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Completed Let's become the bookhouse boys in Magic and Magic VI!
- Thread starter Pope Amole II
- Start date
Pope Amole II
Nerd Commando Game Studios
- Joined
- Mar 1, 2012
- Messages
- 2,052
Slow this LP may unfold, abandoned it is not. Heck, I might even return to my SJW fallout 2 business, just give me enough time to recharge my F2 appreciation batteries. Because, see, there is quite a reason why I need them recharged, but all in due time...
Well, enough foreshadowing. One thing I want to clarify here – or, rather, to ramble about – is the “cheese” issue. Because cheesing through the game is not my intent, not really or, at the very least, not primary. Generally, cheesing through any kind of game is discouraged because it kills the fun of the game. Best example here would be dnd 3 & 3.5 – at it’s core, it’s a combat-centric game, almost a tactical skirmish one, and all the joy lies in challenging and varied encounters. Non-combat dnd aspects are rather trivial and mostly rely on having enough skill points invested (plus skill/stat bonuses added) to win those d20 rolls as often as possible. It’s in the combat where the system shines, and ToEE & KoTC highlight that almost perfectly. As long as encounters in those games stay fresh and different, you’re having a blast with them. Once things get stale, you’ll struggle to finish those titles.
And how those things do become stale? Repeated encounters play their part, of course, because no computer game can match the knowledge and wit of a good DM (yet), not to mention the basic ability to learn about or even invent the new enemies, but most often it’s because of the lack of challenge – your character/party becomes so stupidly overpowered that even if you will be given a varied and tricky bunch of opponents, it won’t matter as you’ll mow through them with the same speed and ease as through the boring and copy-pasted foes. And munchkinism accelerates such development of things tenfold – let’s say hello to the char builds that consist of nothing but 1-2 levels in different characters and prestige classes , also borrowing broken feats, spells and items from a dozen or so books. Nah, I’m sure they can be interesting to build simply as a mental exercise – like, let’s see if we can do a thousand damage from charge or whatnot, but to actually play the game with all this pouncing charge shit? And I’m not even mentioning something akin to the fucking high-level summoning for endless wish exploitation – really, from a point of etiquette, it’s like taking a huge dump on your gaming table. If not worse.
Munchkinism and cheese are reviled because they make the game boring, thus slaughtering the purpose of the game (which is to have fun, duh). They add nothing positive to it, they just screw the shit up so one little person can have his power-ego trip. Best case scenario, they turn dnd into some kind of dueling game between the dm and the players, where either side starts using cheese, then, to punish their transgression, other side throws everything and a kitchen sink at them and then it’s an inglorious free for all. And while that may count an acceptable playstyle for some, let’s just say that there are much better suited systems for this kind of role-play.
However, this all relies on one thing – the aspect that’s getting cheesed being actually fun and interesting. Which isn’t a guarantee. It’s one way to cheese through ToEE with its good and fulfilling combat and completely another to beat the living crap out of NWN where it’s just filler after filler after filler after another horde of fucking orks in another fucking cave. Playing both NWNs original campaigns is not advised in general (especially the first one – part two at least has the keep and the trial), but can you imagine doing so with a non-powered character? Ugh, what a dreadful waste of time it would be...
And, no matter how much I love late M&M games, the truth is that their combat is absolutely simplistic. It’s just clicking on mobs. Or mashing your attack & fastcast keys – whichever you like better. And the only thing that’s changed here by the appliance of cheese is how long do you click or mash – whether it’ll be five, fifteen or fifty minutes per dungeon. Remember, you can’t really lose in this game. Since five sounds more entertaining than fifty here, that’s what I choose. It’s all about funbuilding – not powerbuilding.
Unfortunately, this precise choice (to maximise the fun out of your game) it not recognized in gaming community and, while there are lots of the “how do I break this shit” guides for pretty much everything, rarely you’ll see “what’s the most awesome way to play this” kind of faq. Which is a shame, really. I’ll elaborate on this in the next update (I think), and now it’s time for...
Part VIII.
(one of the reasons this update took so long is that I’ve run out of appropriate songs – no worries, after doing some research, we’re back into business)
Having acquired the ultimate magical bling, we beacon back to the Hermit's Isle, now intent on getting rid of anything that dares to dwell here. 9 high-powered armageddons should deal away with the sea monsters...
As usual, titans are immune to them, but their tendency to hang out in tight packs (are they too afraid to head out without holding each other's hands?) makes them perfect targets for our meteor showers. In fact, of all the high-danger locations, Hermit's Isle is the easiest one to clean up - it's just an elegant ‘geddons into meteor showers transition, no need to switch frantically between meteor showers, starbursts and whatnot.
Hydras were also smitten with our world-shattering might.
Just a couple survived and only barely at that. Not for long, obviously.
One of the main attractions here is the fountain of rejuvenation (lol, they've got a typo there), offering a costless removal of all magical aging. Neat, but with Divine Intervention being really limited and potion components being scarce, it's incredibly hard to rack up so much magical years that they will become an issue.
And so we have a relatively long and absolutely unspectacular battle with an army of titans inhabiting this hill.
Challenge is slight, loot is plentiful. We've found a water boosting ring in one of the chests they were guarding - great news for Hawk, considering poison spray is his main combat skill...
And, after looting the mound of titan corpses for quite a while...
We've found Galahad. It's kinda fine in vacuum, but the only chain-wearing classes are cleric and archer. You definitely don't want archer in your party and cleric is doable, but not that great.
Paradise Valley. Same tactics as before - chain-launch our spells of mass destruction...
Hunt the survivors one by one - yeah, local hydras are very lucky to survive through that with that much hps remaining.
Titans are dispatched in the same manner.
The only real difference is that instead of the sea monsters we have dragons here. Well, they aren't immune to armageddons so they're not as big of a deal after them.
It's past 1 A.M. and temples are closed so we use the local fountain of +100 HP/MP to regain some strength.
The only downside of armageddon tactics here is that it throws flying monsters high in the air, thus making them invulnerable to meteor storms & starbursts - they only hit monsters that are close to the ground.
But then, dragon's here don't roam in hordes as they do in dragonsands, so shrapmetal is perfectly viable against them.
Actually, I’ve changed my mind. Paradise Valley is the easiest high-powered location to clean up because of this - it has one of those super-cheap baa temples in it so you can heal as much as you want. If I wanted to make this LP easier (which I didn't), I'd rushed here at lvl 30 or so, grinding tons of gold and xps with meteor showers. It's effortless when your mana pool is virtually infinite.
Another of few precious uses for the Telekinesis spell here - a chest on the edge of the map that's inaccessible otherwise. Cute, but they could've put a guaranteed relic/artifact into it to make the pay-off bigger.
The final episode of attack on the titan...
And off we go to tie up some loose ends. Heh, this dude looks much better now. His item reward is somewhat meh in monetarily terms, but its xp part is what interests us the most.
Those two "high-difficulty" areas were a breeze for us, but the reward is still substantial. At least the xp part of it.
For Hawk, it's couple of points into body magic and lots of focus on the water magic - as it is his main combat skill, it's only logical for him to become really good at it, especially after that ring of water magic finding.
Coop continues to pursue the black lodge knowledge (won't end well for him, I tell ya), but also spares a couple of points for air magic - we're casting lots of sparks so why not?
Harry follows in Coop's wake, but will he be able to follow him everywhere?
Andy is bright as ever, at least when it comes to his magical skills - his personality, though...
Here's how the bookhouse boys fate at this point.
Now nothing else but the main quest remains.
The temple itself may be superior, but its inhabitants - not so much. Pushover priests barely attract our attention....
And, well, warlocks can pose a problem, but in much, much greater numbers. Let's just say that their time has not come yet.
At least Andy can once again pretend that prismatic light is actually a useful spell (protip: it is not).
So, while we're kinda battered and somewhat delirious and a lucky druid shot burned all of Coop's mana away, we're not feeling impacted by any of this.
We don't even bother to get healed - what is there to be afraid of, tier-1 druids?
While we're at it, we might as well perform the sidequest here. 4 heads activated, now we have to pass through the tunnel.
No rushing it, though. And see, why bother using prismatic light or inferno when you can just fireball enemies with pretty much the same effect? A whole screen of enemies, all getting hit by one casting.
Getting tired from Coop missing his turns (he's the hero here, he must act!), I made a quick healing jaunt.
Not that it mattered, though. Despite our huge resistances, the druids still managed to drain us dry (in the most pleasant manner possible, we hope).
And it got even worse.
And worse. Well, at least they don't dispel and we still have 100 dmg hitting daggers in our hands - who needs magic after that point?
Through the tunnel of trials we go. The whole experience feels rather electrifying, but, with our huge resistances, not quite as lethal as it's supposed to be.
Couple of wimp priests at the end are, like, nothing.
Yay, extra experience! Not even a whole level at this point, but hey, xps are xps. Also a huge reputation drop, but we've past the point of caring about that.
And in the chest full of fat loot...
We find the proof we need. Good.
On the road to the council, we visit the local shrine - gotta grind up those stats for some inexplicable reason. Accuracy is almost useless for us, but hey! Erm, hey! Uhm, I can't find a single reason to do it, but, well, at least we're not harmed by this.
My TP to freehaven was premature - need to visit Humphrey first. Yeah, dude, like, totally, who could've guessed?
