Might and Magic The Might and Magic Discussion Thread

[Crispy]

I admit that I do put on rose-colored glasses when it comes to the classics, and I do and have give(n) M&M X its due praise, but no one is going to come here to this particular website and denigrate the Might & Magic series on a whole and not have me throw my cane and dentures at them in protest.

 

[MajorMace]

@crispy when reading your comments I do wonder if you played mmx at all.
races+classes combo being unique tuple stands of in the series. Combat is tactical as opposed to prebuffing and auto attack/cast spamming. With occasional loyd beacon and/or invis.
Whole areas can be locked to you if you dont include specific race in your rooster.

Yet you keep making those wild claims

The skills comment is a fair one to make, but you cannot stand by an implication that X's character creation and development on a whole surpasses anything M&M before it.

Utterly unfair and disingenuous. You know as well as I do that X has "simple" gameplay as well. The Might and Magic series has never been known for its tactical complexity.

Either you misremember mmx or rest of the series. Mind you that you keep making unfair comparrisons, like if mmx needs to beat in every asspect every other game in the series. Yet my claim is that in those areas indeed it does. As such it does reserve recognition, well at least mine. It did push series in right direction, alas it was doomed to fail even before the release

I finally got around to X last year and was surprised how much strategic play there was to it, along with the depth of the devotion to the lore. Felt a little unfinished (though not nearly as unfinished as IX) but ultimately a fitting tribute.

You're a good man Desiderius. And M&MX indeed deserves a mention. Its budget was abysmal. The devs were inexperienced. Ubisoft clearly didn't give a shit. But Julien Pirou (pbuh) still gave it some love.

I take advantage of the situation to plug Pirou's p&p tribute to M&M : Lore & Legacy.

 

[Radiane]

So, the last time I did play Darkside of Xeen, I distinctly remember that every (?) place on the surface of the worldmap had been "cleared" from monsters, and my heroes were all around level 50, but in reality they could have reached level 90 or beyond but there simply was nowhere any more sufficient money to be found (because leveling up in the training hall costs money)...

And leveling up gets progressively more expensive the higher level you achieve. But without money I just tried my luck with my level 50-party and went up to the clouds (the only place left to explore in the game i think) where my party was brutally wiped out by some cloud dragon or some similar monster. I'm sure that I could have beaten that monster had I some more level ups, but without any possibility to aqcuire any money, it was pretty much a fruitless endeavor.

I must have been pretty damn near the end of the game, but I was so frustrated that I finally erased the game from my harddrive including all save files because it was just frustrating being so stuck in the game. It has been quite a few years when I did play M&M V (i'm pretty sure it was standalone 5, without 4, so no World of Xeen), and it remains the only game I did play from the series

Does this sound familiar to any of you? Is it really possible that you can get into a situation like this, where you have no more money left to efficiently level up and are hanging back literally dozens of levels ?

 

[Butter]

I recall having oodles of money, and pushing my characters up to level 90, only to then realize that I needed 2 million gold in the final WoX dungeon. I had to farm gems from the Darkside mountains and get rare items to sell so I could finish.

 

[Average Manatee]

You must have missed some dungeons, I think pre-uniting the world you should be able to get to at least level 60ish. Granted its very easy to miss dungeons when there's nothing in the log or anything. The log is great for just about everything except telling you where dungeons are and about the keys to open them.

But the main thing to know is the fountains

Hit the 2.5k HP well (this boosts you past your max so you can have like 3-3.5k HP), +100 resist (applies to all resists, not just elemental), +15 levels (boosts buffs and APR). There's also a +1000 SP well in darkside, and you can choose between the +100 luck (boosts your resistances... somehow, according to guides) or +50 speed on lightside (makes you go first against most enemies). Ideally you have decent base resists from permanent boosts and equipment, resists are basically the only character stat that matters once you've hit the 50 stat soft cap, aside from speed. Well, and aside from just having a busted high level, like my level 255 Ninja who buffs the party, everyone else ended around level 80-85.

The game tells you that every character can have a separate Lloyd's Beacon up in one of the hints at the tavern for a reason.

I recall having oodles of money, and pushing my characters up to level 90, only to then realize that I needed 2 million gold in the final WoX dungeon. I had to farm gems from the Darkside mountains and get rare items to sell so I could finish.

I should remember this since I literally just played it, but isn't this paying for a safe way through a bunch of traps that you otherwise have to walk through? My solution for that was to just keep recasting Lloyd's and dipping back to the 2.5k HP well every few steps. The traps in that dungeon are busted tough. If the 2M gold wasn't for that then I probably just paid it and wasn't paying attention, I wasn't really manually leveling people past level 50 until the finale since there wasn't much point. Like I said, all you get on characters aside from the one casting buffs is a very minor amount of HP.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

I forget if the Bank has interest every day for gold and gems? Same for MM3 maybe. I swear I was making a killing in the bank unless I am yhinking of another game.

