Major Bugs

Disappearing RPCs and NPCs

The biggest and most annoying bug of them all causes your RPCs to disappear, as if you had killed them yourself, just without the altered faction ratings. You will never see them again if this happens to you, until someone makes an editor that can put people back in the game.

How it is caused:

Whenever an RPC moves from one area to another, in between seeing them the first time and them teleporting away, or before and after recruiting, whatever the case... they have a chance of disappearing if you release another RPC in your party into the zone they are currently in. Quite a mouthful, huh? Here is an example.

Vi Domina starts wherever you start Wizardry 8. Go with the T'Rang from Wizardry 7, and she's at Marten's Bluff. Go with her or start a new game, and you're both at the Monastery, etc... When you leave the immediate area, i.e. you walk to a part of the map where you can no longer visibly see Vi Domina, she will instantly teleport to the wrecked ship in Arnika. Upon rescuing and recruiting her from the ship in Arnika, when released, Vi Domina will remain at He'Li's bar.

So to summarize, Vi goes from your starting point (A) to the wrecked ship (B) to the bar (C). Because of this, she is at risk for disappearing.

So how does it happen? When she is in the bar, or in the ship, and you release an RPC from your group, she may disappear. So if you picked up Myles then decide to boot him out in Arnika, where Vi is, Myles will leave your party and Vi may be no more.

Try it yourself! The next time you play, when you first get to Arnika, dismiss your RPCs and walk to the wrecked ship. Take a peek inside... surprise! Several Troopers, but no Vi! You can try it after the fight, too. Kill the guards, release an RPC while Vi is standing there, then leave the room so Vi cannot visibly see you anymore. Poof! Her dot is gone from the radar.

Like I said, this bug works on any RPC (and in some cases, NPCs) that move from one area to another by teleporting. From personal experience at least, I have seen the following people disappear: Vi Domina, Myles, Urq, Madras, Sparkle, Sgt. Rubble and Tantris T'Rang. All of these people teleport at one stage of the game or another.

The fix:

I think I found a way to fix it... and several RPC dismissals followed by NO disappearances seem to confirm it works. To fix a certain RPC, recruit them and another RPC into your party. We'll include Vi and Myles as examples, not only for simplicity's sake, but also because you can fix both of them if you recruit both of them.

First, dismiss one. We'll say Myles. As he is still standing in front of your party but before he leaves to go back to Arnika, dismiss Vi. They should both now be standing in front of your party.

Now, recruit Myles, and dismiss him again. Finally, camp to send them back. By dismissing Myles while Vi is standing there, and Vi while Myles is standing there, then immediately recruiting them after, the problem that caused the dismissal is negated afterwards, because you recruited the both of them before they had a chance to disappear.

The problem should never happen again. Repeat the process for Madras, Sparkle, Urq and Tantris, using any RPC you have.

Note 1: Don't use RFS-81 to fix RPCs, because he doesn't teleport after you dismiss him, and instead stays where he is. The bug only happens with teleporting RPCs (namely, all of them after they are dismissed), and must be fixed by teleporting RPCs (basically, not RFS).

Note 2: Don't do this in zones with unfixed RPCs in them for obvious reasons. If an unfixed Urq is there while you fix Myles and Vi in Arnika, for example, he may disappear while you are busy with them.

No loot drops bug

Thanks to ghochan, Thudtrain and the others at vnboards for bringing this to my attention.

Sometimes you will play a game where the "guaranteed" drops from enemies like the Djinn in Mt. Gigas, the Steelhide Crocodile in the Swamp, Z'Ant or others simply do not come. This also extends to killing Crock to get your character back, because Brekek is not dropping his frog leg.

I never knew what caused this, and I'm still unsure. However, I can tell you what the evidence points to. After you kill an enemy, there is a brief period of time where these things happen in order: you kill the enemy, they go through a death animation, loot drops. If you save the game during their death animation but before loot drops... you get no loot! And apparently, this causes a bug in your savegame that might extend to ALL loot in the game!

Iron Man mode is especially affected by this bug, as you cannot save/load the game if you miss a drop. Since people with Iron Man games have been reporting this bug, there may be a completely different cause to this most vexing problem aside from saving too soon...