We love you too, hon.
The oracle! What sort of ancient wisdom will he bestow unto us?
I must admit I was expecting something more... Profound. Duh. At least we know where to head next.
We're not afraid of pain and suffering, so let's start from the worst.
If that term was invented back then, players would call Darkmoor trollish. It starts rather innocently - it's just ogres, early game enemies, what danger could this place pose?
Deeper in, liches come into mix, but they're midgame enemies and you get crystal quests well past that point. Maybe not if you rush it, but still, to get them you need to go through the Gharik's forge, and hey, warlock are much tougher than power liches (which sorta defeats the purpose of lichhood, though).
So, without much worries, you explore, finding cauldrons & whatnot, until a sudden dispel rips your magical defenses away. Bogus. But hey, what you can do, it's those liches - despite being powered by dark magic, they wield this light spell all too well.
You rebuff, you proceed, crushing the unlife out of occasional lich or two...
And then your face is slammed into a room full of eyes. Good luck surviving that, kid!
If you came here before you can cast 1k damage dragon breath, that is.
Even so, fighting them in the darkness, without wizard's eye and protective buffs is extremely annoying - you're subjected to such an amount of dispel casts that buffs won't last even a round.
At least they're still absolutely unprotected from poison, so even a seemingly weak spell like acid burst can be extremely effective against them. Yeah, Hawk, that water mastery really pays off in this place. Poison spray works even better, but that's in theory - in practice, those things float and it's really hard to get close to floating enemies in this game.
Also a group of liches here, but they don't hit as hard so they're the last to fall before our arcane might.
Next is a hall that contains roughly half of all ogrish population of Enroth. Give or take 2%. Strength in numbers?
I think not. Few eyes that are hidden amongst their ranks pose far greater threat (or, at the very least, nuisance factor).
And, well, why stop the fun when you can have more and more of it?
This place is absolutely infested with Agar's fine works.
Infested to the point of absurdity...
Which culminates in this unholy fight - the number of this screenshot is 009666, which means that even my screen capturing program agrees on this point.
We're immediately greeted by numerous volleys of magefire...
And, while we're quite efficient at murdering the abominations, their numbers are just too great to dispatch them quickly enough.
One weird thing is that, despite fighting the mind-numbing amount of dispelling eyes, Dale & Andy have managed to go through the battle with their buffs untouched. Lucky!
By the end of it, our mana reserves are seriously depleted, but darkmoor's eyes are done for good.
Actually, I really like this encounter. Yeah, it's just stupid spam of some monsters, but sometimes, the careless, unreasonable, over the top spam of strong monsters is exactly what the RPG needs. You don't need lots of such moments or they will get boring quickly enough, but a couple of them make quite a nice touch. Also, I like the choice here - you either solve the darkmoor's riddle to get the crystal or you fight through the eyes. Smarts or brawn, choose. The only problem here is that the riddle is extremely easy and unchallenging, so walking the path of eyes is much more fun.
We loot some excellent rings from their corpses, most important of which is the final dark magic ring. Just what we needed!
Back into fray. And, well, I lied about eyes being done for good - yeah, sure, of course there are more of them. Still, there are mostly liches here, and liches are awesome, but just not a threat in this game.
We can even afford to relax and slowly barbeque them down with infernoes.
Or maybe we can't. Apparently, in great numbers their shots do count. We're lazy with Hawk's healing, though, so it's more because of that. That and our protection spells being dispelled. Anyhow, here we see the boss of local necromancer's gang...
And he's not as tough as his names implied. Really, they could've given him at least 2k hps and some extra abilities. Guy is a pushover.
Sidequest time.
We valiantly destroy the book of liches...
Then not so valiantly we snipe some goods from the hands that definitely don't need them anymore. Hey, I figure you'd have to be pretty evil to get entombed in a place like this so why the fuss? Besides, we're not robbing - we're gathering evidence here!
Apparently, since I haven't had enough of eye encounters, I swoop through this place, killing occasional creeps I've missed.
But, as the evening approaches, I understand that I've had my fill of carnage and roaming through the vast dungeons so I decide to leave a couple survivors. Leave and let live, I guess (sic).
Gotta grab that crystal first, obviously. Yay, our first one!
Considering what we've pretty much single-handedly exterminated said Necromancer's Guild just now, the reward could've been greater. At least the xp part is good.
To take a break, we decide to explore some place that is not quite as overpopulated as Darkmoor is. Was. So it's Kriegspire time!
And it's also time to end part VIII.
Well, enough foreshadowing. One thing I want to clarify here – or, rather, to ramble about – is the “cheese” issue. Because cheesing through the game is not my intent, not really or, at the very least, not primary. Generally, cheesing through any kind of game is discouraged because it kills the fun of the game. Best example here would be dnd 3 & 3.5 – at it’s core, it’s a combat-centric game, almost a tactical skirmish one, and all the joy lies in challenging and varied encounters. Non-combat dnd aspects are rather trivial and mostly rely on having enough skill points invested (plus skill/stat bonuses added) to win those d20 rolls as often as possible. It’s in the combat where the system shines, and ToEE & KoTC highlight that almost perfectly. As long as encounters in those games stay fresh and different, you’re having a blast with them. Once things get stale, you’ll struggle to finish those titles.
And how those things do become stale? Repeated encounters play their part, of course, because no computer game can match the knowledge and wit of a good DM (yet), not to mention the basic ability to learn about or even invent the new enemies, but most often it’s because of the lack of challenge – your character/party becomes so stupidly overpowered that even if you will be given a varied and tricky bunch of opponents, it won’t matter as you’ll mow through them with the same speed and ease as through the boring and copy-pasted foes. And munchkinism accelerates such development of things tenfold – let’s say hello to the char builds that consist of nothing but 1-2 levels in different characters and prestige classes , also borrowing broken feats, spells and items from a dozen or so books. Nah, I’m sure they can be interesting to build simply as a mental exercise – like, let’s see if we can do a thousand damage from charge or whatnot, but to actually play the game with all this pouncing charge shit? And I’m not even mentioning something akin to the fucking high-level summoning for endless wish exploitation – really, from a point of etiquette, it’s like taking a huge dump on your gaming table. If not worse.
Munchkinism and cheese are reviled because they make the game boring, thus slaughtering the purpose of the game (which is to have fun, duh). They add nothing positive to it, they just screw the shit up so one little person can have his power-ego trip. Best case scenario, they turn dnd into some kind of dueling game between the dm and the players, where either side starts using cheese, then, to punish their transgression, other side throws everything and a kitchen sink at them and then it’s an inglorious free for all. And while that may count an acceptable playstyle for some, let’s just say that there are much better suited systems for this kind of role-play.
However, this all relies on one thing – the aspect that’s getting cheesed being actually fun and interesting. Which isn’t a guarantee. It’s one way to cheese through ToEE with its good and fulfilling combat and completely another to beat the living crap out of NWN where it’s just filler after filler after filler after another horde of fucking orks in another fucking cave. Playing both NWNs original campaigns is not advised in general (especially the first one – part two at least has the keep and the trial), but can you imagine doing so with a non-powered character? Ugh, what a dreadful waste of time it would be...
And, no matter how much I love late M&M games, the truth is that their combat is absolutely simplistic. It’s just clicking on mobs. Or mashing your attack & fastcast keys – whichever you like better. And the only thing that’s changed here by the appliance of cheese is how long do you click or mash – whether it’ll be five, fifteen or fifty minutes per dungeon. Remember, you can’t really lose in this game. Since five sounds more entertaining than fifty here, that’s what I choose. It’s all about funbuilding – not powerbuilding.
Unfortunately, this precise choice (to maximise the fun out of your game) it not recognized in gaming community and, while there are lots of the “how do I break this shit” guides for pretty much everything, rarely you’ll see “what’s the most awesome way to play this” kind of faq. Which is a shame, really. I’ll elaborate on this in the next update (I think), and now it’s time for...
Part VIII.
(one of the reasons this update took so long is that I’ve run out of appropriate songs – no worries, after doing some research, we’re back into business)
Having acquired the ultimate magical bling, we beacon back to the Hermit's Isle, now intent on getting rid of anything that dares to dwell here. 9 high-powered armageddons should deal away with the sea monsters...
As usual, titans are immune to them, but their tendency to hang out in tight packs (are they too afraid to head out without holding each other's hands?) makes them perfect targets for our meteor showers. In fact, of all the high-danger locations, Hermit's Isle is the easiest one to clean up - it's just an elegant ‘geddons into meteor showers transition, no need to switch frantically between meteor showers, starbursts and whatnot.
Hydras were also smitten with our world-shattering might.
Just a couple survived and only barely at that. Not for long, obviously.
One of the main attractions here is the fountain of rejuvenation (lol, they've got a typo there), offering a costless removal of all magical aging. Neat, but with Divine Intervention being really limited and potion components being scarce, it's incredibly hard to rack up so much magical years that they will become an issue.
And so we have a relatively long and absolutely unspectacular battle with an army of titans inhabiting this hill.
Challenge is slight, loot is plentiful. We've found a water boosting ring in one of the chests they were guarding - great news for Hawk, considering poison spray is his main combat skill...
And, after looting the mound of titan corpses for quite a while...
We've found Galahad. It's kinda fine in vacuum, but the only chain-wearing classes are cleric and archer. You definitely don't want archer in your party and cleric is doable, but not that great.