Lesseee

1) How exactly does interest at the bank work?

2) I see that the hireling The Raven is 134 years old! I know that as characters age they get penalties. Is it the same with hirelings? How does aging work for them?

Thanks in advance for any input on these question!
1. A week is 10 days. On the first day of each week, at 5 AM, your bank account funds increase by 1%. (Note that there are only 10 weeks in a year, so this amounts to 10% interest compounded weekly.) Both gold and gems are increased. This probably won't be an issue if you play normally, but if your bank account passes 2 billion, your bank account may overflow and become negative or small. Shops also stock new inventory at this time.

2. Aging works the same way it does for your characters. The penalties are manageable: at 101, the penalty is only -20 to physical stats. At 201, the penalty increases to 50. (Note that this is a sudden increase.) Strength, Speed, Endurance, and Accuracy go down. Intelligence and Personality actually increase. Death from old age can only happen if one of your stats is 0 or less (but can happen regardless of age if, for example, poison or insanity lowered a stat to 0).

3, You didn't mention it, but World of Xeen works the same way, as does Swords of Xeen.

My questions are:
-What is the effect of aging?
-Can I actually die from old age?
-If some of my party dies from old age can I just recruit other, younger, characters and keep the money I have in the bank?
-Has anyone ever done this and can advise on the best way to go about it?
Thanks!

Answers:
Excessive age will begin to add a penalty to some stats, eventually characters will die of "old age" (actually they die because their endurance (and therefore their HP) reaches 0, so they can't be resurrected because they have no HP), and yes, you can replace them as they get old.
Best way to do it is to complete Vertigo, clearing out all the slimes and bugs, level up a couple times, then tell the mirror "Rivercity" to go straight there. If you don't clear Vertigo and level up, you might have some difficulty with the beggars. Once in Rivercity, go to the work place, work for a year, back to the bank, put it in, repeat. Eventually the interest is higher than the money you're making so putting it in the bank isn't as important as just wasting time really fast.
DO NOT GO ABOVE 4 billion! You can have 4 billion(ish) gold in the bank, and another 4 billion in hand. If you add more, it will wrap around to 0 and all that time will be wasted. I suggest stopping at about 3 billion in both hand and bank.
Once you've got your 6 billion combined or your characters are 60 years old, just go to the inn and replace them. They all start at level 1, so buy some good weapons and then tell the mirror "Warzone" so you can fight a few low level monsters to replace the ones you defeated with the first group. Should add a few days, but you need the extra experience.
And then you'll never be wanting for money again, and no other ill effects will happen. The story proceeds as normal and no one else has aged, even though it's now 50 or 60 years later.
There are bits of unused code that I've come across which suggest that there was supposed to be a time limit, but it's incomplete so the idea was probably scrapped.

------
When I needed cash for training at the end of Xeen, here's what I did.
First, make sure you have at least one merchant to handle buying and selling (I train all of my characters as merchants anyway), and put most of your gold in the bank - it earns interest.
1) Teleport to each town and buy up any expensive nonmagical armor (i.e. no prefix or suffix), namely plate mail and plate armor.
2) Use the Enchant Item spell to enchant the armor, then resell it for profit. If you want to speed things up, save your game first, and reload until you get pricy results like obsidian and diamond (this also lets you cut out unfavorable results like wood or leather).
3) Bank your profits from step 2, then visit the taskmaster and work for a week. Afterwards, you'll find that all the shops have restocked and you've earned some interest on your banked gold.
Repeat steps 1-3 as long as you like. Keep as much of your gold in the bank as possible to maximize your earned interest. I was able to rack up enough cash to fully train my characters in just a couple of game years. I haven't tried the other methods posted - I was at the end of the game, after all - but this one worked very well for me.

 

[Mauman]

I remember becoming completely broke at the end of xeen whilst taking on the bonus dungeon.

I did NOT care for figuring out how to fix the problem and thus did not become an ultimate goober.

Besides, eventually having all of my gear broken after every other fight just got a bit thin.

 

[Rincewind]

Just came to my attention that the DOS version of M&M 2 does support tweaked skin colours in MCGA/VGA mode. It's still the same EGA graphics, but purple and pink get replaced by light-brown skin tones. You need version 1.01 of the game for this to work.

Somewhat confusingly, this only applies to in-game content. In the intro sequence the guy in the tree is still purple, and so is the hand when rolling a custom character.

Of course, the Amiga and MacOS versions are preferable and look way better

Relevant config:

[dosbox]
machine = mcga

[autoexec]
mount c c
c:
loadfix mm2 m

EGA mode

MCGA/VGA mode

(Yes, I'm taking the liberty of using a single-scaline/15kHz shader here too as this is essentially still EGA graphics, although MCGA introduced line-doubling of earlier graphics modes even before VGA)

 

[Lonely Vazdru]

?????????

