General Strategies and Information

Hireling XP
When trying to level up new Hirelings, try to make their attack do the killing blow on an enemy. Use a more powerful unit to attack the enemy until it is ready to go. If the Hireling does the killing blow it will level up every time.


Advance Time while Searching
If you send a search party to complete a quest that requires a certain time of day, you can advance time by resting at any Inn. Resting advances to the next time of day. Camping advances to the next morning.


Castle Guards
You can only leave guards at 3 castles for any given battle. Any castles you can not guard will automatically be taken by the Demon Army.


Block enemy's Summon Hexes
You can block the enemy's capability to place more creatures by occupying his surrounding summoning hexes. In the God's Castle battle, you can occupy the monster generators to prevent more enemies from spawning.


XP from Boss Enemies
If you want to gain some levels, surround the demon leader, attack him until he is almost dead, and end your turn. Most of the time he will use Megarestore and you can repeat your attacks each turn. Use a powerful character that can survive the first attack, then let the weaker characters have a free shot for big XP. Use spells that do little or no damage to that particular boss. This allows your magic users to gain nice xp and allows as many other party members to attack as possible.


Party Order
Adjust your party order after each battle, so that the units needing XP attack first over other units of that type. This gives your party balance. To adjust your party order on the party (PRTY) screen: highlight a unit, press C, highlight the unit you would like to swap with, and press C again.


Priest XP
Always cast a heal or shield spell with Priests even when everyone is healthy. They can get XP every turn. Restore = 4 XP. Regenerate = 6 XP.


Leader XP
Cast a spell with your leader every turn even if they have nothing productive to do. If everyone is healthy and your leader doesn't have a long range attack spell, use confuse, defense drain, etc. Attempting to confuse/drain higher class enemies will result in higher XP gain (7 XP for class 4 dragons). Save the leader's turn until last to determine what action is the most beneficial. Healing, Attacking, or just a spell to gain XP.


Special Character Class Advances
Sub Leader Characters, Ninjas, Dragonriders, Griffinriders, and Winged Horseriders will increase in class one time.


Hiring Class 2 units
You will gain the ability to hire and summon class 2 party members when you take Cheshire. Class 2 summoned units availability will be limited to units that you have already classed up normally.


Which summoned units are best?
All summoned creatures have strengths and weaknesses. All are useful if used to their strengths. See summoned unit information in III. Leader Information


Why can't I summon any units? I have MP.
You must keep the Royal Light Staff in the possession of your leader in order to summon creatures. It does not need to be equipped.


Inventory and Equipping in Cities
While visiting a City, on the main screen, press the start button to bring up your inventory. Here you can equip items with the C button and get item descriptions by cycling through your inventory items.


Time/Day and Night
Lawful units gain advantage during the day and are at a disadvantage at night. Chaotic units gain advantage at night and are a disadvantage during the day.

There are 4 turns in every day:

Morning>   Noon >   Evening >   Night

The calendar months in order are:
Scarn    >    Siang    >    Cela    >    Ord


Castle and City income
You will gain additional income from each Castle and City you control. You can gain control of a city in battle by moving any unit onto any hex of the city. Gaining control of Castles requires the leader to move onto any Castle hex. Some Leaders may need to be on the north hex. Amon needs to be on the north hex and Summon creatures can't control cities for him.
After every successful battle, you will automatically gain control of all remaining Castles and Cities on the map. Cities add approx. 2-20 gold to your income, while most Castles gain approx. 20-100 gold depending on the leaders economic strength rating.


Emulation
http://gens.consolemul.com
I suggest playing Dark Wizard with the Gens Emulator using the CD. The original CD has no copy protection and can be copied with any burning software. No use taking a chance with your original classic game CD. The Kreed Graphics engine and Yamaha high quality sound options of Gens makes this great game even more enjoyable. I have not had one crash or problem. Make sure "perfect synchro" is checked in the CPU menu. There is enough room on the ram cart to save after every map in case you want to go back and try something different.

VERY IMPORTANT...To keep from losing saved games
Make a directory specifically for Dark Wizard including its own copy of Gens, bios, and Ram Cart files. Always keep the files together and never run gens without all the files present. You can move the folder, but make sure to repath the bios, ram cart and other directories before running Gens. Always copy, test, then delete the old one instead of just moving. If you separate the files and run Gens, you will lose all your saves. To archive your saves, make a copy of the entire folder, test it (after repathing), and save it to your preferred media. Test it again by copying it from the media to your hard drive to make sure everything still works. I suggest you do this with any sega cd game you're playing with Gens. Hopefully, Gens will correct this issue on the next version, until then, protect your saves!

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