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I miss the good ol' days of mapkins (I do not actually miss the good ol' days of mapkins) e: Well that's a terrible no good snipe
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Dec 21, 2020 20:18
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| # ? May 27, 2024 03:14 |
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I still have my two maps of Cloudside and Darkside of Xeen at home, it's so nice how they fit together. Maps and nice manuals are definitely things I miss from the pre-digital download era.
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Dec 22, 2020 00:18
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Update 001: Proper Hydration And thus, the LP begins! Four survivors from the village of Sweet Water, chosen by fate(and Falagar), have been whisked to safety by magic and spent three years "training" to become the heroes Enroth needs and deserves. Let's have a look at them, shall we?  Say hello to Deadeye, Agnes, Richmond and Bobelix. I went with Deadeye and Richmond because they got multiple votes, and then Bobelix because someone choosing that image couldn't be ignored... and then Agnes was a perfect fit both because a Druid would round out the party's magic and you can't have Obelix without a druid. Aside from picking a name, profile image and class for each character, we also have a pool of discretionary points and two extra skills we can teach them(different for each class). The skills are less vital since we'll eventually be able to learn them all in-game, but some will take a bit to reach a trainer for, since the starting town doesn't have them all. The stats should largely explain themselves. Strength makes you hit things harder, Accuracy makes you land more hits with melee and bows, Endurance increases your total hit points(and helps shrug off an array of conditions), Speed reduces the cooldown between attacks and spells and Luck plays a large role in resisting status effects. Personality and Intellect, however, are a bit more vague. Personality gives bonus spell points for paladins, clerics and druids, and intellect gives bonus spell points for archers, sorcerers and druids. They also help you resist curses and insanity, respectively. To complicate things, however, each stat's number is translated into an "effect." For instance, a stat has the same effect at 13 and 14, and then at 15 and 16 a +1, 17 and 18 a +2, and so on upwards, but the "break points" where you gain benefits start growing longer and longer apart until eventually at 500 your stat no longer benefits you any more, so you want to spread stat boosts around some.  The stat assignments should mostly speak for themselves, except for the "dumped" luck, but there'll be an explanation for that shortly, too. Skill-wise, I wanted Deadeye and Bobelix to get some armor to start off with(though I later learned that armor is largely overrated, even with the maximum armor rating in the game and the worst attacker, you'll apparently be lucky to evade 50% of all attacks. Armor in this game reduces chance of getting hit, not the damage taken), having a trap disarmer speaks for itself(there are no locks, but most containers will absolutely have traps), Agnes takes meditation since it boosts her SP total and Richmond takes more magic types since it gives him some free spells(the two lowest-tier ones) if he starts with them, while learning new magic skills themselves is also quite expensive and I'll be a bit strapped for gold at the start. Then I hit the thumbs up icon and get the game's first loading screen. There's only one, and on a modern machine I'll only be seeing it for split seconds, but I do like it.  The loading bar is the fireball travelling across the screen and smacking the demon in the face. Always loved it.    Man, I can't believe we're finally out of Falagar's shack! Three years in there, "studying." Don't be so dismissive, I'm not sure how I'd ever have gotten my Master's in Monster Studies without it. How's that going to help us save the world? Look, if it wasn't for my finding that letter in a goblin camp when Falagar sent us grocery shopping, we'd still be back there. Hey, Tweedledumb and Tweedledumber: focus. The letter mentioned a guy here in town who was waiting for the letter. I say we look around, make sure we're not walking into an ambush, and then go have a talk with him. The letter in question. Good of the villains to mail each other such incredibly incriminating evidence.   Rather than being legible, signs will display their text on the little bar above the portraits when moused-over. In fact this is the only place the game shows you any feedback information, so sometimes it's very easy to miss things happening in the heat of battle.  Looks like a nice enough town.  Looks can be deceiving, anything could be hiding here. For instance, that stable? Could have a dozen rogues in the horse stall ready to ambush us. Then maybe we should ambush them first! Hah! See? You're being too negative, just a pair of horseshoes. We should hang on to those, they're supposed to bring good luck.I believe all towns in the game barring one have a stable, and every stable has horseshoes in the horse stalls. They're very worth collecting since they're consumable items that give +2 skill points each. Considering that a level-up gives you +5, that's almost a full free level-up if, for instance, you find two, like we did here in New Sorpigal. I like to hang on them to bump me over the edge if I've almost got the points for a skill-up in something.   Wow, they've even got public drinking fountains. Brimming with typhoid, cholera and industrial pollutants!Most fountains and wells can be drunk from. In the early game they're mostly beneficial or do nothing, in the later game, they tend to either outright kill you or give you benefits and drawbacks both.  So, go on, tell me, how's this apple orchard going to kill us? Killer slugs, maybe? Pesticides? Okay, okay, I've just been a bit on edge ever since we almost got killed. It's been three years, you have to loosen up sometimes. Now, get your bags out, we're scarfing up as many of these as we can.Fruit trees give you free rations when used, adding +2 to your current supply. Here in New Sorpigal, resting requires one unit of food, and the local inn can top us up to 6 units. Later areas require more food(justified by their being barren, and assuming that the party is collecting delicious-looking rocks and small animals as they go along to supply part of their dietary needs) but also often have innkeepers that can fill the party's food bags better.    