Might and Magic The Might and Magic Discussion Thread

[DaveO]

I suspect the interest and longevity of multiplayer Arcomage would last as long as the MyBrute and Robot Unicorn Attack craze. A few days at most before you all come back to create or whine in the latest DA2 threads.

Why have MM7 for Arcomage when MM8 also has it with additional cards?

 

[Canus]

The important thing is that I've acquired Kodex Kredits!

 

[Nael]

Spend them wisely. I blew all of mine saying every single Fallout sucks except for Fallout 3.

 

[octavius]

Any advice on where to go after exploring Sorpigal and the caverns underneath in MM1?

According to the gnome Town Portalist the roads are unsafe (but maybe he's lying?) so I tried portaling to Erliquin to deliver a scoll, but there I encounter traps that paralyze and poison my party, and enemies like Minor Demons and Acidic Blobs that quickly kill my party.
Town 2, Portsmith, is a nasty place for my 5 males party.

Maybe the magic portal in the caves under Sorpigal is the best choice?

Or do I need to grind to get my characters up to a level where they can survive outside Sorpigal?

 

[Fowyr]

Travelling from Sorpigal to Erliquin is very easy if you stay to the road. Path from Erliquin to Portsmith is easy too. Try to find Merchant pass in the area north of Sorpigal and start doing Lord's quests. After your Sorcerer gains Fly, you may travel to Dusk. Also I repeat myself

Regarding M&M1
1. There is unguarded chest in the C2
2. You may kill bunch of Caryatids for 400 xp for everyone, they defending path to B2.
3. Make you way to Erliquinn, try to complete lord's quests on the way. First quests in the South Blackridge (sp) castle pretty easy, requiring only visiting cities.
4. Fast way to any city - teleport in Sorpigal, fast way back to Sorpigal- Fly spell.
5. Increase agility and speed under Dusk, shrine in this dungeon have good items.

You don't need to fight in the Portsmith to finish quest (you gain it later), you may deliver scroll to Erliquin without fights too.

 

[Wolfus]

I Still like the earlier M&M better though. :Amiga500NostalgaGlasses:

Were you able to get MM3 to run on your Amiga? I was not, and had to wait 15 years to play in on PC...

I personally never played MM3 on different computer than my A1200...

 

[octavius]

I Still like the earlier M&M better though. :Amiga500NostalgaGlasses:

Were you able to get MM3 to run on your Amiga? I was not, and had to wait 15 years to play in on PC...

I personally never played MM3 on different computer than my A1200...

I only had a measly A501.
MM3 was supposed to be able to run with the extra RAM, but I never got past the opening intro.

Travelling from Sorpigal to Erliquin is very easy if you stay to the road. Path from Erliquin to Portsmith is easy too. Try to find Merchant pass in the area north of Sorpigal and start doing Lord's quests. After your Sorcerer gains Fly, you may travel to Dusk. Also I repeat myself

Regarding M&M1
1. There is unguarded chest in the C2
2. You may kill bunch of Caryatids for 400 xp for everyone, they defending path to B2.
3. Make you way to Erliquinn, try to complete lord's quests on the way. First quests in the South Blackridge (sp) castle pretty easy, requiring only visiting cities.
4. Fast way to any city - teleport in Sorpigal, fast way back to Sorpigal- Fly spell.
5. Increase agility and speed under Dusk, shrine in this dungeon have good items.

You don't need to fight in the Portsmith to finish quest (you gain it later), you may deliver scroll to Erliquin without fights too.

Thanks for tips.
I decided to explore C2. Haven't found any Ceryatids (whatever they are), nor any unguarded chests so far, but I only had to reload twice so farm first time when a landslide took my party to C-3 where the natives proved too hairy, and the second when I met 4 Killer Bees (Swarm, 10 attacks, immune to Sleep and none of my guys could even hit them).

The game is quite frustrating due to unbalanced encounters, but still surprisingle addictive. It certainly has a lot more depth and more advanced game mechanics than the prettier Bard's Tales from the same era.
And the combat is actually quite fun, and the game doesn't spam you with random encounters like Bard's Tale does.

 

[Fowyr]

Chest in the west part of C2, hidden behind passable forest title. Caryatids in the SW corner and too difficult for you now. I suggest exploring Erliquin, because Agar hidden in the REALLY easy place. Good hunting ;-)

 

[Sceptic]

And the combat is actually quite fun, and the game doesn't spam you with random encounters like Bard's Tale does.

