Might and Magic The Might and Magic Discussion Thread

[Efe]

can any class become any other class?
or only peasants become everything?

 

[Rinslin Merwind]

can any class become any other class?
or only peasants become everything?

I have managed to do this only with peasants. After fucking around in attempts to gain daggers skill as fast as possible, I cannot confidentially reassure you, but I think it's the only way.

 

[Invictus]

So I've been replaying WoX for the first time in a little over a decade (I believe this is my fourth playthrough overall, discounting incomplete starts). I'm roughly 2/3 of the way through Clouds, and I have barely touched Darkside at all, so I still have quite a way to go.

Some thoughts:

-Red Dwarf Mines aren't as bad as I remembered. They're definitely the weakest dungeon in terms of design/layout/art, but it's also much more apparent to me that you're meant to come and go while exploring the overworld, and not just bruteforce your way through the deep mines.

-Exploration remains a genre-high for me. Few games can rival WoX's sense of grandeur and openness. It's legitimately exciting to gain new traversal skills/spells, and the game never holds you by the hand to show you where you can go and what you can do. Unfortunately, even 10+ years after playing the game, meta-knowledge does dampen this (which brings me to the next point).

-Going to Darkside early completely breaks Clouds, much more so than I remembered. Getting 100,000 xp from a fucking copy-protection puzzle (potentially at level 1) just utterly trivializes the first 1/3 of Clouds. Same with getting mountaineering, swimming, or pathfinding at level 1. I get that they were trying to allow players who bought V but not IV a chance to skill up, but the implementation leaves much to be desired.

-I forgot how many spells serve utilitarian/traversal purposes. Levitate, Jump, Walk on Water, teleport, etc.; the spellbook is very PNP DND, and that's awesome, more games should learn from this.

-The UI, although inarguably ahead of its time, leaves something to be desired. I think a lot of the time that people are singing the praises of WoX's UI, what they really mean is that it has an excellent control scheme and a slightly better than average UI. The game plays very fluidly (especially with a numpad) once you know all the keyboard shortcuts, but the actual UI elements outside of the animated gargoyles (the item menu, the unannotatable map, the awful char gen/party deletion at NG) are cumbersome as fuck. Ultima Underworld had an overall superior UI IMO (I know the'yre different kinds of games).

-Combat remains as underwhelming as always. It's fast, so it's completely tolerable, but as a result some of the more combat heavy dungeons encourage cheesey behavior (rest-spam, Lloyd's Beacon spam) a bit much for my taste. Of particular note are the dungeons which inflict the insane status (which I forgot was uncurable outside of temples before Mandate of Heaven). It's not rage-inducing, but it is tedious.

-General obfuscation of stats. I know, I know, I can go to the smith and identify items, or I can learn the identify monster spell, and it's a cool nod to PNP roots, but in practice it's just not fun in a crpg. I want to be able to make quick and concise decisions about the optimal course of action/equipment and not waste time casting spells. Maybe I've just gotten acclimated to the popamole tendencies of the modern world, but I don't think so; WoX is basically the popamole of its era after all.

I'm excited to get to Darkside, which from memory is largely a straight-up improvement over Clouds in terms of content. Currently in Clouds I have the Northern Sphinx, Darzog's Tower, the Volcano, and the Golem Dungeon all open to me, so I'm not too far from getting into the good stuff. I'll try and weigh in with thoughts again after another 20 hours.

Interesting points especially about the UI since its predecessor (Terra) was arguably one of the first interfaces that had interactive displays which you could see at a glance all the various spell effects and status ailments reflected right there on the screen so I daresay it has not only aged very well but largely unsurpassed on even modern games which have elaborated on mechanics and graphics but keep everything behind different screens and oblique systems.

As for the fountains... I think that it is not an exploit if the designers of the game allowed for it in the first place; especially on the design philosophy of Might and Magic where the front end of the dungeon has more manageable monsters while the back end often has the heavy hitters which do require a bit more buffing

The fountain are there in case you want to micromanage and bruteforce your way into the game but I don’t consider anything specially placed there by designers to be an exploit per se
Now selling an almost depleted wand to repurchase it at full charge its another matter

 

[Storyfag]

So, has anyone managed to assemble the golem in MMMerge? How?