Yoink! The best food is free food. Hey, who's that over there? Is that one of the townspeople? He's in an awful hurry... you don't think we just took his apples, do you? That's not a townsperson, that's a goblin!New Sorpigal has no walls or guards, so stepping a bit too close to the edges of town can easily provoke some of the local bad guys to come for you, and while they're obviously scaled to the expected party level(i.e. 1), it's quite easy to gently caress up and die. Especially since the game leaves the party with all their weapons and armor unequipped at game start, as well as their spells un-learned, instead just as spellbooks in their inventory. Most of what you'll run into by accident is likely to be goblins.  Like most enemies in the game, goblins exist in three colour-coded variants. From weakest to strongest they're green, blue and red. Green ones run at you and swing swords, blue ones shoot fire at you from a distance and red ones shoot fire at you from a distance. Red ones can also break your equipment up close. Broken equipment needs repairing and isn't super bad for mages, but for, say, a knight, having a broken weapon would suck bigly. As appropriate for the game's first enemy, though, they're not too complicated.  Hey, I was just about to gut these adventurers, can we get back to that?Right, sorry.  I don't have my weapon ready! I don't have my spells ready! The townspeople stroll around, somewhat unconcerned, while I run through the middle of their town with goblins in pursuit.     What a lovely day. Singing birds, screaming adventurers, growling goblins. I think today I shall have eggs for lunch.This is all worsened by the fact that I've managed to forget which key attacks, first, even after equipping everyone and then, afterwards, the goblins are in the middle of town and I don't want to blast the peasants. MM6 doesn't have vengeful, teleporting guards like an Elder Scrolls game, but there are downsides to just blasting the townsfolk willy-nilly.    *huff, puff* Okay, shouldn't be any chance of townspeople getting caught in the line of fire up here. Spells and arrows!  With 13 hit points a piece, and attacks and spells around around 1 to 8 damage each at this early stage, goblins can suck up a good number of hits before going down, sometimes. Not to mention that most of the starting offensive spells barring, I believe, the starting Air attack spell, require a successful attack roll to hit, too. This will need remedying as soon as the party has some money.  Is he retreating? I think he's retreating!Most enemies have the same AI: Zig-zag movement at long range, straight line movement at close range, attack until almost dead and then run for the hills. Fleeing enemies sometimes recover their courage after a while, or if you get within melee range again while chasing them down, but usually they're easily killed. M&M6 doesn't reward behavior like not shooting fleeing enemies in the back. *Thwock* Bullseye. I'm not sure how comfortable I am with our first day of adventuring. I almost get cut in half, Deadeye's shooting fleeing enemies in the back and we looted an orchard. I agree, this is small potatoes, but we'll scale up soon enough. Just gotta find our pacing. That's not what I mean- oh never mind. Was that the last of them? I've got a spell that'll tell us. Hold on. Note the change to the minimap in the upper right. Wizard Eye is, unlike W&W's knockoff Spirit Eye, an extremely vital spell. It indicates enemies(red), friendlies(green) and corpses(yellow). Once the caster is sufficiently able at magic it'll also indicate dropped loot and "locations of interest" in dungeons, both of which can be very useful. Looks like there are still a couple in town. It is our fault, we should go deal with them. I think I can see my liver through this wound, let me just have a drink of water first. ...huh, a healing fountain. That's handy.New Sorpigal has, among other things, a healing fountain and a spell point regeneration fountain. They're only good for a certain number of sips per day, but rampant abuse of them will help the party need to rest less and also make sure they stay properly hydrated. Especially in a party as reliant on their spell points as this, especially the SP fountain is super important.  After patching everyone up, a scavenger hunt for surviving goblins ensues, most of them still being in town because they've gotten stuck on geometry or the party ran fast enough to get outside of their aggro distance.  Now let's try that again without the wanton slaughter. I got a goblin hand stuck in my braids. Yes, less of that. While you guys were chasing down the last of the goblins, I went and got a map of New Sorpigal from the local tourist office. Without a map, New Sorpigal and its environs can hold a few small surprises. Locations 1 through 30 are the town itself, while 31 and 32 are the two local starter dungeons(both of which are somewhat rough). The islands off the shore aren't ones we can visit(at least, not easily or cheaply) at the moment, nor are they ones we want to visit, since they'd eat up the party without needing to stop to chew. Time for a tour of the town and a chat with some of the wandering NPC's.   Wandering NPC's will generally have two random conversation topics and the option to recruit them. Recruited NPC's take a starting amount of gold, and from then on a % of all your gold earned while they're in the party. In exchange they give you benefits like boosted skills, being able to cast a spell X times per day for free(as far as I know the speedrun strat for M&M6 still involves getting someone who can cast Fly and then abusing an easter egg) or just hanging out and being company. While recruited, they occupy the two coloured glass panes immediately below the minimap. Let's also take this chance to do a fashion review and see how goofy our crew looks.   