MM2 is also guilty of excessive combat, which is why I like MM1 more (fewer but more memorable encounters). Unfortunately it is quite badly unbalanced, as you have already noticed. You may need to grind until maybe level 5 before outdoors exploration gets more doable. As someone else suggested, getting the Merchant Pass ASAP is also good, as some of the Lords' quests require little or no combat and are a good source of experience. If you get a quest you cannot complete, you can always get rid of it with Remove Quest spell.

 

[kmonster]

An advice where to go next in MM1:

Visit the well at A1 x12 y1 to get +2 endurance and more HP at level up. If your sorcerer can't cast jump spells yet you need to buy "rope with hooks" in Sorpigal and use it.
When you leave Erliquin go 1W 1S 3W 3N 3W and follow the path to A1 x14 y1 (secret passage from B1 x0 y0 to A1 x15 y0). From there jump west to avoid the fixed encounter are x13 y1, drink from the well, jump back and go back to Erliquin (explore the rest of the area there when you're more experienced) for saving. You might need a few retries to avoid random encounters, but the extra HP for getting the endurance boost early are worth it.

 

[octavius]

An advice where to go next in MM1:

Visit the well at A1 x12 y1 to get +2 endurance and more HP at level up. If your sorcerer can't cast jump spells yet you need to buy "rope with hooks" in Sorpigal and use it.
When you leave Erliquin go 1W 1S 3W 3N 3W and follow the path to A1 x14 y1 (secret passage from B1 x0 y0 to A1 x15 y0). From there jump west to avoid the fixed encounter are x13 y1, drink from the well, jump back and go back to Erliquin (explore the rest of the area there when you're more experienced) for saving. You might need a few retries to avoid random encounters, but the extra HP for getting the endurance boost early are worth it.

Thanks, but that is a bit too detailed info for me.
I prefer to rely as little as possible on cheating and meta gaming, unless it's the loacation of fixed encounters that are impossible for a low level party.

Seems I need to seriosuly consider the save state option for DosBox, though. Was just slaughtered by a large group of Minor Devils. There was one thing Bard's Tale did better than M&M; you could play it Iron Man and never save or load, since the death of your party was not the end, as long as you has enough money for one of your fellow members of the Adventurer Guild to resurrect your party (or your healer).

 

[octavius]

Seems I had max bad luck with the enemies in Erliquin the two times my lvl 2 party tried their luck there. First time they were killed by Minor Demons and second time by Acidic Blobs.
So I explored C2, leveling up to lvl 3, then caught the avalance that brought me to D2 and from there I eventually ended up in Argay, which was a nice town to explore, untill I met Caryati Guards which was immune to both normal weapons and magic. So without any magic weapons my party decided it was time to get to Erliquin and after much exploring finally found a way that led past the Blackridge Castles. Didn't find any Merchant Pass on the way, though. :-(

In the dungeon below Erliquin my guys have learnt to hate posion with a passion. Even with Prot Poison my guys constantly get poisoned by the trapped doors and the spell to cure it is lvl 4 which is still a few levels away. So I end up spending more cash on curing poison than I get from exploring the place. Time to hit the road again, I guess.

This game is huge. I think only Ultima IV was bigger when MM1 was released, but U4 is mostly empty, with boring combat, while MM1 has much more content.

Another thing that impresses mw with MM1 is that once you start outleveling your enemies they run away. A very nice touch, as it makes things more realistic. I wish more games had this feature.

 

[RatFink]

are gems good for anything apart from selling?
they are piling up in my inventory and i am really tempted to sell these bastards but i dont want to fuck anything up...so...can i?

 

[octavius]

Gems are used as spell components in some spells.
It's a bit embarrasing when your sorceror casts a Lightning Bolt with a triumphant "have at you, fiends!" and then his spells fizzles due to lack of gems...

 

[Fowyr]

are gems good for anything apart from selling?
they are piling up in my inventory and i am really tempted to sell these bastards but i dont want to fuck anything up...so...can i?

In the m&m6-8? Yes, you can sell them.

 

[Sceptic]

Actually you may want to keep them in 8, as they can be used to produce horseshoes.

 

[DaveO]

In MM8, diamonds can be converted to horseshoes for skill points. Rubies can be exchanged for black potions.

