TVTropes Now available in the app store!
Open

Follow TV Tropes

Wizardry Variants Daphne

Go To

  • Accidental Innuendo:
    • Livana's English line when she uses her "Moonlit Pool of the White Daemon" skill has a suggestive tone, almost as if she gets "excited" in a fight. Whether this is an intentional facet of her character or just a quirk of the English voice direction is unknown.
    • "You received Den of Light Milky White Junk!" Of all the adjectives to use for 'white junk', "milky"?
  • Complacent Gaming Syndrome:
    • You'd be hard-pressed to find someone who doesn't run a front row of Good and/or Neutral characters with Lanavaille and a back row of Evil and/or Neutral ones with Alice, in order to benefit from the damage buffs given by Lanavaille and Alice for their respective alignments.
    • In B4F of the Beginner Abyss, there are two chests in a forked area in the north, but taking one makes the other inaccessible. It's heavily recommended to take the left one since it contains an Adventurer's Remains while the right one contains three Beginning Commonplace Junk (which is plentiful elsewhere, if not outdated by the Junk of later dungeons). The only mercy is that the hidden respawn timer before you can reacquire either through the Cursed Wheel is only one week if the latter was opened (compared to 21 days for the former).
    • Having the Masked Adventurer Inherit one Gandolfo copy for Heavy Attack is recommended since he is the only one who can naturally learn Heavy Attack twice (from both the Wanderer and Fighter classes), and its Lv3 version has the most cost-effective damage-to-SP ratio. A similar but lesser case could also be made for the Masked Adventurer Inheriting one copy of Elise for Armor Break Lv3 and one copy of Chloe for Warrior's Battle Cry Lv3.
    • After defeating Geuzen in the Arena for the first time, it's recommended to pick "Rich treasures" as your reward since you'll get permanent access to the ship's treasury containing three Mana Elixirs (with a hidden monthly respawn timer). While you could pick "Recovery items" to get a full recovery before the final boss of the Trade Waterway, it's probably not a good sign if Geuzen already gave you trouble. Also, your reward for picking "Battle with the Greater Warped One" is a middling Accessory compared to the Junk you can diligently farm on 2F of the Ship.
    • After the coding for the Ninja's Dual Wield Passive was fixed, the recommended setup for dual-wielding Ninjas is to have weapons with defensive Blessings and non-weapons with offensive Blessings since each weapon's offensive Blessings only apply to attacks made with that specific weapon.
    • Before the 1.18.0 update, exploring the Mausoleums for the Remains of General or Anonymous Adventurers (notably the Crucible Mausoleum, which cycles every two weeks) was recommended to be the last activity on your checklist before you take a break from the game: each run essentially costs three to four hours' worth of Fortitude just to enter, and doing more than three runs in a row can't make Fortitude go below 0 anyway. It was recommended to clean out all the Mausoleums in one sitting if you haven't already done so. This has since been outdated after the 1.18.0 update relocated said traps to avoidable paths instead of the chokepoint at the entrance.
    • Having your main non-spellcasting allies learn Priest recovery spells (especially if they don't have Priest as a class option) is never a bad idea since the alternative is having recovery items take up valuable inventory slots, and they weren't using their MP anyway. Latumofis Lv3 is especially important, because Critical Poison Gas Bomb traps start appearing in Guarda Fortress chests and Hydra Plants (encountered both in the Grasslands and as bosses) can inflict Critical Poison as an attack.
  • Demonic Spiders:
    • Those who get too overconfident from slaughtering defenseless goblins in B1F will probably get a nasty wake-up call in the form of their first Hobgoblin encounter. They're much tougher and more powerful than the regular Cannon Fodder goblins, and can charge up a powerful cleave attack that deals massive damage to your entire front row. From the second run onward, Elite Hobgoblins start showing up, which are even stronger and have much higher Defense.
    • Skeletons are heavily resistant to weapon damage, meaning you can only kill them efficiently by spending your precious mana or scrolls, and tend to pack quite a punch, especially the archers. Undead Bane weapons help, but only go so far considering how weak they are, and once your mages and priests run dry, you will suffer a Death of a Thousand Cuts unless you book it back to town... which isn't helped by backtracking to a Harken being extremely inconvenient on later floors of the Beginning Abyss. There's even a journal at the entrance of B6F telling you how dangerous these things are. To make them even more dangerous, skeletons outside the Beginning Abyss tend to spam Death Strike, which has a chance to One-Hit Kill the target. Yes, that includes the archers.