Paradise Valley. Same tactics as before - chain-launch our spells of mass destruction...
Hunt the survivors one by one - yeah, local hydras are very lucky to survive through that with that much hps remaining.
Titans are dispatched in the same manner.
The only real difference is that instead of the sea monsters we have dragons here. Well, they aren't immune to armageddons so they're not as big of a deal after them.
It's past 1 A.M. and temples are closed so we use the local fountain of +100 HP/MP to regain some strength.
The only downside of armageddon tactics here is that it throws flying monsters high in the air, thus making them invulnerable to meteor storms & starbursts - they only hit monsters that are close to the ground.
But then, dragon's here don't roam in hordes as they do in dragonsands, so shrapmetal is perfectly viable against them.
Actually, I’ve changed my mind. Paradise Valley is the easiest high-powered location to clean up because of this - it has one of those super-cheap baa temples in it so you can heal as much as you want. If I wanted to make this LP easier (which I didn't), I'd rushed here at lvl 30 or so, grinding tons of gold and xps with meteor showers. It's effortless when your mana pool is virtually infinite.
Another of few precious uses for the Telekinesis spell here - a chest on the edge of the map that's inaccessible otherwise. Cute, but they could've put a guaranteed relic/artifact into it to make the pay-off bigger.
The final episode of attack on the titan...
And off we go to tie up some loose ends. Heh, this dude looks much better now. His item reward is somewhat meh in monetarily terms, but its xp part is what interests us the most.
Those two "high-difficulty" areas were a breeze for us, but the reward is still substantial. At least the xp part of it.
For Hawk, it's couple of points into body magic and lots of focus on the water magic - as it is his main combat skill, it's only logical for him to become really good at it, especially after that ring of water magic finding.
Coop continues to pursue the black lodge knowledge (won't end well for him, I tell ya), but also spares a couple of points for air magic - we're casting lots of sparks so why not?
Harry follows in Coop's wake, but will he be able to follow him everywhere?
Andy is bright as ever, at least when it comes to his magical skills - his personality, though...
Here's how the bookhouse boys fate at this point.
Now nothing else but the main quest remains.
The temple itself may be superior, but its inhabitants - not so much. Pushover priests barely attract our attention....
And, well, warlocks can pose a problem, but in much, much greater numbers. Let's just say that their time has not come yet.
At least Andy can once again pretend that prismatic light is actually a useful spell (protip: it is not).
So, while we're kinda battered and somewhat delirious and a lucky druid shot burned all of Coop's mana away, we're not feeling impacted by any of this.
We don't even bother to get healed - what is there to be afraid of, tier-1 druids?
While we're at it, we might as well perform the sidequest here. 4 heads activated, now we have to pass through the tunnel.
No rushing it, though. And see, why bother using prismatic light or inferno when you can just fireball enemies with pretty much the same effect? A whole screen of enemies, all getting hit by one casting.
Getting tired from Coop missing his turns (he's the hero here, he must act!), I made a quick healing jaunt.
Not that it mattered, though. Despite our huge resistances, the druids still managed to drain us dry (in the most pleasant manner possible, we hope).
And it got even worse.
And worse. Well, at least they don't dispel and we still have 100 dmg hitting daggers in our hands - who needs magic after that point?
Through the tunnel of trials we go. The whole experience feels rather electrifying, but, with our huge resistances, not quite as lethal as it's supposed to be.
Couple of wimp priests at the end are, like, nothing.
Yay, extra experience! Not even a whole level at this point, but hey, xps are xps. Also a huge reputation drop, but we've past the point of caring about that.
And in the chest full of fat loot...
We find the proof we need. Good.
On the road to the council, we visit the local shrine - gotta grind up those stats for some inexplicable reason. Accuracy is almost useless for us, but hey! Erm, hey! Uhm, I can't find a single reason to do it, but, well, at least we're not harmed by this.
My TP to freehaven was premature - need to visit Humphrey first. Yeah, dude, like, totally, who could've guessed?
We love you too, hon.
The oracle! What sort of ancient wisdom will he bestow unto us?
I must admit I was expecting something more... Profound. Duh. At least we know where to head next.
We're not afraid of pain and suffering, so let's start from the worst.
If that term was invented back then, players would call Darkmoor trollish. It starts rather innocently - it's just ogres, early game enemies, what danger could this place pose?
Deeper in, liches come into mix, but they're midgame enemies and you get crystal quests well past that point. Maybe not if you rush it, but still, to get them you need to go through the Gharik's forge, and hey, warlock are much tougher than power liches (which sorta defeats the purpose of lichhood, though).
So, without much worries, you explore, finding cauldrons & whatnot, until a sudden dispel rips your magical defenses away. Bogus. But hey, what you can do, it's those liches - despite being powered by dark magic, they wield this light spell all too well.
You rebuff, you proceed, crushing the unlife out of occasional lich or two...
And then your face is slammed into a room full of eyes. Good luck surviving that, kid!
If you came here before you can cast 1k damage dragon breath, that is.
Even so, fighting them in the darkness, without wizard's eye and protective buffs is extremely annoying - you're subjected to such an amount of dispel casts that buffs won't last even a round.
At least they're still absolutely unprotected from poison, so even a seemingly weak spell like acid burst can be extremely effective against them. Yeah, Hawk, that water mastery really pays off in this place. Poison spray works even better, but that's in theory - in practice, those things float and it's really hard to get close to floating enemies in this game.
Also a group of liches here, but they don't hit as hard so they're the last to fall before our arcane might.
Next is a hall that contains roughly half of all ogrish population of Enroth. Give or take 2%. Strength in numbers?
I think not. Few eyes that are hidden amongst their ranks pose far greater threat (or, at the very least, nuisance factor).
And, well, why stop the fun when you can have more and more of it?
This place is absolutely infested with Agar's fine works.
Infested to the point of absurdity...
Which culminates in this unholy fight - the number of this screenshot is 009666, which means that even my screen capturing program agrees on this point.
We're immediately greeted by numerous volleys of magefire...
And, while we're quite efficient at murdering the abominations, their numbers are just too great to dispatch them quickly enough.
One weird thing is that, despite fighting the mind-numbing amount of dispelling eyes, Dale & Andy have managed to go through the battle with their buffs untouched. Lucky!
By the end of it, our mana reserves are seriously depleted, but darkmoor's eyes are done for good.
Actually, I really like this encounter. Yeah, it's just stupid spam of some monsters, but sometimes, the careless, unreasonable, over the top spam of strong monsters is exactly what the RPG needs. You don't need lots of such moments or they will get boring quickly enough, but a couple of them make quite a nice touch. Also, I like the choice here - you either solve the darkmoor's riddle to get the crystal or you fight through the eyes. Smarts or brawn, choose. The only problem here is that the riddle is extremely easy and unchallenging, so walking the path of eyes is much more fun.
We loot some excellent rings from their corpses, most important of which is the final dark magic ring. Just what we needed!
Back into fray. And, well, I lied about eyes being done for good - yeah, sure, of course there are more of them. Still, there are mostly liches here, and liches are awesome, but just not a threat in this game.
We can even afford to relax and slowly barbeque them down with infernoes.
Or maybe we can't. Apparently, in great numbers their shots do count. We're lazy with Hawk's healing, though, so it's more because of that. That and our protection spells being dispelled. Anyhow, here we see the boss of local necromancer's gang...
And he's not as tough as his names implied. Really, they could've given him at least 2k hps and some extra abilities. Guy is a pushover.
Sidequest time.
We valiantly destroy the book of liches...
Then not so valiantly we snipe some goods from the hands that definitely don't need them anymore. Hey, I figure you'd have to be pretty evil to get entombed in a place like this so why the fuss? Besides, we're not robbing - we're gathering evidence here!
Apparently, since I haven't had enough of eye encounters, I swoop through this place, killing occasional creeps I've missed.
But, as the evening approaches, I understand that I've had my fill of carnage and roaming through the vast dungeons so I decide to leave a couple survivors. Leave and let live, I guess (sic).
Gotta grab that crystal first, obviously. Yay, our first one!
Considering what we've pretty much single-handedly exterminated said Necromancer's Guild just now, the reward could've been greater. At least the xp part is good.
To take a break, we decide to explore some place that is not quite as overpopulated as Darkmoor is. Was. So it's Kriegspire time!
And it's also time to end part VIII.
Good to see an update!
now that's an amusing mental image...
Elwro
Arcane
Cool! Keep it up!
Baron Dupek
Arcane
- Joined
- Jul 23, 2013
- Messages
- 1,870,855
Good to see you again, could brofist it if I could...
Please do! It is true such guides are sorely missing.
*cough*
Pope Amole II
Nerd Commando Game Studios
- Joined
- Mar 1, 2012
- Messages
- 2,052
Dianne, it's 0:21 AM, the rain-scented spring night is exquisitely light and game journalists are gravely mistaken. Now, given what they are, they're mostly mistaken during all seasons, weathers and hours of day, but right now they're really wrong about what makes old RPGs inacessible to the newer audiences. No, my darling, it's not the horrible, horrible complexity of their, oh humanity, tabletop-inspired mechanics which, quite obviously, have no place in the glorious world of sexual alpha simulating interactive movies. It's the obscurity that fails us and, in an ironic twist, with all those scary numbers and formulas being hunted harsher than a pinko during the heat of mccarthyism, the progressive, innovative, revolutionary game design of our days is more obscure than ever.