Deadeye and Agnes, looking sharp. Also look at how the game just feeds you all your derived stats with no bullshit. What a loving relief after Wizards & Warriors   I didn't notice that tower when we came in, who do you think lives there? According to the tourist guide, it's a defunct anti-dragon defense system. Now that's my kind of infrastructure spending. At least now we know where the inn with the contact is, but let's poke around town a bit first and see if anyone knows why there are goblins so close to the town limits and willing to chase visitors through the streets with rusty swords.   Houses can have between 1 and 3 residents and come in two types, not counting quest NPC's. Either they're trainers, like Abdulai, who can upgrade one of your skills from its basic tier to either Expert, or if already Expert, to Master. They'll also usually tell you who can do the next tier of upgrade and have a random conversation topic besides. Upgrading used skills is really vital since it tends to make a big difference for spells and, in the case of non-spell skills, often up to doubles the skill's effect or adds some useful secondary function(for instance, for axes, basic Axe skill increases chance to hit, Expert axe skill also increases attack speed and Master axe skill also adds the skill level to damage done). Or if they're not trainers, they're random conversation NPC's like Dimi who, being a Child, will always talk about School but also has a random topic besides which is why this eight-year-old is engaging us in a conversation about national politics.      Also like 99% of all the character portraits appear to be New World Computing employees or interns wearing the company's leftover Ren Fest gear. There are a lot of silly hats.  Some locals on the street also refuse to talk to you unless your rep is over(or under) a certain break point. The dialogue becomes somewhat comical when they accuse us of being violent criminals even just as we've started the game. But I haven't even mugged anyone yet! How about we make that "never" instead? I told you guys this town was plotting against us. Aside from the NPC's, there are also a few utility buildings. On the left here is the training center. A consistent feature of M&M games is that levelling-up requires you to go to a trainer and spend gold, no levelling up in the field. Some people hate that, I don't mind it. On the right is the Buccaneer's Den, which teaches misc. skills(disarming traps, merchant, perception, etc.). It's one of three training guilds, being the Buccaneer's Den, the Mind's Eye and the Blades' End. They're not all present in all towns and I believe they teach different skills from town to town. For instance, here in New Sorpigal there's no one to teach us about Plate Mail or Bows.  Knocking on doors is thirsty work, though, let's get everyone rehydrated.   There are a few stat-boosting fountains around the gameworld, this is one of them. It only has a certain number of charges, and a long recharge period(people disagree whether it's time-based or based on you travelling to another map region and then back again), and it can only shift characters up to a max of 15 Luck, but it does a lot to negate the luck malus I chose at chargen, getting Deadeye up to 15 and Agnes up to 13. Does this water feel... lucky to anyone? There's no such thing as lucky water. What about lucky horseshoes? Those are just established science. But lucky water... Maybe it's lucky for people who get paid to build wells.  Eventually I get around to the town hall, I believe every town in the game has one, and that they're also offering at least one quest, alongside several generic services.   You'd figure that their being named "The Shadow Guild" would be proof enough that they're up to no good. They could argue that they're just unionized shadow puppeteers.Aside from the Mayor, there's also Janice the Clerk who handles the secondary quest and also some generic services.  She hands us the keys to the small fort across the road from New Sorpigal, tells us that the town gets shipments on tuesdays(I think that means tuesdays are when shop inventories reset?) and informs us that there's a bounty on ghosts. Every town has a new bounty every month, but it's one of those features you'll never use. To find a ghost you'd need to travel multiple zones away and back again which, by itself, would stretch the odds that you'd make it within the month. Secondly, that entire zone is high enough level that by the time you can go there and kill a ghost, the 900-gold bounty wouldn't be hugely valuable(at the moment, 900 gold is a big deal to us, though). Occasionally you get lucky and the bounty is on a creature from the same area, but I've had that happen like... once, I'd say, in three full playthroughs. And of course there's also the chance that you've completely depopulated the area of said enemy type by the time you get the bounty. Most overworld areas repopulated once a year or every two years, with New Sorpigal repopulating every six months. Dungeons don't repopulate at all.  Stepping out and hydrating a bit from the steroid fountain. Most of the stat-boosting fountains don't really make a big enough difference to be worth chugging from, sadly, though if you wanted to optimize your performance you'd certainly figure out which ones were the most worthwhile(likely any boosting Luck or resistances) and set some beacons to go have a drink before entering a dungeon. The east side of town hosts most of the stores as well as a couple more quest-dispensing NPC's.    The third one isn't exactly a quest, I suppose, more just an NPC informing us that he'll pay for any cobra eggs we manage to collect. There are a few of these scattered around, and they're important to keep in mind since they're a less RNG-dependent way to make early-game money for spells and gear upgrades.  And finally we make it to the inn. Alright, let's play it casual. This guy has no reason to doubt we're not his contacts. The moment he makes a wrong move, I bonk him with my club, got it. ...Richmond please handle this one while I stay out here with Deadeye. Inns are important as the places where you can guarantee being able to stock up on food, and also where you can waste gold getting drunk so the bartender can give you very lame hints.  