Might and Magic The Might and Magic Discussion Thread

[UndeadHalfOrc]

The circus is great, and is how I pumped my stats all the way to 100 for everybody. My Lloyds Beacon was placed right next to the well in the oasis.
I then used the various stats exchange buffs (-5 for +3) to exceed some of them past 100, then used the circus to buff up again those I just lowered by the exchange.
Be careful if you're as greedy as I am - the well LOWERS stat to 100 if it exceeds it!

Some might argue that for quicker results to pump them to 50, instead of the circus, to use the other dungeons' stat boosters,which work repeatedly, and all year long. Set up a Lloyds Beacon there, and it makes the 5 visits super fast and trivial.
Except the one for accuracy.... if I recall, that one is a pain in the ass due to very hard unskippable encounters, best to stick to circus for accuracy. Still, I think you can cheese Lloyds Beacon for that one too, though.

 

[behold_a_man]

So, I've finished the second one:

ending

Note that it's helpful to have a fellow with a divine mace (having the Divine Intervention) along with a cleric.

It felt to me like this game was way more experimental than any other I've played in the series, for better or worse. I started with a party imported from the previous title, which was probably a mistake. My observations after playing it:

1) Exploration:
-> I liked how some spells could only be obtained from certain, somewhat related places or people (unless you ventured into the depths of a certain castle). It gave them a sort of identity, which is something I don't see very often.
-> The intensity of exploration from the previous game was gone. I spent the entire game with the Time Distortion spell; the areas where using it resulted in a failure were scarce, and even then, fights were so slow (with higher armor classes and hit points) that I could almost always easily retreat from the untimely death. As a result, I barely needed to reload the game despite it retaining the mechanic of saving at the inn from Book One. I think even if I started from level 1, most of the game would be played at levels above 7th, so the shallowness persists. The save mechanics didn't seem to me to be an integral part of the exploration anymore.
-> Cities were way more boring than in both Book One and Isles of Terra. Tundara had its quest and peculiar structure (I had to walk quite a bit to get to the temple), but other cities felt like mere hubs without anything interesting going on. Sansobar and Vulcania were completely bland; Middlegate had two mildly interesting fountains; and Atlantium had some statues and a top tier joke.
-> The game lacked spatial challenges like Castle Blackwind in Isles of Terra or Soul Maze/Astral Plane, or the second level of the Ancient Temple with circular teleports in Book One. It felt to me like JVC wanted to allow the players to rely solely on his in-game maps rather than their own tricks - which is a shame, since they were one of the more interesting things in both MM1 and MM3 (even double shame, as I wanted to test the limits of my own automapper).
-> Oddly, there were barely any explicit puzzles in this game; messages were somewhat simple if you used code to decipher them; the entry code to Druids' Cave was semiobvious; the non-blocking puzzles allowing to avoid fights in fortresses at the Isle of the Ancients were lovely; the most interesting one - the last puzzle - was bizarre; while I like the idea (limited time, randomized cryptogram), I don't have a clue why JVC went for information completely outside of the game to define the message. It wasn't that atrocious since the first image on the web after I searched for the word 'preamble' was that exact preamble; but imagine if JVC was Turkish ("King Kalohn, the immortal leader and the unrivalled hero").
-> I disliked the unnecessary symmetry of the world; all four elemental planes were painfully insipid. All they had were some Red Messages (that weren't really necessary), talons (the location of which you could already know), and irrelevant Elemental Lords. There were four castles, all with the same structure (three levels, things for the Element Orb and bishops on top, really interesting stuff on the bottom). Four cities were laid in four corners of the CRON, and one in the middle. It added predictability to exploration, which is quite a letdown for me.
-> Hinting at the places of mercenaries and spells in Castle Xabran was a nice touch at the end of the game.
-> Dungeons (especially castles) became way more rewarding, and unlike in Book One, the rewards were diverse, including spells, mercs, alignmets, tripling experience, or thousands of hitpoints.