 

[Fowyr]

Didn't find any Merchant Pass on the way, though. :-(

It's in the SE part of C1. Look for the destroyed caravans.

Also do you find Agar in the Erliquin?

 

[Sceptic]

In MM8, diamonds can be converted to horseshoes for skill points. Rubies can be exchanged for black potions.

There's a chain of conversions that can end up with most gems eventually becoming a diamond and therefore a horseshoe. I don't remember the exact sequence now though.

 

[DaveO]

From my Web page Easter Egg list, the other conversions are below. It's possible that a Topaz would give a Diamond.

Zircon(250g)-Citrine gem, Iolite (500g)-Random item, Citrine(750g)-Amethyst gem, Amber (1000g)-White potion, Amethyst (1250g)-Emerald gem, Topaz (1500g)-Random item, Emerald (1750g)-Apple

 

[Sceptic]

Oops, seems like I misremembered. Thanks for the heads up. I guess converting the lesser gems to emeralds would be good to make more money, if money wasn't already so easy to come by in this game.

 

[octavius]

Didn't find any Merchant Pass on the way, though. :-(

It's in the SE part of C1. Look for the destroyed caravans.

Also do you find Agar in the Erliquin?

Yup, I found Agar. I have made it a habit to bump into all walls.

Finally found the Merchant's Pass and entered Blackridge North, where my party's alignment at one point must have shifted towards Evil. I haven't spoken with the lord yet, but I freed a prisoner (since three of my guys were Good I figured that was the right thing to do).
I also entered an empty vault behind a false wall and an alarm sounded. After that I started encountering much harder enemies; necromancers, mummys, spectres, assassins, elementals and banshees instead of the usual low level ones. Did I just enter a much harder part of the castle or did the encounter become harder due to setting off the alarm?
And what could have caused the alignment shift? I know it was normal right after entering the castle.

 

[octavius]

Oh well, I found out that "Empty Vault" An alarm sounds" is what cuases alignment shifting towarsd evil. So I guess bumping into walls and unlocking/bashing doors in castles is a bad idea.

Did the first three parts of the Lord's Quest in Blackridge South which was easy since I already had Garlic, Wolfsbane and Belladonna. And now the next thing required is a Medusa's Head.

So we headed for Blackridge North ans was told we were already quested, so Lord Inspectron could not engage our services.

Does this mean only one quest can be active at any given time? And does this mean the Prisoners quest is now broken, since I entered and exited an Inn after getting the quest?
And what happens if I use the spell to Remove Quest? Will I have to do the Garlic, Wolfsbane and Belladonna quests over again? And will that in turn mean getting the XP reward twice? I hope not, as that would feel like cheating.

Questions, questions, but who has the wisdom to answer?

 

[Sceptic]

Does this mean only one quest can be active at any given time? And does this mean the Prisoners quest is now broken, since I entered and exited an Inn after getting the quest?

Yes to the first, no to the second. The prisoner quest (and the Og quest, and the MQ for that matter) don't count as quests as far as the one-quest limit and the spell are concerned. Speaking of the spell...

And what happens if I use the spell to Remove Quest? Will I have to do the Garlic, Wolfsbane and Belladonna quests over again? And will that in turn mean getting the XP reward twice?

Nope, what the spell does is simply remove the "get medusa head" from your "active" quest slot so that you can take another lord's quest. Then when you come back to Blackridge South many levels later you can take the medusa quest again. However... each questchain does reset once you've completed the whole chain (7 quests each), at which point, with the exception of one lord, they'll start offering the chain from quest 1 again (for repeat XP).

That wise enough for you?

 

[octavius]

I'm no longer a sceptic.

Thanks for answers; seems MM1 is more advanced than I thought. But it's often hard to tell with old games with their poor documentation, no in-game way to track quests and info, and due to memory/disk limitations of the time most things are reset when leaving an area.

BTW, found an old review from 1998: http://www.gamerswanted.com/PC/367/news/93/
Even then they were complaing about the New Shit (which today many regard as the Golden Age):

The games are definitely dated by today's standards. However, with the amount of crap released lately, are they still viable, fun candidates for satisfying your gaming enjoyment

But also complaining about how dated the old shit is:

While Secret of the Inner Sanctum (MM1) and Gates to Another World (MM2) are just too dated in all ways to be enjoyable at this point,

Needless to say I don't agree with that last statement.