Might and Magic The Might and Magic Discussion Thread

[UndeadHalfOrc]

To keep some sort of challenge, I could also increase the physical resistance of all non-boss monsters. That would then make some of them physical immune, like ghost & phase mummies, power liches and earth blasters.

 

[Kayato]

- If you create characters in the Castleview tavern they start at level 5 instead of level 1.
- The early quests in Castleview and its sewers give TONS of XP, especially if you solve both 9 chest challenges.

But so originally MM5 allowed you to completely import the party from MM4 (and not a conversion like between MM1 and MM2) or did it allow you to start with a high level party? Because I hope the second world is balanced otherwise the first dungeons won't offer me any challenge.

The way it's balanced you get a harder start than MM 4 but still doable at 1st level, while enemies and quests provide like 10-100x as much XP as you'd expect so that you're done with the first region with more XP than all of MM4

Thanks to both of you. I started Darkside using the pyramid just outside Vertigo. Then I remembered that I could also train in the castle and I managed to get the party to level 20!

 

[lukaszek]

anyone knows if i need to clear archmage quest in order to get dark magic mastery?

 

[UndeadHalfOrc]

lukaszek: no.
Mm6: get notorious reputation. The trainer lives in paradise valley village. But try to make sure you learn master light FIRST
MM7: just level the skill up to lev7, the Master trainer lady lives with the Lich promotion quest Lich
MM8: some lady in shadowspire

 

[UndeadHalfOrc]

MM4-5 World of Xeen
Folks, this is big,
While working on my patch and doing tons of tests, I realized that monsters' elemental resistance for Fire, Elec, Cold, Poison AND Energy DO NOT WORK. At all.
Only their physical resistance and magic resistance works. As I said earlier, magic resistance gives them a chance to outright evade your spells, at 100 they are 100% immune.
Values go from 0 to 100 (in hexm this is 0x64)
No matter what, all 5 values always act like they are close to 30 (maybe...hard to say), They all have a chance to halve your spells even if it says 0,
but spells will always land and do some damage (as long as they don't evade it due to their Magic resistance score, which does work).

The best way to test it is in the dragon cave, Fire dragons are supposed to be immune to fire and 0 to everything else, ditto for Cold dragons (cold).
I just killed fire dragons using incinerate, and killed cold dragons using frostbite, cold ray and fantastic freeze.

I'm playing the floppy version. Can anyone here test it , preferably using the CD version?

I have both versions installed, but no save games for the CD version, and my floppy-version save files are incompatible to the CD version, the game doesn't recognize it.

 

[UndeadHalfOrc]

EDIT: (can no longer edit the last post): what I just said regarding 100 magic resist (0x64) might still allow for Mass Distortion to work, as someone else on GOG told me.

 

[lukaszek]

lukaszek: no.
Mm6: get notorious reputation. The trainer lives in paradise valley village. But try to make sure you learn master light FIRST

ahh, no even need to go beyond rank4.

In unrelated news my solo sorc started strong, first monster kill was in new sorpigal through master armageddon. Important distinction as I had to stab a bunch of pheasants in blackshire first to gain notoriety. Lvl15, barely had enough sp after using nwc stat boost. I think im gonna plow through places, not turning quests in, so I can continue clearing outdoors easily.

 

[Kayato]

MM4-5 World of Xeen
Folks, this is big,
While working on my patch and doing tons of tests, I realized that monsters' elemental resistance for Fire, Elec, Cold, Poison AND Energy DO NOT WORK. At all.
Only their physical resistance and magic resistance works. As I said earlier, magic resistance gives them a chance to outright evade your spells, at 100 they are 100% immune.
Values go from 0 to 100 (in hexm this is 0x64)
No matter what, all 5 values always act like they are close to 30 (maybe...hard to say), They all have a chance to halve your spells even if it says 0,
but spells will always land and do some damage (as long as they don't evade it due to their Magic resistance score, which does work).

The best way to test it is in the dragon cave, Fire dragons are supposed to be immune to fire and 0 to everything else, ditto for Cold dragons (cold).
I just killed fire dragons using incinerate, and killed cold dragons using frostbite, cold ray and fantastic freeze.

I'm playing the floppy version. Can anyone here test it , preferably using the CD version?

