I completed Wizardry 6 around a year ago, it took me a whole year to finish Wizardry 7 (which is a mind-numbing slog - I think Wiz 6 is a better game), and now, 4 days ago, I started Wiz 8. It captivated me so much that my playtime is already 33 hours.

My impression are very positive, almost as good as when I played it for the first time some 10 years ago. However, I got seriously discouraged and frustrated when I got stuck in the cemetery retro dungeon because none of my characters knows knock-knock spell and I've run out of all scrolls... My gadgeteer has lockpicking at 42 now (36 before the dungeon) which is not enough to open that 6-tumbler lock to the exit...

This is a terrible, awful, absolutely intolerable example of level design. It's plain bad, amateurish and not respecting the player. It shouldn't be possible to get stuck like that in any game, be it platformer or dungeon crawler. I don't remember any similar situation in Wiz 6 or 7. What the heck were they thinking when they designed it (or maybe there weren't thinking at all)? Either provide means to finish the dungeon within it, like knock-knock scrolls, or at least give the player some hint before entering that high lockpicking skill is essential here...

I lost over 3 hours because of that crappy design, my previous save outside the dungeon is at the beginning of the swamps. I need at least a week break from this game, because I almost uninstalled it today. Hopefully I can get over it and continue playing later. Just had to get it off my chest. Wizardry 8 is widely praised but let's not forget there's some absolutely terrible level design in there too.

I realize, that this is absolutely useless 'hint', after you already lost 3 hours of your real life.

But my best practice when approaching any of the three retro dungeons: always cast Set Portal in front of the entry points (before you enter said retro dungeon, let it be western wilderness, cemetery near Arnika-Trynton road or Mountain Wilderness)

Which also suggests that my party is kind of well advanced (level-wise)

As for the design, normally the game was not originally giving any hints on any of these dungeons, so even if anyone found the blue symbols, touched them, maybe even all 6 of them, there never was a real clue what to do next (what item use where) so by design, one should not enter those dungeons by default. Learning about them required extra effort, and by learning about them, mostly always also warning was provided - to not enter them carelessly.

So I cannot agree that the design is anyhow bad or broken, as the design was : not enter any of those dungeons at all.

Unless I am mistaken and there is a hint in the game advising player to rush into the retro dungeon ASAP without solid preparations.

Oh, and also calling out the need of Light spell.
For anyone who still plans to explore any of the three retro dungeons.
Once I entered it without Light spell or other means to illuminate the surroundings and it was really a pain to walk in the constant darkness. Even with light, the dungeons are quite dim and often let you step into a trap, so without the Light spell, it is really bothersome.

The Retro Dungeons are a derelict of the past. I started with W8. No disrespect to past players, but the earlier Wizardries seem ancient in comparison. The retro dungeons have strange mechanics (all 3 dungeons are stacked on top of one another, making X-Ray not very helpful). On top of that, none of the 3 retro dungeons are canon to the story.

I agree that it wasnt nice by the devs to put a difficult lock between entry and exit,
but party is definitely not stuck.
As a sidenote, players who find out on their own how to enter the dungeons
can be expected to at lest get not lost in them, after all they can draw maps on grid paper,
as it was done in the time to which the dungeons reference (16x16 grid and map wraparound at borders)

if you did not already check the dungeon maps in the web, this is the path to the exit:
Go to the central crossing where all 4 hallways stretch straigt N/E/S/W for many tiles,
turn south and open the 1st door to the west (locked but its easy)
Cross the room and take the next door, follow the path til you get to the non locked door to the west,
the next and last one is locked at difficulty 6, it should have 5 tumblers, behind is the exit teleporter, ofc guarded.

Since L&T skill increases while you play with tumblers, you could try to manually beat it, ofc may take hours with L&T skill of 42.
Optionally learn how to use e.g. Autohotkey, and let it do the job while you do smth else, e.g. sleep.

Unless you're playing the original 1.0 release, this won't work, because each lock can only provide a finite number of passed skill increase checks; once you've got them, that particular lock will never give you any more skill increases.

Sorry for misinformation if it wasnt true, btw, are you 100% sure of that?

I didnt test that, only saw skill increases of several points on attempts to beat a single lock,
so i assumed skill pts from lockpicking would work the same way as for traps

Traps only need to be inspected without trying to actualy disarm them.
~25 inspections provide 1 skill increase, and there is no "1 trap can give only so much skill" limit "
in theory you can go from 1 to 100 on a single one (ofc it will likely blow up at low skills)
With L&T at ~15+ its imo better to run the script on an low difficulty trap instead on any lock,
for locks you also have to adapt the script to the number of tumblers,
so one less than actually present is touched to not accidentially pick the lock,
then cancel and start over again, which is substancially more script lines to write.

I didn't get lost, I don't have a way to unlock the door leading to the exit. I'm exactly where you described, there's only one path to the exit and the lock has 6 tumblers - you can't bypass it.

It's clearly bad, broken design, because the designers assumed that the player will have high lockpicking skills and/or knock-knock spell, and failed to take into account situations where that's not the case. In a game that gives you a lot of freedom in terms of party composition and skills you can train that's just unacceptable. The simplest solution would be to make that critical lock easier or provide a few more knock-knock scrolls somewhere in the dungeon...

Anyway, I'll have to do the swamps again and I'm not coming back to that cemetery dungeon for sure, I'll do the other ones though. If my party is prepared or not that's very relative, I'm level 10, had zero problems with combat encounters, my only "fault" is that I didn't learn knock-knock or put more points into lockpicking.