    • Vorpal Bunnies, much like their inspiration from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, are no laughing matter, due to their high evasion and a tendency to indiscriminately one-shot your frontline with their Razor-Sharp Incisors attack. The one mercy you get is their low health.
    • Succubi can deal massive area spell damage, inflict all kinds of devastating status effects, and drain large amounts of stamina and mana, all while having insanely high action speed so they'll mess you up before you can even attempt to defend yourself.
    • Plague Crewmen have a truckload of health and can attack your fragile backrow characters with impunity. They also come with the extremely dangerous Scurvy Breath attack which deals heavy damage across an entire row and reduces Defense, and if you're fighting multiple Crewmen, they can all do Scurvy Breath in succession to wipe your backline if the RNG decides it hates you.
  • Ensemble Dark Horse: The devs' Twitter/X post about stats circa the game's half-anniversary revealed the most used General Adventurers:
    • Marianne, who ranked 1st, has the most staying power as a Priest via her Frugal Faith Passive, and her characterization is one of the funniest in the game. The "Gold Ore Collection" event Request even gives her spotlight if she's in the party.
    • Elise, who ranked 2nd below Marianne, has one of the few column synergies (for a Neutral Masked Adventurer or ally in front of or behind her) and found use in the Trade Waterway due to her own Earth element giving her advantage over the numerous Water-element enemies, including the final boss.
    • Amelia, who ranked 3rd, is the most convenient Thief to raise since she's a Beastfolk, who naturally fit the class, and her dupes are more common to find compared to Legendary Thieves, allowing her to gain Discipline levels more easily.
  • Epileptic Trees: Lanavaille's Life Story and the stark difference between her regular and Wandering Adventurer versions have led to a fan theory that one of them is actually the body double of the other, as the former continues to wear chains as an ally (implying she died in captivity) while the latter doesn't. The counterpoint is the Merging mechanic explicitly stating that each Adventurer's Style is from a "different timeline", which debunks the theory of both versions being two different people who coexisted. Her personal quest ultimately debunks this when post-quest Lanavaille uses the voicelines of her Wandering Adventurer version (and implies that the latter is a version who passed the King's Trial in life).
  • Game-Breaker: Shelirionach defies the genre convention of "conserve MP against trash mobs" by being the only Adventurer with MP regeneration. Once per battle, if she happens to end her turn with 25% MP or less, she falls asleep and gains 8 MP. If she starts her turn asleep, she casts a powerful Dark-type spell on one enemy and gains another 8 MP. With enough levels in Katino you can essentially trigger her sleep nuke against a sleeping enemy/line of enemies right away. She can also become an invaluable field medic if she inherits Priest recovery spells like Dios/Madios, Latumofis (Lv3 for Critical Poison), and Reinkus (for Stone), freeing up her inventory slots for other things. It's no coincidence that an update lets her Class Change to Priest, giving her one free level in every single Priest skill and spell.
  • Goddamned Bats:
    • Gas Clouds' damage output is completely negligible and their health isn't impressive either, but they love to inflict the annoying Paralysis and Fear effects and drain your party's precious MP and SP.
    • Flying Swords tend to die to any remotely powerful hit, but have high evasion and action speed, making them very good at wearing down your party before you get to act with anyone but your thief. For extra fun, they can also target your backline and tend to show up alongside skeletons.
  • Good Bad Bugs:
    • Ones that have since been patched:
      • In a camp conversation with Alice regarding her offscreen acts of committing Human Sacrifice, two of your responses had swapped results, making her impressed if you said you'd stop her and unamused if you enabled her instead of the reverse. This has since been fixed.
      • You or your allies could perform other classes' animations when using certain Skills or Spells (e.g., a Mage "throwing" Balafeos like a Thief's Blinding). The character models' animations have since been updated for consistency.
      • The "Purple Garlic Delivery" Request that requires a Purple Garlic initially rewarded you with the same Purple Garlic, which made the Request a guaranteed repeatable 1,500 Gold without ever leaving town. The reward has since been changed to a Purple Garlic Bulb.
      • A bug regarding Equipment Inheritance allowed players to have +20 equipment without needing to Unify it with equal-Strength copies of that same equipment (i.e., the inherited value wasn't being soft-capped to +5/+10/+15). Some players even reached top scores in the Old Castle Ruins event by using +20 Digging Mattocks (which shouldn't be possible for any account for at least two years)! The game now properly soft-caps those values until the items have been Unified enough times.