Maria's just another lore/rumour NPC.    Andover, who's mentioned in the letter, does in fact pony up some gold, a whole 1000 of it, which'll handle guild memberships(thankfully being per-party and not per-person) and training for now. Spells we want will cost about 600 gold a piece, and learning new magic types will cost about 700 gold a piece. I'd like to have everyone with full magic access for their classes(except dark/light which we won't have for a while yet) by the time I leave New Sorpigal.  So what happened? Did you have to gut him like a fish? He gave us some money and said he'd give us more if we found a candlestick for him. A candelabra, but yes, apparently the followers of Baa had a very not suspicious underground temple just across the creek. So we wait until he's paid us twice and then we gut him. I like how you think, Richmond.  So at this point we have a number of official quests: Go east to Castle Ironfist and show the letter to the royals. Search the Baa temple across the river for A Girl, A Big Spider, A Candelabra and Some Eggs. Bust into Goblinwatch across the road and find the new password for the deeper dungeons. Nothing tells us which of these to do first or really forces us to do them in any specific order.  Um, where we do we go from here? Good question, we've got two dungeons that need looting, now I'm thinking we hit Goblinwatch first... Hold it. We almost got our asses kicked by four goblins and now you want to charge an entire fort of them? Not happening. We're getting in some exercise first. Please not Crossfit again. Oh, I've got something better in mind.  ...perhaps the goblins are just peacefully camping on their native land? Or perhaps they're planning to burn New Sorpigal to the ground. You gonna let that happen, Richmond? Bobelix? No! We should save them! ...I'll get my spellbook.So, yeah, definitely what I do before hitting either dungeon is to clear out this goblin camp. It's mostly just base goblins and then a single shaman. Approach close enough to aggro a small group, pull, kill, hydrate, repeat until fountains tap out, sleep, take it from the top.  Pretty easy work so far, I can feel myself getting stronger!  Did you really have to say that? We'll pull back and lure him over the hill so he can't hit us from far away.Essentially what Agnes said. Ranged enemies can be hard to fight without getting hit since they'll shoot while still at zig-zag range and only stand still while winding up for a shot, which is also when you want to be moving to not get hit.  After one of the rests, I end up getting some "weather." Occasionally you get fog in M&M6 which is just about the only weather system that really exists. Some areas have precipitation, but as a constant effect, not something that hits occasionally(it's a bit away, so we'll see if I remember right!), and aside from that it's just day/night cycles.  Too many! Back! Back!I end up getting too close to the goblin camp and having to beat a retreat up one of the hills bordering New Sorpigal. Just lucky it was at a climbable angle, enemies can climb any non-vertical wall, but player characters cannot.  ...is that a sword in a stone? Keep running you fool!  Don't you dare stop for that sword.  ...arms... burning... need... magic water...I think about half of the overworld regions in the game have a sword in a stone, if not more. They produce non-set, random swords which I believe are all two-handers, and require more strength and give better swords the deeper in the game they are. I generally remember being deeply disappointed by most of them. I knew Deadeye couldn't pull out that sword, but I wanted to catch his comical face when he tried. In any case, I think it takes me about a total of three in-game days to clear the goblins from the peninsula east of New Sorpigal.  Some of the last flee down to the docks where they get stuck on the pier. Coaches and ships will safely, and quicker than walking on foot, take you to other cities, but their destinations vary along a set schedule, so they might not be going where you want to go.  As I chase down the goblins, I also aggro some enemies from the south.  Apprentice mages are all ranged, shooting fire, cold and electricity as they advance in ranks. Definitely pinchier to fight than the goblins, especially if you don't have an all-caster party that can blast them from range. I nuke the couple coming over the hill and jam Deadeye's face into the nearby barrels before I piss off any more.  Might and Magic has a thing where it colour-codes stat boosts, and with these barrels being Might and Endurance, Deadeye seemed like the obvious choice. Why would you drink out of an uncovered barrel standing outside? It was green! What doesn't kill me makes me stronger! I want the next one we find! I'm holding you responsible if he gets dysentery.  Alright, gang. We've cleared out the goblins, now let's check that hut, be careful, could be a goblin king in there. We could ask that lady before going inside. What lady? With enemies not attacking civilians, sometimes they can be found wandering around in slightly incongruous settings. ...I'm just gonna open the door. Where this guy tells us laser guns are real and he totally knows how to use them and will share his cool tricks. Well, that was a waste of time. Oh, I wouldn't call it that. Plenty of cardio, and while you guys were talking to the dude in the hut, I looted the goblin camp. We're rich now.The party is, in fact, wealthier than they've ever been before. But not exactly rich. The costs of teaching Deadeye how to ID items(to keep down costs) and getting Agnes a spell that scales with skill(I'll make a spell update post after this one), pretty much ends up stripping the party of most of it.  At least Deadeye now has an actual weapon. I went for axes since their higher skill levels also add damage, not just accuracy, based on skill, which will help keep him competitive in melee. Unlike earlier games, as far as I can tell, characters never get more attacks per swing(though they CAN get a quicker cooldown between swings with a combination of skills and stats), so not getting left behind takes a considerable skill investment.  