Yeah, the last door to the room with home-teleport (or rather exit-teleport) is locked with 6-tumbler indeed.

https://imgbox.com/cUCg7dA5

1) with lockpicking 42 - is it impossible or just very difficult to open such lock? (don't know the math behind)
2) In any average RPG / Dungeon, to hit a door, that cannot be opened for various reasons, is absolutely normal. Games not holding players' hand, also absolutely normal. Players in need of reloading for reasons, that also include scenario of being 'locked out' from progression, also absolutely normal. After you played W6 and W7, you should know this very well.
So the frustration is not about the design of extra hidden dungeon, where you should not even enter normally, but simply due the player skills.

"my last save is at beginning of the swamps" -> why is your last save not right before the mushroom ring near cemetery?
So you would waste only the time spent inside retro dungeon.

Retro dungeon, just like previous wizardry games, is simply unforgiving, and that is by design, and therefor : noting is wrong with the design at all.

One could blame the devs, if you get stuck in main-story dungeon (I remember when in the rift - you should touch old supporting pillars, which will cause small cave-in, and while one way closes, other way should open - as some rocks fall into a lava pool of a connecting alley and your party shall pass through to next corridor, which ends with two teleports, one leading to El Dorado, the other to Sanctuary ... and here was a glitch, as even if you could walk on the fallen boulders, but the other side was still blocked by invisible wall. That would be a clear example of sloppy design.

But blaming your 3 lost hours on a dungeon design, in a game where you have scrolls, wands, spells (knock-knock, portal) items that improve traps & locks skill, but you was simply underequiped and undertrained... that is not on the design, that's on you.

Unless one playes iron-man mode, it is the simplest of things to hit quick save button before entering fishy quirky and very suspicious secret retro dungeon, duh.

BTW, in this room, I found one knock-knock scroll. Not sure if it is randomly generated or hard-edited, but at least one scroll is there.
https://imgbox.com/oTVoB8vK
The whole dungeon contains several doors with full locks (completely with filled with tumblers), but those are not mandatory, and few doors with 3-4 tumbler rocks. Which are fine for 42 locks & traps skill.

This isn't about some door that can't be opened - it's about being softlocked in a dungeon without any way to progress or go back. It's bad design.

I quick-saved before entering the dungeon, but the save got overwritten by another quicksaves when I was inside. My last solid save is in the swamps.

Yes, I did find at least 2 knock-knock scrolls but used them on other locks, as I played blind, and only consulted an online guide after I realised I'm stuck.

I've played lots of old-school dungeon crawlers that don't hold your hand. My current party in Wiz8 was created at the beginning of Wiz 6... The hardest and most obscure game I've played was probably Wizardry Empire 2 Legacy of the Princess - available only in Japan, I played with a fan translation patch, the only online guide was an archived japanese page very poorly translated by ai. It was harder than Elminage Gothic, and had the most intricate and masochistic dungeon design. However, in none of these games have I encountered a situation I'm now in Wiz8, not being able to move on or go back.

Try implementing the script yourself and see what happens.

My understanding is that there;s no situation where a lock would ever give more than 2 skill increases to the same character (assuming you don't leave, get practice elsewhere, and come back; this doesn't reset the count, but could result in passed skill increase checks that you don't see).

So, make the script, run it for a while, and if you get 3 or more skill increases, than what I said is incorrect. One other way they could have avoided the problem is to lock the dungeon, or at least the point of no return, by a 6 tumbler lock. If the player can get past that lock, then the developers can safely assume the player can do so (plus it serves as a warning for the player to have enough knock picks or scrolls before continuing); if the player can't, they'll just ignore the optional area.

By the way, there's some mandatory 8 tumbler locks near the end of the game, so make sure to eventually develop the means to deal with them. (Knock Knock helps, as do multiple Knock Picks and/or scrolls; also helps to have good Locks & Traps by that point. With that said, this won't be a problem until ~20 for experienced players or even higher for new players who like to explore, and you can leave that area if needed.) Sounds like you haven't played Wizardry 4.

The retro dungeon generates infinite enemies, so just sleep, and traverse it periodically, make a level, upon level up, let your wizard/samurai learn knock-knock -> perfectly flawless game design, IMO.
Also, some enemies drop random items, not sure if knock-knock wand or knock-knock scroll are in scope of such random drops, but maybe they are.
Considering the described situation, the party trapped by 6-thumbler lock was not of high level -> it cannot take very long to make at least one extra level-up.

I'm pretty sure that there are limits:

You can't play with the same tumblers forever, past maybe one skill increase.

You can't (shouldn't) be able to play with the same trapped chest, casting Divine Trap, beyond one skill increase.

You shouldn't be allowed to stand in the Arnika fire, casting Heal Wounds and Heal All (I don't think this has been fixed).

The game has prevented you from running around, casting Stamina and Rest All outside of combat.

1 is true.

2 and 3 are not the case. You can keep playing with the same trapped chest, and you can stand in the Arnika fire (but be aware that getting into a fight is bad; you'll take damage from the flames in real-time while being limited by combat movement rules, with everything else being turn-based).

.4 cam be subverted through fake combat, which happens to work for this case (even though it doesn't work for spells like Bless).

Yes, "purist" player here, but I think that I just highlighted the scummiest skill grinding tactics. Some have been fixed, some have not:

1. Locks and Traps: You should only play with tumblers enough to unlock the chest or door.

2. Heal Wounds/Heal All: These should only be cast during combat. After combat, if there is still damage, or if the party took fall damage.

3. Stamina/Rest All: Only during combat. Though, as mentioned, there is an exploit, which I don't care to persue.

4. Casting Divine Trap only once at any one trap is allowed. After that, it's dishonorable cheese.

Note that Divinity casters (Priest, Lord, Valkyrie), have the option to honorably max their Mental realms by casting ID Item at mixed potions for profit.