The workaround:

I currently don't have enough information to tell you how to fix this problem. I've never had it happen to me before, and thus, I can't do anything to try and fix it. However, I can tell you how to prevent it: for sure, do not save too quickly after a battle. Let the enemy die, and wait until you see the spinning red bag or hear the jingle of coins to indicate that you got the loot. It may be tempting to save right after you kill someone tough like Al-Sedexus, Yamir or others, but it could have a very negative effect on your game.

If the bug is affecting you, all I can advise is to A) Download one of the editors on my site and edit relevant game items into your save to continue, or B) Start over. I'll update when I get more information.

Hostile Z'Ant bug

I honestly have no idea why this happens. Sometimes, Z'Ant just randomly goes hostile on you, despite having paid off He'Li for her silence and leaving Kunar alone. It happens when you join the Umpani and T'Rang at the same time. Some of the people I have spoken with have theorized that it might be a time constraint to paying He'Li off... but I once waited an entire game month before paying her, and didn't see any consequence of it. Another theory is that if you turn in, pickpocket or kill Sgt. Kunar, Z'Ant will attack. But I never do any of those things to him in any of my games, and I still had Z'Ant go hostile for no perceived reason.

Lastly, there is the theory that giving the Mook one or the other alliance letter first will result in the bug, but again, personal testing proved this inconclusive as well.

The workaround:

If Z'Ant is hostile with you for no good reason, just initiate contact with Z'Ant by giving him a quest item, such as the Chaos Moliri, or a regular item, like some boots or a sword. This only works if he's still green and about to go hostile, not if he's already hostile.

Crash with Rubble Bug

If you give the pass card to Rubble to initiate the conversation with him outside the Training Facility for your first Umpani quest, the game will crash later when you speak with him inside the mountain.

The workaround, thanks to Jason (JsnStein):

You can fix your problem but you need a hex editor. (make sure to backup the Monsters.slf file before doing this! When you are done replace your modified file with the original in case you play the game again :-)

Open the Monsters.slf file and search for "Walkto NP_RUBBLE" replace that line with a series of Carriage Return, Line Feeds (ASCII 13, 10) and then run the game. Talk to Rubble twice and he the second time he will say what he is supposed to say.

Dark Savant in the Swamp Bug and the Mook Hologram Bug

Under no circumstance should you ever save the game in between when the Dark Savant appears in the swamp and when he starts talking about you nabbing the Astral Dominae.

If you load in between these times, he will remain standing there in the swamp, neutral and unmoving, cape flowing behind him as he stands there waiting for his cue to leave. No matter how many times you talk to him, he will only repeat himself over and over, never disappearing, never dropping the fake Astral Dominae.

You can't attack him either, which is a big letdown. However, TinyMage of vnboards killed him using the "accidental on purpose" method of killing NPCs, including ones like the Dark Savant and Bela who are supposed to be unattackable: load up powerful ranged weapons during a fight, especially on people who can't handle them very well, and "accidentally" blast them in the back while aiming for monsters!

Position the target between your party and a group of monsters, switch to ranged weapons, then fire away and blast them good! They will think you're just shooting them on accident... over and over... and will take damage without fighting back. You can kill anyone in the game this way, though it takes a long time. Note also that TinyMage got the Savant's Cobaltine Powerglove for doing this.

I've recently come to understand that this bug is directly related to the "Mook Hologram doesn't re-appear" bug which was fixed in a previous patch. In both instances, quicksaving before the Hologram or the Dark Savant speaks, and subsequently reloading to that save, causes a debilitating problem.

However, when the same thing happens to the Mook Hologram (save in-between seeing it and hearing it speak), it will not disappear after you end the dialogue, and instead stay permanently stuck outside. This is probably the fix they added.

Playing Wizardry 8 in Windows XP

Sometimes Windows XP is a difficult OS to use when playing older games. If Wiz 8 is one of them, right click the Wiz8.exe file, click the Compatibility tab, then set it to Windows 95 or 98. That usually clears up most problems.

Memory Issue

There's some sort of memory leak issue involved with Wizardry 8, which causes it to crash if you zone, or load your savegame too many times in a short time period. I have no idea how this works, or what it means. So just restart after 20 savegame loads in a row, such as when you're trying to get a specific item to drop off an enemy, and it should be no problem. I should add that once I got Windows XP this stopped happening; in Windows 98, it was a frequent problem.