2) Combat:
-> Hitting any key - inventory, changing direction, pressing an unrelated key (which was useful for me for mapping) could lead to combat; it was infuriating; it penalized dilligence and proper preparation.
-> I like the idea behind the party disposition; first, it wasn't equivalent to difficulty, as fights on a more intense disposition resulted in better loot and more experience points. What I didn't like is the implementation; on higher difficulties, the last enemies (usually 100-200) were the same. This leads to a situation where I usually know before combat whether the fight will be dead simple or whether I should just retreat. There were almost no intense, interesting fights on 'Thrill Seeker' disposition. I would rather have the disposition lower the number of random encounters.
-> Even without random encounters, I think there was too much uninspired combat. For example, I saw 32 copy-pasted encounters on the pretty barren Plane of Fire.
-> Most enemies had some resistances - which I consider an improvement, though it would be nice if I could get this information about an enemy in some way.
-> The mechanic that was particularly odd for me was the ability to act during a turn; if I understood it correctly, only the first ten enemies were able to move during a turn - so, if I managed to regularly kill the first ten characters during a single turn, I could breeze through an arbitrarily long fight. The problem is, it was insufferably tedious, and automating spell casting was impossible, so I couldn't just mow down enemies with Ctrl+a.
-> The combat became way less tedious once I switched to a lineup with two mercenary sorcerers along with a standard party composition and started spamming Disintegration, Dancing Swords, or Star Burst depending on the number of enemies and place. Dancing Swords were the ?only? spell, that acted on a crowd and was working pretty much universally, and Disintegration was very handy if there were many (200) somewhat weak enemies, and I had to ration spell points.

3) Quests seemed more polished than in the previous entry; King's quests seemed way less random (Slayer ordered me to kill either some random monster or three exact beasts depending on my choice; Hoardall wanted some items; remaining king and queen had exactly one, distinct quest); rewards were much more acceptable.

4) The graphics were pretty but wore down quickly. I kept seeing the same monsters and terrain types over and over.

5) The alignment blended with itemization was neat, with the ability to switch any equipment as a reward for delving deep into three castles; but the constant random encounters on a way there made this experience painful. It is one of the few games that, I believe, could benefit from having sort of a stronghold allowing, among other things, to switch alignments without repeating those tedious encounters or calculated teleports over and over.

6) Humour - it might be my favourite part of the game - very intense and uncanny. The best jokes for me were:

jokes

Though I think this joke would be better if the ride were free of charge.

At last, I can LARP as a Balkan party of adventurers!

Accordingly, this wearisome dungeon level was full of guards removing all my gold. Note that the same icon was also used for Gwyndon, the young apprentice of Corak the Mysterious.

Overall, I preferred the third and first ones. They didn't have endless encounters, the third one had way more interesting exploration, and the first one made great use of its save system and low level adventure. It's interesting how JVC addressed most of the problems of Gates to Another World in Isles of Terra and simultaneously how he was capable of continuously reinventing this series:
-> As the series moved towards mostly a high level adventure, the old save system was scrapped.
-> The cities felt boring, so the teleport system was added along with the order of exploration (in MM2 getting to any city was banal from the start - even roads were mostly safe). Also, they were more compact, with all important copy-pasted buildings (temple, smith, training, etc.) technically consisting of a single cell.
-> Graphics got uglier, but most locations spiced things up with new things - like altars in Blistering Heights or cauldrons in Cursed Cold Cavern - which made them more memorable from my perspective.
-> The longer the game, the more tiresome random encounters became - and so they were removed completely.
-> Myriads of very tough puzzles got added (including spatial ones), and the idea of having meta-information in the last dungeons was retained - this time aiding in solving those puzzles.

 

[octavius]

Random encounter frequency is pretty low in MM2 compared to the Bard's Tale and later Wizardry games. Also, there were always new types of monsters to face and new items to be found, which combined with the best tactical combat of any TB blobber, for me made the combat exciting until the end. Well, except for the Elemental Planes which were a slog.