Obscurity comes from many sources. Some is created by sheer unpredictability - you choose axe and, well, who could've known that game designers were too lazy to actually put any sort of decent axe into the game? Should've picked another deodorant, kiddo. At times, it is created by player falling into pretty much LARPing - disarming traps is usually important, for example, so the player begins to disarm every trap he sees without actually thinking whether or not he really needs to disarm them. Often, it's all about game logic betraying common sense, when formulas too quirky and unpredictable are getting used. In worst cases, the game blatanlty lies to you - like in this very M&M VI, which tells you that archers are really good with the bow when actually everyone else is as good as they are. And it's not always the case of not bothering to RTFM - The Mandate of Heaven has a wonderful manual, sure, really flavorful and detailed, the only problem is, it says nothing about how this game really works.
Obscurity kills games. Not complexity. Jeff Vogel once wrote a blogpost full of biowarian evangelism, defending his then freshly castrated game design by the "you can't force the player to make a bet if he doesn't know all the stakes, it's unfair!" (and what fair is taking the entire option of making a bet away, yeah). But he fell on the most tender parts of his being, for his new, overly simplified games suffer from the same type of obscurity that the older ones - despite there being much fewer options, it's as easy to spoil your character build as ever. And even the possibility of respec is not a great cushion - it could've been as easily done with an older, more complex system and it comes too late in the game to actually mean something.
Accessibility is not a bad thing. It's not about simplish, "2+2=4" level of complexity design. It's about rules (i.e., the inner logic of the game) being actually logical, which they should be by their nature. And, no matter how much do I love the late M&M trilogy, it's biggest failure is here - rules-wise, it is a mess and no attempts are made to clean & clear it. And they're extremely needed, those attempts - if you're building a complex game, getting the basic rules through to your player should be at the center of your design. It must be done even in the most basic things - for example, once I'm done in this post, I'm gonna go into the Underrail thread and pester Styg to change his character creation slightly. Atm, you start with 5 points in all 7 stats and 5 bonus points to distribute. You can decrease stats to a minimum of 3 to gain bonus points. So it's like 5 stat points in the pool and 14 already distributed. I will propose that the character creation starts with all stats at the value of 3 and 19 points to distribute - no change in the rules, just a change in the presentation. Whether intended or not, Underrail is a min-maxing game with tough combat, so spreading your stats too thin (and I've watched some random LPs - all of them started the game with a bunch of 5-6-7 average stats, no min-maxing) will hurt the player. So why push him in the wrong direction when you can push in the right one?
In other news, believe it or not, Part IX of our LP:
In castle Kriegspire, we're immediately by some photography phobic minotaurs - they'd rather drop dead than get into a picture for our LP. Well, we're always glad to assist...
The great thing about this place is the abundance of horseshoes hidden in chests or just laying around - we can use all skill points that we can get. The only realy question is - what do the minotaurs do with the horseshoes? Well, maybe they're fans of that fair "throw the horseshoe on a pole" game - it's fantasy world, there are no playstations and xbawks here and you just have to pass time somehow.
One of the dirtiest moves you can do them is punch some bulls through the windows here (if this was a more codexian LP, there'd be a glory hole joke here) - minotaurs are not well-versed in tactics so they can't use the same maneuvre in the retaliatory manner.
Wandering around the castle (and punching an occasional minotaur), we stumble upon a piece of evidence that maybe will let us know who killed Laura Palmer. Wouldn't count on it, though.
Exclaimer: lots of animals were harmed during the filming of this movie.
Of course, it's not like we shun a fair fight - it's just that those bullies are no threat for us in said fair fight. Shrapmetal floors them fast.
Actually, this 4 room area is like a gourmet course of sorts - in the first room, we were treated to some quality beef, now it's time of the turkey...
Followed up by a deeply roasted drake...
And finished by a balanced meal of sorts. Yummy!
We'll be taking an extra serving of that roasted drake, please.
Drake isn't so tough once you compare him with the dragon (breath). And it's so nice to encounter such huge swarms of enemies and obliterate them in one shot.
Some ugly birdies get attracted to the sounds of the battle - just a fleeting distraction. Well, they would be fleeting if they were wise - now they're just dead.
Lots of junk is thrown around this area - yeah, literally junk, nothing of worth.
After more wanderings around now empy castle, we finally find the secret button of Kriegspire - duh, I always tend to forget where it is.
There's one extra challenge we have to take here, though - the king-sized portion of quality beef.
One shrapmetal and we're facing the anti-climatic resolution. Should've gulped more steroids, Lurch.
And the prize is ours!
Your most precious thing is worth 5k to you, mate? What a stingy bastard... Well, at least we've gained some good xps for this quest.
We've done all of the side-quests, so now it's main objective after a main objective. Castle Alamos now.
Upon our entrance the boys immediately understood that Eel Infested Waters have a serious housing problem, with about a million people being crowded in a spacious, but not that spacious castle Alamos. Our heroes decide to resolve this problem in the only manner they know.
I.e., wiping out everything that moves, so there's no need to house anyone. Smug wizards included.
Our boys went forward in the atmosphere full of hostility... Oh, wait, it's the atmosphere itself that was pretty hostile (and moving, though not for long).
Where possible, the boys attacked in the cunning, non-direct ways, smiting foes from the safety of a distance...
But let it not be said that the bookhouse boys shun a direct confrontation.
Far from it - they've got all the tools to be as direct as they want.
To be honest, this place is such a hell without a properly built party - it's grinding through waves and waves and waves of foes...
In our case, it's just breezing through them all - this is all in one go, no lloyd's beaconing.
Now they're just numerous yellow points on the minimap and we've got our first clue to investigating this place.
For a while, things go relatively quiet - just a random elemental here or there...
But then it gets mad with the next two battles. First one is relatively tame...
It's just that enemies are well-spread around the room so you can't nuke them in a couple of spells, you have to stay and take damage.
Plenty of damage and things go quite radical here (in terms of the boys' sanity).
Next room is built around the same principle, only it's even more warlocks here.
We try a different approach here, but it's not wildly effective - the room is really big so the inferno spell doesn't reach enemies on the far side of it. A pity.
So we use a cruder tactic and walk counter-clockwise across the room, torching everything in our path.
We can't actually hit everyone from the low ground, so we make some next level maneuvering. Well, more like upper level. The battle is pretty arduous...
But the reward is pretty decent.
Chests contain pretty much unimportant goodies, but all those goodies are worth quite a lot so we don't complain too much.
Or is the finest reward here the ability to punch some magyars without them retaliating? Who knows.
You can even squeeze a fireball there (if you wish to).
More trees, more clues.
Some cute dungeon design here - a really long a narrow tunnel through which fireballs course constantly. Damn, when I'm building the house of my dreams, I really gotta include one of these.
Too bad it's not a fir. Lack of great firs is the biggest flaw of this game.
The greatest sign of this dungeon being totally over the top in terms of enemy quality is that I'm almost out of hopefully witty comments and we're far from being done with this place.
Honestly, do they run a cloning factory here?
And it's another "big area, lots of sorcerers" encounter. The third one, to be precise. This one is somewhere in the middle in terms of difficulty...
Also, designers at least bothered to offer you some easier way of going through it - you can snipe plenty of them through the window in this side-room.
Alamos is a pretty well designed place, it's just that finalizing it someone probably got drunk and went mad with the copy-paste function.
Lots of little hidden rooms and openings here - actually, it's really hard to clean this place 100% up. Especially since the multiple-layered map becomes really confusing here.
On and on we go...
Until it's finally time to answer the riddle...
And the next crystal is in our grasp!
We've used a couple of divine interventions to keep us going, so let's jump to the fountain of youth and get rid of those extra years.
Temple of Baa. I've decided to leave something effortless for the dessert.
It's probably harder than castle Kriegspire (that's arguable, though), but it's definitely not as rock-hard as either Darkmoor or Alamos. Especially its beginning where you fight these pathetic low-level clerics.
There's a neat (flavor-wise) shortcut here, leading to the grand temple of baa (the one where we found proofs of Silvertongue's treason). It's not really useful, but it's just a neat thing that really solidifies the setting.
There's also a couple of altars here - if you pass their painful challenges (i.e., just take some damage), you'll be rewarded with some resistance points later on. The bonus is small, but once again, it's all about the flavor of this place.
Speak of the devil... Wait, we haven't spoken about them yet still they show up - sneaky devils!
It's really low-tier ones so we don't care as much. There are also those pesky fire-elementals here, flying around and being a general nuisance.
So here we reap those elemental rewards. Every little bit counts, I guess.
Some of those random crystals lie in this place - more gold to convert into experience points.
And someone here sleeps with a mace under his pillow - somewhat randomly placed and not exactly precious, but still, we can always enchant it and sell it.
This dungeon is of medium size and not exactly complex - unlike Darkmoor and Alamos, can't really get lost here.
Time for a final rush, dealing with a moderate number of devils.
There's a dozen and a half of them, maybe, and it's such a relief after insanity of the Alamos.
The fourth and the final crystal is in our hands, but there's one more thing to do here.