Minor bugs

General Gameplay

Thanks to Jeff:

- With verbose combat output on (not sure if that's what it's actually called under the option menu) I ordered my priest to cast Rest All. My Ninja did an INSTANT KILL on one of the enemies. Everyone else, except the priest, was targeting that enemy. However, it still caused my priest to "retarget." Now, she did cast Rest All Successfully at my party. The thing that makes me laugh is why she thought she had to change targets in that situation when it wasn't necessary with respect to the default target of the spell which is your own party!! Goofy stuff!

Thanks to Wagner Bruna:

- At the party creation screen, select any character (without including it in the party). Then, enter the Import Party screen, and select a Wiz7 party with *less than six members*. Now, double-click one of the imported characters. Surprise! The party found someone in the travel from Guardia. Playing a bit, it's also possible to get an anonymous level 0 fighter with 1 in all attributes and a fixation for a certain weapon... Talk about a challenging character.

Thanks to Yosk and the others at vnboards:

- Killing enemies with auto-death spells, like Death Wish, will not grant a "Kill" in the character's information unless the enemies are numerically damaged first (1 damage, 10 damage).

Thanks to Brondby_IF:

- How come a Psionic can choose the Instant Death spell at a level up, but not use a Spell Book of Death?

Thanks to Flamestryke:

- The Serpent's Tooth has a poison strength of "0."

Thanks to Jason (JsnStein):

- On occasion, when either Rodan or Drazic is paralyzed, magically sleeping or otherwise incapacitated, the other will think they have instead left the party. This will cause the non-affected one to get mad and leave, and when the other recovers from the paralysis or sleeping, he will leave as well.

- If you level up while under the "Drained" effect, the loss of life becomes permanent. Though the Drained symbol remains next to the character's portrait, curing it brings back no hit points.

- A few items have charges, but no spell to go with them, leaving behind a blue "0" on the item. Some examples include the PK Crystal and Cameo Locket.

- Many, if not all, of the NPCs refer to the Rapax Queen as a male. These NPCs have general things to say about specific people. For example, Marten, who says that "He is like all the others" and "She is like all the others." He is one of the many who confuses her gender.

- Arnika-Trynton Road's map is really fussy. First of all, it takes around 30 seconds to load it whenever you hit the map key, whereas most other maps take around 3 seconds. Secondly, if you zoom in to any area on it, then try to "fit map to screen" with the Home key, the game sometimes locks up.

- When you press the apostrophe key, a character says the last line they spoke, no matter if it's "Nice!", "Look out guys, monsters!" or their dialogue about the area you are in. When you apostrophe their dialogue that is part of a larger one though, the other person will continue it despite not being there. For example, if the last thing Myles said was, "He'Li, my love!", He'li's disembodied voice continues the conversation: "It's good to see you Vi..." etc... no matter where you are in the world.

- Tantris has his own character portrait in the data file, but for some reason, he looks exactly like Drazic in the game.

- If your blinded character aims for monster 1 and hits monster 2, they get yelled at as if they made a blunderous error. In my game, Vi apologized for striking Tanto Wasp #2 instead of Tanto Wasp #1.

- When asked where the Rynjin are, every NPC responds, "In Rapax Castle," even though they not only live in Bayjin, but there are also mp3s within the Data.slf file for every NPC along the lines of "In Bayjin." They just are not used within the game.

- Sometimes, when you cast both "Haste" and "Superman" on a single character (especially level 7 or higher from both spells), their Speed will wrap around from 125 to 1.

- If a character is both "Hexed" and "Cursed" with a cursed item, casting "Remove Curse" on them results in a bizarre message.

- When attacking a group of wandering, neutral enemies who talk when you get near them (i.e. Savant Troopers who demand an artifact you just got and then attack you), sometimes one will get blinded or terrorized and run away, making combat end when they take off. If you get close to them to re-initiate combat, the game will automatically try to make them do their little "give us the artifact" speech, but instead, the game will crash. Work around this by not letting them talk to you, initiating combat, and killing them before they can speak.

