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[RPB]

Not sure if anyone's still interested in this, but I have been putting in bits of playing time here so I figured I'd post an update. It looks like this is going to be even shorter than the NES version, so things should be wrapping up fairly quickly anyhow hopefully.

The second floor turns out to be pretty similar to the first floor in terms of enemies, the main difference being that there are now more of them. Still, we have sufficient explodeyness in our ranks by now that we're cutting through them at a pretty good clip, until we come to...



Progress! Maybe! It's kind of hard to tell in the picture but this is a wall in front of us with 3 doors, the party currently being right in front of the middle door.

I'm noticing that the NES version I'm familiar with reused a lot of motifs from the dungeon layout in this, even though the dungeon maps themselves were largely redone. This room in particular shows up exactly the same on this floor in the NES quest.

(As an aside, I like how it tells you to "choose wisely" but leaves you to choose entirely at random with no indication that any of the three identical doors may or may not be the right one.)



Except I don't remember having to put up with this crap in the NES version. Not only was there a lot less of this darkness crap, but the message when you walk into a wall was a slightly more tolerable "Ouch!" instead of this smartass backtalk.



We do run into the most adorable hellhounds ever though. I always knew basset hounds were evil! Those droopy jowls are unnatural, man.

The dark area on this floor is relatively straightforward, at least for being a maze of twisty passages, all alike (we are likely to be eaten by a grue!), so stumbling around blindly works well enough and we eventually make it to an exit, which dumps us right back in the "three choices" room.

At this point we're running low on health and magic so RPB II teleports back out and the party makes its way back so we can try the left door. This one teleports us to an area that's basically a whole bunch of small rooms in a symmetrical layout that is completely packed with monsters. This place would've been handy if we had access to it during the mandatory grinding portion of the game. At least our lewt collection continues to shape up nicely.



That granite stone Nirur picked up all the way back near the beginning is still goin' strong in spite of being used against most major spellcaster enemies, and has been supplemented by a dreamer's stone and amulet of MAKANITO, which put enemies to sleep and wipe out weaker enemies, respectively. The latter especially is one of the most useful spells in Wizardry I and early on in this game as well, but of course you generally don't get the item that casts it for free until the point when a lot of enemies start to resist it.

Still, it's enough to make him about as useful a spellcaster as Servant Corps thanks to the bishop's crappy-ass spell progression. No other class can identify items though so we're basically stuck with him.

The Blarney Stone is not a spellcasting item; it's a stat-boosting item, in this case luck. Most of the party has crappy luck scores, but I think luck is primarily used by thieves anyhow so that's not a big deal except for trying to class change to lord/ninja. We're up to our eyeballs in metamorph rings anyhow though. In fact, even after lordifying inaluct and RPB II we're accumulating so much crap that leaving Jarvis sitting in the inn with it isn't enough, so we grab a level 1 recruit to carry our stuff. Although "carry" might not be the word, since he's dead basically all the time. I envision us dragging around his corpse like a sled, piled high with priceless magical artifacts.

After a quick rest it's back to the dungeon to try the right-hand door. We make our way through several rooms and are treated to a wall of mock-poetic semi-Oldey Englishe, so I assume this means we're getting somewhere.




It's a riddle! Uh well we're trying to recover the Knight of Diamond's gear and we already have his armor, so I'm going to guess SHIELD.



Nope! It was his magical easter egg and not a shield at all.



His magical, carnivorous easter egg OF DOOM!

At this point we're basically ****ed--although the metamorph ring magically gave RPB II the fighting ability of a 13th level warrior, he still doesn't have inaluct's strength or kickass magic sword. In desperation I throw out the MAHAMAN spell, which sacrifices a level's worth of experience in order to call a semi-random but obscenely powerful effect.

Or at least it normally does. All that happens is that I get some "divine snickering". The gods of Llylgamyn are dicks, although I guess RPB I already learned that.

