Wizardry II: How Level 6 Resists Mapping
Comments(0) At this point, I could probably just go for the ending. The characters I imported were overpowered for the scenario, and even if they hadn’t been, the game is as eager to help you advance quickly as it is to kill you without warning. The dagger that instantly transforms a thief into a ninja, available only as a rare drop in the previous scenario, is available for purchase in the town. There are similar items findable in the dungeon for attaining the other advanced classes, and if you (justifiably) don’t trust that kind of magic and want to make Lords and Ninjas the hard way, there are items that facilitate that too, giving permanent boosts to various stats.
But even as it accelerates advancement, it slows exploration. And that’s why I haven’t ended things yet. I still want to map out the dungeon as thoroughly as I can. (That’s why I’m replaying this, remember?)
How does it impede exploration? First, there are places you can’t teleport to. Teleporting blind is a foolish gamble anyway, betting that the spot you’ve picked isn’t occupied by solid rock. But when you can’t even teleport to places you know, you lose a valuable shortcut, as well as a way to be sure where you are.
Speaking of which: There is a low-level spell called DUMAPIC that’s extremely valuable for exploring confusing areas with teleporters and spinners and indistinguishable rooms. All it does is tell you your current coordinates and heading. When the game really wants an area to be disorienting, it just disables this. There are anti-magic fields where no one, player or enemies, can cast any spells at all, but there are also specific anti-DUMAPIC fields. Such a field covers the entirety of level 6.
Even worse are the darkness fields. By default, you can see one space around you. With a spell providing light, you can see two more spaces beyond that, and that is the state in which any sane person plays most of the game. When in magical darkness, you can’t see at all. The first-person view is simply filled with a grey dither pattern. The only way to tell where the walls are is by bumping into them, making mapping slow and laborious, and at the same time absolutely necessary. Darkness is so discouraging that the first elevator back in Wizardry I is protected by nothing else, secured by just the fact that the player’s first instinct on entering darkness is just to try to get out of it as quickly as possible.
Level 6 of Knight of Diamonds combines all of this. You can’t teleport to it. Reaching it for the first time means sliding down a chute into darkness where you can’t use DUMAPIC. The only way I know to find the coordinates where the chute comes out is to teleport straight up, and cast DUMAPIC from there. There are stairs leading down from level 5, but they’re behind a one-way door; if you’re being sensible and not teleporting blind, the only way to find them is from the underside, approaching the level 5 boss backward.