And the game is balanced for an imported party. A lvl 1 party will always struggle in Middlegate unless grinding the Skeleton Closet.

 

[behold_a_man]

Also, there were always new types of monsters to face and new items to be found, which combined with the best tactical combat of any TB blobber, for me made the combat exciting until the end.

Yeah, well, it would be more exciting if they could survive my initial onslaught of four quick wizards with Dancing Swords. The only enemies I can think of that were regularly able to avoid this spell were golems - and I think (I don't have numbers) that they were quite susceptible to Holy Mace. Also, I think the game would be more intricate (not necessarily better) if there was some penalty for retreating - but there was pretty much none, especially with Lloyd's Beacon. Interestingly, I never ran out of gems.

 

[UndeadHalfOrc]

Hello all,

So I finally finished MM4. Went everywhere and conquered everything, except the last south-eastern big room of the dragon cave. My party is currently at level 19. I used a patch that prevented the double XP bug when below lv 15 (thanks again for this, Cedric Busch!)

I like how JVC clearly meant this as one half of one big world, and to pull it off without ruining the Darkside's early game experience too much, he made MM4 a low level campaign with a hard level cap, but included a more dangerous mid-level area: the entire north eastern part of the world. The abundance of boosting fountains makes lots of sense in that context.

But taken on its own, MM4 was definitely a lot shorter and less interesting than MM3.
The only sci-fi elements I have found so far are the 4 corners of the world.

Time to "Break on through to the other side".

 

[Mauman]

The only sci-fi elements I have found so far are the 4 corners of the world.

This comment always makes me laugh when it comes to 4.

 

[UndeadHalfOrc]

I assume they're for the World of Xeen extra quests to "reunite" the two halves

 

[UndeadHalfOrc]

Forgot to add:
Year 613, day 84, characters are 21 years old, 1.2 M gold and 15K gems in the bank. All 3 free level ups are unclaimed.

 

[UndeadHalfOrc]

So, I've been searching the web about mechanics of the hidden "to-hit" bonus of the Knight and Barbarian.

http://crpgaddict.blogspot.com/2021/05/darkside-of-xeen-here-today-to.html
On the CRPG Addict's blog, in the comments sections, two people make this claim:

RadiantMay 3, 2021 at 4:58 AM
According to ScummVM (which contains a reverse-engineered Might&Magic engine, among others), accuracy does impact melee attacks (but not linearly). Also, characters get a level-based to-hit bonus similar to THAC0 (i.e. warriors get +1 per level, clerics get +1 per two levels, and so forth).

asimpkinsMay 3, 2021 at 6:39 PM
That undocumented to-hit class bonus is interesting, and it's strange the manual doesn't mention it along with the other class stuff because it's pretty simple and very relevant.

I think I hunted down the right code for it, and Knights and Barbarians get +1 per level, Druids and Clerics get +1 per 3 levels, Sorcerers get +1 per 4 levels, and the other classes all get +1 per 2 levels.

Pure spell casters give up a lot for extra spell points. If I ever played this again, I'd like to try multiple Paladins and Archers instead of Clerics and Sorcerers.

Is there a way to test or verify this claim?

I really wanna know. I'm obsessed with gaming combat mechanics.

 

[Average Manatee]

M&M melee involves multiple/dozens of attacks in a single frame and figuring out how many hits you've scored is incredibly hard in testing.

So what are we thinking the math is then? My understanding is that stats work like this:

Stat Range Adjective Bonus
0-2 Nonexistant [sic] -5
3-4 Very Poor -4
5-6 Poor -3
7-8 Very Low -2
9-10 Low -1
11-12 Average +0
13-14 Good +1
15-16 Very Good +2
17-18 High +3
19-20 Very High +4
21-24 Great +5
25-29 Super +6
30-34 Amazing +7
35-39 Incredible +8
40-49 Gigantic +9
50-74 Fantastic +10
75-99 Astounding +11
100-124 Astonishing +12
125-149 Monumental +13
150-174 Tremendous +14
175-199 Collosal [sic] +15
200-224 Awesome +16
225-249 Awe Inspiring +17
250+ Ultimate +20

Which would mean that a level 40 paladin with 250 accuracy would have the same hit rate as a level 40 barbarian with 11 accuracy? That does seem to make accuracy fairly weak. Which is surprising to me, usually I really like to see it raise and can feel hitting enemies more often but that might just be the levels I'm getting in the meantime.

