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Wizards & Warriors Low-Spoiler Directory

Welcome to my Wizards and Warriors hints page. (-: If you're new to my series of low-spoiler computer game walkthroughs, the idea is to point gamers towards things they might not have thought of in each game rather than giving away puzzle solutions or step-by-step instructions. There's not much point in playing a computer game if you know all its plot twists and puzzle solutions in advance, after all.

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So these pages are as close to spoiler-free as possible while still providing some valuable Wizards and Warriors hints and game recommendations. If you are looking for a more explicit hint, there are a couple of detailed walkthroughs listed on my links page below. My site here, meanwhile, focuses on exactly the things traditional walkthroughs don't: the non-critical bits of Wizards and Warriors, detours you can take, little things you can do to smooth the gameplay out, extra details you might miss if you did only what was strictly necessary to complete the game. If you want even fewer spoilers--you're considering whether to buy the game, for example, and want to know whether there's anything you're going to detest in it--please try my Wizards and Warriors Review page to find all the pertinant information in one convenient spoiler-free package.

Now, on with the game!

Wizards and Warriors Review
Wizards and Warriors Hints and Tips
Wizards and Warriors Walkthrough
Wizards and Warriors Walkthrough: Ishad N'ha
Wizards and Warriors Quest List
Wizards and Warriors Solutions
Wizards and Warriors Cheats
Wizards and Warriors Links (Patches, Trainers, Editors, Maps, and Forums)
The Backseat Game Designer: Wizards and Warriors Critique

Wizards and Warriors Hints and Tips



Although Wizards & Warriors is a recent game (released in the year 2000,) in style and substance it is more in keeping with a mid-nineties-era CRPG like Wizardry Gold, and the game is riddled with interface and gameplay hurdles that can diminish your enjoyment of it. Here's my short list of things to know about Wizards and Warriors before you begin:

Party Interactions: Wizards and Warriors gives every indication of having originally been created as a solo adventure and then expanded into a classic six-character format very late in production. A number of plot points, for example, seem to be addressing a single hero. Several spatial puzzles rely on the inability of the party to pull two levers at the same time, or for one character to press a button while another props a door open. (In another game I probably would have considered this a limitation of the 3D environment, but Wizards and Warriors has an exceptionally manipulable environment, and it's just odd that two objects can't be used at once.) The part that can really throw a player for a loop, though, is the inability to interact with questgivers at a party level. You can't accept a quest to, say, kill a vampire on behalf of your entire party, and have each party member receive credit for completing the quest; instead you have to have each player character, one after the other, individually inquire about the quest, listen to the entire backstory, and accept it before the party sets off to do the deed. If you complete the task without all six of your characters accepting it first, you may need to go back and repeat the entire quest all over again. Other times the PC you've forgotten simply never will get credit for that quest at all (frustrating if you're trying to advance him or her in guild levels.) In game terms, all guild quests (including the dojo quests) must be individually accepted by each character who is a member of that guild. Since there are five guilds and each of your six PC's will belong to at least two of them, repetition is unavoidable. Sometimes this repetition is very bizarre (six characters being asked to deliver the same letter to the same NPC, for example,) but if you're careful to accept the quest on behalf of each eligible character before completing it, they will all receive the XP and guild promotion.

There's a corollary to this--in the very first town, Valeia, you will probably be receiving guild quests before your PC's have graduated out of their "apprentice" classes (and therefore belong to no more than one guild apiece, even though most of them will eventually belong to three or more.) That means that you're either going to have to go back and complete those early quests twice or more (which is a pain), put off completing all of them until your characters have achieved advanced classes (which is a real pain,) forego some guild levels, or cheat. There are only seven guild levels to be had, so you can still achieve the highest possible level if each character completes only one quest for each guild in Valeia (though it's a good idea to do two quests in the Valeia mages' guild due to a glitch in the Brimloch Roon one.) Cheating to get early guild membership is actually a very attractive option, especially for characters you intend to become ninjas, samurais or bards (three classes you won't be able to legitimately achieve till after leaving the Valeia quadrant.) All you need to do is accept a quest to change your character class to one that can use the guild(s), pay to join, then cancel the quest. There's no penalty for this; you can still complete the quest and become the new character class for real later on.

Character Classes: Speaking of character classes, you should decide fairly early on what classes you want your characters to aim for. There's no limit on how many times you can change your character class, but once you quit a class you can never return to it again. You want to upgrade from the fairly useless apprentice classes as soon as possible, so if you are intending one of your PC's for an advanced class you won't be able to achieve for a while, like Ninja, Samurai, or Bard, there is no downside to spending the intervening levels as an easy-to-achieve advanced class like Barbarian, Paladin or Warlock instead of an apprentice class. Two of the three enticing-looking special classes in the manual--the Zenmaster and the Valkyrie--can't be achieved until the final dungeon of the game, so there's no point even spending time thinking about them. The Assassin, however, can be achieved about midway through and you should plan on upgrading one of your characters to this powerful class as soon as it becomes available.

Time Management: Time passes automatically in Wizards & Warriors, but for the most part this has no effect on anything. There is no time limit to any of the quests in this game (there is one quest where you have to wait for time to pass in order to win

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