You know, I saw some more goblins across the river to the west. You haven't had enough of fighting them? C'mon, Richmond, they could be a danger to New Sorpigal. It's our public duty to go clear them out.  There are two bridges over, and as soon as you cross the northern one, a trigger spawns three goblins behind you. You can just run south(north is a dead end), but it could make a new player panic and make them vulnerable to the additional enemies to the west(visible on the minimap, guarding the old Temple of Baa).  They're a mix of normal goblins, apprentice mages and a single goblin king, so I promptly fall back to give me a chance to shoot them. I back on to the bridge and wait for them to come to me.  ...why aren't they coming up the bridge? Turns out their pathfinding gets them stuck next to the bridge where I can pelt them with arrows and spells pretty much without any resistance. They're so stuck that I can even go back to town and top up from the fountains, and come back, and they're still there. Har har, losers. This is also sufficient to get everyone to level 2.  Richmond's happy face is just so goofy-looking. I spend the extra skillpoints on getting Deadeye better with his bow, Agnes better at earth magic and Richmond better at fire magic(as I just bought him Fire Bolt with the goblin king's treasure). I bank Bobelix's skill points for the moment while I figure out exactly I want him to be good at doing.  Why are we going here? Why are we fighting wizards? These dickheads shot flaming arrows at us! We're not gonna take that, are we, Bobelix? No we're not! See? Two in favour, you're outvoted. What about me? I figured as a druid you'd have a pact of neutrality and you'd abstain on all votes that didn't involve animals. I'm more the "human sacrifices under the full moon"-kind of druid. So that means...? You bet I'm all in on this. CHARGE!   I think they're meant to be tougher than the goblins, but between Deadly Swarm and Firebolt I can now reliably one-shot all of them except for the blue-clad level 3 lightning mages, of which there's all of one.  There are a lot of wizards to kill, though.  This place looks kind of familiar, doesn't it, guys?  Yeah, for some reason Falagar's lawn is crawling with like a hundred angry wizards. I presume he was hosting some sort of Harry Potter cosplay convention and we just gibbed an entire Quidditch field. Falagar does seem to think we're a bit farther into the game than we actually are, though.  On the bright side, they're cosplayers who left behind a huge sword for Bobelix.   And what looks like an old piece of cast-iron cookware for Agnes to wear on her head. While armor and shields require skills, anyone can wear huge clunky metal helmets, boots and gauntlets, so obviously they go to Agnes and Richmond first off.  At least you three can hardly think of any more slaughter to perpetrate around here, the only things moving on the mainland are us and the townsfolk! You're forgetting Goblinwatch and the Temple of Baa. But which one do we handle first? Hmmmm. We could flip a coin! Heads for Goblinwatch, Tails for the Temple of Baa!Vote of the Post Does the coin come down Heads or Tails? I've usually done the Temple of Baa first every time I've played, but guides seem to suggest Goblinwatch first, so I leave this choice up to the thread! Spells Spells in M&M6 aren't gated by level or skill level, really only whether your character has access to the right type of magic and can afford(or find) the spellbook. Due to the way scaling works, some also aren't really worth using until you get higher levels of skill or expertise/mastery of the relevant type. So let's have a look at what's reasonably accessible for the party at the moment. Fire Spells Torchlight: Generates Light, unlike the spell of the same name in Wizards & Warriors, it actually works. Skill level determines the duration, while Expertise and Mastery makes the light brighter. Flame Arrow: It does a flat 1d8 damage but requires an attack roll to hit, making it extremely unreliable. Higher skill level increases the bonus to hit, while Expertise and Mastery makes it cheaper to cast, culminating in it being free to cast at Master tier. Protection From Fire: Protects the entire party against Fire. More skill means more protection, and more mastery means more protection per skill point. Resistances work in the odd way that they have no guaranteed effect and are instead rolled, but each time they're successfully rolled they get rolled again and each successful roll halves damage, though it can never zero it. The Luck stat also features in these rolls at as important a level as the resistance, though it's usually easier to get a high resistance than a high Luck effect since the Resistance just uses its "raw" value rather than using breakpoints to translate into an "effect." Fire Bolt: 1d4 damage per skill point, with expertise and mastery lowering recharge time. Always hits. Surpasses Flame Arrow very quickly. Currently Richmond's main offensive spell. Air Spells Wizard Eye: Reveals enemies, corpses and friendlies on the minimap, with skill determining duration. With expertise it also spots dropped treasure and with Mastery it also spots "points of interest" inside dungeons. Static Charge: 2d3 damage and always hits, like Flame Arrow it's free to cast at Mastery and cheaper at Expertise. Protection from Electricity: Like above, but for lightning. Sparks: A shotgun blast of sparks that does 2+skill level damage. Bounces off walls and produces more sparks at Expertise and Mastery. The poor scaling makes it rapidly outclassed but electrical resistance is one of the less common types. Water Spells Awaken: Awakens the entire party, countering the Sleep status. Status effect removal spells are somewhat similar in that the skill level and mastery level determines how "old" a status effect they can counter. For instance, at level 1, anyone who's been magically asleep for over 3 minutes of in-game time cannot be roused. Sleep goes away if someone gets whacked, though, so no big deal. Cold Beam: Cold-flavour Static Charge. Protection From Cold: See Above Poison Spray: Works much like Sparks but scales better, at 2+(1d2*skill level) damage and poison resistance is even rarer than lightning. Earth Spells Stun: I have never, ever cast this spell. Supposedly it attempts to briefly