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- Jan 4, 2005
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Hit-point rolls are random, and class-based, so yeah, your wizard might roll a 1. Hence, to iron-man 6 and 7, you must make sure that the wizard (or any caster, and actually, all characters) have a Vitality of 18, as this gives a guaranteed +2 HP each level and prevent your wizard from being wiped out by fireballs. Mostly.
Stat increases are random, but always positive. Each level, each character has a chance to get +1 to a stat, for each stat. He is guaranteed at least one +1, so no worries there. The level-up stat+1's most desirable are Speed and Dexterity.
There's two big bugs: mana-regeneration depends on STARTING Vitality, and never changes, even if Vitality changes. That means casters REALLY should have 18 VIT. Also, Carry Capacity is fixed at start too, and never changes, so having many characters with 18 STR is a must; you will find many things to carry.
Iron-manning Wizardry 6 and 7 isn't very recommended as the games might throw encounters at you you will have trouble fleeing from. For example, in 6, you might meet 3 groups of 6 Nightgaunts. They will all cast incapacitating spells, like Sleep, and once all are asleep, you are fucked for good. If you must iron-man, save your sanity and do it on "Easy" difficulty, or know that you will need lots of grinding to increase the party's resistance to spells.
Depends, see post above. If you never, ever multiclass - an approach I can only recommend on Easy and Normal - you might have luck with:
Lizardman Samurai - 18 STR, 18 VIT, as much DEX as possible
Dwarven Valkyrie - 18 STR, 18 VIT, as much DEX as possible
Fairy Ninja - as much STR as possible
(Female!!) Human Bard - 18 VIT
Gnome Priest - 18 VIT
Fairy Wizard - 18 VIT, as much SPE as possible.
You will need many rolls to roll the lizardman samurai and the fairy ninja. My advice: use the Cosmic Forge editor to change the rolling algorithm to give you higher rolls more easily. It's not cheating, it's saving time, as far as I concerned. As a warning, without that little "cheat", it took me two hours six years ago to roll a decent party. You will want ~18+ bonus points on each character, and the samurai and ninja need more than that to even be selectable. Use it.
All the skills do something That said, never put points into:
Oratory
All Weapon Skills
Artifacts
Scribe
Scouting
Music
Ninjutsu
Since all these, except for scouting, improve rapidly with use. Scouting is useless since the spell Detect Secrets has the same function. And if you iron-man, you ought to use artifacts very often, just to survive; bombs and such help a lot early.
And you CAN put points into these skills, once you maxxed the important skils that don't improve with use: this is mainly the respective casting skill - Thaumaturgy for your Wizard, Samurai and Bard, Theology for the Valkyrie and Priest, Alchemy for the Ninja; and far more importantly: Kirijutsu, the instant kill skill, which, when maximized, gives a 20% guaranteed chance to kill an enemy of your hit-die or lower.
Ignore Alchemy on the Ninja and Thaumaturgy on the Samurai and Bard; but put points into Theology for the Valkyrie.
The Bard should focus on lock-picking, called Skullduggery. It's your decision if you want to put points in this, since it rises 1 point each picked door on its own, but you need 10 at the start to even open the easiest doors.
You can ignore "Legerdemain" if you don't mind grinding for money. Besides, you want to iron-man, so reloading after every failed pick-pocket attempt is out of question anyway.
Multi-classing has almost no drawbacks in 6 and 7. You could multiclass everyone, once they are level 12, to a Ninja to gain Kirijutsu and Ninjutsu (Hide), then multiclass back once you can, and now have a party where everyone can critically kill the enemies to 20% and Hide in the middle of battle to become untargetable by most monsters. So you might not want to do that.
In 7, you can use "Recharge" to give bought items with charges MANY charges, and then sell them for huge profit.
Some say the Cane of Corpus is an exploit. I disagree. It's a very hard to get weapon, and you did say you want to experience all the uber weapons, so there: Fairy Ninja, only dude who can wield it; the best weapon in 7 and 8.
Most of my advice is for 6. Also, I am not much of an expert, so try not to trust this to 100%. The party I suggested can use most of the uber-items I remember, except for a few:
The PK Crystal (very good item). You could use a Psionicist instead of a Wizard to be able to use it, but if you iron-man, the Wizard will be far more valuable.
The Forest Cape is Ranger-only, but Rangers are awful in 6 and 7.
Jade Figurine, a "meh" Monk-only item.
The Avenger, the best 1-handed sword, can't be used by the party. That's not a problem because the Samurai gets an equally good Samurai-only sword, the Ninja doesn't need any sword to wreak havoc, and the Valkyrie gets an excellent polearm that even outclasses The Avenger by a good deal, the Maenad's Lance.
The Elven Bow is only usable by elves, and is the best Bow in the game. It also imports to 8, and if you play 8, you might want to have an Elven Ranger in that game so he can automatically search, which makes playing it more comfortable. But you will have to tell me that; if so the party must be changed slightly.
Some of the uber-items are very hard to get. The PK Crystal is a rare drop of a rare monster. The best 2-handed sword in the game, Excalibur, is also a 2% chance drop from a rare monster. The best staff for the Samurai, which isn't as good as the sword he will get to 100%, is also a 2% drop.
However: 6 is a generous game. You will get uber-items in the normal course of the story. You get the best 1-handed sword, the best polearm, the best armor items, the best Samurai equipment, and so on.
I wrote three times I'd do one of 6 to 8 in September, but I guess, go ahead.