I have both versions installed, but no save games for the CD version, and my floppy-version save files are incompatible to the CD version, the game doesn't recognize it.

Damn I did the dragon cave just a couple of days ago. I'm using the gog version of WoX and it allows me to choose at the beginning whether to start the floppy or cd version (I'm using the cd version) I could try with a new party and jump directly there by changing the parameters a bit just to survive! But I can tell you that I tried "Dragon sleep" 5-6 times and it never worked.

 

[UndeadHalfOrc]

MM4-5 World of Xeen
Folks, this is big,
While working on my patch and doing tons of tests, I realized that monsters' elemental resistance for Fire, Elec, Cold, Poison AND Energy DO NOT WORK. At all.
Only their physical resistance and magic resistance works. As I said earlier, magic resistance gives them a chance to outright evade your spells, at 100 they are 100% immune.
Values go from 0 to 100 (in hexm this is 0x64)
No matter what, all 5 values always act like they are close to 30 (maybe...hard to say), They all have a chance to halve your spells even if it says 0,
but spells will always land and do some damage (as long as they don't evade it due to their Magic resistance score, which does work).

The best way to test it is in the dragon cave, Fire dragons are supposed to be immune to fire and 0 to everything else, ditto for Cold dragons (cold).
I just killed fire dragons using incinerate, and killed cold dragons using frostbite, cold ray and fantastic freeze.

I'm playing the floppy version. Can anyone here test it , preferably using the CD version?

I have both versions installed, but no save games for the CD version, and my floppy-version save files are incompatible to the CD version, the game doesn't recognize it.

Damn I did the dragon cave just a couple of days ago. I'm using the gog version of WoX and it allows me to choose at the beginning whether to start the floppy or cd version (I'm using the cd version) I could try with a new party and jump directly there by changing the parameters a bit just to survive! But I can tell you that I tried "Dragon sleep" 5-6 times and it never worked.

You can test it with Slimes, Doom Bugs and Breeder slimes from the very first town, and the spell Toxic Cloud.
According to the monster data tables, they should be immune to poison.

 

[UndeadHalfOrc]

CONFIRMED.

The bug also exists on the CD full speech version.

Toxic Cloud works perfectly fine on all 3 enemies in vertigo, which are supposed to be immune to poison.

 

[Lacrymas]

Nobody has ever noticed being able to kill fire elementals with fire?

 

[Morpheus Kitami]

Nobody has ever noticed being able to kill fire elementals with fire?

I've noticed before that a lot of games, if they have the placebo effect of difficulty, people assume that they're difficult without ever trying anything different. That said, shouldn't people have noticed something was up when someone worked against, say, something with 50% immunity to something rather than 100%? You'd be a fool to cast a fireball spell against a fire elemental, but against something with weaker resistances...

 

[Kayato]

Speaking of resistance in Wox, I'm not sure if they work on a percentage basis. Because I see that I now easily exceed 100 resistance to the elements of my party and in fact I walk without problems on lava and acid. Instead I continue to take damage from some traps and enemies. There is a fire trap in the vampire castle in darkside that causes 200 fire damage which partially damages my group, it makes me think that the resistance is not a percentage but reduces the damage by that value. However, low level traps do no damage.

 

[UndeadHalfOrc]

As far as player character go, you are correct, personal resistance values can go as high as 250 and is not percent based.
It doesn't reduce damage by that value; it uses a standard might and magic formula, used from mm1 to mm8, that go through many "rounds", each round having a chance to half the damage, and so on; resulting in full damage, 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, etc.
However, the clerical "Protection from elements" spell and sorcerer's "power shield" work independently, and in addition to, personal resistances and DO reduce damage by a fixed value.

However you might have a point that the maximum 100 (64) value in the monster data table may not mean immunity.