I'd guess we do something like (level bonus) + (accuracy bonuses) + d20 vs AC to find the final hit rate?

That said it doesn't matter much for M&M4/5 due to how group buffs give everyone an additional +1 attack per level (and temp level buffs boost both this and base accuracy). In M&M3 though its common to not run around with them since SP isn't infinite and buffs are very expensive and single effect/target, which makes the higher SP classes a bit more useful.

 

[UndeadHalfOrc]

That said it doesn't matter much for M&M4/5 due to how group buffs give everyone an additional +1 attack per level (and temp level buffs boost both this and base accuracy). In M&M3 though its common to not run around with them since SP isn't infinite and buffs are very expensive and single effect/target, which makes the higher SP classes a bit more useful.

You mean an additional "to hit" (or "attack bonus") point per level. Heroism does not increase temporary level, contrary to the in-game spell description.
Otherwise, I agree with your post.

There is an advantage though to have (in MM4-5 Xeen) the sorcerer having plenty of mana to cast offensive spells for every important fight.

 

[Average Manatee]

You mean an additional "to hit" (or "attack bonus") point per level. Heroism does not increase temporary level, contrary to the in-game spell description.
Otherwise, I agree with your post.

I was referring to the fountains which boost level. No reason not to have them up past the early game, one of them is even in a city you can just use a mirror/town portal to get to without needing to occupy a valuable beacon slot.

There is an advantage though to have (in MM4-5 Xeen) the sorcerer having plenty of mana to cast offensive spells for every important fight.

Ehh, use your other beacon spot on one of the reusable SP fountains and its no big deal.

 

[behold_a_man]

But taken on its own, MM4 was definitely a lot shorter and less interesting than MM3.

Interestingly, the game isn't really much smaller than Gates to Another World.
In Might & Magic 2, I visited 15163 map cells (the theoretical maximum is 60*16*16=15360) and annotated 1860 fields (but only 1479 if I exclude combat-related annotation).
In contrast, in Clouds of Xeen, I visited 14699 cells (without really venturing into the Darkside) and annotated 1055 cells.
Despite that and similar early game structure (in the second game, I started at level 7; in the fourth, the leveling is very quick in the beginning and traps are very sparse before getting neat spells), I felt like Gates took me, like, three or four times longer than Clouds. For me, it shows how bloated encounter design can influence playing time.
It's harder to compare Isles of Terra to Clouds, as Isles featured quite nasty puzzles, the early dungeon crawl was way more sluggish (as traps were plentiful), and leveling was much slower in the beginning.

 

[UndeadHalfOrc]

You're most likely right about MM2, and it has not only random encounters but every fixed encounter respawning contributes a lot to its gameplay time.

MM3 however, I felt had WAY more dungeons, especially in the early game. Almost every 5x5 square you clear has a dungeon, not even including town caverns which were mysteriously absent from MM4.
And those early dungeons as you pointed out, have lots of traps, and almost all of them inflict nasty status ailments.

 

[octavius]

MM4-5 had in practice real time combat, with not much thought involved, and far fewer enemies, so it was much quicker. And ditto boring.

 

[Butter]

It's a shame that there isn't a truly great M&M game. 2 comes closest, but level scaling and routinely battling 255 enemies compromise it. If you took the best aspects from all the games you could make something really special.

 

[octavius]

The number of enemies in MM2 is scaled to your level. So routinely battling 255 monster happens only if you grind, typically the 3 Cuisinarts. Otherwise you'll rarely see 100 enemies in one battle.