stun an enemy, which I presume is that it makes them do their flinch animation since there's no "stun" condition. Magic Arrow: Flame Arrow, but 1d6+2 damage and physical elemental. Protection From Magic: Not all spells in general, but specific attacks considered to be "magic." I think it's primarily various gaze attacks that get filed under this. Deadly Swarm: 5+(1d3/level) damage is pretty nice! It starts out stronger than Fire Bolt, but then scales slightly more weakly. As it's physical damage, though, almost nothing will end up resisting it. At the moment, Agnes is, appropriately enough, drowning enemies in angry wasps. Spirit Magic Spirit Arrow: 1d6 magic damage Flame Arrow. Bless: 5+1 per skill to attack bonus on the target, which is very big in the early game, about as much as all your inherent bonuses added together. Skill also increases duration, at Expertise it affects the entire party, and Mastery improves the duration scaling. If you have a Knight, you wanna be casting this at all times Healing Touch: Non-scaling healing spell, skill just reduces cast time, Expertise and Mastery increases the healing(1d5+2, 1d5+4 and 1d5+6 respectively). Lucky Day: A Luck boost which is all-party at max level. Since Luck affects almost all things you roll, this is in fact a quite good buff if it pushes you over some break points. With a boost of 10+(2*skill), at lower levels, it'll almost certainly move you past several. Mind Magic Meditation: Lucky Day, but for Intelligence and Personality... not that great. It'll boost your max but not current SP, so I guess you could cast it and then hit up a +SP fountain, but eh. I wouldn't really bother. Remove Fear: Cures the Fear condition, single-target but otherwise like Awaken. Mind Blast: 5+(2*level) spell. One of the two early-game scaling attack spells for divine casters. As it does Magic damage, it's good at getting around resistances. Precision: Boosting Accuracy is a decent deal. Stacked with Bless it'll really boost your ability to hit enemies. Body Magic Cure Weakness: A really important one, enemies that cause Weakness are common, if you go too long without resting partymembers will also become Weak and some buffs, when they wear off, leave the targets Weak. First Aid: Cures a small amount of static hit points(5, 7 or 10 depending on mastery). Protection From Poison: I remember poison as being relatively rare compared to other bullshit like Disease, Weakness and Insanity, as a condition, poison-type damage is also very rare. Harm: 8+(1d2*skill) damage, so it's slightly better than Mind Blast, but also costs slightly more spell points to cast. Shortly after finishing recording, I picked this one up for Bobelix so he can punch people from across the room with magic. PurpleXVI fucked around with this message at 19:59 on May 24, 2023 |
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Dec 23, 2020 01:26
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I'd go with Tails, any place called Baa is promising in my book.
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Dec 23, 2020 02:19
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This game has some fantastic portraits for debuffed characters, please try to capture as many as you can. Especially the Insanity ones.  Sparks is a decent early-game damage spell if you can get close enough to hit your target with all the shots, the individual damage is low but 3+ hits will do more than pretty much any level-equivalent spell, and in most dungeons you'll be in close quarters anyways so the low range isn't a bid drawback. Of course there's always the risk that a shot will bounce off a wall and back into your party but that's just part of the fun. I'll also vote Tails , there's one particular part of the dungeon that really deserves to be shown off at a low level. Both dungeons are surprisingly rude in parts for a game that's generally pretty fair, though.
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Dec 23, 2020 02:32
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Tails for Baa.
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Dec 23, 2020 02:36
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Heads is a good result
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Dec 23, 2020 03:25
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The fact that the portraits aren't cropped evenly wigs me out a bit. Also tails for temple of sheep.
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Dec 23, 2020 03:25
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I asked Google to flip a coin for me and it said heads.
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Dec 23, 2020 03:31
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BraveLittleToaster posted:I'd go with Tails, any place called Baa is promising in my book. This! Gimme tails because I want to see the sheep church.
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Dec 23, 2020 04:07
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Tails for sheep temple
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Dec 23, 2020 06:40
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Tails I wanna see the sheep!
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Dec 23, 2020 07:22
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Tails of course. I'm surprised you didn't give more of your party the bow skill, as having a "free" ranged attack on all your characters is imho a big boost to overworld fighting, and makes frequent treks back to town for the SP fountain far less necessary.
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Dec 23, 2020 09:28
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Torrannor posted:I'm surprised you didn't give more of your party the bow skill, as having a "free" ranged attack on all your characters is imho a big boost to overworld fighting, and makes frequent treks back to town for the SP fountain far less necessary. The party will be getting the bow skill, but at this stage they'd be missing a hell of a lot more shots than they'd be landing, so having spells that are guaranteed to hit is worth the extra drinking. Cooked Auto posted:The fact that the portraits aren't cropped evenly wigs me out a bit. I'll see about fixing that for the next post.
