Comments please on this party build

[Gambleur]

Fellow Wizardry junkies,

just starting my 3rd party tonight - was doing okay before but played Iron Man game for kicks, tried to charm the Rapax shopkeeper, and he called the guards and I was surrounded, thus had to kill one to escape, and I was permanently hostile to Hogardi. Since I still had half the things to do (bank etc.), I'm starting over.

The party I used, and will probably use again unless I can think of anything better (or you guys can) is as follows:

Satchmo the Lizard Fighter
Adrian the Human Lord
Melissa the Human Bard
Hanna the Human Priest
Toleadaux the Elf Bishop (that would make her "Holy" Toleadaux.. get it?!)
Gambleur the Human Psionic

The reasons behind my party selection:

* 3 spell casters, 3 fighters. Bards and Rogues can get wear good enough armor and have a high enough AC to be good flank and rear guards so the spell casters can hide in the middle.
* The bishop learns only from the Mage and Alchemist schools, since they have common strengths (IE both have lots of different elemental spells and very few divine/mental spells).
* I want the Lord for the bonus in Dual Wield, so he can wield Bloodlust and Poison Dagger - might as well have one guy carry both good cursed weapons, no? Fighter can vary from 1 hand to 2 hand as good axes and swords come and go.

My strategy:
* Use the Bishop's points only for advancing the Mage and Alchemist schools, using the Psionicist and his mad Mental Magic skills for identifying item.
* Use the Poseur Cap until I get Myles. The traps are wimpy enough I can just crack them open and heal after anyways. All the Bards points need to go into music and combat skills.

Any comments?

[DraconisRex]

Yep. It'll work. I'm on my Ironman VII. 15 regular games, too. What I have learned about party composition and development:

Everyone has his or her opinion. Some of them will get you dead. Quick. Including mine. I play the way I play, and everything I say is based on the way I play.


I'm wondering why you are not using more races. Yes, humans are great and get more ability points than any race, save hobbits, which they tie. I'd suggest a little more racial diversity in your party.

1. Consider a change in your Bard to a hobbit. My experience has been they work out a little better. Same points, much better Bardic allocation.

2. You don't need Bloodlust. Change the way you're working your Lord. You will start with one Dagger-Class weapon. You'll find many more before you leave the Monastary. Don't develop your sword skill to weild bloodlust. You'll get more attacks, but in a heated battle, you need that armor class. And the ability to quickly shift to your sword/sheild weapons when things are going against you is great.

There is a Dagger Class, common-enough weapon that you'll find in the Swamp. You may even find it after a random encounter, if you're lucky. Stilletto - 10% Kill Chance. You poke a Hogar in the eye, that's 400+ damage. That'll be about 20 hits with Bloodlust.

But don't forgoe your sword. There are other good swords in the game. Or use Bloodlust until you get a Stilletto and dump it. Bloodlust is great, for Samurais, but I wouldn't use it with any other hybrid-fighter class, especially the Lord which is weaker than the Samurai in offensive magic when you're stuck in ranged/magical combat.

3. I don't understand the inclusion of Priest. You have a Bishop. You can advance THREE books at full speed with a Bishop and practice to make perfect. You also have a Lord. Properly developed, he can function as a formidible front-line fighter and as a support caster.

4. I've never been able to get a warm, fuzzy for the Psionicist. I much prefer Alchemists, who can combine various potions and powders (don't use them or sell them unless they can't be combined) and make you a ton of money. In the early game, money's a little tight. An Alchemist can fix that for you. Plus, the Alchemist can't be silenced. Very handy when fighting creatures that CAN silence your other party members.

I'd switch your Bishop development to Psionics, Divine & Mage. She'll develop quite nicely. My singe-class Alchemist has 76 in Alchemy (B4 Alchemy bonus). His FIVE realms total 206 points.

In contrast, my Faerie Bishop has 57 in Mage, 62 in Divine & 44 in Psionics. Alchemy is not worked, that score is 8. Her SIX realms have 207 points.

AS I can buy a lot of spell books, I have a wide-variety of spells that I didn't have to select at level up. As the game progresses, I'll buy more and more books. This, plus all the support & healing & identifying work, easily makes up for not being able to allocate 6 points to my realms.

5. I think you're going to have to develop your Bard differently. They don't fight as well as Rogues, and get chopped to bits on the sides because the FACE the direction of their music/spell. This means getting hit in the back for double damage. A lot. Even rogues have a hard time under true pressure, bards have less success.

6. Your character class-groupings count confuses me. You have, by my reading, 2 Fighters (1 hybrid(Lord)), 1 Rogue (Bard), 1 Cleric (Priest), 1 Cleric/Mage Hybrid (Bishop), 1 Mage (Psionist).

By your stated development, it's really 2, 1, 1, 2.

[Annheiser]

I mentioned that as well in the Cursed items discussion.

I wouldn't bother with dual wielding Bloodlust and the Poisoned Dagger. My Dwarf Lord had them both, and after several hours of testing, found Bloodlust just plain stinks. Plus you'll be getting better swords sooner anyhow, like Demonslayer. [img]smile.gif[/img] I would work on Mace/Flail for your Lord. You get a pretty good off-hand one later in the game.

[Gimli]

Hey - well I would drop the Priest and make 2 Bishops; if I had to make another party I would make one Bishop study Alchemy/Divinity and the other Wizardry/Psionics. Once you reach Arnika you can make them both alot stronger, have them learn "Charm" and "Knock Knock". By talking to the store owners and "Charming" them over and over you'll raise Mental Magic a ton and for one Bishop Divinity will go up while Psionics will rise for the other. Then go down the chute in the arnika jail to the bank vault and cast knock knock on it repeatedly (at a low enough level to never open it) and you'll pump their Earth magic and Wizardry for one and Alchemy the other.