      • You could phase through enemies if you were able to flee a battle with them. This proved infamous during the Old Castle Ruins and Fighter Proving Grounds events, allowing some players to receive rewards far above their party's ability. This has since been fixed in the Old Castle Ruins by sealing off the teleporter until the boss enemy is defeated, while the Fighter Proving Grounds Requests now have additional requirements to clear.
      • Opening the Knowledge section in a dungeon used to freeze all enemies in place. Some players exploited this to avoid raising the corruption level in the Guarda Fortress.
      • It used to be possible to dismiss any Bondmate to gain an Amnesia Incense, even ones from the main story. Some players dismissed ones that can't be leveled up (e.g., Gary the Dog, Sir Maurice, Sophie the Caring), and found out that they couldn't be gained a second time at all. This has since been fixed in two ways: Bondmates gained through the plot can no longer be Dismissed, and gaining Bondmates past Lv5 gives an Amnesia Incense (with a hidden respawn timer that varies depending on the Bondmate).
      • After reaching 3F of the Trade Waterway, you could see Elmon as an NPC in Luknalia even if you let her die in the Beginner Abyss.
      • You used to be able to trigger the event of Dylanhardt receiving the Saint's Shield at the start of B8F of the Beginner Abyss after the King has already been rescued.
      • Due to a coding error, Ninjas who had two weapons equipped got both weapons' Blessings and Traits (including elemental and bonus damage) to apply twice in some cases, enabling Rinne and Kiriha (the only Ninjas at the time) to deal ludicrous damage with the right setups. The Dual Wield Passive has since been coded to limit each weapon's Blessings and Traits to their respective attacks.
      • During the release of the Steam version, there were a number of timed deals at the Jeweler (expires 48 hours after making enough progress in Guarda Fortress) that were massively underpriced in the Steam version (e.g., the "Guarda Fortress Traversal Celebration Set" had 1 Legendary Adventurer's Remains, 30 Adventurer's Remains, 1 Intermediate Codex of Learning, and 2,560 Gems of Org for a mere $3.69). The devs eventually noticed this and disabled Steam purchases until after they adjusted the prices.
      • When the Gold Maiden's banner went live, there was another massively underpriced deal at the Jeweler in the Steam version [20 Unique Remains: Golden Beast Dancing Maiden (with bonus) for a mere $4.59, down from $54.99]. It was patched within two hours.
      • Cursed Sack Dolls that fled would respawn in the fight if you took one action and then reloaded the fight, which proved especially useful for the EXP-specific daily Request. This has since been patched.
    • Ones that have yet to be patched:
      • Some events appear to be coded to their tile location or missing logical flag checks, even if the player has progressed the main story beyond that point. For examples (that have since been patched), two events on B5F of the Beginner Abyss only checked if Vernant or Elmon is still alive, even if your party is no longer escorting them to save the King.
      • If you use the Group Recovery option while a character is selected, that character's model remains on the map until you prompt it to move again (e.g., switching the selected character). This unintentionally gives the player a kind of "photoshoot" mode for their allies.
      • If you begin the "Save My Friend" Request before triggering Albano's Bondmate event during the current Reset, the latter scene happens right after fighting Pan. The normal scene plays once you return to town.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight:
    • Gaston, one of the playable General Adventurers, is a braggart with a Passive that gives him increased damage against demihumans. It's almost reminiscent of another Gaston.
    • The Goblin's Nest in B3F of the Beginner Abyss is a nasty surprise for an overconfident newbie, just like the fallen parties of Goblin Slayer. The game's first collab event then turned out to be with Blade & Bastard, a Wizardry spinoff by the same author.
  • Low-Tier Letdown:
    • Knights in general are considered quite useless due to their universally low Action Speed and SP hindering their ability to actually do their job, and their focus on Defense over evasion and damage making them scale poorly. Their Draw Aggro abilities also tend to be weak, since they're not guaranteed to make enemies target the Knight and do nothing against area-of-effect attacks. It's telling that Lanavaille is generally considered a good unit in spite of being a Knight rather than because of it, and most players would re-class her into a Fighter in a heartbeat to put the Knight skills on an Adventurer with better stats.
