Might and Magic The Might and Magic Discussion Thread

[Haplo]

So, is the consensus that 10 is good?

Not sure about consensus, but I personally loved it.
One of the best crpgs in the last years, along with Shadowrun Returns.

Sure the scope is not very ambitious, the world map could be a bit bigger. It reuses (poor) assets from HoMMVI. But exploration, character building and tactics are excellent.
At least it's a proper blobber, like M&M 1-5.
I'd rather have M&M 6-9 under a different label.

 

[SionIV]

I love Might & Magic 10, it's one of my favorite in the series. It's very technical with a lot of choices for you to make when it comes to combat, tactics and how you face your enemies. Make sure that you play it on the warrior difficulty. Almost every single enemy has a weakness that you can exploit, just pay attention. I personally love the grid based system. I mod my own game as there are a couple of things I don't agree with, but it's easy to mod and it really enhances your experience.

Story - 6/10
Graphics - 7/10
World - 7/10
Gameplay (combat) - 9/10
Replayability - 8/10

I would rate it at a solid 8/10. It has got much better combat than both Might and Magic 6 and 7, but it falls short on the other parts, so i'll put it on a close third place.

Here are a few things to take into consideration if you're thinking about playing the game.

1.) Take your time to read up on the different classes, and figure out how you want to set up your team. You'll get brutalized on Warrior difficulty otherwise, and that's the only way to play the game.

2.) The game has a very steep learning curve and quite the challenging start/mid, hang in there and don't give up, it's worth it.

3.) It's one of those games that let you challenge and fight much harder opponents than you're able to at your level, they won't think twice about throwing you into a dragon fight where your party get one shot. You're supposed to return later on and try again, it makes the world feel much more alive and dangerous, no hand holding.

4.) Once you reach your second big town, the game really opens up and you have 3+ different paths that you can take. It's a bit like Dark Souls, certain areas are much harder than others, but you get to decide where you want to go.

5.) Light and Earth magic are very powerful and will help you keep your party alive.

6.) Focus your characters within a small area to start with, don't spread your abilities too thin.

7.) THE DLC DOES NOT EXIST.

8.) For the first half part of the game, you'll mostly face melee enemies and a few rare spell casters. The second half of the game does a complete u-turn and you'll be facing mostly casters, these can one shot your entire party if you're not prepared.

 

[Dorateen]

So, is the consensus that 10 is good?

I would suggest you finish Might & Magic II first. There are some character references from Gates to Another World in particular that will be better appreciated with the context of the entire series.

 

[SionIV]

There is no HP bloat in Might & Magic 10. You'll have a hard time hitting the monsters (block, evade, etc), but they don't have a lot of health and it's possible to one shot common enemies and bring down bosses in a few hits if you're fighting them at a level that is close to their own. If you end up fighting some of the 'extra' bosses at a much earlier stage, it'll take a very long time to kill them but it's possible to do so with the correct tactics. You're able to use different abilities and tactics to prevent them from blocking/evading your melee hits, and most of them have a weakness to one or several types of magic.

 

[octavius]

This is silly...I explored Gharik's Forge in MM6, but found no Hourglass, only a letter that suggested it was moved to Alamos.

So I cleared out Alamos, and found two things:
1. A Memory Crystal. For some reason it was very difficult to pick it up and needed lots of clicking and manouvering. The other pedestal was named "Exit", but no amount of clicking worked. I guess I have to search the Forge more carefully for the Hourglass.

2. Raiding the Alamo treasury I noticed that chests can contain more items than is shown when first opening one. After cleaning out all or part of the chests, more items may appear. Is this a knowm bug or "undocumented design feature"?
I wonder how many items I've missed the 2.5 times I've played MM6...

Also, the Paladin kind of sucks. Apart from more HPs he's not really a better melee fighter than the other characters, and he even seems to miss more often!

