Wizardry I: The Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord

Solution Copyright © 2000 by Mike Marcelais.

• General Notes
• Maps and Solutions
• Class Information
• Item List

Everything in here is based on information from the version of Wizardry I that was included with the Wizardry Archives for the PC. Other versions of Wizardry I (including earlier PC releases) may differ.

There isn't a lot to this game, aside from mapping out each level, finding equipment, and gathering experience points.

Unlike in other games, teleporter squares also teleport light. Thus, if you're standing just south of a teleporter square, when you look north, you see the corridor that you would be teleported into. That, along with the lack of a visual cue when you've been teleported (like the screen flash in Bard's Tale) can sometimes make it hard to tell when you've been teleported.

The party I used started out with 2 Fighters, a Thief, a Priest, and 2 Magicians. After playing for a while, I wonder if starting out with 2 Priests and a Magician would have been a better choice, since near the start of the game, you're limited by the healing abilities of your priests.

After you get to 13th level, class switch everyone so that you have a Fighter, a Samurai, 2 Mages, a Priest, and a thief. That way, you'll have four or five different characters that can cast mage spells, three or four different characters that can cast priest spells, and a Samurai to use the Muramasa Blade, when you find one, as that is easily the best weapon in the game. If you find a Dagger of Thieves, switch your Thief to a Ninja.

Make a Bishop. Keep him at home. Whenever you return to town, give your unknown items to this Bishop, have him identify everything, and then give it back. If the item turns out to be cursed; well, you didn't want it anyway. If your Bishop collects too many cursed items, just delete him and make a new one.

Many doors in the game are hidden, revealed only when casting lomilwa or its little brother milwa. Before you procede to level two, you should have a priest capable of casting lomilwa and have that spell going during your entire expedition. Doors on the maps below are not marked as being hidden or not. Note that you can go through a hidden door even if you can't see it.

Due to a bug, once you enter an anti-magic area, you carry that anti-magic area around with you until you leave the level, no matter where on the level you go. Fortunately, it affects all monsters you encounter as well. Anti-magic areas do not dispel any expidition spells you have already cast.

General solution: There are only two things that you need to do in order to win the game. Take the elevator down to level 4 and get the Blue Ribbon from the old man there. Then take the express elevator down to level 9, jump down the chute to level 10, and follow the corridor to Werdna's lair.

The entire rest of the maze is complete filler. In reality, all of that filler is absoluetly necessary so your characters can gain the levels and equipment in order to survive down on level 10 and defeat Werdna.

For all maps, this key is used:

Level I

1. Area out of bounds.
2. Teleports you back to towne.
3. There are buttons here marked A through D. Pushing one teleports you to this square in levels 1 through 4.
4. If you search this statue, you are attacked by 1 or 2 Murphy's Ghosts.
5. If you search this statue, you find a Key of Bronze.
6. If you search this statue, you find a Key of Silver.

Level II

1. Someone needs the Silver Key to pass through this square.
2. If you search this statue, you find a Statue of a Bear.
3. Someone needs the Bronze Key to pass through this square.
4. If you search this statue, you find a Statue of Frog.
5. Someone needs both the Statue of Bear and Statue of Frog to pass through this square.
6. If you search this statue, you find a Gold Key.
7. "A dungeon's dark..."
8. "When it's not lit..."
9. "Watch out, or you'll..."
10. There are buttons here marked A through D. Pushing one teleports you to this square in levels 1 through 4.

Level III

1. "Turn left"
2. "Turn right"
3. "Turn around"
4. There are buttons here marked A through D. Pushing one teleports you to this square in levels 1 through 4.

As far as I can tell, the instructions written on the floor are just there to mislead you.

Level IV

1. Someone needs the Gold Key to pass through this square.
2. There are buttons here marked A through D. Pushing one teleports you to this square in levels 1 through 4.
3. "Testing Grounds Control Center"
4. An alarm goes off. Really, its just a text message. You'll have forced encounters on the squares to the left and right of you regardless of how you get to them.
5. "Treasure Repository" Nothing but a random encounter.
6. "Monster Allocation Center"
7. Fixed combat: 2 Lvl 7 Fighters, 2 Lvl 7 Mages, 2 High Priests, and a High Ninja. Tresuare is always a Potion of Latumofis, Rod of Flame, and a Ring of Death.
8. You receive a Blue Ribbon from the old man here.
9. Private Express Service Elevator
10. Someone needs the Blue Ribbon to pass through this square.
11. There are buttons here marked A through F. Pushing one teleports you to this square in levels 4 through 9.

The battle at location 7 can be fairly though for the party you have at this point, but is great later. Because you can come back and fight it as many times as you want, you have a limitless supply of Rod of Flames, which are useful for quite a while in the game as it lets you cast mahalito on monsters during the round you surprise them. The Ring of Death, once identified, can be sold for a cool 250,000gp, so you'll never be short of cash again.

The Blue Ribbon is an essential item. It allows access to the elevator at location 11, and that elevator is the only way, except for a malor, to get to level 9. And level 9 is the only way to get to level 10.

Level V

1. There are buttons here marked A through F. Pushing one teleports you to this square in levels 4 through 9.

Level VI

1. There are buttons here marked A through F. Pushing one teleports you to this square in levels 4 through 9.

Level VII

1. There are buttons here marked A through F. Pushing one teleports you to this square in levels 4 through 9.

The stairs up lead to the up staircase on level 6, not the down staircase.

The stairs down lead to (0,0) on level 8. There is not an up staircase at that location.