    • Out of the six starting Legendary Adventurers, Gerulf is generally considered the weakest. His kit suffers from Crippling Overspecialization since his unique abilities railroad him into two-handed maces, which in turn forces him into the front row where his Evil alignment anti-synergizes with the far more versatile Lanavaille (who demands Good/Neutral allies in her row to grant her damage boost). While the Fire damage on his unique Eruption Strike has its uses, most of the time it's not much better than the stock Fighter skills and it's all but useless in the Port Town where almost everything is Water-element.
    • Greedy Saintess Marianne is widely considered a downgrade to her normal version since her passive ability Sacred Healer reduces the cost of the healing spells Dios and Madios, whereas her normal version's Frugal Faith reduces the cost of all her spells.
  • Nintendo Hard: This game is no exception to the Wizardry series' infamous difficulty; if you want to take on enemies that are well above your level, you'll find plenty of opportunities to get yourself killed.
  • Obvious Beta: The game was full of Game Breaking Bugs at launch that could crash the game or even lock up a player's account. As of February 2025, the game has become much more stable and a "Forced Reset" option was added to the title screen, but many players still encounter problems.
  • Scrappy Mechanic:
    • Class Handbooks cost Gems of Org, can only be used by the specified character, might specify their current class (useless if you never intend to change that character back), and most damningly are single-use; if a later update adds a desired skill to the later levels of one of that character's classes (a very likely possibility), you have to endure this waiting game all over again! Before the 1.8.0 update, they were only available in batches of one or two every week, from an initial pool of 70 (Shelirionach's Handbooks bring the current total to 86).
      • Partially fixed as of the 1.7.0 update with the introduction of Class Change Requests, which allow any character to class change to any class they previously held. You still need to buy their original Class Handbook, but at least you won't need to wait as long to flip them back.
      • The 1.8.0 update partially fixed this even further by making the Handbooks available in batches of four every week (two of which can only be bought with Gems of Erin), which can be reset up to four times with Gems of Org/Erin (the cost doubles after each reset, with the last one being 1600 Gems). As a side benefit, Handbooks now have their own section in the Jeweler.
    • Adventurers have a 20% chance to be rolled with less than 100 Fortitude (18% chance with 90 Fortitude, and 2% chance with 80 Fortitude). Fortitude defines the difficulty of resurrecting an ally mid-battle (consider that an 80-Fortitude character gets a smaller circle after just one revive), the outcome of resurrecting them at the Temple (i.e., less than 50 Fortitude potentially results in failure, and two failures equals Permadeath), their "stamina" against chest traps (mainly relevant for your chest openers), and most importantly their resistance to status effects. While it doesn't outright ruin an Adventurer, it does hamper their longevity. It's also telling that the Merging mechanic was updated to retain the higher max Fortitude of the two Styles used.
    • Regarding Bondmate Skills:
      • Some Bondmate Skills can gain Levels (max Lv5) by repeating the steps to acquire them, but the game doesn't easily tell you whether any given Bondmate Skill can gain Levelsnote . For example, Ghreen Jelly's Bondmate Skill explicitly mentions that it "increases further based on skill level", yet Ghreen Jelly no longer appears in the Beginner Abyss after it becomes a Bondmate.
      • Some involve so much RNG. Water God Priestess Regia's Bondmate requires randomly encountering her in the Trade Waterway and paying 1,500 Gold five separate times per Bondmate (55 times minimum, spending 82,500 Gold total), while Songstress Marin's requires fighting her in one specific location (coordinates X4:Y4) out of five possible ones on Ship 2F (if she doesn't spawn there, a quick way to reroll it is to fail the QTE on a corrupted Water God Statue multiple times and Accept death, at the cost of 10 Fortitude from your allies)note .
      • Others involve a lot of legwork. Head Chef's Bondmate requires completing four other Requests (at least one of which must be turned in to him directly), then defeating the final boss of the Trade Waterway and catching him as he's packing up to leave (if you forget to catch him, he is gone).
    • You can pay Gems to be able to open three chests in Mausoleums for a time instead of one, but it also spawns Necrocore fights in chokepoints. While this potentially cuts down on the minimum number of trips, it just isn't worth the extra fights when those chests still have a coinflip chance of giving Junk, not to mention that simply doing more Mausoleum runs only costs more Fortitude from your allies (which becomes negligible when they don't have any more to lose).
    • The Change Style option isn't just cosmetic: each Style has its own exclusive Unique Skill and Discipline. This becomes a problem if a player prefers the looks and voicelines of one Style but the Unique Skill and Discipline of the other. It's notable that the devs actually acknowledged this criticism and announced that this mechanic would be reworked.
