Might and Magic The Might and Magic Discussion Thread

[fantadomat]

I am curious,what happens to items in older mm games when your inventory is full? Do they get destroyed ?

 

[Pope Amole II]

I am not a big advocate for respeccing builds, but it quickly becomes obvious late game that magic is going to totally outdo anything a physical class can do and it is frustrating

That's not true. Physical classes have three advantages over magical ones:

1. They act faster. Melee attacks, one way or another, get down to minimal 30 recovery time. With grayface patches that's spear & sword combo. Without them, that's just two handed axes, eventually turning into ax & dagger combo - somewhat worse but still efficient. Spells, on the other hand, range from 80 to 90. Efficient spells, that is - there are lots of duds with 120-140 recovery range. So you can say that for every single cast your fighter is doing three strikes. And, as most good spells are point-blank range, it's not like they have much of a distance advantage.

2. Vampiric weapons are broken, period. They drain 20% of everything that they do and, if you dual them, this one increases to 40%. There's a point of time in each game when even a solo character can hold down attack button in real-time and that's gonna be enough to win the fight as no one will overtake him. Well, solo-melee is not really doable in VI but not due to the lack of damage - unescapeable insta-death really ruins its day.

3. They don't need mana, duh.


The thing is, from my observations, people don't understand how to optimize melee parties. In VI, it goes like this:

1. The party is either Knight-Knight-Sorcerer-Cleric or Knight-Knight-Paladin-Sorcerer. Knight-Archer-Paladin-Sorcerer may work if you don't wish for repeats. Whatever the choice, you dedicate one Light caster as your main engine and dump all the spare skill points into him - all the horseshoes and all the kriegspire well exp.

2. Don't be greedy with teacher-instructor-banker shit in the early game - simple healers are your best friends. You have a large health pool and replenishing it once per day means a lot in the early game.

3. Don't spread your points thin - if your light caster is wizard, it's something like air 7, water 12, dark 10, everything else into light magic. If it's a cleric, it's even simpler - dark 10 and everything into light magic. You wanna reach 30-40 light magic asap. Likewise, your knights should prioritize weapon skills. +1 damage per skill increase may not sound as much, but that'll eventually turn into +30 and that's a bit of a breaking point. For knights, bodybuilding of at least 15 is also adviseable.

4. Remember that artifact rings of magic stack with the common ones multiplicatively. So double-ringed 30 skill Hour of Power is +72 attack and damage for everyone.

5. Once your party is equipped with vampiric duals, Shared Life becomes the best healing spell. Due to bodybuilding, your knights will be overwhelmingly fat. This just shaves some of that off their sides and waxes the entire party.

Here are the examples from my old playthrough:

Spoiler

 

[fantadomat]

Sooo are you a tranny Pope Amole II ? I noticed that your whole party is girls...

PS: Do you larp as naomi or hilda ?

 

[jungl]

The worlds not really huge its all the back tracking that is too time consuming. It would be interesting if 3D0 somehow compressed the game in n64 cartdige back in the day and tapped into a much bigger market possibly not going bankrupt.

https://youtu.be/BaX5YUZ5FLk

 

[Morpheus Kitami]

Except that during the N64-era they had a competing console...technically. Plus they did put MM8 on the PS2, but made it Japan-only for reasons. Weren't there a couple of console MM games that technically sold the most out of the series? I don't think getting twenty more sales from the N64 would have helped them much.

 

[Darth Canoli]

newtmonkey
Grauken
So, i found the holy grail!

It's called DOSBox-X

I installed it, then launched the gog installer for the M&M pack, directed the Dosbox directory to Dosbox-x one and voilà! (well, i had to rename the dosbox-x exe: "dosbox" so the installer would recognize it)

Close combat hits and arrows SE are just fine, and the music sounds good too (it uses Munt).
Footsteps are a bit weird but nothing too offensive.
There's Mac, linux and win 32 and 64 versions so that's how everyone should play the M&M 3-5 trilogy (and swords).

