Might and Magic The Might and Magic Discussion Thread

[octavius]

Grinding is like admitting deafeat. Explore carefully instead, and develop your characters naturally.

 

[Wayward Son]

Grinding is like admitting deafeat. Explore carefully instead, and develop your characters naturally.

That's always been my thought. Then, I tried JRPGS. Those were hell to go through with natural progression.

 

[CptMace]

Grinding is like admitting deafeat. Explore carefully instead, and develop your characters naturally.

That's always been my thought. Then, I tried JRPGS. Those were hell to go through with natural progression.

And that's why jrpgs are notoriously poorly designed.

 

[Goblino]

The grind isn't that bad. We're all approaching lvl 5, at which point I'll be confident wander around the woods. I just don't want a repeat of how I lost my first party at Dusk.

 

[octavius]

Grinding is like admitting deafeat. Explore carefully instead, and develop your characters naturally.

That's always been my thought. Then, I tried JRPGS. Those were hell to go through with natural progression.

Another reason to avoid them, then.
I think the only CRPG I've contemplated grinding was Bard's Tale 1 due to the final levels being so brutal.

 

[Wayward Son]

Yeah, I think I've only actively grinded in Wizardry I, when I lost my Mage on Floor 5 and had to replace him. Any other time that I repeatedly fought trash mobs was trying to find out where to go in other CRPGS, or once when I had just under the amount of gold needed to revive a party member in either one of the IE games, or in Wiz 1.

 

[Wayward Son]

The grind isn't that bad. We're all approaching lvl 5, at which point I'll be confident wander around the woods. I just don't want a repeat of how I lost my first party at Dusk.

That's a fair point. I haven't found grinding too bad in old dungeon crawlers (MM, Wiz, etc.) partly because that's what 50-75% of the game is (fighting random spawns for loot), with the other 25-50% being wandering aimlessly, which encompasses grinding. So, even though you may just be fighting dozens of random spawns, you still feel as if you're accomplishing something meaningful.
Sorry for the double post.

 

[Goblino]

The encounter rates are really comfortable with these older crawlers. Jap style almost always has sickening encounter rates. Even smt, which I consider to be the best jrpg license, still has encounter rates that simply discourage the player from enjoying the game. I always assumed that fewer dimensions would mean these old titles rely on high encounter rates for padding and difficulty.

 

[TigerKnee]

I guess it depends on how you define grinding, but I basically only count it as grinding if you're walking around in a circle in already cleared areas just earning money/exp that you need to progress. In that regards, JRPGs haven't been "grindy" for quite some time - even the Dragon Quest remakes tone down a lot of it by making it way easier (don't let aweigh hear that)

Now, high encounter rates when you're exploring areas is a flaw that still persists, but I honestly don't think there's much of a difference between regions - they're both pretty high and generally higher than necessary, it's just that WRPGs probably have other elements to distract you from that fact like non-linearity making you feel more in control.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

I've yet to encounter a Might & Magic game where I saw a reason to grind.

Bard's Tale 1, however, is probably the oldest game I've played where I saw a reason to grind some. I roamed the streets of Skara Brae until my party about Lvl 5-6 before even thinking about heading into the Wine Cellar.

 

[Damned Registrations]

The encounter rate thing stems from developers aping shit without knowing it's purpose, as usual. Back in the day, the high encounter rates were designed to wear down your party's resources so you had some tension after exploring for a while, and had to choose whether to risk continued exploring for some potential major rewards and a quicker path to the end, or back tracking out. It also made spamming all your best attacks on every random encounter a bad strategy, since you didn't know how much gas you'd need left in the tank to handle the boss, if there was one.

But these days you can just save and rest in dungeons anyways, so none of that matters. Just spam all your best attacks, face no challenge at all, recover to full right before the boss and even if you die you're only set back 2 minutes because you were constantly save spamming.

 

[octavius]

The encounter rate thing stems from developers aping shit without knowing it's purpose, as usual. Back in the day, the high encounter rates were designed to wear down your party's resources so you had some tension after exploring for a while, and had to choose whether to risk continued exploring for some potential major rewards and a quicker path to the end, or back tracking out.

The problem with the Bard's Tale games was that if you fought all battles and never used the Flee option, your party would be so overpowered that the most of the game became far too easy and most monsters couldn't even hit you.
Fortunately the Wizardry and M&M games were better balanced.

 

[Goblino]

Been playing on and off for a couple weeks now. My characters are almost all level 7 and I still haven't accomplished a single quest. I actually really enjoy the game, but I think I might need to backlog it and come back later. The whole m&m 1 format feels like blobber Metroid. I can't help but imagine a game where you play as crew members from the not Enterprise and explore a fantastical sci-fi planet.

Edit: After a brief jaunt into U5, I've decided to jump to MM2 or MM3. Ultima proved to be colorful and engaging, but my interest waned when I got locked up with a large black npc named Jerome. Murdered him after he kicked me out of bed one night. Now I can't pick the doors or talk to guards and I'm not patient enough to wait out my sentence.