Now we're basically extra screwed, and Nirur is still sitting in the back row with nothing to do (at least until someone else gets cuts down to make room), so I have him use his Dreamer's Stone for the heck of it, and... the shield slash easter egg goes to sleep. I honestly was not expecting that to happen. The MORLIS and DILTO spells that we've been throwing at it for the past several rounds have nuked its AC to the point that we can actually hit it, so we hack it down. Now we have a second piece of brokenly powerful armor (although note that the first one wasn't brokenly powerful enough to stop inaluct from getting shredded by a giant fabrege shield.)

Annoyingly it still docks RPB II an experience level even though his MAHAMAN didn't work. But on the plus side this puts me a lot closer to leveling up as a lord, since before I had only been level 13 by mage standards and lords have much steeper experience requirements. Now I'm starting to wonder if you could theoretically gain experience from getting level-drained if you get to a high enough level in a quick-advancing class and then use an item to switch to a class with a slower experience progression.

[Servant Corps]

Oh dear. Look like the game is over, huh?

[RPB]

Technically we're not even halfway through the dungeon (there are still several more pieces of the Knight of Diamond's equipment to find and hopefully not get eaten by), but I'm guessing that the next 3-4 floors are probably going to take less time than the two that have been done, since after all most of that was grinding.

[RPB]

On to level 3! Level 3 seems to consist of a lot of random mazeyness. There's a lot of thin, non-contiguous walls chopping up the path and many dead-ends, but thankfully short ones.



One of the dead ends even thoughtfully provides vocational guidance counsel!

The right-hand rule pwns this maze in short order, bringing us to the next area of this floor, a big open area. There's some little rooms standing out in the middle with monsters in them to fight, and a somewhat larger enclosed space in the very middle with a few doors. We try the first one and... get teleported back to the start of the level. Greaaaat. After healing up we make our way through the maze part again to get back there and try the second door.



Another piece of the Knight of Diamonds's equipment. This one actually looks pretty sword-ish, too! At first I thought that this showed that the sword MEANT BUSINESS but actually it died in one round. Unfortunately Nirur's dreamer's stone went poof in the process

The trip was not entirely unfruitful, though... upon going back to heal and identify loot, it turns out that somewhere on this floor we picked up a Blade Cusinart (tm), the 2nd or 3rd most powerful sword in the game. So now we have two utterly kickass magic weapons.

Also of note, we finally got an Amulet of Jewels, which lets us see our coordinates in the dungeon for free, which is handy for teleport spells (teleports to invalid locations tend to result in your entire party being lost forever, so having proper coordinates is real damn important). After healing up we teleport back to the end of level 3 and start exploring level 4.





Bonus points for keeping things thematic, Wizardry, but giant bats? Really? Note that these giant bats are proportionately about twice as strong as what you might expect upon seeing a "giant bat" enemy in the average CRPG, which means they are still a complete and utter joke for our party. Nirur is happy because they are pretty much the first enemy since floor 1 that his shiny amulet of MAKANITO works on.



Incidentally, this is what the Blade Cusinart (tm) does. I kept Hrathnir (the Knight of Diamonds sword) for RPB II because I am a greedy bastard the Blade Cusinart (tm) does more attacks and inaluct has higher damage per-attack due to his strength.



Oh hey I forgot Wizardry featured petrification. Insert obligatory marijuana joke.

A treasure chest drops here. Our thief is petrified, but we're a bunch of super badasses now. What's the worst that could happen?

You triggered the trap!
Teleporter



Oh hey 'sup.

Ok, we're facing another animated piece of ridiculously powerful equipment. No biggie, we'll just throw a few KATINO spells like we did against the others and...

...it resists KATINO spells...

...and throws pretty powerful damage spells against the whole (surviving) party...

Hokay, we might be in trouble. inaluct takes it down with the Blade Cusinart (tm) just in the nick of time, and RPB II teleports us the hell out of there. Now we have 4 of the 5 pieces of the Knight of Diamonds equipment. One more and then we do... something else, I think? And then we win.