 

[Arbiter]

What is the best way to play MM6 today? With the Merge mod or some graphical mods? Does OpenEnroth support MM6?

 

[Arbiter]

The number of enemies in MM2 is scaled to your level.

And I thought Oblivion was bad.

 

[behold_a_man]

So, I've finished the World of Xeen:

Endings

And to recap my impressions:
I: The things that both Darkside and Clouds shared:
1) Both had visual polish and a wonderous soundtrack oozing a sense of adventure. Almost every monster had its own distinct icon (even if it appeared once in the entire game - like the Dragon King in Clouds) and a silly posture it showed when it got hit. Almost every dungeon had some previously unseen graphical quirk or item. The intro to Clouds, along with its score, is a thing of beauty, and the ending cinematics (Crodo and Burlock watching the party whacking subsequent monsters) were very witty. Overall, I don't think I saw many games as good audiovisually as this one.
2) For the first time in the Might & Magic series, I was lacking resources at some point of the games; I was short of gems in the Clouds (until I hit the Castle Basenji and then the Northern Sphinx), and then I was unable to use my experience for level-ups in the late Darkside as I had practically no gold.
3) Seemingly, the primary purpose of combat is to pace the game rather than give the player any sort of challenge (unlike in the previous two titles, where the world was densely filled with encounters); given the simplistic nature of combat, it makes sense, even if it's not necessarily a good decision (I believe that, in general, the sluggishness of exploration can add up to the identity of a place - for better or worse).
4) The primitive character of some dungeons really ground my gears. All towers needed exactly four comically small levels before ascending into the clouds. Similarly, all castles looked pretty much the same, although there was always something interesting going on there, as six of seven of them were plot-related. The issue was exacerbated on the Darkside as each city had sewers (for what? They weren't even bad, but some of them felt forced). It doesn't seem like a big problem, but half of the dungeons were either towers or castles - and most of them were puzzle-free, contributing to their general blandness.
5) What I liked was individuating each city. They became fully fledged dungeons rather than hubs, with different sizes, utilities, and purposes. Also, with small cities becoming less cluttered (as there were no unnecessary buildings - like training / smith / temple) each city could contain (and did contain) some driving theme or quest - like ghosts in Winterkill, snake curse in Asp or the witches of Lakeside. Furthermore, those tended to be the best quests in the game.
6) Teleport spell felt needlessly handicapped. Almost always, when I wanted to use it, I was unable to. It's quite a decline, since it did add options and variability to exploration in the previous titles.
7) At last, I saw some locations devoid of combat (like Escape Pods, or higher levels of the Great Pyramid). I believe it was preferable to do them that way, as places without encounters can create a different atmosphere (especially with a proper score - like Escape Pods).

II: About Clouds of Xeen
1) The game is practically devoid of any puzzles. Even if there was anything to unravel (like passwords for Dwarven Mines or Castle Basenji), the answer was trivial to obtain (and oftentimes placed within auto-notes in a spoilery order). It removes one layer from the memorability of a dungeon (the others are structure, loot, and boosts in this case).
2) Side quests are bad. Pretty much each one of them (except for some city quests) boils down to finding some item / place or killing some monster. There was nothing as unpredictable or oddish as, say, Princess Trueberry's quest in Terra or Mark's keys in Gates. Rewards were mostly banal (except for spells - which were mostly useless and obtainable through guilds, if I'm not mistaken).
3) Dungeons did have distinctive features - like the watery Cave of Illusion that I could drain, Dragon Cave with, guess who, dragons (and also taxation), or Deep Mines with the bizarre teleport system and unpredictable structures.
4) The pacing of the early game felt botched: I rose to around 9th level very quickly (after Vertigo and some Deep Mines), until that time I barely encountered any traps, and by the time I saw them, I had all the spells allowing me to ignore them (like cure disease / poison, levitate, and, generalizing, Day of Sorcery+Protection).
5) It's the second game in the series where progression was built towards mostly lower level adventure (below 20). I felt it made the endgame way more concise than in some previous entries - subsequent levels made a visible difference while fighting with dragons or diamond golems.