 

[T. Reich]

2. Raiding the Alamo treasury I noticed that chests can contain more items than is shown when first opening one. After cleaning out all or part of the chests, more items may appear. Is this a knowm bug or "undocumented design feature"?
I wonder how many items I've missed the 2.5 times I've played MM6...

You're playing with Greyface's MM6 patch.
If you took time reading through the patchnotes (hint, hint), you'd know that in MM6-8 there was an engine bug where chests would spawn with more items that would fit in one.
In vanilla games, the excess items are lost forever.
In GF's patch, he enabled the feature that the chest would get re-filled with remaining spawned items until you cleared it entirely.
Therefore, anyone who played vanilla MM6-8, missed a TON of items due to a bug.

 

[catfood]

Also, the Paladin kind of sucks. Apart from more HPs he's not really a better melee fighter than the other characters, and he even seems to miss more often!

Well at least he's not as useless as the archer.

But yeah, the hybrid classes kinda suck. Not even the druid is all that good since he can't cast light or dark magic spells.

 

[Baron Dupek]

SionIV
thanks for the summary. I got two questions.
One - you're talking about modding. What and how you mod the 10th installment of the series?
Two - how are the dungeons in the game? After Mandate of Heaven (6th) only Writ of Fate (M&M IX) got decent dungeons.

 

[Haplo]

M&MX Legacy is a blobber. The whole worldspace is your dungeon

 

[SionIV]

SionIV
thanks for the summary. I got two questions.
One - you're talking about modding. What and how you mod the 10th installment of the series?
Two - how are the dungeons in the game? After Mandate of Heaven (6th) only Writ of Fate (M&M IX) got decent dungeons.

1.) It's very easy to mod the game, you can do it with word.
-> Might & Magic X Legacy
-> Might & Magic X Legacy_Data
-> Streamingassets
-> StaticData
-> CharacterClassStaticData (this is where you can mod the different classes)

CLASS_NAME_CRUSADER,ADVANCED_CLASS_NAME_PALADIN,HUMAN,ART_character_human_crusader,PIC_body_human_crusader,ICO_award_promotion_crusader,"HUM_FEMALE_NAME_3,HUM_FEMALE_NAME_4","HUM_MALE_NAME_3,HUM_MALE_NAME_4","3,14,17,18,25","8,4,9,11,12,15,21","6,13,16,23","6,23","9,11,13,16",8,6,5,9,9,6,55,25,1,0,0,2,2,0,10,0,0,0,0,0,0,"MELEE_WEAPON,2",2,2

DefaultMaleNames,ExpertSkills,MasterSkills,GrandMasterSkills,StartSkills,

The different skills have a different number, so if you want to change a class so that he can grand master a skill instead of only master, you remove the number from the master category and then place it into the grandmaster instead. I do small changes that makes it more fun and improves certain classes. I let the Barbarian Grand Master axes and learn expert Air magic, as he's the only might class that doesn't have any magic at all (the others have a minor that fit their race). The reason I started modding the classes was because I felt that a few of them were a bit lacking in certain areas. Every single piece of artwork in the game of the Crusader, has him two handing a sword. He does have Grandmaster in sword, but he doesn't even have expert in two handed, so he can't use any of the two handed swords. I changed it and gave him Master in Two Handed. The Mercenary has the 'jack of all trades, master of none' thing going on which can be charming at times, but when it comes to his weapons (all master, no grandmaster) he ends up far behind at the end game when picking up Grandmaster in your weapon doubles your damage. I let him Grandmaster the Sword (his starting skill), to let him have a chance to compete and fit the promoted class 'WindSWORD'.

2.) I happen to really enjoy all the dungeons, with the exception of two dungeons (too long), they are the perfect lenght. I get to enjoy some fun and unique dungeons, but I don't end up getting bored of them.

