Wizardry 6: Patching the Game with Mad God’s Utility, Suggested Patches and Ranger Improvement

If you’re a new player to Wizardry 6, you probably want to experience the game with a fresh set of eyes. So this blog post might not be for you. On the other hand, for veteran players that want to alter the game, improve some quality of life issues and try different things out that hopefully enhance your experience, then this post is better suited for you. But the idea here is that with the Mad God’s editor/patch utility, you can update an existing game like from the GoG or Steam versions and try something different. Even if you don’t want to “cheat”, you might still want to examine the various included patches with this utility to see if you want to fix an outstanding issue.

First, there are a few guides on installing the patch utility. I wrote one up for dealing with the basic utility and there’s another write up that mostly focuses on the encumbrance bug. You might have to do additional stuff to get Wine working on the Mac as this is a dos program. But my write up includes another link that goes into more detail on dealing with things like WineTricks. However, that other guide is aimed more for BaneEdit.exe. I suggest checking the two links to see which fits your situation better.

Once you get the utility setup, configured and running, you will see a general interface like this:

The key piece in this interface is the section called “Patches.” From there, you see another popup/modal with the following:

Here, you will see the various patches that you can apply. Some are reversible, others are permanent. But this screen will show you which patches have been applied. I’m guessing that GoG, etc. might have already applied as few such as the “Affect All” patch, where spells like Nuclear Blast would fail to damage your enemies due to a bug. At any rate, some of these patches are considered bug fixes, so you might consider using them in case you were unaware of an issue (like the Poison debuff one).

The utility file itself comes with a patch notes section for both Wizardry 6 and 7. The most relevant patches I found were the following ones.

Attribute Bonus Generation

The original algorithm both for W6 & W7 is as follows:

Character gets 1d6+4 bonus points (5-10)
If what the character got is less than 9
(S)He gets 1d4+7 bonus points (8-11) 2/3
Otherwise
It is 1/20 that (s)he may gain additional +8 bonus points (13-18) 1/60
It is 1/20 that (s)he may gain additional +8 bonus points (21-26) 1/1200
End

The patched algorithm both for W6 & W7 is as follows:

Character gets 1d19+7 bonus points (8-26)
If what the character got is less than 9
(S)He gets 1d4+7 bonus points (8-11) 1/19
End

To me, this is the most valuable patch of the bunch because character creation in this game is really bad. Unless you really enjoy pain, suffering and endless wasting time in trying to create a character because you have some stupid, impractical notion of honor, be my guest and wither away in agony. However, I think a lot of sensible veterans would have to agree that creating a decent starting character should not take hours by itself. Also, if you want to try different things and take advantage of the game’s issues like Mana Regeneration problems, you practically need to do some level of editing and min/maxing.

In my case, I have applied the patch and I can still roll stinky amounts but it’s far rarer than seeing a 5 show up as my bonus roll compared to before. Since you can get up to 26 bonus points from the start, you can get more flexibility in your starting party. Because if with a utility like BaneEdit.exe that allows you to edit your attributes, BaneEdit.exe won’t work without a saved game and a starting party. So pick your poison here.

Removing Shoot and Throw Attack Restriction.

The problem with missile weapons in this game, especially Bows for me, is that they are mostly worthless. One of the neatest items in the game is the Elven Bow, but it already is plagued by issues like the class and race restrictions. However, you don’t get any bonuses from hiding in the shadows when you attack with a missile weapon, so you do far less damage. Even worse, you can’t multiple multiple swings (or shots) with a missile weapon. In turn, this makes the Ranger an absolutely abysmal class because their armor is bad and their general damage is bad. This patch tries to fix some of these issues by upgrading the number of shots someone can do, which should incentive using a Ranger. The key notes of this part of the patch reads as follows:

The base logic of the game concerning this matter is that when the attack type of the monster or
one of your characters is either ‘Throw’ or ‘Shoot’ type, than ‘Swings per attack’ is defaulting to 1.

The patch removes that restriction, so in that case the monster or one of your characters can ‘Shoot’
or ‘Throw’ more than once per attack (providing that (s)he has ‘Swings per attack’ > 1). Thus the patch
rejuvenates projectile and throwing weaponry.

But there are several flaws in this patch:

• Your character will lose only one missile from its inventory regardless of the number of shots made
  per attack (that is the cheating part – My response: who cares? Ammunition management sucks in general).
• Animation for the missile will be drawn once (does not really matters).
• Some monsters will become VERY powerful, notably ROBOTS. ROBOTS have powerful enough weapons such as
  LASER CANNON, PLASMA CANNON and SPECTRAL RAY which hurts badly the whole party. In the unpatched game
  they will only shoot that once per attack, in the patched version they may (and will) shoot it more than
  once. (My response – Does not apply in Wizardry 6 at least with regards to robots)

In general, this massively upgrades using a Bow and makes the Ranger class more appealing both as an intermediary class (midgame change) where you gain some stealth, can use a Bow and employ Alchemy and potentially as an end game class since the Elven Bow adds Critical Hit. Ranger’s armor mostly sucks but you will get the the Forest Cape, which has some nice resistances. Also, if you swap into the class from a class that has Kirijitsu, then you can nullify a good chunk of the defects in the class from the core game. With a solid Ranger armed with the Elven Bow being able to fire critically hitting arrows from the shadows multiple times per attack, you gain a specialized character that can potentially take down enemies in the rear, especially spell casters or highly resistant enemies that might lob special attacks at your group.

Another thing is that with these upgrades, a mid game Ranger becomes more feasible as you do not have to deal with armor issues still, have lower requirements than a Ninja (which progresses far slower), will gain a fair number of hit points per level and can function as a lockpicker as they have Skulduggery. Also, you would gain Alchemy without having to change into an Alchemist (which would feel pointless mid game) or a Ninja (where you won’t have their garb). So this patch does a lot to improve this class and it’s something that would make me reconsider how I can structure a party because of this new dynamic.

Encumbrance Bug

Another major problem with the original game was how Carrying Capacity/Encumbrance was determined at the start of the game. Strength dictates how much you could carry so regardless of the class you picked, you would always want a fair amount of strength to ensure you could hold anything. Even if you didn’t want to deal with the Mana Regeneration issue but still tried to create any pure spell caster type, if you knew about this bug, you would still need to allocate points into strength as opposed to your true main stats. So the patch corrects this issue by adjusting your CC as you level. I’m guessing that as you improve your strength, your CC should correctly adjust. I’m not sure if it goes down on changing classes but even if you’re a purist, you have to agree that your CC should increase if you get stronger at least. So this is another really good patch to install.

Other Patches

The remaining ones are either enhancements or a few key bug fixes like the Poison debuff one. These mostly are up to you. Some are labeled enhancements like one where a few classes are given an immunity. I’m not that big of a fan of that idea. I still want to keep the base game close to vanilla as possible. There is a patch for resting in the notes, but I can’t seem to find it in the actual list. However, it might be for Wizardry 7, despite how the description sounds fairly general for both games.

On the other hand, you can modify certain parts of the game like Mana Regeneration, which is silly to a degree. Or you can use the utility to even modify the maps, loot, etc. It’s a fairly robust editor that allows you to change a chunk of the game. I would only do this if I was supremely bored with the core game or wanted to give myself some small QoL (like adding a Lute or Ninja garb in the starting chests)

I think though with the above patches I suggested, I would like to give the Ranger another shot (pun partly intended). It’s one class that I think got badly shafted in this game. I read that they managed to fix the class up in later games. But I think having a dedicated ranged class in this game does add a small but interesting dynamic.