{"id":7213,"date":"2022-10-06T20:34:33","date_gmt":"2022-10-07T03:34:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/?p=7213"},"modified":"2022-10-06T20:34:33","modified_gmt":"2022-10-07T03:34:33","slug":"wizardry-iii-end-of-level-4-observations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/archives\/7213","title":{"rendered":"Wizardry III: End of Level 4 Observations"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve seen every last tile of level 4 now, even the secret bits. This also goes for the parts of level 2 that are only accessible from level 4. That done, I spent a while just grinding for XP and item drops, because level 4 has a very good place to do this, where you can basically summon random encounters at will by deliberately stepping on traps. It&#8217;s like the Murphy&#8217;s Ghost area that way, but more varied and dangerous.<\/p>\n<p>In fact, I&#8217;m not entirely sure I made an overall profit on it, XP-wise, due to the occasional encounter with level-draining undead. Most monsters become less of a peril as you gain experience levels: a monster that can hit you for 8 points of damage will kill a level-1 character outright, but be far less of a concern to a level-10 character with 50 or more total health. But level-draining monsters like Banshees are the opposite. The higher-level the character, the more XP the banshees take away when they manage to hit you. Presumably there&#8217;s a break-even point where you gain levels exactly as fast as you lose them, but exactly where that point lies depends on your defenses and your party&#8217;s initiative. The best way to deal with Banshees is to kill them all before they get any attacks in, throwing all your highest-level group damage spells at them just to be sure &#8212; yes, the game successfully makes me terrified of undead, as is appropriate.<\/p>\n<p>But any encounter has a chance of giving the monsters a surprise round &#8212; if you&#8217;re really unlucky and ill-prepared, they can kill your entire party before you have a chance to react. Good armor helps here &#8212; and that&#8217;s what all this grinding is really good for. Every once in  a while, I find enchanted armor or a magical pendant or something, usually improving someone&#8217;s AC by but a single point, but every single point has a perceivable effect.<\/p>\n<p>At any rate, I&#8217;ve braved level 5 by now, albeit just barely. I haven&#8217;t yet encountered anything there that wasn&#8217;t on level 4 &#8212; it&#8217;s not clear to me if there&#8217;s really a steady increase in difficulty from level 1 onward or if it compensates for the way it&#8217;s set up to send good and evil characters into different parallel tracks by making 2 equivalent to 3 and 4 to 5. But I&#8217;m not taking any chances.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve seen every last tile of level 4 now, even the secret bits. This also goes for the parts of level 2 that are only accessible from level 4. That done, I spent a while just grinding for XP and item drops, because level 4 has a very good place to do this, where you [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[348,349],"class_list":["post-7213","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-wizardry","tag-wizardry-iii-legacy-of-llylgamyn"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7213","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7213"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7213\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7214,"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7213\/revisions\/7214"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7213"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7213"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7213"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}