 

[Haplo]

Well, I don't remember all the details, but I remember agonizing over class choices in M&MX. My conclusion was that they are almost perfectly balanced and almost all very potent (well, except the Defender).
Each skill access level has a reason and is balanced against other options. Some things may surprise (like lack of GM access for a specific weapon, skill), but it all has been clearly very well though out and the class certainly has other perks. Mercenary from your example doesn't have a weapon GM, but has Warfare GM instead (only him?), which makes up for it.

 

[Zdzisiu]

2. Raiding the Alamo treasury I noticed that chests can contain more items than is shown when first opening one. After cleaning out all or part of the chests, more items may appear. Is this a knowm bug or "undocumented design feature"?
I wonder how many items I've missed the 2.5 times I've played MM6...

You're playing with Greyface's MM6 patch.
If you took time reading through the patchnotes (hint, hint), you'd know that in MM6-8 there was an engine bug where chests would spawn with more items that would fit in one.
In vanilla games, the excess items are lost forever.
In GF's patch, he enabled the feature that the chest would get re-filled with remaining spawned items until you cleared it entirely.
Therefore, anyone who played vanilla MM6-8, missed a TON of items due to a bug.

God Damn T. Reich don't make me reinstall M&M 6 and try to finish it again.

 

[SionIV]

Well, I don't remember all the details, but I remember agonizing over class choices in M&MX. My conclusion was that they are almost perfectly balanced and almost all very potent (well, except the Defender).
Each skill access level has a reason and is balanced against other options. Some things may surprise (like lack of GM access for a specific weapon, skill), but it all has been clearly very well though out and the class certainly has other perks. Mercenary from your example doesn't have a weapon GM, but has Warfare GM instead (only him?), which makes up for it.

None of the classes are weak, and you can complete the game with any of the classes, but not all of them are equally strong. There is nothing the Mercenary can do that others can't do better. He has GM Warfare which lets him get an automatic critical hit once every turn by spending mana on it, this is where he shines. The problem is that you're at late-mid to end game when you're able to pick up this ability, and by then he's dealing half of the damage that a Barbarian will do. Grandmaster more than doubles your damage, and this gets more noticeable when you pick up +5/+6 sword/axe/mace gear from the shops. The Mercenary is the ONLY might hero that can't get Grandmaster in a weapon.

I would rate the Defender above than the Mercenary, and he can get both Grandmaster Axe AND Grandmaster Warfare. The problem with the Defender is getting him a good weapon, once you solve that problem he's surprisingly solid. You'll want to build him 3 Might/1 Vitality on level up.

The last party I ran with was able to kill the Cyclops and Shadow Dragon at level 8 (always Warrior difficulty) and I went on to breeze through the game with this party, even one shotting the last bosses. Crusader, Defender, Barbarian and Druid. The Barbarian dealing 1200+ on a critical hit was wonderful to see.

 

[T. Reich]

God Damn T. Reich don't make me reinstall M&M 6 and try to finish it again.

 

[Snorkack]

Goddamnit people I need a quest compass. All this talk about MM6 made me reinstall it (gog version). But neither does the music play nor can I get the GrayFace patch working. It installs fine and I choose the right directory, but any changes I made in the .ini apparently don't do anything.
Anyone knows how to fix that? I'm running Win8. Could using the uplay version instead help?

 

[Haplo]

Well, I don't remember all the details, but I remember agonizing over class choices in M&MX. My conclusion was that they are almost perfectly balanced and almost all very potent (well, except the Defender).
Each skill access level has a reason and is balanced against other options. Some things may surprise (like lack of GM access for a specific weapon, skill), but it all has been clearly very well though out and the class certainly has other perks. Mercenary from your example doesn't have a weapon GM, but has Warfare GM instead (only him?), which makes up for it.

