Glitches and Tricks

The guide to glitches and tricks in the Wizardry Series. Right now it's more of a glitch guide to Wizardry V but hopefully others will contribute their findings.

Wizardry I-IV
None yet.

Wizardry V: Heart of the Maelstrom
Here's the fun stuff.

1. Buy my Leather Gloves for 120,000 gold?

Requirements: An NPC who sells at least 1 item, enough gold to buy the entire stock of the NPC, and a thief with ONE free inventory spot.

How it works: Now, let me give a brief disclaimer. I've performed this glitch twice, once when I first discovered it, and again on purpose. It doesn't always trigger, so make a quick save (Save the party and return to town) before you engage the NPC. I discovered the glitch with The Mad Stomper, and got it to work on Mafretti's Ghost. I will tell you exactly how to make the glitch happen, whether it triggers is hit-or-miss.

First, encouter the NPC and charm him/her. Then Pool Gold to a character (this is important) and buy every item the NPC is selling. If one character can't buy them all, Pool Gold to another and buy the remainder of the NPC's stock. Then, use the Steal commad and have your theif (with ONE free inventory slot) steal and item--your thief MUST steal an item WITHOUT stealing gold. Select the Sell command and try to sell that item back to the NPC.

There are a few things that will happen at this point, either the NPC will want to buy it for 0 gold (your thief had more than one free inventory slot) or they will want to buy it for somewhere around half its value (the glitch didn't trigger). If the glitch has been triggered, the price the NPC will offer for every unequipped item will look like this: 3=>15 or 12<-5 (the two I've seen, but generally it will be a combination of symbols and numbers). This indicates a selling price of more than 5 digits, anywhere from 35,000 to 120,000 gold!

Why it works: This is all speculation, but I think when you buy an item from an NPC it sets a flag for pricing, usually reading the item's value that you just bought and determining the NPC to buy items from your characters at half value. If you steal an item, it reads "item" as text and tries to translate both the item and the word "item" into a price. I think that if the item you steal is more at least 5 characters, e.g. ?sheild or ?equipment, it causes an overflow, and the game will insert letters into the value and try to determine a price. This translates into 5 or 6 digit prices! When I performed the glitch on Manfretti's Ghost it took about 220,000 gold to buy out his inventory, and I sold every extra item I was carrying back to him--netting a whopping 1.3 MILLION gold! Of course, this meant I could now outfit my party with Armors of Defense and Gloves of Myrdall, and buy enough Ankhs to manipulate one of my Lv13 clerics into Lord!

2. The Soultealer AKA Gamebreaker

The Soulstealer is a weapon in Wizardry V - Heart of the Maelstrom. It is a longsword, can be weilded by Fighters, Samurai, Lords, and Ninjas, grants a bonus +2 to hit, and does 4d5+4 damage per hit.

It is a cursed weapon and, like all cursed weapons, inflicts certain penalties on characters that equip it. The Soulstealer will raise the AC of any character who equips it by 4, and this is merciful considering how many cursed weapons also cause negative hp regen.

Why would you ever use a cursed weapon? Hell, why would I take the time to write an article on a cursed weapon? Well, everything comes down to invoking this very special weapon. Any character capable of weilding the Soulstealer can invoke it, and it can be invoked ''without equipping it. ''When invoked, the  Soulstealer decreases a character's Vitality stat by 1 and ages them 1 year. It has a 50% chance of breaking when invoked.

There is something else though, something that makes this cursed weapon worth the time, and well worth the loss of Vitality and age. From the moment the Soulstealer is invoked until the character attempts to change their equipment (if you so much as accidentally hit the "Equip" command, even if you keep the same equipment equipped), they will receive some sort of absurd bonus to their to-hit rolls and damage. I do not know what the stats are, but my Lv15 Samurai weilding a Muramasa Katana could barely manage to hit an Archdemon if given ten or more tries, and when a hit did connect, it didn't do much. I could count on a 10% success rate with hitting an Archdemon, and I expected around 40~50 points of damage. After the Soulstealer was invoked, using the same Katana and other equipment, my Samurai was hitting Archdemons 90% of the time for 450~500 damage!

This ridiculous bonus will stay with the character, even if they: The bonus will be removed if a character: Moral of this story: Invoke the Soulstealer!
 * 1) Are removed from the party.
 * 2) Are added to the party.
 * 3) Are killed and revived in-dungeon.
 * 4) Cast Spells.
 * 5) Use Items.
 * 6) Buy Items.
 * 7) Sell Items.
 * 8) Trade Items.
 * 9) Exit the Maze.
 * 10) Enter the Maze.
 * 11) Sell equipped items in Boltac's.
 * 12) Are killed and revived out-of-dungeon.
 * 13) Moved into an anti-magic field.
 * 1) Uses the "Equip" command, even if their equipment is kept exactly as is.