Unfortunately I forgot to grab the coordinates of the end of level 4, so we have to walk through it the hard way. The big cavern is littered with damage traps too. inaluct finally got his lord level and has some mid-level priest spells of his own now, but our healing spells still aren't going to last very long.

At this point I should mention that each piece of Knight of Diamonds equipment has a built-in spell that it can cast an unlimited number of times, but I always forget what they all do except that the first piece (armor) casts something useless and the last piece (gauntlets) cast something awesome. In desperation I start trying each of them out and it turns out the shield we've been lugging around since the second floor casts one of the better healing spells for free, which would've been nice to know earlier. The sword and helmet both cast pretty decent attack spells too. inaluct gets the helm, so now both inaluct and RPB II can use attack spells for free (being an ex-mage RPB II can also use even better attack spells for nonfree).



This is what I call a swarm. Now that I know how much free firepower we get from the Knight of Diamonds stuff it gets exploded in short order.




Very unsuspicious! Everyone knows it's a bad idea to drink randomly from fountains you find in CRPGs, but there's no rule against wading. Someone resurrect Ensign Redshirt, he could use a good swim!

Oh dear. After we fish Ensign Redshirt back out it looks like he's been poisoned. Nothing that a quick dip in the water won't fix!

Hmm. Shoving him in a second time seems to have disintegrated him. You might expect me to say "gee at least he's not poisoned anymore" but it looks like somehow his ashes are still afflicted with poison. I'm guessing this is probably not one of those fountains that randomly does something positive, so we leave it alone after that.

On to level 5!



What the bleeb? The monsters are getting quite a bit tougher, but they still don't make any more sense than before.



I mentioned they were getting tougher, right? Cerej just got pwned by a dude wearing mismatched pink and blue socks. The greater demons are nasty as hell, too: they can summon more greater demons, they paralyze with their attacks (and note that paralysis does not wear off on its own, ever), they throw some medium-strength damage and sleep spells against the party, and they have magic resistance out the wazoo. We pull through anyway. A quick trip back to town for some resurrections and we're back at it.



The demons are back at it too. This time they put up a much tougher fight even though they don't have as many lackeys as before. Still, no big deal. We'll just go hit up the Temple of Cant again and



NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Oh Danny boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling
From glen to glen, and
something about summer maybe I forget the words
F*** it let's go get drunk

(Why do they want to bury him when he's pre-cremated, anyhow?)

Ironically, after the botched resurrection I go to the inn to see who's leveled up, and Cerej just manages to hit level 13 and get the 7th-level resurrection spell. I'm pretty sure the temple is supposed to be more reliable anyhow, though.

[inaluct]

Alas, poor Nirur Torir.

Anyway, this is reminding me that I need to update my LPs.

[RPB]

We've got an Amulet of Skill or two around, so I roll up Nirur II and dump 100,000 experience on him. He got a cool 17 bonus again, so this time I went with maxing vitality instead of agility.

I think this was a mistake; we went through about 10 chests before he managed to successfully disarm one. So it looks like agility is more probably important than luck when it comes to thief skills...

Oh yeah, Nirur II starts out evil again, so we have to go back to the "drop someone off in dungeon, then send another party in to pick them up" routine in order to get a mixed-party alignment together.

RPB II: This would be a lot more convenient if you weren't evil. Can't you sacrifice your own personal satisfaction to help the team out?
Nirur II: Uh, hello? Evil.
RPB II: Whatever. You're just going to end up having a spontaneous epiphany of faith somewhere along the line.

In the dungeon we meet some new faces!



Most original-looking orcs ever, I guess.

Exploring the fifth level we quickly run into MORE DARK ZONES. It's supposed to be better to light a candle than to curse the darkness but Boltac's doesn't sell any candles so F*** YOU DARKNESS.

Then things get worse.



It should go without saying that RPB II kicks these guys' asses solo while everyone else was busy slacking off. But I'm going to say it anyway, because it always bears repeating how awesome I am.



This is what happens to wishing wells in an inflationary economy.