None of the classes are weak, and you can complete the game with any of the classes, but not all of them are equally strong. There is nothing the Mercenary can do that others can't do better. He has GM Warfare which lets him get an automatic critical hit once every turn by spending mana on it, this is where he shines. The problem is that you're at late-mid to end game when you're able to pick up this ability, and by then he's dealing half of the damage that a Barbarian will do. Grandmaster more than doubles your damage, and this gets more noticeable when you pick up +5/+6 sword/axe/mace gear from the shops. The Mercenary is the ONLY might hero that can't get Grandmaster in a weapon.

I would rate the Defender above than the Mercenary, and he can get both Grandmaster Axe AND Grandmaster Warfare. The problem with the Defender is getting him a good weapon, once you solve that problem he's surprisingly solid. You'll want to build him 3 Might/1 Vitality on level up.

The last party I ran with was able to kill the Cyclops and Shadow Dragon at level 8 (always Warrior difficulty) and I went on to breeze through the game with this party, even one shotting the last bosses. Crusader, Defender, Barbarian and Druid. The Barbarian dealing 1200+ on a critical hit was wonderful to see.

I remember Flawless Assault being an awesome skill and Merc/Windsword absolutely pulling his weight. Not only the attack cannot miss and is unblock-able, but it also prevents further blocks this round. Plus the Windsword Perfect Strike is absolutely great as well. Auto-criticals that cannot be blocked or miss? Perhaps pair that with a stunning weapon for extra cheeze? Yes, please. Defender doesn't have a passive ability like that. And the move ability is usefull as well.
IMO Merc is a top-tier meleer.

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[octavius]

Goddamnit people I need a quest compass. All this talk about MM6 made me reinstall it (gog version). But neither does the music play nor can I get the GrayFace patch working. It installs fine and I choose the right directory, but any changes I made in the .ini apparently don't do anything.
Anyone knows how to fix that? I'm running Win8. Could using the uplay version instead help?

I'm using my old disks on a Win 7 64 machine and it works perfectly with Greyface, except the no CD option doesn't seem to work, but fortunately modern CD players are fast and silent, while back in '98 they made sound like a jumbo jet taking off, which taught to intensely hate AutoPlay.

I assume your game is not installed in the Program Folders folder, and that the ini file is in the same folder as the MM6 exe file? Personally I had to modify the ini file to be able to turn the music OFF.

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[Zdzisiu]

Goddamnit people I need a quest compass. All this talk about MM6 made me reinstall it (gog version). But neither does the music play nor can I get the GrayFace patch working. It installs fine and I choose the right directory, but any changes I made in the .ini apparently don't do anything.
Anyone knows how to fix that? I'm running Win8. Could using the uplay version instead help?

I just installed the Gog version of MM6, from the Limited Edition thing, and installed Grayface patch 2.0 without any problems. Just copied the exe into the main directory of MM6 and clicked on it. Then I can modify the mm6.ini to change stuff. I had to run the game once before changing anything in the ini since the file was nearly empty before first run of the game. After getting into the game and quiting the file had a few more lines.

I changed the mouselook to 1 to get nice ability to move the screen with my mouse.

I also installed the Angel Death resolution patch that allowed me to play the game windowed with a resolution I set in the same ini.

I tried the hd textures from Greyface but they kept giving me lua script errors in fights so I reinstalled the game without it.

My game is installed in a normal, non protected, non program files directory.

 

[Darth Roxor]

When I first played MM6 (which was like 7 years ago holy fuck where has all that time gone), I was also using the gawg version, and IIRC it also didn't run the music. Funny thing, I played it without tunes till the end, because it didn't even occur to me that the music wasn't working, I just assumed it wasn't there to begin with. Imagine my surprise when I moved on to MM7 later and suddenly heard musix.

Wasn't using Greyface's patch tho, so can't comment on that.

 

[Snorkack]

It was a permission issue Thanks for giving me the right hints bros.