Level VIII

1. There are buttons here marked A through F. Pushing one teleports you to this square in levels 4 through 9.

The only way off this level is the elevator at location 1. There is no escape from the area of fog except by using a malor spell.

The RJW initials carved in the maze are for Robert J. Woodhead, one of the two co-authors of Wizardry. Woodhead now runs AnimEigo, a company which imports and subtitles anime.

Level IX

1. There are buttons here marked A through F. Pushing one teleports you to this square in levels 4 through 9.
2. Chute drops you to (0,0) on level 10.
3. Teleporter to (0,5) on level 1. (No, I didn't check every last square, but I checked a lot of them and there doesn't seem to be anything outside the initials.

The ACG initials carved in the maze are for Andrew C Greenberg, the other co-author of Wizardry.

The chute at location 2 is the only way into level 10.

Level X

1. Teleporter back to town.
2. The Lair of Werdna. Werdna, a Vampire Lord, 3 or 4 Vampires, and sometimes a second group of Vampires are here. Defeating them gets you the Amulet of Werdna.

Dumapic does not work on this level. Malor can be used to teleport out of this level, but not onto it. Locations in the above were found by casting malor to go directly up to level 1, followed by a dumapic to give me my current position. It is believed (but not proved) that all of the space outside of the rooms are solid rock.

The best treasure in the game can be found on this level in the random encounters that happen in every room. This is a great place to hang out by going through a few rooms, then teleporting back to town as soon as your party can't handle anymore. ID the items, sell, equip, level-up, repeat.

Defeating Werdna is hard: If you are surprised, you can probably kiss your party goodbye right then and there. If you manage to surprise them, try to take out Werdna with a good hit from your Samurai, while your Priest(s) attempt to dispel the Vampires. If you have a Staff of Montino, try using it to silence Werdna. When regular combat starts, use tiltowait to try and kill everything, zilwan to kill the Vampire Lord (as he will often resist tiltowait), and montino on Werdna to keep him from casting tiltowaits at your party.

When you get the Amulet, as soon as you return to town, you'll receive 50,000 experience points and gold pieces and you'll lose the Amulet. The Amulet is quite a useful item. Anyone can Invoke its power to be fully healed. You can use it to cast malor. It gives you awesome regenerative powers. It drops your AC by 20 (if equipped). Note that its cursed, so if you equip it, you can't share it around to get the free heals anymore. You can still win the game even if its equipped though.

This is information that I think should be in the manual, but isn't.

Bonus points required to be eligible for a class:

Experience points and spell progressions.

++ refers to how many additional experience points are required for each level after 13th.

Spells are listed as two numbers: the level at which you gain 1st level spells, and the number of additional levels you need to gain to get another spell level. For example Mages are listed as 1-2, so they get 1st level spells at 1st level, and new spell level every other level (3rd, 5th, etc).

The number of spells you can cast each level is equal to the number of levels you have been able to cast that level of spell at. For example, a 7th level mage got access to 3rd level spells at 5th level. He will therefore have 3 3rd level spell slots (5th, 6th, and 7th levels.) You will always have one spell slot for each spell you know, and you cannot have more than nine slots in each level.

Item: The name of the item, as it appears in the game.

Classes: Which classes can equip, invoke, or use the item.

Align/Cursed: If an alignment is listed here, then the item becomes cursed if you equip the item and are of a different alignment. Generally, this makes the items' powers nonfunctional and reduces your AC and "to hit" rolls by 2 each. Items marked "cursed" are always cursed and cannot be unequipped.

Price: This is the price that you can buy the item for. The selling, uncursing, and identification price are half this amount (rounding down). Items with a price of "*" cannot be sold, nor purchased. They cost 150,000 to identify and uncurse.

AC: The amount this changes your AC. Lower numbers are better.

Damage: The amount of damage this weapon does.

TH: The bonus on your ability "to hit" monsters.

Speed: A higher speed allows you to attack sooner in combat, and to get more melee attacks with your weapon in a single round.

Special: Other powers that the item has. Regeneration gives you that many hit points back each round of combat. Items marked "Use:" or "Invoke:" have a power that is activated when you use it or invoke it. If the power has a percentage listed after it, this is the chance that the item will be consumed when used. If no percentage is listed, then the item can be used exactly once. Most items just "disappear" when they are consumed. A few items become some other type of item. This is listed below as "becomes ~".

Information in this table was taken from the internal data tables on the Wizardry disk, and checked (when possible) against actual gameplay. There are a number of "contradictions" in the table (such as +1 weapons generally being more expensive than +2 weapons), but this is how things really are.

Due to a bug, it seems that items of regeneration work even when not equipped. At the end of the game, my thief was carrying a Robe of Lords in his back pocket because it was giving him regeneration.

F    SLN

F    SLN

F    SLN

F    SLN

F    SLN

F    SLN

F    SLN

F    SLN

     S  

F  T SLN

F  T SLN

F  T SLN

F  T SLN

F  T SLN

F  T SLN

F  T SLN

F P BSLN

F P BSLN

F P BSLN

F P  SLN

F P BSLN

F P BSLN

F P BSLN

 M     N

FM T SLN

FM T SLN

   T   N

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 M  B   

FMPTBSLN

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       N

F PT SLN

F PT SL 

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F P  SLN

F PT SLN

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F P  SLN

F P  SLN

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F P  SLN

F P  SLN

F P  SLN

F P  SLN

F P  SLN

F P  SLN

F P  SLN

F P  SLN

F P  SLN

F P  SLN

F    SLN

F    SLN

F P  SLN

F P  SLN

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      L 

F    SLN

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