I feel like writing a post explaining how to reach high levels in some of the early Wizardry games, so I am doing so. The one rule I am assuming is that only the Wizardry games published by Sir-Tech may be used; cheat programs like WizPlus are out. Glitches, however, are allowed. (I bet some of you can predict my Wizardry 1 method right now.)

Wizardry 1:

There is a well known way to get tons of experience in the Apple 2 version. Just have a Bishop Identify the 9th item in the inventory (for those unfamiliar with early Wizardry, each character can only carry 8 items). When this succeeds (15% chance at level 1), the character will gain 100 million experience points, enough for over level 200! (Note that actually gaining these levels will take a while.) I recommend getting at least one level 18+ Bishop so that you can reliably identify items (and hence reliably use the Identify glitch).

What about the rest of your party? Well, it turns out that by identifying item 's', you can give the experience bonus to the *next* character in the party. (I don't know what happens if the Bishop is in slot 6; it might be worth testing.) Now, everyone gets 100 million experience.

But wait, you say? You think that is not *enough* experience? Well, there is a way to easily get nearly 200 million experience. First, get 100 million with the glitch, and level up by resting in the stables until you can't level up anymore. Now, get level drained on purpose. (Casting HAMAN or MAHAMAN is the easiest way to do this.) Make sure that you either win or run away from the battle. This will lower your experience to below 100 million. Now do the identify glitch again to get another 100 million experience.

One warning: If you decide to experiment with the Identify glitch, be aware that it can corrupt a character's password if you identify a certain "item"; if this happens, the only way to recover the use of the character is a cheat program or hex editor.

Wizardry 2:

It turns out that there is a way to get even more experience in Wizardry 2, and the method isn't even version specific! First, you need to be a high level to begin with. The higher the level, the better! For the purpose of this part, I will assume that the character knows (MA)HAMAN and is in one of the faster leveling classes. (If not, that is easily fixed by invoking a used Coin of Power and reviving the character.) Also, you need to get a Coin of Power to do this trick.

First, invoke the Coin of Power. This will change you to a Samurai, Lord, or Ninja. Ninja is ideal here because that class takes the most experience to reach any given level, but Samurai and Lord are not horrible here.

Next, cast (MA)HAMAN, then win or run away from the battle (or just choose the teleport monsters option). This will cause you to lose a level, and your experience will be set to the minimum for your new level. This would normally be a loss of experience, but because your class changed, you will actually *gain* experience when this happens.

Third, invoke the same Coin of Power again. This will change your class to one of the other 5 classes. Thief is ideal, but anything other than Bishop will work nicely here. (Bishop isn't a total loss, as Bishops still level faster than Samurai, Lords, and Ninjas, but this might be a time to reload if you have the means to, even if it takes a while to reboot the system.) Unfortunately, this comes with an unpleasant side effect: the character is now Dead. (Note that this happens even if the character is Lost; yes, you can restore Lost characters this way.)

Fortunately, there is a reliable way to restore the character. First, try casting Kadorto *once*. If it succeeds, you lose one point of Vitality (easily regained by leveling) and don't need to use the other method. (The Temple of Cant isn't recommended, as it ages the character, which is harder to fix.) If it fails, the character is now ashes. To restore this character without any risk of failure, use MAHAMAN. This may fail to provide the option to revive, but it won't make the character's condition any worse. Note that you can avoid the experience loss (but not the level loss) by using MALOR or LOKTOFEIT to teleport out of the battle. (Game Over-ing will also work, but won't solve the problem of your characters being Dead or worse, and has a risk of characters becoming lost and deleted.) Now just rest to regain the level.

Now that the character has been revived, just rest and you will gain plenty of levels. You can repeat this when you get another Coin of Power. Say "hello" to 4-digit levels!

Wizardry 3:

So, those characters you built up in Wizardry 1 and 2 can't be used in Wizardry 3 without undergoing the rite of passage, and doing so reduces the character to level 1, right? And these tricks don't work in Wizardry 3, right? Well, I have found a way to work around that issue, at least in the Apple 2 version.