I think a pure Priest is too much of an offensive liability, I'd rather be doing damage and never taking it in the first place. But with 2 bishops and your Lord you'll more than make up for not having a pure priest. Not to mention your Alchemist-type Bishop will make you tons of money mixing potions and powders together to sell to the stores.

I would go with another fighter type over the psionic, you are missing a ranger and I think they're invaluable. Also I like gadgeteers over bards, but I would take yet another fighter type over both of them and let your bishops open chests/locks with knock knock; I'd take a Samurai instead.

Also stick the Bishops in the back rank, some extended weapons will hit them in the middle; if you have a ranger it will be alot harder for things to sneak up behind you and get at your rear chars.

Right not I have these guys who I am going to finish the game with:

Dwarf Fighter
Mook Ranger
Dracon Valkyrie
Human Psionic
Elf Bishop
Faerie Mage

With Vi and RFS1 as RPCs. I want to do it one more time and I think it will be with these chars:

Dwarf Lord
Felpurr Samurai
Hobbit Ninja
Mook Ranger
Elf Bishop
Faerie Bishop

And try not to use RPCs at all. Enjoy this great (and addictive!) game =0)

[R_ock]

Gambleur,

There is no "better" or "worse" regarding party make-up. (Ok, I admit a lizardman bishop might be a bad idea...) If you have already won the game with those six characters, consider trying something completely different.

If you haven't played any or your teams very long, here are some of my opinions. The most important rule is to "Play what is fun to you!"

Personally, I would find it hard to keep 3 pure spell-casters alive during the early part of the game. They have so few hit-points! On the plus side, your bard will help them regenerate mana quickly while resting, so you won't need to take the full "8 hours" (or more) of sleep.

In my parties, the bard has been a back-row character, using a bow or wrist-rocket (advanced slingshot) when not playing a tune. Since you have her on the front row, she will start taking a lot of melee damage. There are some bard-specific items which will help, but she will never have the same high armor class as a fighter, lord, or rogue.

So, since you have given us permission to tweak with your party, the bard would go to the back. You, "Gambleur" the psionic, would become a monk and move to the front. This would get you plenty of exercise, and still allow you to develop your mental skills. As a monk, you would have a lot more hitpoints, and your armor class can build to very high levels (via stealth, speed, and reflextion). You won't be pure-brain any more; instead you would seek the perfect balance between mind, body, and spirit.

Since bards have access to the locks&traps skill, you won't actually need to depend on Myles for that. If you are patient, very few points need to be allocated to this skill at level-ups. And by moving to the back, the need to use so many level-up points for combat skills becomes less.

At every trapped chest, keep examining it and disengaging just one of the components. Then get out of the "trap mode" and start a new untrapping sessions. Repeat again. Eventually you will gain a point. Try and try again and you can gain another point or two from the same chest. I typically have a personal rule that at each trapped chest, my lockpicker needs to train at least two points. It gets tedious, but the points will come, and they are "free". If the trap goes off and the chest opens, I consider that the game's way of telling me to move on.

Typically it takes about 10 minutes of real time to gain two points from a chest. If you play in Expert mode, set it to Normal or Novice while training locks&traps. One of the "features" of expert mode is that it makes gaining this skill from usage rarer. Once you finish with the chest, set the difficulty level back to where you like it.

[ 02-11-2002: Message edited by: R_ock ]

[Gimli]

I think it's not worth it to develop the locks skill precisely becasue it takes so long on chests; for every round of casting knock knocks on the bank vault door you'll pick up 1-2 points of earth magic and occasionally raise wizardry or alchemy (whichever skill your char has that is higher). But if you are going to try to raise the locks skill on chests, just keep pressing on "inspect" over and over, it will be easier than disarming one piece, exiting and starting over - click inspect till the chest's trap goes off, but to me it's boring. Not to mention developing your casters with knock knock will make them stronger casters in general.

[R_ock]

Wow, several good posts were made while I was still writing. It was in the back of my mind that your party had a lot of healing focus (priest, bishop, lord, and eventually bard). Thus, I concur with other posters that changing the priest to either an alchemist or ranger might be beneficial.

The alchemist will provide the quickest route to having plenty of money. A ranger will also eventually be able to mix together potions and powders for tremendous profit, but it will take longer. Having a ranger's automatic auto-search ability is very nice, though

[R_ock]

Gimli,

Do you know what my rogue would do to my bishop if he even attempted to open a locked door or trapped chest? Do you KNOW?!?

Well, neither do I. But it wouldn't be a pretty sight. She isn't one to take kindly to having others trying to move in on her "territory".

[Jem]

FWIW - when you are training up your lock-picking by clicking the 'inspect' over and over again, it takes 20 times get one point. When playing with tumblers it takes about 4-5 minutes of clicking various tumblers to get a point unless you were already close to getting one anyway and is not worth the effort.

I have to agree with the others -- stay away from tumbler locks when trying to build lock-picking. Use those for building up Earth and Alchemy/Wizardry levels.

Best places to practice these are 1) Arnika Bank vault via the Jail, 2) Umpani barracks in Gigas Base Camp 3) Barracks in Gigas Caves or 4) the various Retro Dungeons. Number 1 and 4 seem to work best for me because they contain harder locks so I don't have to worry about accidently succeeding in opening one. [img]smile.gif[/img]

[Gimli]

LOL @ Rock [img]smile.gif[/img] Well I have never taken a rogue (other than myles for a while) so my bishop is safe. Not to mention if a rogue did take offense my Dwarven fighter Gimli would carve him up like an orc in Moria [img]smile.gif[/img] Next party I will take a Ninja but he'll never spend a single point on lock picking, that's what the Bishops are for...