 

[<3sRichardSimmons]

So I've been replaying WoX for the first time in a little over a decade (I believe this is my fourth playthrough overall, discounting incomplete starts). I'm roughly 2/3 of the way through Clouds, and I have barely touched Darkside at all, so I still have quite a way to go.

Some thoughts:

-Red Dwarf Mines aren't as bad as I remembered. They're definitely the weakest dungeon in terms of design/layout/art, but it's also much more apparent to me that you're meant to come and go while exploring the overworld, and not just bruteforce your way through the deep mines.

-Exploration remains a genre-high for me. Few games can rival WoX's sense of grandeur and openness. It's legitimately exciting to gain new traversal skills/spells, and the game never holds you by the hand to show you where you can go and what you can do. Unfortunately, even 10+ years after playing the game, meta-knowledge does dampen this (which brings me to the next point).

-Going to Darkside early completely breaks Clouds, much more so than I remembered. Getting 100,000 xp from a fucking copy-protection puzzle (potentially at level 1) just utterly trivializes the first 1/3 of Clouds. Same with getting mountaineering, swimming, or pathfinding at level 1. I get that they were trying to allow players who bought V but not IV a chance to skill up, but the implementation leaves much to be desired.

-I forgot how many spells serve utilitarian/traversal purposes. Levitate, Jump, Walk on Water, teleport, etc.; the spellbook is very PNP DND, and that's awesome, more games should learn from this.

-The UI, although inarguably ahead of its time, leaves something to be desired. I think a lot of the time that people are singing the praises of WoX's UI, what they really mean is that it has an excellent control scheme and a slightly better than average UI. The game plays very fluidly (especially with a numpad) once you know all the keyboard shortcuts, but the actual UI elements outside of the animated gargoyles (the item menu, the unannotatable map, the awful char gen/party deletion at NG) are cumbersome as fuck. Ultima Underworld had an overall superior UI IMO (I know the'yre different kinds of games).

-Combat remains as underwhelming as always. It's fast, so it's completely tolerable, but as a result some of the more combat heavy dungeons encourage cheesey behavior (rest-spam, Lloyd's Beacon spam) a bit much for my taste. Of particular note are the dungeons which inflict the insane status (which I forgot was uncurable outside of temples before Mandate of Heaven). It's not rage-inducing, but it is tedious.

-General obfuscation of stats. I know, I know, I can go to the smith and identify items, or I can learn the identify monster spell, and it's a cool nod to PNP roots, but in practice it's just not fun in a crpg. I want to be able to make quick and concise decisions about the optimal course of action/equipment and not waste time casting spells. Maybe I've just gotten acclimated to the popamole tendencies of the modern world, but I don't think so; WoX is basically the popamole of its era after all.

I'm excited to get to Darkside, which from memory is largely a straight-up improvement over Clouds in terms of content. Currently in Clouds I have the Northern Sphinx, Darzog's Tower, the Volcano, and the Golem Dungeon all open to me, so I'm not too far from getting into the good stuff. I'll try and weigh in with thoughts again after another 20 hours.

Interesting points especially about the UI since its predecessor (Terra) was arguably one of the first interfaces that had interactive displays which you could see at a glance all the various spell effects and status ailments reflected right there on the screen so I daresay it has not only aged very well but largely unsurpassed on even modern games which have elaborated on mechanics and graphics but keep everything behind different screens and oblique systems.

As for the fountains... I think that it is not an exploit if the designers of the game allowed for it in the first place; especially on the design philosophy of Might and Magic where the front end of the dungeon has more manageable monsters while the back end often has the heavy hitters which do require a bit more buffing

The fountain are there in case you want to micromanage and bruteforce your way into the game but I don’t consider anything specially placed there by designers to be an exploit per se
Now selling an almost depleted wand to repurchase it at full charge its another matter

?

I didn’t say anything about the fountains. I rarely use them outside of early early game, because their status effects don’t last very long.

Regarding your comments on the UI, unless I’ve been missing something for the last 30 years, that’s just not true. If one of your characters has multiple status afflictions you have to open the character menu and then examine the condition in order to see all of them.

 

[fantadomat]

It is a shame that they chose the most retarded spell system of them all,also missing the fire blast. Should have used the mm6 spell book,not that chaotic garb age from mm7.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

Does this mod need further patching? Are all cutscenes shown? Am I thinking wrong (since its effectively an mm8 mod), but you can basically play 6-8 with same characters with/without mob scaling?

