A few weeks back I wrote about one of the most frustrating battles from the venerable cRPG, Wizardry 7. Here are a few more that, for various reasons, have stuck in my memory all these years.

The Fiend of Nine Worlds

Towards the end of the game, working through the vast, sprawling final dungeons, you enter a place called the chamber of Gorrors. It has six cells, each with an ominous sounding name on the door. A chest of rare treasures can be glimpsed within each cell. You can if you wish carry on further into the depths and ignore the chamber. Instead, you decide to investigate one of the cells. “the fiend of 9 worlds”, it says.

Inside you encounter: a rat-man. You think, okay, This is endgame so let’s be careful. Despite his humble appearance, this guy could be challenging. Probably hard hitting with a stack of hit points.

Still, this should be doable.You have a high level party led by mighty champions armed with powerful weapons, such as the Muramasa blade and the legendary Sword of Four winds. You also have a ninja who hands out critical hits like candy and a couple of magic users who can summon forth lightning, enormous boulders and even nuclear blasts. This should be doable. You queue up orders for the first round of combat, and hit go.

*fiend strikes LordJeff*
*hit! 99 damage*
*hit! 99 damage*
*hit! 99 damage*
*jeff dies*

*fiend strikes lolegolas *
*hit! 99 damage*
*hit! 99 damage POISONED*
*hit 99 damage*
*lolegolas dies*

*Zippy thrusts Sword of Four Winds at fiend*
miss
miss

*fiend strikes Zippy*
*hit! 99 damage*
*hit! 99 damage*
….

a minute later half the party is dead and you’ve accomplished little more than singing the Fiends’ whiskers. You sit back from the keyboard, vaguely stunned at the utter thrashing you just witnessed. The game patiently awaits instructions for round two. Good luck!

I had a read around some forums, and wizardry players have shared tricks for dealing with this guy, a lot based on having everyone hiding. Which is great except only certain classes can learn hiding. So there will be a lot of tedious class-changing back and forth for anyone that you don’t want to be a thief, ninja or bard.

Conquilados

The Greater Wilds is a forest area accessible only from the sea, once you’ve found a boat. There are no quest objectives here, no characters to talk to, and no loot to find. The only reason to come to the Wilds is to get swarmed to death by giant millipedes.

A few Conquilados wouldn’t be a major challenge for a level 25+ party, but they tend to come in multiple ranks of eight each. The front row is steadily clawing away at you whilst the ones at the back spit poison, leaving you in a desperate, futile struggle to hack them down before you’re overwhelmed. Your best chances are if you can manage to fire off several Nuclear Blast spells before your spellcasters are dragged down by the screeching horde.

No, wait. Your best chance was to never come to this godforsaken forest in the first place. There are less stressful places to level-grind where individual fights are more manageable and in some of them you’ll get loot for your trouble.

Survive a fight with the Conquilados and, well, I suppose you do a get a shitload of experience points. Then a few steps later you hit another 36 of them. Or maybe you rest your party to recover health and spell points and then… there’s a surprise attack from another 36 of them. This forest exists purely for old-school crpg sadism.

?Phoonzang?

Wizardry is known for its challenging combat, but this foe is both impossible to lose against, and rather baffling.

Deep in some mountain caves, you encounter witches that take on the appearance of other major characters from the game. So for example you fight a faux version of the Dark Savant (the main antagonist) and it’s a pretty decent challenge for a mid level party. Another witch becomes Phoonzang, creator of the planet you’re standing on.

Or rather, she disguises herself as a statue of Phoonzang, similar to the ones you see scattered around major cities. I suppose either Sir-Tech wanted to keep him a mysterious, mythical figure, or they just couldn’t be bothered to draw a new sprite.

It isn’t a terrible idea – we can easily imagine a statue coming to life, swinging mighty marble fists or maybe shooting lasers from its eyes. All this one does however is cast the spell Dispel Undead. That is literally its only attack. Quick check – any undead characters on your team? Nope.

So the statue stands there, casting its one spell that may as well be “conjure turnips” for all the good it’s doing. You scratch your head for a moment then order your guys to attack. They swiftly hack the statue to bits. The usual “VICTORY” fanfare plays but it really should have been replaced with a sad trombone effect.