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Dec 23, 2020 09:41
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Joining the sheep tails  also I already adore the portrait reaction changes, I didn't realise they would do that. I request you screenshot as many goofy expressions as possible.
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Dec 23, 2020 10:31
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kvx687 posted:Sparks is a decent early-game damage spell if you can get close enough to hit your target with all the shots, the individual damage is low but 3+ hits will do more than pretty much any level-equivalent spell, and in most dungeons you'll be in close quarters anyways so the low range isn't a bid drawback. Of course there's always the risk that a shot will bounce off a wall and back into your party but that's just part of the fun. Seeing Sparks and its top-of-class 7 extra damage/skill point scaling on a cheap 4 SP spell denigrated thus makes me sad. Backpedaling in narrow corridors mashing 'S' to throw Sparks in front of you for enemies to walk into is an A+ low level strategy. In general, getting water and air magic to expert then relying on Sparks and Poison Spray is how you get the most out of your casters early on, they're the spells with the best damage scaling until you get dark magic and Shrapmetal and they're both very cheap. For druids who don't get to play with Shrapmetal, Sparks, Poison Spray and Fire Blast are the best (indoor) damage spells period. MM6 casting very much favors the multiple projectile options. It's been years since I played but last time I cheerfully broke the early game over my knees by heading to the next town over for bow training before going to the Shrine of the Gods and developer dungeon, so it'll be nice to see the intended, painful approach for the starter dungeons. I expect it'll involve a lot of healing fountains and resting.
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Dec 23, 2020 12:01
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I'm so glad to see that Might and Magic kept doing the wacky portraits when they went semi-3D. Also, tails! To the Temple of Moo! I mean Baa!
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Dec 23, 2020 12:01
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Well I know nothing about this game, so I just flipped an actual coin and it came up heads
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Dec 23, 2020 13:26
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It should be a crime that there is a stat called Might but not Magic in Might and Magic. Anyway, my decision coin says heads, even though whatever Baa is is most likely much more interesting.
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Dec 23, 2020 14:24
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Going with Tails.
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Dec 23, 2020 14:27
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I forgot about the crazy portrait shifts when you do actions like trying to pull the sword out. Oh, Might and Magic, you silly series.
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Dec 23, 2020 15:05
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My coin says heads
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Dec 23, 2020 16:00
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The Gods demand Heads
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Dec 23, 2020 16:48
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I'm going with tails. Why are level and age shown in the #/# format? Is there some sort of drain mechanic to reduce them?
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Dec 23, 2020 17:31
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Melufa posted:I'm going with tails. Not reduce them but increase them, some enemies(ghosts, in particular), have age-increasing attacks, and a few powerful consumables and spells increase your age, too. At some undefined breakpoints you get Int/Per bonuses and physical stat maluses, then afterwards at the following breakpoints its just stat maluses across the board. And it's worth noting that the ways of undoing magical aging are generally located a good bit deeper in the game, so you have to be careful not to get thoroughly hosed. Your characters also age "naturally," which there's no way to do anything about.
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Dec 23, 2020 17:51
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Melufa posted:Why are level and age shown in the #/# format? Is there some sort of drain mechanic to reduce them? Oh yes, there definitely is some sort of drain mechanic. Amusingly, getting intentionally cursed to old age by an angry ghost or whatever is somehow beneficial to some characters. The "middle age" range of 50 to 99 years gives you a modifier of -25% to might and endurance, but +50% intelligence and personality. I guess you could very carefully ensure that your casters are your older characters on creation and then spend several real-life hours resting in game to advance the clock and hit 50+ naturally, but since characters always start somewhere below age 30 doing so would be very, very boring.
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Dec 23, 2020 17:56
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Tails for the Sheep Temple!