 

[Kaldurenik]

I have not run into anything that causes any serious issues for the mod so far.
You can play 6 7 8 with the same characters.
You can also unlock extra options (races / class combinations).
I think you can edit, change or even remove mob scaling but I have not tried it.

Over at (page 37):
https://docs.google.com/document/d/...li8_APq3a_ECxmZ3o/edit#heading=h.oj30u56p9rl7
You can see how promotions work for the classes.

 

[Grampy_Bone]

With the world of enroth mod--is there a way to get widescreen and hardware acceleration in MM6? Also the UI seemed to change and get messed up from quitting and restarting the game.

*edit* nm figured it out

 

[grimer]

just curious which combat system do you guys prefer to play mm6-8 in? i feel like the games were designed around rt mode but it really trivializes a lot of the combat in the early to mid game when you can just dodge spells and kite enemies with arrows. also some of the spells dont seem work in tb mode i think (e.g. crowd control spells)

 

[Cyberarmy]

I mostly use RT for clearing basic mobs, outside areas. TB for dungeons and harder monsters.

 

[jackofshadows]

RT all the way with some rare exceptions (the dwarf dungeon ambush in mm6 for instance). I used to switch in TB often but RT is more fun.

 

[Desiderius]

Unfortunately for whatever reason RT seems far more powerful. Had to give up IX run when RT obliterated everything while TB on the same foes was high risk.

 

[lukaszek]

depends on party and whether you require some heals in given fight.

If you are in auto attack or auto cast sparks mode(yes, whole party), then obviously RT. Im sure that my playthroughs were 99% RT

 

[Invictus]

I mostly do TB, feels like the game was designed to be that way from the development and then someone at the office played Doom, RT can be exploited in so many ways like jumping over enemies, flying to get out of the way of spells etc
I am in the Werewolf lair right now and holy shit everything seemed to be going ok and the boom attacked by like 30 werewolves at the same time; no way you can do that in RT

 

[Efe]

So finally truth comes out, RT is easier.
TB is the monocled answer

 

[J_C]

When the enemy is stronger and my characters might be in danger, I use TB to be able to direct my attacks more efficiently. When I am overpowered and just mowing down enemies, I'm using RT.

 

[jackofshadows]

flying to get out of the way of spells etc

Ackchyally, this exploit works in TB as well. Shooting enemies from afar is way better in TB, speaking of difficulty. Kiting in VI-VII is also better in TB by u-turn every time you move away.

I don't mind TB but lack of movement option in VI is sad.

What RT is far better in general is dodging and last time I played VI-VIII had a lot of fun using range parties which are squishy and essentially must rely on RT dodge in order to survive.

 

[Efe]

once you fly, you just kite up/down while in tb

 

[Lonely Vazdru]

Turn based for me. I hardly ever use real time, it feels more like a shooter than a RPG. I have little love left for arcade games.

 

[Storyfag]

TB all the way.

 

[Rinslin Merwind]

Storyfag I know, it's probably too late, but my party reached Alvar (in hopes that master merchant there would not require 50 personality to train and these hopes was crushed) and almost every fucking house offered to peasant in my party a conversion into Dark Elf. So I guess you can make a mm8 class from peasant.

 

[fantadomat]

lol playing mm games on tb,sad
Clearly storyfag is too old and decrepit,shame that he won't live enough to see SOON happening .

 

[Efe]

having vampire/elf skill as martial class when you have 1 mp from meditation is so pointless... I guess they didnt balance that part at all...
you dont get sp from int/per either and focusing on it means gimping yourself thoroughly

1filemods under extras makes races a lot more meaningful though some races getting 3 ranks is a bit overkill

 

[<3sRichardSimmons]

Is there a means of boosting elemental protection beyond Day of Protection, Protection from Elements, shrines and permanent boosts in WoX? I just did the Volcano cave, but I couldn’t reach the demon/devil spawn points without party wiping from the lava, even with teleport manipulation. I don’t remember having that much trouble doing so on previous playthroughs, but perhaps I just did it after some Darkside content. In other news my party is now level 19 and I’ve completed everything Cloudside except the Northern Sphinx, half of the dragon cave, and Castle Xeen (and all the locations tied to Darkside of course). I think I’m just going to do Castle Xeen right now since I don’t have any chars that meet the stat requirements for the loot in the other locations.
Darkside here we come!