Wolfie's Wizardry 8 Info Site

Wolfie's Wizardry 8 Info Site

Latest News

December 2, 2004: Wiz8CombatStats spreadsheet makes its first public release: Already at version 1.60, it is now available for download, go to here for all the details.

November 9, 2004: Announcing the release of another Wiz8 spreadsheet soon: The purpose of this spreadsheet is to provide an estimate for each character of the number of battles your adventuring party need to complete to gain their next character level. This estimate is based on the average of the last 30 battles, so as you enter your combat stats, the older battles (and generally lower XP earnings) drop out of the average.

October 18, 2004: Links section updated: Added about 10 links to the Links section for more Wizardry goodness.

October 9, 2004: Links section is under construction: Actively searching for every link to Wizardry 8 related web resources available. It's the testing that the sites are still available that takes so much time, so updates will get added progressively, and keep those e-mails coming in.

October 6, 2004: Added printer-friendly versions of the Retro Dungeon maps: Had prepared these some time ago, but it was only after receiving an e-mail requesting something along this line, that I remembered were already there, just needed to post a link to them. You'll find them under the Retro Dungeons section.

September 16, 2004: Check out the new version plans for Wiz8SpellAbility: Located under Wiz8SA (on the left side menu), this page details what suggestions have been received for the next version of the Wiz8SpellAbility spreadsheet. There is a suggested update which needs YOUR vote! Details available here.

September 15, 2004: Web site face lift finished: The new side menu is now available! It should make navigating this web site far easier than before. Much of the existing content has also been revisied as well. Some pages are still work in progress, but didn't want to hold up the update for tasks which can be done as time permits. I hope you find the changes worthwhile, enjoy!

September 10, 2004: Web site face lift update: Graphics are now COMPLETED, but I'm revising the text part is at more like 10%, not 60% as reported the other day (more to do that I first thought <sigh>).

September 7, 2004: Web site face lift progressing: Work is continuing along, if somewhat slower than we'd all like. Graphics are at 80% complete, index pages and text at ~60%.

July 28, 2004: Web site getting a face lift: Work has begin to give the web site a bit of a face lift to improve navigation to all the various pages of information stored here which are admittedly not the easiest to find quickly. As this work has to be slotted in with other tasks, not able to give a date of when you will be able to see the results, but have set a target of first week of September. After this, I'll be turning to completing an update for the Wiz8SpellAbility spreadsheet (a number of feature enhancements have been waiting long enough for implementing, time they were made available don't you think)!

May 5, 2004: Updates now been seen!: Found the cause of the problem, the main issue seemed to have been that updates being uploaded were not copied across to the live production web server(s); end result no-one seeing the updates. The secondary problem was that whilst always checking after completing an update, my local proxy host was being too smart, it cached the uploads and so served them when I browsed to the web site, so it looked updated to me. (Ain't technology grand when it works better than you expect!) Thanks again to everybody who helped.

April 25, 2004: Updates not getting through?: Have received a couple of reports that people are not seeing any updates since mid-March!? Looks ok to me, but investigating all the same, keep those e-mails coming in!

April 4, 2004: Retro Dungeon Map Corrections: Completed the list of corrections made to Moni's original maps for the Retro Dungeons. Click here to view the list. Note to webmasters: If you also have a Wiz8 web site and feature the Retro Dungeons, especially if you used Moni's maps as your reference, this page includes a before & after image highlighting the changes. Use them to determine if you need to make corrections to yours as well.

March 28, 2004: Mountain Wilderness Retro Dungeon Map Walkthrough Available: As promised, here's the last of the three walkthroughs to be released. If you have never tried the Retro Dungeons before, what are you waiting for! Click here for the walkthrough, including step-by-step instructions on how to activate access to the dungeon. ** Spoiler Warning **

March 21, 2004: Northern Wilderness Retro Dungeon Map Walkthrough Available: Here's the second of the three walkthroughs to be released over the coming weeks. If you have never tried the Retro Dungeons before, now you have no excuse! Click here for the walkthrough.
** Spoiler Warning **

March 14, 2004: Cemetery Retro Dungeon Map Walkthrough Available: The first of the three walkthroughs to be released. Click here for the walkthrough. ** Spoiler Warning **

March 10, 2004: Updates made to Northern Wilderness Retro Dungeon Map: Corrections have also been made to the original maps for the Northern Wilderness Retro Dungon. Click here to see the differences. ** Spoiler Warning **

March 5, 2004: Updates made to Moni's Retro Dungeon Maps: A number of corrections have been made to Moni's original maps for the Retro Dungons. ** Spoiler Warning ** Click here to view a page comparing the differences. Information about the Retro Dungeons can be obtained here. Stay watching as over the next three weeks a complete walkthrough for each of the retro dungeons will be released.