Difference being ?

 

[Eisen]

?????????

Difference being ?

Look at the cleric
EDIT: The skin

 

[Butter]

?????????

Difference being ?

Look at the guy's skin tone.

 

[Mauman]

Ah yes, I remember being very confused by all of the purple people when playing MM2 as a wee lad.

 

[wishbonetail]

SNES version almost looks like a remake. Too bad it's incredibly laggy due to a SNES' anemic CPU.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

Hmmm... snes gfx, upgraded sound, on the PC. Where da mod?

Just avoid the genesis version; it sounds like the plague. Here! Hava a taste again:


If you can get past that, I applaud you.

 

[0sacred]

I've heard worse.

Also the lazy(?) guys who did the SNES port made every new character start with 200 gold, i.e. infinite gold (Wizards&Warriors did this too but prices in that game meant this was only mildly useful). In the Genesis version, only one (premade) character carries 200 gold.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

Comparing gfx again... Amiga wins I guess.

Mobygames
Hardcore Gaming 101
C64 Sets
I'll have to scour for more c64 gfx. Site it lacking

Mobygames got a new look. Meh. GameFAQ looks a little different. Fandom is moving. Honestly, I rarely see a gaming shrine that is as complete as I would like. There an ultima one that is pretty good.

 

[Mauman]

I've heard worse.

Also the lazy(?) guys who did the SNES port made every new character start with 200 gold, i.e. infinite gold (Wizards&Warriors did this too but prices in that game meant this was only mildly useful). In the Genesis version, only one (premade) character carries 200 gold.

The SNES port had issues beyond that. One of the biggest problems is that you're unable to level up hirelings.

Hmmm... snes gfx, upgraded sound, on the PC. Where da mod?

Just avoid genesis soubd like the plague. Here! Hava a taste again:


If you can get past that, I applaud you.

Spoiler

At least the Genesis version was playable without any serious issues, unlike the SNES version.

But how do you make the music from the Genesis sound board sound WORSE than the plonks from my old EGA computer? Just HOW?!

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

There are a lot of genesis worse music vids that try to explain it.

 

[Mauman]

Ya know, I was replaying the Bard's Trilogy remaster and I started thinking to myself that it'd be great if someone did a graphical/UI remaster of MM 1 and 2.

Of course, I imagine my wish would be monkey pawed and turned into a god awful mess....but it'd be nice if it happened and if whoever did it did a good job.

 

[Luzur]

Ya know, I was replaying the Bard's Trilogy remaster and I started thinking to myself that it'd be great if someone did a graphical/UI remaster of MM 1 and 2.

Of course, I imagine my wish would be monkey pawed and turned into a god awful mess....but it'd be nice if it happened and if whoever did it did a good job.

I worked on a MM1 remake (i scouted and traced textures) along with a guy named Wyzardry some....15/20+ years ago, but it fizzled out after he just vanished one winter.

 

[Broseph]

I admit that I do put on rose-colored glasses when it comes to the classics, and I do and have give(n) M&M X its due praise, but no one is going to come here to this particular website and denigrate the Might & Magic series on a whole and not have me throw my cane and dentures at them in protest.

Might & Magic is a classic series for sure, but let’s not forget that World of Xeen is literally popamole.

 

[octavius]

It's funny that the most "accessible" of all the classic turn based CRPGs is the one that has mole popping.

 

[Ryan muller]

playing world of xeen right now, not feeling it as it is for now, it feels quite dull in some areas (food system, extremely fast leveling, broken economy, no punishment for resting), atleast dungeons are somewhat decent and i like the artstyle a lot

 

[Barbalos]

I found the balancing just like an afterthought in World of Xeen, since you can get a ton of early experience by doing early parts of Darkside that can trivialize the game. I also really missed the Corak's notes flavour lore from MM III: Isles of Terra, which Xeen completely lacks. The quest log is pretty cool in Xeen though. Beyond that, the sometimes great, and oftentimes really bad monster graphics in Xeen made me like it less than MM III where everything was consistently solid. To be fair though, MM III was the first dungeon crawler with an overworld and towns I played (something I really like in Dungeon Crawlers, to the point I don't play Dungeon Crawlers unless they have an overworld with towns and castles and such). Xeen is good, the quests are cool and the quest dialogue is pretty great too. But I like MM III more. Another benefit for MM III is that the sound is a LOT easier to set up than Xeen, especially on modern machines where you might use emulators like MUNT to get MT-32 sounds, and avoiding arrow sounds all the time, and the weird door opening sounds is just such a pain to get working correctly in Xeen. And I don't find the spoken dialogue adds very much to Xeen either, it gets repetitive and it's really nothing special imo. So overall I prefer MM III quite a lot more.

 

[Butter]

Isles of Terra also had RPCs, something they cut in Xeen (I suspect purely for UI design reasons).