 

[Lonely Vazdru]

Thanks. I couldn't get World of Xeen to run properly... now I can !

 

[newtmonkey]

Darth Canoli
Great news! Glad you found a solution that works. Enjoy that sweet MT-32 music!

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

Ok, finally finished this thing:

Started out very nicely, but mid-late game turned into a massive slog, and by late game, I couldn't stand the game anymore. Just too much retarded shit, like that idiot Prince Nicholai running away with the circus, and of course the circus has 4 locations, and they are only there 3 days a year or whatever, and while the little fucker is gone, you can't turn any quests to his dumbass overseer... Or the worst item repair system in any game ever... Yeah, it's a lot of fun moving around 40 rings after every dragon fight. And the fucking endless grind.... I just flew through the last 2 maps, fuck clearing them.

The last dungeon, the Hive, was also appropriately retarded. Resets every 7 days (just enough if you have to travel to a nearby city) because the Beacon's doesn't work there of course. Nor can you rest in peace there either. Just 200 switches to complete the rat in a maze feeling, and the final fight with 400 devils and you can't escape. Barely made it out alive, with half the group unconscious.

You know, we spend a lot of time here at the Codex bemoaning the modern games' retardation (the handholding and dumbing down of everything), but some of these old games had their own brand of retardation.

 

[Darth Canoli]

I didn't know you could get such a low score, you probably broke the record.

Also, Might & Magic games were never meant to be completed in two weeks, most entries took me months to complete.
Only replays are shorter because you know what to expect and past the initial discovery, it's less fun to wander so you get straight to the point.

 

[Pope Amole II]

Today I've uploaded the juiciest part of my M&M 8 solo-vamp LP - pretty much the reason I've started it in the first place. A lonely vampire taking on a max-level arena - that is, 20 lvl 100 monsters. Quite doable if you put some mind into it. Relevant part starts at 1:06:00

Spoiler

 

[J_C]

Ok, finally finished this thing:

Started out very nicely, but mid-late game turned into a massive slog, and by late game, I couldn't stand the game anymore. Just too much retarded shit, like that idiot Prince Nicholai running away with the circus, and of course the circus has 4 locations, and they are only there 3 days a year or whatever, and while the little fucker is gone, you can't turn any quests to his dumbass overseer... Or the worst item repair system in any game ever... Yeah, it's a lot of fun moving around 40 rings after every dragon fight. And the fucking endless grind.... I just flew through the last 2 maps, fuck clearing them.

The last dungeon, the Hive, was also appropriately retarded. Resets every 7 days (just enough if you have to travel to a nearby city) because the Beacon's doesn't work there of course. Nor can you rest in peace there either. Just 200 switches to complete the rat in a maze feeling, and the final fight with 400 devils and you can't escape. Barely made it out alive, with half the group unconscious.

You know, we spend a lot of time here at the Codex bemoaning the modern games' retardation (the handholding and dumbing down of everything), but some of these old games had their own brand of retardation.

Congrats to finally finishing the game, but it's sad to see that you didn't enjoy it that much. But as one wise man once said, you were playing it wrong.

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

Yeah, I play games (including RPGs) for fun. So if a game requires you to play it 5 times to learn the meta-game and then the enjoyment comes from max-minning stuff, that's not for me.

 

[J_C]

Yeah, I play games (including RPGs) for fun. So if a game requires you to play it 5 times to learn the meta-game and then the enjoyment comes from max-minning stuff, that's not for me.

Why did you cover the character names? Are you embarassed of them?

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

I used my bank account numbers and social security as character names. A personal fetish.

 

[Lonely Vazdru]

I used my bank account numbers and social security as character names. A personal fetish.

As far as naming characters go, this has to be the weirdest shit I heard.

 

[Darth Canoli]

Fuck, it made me install the M&M 6,7,8 merge mod, starting from VII's world with a weird party
Monk, Thief, Druid and Cleric
Druids are modded and can go GM in all the basic magic schools but i don't think they get access to light and dark (but who knows, it'd be a nice surprise).