 

[Comte]

I am starting out a new game of Might and Magic III for the first time in something like 20 years. I played it in High School. I remember then just messing around and not really completing anything. Anyway I want to roll up my own party. I was thinking a Knight (or Paladin), Barbarian, Archer, Cleric, and two sorcerers. Ditching a thieving class character since I vaguely remember you can get thieving skills somewhere in the game. What races do you suggest for these classes? Also what stats are important for low level parties survival? I made a test run last night and got my ass kicked with a party I made myself. I used the generic party that came with the game and fared a little better.

 

[octavius]

I prefer the pregens myself. You need a long time to roll a better party, the two first hirelings complement the party nicely, and the pregens become NPCs in MM7.
Don't forget that you can shoot twice in a round by double clicking the S key. Not sure is this is a bug or just an undocumented feature, though.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Disclaimer: All of this is "IIRC", and I'm not the resident M&M expert. Look for the ones with the M&M avatars to show you the true way.

Nevertheless, I hope these words help:

# The pre-gen party is at least a couple of levels higher than any character you roll in MM3 - at least I recall having trouble right at the start. It'll sort itself out real quick, though.

# I was taught to have the class's primary stat at 16+, but if you're patient you can get it as high as 20.

# I dunno about getting thieving abilities later in the game, but you will lament not having a Robber at the start - roll one.

# Half-Orc Barbarian is a given - you'll want a character that has tons of HP early on. Elf Sorcerers are also good, but fragile.

# My last party was Knight/Barbarian/Archer/Robber/Priest/Sorcerer, but I never got far enough to find any decent hirelings. I prefer Knight over Paladin, as the increased weapon/armor options can make the Knight a much tougher tank/gank than the Paladin ever could be. The Archer turned out to be kinda useless except as a supplementary character, particularly spellcaster. If you roll an Archer, make him only learn the most useful and utilitarian spells to save cash.

# Learn what is each character's primary stat, and whether they have any "dump" stats (Personality/Intelligence for non-spellcasters).

# Learn the "colors" of each stat - you'll get plenty of chances to perma-boost your stats while playing, and their color tells you what you'll be getting. Red is Might, for example.

# When choosing who gets what stats boosted, keep in mind that some stats benefit all classes, so try to distribute those boosts equally.

# Get missile weapons for every character that can use one. Sometimes you can make short work of vast hordes of monsters by simply staying out of reach and grinding them down with missile weapons.

# Some monsters target specific races and classes first. If you can spot these monsters and learn their preferred targets, you can plan ahead by casting extra protection magic on your party members whom are about to get gangbanged.

 

[octavius]

Disclaimer: All of this is "IIRC", and I'm not the resident M&M expert. Look for the ones with the M&M avatars to show you the true way.

Nevertheless, I hope these words help:

# The pre-gen party is at least a couple of levels higher than any character you roll in MM3

I'm sure I would have remembered if that really was the case.

 

[Comte]

I prefer the pregens myself. You need a long time to roll a better party, the two first hirelings complement the party nicely, and the pregens become NPCs in MM7.
Don't forget that you can shoot twice in a round by double clicking the S key. Not sure is this is a bug or just an undocumented feature, though.

Decided to go with the pre-gens. After seeing my terrible rolls decided I didn't have the patience to keep rolling. Should I buy my Cleric a membership to the Raven Guild? I bought one for my sorcerer from the bum student on the street.

 

[Dorateen]

M&M3 doesn't enforce or even encourage playing through in any kind of logical order.

The above line comes from a random comment I stumbled across characterizing the game. It sums up the sublime beauty of the Might & Magic series, and certainly applies to Isles of Terra.

 

[Nekot-The-Brave]

M&M3 doesn't enforce or even encourage playing through in any kind of logical order.

The above line comes from a random comment I stumbled across characterizing the game. It sums up the sublime beauty of the Might & Magic series, and certainly applies to Isles of Terra.

Well, it does kinda have a logical order of 'finish one island, go to the next'

 

[Sceptic]

# The pre-gen party is at least a couple of levels higher than any character you roll in MM3 - at least I recall having trouble right at the start. It'll sort itself out real quick, though.

This one's not true. However, and like in all of MM1-5, the pre-gen party gets very good stat rolls, much better than average. Getting the same rolls yourself would take a LONG time or a lot of luck.

The rest of your advice is most excellent.

 

[Comte]

What happens when my characters level? Do they just gain hit points and spell points? Is there any stat gain when they level?

 

[octavius]

No stat gains, only HP and SP, and possibly new spells.
You'll find so much stat enhancing items and fountains that the stats tend to get rather meaningless.

 

[Scroo]

Yeah the stat thing always was funny about the M&M games. It's one of the few games where the stats you roll actually don't really matter except for maybe the very first few levels. At some points your mage will run around with 200 intellect while your barbarian will flex his 198 str muscles etc

 

[TigerKnee]

I should restart M&M 2 on the Apple version instead of the DOS one.