III: About Darkside of Xeen
1) Puzzles did get better: the Drawkcab monks' quest, the Northern Tower goblet puzzle, or the chests in Castleview were all pretty entertaining (and I haven't seen them in any earlier entry). I don't think I ever saw before a puzzle, that can be brute-forced with a topological ordering of a graph (which is a case for chests in Castleview). What I didn't like were the criminally small rewards for solving any of them.
2) Solving side quests provided items not attainable in any other way, like entrances to cities or dungeons - which is a step up from before; nonetheless, most quests were just as uninspired as before.
3) I liked the idea of the Skyroad as an additional way of getting into places.

IV: The ending (add-on? everything after the showdown between Sheltem and Corak) is very bad and clearly unfinished:
1) Elemental planes are just as barren and futile as in the Gates to Another World.
2) It's the first time I encountered severe

bugs

in this series: the game was crashing if I scrolled low enough in Auto-notes, and the traps within the Southern Sphinx sometimes crashed the screen. Once I saw a Skeletal Lich, that couldn't get me as it was behind an invisible wall. To make matters worse, insect spray didn't work on them.
3) Almost all new monsters used the same icons as in the earlier games, and the new ones were not aesthetically spectacular, to put it bluntly. Some icons from Isles of Terra were re-used (for example, the throne and traps within the Southern Sphinx), rather than new ones - which is a surprise given the game's graphical polish and a disaster given the bugs they induced. There was no new part of the soundtrack.
4) Worst of all, the dungeons were almost universally uninspired or outright botched: the first floor of the Dungeon of Death was great, the third was passable, the Dragon Clouds were neat, and the rest was between bad and atrocious.
5) The only really interesting rewards at the end of the game could be stats, levels, and some resistances. Of course, almost all rewards (especially in the Dungeon of Death past the first floor) boiled down to experience (which was useless without huge amounts of money) and equipment (which was also pretty useless at that point).
In summary, it had no element that made (in my eyes) both Clouds and Darkside admirable, but it introduced a plethora of problems and bad content.

Overall, I think I preferred Isles of Terra to this one - World of Xeen improved upon the production values but was a downgrade in terms of puzzles, quests, and general exploration. Also, the game took a nosedive at the very end.

 

[catfood]

Great game. 10/10

 

[Kayato]

Finished MM2 yesterday, honestly I preferred MM1 in many aspects (I've never played MM and I'm playing them all in order).
it is undeniable that they have made progress both in terms of graphics, animations, functions and QoL, but I found the world blander and the quest less compelling.

Visually great improvements (I'm playing the GOG versions, I imagine they are the IBM-DOS ones) more colors, more details, animations, day and night cycle and NPCs! However, stairs, entrances to dungeons continue to be missing and above all I often missed them because I was in the correct square but I was looking from the wrong side!
Not having to select the party every time I start the game and the better party management were welcome additions! Also the spellbook and other functions in overlay.

Things I didn't like:
The world, unfortunately I'm not a big fan of the "4 elements", perhaps because I've already played too many games with this theme, but I understand that at the time it was still a "novelty". Then there are choices they made that in my opinion ruined the exploration of the world. Making all 5 cities accessible and easily accessible immediately took away a bit of that sense of exploration that is in "reaching the next city" as a next step to improve the party and also a purpose for exploring the world. Before exploring the world I already had my party with 2 hirelings with all +4 gear and all secondary skills!
This is another "mistake" (again IMHO) giving immediate access to all the skills, being able to immediately cross all the mountains and forests (and almost immediately even the waters) made all the external maps bland and anonymous as if they were gigantic car parks with some events every now and then. Only if the PC with that ability died was I forced to follow the established paths of the terrain. The "elemental barriers" were also a disappointment: I thought I wouldn't be able to cross them immediately or find great challenges beyond... but not really.
Instead, the river that crosses various maps and the "cruise" were small details that I appreciated.