The archtraitor Silvertongue has tried to escape our wrath by jumping into lava below (and somehow surviving while standing knee deep in it). We had no choice but to follow him down and put an end to his menace with a well-placed Shrapmetal.
Having collected all of the crystals, we put them into their proper places.
And learn of our next destination - the pyramid in midst of Dragon Sands. We felt that this task will require some preparation...
So it was time to train.
There's no limit to the kindness of Andy's nature - he gets more and more caring with each and every update.
Harry feels somewhat air-headed in this one...
And Coop is haunted by his dark past, dragging him into some pretty gloomy thoughts.
Hawk is one with the nature in both spirit and body. Well, mostly body.
Here are our stats under the full buff.
Now the mysteries of the ancients await!
To be continued...
Obscurity comes from many sources. Some is created by sheer unpredictability - you choose axe and, well, who could've known that game designers were too lazy to actually put any sort of decent axe into the game? Should've picked another deodorant, kiddo. At times, it is created by player falling into pretty much LARPing - disarming traps is usually important, for example, so the player begins to disarm every trap he sees without actually thinking whether or not he really needs to disarm them. Often, it's all about game logic betraying common sense, when formulas too quirky and unpredictable are getting used. In worst cases, the game blatanlty lies to you - like in this very M&M VI, which tells you that archers are really good with the bow when actually everyone else is as good as they are. And it's not always the case of not bothering to RTFM - The Mandate of Heaven has a wonderful manual, sure, really flavorful and detailed, the only problem is, it says nothing about how this game really works.
Obscurity kills games. Not complexity. Jeff Vogel once wrote a blogpost full of biowarian evangelism, defending his then freshly castrated game design by the "you can't force the player to make a bet if he doesn't know all the stakes, it's unfair!" (and what fair is taking the entire option of making a bet away, yeah). But he fell on the most tender parts of his being, for his new, overly simplified games suffer from the same type of obscurity that the older ones - despite there being much fewer options, it's as easy to spoil your character build as ever. And even the possibility of respec is not a great cushion - it could've been as easily done with an older, more complex system and it comes too late in the game to actually mean something.
Accessibility is not a bad thing. It's not about simplish, "2+2=4" level of complexity design. It's about rules (i.e., the inner logic of the game) being actually logical, which they should be by their nature. And, no matter how much do I love the late M&M trilogy, it's biggest failure is here - rules-wise, it is a mess and no attempts are made to clean & clear it. And they're extremely needed, those attempts - if you're building a complex game, getting the basic rules through to your player should be at the center of your design. It must be done even in the most basic things - for example, once I'm done in this post, I'm gonna go into the Underrail thread and pester Styg to change his character creation slightly. Atm, you start with 5 points in all 7 stats and 5 bonus points to distribute. You can decrease stats to a minimum of 3 to gain bonus points. So it's like 5 stat points in the pool and 14 already distributed. I will propose that the character creation starts with all stats at the value of 3 and 19 points to distribute - no change in the rules, just a change in the presentation. Whether intended or not, Underrail is a min-maxing game with tough combat, so spreading your stats too thin (and I've watched some random LPs - all of them started the game with a bunch of 5-6-7 average stats, no min-maxing) will hurt the player. So why push him in the wrong direction when you can push in the right one?
In other news, believe it or not, Part IX of our LP:
In castle Kriegspire, we're immediately by some photography phobic minotaurs - they'd rather drop dead than get into a picture for our LP. Well, we're always glad to assist...
The great thing about this place is the abundance of horseshoes hidden in chests or just laying around - we can use all skill points that we can get. The only realy question is - what do the minotaurs do with the horseshoes? Well, maybe they're fans of that fair "throw the horseshoe on a pole" game - it's fantasy world, there are no playstations and xbawks here and you just have to pass time somehow.
One of the dirtiest moves you can do them is punch some bulls through the windows here (if this was a more codexian LP, there'd be a glory hole joke here) - minotaurs are not well-versed in tactics so they can't use the same maneuvre in the retaliatory manner.
Wandering around the castle (and punching an occasional minotaur), we stumble upon a piece of evidence that maybe will let us know who killed Laura Palmer. Wouldn't count on it, though.
Exclaimer: lots of animals were harmed during the filming of this movie.
Of course, it's not like we shun a fair fight - it's just that those bullies are no threat for us in said fair fight. Shrapmetal floors them fast.
Actually, this 4 room area is like a gourmet course of sorts - in the first room, we were treated to some quality beef, now it's time of the turkey...
Followed up by a deeply roasted drake...
And finished by a balanced meal of sorts. Yummy!
We'll be taking an extra serving of that roasted drake, please.
Drake isn't so tough once you compare him with the dragon (breath). And it's so nice to encounter such huge swarms of enemies and obliterate them in one shot.
Some ugly birdies get attracted to the sounds of the battle - just a fleeting distraction. Well, they would be fleeting if they were wise - now they're just dead.
Lots of junk is thrown around this area - yeah, literally junk, nothing of worth.
After more wanderings around now empy castle, we finally find the secret button of Kriegspire - duh, I always tend to forget where it is.
There's one extra challenge we have to take here, though - the king-sized portion of quality beef.
One shrapmetal and we're facing the anti-climatic resolution. Should've gulped more steroids, Lurch.
And the prize is ours!
Your most precious thing is worth 5k to you, mate? What a stingy bastard... Well, at least we've gained some good xps for this quest.
We've done all of the side-quests, so now it's main objective after a main objective. Castle Alamos now.
Upon our entrance the boys immediately understood that Eel Infested Waters have a serious housing problem, with about a million people being crowded in a spacious, but not that spacious castle Alamos. Our heroes decide to resolve this problem in the only manner they know.
I.e., wiping out everything that moves, so there's no need to house anyone. Smug wizards included.
Our boys went forward in the atmosphere full of hostility... Oh, wait, it's the atmosphere itself that was pretty hostile (and moving, though not for long).
Where possible, the boys attacked in the cunning, non-direct ways, smiting foes from the safety of a distance...
But let it not be said that the bookhouse boys shun a direct confrontation.
Far from it - they've got all the tools to be as direct as they want.
To be honest, this place is such a hell without a properly built party - it's grinding through waves and waves and waves of foes...
In our case, it's just breezing through them all - this is all in one go, no lloyd's beaconing.
Now they're just numerous yellow points on the minimap and we've got our first clue to investigating this place.
For a while, things go relatively quiet - just a random elemental here or there...
But then it gets mad with the next two battles. First one is relatively tame...
It's just that enemies are well-spread around the room so you can't nuke them in a couple of spells, you have to stay and take damage.
Plenty of damage and things go quite radical here (in terms of the boys' sanity).
Next room is built around the same principle, only it's even more warlocks here.
We try a different approach here, but it's not wildly effective - the room is really big so the inferno spell doesn't reach enemies on the far side of it. A pity.
So we use a cruder tactic and walk counter-clockwise across the room, torching everything in our path.
We can't actually hit everyone from the low ground, so we make some next level maneuvering. Well, more like upper level. The battle is pretty arduous...
But the reward is pretty decent.
Chests contain pretty much unimportant goodies, but all those goodies are worth quite a lot so we don't complain too much.
Or is the finest reward here the ability to punch some magyars without them retaliating? Who knows.
You can even squeeze a fireball there (if you wish to).
More trees, more clues.
Some cute dungeon design here - a really long a narrow tunnel through which fireballs course constantly. Damn, when I'm building the house of my dreams, I really gotta include one of these.
Too bad it's not a fir. Lack of great firs is the biggest flaw of this game.
The greatest sign of this dungeon being totally over the top in terms of enemy quality is that I'm almost out of hopefully witty comments and we're far from being done with this place.
Honestly, do they run a cloning factory here?
And it's another "big area, lots of sorcerers" encounter. The third one, to be precise. This one is somewhere in the middle in terms of difficulty...
Also, designers at least bothered to offer you some easier way of going through it - you can snipe plenty of them through the window in this side-room.
Alamos is a pretty well designed place, it's just that finalizing it someone probably got drunk and went mad with the copy-paste function.
Lots of little hidden rooms and openings here - actually, it's really hard to clean this place 100% up. Especially since the multiple-layered map becomes really confusing here.
On and on we go...
Until it's finally time to answer the riddle...
And the next crystal is in our grasp!
We've used a couple of divine interventions to keep us going, so let's jump to the fountain of youth and get rid of those extra years.
Temple of Baa. I've decided to leave something effortless for the dessert.
It's probably harder than castle Kriegspire (that's arguable, though), but it's definitely not as rock-hard as either Darkmoor or Alamos. Especially its beginning where you fight these pathetic low-level clerics.
There's a neat (flavor-wise) shortcut here, leading to the grand temple of baa (the one where we found proofs of Silvertongue's treason). It's not really useful, but it's just a neat thing that really solidifies the setting.
There's also a couple of altars here - if you pass their painful challenges (i.e., just take some damage), you'll be rewarded with some resistance points later on. The bonus is small, but once again, it's all about the flavor of this place.
Speak of the devil... Wait, we haven't spoken about them yet still they show up - sneaky devils!
It's really low-tier ones so we don't care as much. There are also those pesky fire-elementals here, flying around and being a general nuisance.
So here we reap those elemental rewards. Every little bit counts, I guess.
Some of those random crystals lie in this place - more gold to convert into experience points.