- Vi does not have a soundbyte for critically injuring an enemy/learning a spell from a spellbook. Her mouth moves, but there is no sound.

- Vi's eye patch also swaps sides depending on whether she is in the left or right RPC position, though it is her right eye that the Dark Savant took.

- Oftentimes, when a single-target spell backfires (especially Acid Splash and Mind Stab) on big maps like Arnika-Trynton Road, it can take upwards of a minute for the spell to travel to your group and hit you, stopping combat for that long in the meantime.

- Poison and Stalker Seekers do not have an "I've been hit" sound.

- In Marten's Bluff, the Swamp, and other places where something like a wall buttress or a log leans at a downward angle into the ground, it is very likely that if you get near it, you will sink into the ground and get crushed to death.

- Merging two daggers does not result in a Doublestrike Dagger, but instead an unusable dagger with strange stats.

- Some items were not enabled in the final release of the game. While some of these are understandable, like the overpowered Demon in a Box (which casts Psionic Blast for free), others, like the Maenad's Lance, are not available anywhere.

- Some chests, like the ones in the Arnika Bank, stick you to the top of them when you wander too close.

- By taking an RPC's personal item (Vi's mace, Saxx's sax, etc...) and clicking another character's portrait with the right mouse button, it is possible to steal that item with no knowledge of the RPC.

- Every enemy disappears if your party is completely blinded, and you don't have a blind-fighting Monk. However, if everyone is either blind or dead, the enemy will still be visible, because the dead can still "see."

Monastery

- When you walk out the door leading to Arnika Road (the closed one, not the open one), you can pass through it and keep walking into Arnika Road without zoning, then fall through the world from going too far.

Arnika

Thanks to Martin Volkmann:

- If you have installed the Tracking Module in Arnika, walk to the entrance where you normally enter Arnika (the fountain), and have a look at the spaceport building: The Tracking Module sticks to the outside of the building.

(Note: This happens whether or not you have replaced the Tracking Module, but it looks more solid from the outside once it has been put there.)

Trynton

Thanks to Michael Durocher:

- I recently found a bug that I can't explain. It concerns the bridge that connects Main Tree in Trynton to the 6th Bough. An earlier puzzle has the user repair the bridge using a couple of vines from a room in the Main Tree. I repaired the bridge and used it several times already to cross to the other tree. Unfortunately, now the logic that tells the program that the bridge may be crossed seems to be damaged. The bridge is visibly sound but when I go to cross it, I fall through as if the bridge had never been repaired in the first place(as if the bridge wasn't there). I'm sure that it is a flag that has been reset somehow but I'm not sure how it got reset. The only thing I can think is that I visited the place where the vines originally came from and clicked in the area where they(the vines) used to be.

- In Trynton, just north of the entrance to Arnika-Trynton road, there is a cliff wall. Walk along it to almost the edge, where the cliff wall disappears and the ocean begins. Oops, where'd the wall go?

- Also in the same area, if you slide very carefully around the northern edge of the entrance to Arnika-Trynton Road, you can walk from Trynton into the A-T Road, and not zone. Keep walking, and you fall through the world.

Marten's Bluff

- Sadok remains neutral throughout the game even after joining the T'Rang, despite the fact that you can talk and trade with him, and there is no "Truce" option, either. This bug fixes itself through constant teleporting into Lower Marten's Bluff (usually because of a portal set at the T'Rang teleporter). After several portal returns, not only Sadok, but the T'Rang Youngers emerging from the teleporter become friendly to the party.

Response from Lanastashia:

I was just reading your bugs page. This particular one I think is not a bug. Sadok is old school T'Rang and doesn't trust outsiders as easily as Z'Ant seems to. After performing the first 3 to 4 quests Z'Ant asks of you Sadok begins to trust the party and becomes friendly. If you notice he becomes friendly prior to you seeing him unlike the Youngers who have to get a visual on the party before becoming friendly.

I think it has little or nothing to do with how many times you enter the lower bluff because I have had games where I only went in on the completion of each mission and never really traded regularly with Sadok.

