Wizardry 8

• Damage spells tend to be underwhelming, while status effects are absolutely godlike. Paralysing or sleeping an enemy multiplies the damage dealt to it by physical hits several times over.

• The game is not kind, especially early on. Be careful what you engage, and be aware that you can kind of hide out in a corner and wait for things to pass if they haven't seen you. Roads are the most dangerous locations of all as you can get masses of enemies bunched up.

• Skills are learnt by doing; you can get easy spell levels on people by repeatedly chaincasting spells such as Detect Trap or Open Lock, but this process will usually make you want to kill yourself somewhere along the way. It will increase your basic casting skill, though, and give you substantial stocks of magic points.

• Getting stats to 100 asap is very important, as this unlocks a range of special skills that are significantly more powerful than anything in the base game.

• For a fighter, berserk is usually strictly better than attack. Early on in the first town there's an opportunity to find a sword that's cursed but that turns your attack command into Berserk TEMPORARYDASHCHARACTER it's one of the best weapons for a frontliner who isn't a fighter for some time to come.

• Location is important, as is length of weapon. People at the back TEMPORARYDASHCHARACTER or even in the middle TEMPORARYDASHCHARACTER may require long weapons to be able to hit enemies around the front or sides, so try to make sure that everyone has an option even if it's just a cheap and cheerful stack of arrows.

• ... but keep people at the sides anyway, because the enemy's natural inclination is to try to surround you and that will mean a quick death to your mages if you're not covering them.