March 1, 2004: List of pending updates to the Wiz8SpellAbility spreadsheet open: With all the news of updates and faults found, refer to the Next Version page for all the latest.

November 17, 2003: Web site back up and running: Never received a reply from the web service provider :( but the site's back up again!

November 10, 2003: Web site went off-line: Seems the web service provider which hosts this web site is having a few glitches. Visitors, including myself, to the web site are being diverted. There are no bandwidth limits / throttles policies with this site. All access stats/logs have vanished too. I am currently in the process of making enquires, and will let you know once the outcome is known.

November 8, 2003: Some minor cosmetic changes to the Retro Dungeon web pages: Just made some changes to the appearence of each Retro Dungeon web page (changed some wording, made the backgrounds for the area maps transparent so they look better on screen etc).

October 24, 2003: IT'S HERE! Latest version of the Wiz8SpellAbility released: Near double in size, click on this link to get all the details: Wiz8SpellAbility spreadsheet. Enjoy!

October 23, 2003: Latest version of the Wiz8SpellAbility nearing completion: The spreadsheets are now ready, just putting the documentation together and final checks. Expecting to release tomorrow! Watch for further updates.

October 9, 2003: New version of the Wiz8SpellAbility spreadsheet on the way: Have been planning a new release of the Wiz8SpellAbility spreadsheet for some time now, which will combine both the spreadsheet and the Wiz8SpellAbility Companion Utility into the one package. This is still going to be released. However, the other planned updates will be shelved for now. Recently, there have been a number of other great Wiz8 sites created, which contained most of the information that was going to be posted, so rather than duplicate what is already available, the Links section will be updated pointing to these other sites. Stay tuned for further news updates soon.

June 1, 2003: This site is not dead: Nearly six months have past (eep!) and the promised update ... well it's almost finished, really! Yeah I know, just haven't been able to get the time to do the things I'd like to do, like updating this web site. However, watch this site next month, plan to add a bunch of new things. so once again, stay tuned, some further developments to come.

January 3, 2003: Happy New Year everyone: The promised update kinda got side-tracked a bit (busy making a living in difficult economic times and all that). Stay tuned, some further developments to be announced soon.

October 19, 2002: Improvements to the Wiz8SpellAbility Companion Utility: After the tragic events of last week (Terrorist bombing in Kuta Beach, Bali), in updating the web site, came across some notes of ideas for improving the Wiz8 spreadsheets. So started going through the code; making a tweak here, adding a feature there and generally making it better. Intend to test everything over the next few weeks before releasing, refer to the Next Version page for details.

September 9, 2002: Can finally update the web site again: After over two (2) months of not being able to login and update the web site, the web (non) service provider has at last corrected my access account. Unfortunately, all the usage logs have been lost, and so am no longer able to report on the number of downloads etc (but then again, I was probably the only one that took any notice of those anyway right!). Well, the site is "back on the air" as it were, and be happy to hear from anyone who's still visiting.

July 3, 2002: Wiz8SpellAbility Companion Utility Released: Is now available for download (only a few days late), all the details are to be found here.

July 1, 2002: Update on the Companion Utility: All the formula work has been done, having a few issues with layout but that is being hammered out, should be available by the end of the week.

June 14, 2002: Companion Utility for the Wiz8SpellAbility Spreadsheet started: Development work has begun on a utility to combine multiple copies of the Wiz8SpellAbility spreadsheet (one for each character in your party) and present a concise list of who needs what spellbook and what spells have been learnt by who. Expected release by the end of the month.

June 4, 2002: Web Site Changes: Added a Table of Contents on the home page to list all the available information in the one place, and also cleaned up some of the HTML code on the pages.

June 1, 2002: Spellbook locations updated: Location details have been added for the spellbooks located in the Upper Rapax Castle area, and added where a Book of Dark Hound (Shadow Hound) can be found. You can click here to view Mage_77's latest update.