And someone here sleeps with a mace under his pillow - somewhat randomly placed and not exactly precious, but still, we can always enchant it and sell it.
This dungeon is of medium size and not exactly complex - unlike Darkmoor and Alamos, can't really get lost here.
Time for a final rush, dealing with a moderate number of devils.
There's a dozen and a half of them, maybe, and it's such a relief after insanity of the Alamos.
The fourth and the final crystal is in our hands, but there's one more thing to do here.
The archtraitor Silvertongue has tried to escape our wrath by jumping into lava below (and somehow surviving while standing knee deep in it). We had no choice but to follow him down and put an end to his menace with a well-placed Shrapmetal.
Having collected all of the crystals, we put them into their proper places.
And learn of our next destination - the pyramid in midst of Dragon Sands. We felt that this task will require some preparation...
So it was time to train.
There's no limit to the kindness of Andy's nature - he gets more and more caring with each and every update.
Harry feels somewhat air-headed in this one...
And Coop is haunted by his dark past, dragging him into some pretty gloomy thoughts.
Hawk is one with the nature in both spirit and body. Well, mostly body.
Here are our stats under the full buff.
Now the mysteries of the ancients await!
To be continued...
An update! 
Baron Dupek
Arcane
- Joined
- Jul 23, 2013
- Messages
- 1,870,855
Well, that was unexpected.
Pyramid is propably the only confusing dungeon for me, never liked it, including djinnies.
Pyramid is propably the only confusing dungeon for me, never liked it, including djinnies.
Last edited:
Elwro
Arcane
Fantastic!
Wondering why there are so many Hungarians in Enroth.
Wondering why there are so many Hungarians in Enroth.
Pope Amole II
Nerd Commando Game Studios
- Joined
- Mar 1, 2012
- Messages
- 2,052
Dianne, it's 0:34 AM and it's finally time to talk about the fun of Might and Magic VI. But then, what can I say that have not been said? In the end, the most important (and, unfortunately, often neglected) aspect of games as a source of fun is that they are interactive and you, as the player, are always the co-creator of your fun. And while you can't really influence the efforts of game designing team (unless you want to spent a year or two modding), you can and probably should influence your own actions. Not every game is worth bothering, of course, but there are plenty of flawed gems and it's up to you to polish them.
Of course, people have rather different definitions of fun, but the desire of it is pretty much global (barring some sickly exceptions like anhedonia). And that desire must always be backed by some actions - sure, at times, folks will counter that statement with the trusty old "i play to escape work, not to work more", but that's not really work, that's an investment. It's much better to spend an hour browsing the game mechanics wikipedia to have a decent playthrough than to go at it blindly and hastily and wander around aimlessly as the result. Awareness should be the key here. And while I don't demand that everyone goes with the cheese and min-maxing, it's imperative to understand that while broken & weak things can be sort of fun (like, earth magic might be viable in M&M VI if you go for either 4x druid or druid singleton party - it'll be pretty valuable there), unworking things (like mind magic) are just that, unworking. And that while fairness is good in some cases, fairness that causes you to spend twice or thrice more time cleaning the dungeon is not exactly fair to yourself. Especially when there's a dozens of dungeons to clean and combat is not particularly engaging.
Sure, RPGs are (or, at the very least, should be) pretty hard to plan around, even when you more or less know the system. But that's part of the challenge, right? Oh, and speaking about parts...
Part X:
Right after we enter the VARN we encounter some Andhaira jokes material, but that wouldn't fit this LP thematically, besides, I lack a couple of skillpoints in codexian lore to seriously joke about him (thankfully for my sanity).
Apart from the djinns, this place is inhabited by the different tiers of VARN guardians - they're supposed to be (and actually are) really resistant to magic, but, thankfully, our physical damage output is high enough so there are no worries.
Hope we won't have to escape this place in a fridge... Anyhow, crystal skulls are important and, while I don't know it for sure, it always seemed like they stack with each other, so I'm not against having another one (we've got our first in the halls of the fire lord, remember?)
As usual, there's packs of sick puppies coming at us.
Time to illustrate Hawk's superb body mastery. One cast of power cure...
And look how healthy we are. And people say healing sucks in this game.
Slashing this crowd with our dagers would've taken too much time, so boys decide not to be overly conservative and put the full arsenal of their spells to use (well, just one - shrapmetal, but who needs an arsenal when you have shrapmetal?).
A crystal skull in actions. In most areas of this dungeons, periodically, damage will be dealt to each member of our party. Crystal skulls give a chance to negate it completely - they're awesome because that damage can be a real bother.
Apart from being moderately tough enemies, those genies can also either scare our heroes or put them to sleep. Nothing lethal, just mildly annoying.
Still, we port to the town to clean that mess up and also to fill some white spots in Hawk's spell repertoire. We won't need resurrection in the VARN, but it'll probably come handy in the next dungeon.
And cure wounds is a great and necessary alternative to the power cure - it cost's much less and it's not like we always need to heal the entire party. It's strange how we've played through the almost entire game without it.
Back into business. We enter this huge and really annoying room which is full of genies...
But they're placed at the end of this small rooms, so, to kill them all, you're forced to run from one end...
To another, and so on. Of course, you can just try to kill them, but then they scatter all around the place and it gets even more annoying to hunt them all. Well, they're your enemies, it figures that they don't want to be pleasant for you.
Then it's a room full of easier (relatively) puppies. Note that they're really resistant to elemental magic - top tier, guardians, are actually immune to anything but physical damage, and even to that they have about 30% resistance (on the average).
Eventually, we reach vast library. Well, duh, everything is vast in this place. We find some high-tier spellbooks (cool, but we already have everything we seriously need)...
And one of the scrolls we need to complete this place.
Deeper into this dungeon, we encounter one of the toughest fights of the game - the genie swarm. That is what it says - just a copy-pasted bunch of tough enemies.
Not as tough as the beholder swarm from castle Darkmoor, so we manage it pretty nicely - we even have the luxury to cast some fluffy (but not very effective) spells.
Of course, it's the heavy artillery that cleans the place up - all three tiers of genies have different magical immunities, but poison works against all of them so dragon breath is the most effective aoe spell here.
Especially when they're so tightly clustered.
In the end, it wasn't that tough - we didn't even needed to use the divine intervention (which we totally could - look at the time).
This place is seriously huge - they just don't build stuff that big nowadays. Oh, and don't ask me why I've casted the water walk spell - it doesn't really do anything here.
More genies to slaughter. After pillaging through their lamps, we discover a pleasant surpirse -
Another Mordred! Yeah, you can loot artifacts from the genies. Doesn't happen as often as with the titans and dragons, but still a possibility. It's not much, but it's nice.
We also spend a moment to trade those genie lamps we've found for the gems (and to convert gems into gold - not much other uses for them).
Mordred wasn't the only artifact we've found - there's also the aphrodite. Apart from the circus challenge purposes, it sucks, though.
Diminishing returns really defeat the purpose of such rings - so we equip it...
And gain +25 mana - what a miracle! No, wait, it isn't, it's no better than a common enchanted ring of +25 mana would do. At least it can be sold for 30k.
Back in the pyramid, we scour the place for the remaining scrolls.
Actually, it's not that necessary - with decently planned jump spell, you can just get over that barrier. It's hard to do, but possible (my memory is kinda faulty, but I think I've managed to do this once). But we're in a completionist LP so it's not our style.
Some small skirmishes here and there...
And we're done...
With collecting all of those scrolls. Let's reap the rewards.
Inputting those codes in a totally nerdy manner...
We get to the inner core of this place where we encounter the expected unexpected enemies - thankfully, there are only low level of droids here, and while they are very annoying to kill because of their small size (hard to hit properly with the multiple projectile spells) and the floating nature (hard to hit with meelee), at least they're not dangerous.
We secure the cube...
And gain the access to the control center. Some preparations are required, of course.
Freeing a major war criminal and the frequent visitor to the black lodge seems like a bad idea, but the alternative is even worse. Probably. Hopefully.
This puzzle isn't exactly obvious unless you've read the manual (and who reads them these days), but back then it was still another era. Ah, good old times...
The third eye is quickly exchanged for the magical bell...
And, well, it's a stupid idea, but who's got a better one?
Let's just hope that Archibald is not too angry at this world to give us a fake one... With those villains, you can never know when they want to destroy everything. We give the scroll into the safekeeping of Andy - Hawk is not a sorcerer, and Dale & Harry are too influenced by their dark magic affinity lately. Who knows what dark ideas visit their minds?
Training time.
To ensure that Andy will be a good scrollkeeper, we've even rewarded him with a couple of extra levels when bying experience at the Kriegspire well.
Thus, his light magic affinity reaches the impressive threshold of 40. And people might think that that guy isn't bright!
It's certainly a darker affair for Harry...
But not as gloomy as it is for the Coop. Careful, Dale, you never know what might happen if it catches up to you.
For Hawk, it's more and more water magic - we'll need its poisonous sting shortly.
As usual, our stats in a fully buffed state.
Control center. Terminator units fully deserve their name - not only they have great hps, AC and resistances to everything, they also can eradicate one of our characters on attack, and even the highest resistance won't really save us. Like, our four hundreds of magic resistance may look nearly impervious, but that's still, IIRC, 10% chance for terminator to evaporate a character and, well, given their number and the number of turns they require to get taken down, they've got all the time they need to cripple your party. But there's no way to be really protected from that - let's spam shrapmetal and hope we'll get lucky.
