Blessings of Cant (13/12/2023)
Well met, adventurers — it's time for another update to our reimagined version of Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord. This time we've tried to focus on player feedback as much as possible, and we're expanding some of the core systems of the game to make the experience more forgiving — but only if you want it to be! Let's dive into what's new.
Two key buildings in town have been enhanced. All the features of camp can now be accessed in town at the Inn, and you can now rest your whole party with one button press. At the Temple of Cant, you'll find resurrection prices are a little more generous based on the experience of the character you're trying to bring back to the land of the living. What's more, The Temple priests can now restore experience to characters who have been affected by Level Drain.
The Old School Menu has become increasingly important as we try to respect the Wizardry experience as each individual player might remember it — a computer game, a console game, or just an RPG that they're experiencing for the first time. These options have expanded, and are important enough that we've split them into their own menu. There are many, from how your starting attributes are distributed to how you prefer to see your characters increase in level — but they are all explained in-game, so hover over each one and see which options best suit your style of play. Don't forget you can also use presets for Original and Classic Console, which is an easy way for experienced players to make the game match what you remember!
You'll need all the help you can get in Werdna's dungeon. Stop by Gilgamesh's Tavern and you'll find adventurers waiting to be hired to join your party. Some of them are bargains, while some of them will charge more gold for their expertise – but they're worth every penny.
In addition to more animations and final textures added to the game, you'll quickly spot a new combat arena. Enjoy fighting for your life in this colossal cave!
The previous update brought save slots into existence; this time we're giving players more control over them, including the crucial ability to copy them into other slots. We know backing up your party is important!
In the original version of Wizardry, it was not uncommon for your mage to lock in a spell, only to see your target enemy perish before the mage had a chance to act — and by the time the rotation reaches the mage, the precious spell slot is wasted on nobody and nothing. To address this, our team has added new logic to automatically redirect attacks that would otherwise be squandered. Here's how it works in various situations:
All this and the usual bug fixes should make this update a significant one, with smoother gameplay and more personalized options for players who are veterans to the franchise as well as new adventurers. We appreciate your continued feedback in the Steam forums; we may not always be able to respond directly, but we are reading everything, and we hope we're proving that we are acting on your comments, criticisms, suggestions, and bug reports.
Due to the big December holidays, we expect our next update to take a little longer than our usual two-month cadence. Currently, we're planning to release the next update in March. We'll post a Roadmap before too long, but in the meantime, enjoy the latest content, keep sending in your feedback, and enjoy your holidays!
The Wizardry Team at Digital Eclipse
Fixed an issue where starting equipment was not being given to new characters upon character creation.
Hello from the Digital Eclipse Wizardry development team. We have made significant progress in addressing much of the feedback that we have received over the last six weeks. Early access version 0.2 of Wizardry contains some new features planned by our team as well as a few things we added as a direct result of your feedback — so thank you for your patience and support as we improve!
Here’s what you'll find in this update:
Our initial release was heavily controller focused, but we promised mouse support in our first update. Now, you can navigate all the menus in the game using your mouse, as promised. We’ve also added keyboard shortcuts to many areas to reflect the button prompts in the original Wizardry game.
Players now have access to 5 save slots to mark their progress.
The mini-map should now better reflect your party’s awareness of their current surroundings. What you have seen is what you know. Still, The Maze can never be trusted, so be sure to have DUMAPIC available to cast whenever you suspect it might be lying to you.
Characters can choose to Inspect Enemies during combat to learn more about them (give that back row something else to do than Parry). Your party can now Identify, Observe, and Deduce new facts about the enemies they face. As they do, the information they glean will populate the all-new Bestiary!
There’s now a Bestiary that includes profiles and information on all 101 enemies in the game. The bestiary ties directly into our new identification system, providing a means of reviewing what you’ve learned when encountering enemies so that you can better strategize against them in the future.
A side note to these two features: The original version of Wizardry contained a monumental amount of data, much of which was kept hidden from the player. Under the hood lies a deep, rich system that players would often intuit, but never really directly saw for themselves. Our new enemy identification system, combined with the all-new Bestiary, strives to bring some of that data to light and make the game a richer experience.
Elves, gnomes, dwarves — show yourselves! There are now 20 portraits for every lineage, for a total of 100 portraits.
If you want a truly personalized portrait, we’ve added a character portrait importer as a direct result of player feedback and requests. Here's how to import your own portraits into the game:
Create a 512x512px image (JPG, PNG, BMP, GIF) for your character's portrait. Please note that the final image must be exactly 512 pixels square, and animated GIFs are not supported.
Create a CustomPortraits folder in your Wizardry directory: \steamapps\common\MURPHY\murphy\Content\CustomPortraits
Copy your image files into the CustomPortraits directory.
When you launch the game, visit the Training Grounds and you'll find your custom portraits in their own gallery.
You can organize your images within CustomPortraits into folders, but the game will only recognize subfolders one level deep. For example, the images placed within CustomPortraits\Vampires will be recognized, but any images in CustomPortraits\Vampires\Sparkling will not show up in-game.
To start you off, here are 10 portraits of some of the scarier denizens of the Maze, suitable for your Halloween adventures: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1MI2OzkK8cIYN8qtC_M1SV3jcqY4uzOt7/view
We've also included several quality-of-life and bug fixes based on the vast amount of feedback that we have received. We are actively monitoring the forums on Steam, so please continue to post your findings and feedback there — adding your voice in either venue is the best way to reach the team with your suggestions.
If you have reported a bug but you don't see the fix for your issue in this update, don't despair — we're keeping track and will continue to address more issues in future updates. More improvements are on the way, and your patience is appreciated!
WERDNA had a breakthrough warding himself against the madness of the amulet. He can now more easily differentiate between the loyal undead and pesky adventurers when unleashing the power of TILTOWAIT