May 27, 2002: Have reached 3,500 downloads of the Wiz8SpellAbility Spreadsheet: Since it's release on January 11th this year, there have been over 3,500 downloads of the spreadsheet (and that's not counting the 15 days the web site down down due to web service provider issues). My thanks to everyone who's contributed or even just sent me a thank you e-mail. Remember you can always send a comment by scrolling to the end of this page, fill in the details and click the Send button. To view the latest stats, click here.

May 17, 2002: "Retro" Dungeon Maps and Activation Walkthroughs updated: Been making these a little more user-friendly for novice users. Click here to view maps of all three of the dungeons and then click on any of the maps to view the activiation instructions.

Apr 27, 2002: Wiz8SpellAbility spreadsheet available for non-Excel owners: With the assistance of Persself, a version of the Wiz8SpellAbility spreadsheet has been developed, which removes all the Excel-specific features whilst keeping all the functionality of the original. Even if you don't have a spreadsheet package, there are instructions on where you can download a FREE application. All the details can be found here.

Remember, if you ever want details on what's been developed next, or if there are any reported faults in the Wiz8SpellAbility spreadsheet, you can view all the info here.

Apr 18, 2002: Spell Learning explained: The 'How Spell Availability is Calculated' article has been updated to include details for spell learning with profession-changed characters. It extends the original posting written by the Wizardry 8 Lead Programmer, Alex Meduna. Check it out by clicking here.

Apr 11, 2002: Send your comments: There is now the option of sending a comment at the bottom of this page. Just scroll down, fill in the details and send!

Comments from other users about the Wiz8SpellAbility spreadsheet:

I was playing with your spreadsheet a little more and I am TRULY impressed with what you have done!

I never expected a spreadsheet with so much detail! I was just expecting something like the data entry tab and having to click a button to refresh the spreadsheet whenever a change was made.

The other tabs are very nice touches. You obviously put a lot of thought and work into this. I especially like the availabilty tab and how you use strike thru, italic, and bold lettering on the spell names and how you tell how many more levels are needed in the each school of magic to learn a spell. I really like the spell realm and spell availability tables on the data sheet tab. The print out tab is extremely useful for viewing all current and potential spells available in an instant. I just can't say enough about how much I like what you've done.

Thanks for [the] info, it was nice tool and now it is even better

Thanks. That spreadsheet is a great tool.

Apr 10, 2002: New version of the Wiz8SpellAbility spreadsheet available: At last, the spreadsheet has been upgraded to include support for profession-changed characters! Plus a couple of other improvements have been included. To read all the details, click here.

Mar 25, 2002: Spellbook locations updated: Kunar over in Mt. Gigas has been found to sell Books of Knocks, also Sadok in Lower Marten's Bluff has been reportedly seen to sell Books of Corrosion and Stamina. The listing has now been updated with this information and a few cosmetic cleanups. You can click here to view the updated information.

Mar 17, 2002: "Retro" Dungeon Maps and Activation Walkthroughs updated: The web site that contained the maps drawn by the original artist seems to have gone, so the maps have been added to this site along with instructions on how to activate these easter egg dungeons. As time permits, walkthroughs for each dungeon will also be added. Click here to read all about it.

Feb 21, 2002: Version 1.04 of the Wiz8SpellAbility spreadsheet released: Buckled down and got this finished.

To check out what's new, click here.

Feb 14, 2002: Web site back on-line: After having been off-line for over a week due to a differing opinion on the interpretation of the previous web service providers 'Terms of Service', I've now relocated to another service provider, and so we are back! Bigger and better than before. Thank you to all those people who sent e-mails of support or just to advise me that the site was down, your patience has been rewarded. You can click here to get the full story.

This web site started on January 11, 2002, a few months after the release of Sir-Tech's Wizardry 8 CRPG. The news articles between Jan 11 and Feb 10 of 2002 were lost during a dispute with the former web service provider over "appropriate content" which was a joke because this web site was and has only ever been for the purpose of providing Wizardry 8 content to fans. Anyway, none of this really matters any more, the web site moved on and has succeeded beyond my wildest hopes. Enjoy!


	Comments to: Wolfie (wizardry8@mail.com). Last Update: November 9, 2004.