Spell points will be an issue here, so low-grade units are poked down with the archaic weaponry.
Gotta save all of the goodness for terminators only.
At least we're luckier than the previous inhabitants of this place...
We also find our first blaster rifle here (our goal is to kill all bots and get four of them). Now, in reality, that's really optional - all you need to get here is just one blaster pistol, even that will do. But where's the fun in that?
We also learn how to wield them, only we don't really need that. While blasters are a great equalizer for the badly optimized party, our vampiric daggers under enormous hour of power are much more useful than them. Figure this out.
Things go relatively smoothly for us - we dismantle unit after unit...
Until we stumble upon the toughest fight of the game. Absolutely optional, of course, but for us it's definitely mandatory. First volley of fire and Andy is turned into dust - with his luck it figures.
Hawk resurrects him, but in retaliation he and Coop are almost instantly desintegrated.
Harry and Andy grab what's left from them and dash outside of that horrible room. They have to spend a few hard hours of waiting until it's dusk and divine intervention may occur.
While said blessed hour lasts, the bookhouse boys go back for revenge. The droids are quite successful at bringing our heroes down...
But divine intervention is quite adept at raising them back. Unless, of course, it's the Andy who gets evaporated, but then we've got Hawk to patch him up (it would've been a real horror to have them both eradicated, but we're lucky enough to avoid it).
Once the last terminator is brought down by relentless shrapmetal blasts, we can relax a little and mop up the lower grades of the droids.
The reward for this fight is truly splendid.
We're already members of secret society so we'll have to decline, we think. Thanks for the offer, though.
Night falls as we find our second rifle. Two to go.
This place can be as pretty as it is deadly.
The third man... I'm sorry, the third rifle.
The last unit to fall...
And the remaining blaster to claim. Believe it or not, but we're done here.
BTW, I've totally forgot to show you the amazing length of our buffs - when hour of power becomes, like, a half-week of power...
Without wasting a second, we port into the sweet water - gaining a probably unnecessary stat boost from the fountain...
We rush across the wasteland, encountering mild resistance from few devil survivors - we nuked this place good, but not thoroughly enough. Not that we're not fully healed because the temples are closed.
The hive.
Our first victims here is a couple of worker chumps - they're definitely not worth our precious mana.
Next is this large room, full of winged devils. We could've approached in a cautious manner here, throwing spark spells from the high ground...
But we charge directly into their leathery mass. One devil is torn apart by the jagged metal, his remains combusting in a sudden flash...
And much more soon follow his example. The ugly creatures still manage to drain all of the Hawk's spell points, though - and we can't teleport out of this place, it's protected from that. Our party also gets severely disgusted by the stench of the devils...
Through all the fighting, dawn comes, and with it another round of divine interventions.
Harry gets poisoned again, but at least we're with almost full hps and sps after the fight. Now to explore this place fully...
Occasionally, damage is dealt to our party here, just like in the VARN pyramid. Our resistances are so huge, however, that we barely notice that.
Past the initial battle, this place is not really challenging - everyone talks about it and it's true, the Hive is nowhere near Darkmoor/Varn/Control Center.
That's not a huge disappointment, however - i think making it even harder would be seriously jumping the shark (even more than the game already does). There should be a point where enough is enough.
At one of the Hive's corners there's this neat healing barrel, able to restore you +20 hit points for an infinite number of times. It's not incredibly helpful for us because we're worried more about our mana, not hps (maybe even too much worried - one of my flaws as a player is that I'm really too conservative), but it's neat.
After stumbling around for a while, we discover the way to open this underground passage...
Which leads us to even more devils, obviously.
We almost reach the inner sanctum only to discover that we've forgot to get a key to it. Duh.
OK, a little bit of backtracking, an extra serving of grilled devils...
And we can open the bloody thing (strange to see other loot here - really, it's the final dungeon, what's the purpose?)
Time to equip those rifles, boys.
Reactor fight is not exactly challenging - it goes down pretty quickly...
And once that happens, we're healed completely, but also debuffed.
Also, there's a huge and uggly alien queen besides us.
Nothing to be afraid of, though - gives us a second to recast hour of power...
And another one to clean the chaff away...
So we can unload a huge, red-hot shrapmetal straight into queen's bloated flesh. She can't handle even one and dies instantly. Check.
Couple of casts...
And mate.
Now that reactor doesn't look to good - quick, Andy, get out that scroll!
Umm, Andy, why are you flapping that resurrection scroll around? We're all alive, Andy! What are you trying to mumbe, Andy!?
Andy?
The end.
Of course, people have rather different definitions of fun, but the desire of it is pretty much global (barring some sickly exceptions like anhedonia). And that desire must always be backed by some actions - sure, at times, folks will counter that statement with the trusty old "i play to escape work, not to work more", but that's not really work, that's an investment. It's much better to spend an hour browsing the game mechanics wikipedia to have a decent playthrough than to go at it blindly and hastily and wander around aimlessly as the result. Awareness should be the key here. And while I don't demand that everyone goes with the cheese and min-maxing, it's imperative to understand that while broken & weak things can be sort of fun (like, earth magic might be viable in M&M VI if you go for either 4x druid or druid singleton party - it'll be pretty valuable there), unworking things (like mind magic) are just that, unworking. And that while fairness is good in some cases, fairness that causes you to spend twice or thrice more time cleaning the dungeon is not exactly fair to yourself. Especially when there's a dozens of dungeons to clean and combat is not particularly engaging.
Sure, RPGs are (or, at the very least, should be) pretty hard to plan around, even when you more or less know the system. But that's part of the challenge, right? Oh, and speaking about parts...
Part X:
Right after we enter the VARN we encounter some Andhaira jokes material, but that wouldn't fit this LP thematically, besides, I lack a couple of skillpoints in codexian lore to seriously joke about him (thankfully for my sanity).
Apart from the djinns, this place is inhabited by the different tiers of VARN guardians - they're supposed to be (and actually are) really resistant to magic, but, thankfully, our physical damage output is high enough so there are no worries.
Hope we won't have to escape this place in a fridge... Anyhow, crystal skulls are important and, while I don't know it for sure, it always seemed like they stack with each other, so I'm not against having another one (we've got our first in the halls of the fire lord, remember?)
As usual, there's packs of sick puppies coming at us.
Time to illustrate Hawk's superb body mastery. One cast of power cure...
And look how healthy we are. And people say healing sucks in this game.
Slashing this crowd with our dagers would've taken too much time, so boys decide not to be overly conservative and put the full arsenal of their spells to use (well, just one - shrapmetal, but who needs an arsenal when you have shrapmetal?).
A crystal skull in actions. In most areas of this dungeons, periodically, damage will be dealt to each member of our party. Crystal skulls give a chance to negate it completely - they're awesome because that damage can be a real bother.
Apart from being moderately tough enemies, those genies can also either scare our heroes or put them to sleep. Nothing lethal, just mildly annoying.
Still, we port to the town to clean that mess up and also to fill some white spots in Hawk's spell repertoire. We won't need resurrection in the VARN, but it'll probably come handy in the next dungeon.
And cure wounds is a great and necessary alternative to the power cure - it cost's much less and it's not like we always need to heal the entire party. It's strange how we've played through the almost entire game without it.
Back into business. We enter this huge and really annoying room which is full of genies...
But they're placed at the end of this small rooms, so, to kill them all, you're forced to run from one end...
To another, and so on. Of course, you can just try to kill them, but then they scatter all around the place and it gets even more annoying to hunt them all. Well, they're your enemies, it figures that they don't want to be pleasant for you.
Then it's a room full of easier (relatively) puppies. Note that they're really resistant to elemental magic - top tier, guardians, are actually immune to anything but physical damage, and even to that they have about 30% resistance (on the average).
Eventually, we reach vast library. Well, duh, everything is vast in this place. We find some high-tier spellbooks (cool, but we already have everything we seriously need)...
And one of the scrolls we need to complete this place.
Deeper into this dungeon, we encounter one of the toughest fights of the game - the genie swarm. That is what it says - just a copy-pasted bunch of tough enemies.
Not as tough as the beholder swarm from castle Darkmoor, so we manage it pretty nicely - we even have the luxury to cast some fluffy (but not very effective) spells.
Of course, it's the heavy artillery that cleans the place up - all three tiers of genies have different magical immunities, but poison works against all of them so dragon breath is the most effective aoe spell here.
Especially when they're so tightly clustered.
In the end, it wasn't that tough - we didn't even needed to use the divine intervention (which we totally could - look at the time).
This place is seriously huge - they just don't build stuff that big nowadays. Oh, and don't ask me why I've casted the water walk spell - it doesn't really do anything here.
More genies to slaughter. After pillaging through their lamps, we discover a pleasant surpirse -
Another Mordred! Yeah, you can loot artifacts from the genies. Doesn't happen as often as with the titans and dragons, but still a possibility. It's not much, but it's nice.
We also spend a moment to trade those genie lamps we've found for the gems (and to convert gems into gold - not much other uses for them).
Mordred wasn't the only artifact we've found - there's also the aphrodite. Apart from the circus challenge purposes, it sucks, though.
Diminishing returns really defeat the purpose of such rings - so we equip it...