 

[SionIV]

Well, I don't remember all the details, but I remember agonizing over class choices in M&MX. My conclusion was that they are almost perfectly balanced and almost all very potent (well, except the Defender).
Each skill access level has a reason and is balanced against other options. Some things may surprise (like lack of GM access for a specific weapon, skill), but it all has been clearly very well though out and the class certainly has other perks. Mercenary from your example doesn't have a weapon GM, but has Warfare GM instead (only him?), which makes up for it.

None of the classes are weak, and you can complete the game with any of the classes, but not all of them are equally strong. There is nothing the Mercenary can do that others can't do better. He has GM Warfare which lets him get an automatic critical hit once every turn by spending mana on it, this is where he shines. The problem is that you're at late-mid to end game when you're able to pick up this ability, and by then he's dealing half of the damage that a Barbarian will do. Grandmaster more than doubles your damage, and this gets more noticeable when you pick up +5/+6 sword/axe/mace gear from the shops. The Mercenary is the ONLY might hero that can't get Grandmaster in a weapon.

I would rate the Defender above than the Mercenary, and he can get both Grandmaster Axe AND Grandmaster Warfare. The problem with the Defender is getting him a good weapon, once you solve that problem he's surprisingly solid. You'll want to build him 3 Might/1 Vitality on level up.

The last party I ran with was able to kill the Cyclops and Shadow Dragon at level 8 (always Warrior difficulty) and I went on to breeze through the game with this party, even one shotting the last bosses. Crusader, Defender, Barbarian and Druid. The Barbarian dealing 1200+ on a critical hit was wonderful to see.

I remember Flawless Assault being an awesome skill and Merc/Windsword absolutely pulling his weight. Not only the attack cannot miss and is unblock-able, but it also prevents further blocks this round. Plus the Windsword Perfect Strike is absolutely great as well. Auto-criticals that cannot be blocked or miss? Perhaps pair that with a stunning weapon for extra cheeze? Yes, please. Defender doesn't have a passive ability like that. And the move ability is usefull as well.
IMO Merc is a top-tier meleer.

Flaweless Assault is an awesome skill, but it costs mana and it requires you to reach Grandmaster in Warfare to get it. This means that you'll first get it once your reach mid-end game, and then you'll only be able to use it a limited amount of times with your mana pool. You're also spending 20+ skill points into Warfare to get this. The Windsword Perfect Strike is far from great, it's an automatic critical hit only on enemies that have FULL health, and it doesn't ignore Block/Evade, etc. So you need to strike the target, and then the target needs to have full health. It has very limited use because it's only against enemies with 100% health and it doesn't ignore block, and Flaweless assault is just a better option. You're also at mid-end game before you're getting your promotion and picking up this ability. The Mercenary fills a unique role if you're using him as a stun bot while dual wielding a sword and mace, and then you're trading damage for stuns. The second ability on the Windsword (movement) is really good, but the perfect strike not so much. Neither the Defender nor the Mercenary are top tier, and I'll take a defender over Mercenary. Both the Barbarian and Bladedancer deal so much more damage than the Mercenary. The Mercenary has a few niché things that it brings (stun bot, etc), but it just doesn't make up for the loss in Grandmaster. I always keep a Crusader in my party (the most OP class in the game), so my melee never have problem with blocking.

Might Classes:
Top tier - Bladedancer, Barbarian.
Mid tier - Defender, Mercenary.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

When I first played MM6 (which was like 7 years ago holy fuck where has all that time gone)

My first (and so far only) time playing MM6 and MM7 was back in 2004. I remember the date because while starting out in MM7 a local junkyard FULL of tyres caught fire and half the city's population had to close their windows while those living nearest to the junkyard had to be evacuated.

 

[Sizzle]

When I first played MM6 (which was like 7 years ago holy fuck where has all that time gone)

My first (and so far only) time playing MM6 and MM7 was back in 2004. I remember the date because while starting out in MM7 a local junkyard FULL of tyres caught fire and half the city's population had to close their windows while those living nearest to the junkyard had to be evacuated.

And you could never again play a M&M game without remembering the smell of burning rubber? :D