First, create the character in Wizardry 1, transfer to Wizardry 3, and undergo the right of passage.

Now, here is the trick: Load Wizardry *5*, and use that game's utility program to transfer the character back to Wizardry 1. Once there, raise the character to a high level.

Once you've done that, you can now transfer your character to Wizardry 3 and use the character there without having to undergo the right of passage again. Enjoy your 3 or 4 digit level characters in Wizardry 3!

Why? What's the point???

Because it's there? Because it can be done? Because it is fun to see what's possible?

Edit: Does there *really* need to be a point to everything?

Wouldn't it be simpler and easier to just edit the XP value in the save file?

Maybe those interested in tinkering, as you are, would like to figure these things out for themselves?

Maybe new players reading your numerous posts in this and other sub-forums will think old CRPGs are all about abusing bugs and the game mechanics?

Maybe, but that would be cheating. (Of note, a Wizardry publication called WiziNews did not actually consider the use of the Identify glitch to be cheating.) Also, given the technology of the day in which Wizardry was originally released, editing the XP value in the save file might not have been "simpler and easier". The Identify method is already rather simple; just Identify item '9' (or 's') repeatedly until it is successful.

Actually, on second though, I think the answer is "No". Loading the disk sector editor (assuming you can find one that runs on the Apple 2), booting it, swapping out for the character disk (so far stuff you have to do to play Wizardry itself as well), finding the location on the disk where your character's experience is stored (by far the hardest part), and then changing it I think would be a lot more complex and harder than just using the Identify glitch.

Those who would rather figure out stuff for themselves would not seek out this post. Those who like to tinker, like me, generally benefit from knowing what is already known about the game. Take a look at a Pokemon Blue 151 speedrun, in which tons of glitches are used to obtain all pokemon; no one player could have found all the giltches by herself. Also, discussing glitches is fun, provided that people are actually talking about the glitches rather than shutting down the conversation.

New players would see not just my posts, but other posts as well, that talk about other aspects of the game as well. Hence, your argument there isn't valid. Also, I consider abusing bugs and game mechanics to be a genuine part of video gaming in general.

The technology, as you call it, is literally a basic prerequisite to work with computers, so it was present from the beginning, eg as switches on a panel, you just had to know their functions;)
In early Wizardry times there was already a market for hardware modules that allowed cheats, read/write from/to RAM etc ...
While the ability to get information on cheats and the related programs has drastically increased with the web,
and even more the number of users,
the percentage of compusers who are able to do such stuff themselves appears to have drastically decreased,
propably because its easier to use existing trainers etc than finding it out yourself.
If only they knew how much more satisfying the latter is.

Nmi shortcut/tab out and adjust some bytes in ram is very fast.
E.g. the remarkably delay of the hit message in SSIs panzer strike during the enemies turn already indicates a citical hit on one of your tanks without destroying it, which may have damaged the main gun, immobilize it ...
You can instantly "repair" it so the tank may still counteract on enemy actions, before you are able to save at all.


However, i agree that finding a weakness in engine, byte locations or whatever
may be a good way to keep up the fun with a single player game after beating it fair on highest diffiulties with all thinkable strategies,
i.e. when it starts to get boring.

It is interesting to note that the concept of trainers isn't new. There were actually cheat programs released for the original Wizardry; WizPlus is one example. Apparently, it originally cost $39.95; could you imaging paying that much *just* for a cheat program for one specific game series?

http://www.mocagh.org/loadpage.php?getgame=wizplus

another reason to do this is to import your crazy high level characters into Deathlord, so you have a friggin fighting chance!

Interesting. (I've heard about Deathlord, but don't really know anything about the game.)

Of course, that brings up a few questions:
* Does your level carry fully into Deathlord, or is it capped?
* Can Deathlord handle levels that are too large to fit into one byte? (That is, can the game handle characters over level 255?)
* More importantly, can the transfer routine handle such characters? (For example, if a level 256 character is transferred, does the character keep their level, or is the character transferred at level 0, or does something even more bizarre happen?)