I assumed it was the case because:

A) the manual states so for many monsters: "immune to fire", "immune to poison", etc. In the data table it's 100 (0x64), NOT 255 (0xFF)

B) ssjlee's FAQs for MM4 and MM5 lists its own monster tables, and states "Imm" for all numbers whose value is 100 in the data file. Apart from this, all his resistance numbers do match the data files' numbers.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/pc/932529-might-and-magic-world-of-xeen/faqs/63552
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/pc/932529-might-and-magic-world-of-xeen/faqs/63641

 

[Kayato]

As far as player character go, you are correct, personal resistance values can go as high as 250 and is not percent based.
It doesn't reduce damage by that value; it uses a standard might and magic formula, used from mm1 to mm8, that go through many "rounds", each round having a chance to half the damage, and so on; resulting in full damage, 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, etc.
However, the clerical "Protection from elements" spell and sorcerer's "power shield" work independently, and in addition to, personal resistances and DO reduce damage by a fixed value.

However you might have a point that the maximum 100 (64) value in the monster data table may not mean immunity.

I assumed it was the case because:

A) the manual states so for many monsters: "immune to fire", "immune to poison", etc. In the data table it's 100 (0x64), NOT 255 (0xFF)

B) ssjlee's FAQs for MM4 and MM5 lists its own monster tables, and states "Imm" for all numbers whose value is 100 in the data file. Apart from this, all his resistance numbers do match the data files' numbers.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/pc/932529-might-and-magic-world-of-xeen/faqs/63552
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/pc/932529-might-and-magic-world-of-xeen/faqs/63641

Thanks very interesting! Speaking of mechanics, how is physical damage calculated?
For example if I have a character who:
- makes 10 attacks per round
- the weapon scores 3d6+10
- his might gives a +5
- the weapon does x3 against undead
The 10 attacks are always calculated individually I presume, so some might hit and others not, then the damage is calculated for each one that hits?
Furthermore, what is the priority for bonuses and especially the multiplier?

 

[UndeadHalfOrc]

No idea, sorry. I could read the C++ files for the algorithm on ScummVM's Xeen engine, but who's to say if it comes from the real original EXE from the 90s?
All I know is that at value 100 (0x64) all physical damage is set to 0

gog.com/forum/might_and_magic_series/im_about_to_make_world_of_xeen_balance_patch

https://github.com/scummvm/scummvm/tree/master/engines/mm/xeen

 

[catfood]

Good game, but not as good as the first I think. It had a few design decisions that I didn't like. First of all is the race/class hatred that monsters have. Granted it's only really relevant in the beginning of the game since you can get powerful quite early on, but in those early levels it's a nightmare. My advice either create a full dwarf party or don't add any dwarfs at all since he'll spend most of his time getting knocked out by goblins.

The next few aspects are more sever however. I don't understand why they changed the graphics. The game was very colorful in MM 6, but now they had this really drab, almost de-saturated color palette. Bleah! Also since we're on the subject of graphics, why the fuck did they mess up the portraits? Seriously the portraits in MM 6 are some of the best I've seen. Now they added these prosperous monstrosities. I get that they wanted some portraits for the demi-humans, but come on! How hard could it have been to modify them in Photoshop a bit?

But the worst part was the change to the skill system. In MM 6 not everyone could learn every skill, but every skill could be raised to master level! In MM 7 not only is the skill set for each character limited (as it should be) but the class also dictates the level of mastery that you can get in that skill. Meaning that character development is predetermined from the get go because in most cases you absolutely want grand mastery. There is little point in investing into any skill that you can't get to at least mastery. Investing into something that you can only upgrade to expert is just pointless. I guess maybe for certain skills like perception + disarm trap it might be useful to get them to expert level since traps are only dangerous for low level characters, but in most cases it's pretty much pointless.

The dungeons were also nowhere near as good as the ones in the previous game. There is simply no dungeon here that can rival Tomb of Vaarn or Castle Darkmoor. The dungeons where more a bit more interesting in their themes and designs, but ultimately none of theme felt epic like the ones in MM 6.

The story was a bit better this time around. I liked that you had a choice in the middle of the game which is also reflected in the UI. That was a nice touch and a call back to HOMM 2. Speaking of which it was nice how they tied in the story of MM 3. Too bad the ending was kinda anticlimactic.

PS: great soundtrack but that was to be expected

 

[lukaszek]

I don't understand why they changed the graphics. The game was very colorful in MM 6, but now they had this really drab, almost de-saturated color palette.

for me its about landscapes being empty. For example in mm6 grass would have plenty of weed/flowers. In mm7 you have bare pixels instead

 

[Kayato]

No idea, sorry. I could read the C++ files for the algorithm on ScummVM's Xeen engine, but who's to say if it comes from the real original EXE from the 90s?
All I know is that at value 100 (0x64) all physical damage is set to 0

gog.com/forum/might_and_magic_series/im_about_to_make_world_of_xeen_balance_patch

https://github.com/scummvm/scummvm/tree/master/engines/mm/xeen

Thanks for the reply.