And gain +25 mana - what a miracle! No, wait, it isn't, it's no better than a common enchanted ring of +25 mana would do. At least it can be sold for 30k.
Back in the pyramid, we scour the place for the remaining scrolls.
Actually, it's not that necessary - with decently planned jump spell, you can just get over that barrier. It's hard to do, but possible (my memory is kinda faulty, but I think I've managed to do this once). But we're in a completionist LP so it's not our style.
Some small skirmishes here and there...
And we're done...
With collecting all of those scrolls. Let's reap the rewards.
Inputting those codes in a totally nerdy manner...
We get to the inner core of this place where we encounter the expected unexpected enemies - thankfully, there are only low level of droids here, and while they are very annoying to kill because of their small size (hard to hit properly with the multiple projectile spells) and the floating nature (hard to hit with meelee), at least they're not dangerous.
We secure the cube...
And gain the access to the control center. Some preparations are required, of course.
Freeing a major war criminal and the frequent visitor to the black lodge seems like a bad idea, but the alternative is even worse. Probably. Hopefully.
This puzzle isn't exactly obvious unless you've read the manual (and who reads them these days), but back then it was still another era. Ah, good old times...
The third eye is quickly exchanged for the magical bell...
And, well, it's a stupid idea, but who's got a better one?
Let's just hope that Archibald is not too angry at this world to give us a fake one... With those villains, you can never know when they want to destroy everything. We give the scroll into the safekeeping of Andy - Hawk is not a sorcerer, and Dale & Harry are too influenced by their dark magic affinity lately. Who knows what dark ideas visit their minds?
Training time.
To ensure that Andy will be a good scrollkeeper, we've even rewarded him with a couple of extra levels when bying experience at the Kriegspire well.
Thus, his light magic affinity reaches the impressive threshold of 40. And people might think that that guy isn't bright!
It's certainly a darker affair for Harry...
But not as gloomy as it is for the Coop. Careful, Dale, you never know what might happen if it catches up to you.
For Hawk, it's more and more water magic - we'll need its poisonous sting shortly.
As usual, our stats in a fully buffed state.
Control center. Terminator units fully deserve their name - not only they have great hps, AC and resistances to everything, they also can eradicate one of our characters on attack, and even the highest resistance won't really save us. Like, our four hundreds of magic resistance may look nearly impervious, but that's still, IIRC, 10% chance for terminator to evaporate a character and, well, given their number and the number of turns they require to get taken down, they've got all the time they need to cripple your party. But there's no way to be really protected from that - let's spam shrapmetal and hope we'll get lucky.
Spell points will be an issue here, so low-grade units are poked down with the archaic weaponry.
Gotta save all of the goodness for terminators only.
At least we're luckier than the previous inhabitants of this place...
We also find our first blaster rifle here (our goal is to kill all bots and get four of them). Now, in reality, that's really optional - all you need to get here is just one blaster pistol, even that will do. But where's the fun in that?
We also learn how to wield them, only we don't really need that. While blasters are a great equalizer for the badly optimized party, our vampiric daggers under enormous hour of power are much more useful than them. Figure this out.
Things go relatively smoothly for us - we dismantle unit after unit...
Until we stumble upon the toughest fight of the game. Absolutely optional, of course, but for us it's definitely mandatory. First volley of fire and Andy is turned into dust - with his luck it figures.
Hawk resurrects him, but in retaliation he and Coop are almost instantly desintegrated.
Harry and Andy grab what's left from them and dash outside of that horrible room. They have to spend a few hard hours of waiting until it's dusk and divine intervention may occur.
While said blessed hour lasts, the bookhouse boys go back for revenge. The droids are quite successful at bringing our heroes down...
But divine intervention is quite adept at raising them back. Unless, of course, it's the Andy who gets evaporated, but then we've got Hawk to patch him up (it would've been a real horror to have them both eradicated, but we're lucky enough to avoid it).
Once the last terminator is brought down by relentless shrapmetal blasts, we can relax a little and mop up the lower grades of the droids.
The reward for this fight is truly splendid.
We're already members of secret society so we'll have to decline, we think. Thanks for the offer, though.
Night falls as we find our second rifle. Two to go.
This place can be as pretty as it is deadly.
The third man... I'm sorry, the third rifle.
The last unit to fall...
And the remaining blaster to claim. Believe it or not, but we're done here.
BTW, I've totally forgot to show you the amazing length of our buffs - when hour of power becomes, like, a half-week of power...
Without wasting a second, we port into the sweet water - gaining a probably unnecessary stat boost from the fountain...
We rush across the wasteland, encountering mild resistance from few devil survivors - we nuked this place good, but not thoroughly enough. Not that we're not fully healed because the temples are closed.
The hive.
Our first victims here is a couple of worker chumps - they're definitely not worth our precious mana.
Next is this large room, full of winged devils. We could've approached in a cautious manner here, throwing spark spells from the high ground...
But we charge directly into their leathery mass. One devil is torn apart by the jagged metal, his remains combusting in a sudden flash...
And much more soon follow his example. The ugly creatures still manage to drain all of the Hawk's spell points, though - and we can't teleport out of this place, it's protected from that. Our party also gets severely disgusted by the stench of the devils...
Through all the fighting, dawn comes, and with it another round of divine interventions.
Harry gets poisoned again, but at least we're with almost full hps and sps after the fight. Now to explore this place fully...
Occasionally, damage is dealt to our party here, just like in the VARN pyramid. Our resistances are so huge, however, that we barely notice that.
Past the initial battle, this place is not really challenging - everyone talks about it and it's true, the Hive is nowhere near Darkmoor/Varn/Control Center.
That's not a huge disappointment, however - i think making it even harder would be seriously jumping the shark (even more than the game already does). There should be a point where enough is enough.
At one of the Hive's corners there's this neat healing barrel, able to restore you +20 hit points for an infinite number of times. It's not incredibly helpful for us because we're worried more about our mana, not hps (maybe even too much worried - one of my flaws as a player is that I'm really too conservative), but it's neat.
After stumbling around for a while, we discover the way to open this underground passage...
Which leads us to even more devils, obviously.
We almost reach the inner sanctum only to discover that we've forgot to get a key to it. Duh.
OK, a little bit of backtracking, an extra serving of grilled devils...
And we can open the bloody thing (strange to see other loot here - really, it's the final dungeon, what's the purpose?)
Time to equip those rifles, boys.
Reactor fight is not exactly challenging - it goes down pretty quickly...
And once that happens, we're healed completely, but also debuffed.
Also, there's a huge and uggly alien queen besides us.
Nothing to be afraid of, though - gives us a second to recast hour of power...
And another one to clean the chaff away...
So we can unload a huge, red-hot shrapmetal straight into queen's bloated flesh. She can't handle even one and dies instantly. Check.
Couple of casts...
And mate.
Now that reactor doesn't look to good - quick, Andy, get out that scroll!
Umm, Andy, why are you flapping that resurrection scroll around? We're all alive, Andy! What are you trying to mumbe, Andy!?
Andy?
The end.
Awesome LP Pope. I see now, that I am but a child when it comes to mastering M&M6.
Baron Dupek
Arcane
- Joined
- Jul 23, 2013
- Messages
- 1,870,855
You played the whole game without Cure? Oh my
And congratulation for cleaning Control Center, never managed to do this in any of my playthroughs.
Hope to see another LPs from you, really entertaining stuff.
And congratulation for cleaning Control Center, never managed to do this in any of my playthroughs.
Hope to see another LPs from you, really entertaining stuff.
Elwro
Arcane
Awesome LP!
Black
Arcane
- Joined
- May 8, 2007
- Messages
- 1,872,660
Now hol up, hol up!
I seem to remember "of darkness" enchantments that gave a weapon both swiftness and vampiric traits!
Pope Amole II
Nerd Commando Game Studios
- Joined
- Mar 1, 2012
- Messages
- 2,052
Yeah, it's an upgraded version of this but it lays in the ultra-rare enchantment category, amongst with the stuff like explosive shot enchantment or +5 levels enchantment. You can loot a dragon for an hour and never get even one that you need, they're that rare.
Pope Amole II
Nerd Commando Game Studios
- Joined
- Mar 1, 2012
- Messages
- 2,052
You definitely can't - enchants are rated by categories and it's, iirc, two categories above the maximum that's available through the enchant item.
Dungeon Lord
Scholar
- Joined
- Oct 16, 2015
- Messages
- 240
This is a great LP! Congratulations!
Pope Amole II
Nerd Commando Game Studios
- Joined
- Mar 1, 2012
- Messages
- 2,052
Oh you'd wish, oh you'd wish.
Hell is exactly what you can do with your stupidity, fucktard.
Big fucking chance.
FEEL THE BURRRN!!!
Kids, never let the loved ones go. Chain them in your basement or something, just don't let them fucking go. The only smart thing you can do - chaining them in your basement.
Sorry for the outburst, guys. I've lost the only decent thing I've had in my life (apart from this LP, obviously, this LP is awesome) and getting over it is fucking hard. Wish she was here.
baturinsky
Arcane
Have you considered making World of Xeen letsplay?
Pope Amole II
Nerd Commando Game Studios
- Joined
- Mar 1, 2012
- Messages
- 2,052
Will it bring me hot fangirls? Preferrably of the barely legal variety?
Krivol
Magister
You will find out if you try.
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