Might and Magic The Might and Magic Discussion Thread

[Luzur]

My guys are around lvl 30 in MM3 now. I'm getting a bit tired of the popamole combat (if you hit the S key twice quickly you get two missile attacks), though.
The only enemy that has caused serious trouble was a minotaur; nothing worked against him.
I miss those epic, nail biting fights from MM2.

One thing that bugs me a bit is that many actions take a day to resolve, like any action in a Temple takes one day, and activating some wells take a whole day.
I usually set my self a goal of completing a game as fast as possible in-game time, but I was rather annoyed when I discovered that going to a temple to heal would take 8 days when I could have gotten the same effect - for free - by resting for 8 hours.

This game really requires meticilous note keeping. First time I played I missed out on how to de-activate the force field in the Cathedral of Carnage, and I never found the Fountain of Youth on the island in Piranha Bay.


I was wondering two things:

1. The Wishing Well - a red herring?

2. The illusionary chests on the Isles of Illusion: do they ever turn real? I though they would do so on da 50, 60 or 99, but no luck.

Force Field = say JVC aloud.

Wishing Well = i think you can only do something with it ona certain day, cant remember.

Fountain of Youth = say that you have your YOUTH to a pyramid.

the chests = can only be opened on the birthday/wedding day of one of those dead wizards.

day 99 is the date for Rainbow island, which the monks are supposed to tell ya if you do their little run around game, but due to a bug they never do.

 

[Falkner]

 

[kmonster]

day 99 is the date for Rainbow island, which the monks are supposed to tell ya if you do their little run around game, but due to a bug they never do.

Only if you get a bugged version from a pirate site, in the other versions (like as part of the Might and Magic sixpack which is sold for half price at gog.com currently) there is no such bug.

 

[octavius]

Force Field = say JVC aloud.

Fountain of Youth = say that you have your YOUTH to a pyramid.

I found this out this time playing, but obviously I didn't take enough notes first time I played. This time I make screenshots of anything possibly useful and have so far 650 images in my Capture/MM3 folder.

the chests = can only be opened on the birthday/wedding day of one of those dead wizards.

I tried on one of the wedding days (50 or 60), but I'll try again.

day 99 is the date for Rainbow island, which the monks are supposed to tell ya if you do their little run around game, but due to a bug they never do.

Only if you get a bugged version from a pirate site, in the other versions (like as part of the Might and Magic sixpack which is sold for half price at gog.com currently) there is no such bug.

Yes, my version of MM3 is from the Might and Magic Trilogy and did not have that bug.

 

[Luzur]

day 99 is the date for Rainbow island, which the monks are supposed to tell ya if you do their little run around game, but due to a bug they never do.

Only if you get a bugged version from a pirate site, in the other versions (like as part of the Might and Magic sixpack which is sold for half price at gog.com currently) there is no such bug.

the original diskette version (which i also have) have this bug, you had to send a letter in to NWC to get a disk with a patch/new disks, if i remember correctly.

 

[kmonster]

the original diskette version (which i also have) have this bug, you had to send a letter in to NWC to get a disk with a patch/new disks, if i remember correctly.

You're right, the oldest version had this bug. But since those disks were exchanged and I doubt anyone plays from 20 year old diskettes now it's safe to assume that players suffering from this bug now got their version from pirate sites.

 

[Luzur]

i thought most torrent/pirate versions came from the Trilogy/Millenium collections?

 

[DaveO]

I don't believe that Millenium Edition had issues with the DOS games included(Worlds of Xeen and Swords of Xeen). There are plenty of compilation editions out there though, so I can't guarantee that all of them are bug free(the earlier compilation editions may have bugs in comparison to the Limited or Millenium Editions).

 

[Sceptic]

You're right, the oldest version had this bug. But since those disks were exchanged and I doubt anyone plays from 20 year old diskettes now it's safe to assume that players suffering from this bug now got their version from pirate sites.

Other way round actually. I never got to exchange my disks from back then, and created images of all my floppy games in the mid-90s to ensure I wouldn't lose them when the disks eventually demagnetized, so my floppy version has the bugs but my "borrowed" version doesn't (it's the M&M Classics).

(the earlier compilation editions may have bugs in comparison to the Limited or Millenium Editions).

As far as I know all the old compilation of 1-5 have the official patches applied, so other than MM3's never-fixed bugs (and MM2's rolling-over stats) they're all fine.

 

[octavius]

2. The illusionary chests on the Isles of Illusion: do they ever turn real? I though they would do so on da 50, 60 or 99, but no luck.

They do turn real on a particular day but I don't remember which one. Possibly day 1?
Fake edit: actually they're real on Onesday.

Just found it out in-game in the Cursed Cold Cavern. Looks like I was supposed to have explored that cave much earlier, since there was quite a bit of info that would have been useful earlier in the game, and I finally found the Black Terror Key.
Also found some Ancient Artifacts, but with two of the castles in ruins (nice C&C) they were worthless.

I only have four dungeons left now, so maybe I'll finish the game by tomorrow.

 

[Luzur]

you are supposed to gather all of those artifacts and portion out the PO's so you can turn all of those artifacts in before you are blocked to do so.

 

[octavius]

you are supposed to gather all of those artifacts and portion out the PO's so you can turn all of those artifacts in before you are blocked to do so.

Oh well, I lose some XP. My guys are around lvl 60 now, so the couple of levels I would have got from the Ancient Artifacts don't matter much. Fortunately the AAs can be discarded.