Just finished World of Xeen with the third ending, I have to say that I really liked it. I preferred the world of MM4 but that of MM5 also had its reasons. I appreciated all the gameplay improvements from MM3. I was pleased to review puzzles involving dungeon design. The crosswords were amazing!
As a criticism I have to mention the "equipment breakdown". In addition to being the main cause of interruption of a dungeon, I expected it to be reported in some way, I always have to remember to see the inventory (because I noticed with the Power Shield active there is no change in the AC). Not to mention the lack of a “fix all!” button. or better yet a spell.
Speaking of the plot:

Spoiler

I understand that the main plot, which links all the chapters, between Corax and Sheltem always appears only at the end, a bit as if it were something marginal. If I'm not wrong then they have nothing to do with the events of MM4 or am I wrong?

 

[Sceptic]

Spoiler

I understand that the main plot, which links all the chapters, between Corax and Sheltem always appears only at the end, a bit as if it were something marginal. If I'm not wrong then they have nothing to do with the events of MM4 or am I wrong?

Spoiler

It links indirectly. If you've been to the bottom of Dungeon of Death (one of the optional dungeons exclusive to the WOX dual-game setup) you've seen the machines that produce more Lord Xeen clones. Presumably this is where the Lord Xeen of MM4 came from, and Sheltem is responsible for him and the others being made. It's Might and Magic though, there's a definite attempt at continuity across all the games but the overarching story doesn't always make complete sense.

 

[Kayato]

Spoiler

I understand that the main plot, which links all the chapters, between Corax and Sheltem always appears only at the end, a bit as if it were something marginal. If I'm not wrong then they have nothing to do with the events of MM4 or am I wrong?

Spoiler

It links indirectly. If you've been to the bottom of Dungeon of Death (one of the optional dungeons exclusive to the WOX dual-game setup) you've seen the machines that produce more Lord Xeen clones. Presumably this is where the Lord Xeen of MM4 came from, and Sheltem is responsible for him and the others being made. It's Might and Magic though, there's a definite attempt at continuity across all the games but the overarching story doesn't always make complete sense.

Spoiler

I've been there, besides the cloning machines for Lord Xeen there were the control systems for the elements so it made me think of the "X.E.E.N. control center." therefore something already present before the arrival of Sheltem. The key to the dungeon was in Sandro's hands, which is why I see a fairly weak connection.
But it could also be that he released a Lord Xeen to keep the other half busy, after all he should know all these worlds well.
I was expecting some revelation or connection in the ending of MM4.

 

[DaveO]

Xeen has the blobber style, and MM6 has the best real-time/turn-based experience. I enjoyed MM8 mainly for the bounty hunting that gives you millions of experience points when you do all three levels of the quest.

 

[lukaszek]

mm8 solo was a fun experience. Tried few times to do mm6 and its such a chore that I cant continue.
With dungeons being so large and game throwing crowds at you - it takes forever to clear. Had a good attempt with druid but eventually I wanted armageddon to clear trash outside + resistances were an issue in garrick forge and other locations like it(heavy on warlocks)
Sorc run took me way further. Ive cleared kriegspire but I was already dead inside there. I really like that castle but it did take forever. I just dont want to push through darkmoor and varn.

Obviously solo runs are metagaming heavy. In mm8 it was pretty smooth progression, I could feel my character improving basically all the way, with ogre stronghold being the biggest struggle to overcome.
In mm6 I rush for early armageddon, dark mastery, then quickly for mordred, then archmage promo... and then there is brain dead chore of clearing all content until you lose it

 

[Storyfag]

I just dont want to push through darkmoor and varn.

But Darkmoor wants you. It yearns for you. Darkmoor is love, Darkmoor is (un)life.

 

[lukaszek]

I just dont want to push through darkmoor and varn.

But Darkmoor wants you. It yearns for you. Darkmoor is love, Darkmoor is (un)life.

honestly I always found varn worse