Wizardry II - The Knight of Diamonds

The game begins with the city of Llylgamyn under siege. Llylgamyn's rulers have been killed, and the city's only hope is for the recovery of the armor from the legendary Knight of Diamonds to fend off the invaders.

The game functions virtually identically to the first scenario, Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord, with the player guiding a party of up to six adventurers into the 6 level dungeon. The original version required players to import characters from the first game, while later versions include a pregenerated party and the ability to create level one characters. As the game was intended to be played by those who had successfully completed the first game, the difficulty level was intended for characters of at least level 13, and no training area means that lower level characters will go through a "baptism by fire". Mechanical differences include the ability to save the game in the dungeon rather than forcing the characters to exit the dungeon and return to the training grounds, and some of the spells increasing the power of certain spells (as noted by a message in the dungeon). A reviewer many years ago referred to it as getting levels 11-16 (as the original Wizardry was a 10 level dungeon)

Unlike the first scenario, where half of the levels had no purpose plot-wise and could be skipped if the player wished, all of the levels in Knight of Diamonds are necessary to explore. Each of the six levels has a piece of the Knight's armor somewhere in the level, and all of the pieces must be collected in order to finish the game. Furthermore, unlike in the first scenario, there are no elevators that can be used to skip levels, and teleportation spells will fail if the party attempts to use them to teleport to a level that has not yet been reached via stairs.

8 classes: Fighter, Mage, Priest, Thief, Lord, Ninja, Samurai, Bishop 5 races: Human, Dwarf, Elf, Hobbit, Gnome Alignments: Good, Neutral, Evil (Good characters will not travel with Evil characters; Neutrals will travel with either. Thus, as explained below, a lord and ninja will never normally travel together, but a Neutral Samurai could go with either.) 50 spells divided up between priest spells (29) and mage spells (21). The other spellcasters are Lords (priest spells), Samurais (mage spells), and Bishops (priest & mage spells). 6 main characteristics: strength, intelligence, piety, agility, constitution and luck. On a scale of 3-18.

Alignment restriction by class [G=Good, E=Evil, N=Neutral, None=no restrictions]: Fighter - None Mage - None Priest - GE Thief - NE Lord - G Ninja - E Samurai - GN Bishop - GE