Talking about Quest in MM1 I had understood what the main quest was (even without any introductory plot) and I had a sense of progression since I was (almost) always told what to do next. In this I couldn't distinguish between main and side quests! I thought the quests for each class were "extras" to obtain some specific high-level item, a bit like those dungeons that didn't allow access to certain classes!
This also reminds me of all the enemy "sex" resistances and areas off-limits to classes or races, really annoying.

Speaking of the Hirelings, they are a novelty that I appreciated, I used Barbarian and Ninja to try all the classes but for a second game I would definitely use 2 spellcasters. Furthermore, I would have gathered them first in the same city and used them as a "wardrobe" for all those "useful but not immediately" objects to keep aside! From a certain point of view I appreciate the inventiveness behind the mechanics to obtain Elemental Orb, but on the other hand I imagine the great frustration at the time! But I have to admit that it amused me!
-The Orb won't let us leave the cave!
-Hey you, take the Orb and go away! We don't want you anymore!
-Mkay...
(shortly afterwards at the inn)
-Hey you, do you still have the Orb?
-Yep
-Do you want to come back to the adventure with us?
-Mkay

Good and now it's time for 3! Do PCs still matter? Some advice?
Ah, I forgot, I really appreciate the monsters, I took screenshots of all the models for the first (I think) for the second, can they be found somewhere in everyone's .gif or can they be extracted somehow?

 

[Cohesion]

Great game. 10/10

Fuck you, bro. Reinstalling now!

 

[behold_a_man]

Good and now it's time for 3! Do PCs still matter? Some advice?

YOLO, it's very hard to screw yourself over with the party composition here.

I agree with pretty much everything you wrote except this:

Talking about Quest in MM1 I had understood what the main quest was (even without any introductory plot) and I had a sense of progression since I was (almost) always told what to do next. In this I couldn't distinguish between main and side quests! I thought the quests for each class were "extras" to obtain some specific high-level item, a bit like those dungeons that didn't allow access to certain classes!

It was possible to figure it out:

Spoilers

1) Lamanda says:

2) On the mount Fairview there was a remark:

Which explains the 'Plus'.

3) Below Middlegate there was a remark:
"Win the Blackest battles and you are halfway to an audience with Queen Lamanda."
So the "Triple crown" is related to some 'Blackest battles'. And below Atlantium:
"Buy tickets to the Arena, the Monster Bowl and the Colosseum at your local blacksmith. Hurry, limited time offer."
"Buy a key from a locksmith and win battle of the same color in each forum. Go then to the castles and find a bishop of that key color's battle."
Which should indicate, what needs to be done (there was probably a more precise note about it in some cave, but I can't find it).

4) And if not for that, red notes give us everything we need:
To right ancient wrongs, the solution is very long. The Triple Crown must first be done, with Arena, Monster Bowl and Colosseum to be won. Next, the party must split individually so that each may fulfill their personal destiny. Request an audience with the Queen so the Chosen One can be seen. Travel through time with Talons and Orb. Save the dead King from destruction and get the password. Then visit the lake geometrics to find passage to that which you must hurriedly fix. JVC

So there are at least two ways to get the necessary information.

I preferred the quest to be more cryptic, it was one of the more entertaining challenges of this game. Also, it justified keeping spatial information along with screenshots from the game - in the end, it wasn't hard for me to figure everything out when I had all the data tied to the places where I saw them.

 

[Kayato]

Let me explain a little better about the quests:

Spoiler

The messages in the red notes clarify everything but they were among the last things I found! What I meant was that the queen's quest I thought was a side quest like that of the other rulers in the other castles, given that in MM1 you only got repeatable quests in the castles and having also found similar quests in MM2 in two castles I thought this one was similar too , perhaps more complex but similar. Of course I should have paid more attention to the fact that Corak's assistant was in the previous room.