Might and Magic The Might and Magic Discussion Thread

[lukaszek]

Ok, im gaming MMmerge mod hard and cleared out New Sorpigal and moved into Ironfist, but i have this wierd bug where i cant enter the guilds in town without crashing, and only the guilds, the rest is fine. Anyone had this error?

tried recently and it was fine. DO you have same issue when you purchase membership?

one thing ive noticed when comparing mmmerge and vanila is how baa cultists were much stronger in mmmerge

 

[lukaszek]

how does access to dark magic work in mmmerge in mm6?
im looking in files at tables -> sorcs and wizards seem to have no dark/light access? Necromancer got dark mastery, although it doesnt exists in mm6 context.
Then Im seeing Lich and Dark Archmage who gain access to GM.
If I were to gain promotion, which one would that be?

 

[TheDeveloperDude]

Ok, im gaming MMmerge mod hard and cleared out New Sorpigal and moved into Ironfist, but i have this wierd bug where i cant enter the guilds in town without crashing, and only the guilds, the rest is fine. Anyone had this error?

Do you have a correct installation? The installation method was very confusing for me.
MMMerge install wiki

 

[Luzur]

Every part of the game sofar is fine, except entering guilds in Ironfist. Just insta-crash to desktop

Ok, im gaming MMmerge mod hard and cleared out New Sorpigal and moved into Ironfist, but i have this wierd bug where i cant enter the guilds in town without crashing, and only the guilds, the rest is fine. Anyone had this error?

tried recently and it was fine. DO you have same issue when you purchase membership?

one thing ive noticed when comparing mmmerge and vanila is how baa cultists were much stronger in mmmerge

 

[Luzur]

Ok, im gaming MMmerge mod hard and cleared out New Sorpigal and moved into Ironfist, but i have this wierd bug where i cant enter the guilds in town without crashing, and only the guilds, the rest is fine. Anyone had this error?

Do you have a correct installation? The installation method was very confusing for me.
MMMerge install wiki

i followed the same guide, but i choose the revamp option, though.

can that have something to do with it?

 

[TheDeveloperDude]

Ok, im gaming MMmerge mod hard and cleared out New Sorpigal and moved into Ironfist, but i have this wierd bug where i cant enter the guilds in town without crashing, and only the guilds, the rest is fine. Anyone had this error?

Do you have a correct installation? The installation method was very confusing for me.
MMMerge install wiki

i followed the same guide, but i choose the revamp option, though.

can that have something to do with it?

I did not use the Revamp, Community something was used (master if I remember correctly?).
Too much mods, HP regenerating items are not cumulative in MM6+Grayface, in Merge they are.
I have installed Grayface patch for quicksave and other UI improvements, but he was tinkering with gameplay things like dual wielding.

 

[TheDeveloperDude]

MM6+Grayface

Should I cure insanity for my knight? Or can I play insanely to the game end? Better might+endurance+speed.

 

[lukaszek]

MM6+Grayface

Should I cure insanity for my knight? Or can I play insanely to the game end? Better might+endurance+speed.

you would find that in fact, solo knights playthroughs indeed run around insane

 

[UndeadHalfOrc]

I'm about to make my first World of Xeen balance patch!

MM5 darkside of xeen; Am I the only one who have my attack spells, even basic ones like fireball and lightning bolt, miss a lot of the times vs particular monsters?

So I spent most of today tinkering with Cedric Busch' excellent Xeen unpacking utilities and found all the offsets for monsters resistances.
Monsters have 7 values: fire, elec, cold, poison, energy, magic, and physical resistances.
Magic resistance, in my opinion, is broken. It makes ALL spells , evey physical ones, have a chance to miss.
By editing the value to 0 for a few monsters with high magic resist like griffins and minotaur, it confirmed it.
I think the devs meant it as a way for monsters to resist MAGIC elemental spells like Mass Distortion (it's the way it works in MM6) but it works vs ALL spells!

No wonder people always complain how offensive magic is so weak in MM5!
So I'm gonna do my first balance patch.

In your opinion, should I just set magic resist to 0 for every monster in Darkside, or halve it, giving them a chance to evade spells? For bosses, it makes sense.

 

[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