I have 3 days off so I was playing some Wizardry 8 with the enhanced mod.
I remember why I don't play this game when I don't have loads of time. I was going from Arnika to Trynton with a level 9 party.

I had 2 followers Myles and Vi. My party was a bard, Gadgeteer, Lord(was a priest), Ranger(was an alchemist), Monk(was a Psionic), and Samurai(was a mage).

I sneak around a corner to run face first into 8 juggernauts, 5 stalker seekers, and a couple rank weeds.

An HOUR later(55 minutes actually) I finally finish this fight! I got almost 12k experience for each member of my party. almost every skill leveled up. I sang bless from my bard like 4 times!

I am pretty sure everyone else has had this experience with this game.

Congratulations for your success. These epic battles is something, that makes W8 really outstanding. In these scenes, it rather plays like a strategy game than an rpg. There are so many options to choose from, and one single command can make the difference between victory and failure.

If you want faster battles, you have some options:

- put everything that speeds up combat to the max.

- turn the camera off

- if this is not sufficient (you said you played with enhanced mod), there are more options, to speed up movement. hit/miss animations, missile speed.

- lower the difficulty level. Gives more hits on your side and less to the monsters, which requires less defensive/regen actions on your side.

- use less hybrids. Battles with hybrids take longer at this stage, but they benefit most from these battles with their many, many skills to use.

Have fun.

Thanks for the info! I probably should have mentioned I"ve been playing wizardry 8 for something like 10 years and have beaten it something like 3 times. It is the only reason I can come away from such a bad position like that with no dead characters. I've gotten very good at managing fatigue, load weights, and rotating characters. The nice thing about a party like that is they can take quite the beating.

What made this fight so tough was the rank weeds debuffing me. In another level or 2 I'll have magic screen and my ability to resist that debuff with increase a great deal. Even with a high level bless my weapon skills are not really high yet so I missed a lot, especially with the debuff.

i would have known they where there because my "Samurai(was a mage)" will have xray up but you must swap classes before I do so then I would run away and pick my fights

that is a solid party, I have a Bishop where your Ranger is and started in the bug fort so have magic screen... enjoy the game mate, good luck!

In my experience, battles (especially those with lots of lower level high HP enemies) get faster once your level increases.

Once you get a level 14 Alchemist (or a bit later if you don't have such a character in your party), you can start getting multi-target instant death spells, like Quicksand. That spell, even at power level 1, can be very good at reducing the number of lower level high HP enemies you're fighting at the moment.

At lower levels, sometimes you can get combat to end early by getting some of the enemies to run away (via fear of blindness, for example); if you can do this, you can then quickly save your game, and therefore don't need to play the game as long in one setting. This is also useful if your party can't handle that many enemies at once; get some of them to run away, and they won't be fighting you until well after the effect wears off. (A medium power level works best; too low and the effect will wear off too quickly, too high and you may be in a situation where it works too well and there are no enemies left to fight).

Too bad the combat isn't like Bard's Tale, where you can realistically kill 396 berserkers in 5 minutes.

5 Minutes? You have your 2 Sorcerers call MIBL and press the enter button and not release it until the combat round is finished. Sweet memories...

The TO mentioned the party was at L9. 4 specialist casters were converted into hybrids. The party was stated to be tough so I assume classes were changed early on with probably 1 level of casters and 8 levels hybrids and no access to L3 spells yet. (Please correct me, if I am wrong and 1+ 8 levels give access to L3 spells. I never tried this myself).

A fight vs Juggernauts at this stage takes very long, because they have high HPs and DR, which means the party has dash even more melee damage. But they don't do a lot of physical damage themselves, so the healing can be controlled nicely, unless you are not completely surrounded. It simply takes long, but the party has 6-7 chars good at melee, so it should bring down these Juggers safely.

Rank weeds make these battles tough indeed due to their status afflictions and AC lowering, they should be prime targets. Unfortunately you cannot shoot them down, if the Juggernauts block LoS, so you have only your magic capabilities to get rid of them. So I'd focus on the Single Target damage attacks your hybrids have, blind and any powders, sticks and bombs available in Arnika, the Rod of the gadgeteer and the two amulets you can have at this stage of the game. This should take them down reliably.

I did actually have level 3 spells available to my hybrids. I just have not had a chance to pick them all up. I actually just made level 10 in the game and picked up armor plating. I"m still missing magic screen. Hopefully Croc will have the spell available. Just finishing up Trynton right now and I still have to say hi to the Ratzuka.

Thanks for the clarification.

Crock doesn't sell Magic Screen, you need to go to Braffit. Most spellbooks level 1-5 are available only from 1 vendor.
Even if a vendor sells it, doesn't mean there is always stock.

Best chance is to approach the vendor, save before you talk, then talk and if he doesn't sell what you need, reload that save and talk to him again.

Level 4 spells aren't buyable until level 11.

he has a bard guys... magic screen is in the bug fort next to where you find Marten's Idol (Bard Level 5 to use)

Yes, that's probably the fastest way from the swamp.

The party needs to open the drawbridge/vertical hatch/door/whatever first. To avoid spoilers, I won't be going into more details now.