Just did the Tomb of Terror, so now it's the Dragon Cave left before the big finale with the Maze from Hell and the final Pyramid.
Except for the one Minotaur I met earlier in the game the only mildly scary enemies so far have been the Liches with their death rays. Most annoying is the Witches with their Curse rays.
MM3 is like a stroll in a kindergarden compared to MM2.
And with that overconfident show of bravado I guess I'll be buttfucked in the last two dungeons...

 

[Admiral jimbob]

Nope, I found M&M3 pretty easy as my first game in the series. By contrast, I found WoX pretty tough. This appears to be the opposite of everyone else.

 

[Humanity has risen!]

Yeah MM2 is really tough. You soon run out of easy places to go to, and then all the following ones have very strong enemies that are practically impossible to beat without a lot of grinding.

 

[octavius]

Damned, that Minotaur King was a badass. Only my Barbarian did any real damage to him.
If I were to powerplay MM3 I'd have 4 Barbarians, one Sorc, one Cleric and one Ninja.

Yeah MM2 is really tough. You soon run out of easy places to go to, and then all the following ones have very strong enemies that are practically impossible to beat without a lot of grinding.

Unless you import characters from MM1 you only have to grind the first 6-7 levels.
After that you don't really need to grind; you just need to chose your places to explore carefully. The Identify Monster spell is quite useful as it gives the ID number of the monster - the higher numbered the higher level the monsters are.
But MM2 is a mix of scaling to your level and to area, so some areas, like the Ice Cave or Nomad's Rift will have low level fixed encounters, but higher level random encounters if you go there too late.

 

[octavius]

On third try, and after 20 years, I finally completed MM3:

I completed the game on day 26 of year 509. Too many days wasted in the temple in Fountain Head.
My guys were around lvl 90 (two hirelings at lvl 81-82), and I had 13 million gold.

 

[Jaesun]

heh 3 has that... space ship at the end right?

 

[groke]

On third try, and after 20 years, I finally completed MM3:

(snip)

I completed the game on day 26 of year 509. Too many days wasted in the temple in Fountain Head.
My guys were around lvl 90 (two hirelings at lvl 81-82), and I had 13 million gold.

Congrats! It's day 89 of 509 in my game and I'm only halfway.

I hope you didn't play the entire thing in that window, though, because oh my aspect ratio.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Decided to buy the MM pack of GOG and started playing 3 again today. I don't have the weird time issue with temples you seem to be having- I've cleared fountain head + dungeon and I'm only ~10 days in or so. And some of that was wandering outside for the orc + goblin camps and accidentally resting. And training of course. Party is Ninja/Ranger/Clericx2/Sorcx2. Should be a cakewalk. All the damage/defense in melee comes from buffs lategame anyways. I cleared Xeen with a 2 man party by abusing that fact.

 

[Luzur]

heh 3 has that... space ship at the end right?

 

[octavius]

I hope you didn't play the entire thing in that window, though, because oh my aspect ratio.

Heh, didn't notice that.
I usually check the correct aspect ratio box, though.

Decided to buy the MM pack of GOG and started playing 3 again today. I don't have the weird time issue with temples you seem to be having- I've cleared fountain head + dungeon and I'm only ~10 days in or so. And some of that was wandering outside for the orc + goblin camps and accidentally resting. And training of course. Party is Ninja/Ranger/Clericx2/Sorcx2. Should be a cakewalk. All the damage/defense in melee comes from buffs lategame anyways. I cleared Xeen with a 2 man party by abusing that fact.

I just did a test with both the original and the patched version and it does take one day to get a blessing from a temple. Didn't matter if it was only one character or the whole party, though. If I had paid more attention I could have found out more details about how things works, but I was often susprised at how much time had passed and it took me three years game time before I was able to complete the Greywind and Blackwind quests due to this.

I never used any buffs myself, except for donating at the temples in the beginning, and casting Protection from Elements when needed later in the game. If the game had been more difficult I guess I would have used Heroism and other buffs. For the most difficult enemies I just spammed Implosion anyway. In the end only a handful of enemies were a threat and I only had to reload a couple of times.
So I kind of regret not using the Monster Respawn mod as it would have made things more challenging and perpaps more "balanced", but it would also have meant much more not very exciting combat.

Also, I think I only rested two times during the whole game, as it was just so much more effective to just replenish HP and SP by leveling up.

 

[Falkner]

"Congratulations! You have just freed the kingdom from an enormously powerful skullfaced villain who has a castle in the skies, keeps a pet dragon and can only be hurt by a special sword forged solely to slay him. Truly you are the heroes of our time. Now go visit the other side of the planet, where you'll likely be annihilated by an ARMADILLO. Have fun."

While it does make sense that the Darkside is a much more hostile world, it really takes the steam out of what is basically the midgame of WoX. It probably works much better if you play Clouds and Darkside as separate games.

 

[Jaesun]

heh 3 has that... space ship at the end right?

CLIP

Ahhh thanks. It's been a while and I couldn't remember if it that was in 3 or 4. I liked that level.

 

[Damned Registrations]

The real kicker is that the weapon used to slay Xeen pretty much oneshots everything in Darkside. I forget the exact mechanics of it but it's obscenely overpowered. Definitely some unresolved issues with the merging of the two games.

 

[Falkner]

The real kicker is that the weapon used to slay Xeen pretty much oneshots everything in Darkside. I forget the exact mechanics of it but it's obscenely overpowered. Definitely some unresolved issues with the merging of the two games.

Huh, really? It has a fairly normal damage range.