I wanted to play a more classical Axe Minotaur instead of the thief but i'm fed-up with traps exploding in my face, maybe i'll try to mod the thief so he gets access to GM dagger because it looks like he'll be quite useless late game (my bad, the thief gets GM dagger down the line), then again, maybe i'll just fire him and pick a nice recruit at some point.

Also, you can create a fifth party member.

M&M III with the new config won't go anywhere, i'll keep it warm for december or january.

 

[deadmeme]

Ok, finally finished this thing:

Started out very nicely, but mid-late game turned into a massive slog, and by late game, I couldn't stand the game anymore. Just too much retarded shit, like that idiot Prince Nicholai running away with the circus, and of course the circus has 4 locations, and they are only there 3 days a year or whatever, and while the little fucker is gone, you can't turn any quests to his dumbass overseer... Or the worst item repair system in any game ever... Yeah, it's a lot of fun moving around 40 rings after every dragon fight. And the fucking endless grind.... I just flew through the last 2 maps, fuck clearing them.

The last dungeon, the Hive, was also appropriately retarded. Resets every 7 days (just enough if you have to travel to a nearby city) because the Beacon's doesn't work there of course. Nor can you rest in peace there either. Just 200 switches to complete the rat in a maze feeling, and the final fight with 400 devils and you can't escape. Barely made it out alive, with half the group unconscious.

You know, we spend a lot of time here at the Codex bemoaning the modern games' retardation (the handholding and dumbing down of everything), but some of these old games had their own brand of retardation.

The Nicholai quest is terrible. But MM 6 has one of the best sewer dungeons ever, beneath Free Heaven. I also love The Hall of the Fire Lord in Bootleg Bay.

 

[fantadomat]

The Nicholai quest is terrible

Ahhh for first time sure. If you replay is a late game quest. Just plot loyd's beacon and do it in 30 seconds.

 

[Eisen]

I am curious,what happens to items in older mm games when your inventory is full? Do they get destroyed ?

In 3,4,5, the item you got replaces the last item in the inventory, that's how i lost Xeen Slayer in MM4

 

[fantadomat]

I am curious,what happens to items in older mm games when your inventory is full? Do they get destroyed ?

In 3,4,5, the item you got replaces the last item in the inventory, that's how i lost Xeen Slayer in MM4

Yeah,the inventory is really bad in those old games. It is the only thing that really puts me off them. I don't remember if it was giving the item to the next character in your party or you had to manually send items to other characters before picking new items.

 

[Sinatar]

It automatically gives the item to the next character with available space assuming someone has any.

 

[Pope Amole II]

Finished my solo-vamp VIII run. Was surprisingly fun, tbh - she's quite op in the late game but you need to be rather creative to get there. And her wide array of tools allows for that creativity.

Endgame stats (with max power white potion boosts):

Skills (Body magic should've been 10 but that would not change much, tbh):

Score (the training to lvl 200 alone takes 5 in-game years, not to mention the lack of travel magic - this isn't a class/playstyle for scoring it high, tbh)

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[Pope Amole II]

Skills (Body magic should've been 10 but that would not change much, tbh):

whats up with 40 spirit magic? Just for heroism?

Heroism, Bless, Spirit Lash, Shared life. First two are obvious - 40 skill levels for +65 attack/damage (I have the ring equipped) is a mighty fine deal.

Spirit lash has trash-tier range but it's the only AoE that a Vampire has. Mind you, it's also quite dubious AoE but it's capable of hitting 2-3 enemies at the same time and your average foe has very low spirit resistance. Or none at all. Until you get strong enough to out-lifesteal most opponents, Mistform + Spirit Lash (so you can stay point blank while taking no damage) makes all physical-heavy areas into easy farming places.

Shared Life is just 180 hp for 25 mana healed. Well, the cost is abysmal but Vampire is made of glass so a bit of emergency healing helps a lot.

If you feel like solo-ing combat only, you can also drag around Cauri's corpse, resurrecting her when you need some TPs and then killing her once again.