We've got more money than we know what to do with, so I try wishing up some hot blondes to lighten up this sausage fest. Unfortunately all the well does is teleport us back to the castle. Apparently someone went and ruined the wish for the rest of us.

After making our way back down () we find a chute which dumps us down to the sixth and bottom-most floor. Fortunately it's pretty close to the stairs back up to floor 5.

Of course, this means that we are now standing at the stairs down, stairs which on every other floor have been guarded by...



More magic armor. Disturbingly, the gauntlets appear to still have hands inside of them.

These are easily the toughest of the Knight of Diamonds equipment; there's two of them, and they both like to throw TILTOWAIT (the game's most powerful offensive spell, doing 10-100 damage. Take a look at our hitpoints. Yeah.) It's a good thing they're not smart enough to spam it or we'd be screwed; we barely pull through as it is.

Of course now we have the Knight of Diamonds' gauntlets, which do in fact cast TILTOWAIT at-will. This is a win button for most fights, although on the bottom floors there are some monsters that like to resist damage spells no matter how powerful they are.

We've got all the Knight of Diamonds' stuff, but there's still one more floor to go.



A riddle! Of course, as we all know sphinxes tend to be total dicks so he's making us explore the level to find the actual clues to the riddle.



First one was easy enough to find. We're getting beaten up pretty badly by the monsters here, though. Cerej gets level-drained again, but he already has all the priest spells so it's not that big a deal. Actually, there's really not much point to leveling up any further as a priest anyhow, and we're loaded with class-change coins, so...



Everything's better with ninjas! Now Cerej is one of the party's best fighters and can also disarm traps like a thief. Granted, with 10 agility and 7 luck it's not like he can disarm them very well, but he'd be hard-pressed to do any worse at it than Nirur II.



They come in bigger sizes than greater demon?! Fortunately the arch demon proves to be kind of a wuss.



We should attack its weak point for massive damage! It turns out that the crabs' weak point is the same as most monsters in the game, namely, being blown up by the Knight of Diamonds Gauntlets.



I need to cram a few more memes in here so let it be said that I am sick of all these motherf***ing snakes yadda yadda yadda.



Like, check it out, Scoobs! We found another clue!



The sphinx said there were 3 clues, so it looks like we've got them all. Now let's puzzle this sucker out:

"That king, the king who worships gold,
Will no more see his treasure room.

That king, the king who worships power
Will have none within his tomb.

That king, the king who worships these
That king, he finds doom!"

Hmm, okay, let's see.

"Worship" tends to be associated with religious devotion, but in olden times it was also used as a verb in a strictly secular sense meaning to praise or give respect to a person of great power. So a king who worships what finds doom? The Fantastic Four, of course: a king who praises the Fantastic Four will surely find Doom and his wrath! So we know part of the riddle revolves around the number 4. The clues also mention the worship of gold. Someone who worships gold must be a compulsive gambler. So, gambling and the number 4. Well, cards are used to gamble and there are 4 suits in a deck of cards. We are told about a king who will "no more see", i.e. is blind. Someone can be blinded by removing eyes. The King of Diamonds in a deck of playing cards is usually drawn facing to the side, "one-eyed", so he is our "blind king". The remaining clue speaks of a king "who worships power". A king who worships power must love warfare and would therefore study strategy and war, and must be an avid player of wargames. In a medieval context this must mean chess (it is, after all, an abstract representation of battle). A king who loved chess would almost certainly be entombed with his beloved chess board. A tomb is an enclosed space; things put inside a tomb cannot get out. But chess knights can freely bypass obstructions, so out of all the chess pieces the knights alone would be able to leave, therefore the king would "have none within his tomb".

Putting this all together we have, through the power of logical deduction, arrived at the answer to the sphinx's riddle: "The Knight of Diamonds".