(I've also been wondering how the transfer into Bard's Tale worls, or even how the transfer from Ultima 3 to Bard's Tale, which have entirely different mechanics and stat scales. (25 is a realistic starting score in Ultima 3, but above the cap for Wizardry 1-7 and Bard's Tale 1-2.)

Does your level carry fully into Deathlord, or is it capped?

* level should carry over,

Can Deathlord handle levels that are too large to fit into one byte? (That is, can the game handle characters over level 255?)

* i had level 500+ characters. I'll have to find some time to screen shot all this, and i'll also need to put my Apple2 back together.

More importantly, can the transfer routine handle such characters? (For example, if a level 256 character is transferred, does the character keep their level, or is the character transferred at level 0, or does something even more bizarre happen?)
* character retains levels, but things like a Lord do not exist in Deathlord, and will convert to I believe a Toshi (which is the equivalent to a Paladin in game... but I have no idea about the traditional definition of a Toshi). There's detail class descriptions in the Deathlord manual, available on archive.org.

(I've also been wondering how the transfer into Bard's Tale worls, or even how the transfer from Ultima 3 to Bard's Tale, which have entirely different mechanics and stat scales. (25 is a realistic starting score in Ultima 3, but above the cap for Wizardry 1-7 and Bard's Tale 1-2.)
* the transfer to Bard's Tale was similar and well done. I'll try to screenshot some characters from there also.

I am not sure how the Apple 2 handled super large numbers, but I think you're forgetting that the Apple 2 could easily handle integers up to 65,535 as basic register values. 1 byte may be a unit of measurement, but levels and damage and HP all could easily surpass 256 with Hex.

Not sure what happened but editing my post isn't working. I formated a few questbusters links, but lost what I typed. I didn't find exactly what I was looking for, and there's 35 more search results to comb.

https://archive.org/details/questbusters-v5n06/page/n13/mode/2up?q=wizardry
https://archive.org/details/questbusters-v6n01/page/n3/mode/2up?q=wizardry
https://archive.org/details/questbusters-v5n10/page/n13/mode/2up?q=wizardry
https://archive.org/details/questbusters-v4n03/page/n9/mode/2up?q=wizardry


So this is all in search of a disk swapping technique to ultra-level your characters. The bug somehow gives them enough xp to get to like lv 500 or 600. iirc. and you have to manually level them all in Wizardry 1. There was a way to bring the characters over to the other scenarios without losing too much, but I probably don't recall this correctly.

At a guess, probably because your rep is currently too low. The forum is set up to deter low- and negative-rep accounts from posting links, in order to discourage spammers and bots.

That only happens if the programmer actually decides to allocate 2 bytes to the statistic in question; sometimes only one byte is used in order to conserve space. For example, they could have chosen to use only one byte for level seeing as the developers probably weren't expecting anyone to level up past 255; the only games where I could see a casual player going past that level without glitches and major exploits are Elminage Gothic (it feels like the final post-game dungeon is designed to get you to around level 400) and various Nippon Ichi games, including the Disgaea series.

(Although it appears that classic Wizardry isn't super space optimized in this regard, except for the use of 6 bits for each attribute (STR, INT, etc.), and the fact that spells known are stored as bitfields and maximum spell points aren't stored at all.)

(By the way, one other oddity; healing spells will work on dead characters, though such healing isn't actually meaningful; the only times the game makes sure the target is not dead are the cases where it actually matters, like MADI's status curing. Note that this quirk, I believe, does not hold true for console ports.)

(Also, there is an unused status ailment in Wizardry 1-4; "Afraid". I believe such characters can't act, but may recover each round, and will recover after the battle. If everyone's afraid, it's game over. On returning to town, such characters are taken to the temple, and I believe the cost to revive such a character is undefined (in other words, the game just uses an uninitialized variable as the cost) and often very large. DIALKO won't cure it (it explicitly checks for "Asleep" or "Paralyze", but MADI will (it checks for < "Dead").)