    • There's no easy way to track when certain items can be reacquired via the Cursed Wheel beyond keeping notes. Considering that items have hidden timers ranging between 24 hours and 28 days, this can get annoying when you repeat Requests too early and only get the lesser additional rewards.
    • For whatever reason, using the Economy or Private Room at the Inn has a chance to deduct Fortitude from any ally in the party (at least 1 from either, potentially up to 3 from the former). This is not mentioned anywhere in the game.
  • Self-Imposed Challenge:
    • Anonymous Adventurers have no unique skills compared to General and Legendary Adventurers, but some players have run a full team of them to tackle the hardest content all the same.
    • One impressive player went through the entire main story without allies. Here is a video of him taking down the Gatekeeper at its absolute strongest (zero corruption) all by himself.
    • Another impressive player tackled the main story with a Level cap of 20 (i.e., they never promoted their party out of No Grade).
  • Shocking Moments: After completing the Trial of the Heat-Haze dungeon, a non-Evil Masked Adventurer must go through it a second time with only a single ally (to compensate, mobs will only have a single ninja), and consciously and permanently kill them at the end by tossing their corpse out of reach in order to acquire the Guiding Light (Shadow). Unlike most events, you're warned multiple times if you want to do this. If you kill a Locked ally, the game will even chastise you for forgetting to Unlock them while making you leave empty-handed with the corpse. Note that an Evil Masked Adventurer will receive the Guiding Light just by completing the Trial the first time around.
  • Squick: You can receive a Mimic Secretion from disarming a "chest" that was actually a disguised Mimic.
  • That One Attack: Katino, the resident sleep spell, works far more often against you than it does against dangerous enemies and can easily put an entire row to sleep, which throws strategies into disarray like nothing else by forcing key party members (like, say, your priest) to skip turns. And encounters involving this spell rarely have just one enemy capable of casting it, meaning it's entirely possible to have your entire team put to sleep unless you're heavily decked out in Resistance-boosting gear.
  • That One Boss: Our Heirlooms, the Zone 7 boss of Guarda Fortress, is a sharp Difficulty Spike for players unprepared for its row-wide Confusion-inflicting Dance attack. The general strategy is to kit everyone with Confusion Resistance and unequip the turn unit's weapon to mitigate any potential friendly fire if they're not dealing damage to the boss on their turn.
  • That One Puzzle: The 4th District of the Trade Waterway has a nasty trap with a non-intuitive solution. After a Water Statue pushes you into a flooded room, you're expected to go against the current, check the Corroded Water Statue, walk into a dead-end, and check the nearby door. Doing all that leads to you figuring out that you can use your Right Hand of Reversal on the Statue. Some players actually consider this Fake Difficulty because they already expected the last part, only to find out that the Statue cannot be Reversed yet and they just wasted a few turns drowning for nothing.
  • They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
    • Some players were quite upset that the massively underpriced Guarda Fortress timed deals in the Steam version were adjusted, as they considered those deals very good incentives for tackling that dungeon's ramped-up difficulty.
    • The 1.17.0 update redubbed a few of Lulunarde's English lines, which some players considered unnecessary.
  • Unexpected Character: Back when the Blade & Bastard crossover was announced, the playerbase expected Iarumas and Garbage to be added to game since they're the titular duo. The unexpected part was Berkanan being added instead of Garbage.
  • Unnecessary Makeover: In both cases, some players wish that the Change Style option wasn't only available to a merged ally.
    • Changing a character's class via their associated Class Handbook also changes their appearance to match their new class, but some players have mixed reactions to these new looks. At least these can be reverted by using either a Handbook of the character's original class or a Class Change Request.
    • Before the 1.11.0 update, completing a Legendary Adventurer's Character Quest permanently changed their appearance and voicelines, with no option to revert the changes. Whether it's Adam's two-color hair, Debra's Skull Mask no longer being used, Gerulf's flaming hands, the red-and-yellow color scheme of Yekaterina's Kalshum, or their post-Quest lines, some players actually regret completing the Character Quest.
      • The release of Adam's "Remembrance of the Millennial Lord" version made his case more glaring as he now had five total versions (original, Priest, post-Quest Mage, post-Quest Priest, and "Remembrance of the Millennial Lord"), and the first two were permanently lost once his Character Quest was completed.
      • The 1.11.0 update fixed this by allowing you to freely swap between a character's post-Quest and pre-Quest versions at the Training Room via triple-tapping them.

Top