Well, okay, no. I had to cheat and look up the answer. I feel retroactively justified because I had already guessed "knight of diamonds" just trying out random answers, but the sphinx won't accept it unless you actually type in "the knight of diamonds" (I already mentioned that sphinxes are dicks). Besides, I somewhat doubt that there is any actual path of reasoning to arrive at this answer that makes more logical sense than the convoluted mess I just made up to justify it. If anyone can actually see a way that you can figure out this answer "legitimately" based on the clues (as opposed to looking it up or just guessing "the knight of diamonds" because, I don't know, it's the game's subtitle), I'd like to hear it. There doesn't seem to be any real associative reasoning behind it, and there doesn't seem to be any sort of encryption scheme where the answer is hidden in the actual words and letters of the riddle.



Unfortunately we still can't get through, because we have to send someone in solo here. You might notice that Nirur II is a Samurai now; I went ahead and used another coin on him, because having a thief who sucks at disarming traps was redundant since we now have a ninja who sucks at disarming traps. Having a samurai kicks ass, because wandering around on the lowest floor we managed to pick up a Muramasa Blade, a samurai-only weapon which is the most powerful weapon in the game (generally even better than Hrathnir, and that's a quest item!)

Of course, this is now entirely irrelevant since the game is basically over; I guess the gauntlets were the closest thing we'll get to a boss fight here. RPB II teleports out and collects the KOD equipment from everybody, then heads back in solo (I'm not just gloryhounding with my avatar, here; he's the only one who can teleport, and I'm sure as hell not walking someone else's character all the way down to the bottom floor.) So he teleports back down to floor 5, jumps down the stairs (it doesn't let you teleport directly to floor 6), and goes through the sphinx again.





hoorays

I told you guys it was short. Theoretically I could import the party to Wizardry III and start playing through that, but Wiz III doesn't have nearly as much ridiculously powerful crap, and it won't let us keep our own ridiculously powerful crap from Wiz II: everyone goes back to level 1, it caps everyone's stats and HP to more "reasonable" amounts for level 1, no items transfer, any spells inherited from previous classes go away, and we only get 500 gold apiece. About the only cool part about transferring from Wizardry II into III is that you can start out with lords and samurai and ninjas, which are otherwise ridiculously hard to get in a level 1 party (well, samurai are fairly reasonable depending on race).

Having played both the console and original PC versions now, if anyone wanted to play through Wizardry II themselves I would strongly recommend the console version. The graphics are less abysmal (the first-person line-drawn exploration is real damn annoying), the quest is marginally more interesting thanks to the addition of key quests and the like, and the console versions I've seen tend to back-port some of the features of later games in the series (like additional spells in the NES version and hide/backstab for the SNES compilation, which make things more balanced and fun). The downside is that there is much less in the way of ridiculous loot in the console versions, but there's still the KOD equipment itself.

[Nirur Torir]

You just beat Wizardry II without importing characters. Despite managing to vaporize me, there is one one suitable word: Applause.

[RPB]

If you want to get really technical they were imported, since Wizardry II doesn't actually let you create new characters at all (at least not in the Wizardry Archives version I have, and actually I think maybe not in the original PC version either). You don't actually have to win the game before importing characters to the next one.

I was rather surprised myself at least in terms of the lack of TPKs involved (there were a few times at the very beginning and near the end that came close, but this is Wizardry so it goes without saying that there are lots of potential TPKs near the beginning and near the end). I had done a few test runs using the default party that came with Wiz I and found there were a number of winnable encounters on the 1st floor of Wiz II, so I knew beforehand that the idea was technically feasible; once you get a few levels I doubt there's a lot of difference between doing it this way and playing with a winning Wizardry I party (the extremely good loot in this game helps tremendously too!). It was still a stroke of unexpected luck to find a good magic weapon in the very first fight (having a fighter with a really buff bonus roll certainly didn't hurt either).

I was also rather surprised at how easy the dungeon was for the most part. Granted, this game was designed by the same people who gave you an elevator that skips half of Wizardry I entirely, but given the horror stories I'd heard about the PC version of this I was expecting something at least as complicated as the dungeon on the NES game.

[Servant Corps]

Will you place this in www.letsplayarchive.com? You got the reward for being the second person to finish an non-DF LP on Bay12Games...EVER.

[inaluct]

Yay!