VizziniCD

Morale effects?

I really liked HOMM3 as much as I did AoW. Wizardry 8 was a initially a lot of fun. The horrendously common and difficult random encounters eventually made me move on. Stardock is in the habit of taking ownership throughout the life of their products, instead putting them out there and moving on. I think one result of that is that people feel they aren't wasting their time if they speak up about what could be better, what needs fixed. Games bomb though.

My pioneers are greyed out pretty often, but clicking on the icon seems to work anyway. Is the pioneer part of a stack? Have you tried selecting it before trying to place a settlement? I don't have the game handy at the moment, but those are a few things I'd try.

It's a global spell. I think the spell itself is called "Spell of Making". I think there's a small chance of it coming up as you near the end of the magic tree, each time you finish research. The techs are color coded, and that one is brown, meaning it's one of the rarer results. Getting the lore tech is the first step, then you need to learn the spell itself from the arcane side. That's the time consuming part. It took about 20 essence to cast.</

As I completed each step, it highlighted the next one on the map for me. I've certainly had quest locations appear in enemy territories, which makes things interesting, I'm just not sure if that also applies to locations for the quest mastery victory. I don't see why it shouldn't. IIRC, the first one is very close, and down a well, very easy to get. The later ones seemed to appear farther away and were more well-guarded. Bring friends.

If there are enough enemy units and not enough space for them, they seem to pop up in strange places. It's especially common/irritating on city tactical maps, which are already crowded with fences and buildings.

That's been my experience as well. There's usually a special resource next to it. It was an ogre camp in my last game, but I imagine there's some variety. I was under the impression that you could buy special items for your champions if they were next to these cities, but I haven't bothered to check. I don't know if by "special" they mean regular items you might not have researched, or unique items that can't be researched, or if neither is actually available.

and some vampire glitter!

I always use the attack books on an archer hero. I've only got the sand golem token once, but from the first few goodie locations I crossed in the game. They do allow you to either steamroll an opponent early or quest freely, hauling in huge amounts of money. By midgame, they're just so-so, and ended up as city defenders before too long. Best way to balance would be to have them only around for one battle or a turn limit. They're nothing special at all

I was unable to use this spell to create a land bridge that I could actually walk across. It doesn't seem to work well on shorelines at all. Looks like non-harbor shoreline squares are impassable ("cliff" squares, I guess), even if you raise land out of the sea on the other side of it.

You need to research one of the early magic techs to use them (Shard... Domination?).

The quest victory involves gathering the 5 pieces of the Titan's Forge (Adventure/Domination techs) and reassembling them. Diplomacy is victory through alliance or a combination of alliance/conquest. The spell of making involves researching through the Magic tree to get the spell of making, then researching the spell itself and casting it.

I'm on a medium map with only two arcane temples, possibly a third in the one remaining AI city in the game. I wanted to try out the Spell of Mastery victory for giggles, but about 100 turns to research? The only actual arcane research generating building I can make is the basic lore shop, so even with a multiplier building on the cities next to arcane temples I'm getting slow research. I'm not sure if there's a random tech that permits other arcane

Looks like monsters/bandits are spawning with the same global frequency but spawns are confined to the much reduced late game wilderness/uncontested areas of the map. Cheers, Captain Obvious

also from the original rockpapershotgun article on the Gamer's Bill... they never did like that second one 2. Gamers shall have the right to demand that games be released in a finished state... ...Point 2, for instance: There’s not a developer in the land that gladly ships unfinished code. This is something that regrettabl