I think after giving the coordinates to Z'Ant, maybe after the Mook alliance but I think its the coords, Sadok will always be friendly. Something that did not get implemented in the game is supposed to occur with Sadok at the time Z'Ant issues the mission to destroy the Umpani mothership. Sadok is supposed to give the party permission to enter the test facility, giving them the combination to the lock, and offering them the MIndblast Rod to help with the mission. Perhaps his neutrality was meant to linger until that time, when he felt the party was truly trustworthy and working in the best interests of the T'Rang. Too bad the gift of the MB Rod doesn't go as planned, it would have been a nice little boon.

Mine Tunnels

- The very fun mine cart ride has an odd camera angle that seems perpetually slanted too far to the left, not unlike the New York Times.

Mt. Gigas

- Walls in the Mt. Gigas Caves are sometimes very sticky, especially when the wall is indented in a pyramid-like shape (like a church's pointed steeple on its end), causing your party to be permanently stuck to it. Also be wary of small puddles of water in dips near the cave wall, where you can also get stuck. See www.flamestryke.com for details on these map holes.

- You can walk through many crates on Mt. Gigas Summit.

- When asking General Yamir about "mission" after getting the Bayjin mission for the first time, you get another passcard, over and over, every time you ask.

- On the same note, when you ask Balbrak about "Rodan" after you have already rescued Rodan, you get the quest all over again.

- On General Yamir's destroy the T'Rang ship mission, the voice actor, at the end of one of his long lines, continues his speech despite needing to stop to allow a dialogue break. His lines are supposed to be something like: (Dialogue Box 1) "The T'Rang are gaining ground on us." (Dialogue Box 2) "The reason they're gaining ground is because..." He ends up saying: (Dialogue Box 1) "The T'Rang are gaining ground on us. The reason they're gaining ground..." (Dialogue Box 2) "The reason they're gaining ground is because..."

- Glumph was originally meant to leave your party and attack you when you try to enter an area he doesn't want to go to (especially Marten's Bluff). However, instead of doing so, he just gets mad in his dialogue and won't let you go into the area. Later though, he will attack you when you return him to Yamir. To work around this, don't take him to areas he doesn't want to go, or even try to. If he already hostiles when he you try to boot him, simply knock him out by running too much and dismiss him while he's unconscious. He will continue to be unconscious after he leaves your party, and you can then run out of Yamir's room to make him disappear before he and the other Umpani attack you.

Rapax Castle

Thanks to Martin Volkmann:

- When starting to remove the stones in the jail-cell, I began with the topmost stone (of those that can be removed by hand) and got crushed.

- When you ask Al-Adryian about Initiation after completing the Initiation (answering the riddles and grabbing the Canezou gear), the quest starts all over again.

- When going up the elevator to the west of Ferro in Rapax Castle (that leads up to his little safe), getting off the elevator pre-maturely, even when it's only an inch from finishing its ascent, can result in your immediate crushing death.

- If you set a portal on Ascension Peak, then return there after the landslide without going through Rapax Castle, you can kill the Rapax Prince on the mountain, then see him again in the Castle later.

Sea Caves

Thanks to Martin Volkmann:

- I got crushed the first time I used the Hook & Line (at the correct place), it seems that standing too near is dangerous.

Thanks to Syntax_Error:

- After clicking the skeleton, the inventory popup box appears with items including Marten's tomb key. I could clearly see it. Whilst I think a second which RPC to charge the loot, I got attacked by the skeletons ghost. After finishing him, hitting the save key and the loot is vanished. I didn't found the key anywhere more, Marten's door kept locked with him the Destinae Dominae.

Cosmic Circle

Thanks to Fiend of 9 Worlds:

- in the cosmic circle, if you side with the savant and fight bela/vi domina, and turn on the savant, once you kill the savant, it's as if you killed bela and vi, though your characters say that they're glad the savant is gone, and the universe is rid of him, but the ending continues as if you killed bela and vi. also, while playing around, i killed bela from afar right before the screen went to the savant killing aletheides..once he killed him, my party loaded to where bela *would* have said "let's go to the book and the pen" but since there was no bela, the game froze, and i could not load/quit, move, or do anything. i'm also trying to kill the savant from afar, before he kills aletheides, to see if i can pick up his glove, but it's harder because he is not very susceptible to crush or other spells(how i killed bela from that far away)

- Sometimes after you ascend... you reach the ceiling of the universe, and drop back down.


Any additions? Please let me know!

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