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Dec 25, 2020 20:07
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Update 002: Wildlife Conservation I can't believe we ended up getting Tails, I was looking forward to looting a fort. C'mon, everyone! We've got a little girl to save! Does anyone want to remind him that we spent four days scouring the countryside after we got told the child was missing? I'd be surprised if we even found bones. We're going to be heroes! ...I don't have the heart for it. Ominous-looking place. Considering Portbello didn't just fetch his drat candelabra himself, I think we can assume it's not gonna be safe going in. Weapons and spells at the ready!   All of the dungeon entry screens have a bit of animation. For instance, here, the red eyes flash on and off.  And for anyone who wants to follow along, this is the full map of the temple, with the party entering at the lower right. Some of the more 3D parts can be hard to make out(where corridors cross over each other), but hopefully this gives an idea of what we're dealing with. Aaaaah! Bats! Now now, bats are generally peaceful herbivores or insectivores- Augh! The bats! They're in my hair! -except for a few specialized blood-drinking bats that primarily feed on lifestock- They're coming out of the drat walls! ...and I feel like no one's quite listening to me. Ah, yes, I see. Firebolts coming right up. So bats. They come in the usual three colours, yellow, blue and red(from weakest to strongest) and you wouldn't think that they'd be terrifying enemies, but they are. They do relatively low damage, but attack really fast(like about twice as fast as the party) and are actually of higher level for even the weakest variant so we have some trouble hitting them with physical attacks. They also all have the ability to Disease us, which is resisted by Endurance and Luck. Now, Might and Magic 6 is a bit less datamined and documented by dorks than 7 is, but as far as I've been able to tell, most conditions seem to do roughly the same thing. Disease posted:Weak Effect: Lowers Might, Endurance, Accuracy and Speed by 40%. Reduces combat efficency and lowers Hit and Spell Points to 50% maxmimum over time. Cured by a Cure Disease spell or potion. So while it's less outright evil than Wizardry/Wizards & Warriors Disease, in that it causes no permanent stat penalties, it does have a more acute function of making someone totally useless for combat. Casters can still function, but the problem is that once they rest, they still only recover to the reduced maximum until healed, so their ammo supply is severely stripped down, if nothing else. At least the bats can only cause the "Weak" disease effect and not the moderate or severe ones. Anyway, let's see how the party's doing after that fight.  I don't feel so good. I think I might've caught something off those bats. Just a scratch, champ, you can walk it off. He's turned green. We're dragging him back to the temple.Because, of course, I have nothing that cures Disease or Poison until I hit the next town, so every infection is costing me 50 gold. Considering that I'm entering the temple of Baa with 200, that strains the party's economy a bit. I won't be recording every trip out to get un-diseased and de-poisoned, but you can assume it's happened every time someone stops being bright green from one screenshot to the next.     Aside from an immediate rush by a bat swarm, all the entrance hall has for us is a bit of dropped loot on the floor(scoring Deadeye some nice electricity resistance gloves and a suit of platemail for selling) and a barrel of +1 speed(which goes to Agnes). Currently no one in the party knows how to wear platemail anyway, and I'm strongly thinking that the speed penalty for wearing plate won't be worth the armor boost unless I find one with some very nice enchantments on it. Anyone perceptive can probably spot the pack of bats hurtling up the stairs. This is how it ends up:  Gee, Deadeye, maybe you should walk it off. Get me to the temple before I puke up my kidneys. Oh no, I'm sure you can handle a room or two more.  This seems pointlessly cruel, what if he gets badly hurt? Well he wants us to drag him to the temple anyway, doesn't he?  And it's yet another new enemy!  Cobras are even tougher than bats, but because they don't fly, sometimes you can get them lodged on geometry more easily or they can't path to you if there's, say, a shallow moat of some sort. Predictably, they poison people. Aside from being higher level than bats, and having more HP than bats, they also do over twice as much damage, and on 1 in 5 attacks they also do bonus poison damage that can catapult them up to 3d6+6 vs the basic bat's 1d3 damage. That's a lotta hurting! Combined with twice the hit points and twice the armor class that also makes them take longer to put down, they're probably the most dangerous enemy in the Temple of Baa. As for the effects of poison... Poison posted:Weak Poison: Lowers Might, Endurance, Accuracy and Speed by 25%. Reduces combat efficency and lowers Hit and Spell Points to 50% maxmimum over time. Cured by a Cure Poison spell or potion. It's actually less awful than Disease, but otherwise has much the same effects. It's also resisted by poison resistance, rather than your endurance. Most of the cobras in the dungeon only do "weak" poison, but the toughest cobra down here, the Queen Cobra(of which I think there's only one present), can hit the party with Moderate Poison. The party does, in fact, want none of this if they can avoid it.   I think we got them all! Some enemies aggro through walls, while others "wake up" when you enter their line of sight, in this case there were twice as many cobras inside the room as I originally aggroed and they took me a bit by surprise.  Including a goddamn King Cobra. Nope, please die and stay dead, you terrible thing.    Yeah, that's right, they're not hiding any new monster types deeper in the temple. They're springing all three new monster types on us pretty much as soon as we enter.  Spiders are, by their read stats, probably about as nasty as cobras, but for some reason they always end up going down more easily, I'm not sure entirely why. Mostly it probably helps that we almost only encounter their brown first-tier variety down here, the second-tier blue ones can do level 2 poison and the big red ones can do level 3 poison.  This is what the party looks like after clearing out both of those little rooms at the end, both full of spiders and a bit of incidental loot. Predictably, none of the animals drop gold, but cobras and bats have small chances to drop amulets and rings, presumably stuff they've swallowed when eating other adventurers. How come you don't get poisoned, Agnes? I figure it's because I'm not dumb enough to fight giant spiders with an axe, try to collect one for my studies or to try to pet one in the middle of combat. Also these are the faces the party make while falling, which trigger a lot more easily than actual falling damage. Just going down a hill or some stairs a bit quickly tends to provoke it.   Right side of the hall is much like the left side, except just a chamber with cobras(note the one falling from the ceiling in the screenshot. I presume that gravity doesn't take effect for spawned enemies in dungeons until the party's close enough to "activate" them) and no little extra chambers full of angry, angry spiders.  And an introduction to the idea of not poking every object. This bucket, for example, holds a ring, but also poisons whoever fumbles around in there for it.   The chest in the corner contains the candelabra, and as the smart thing to do would be to head back out to hand that over to Portbello for some XP, that's exactly what the party is going to do.      So, handing that over to Portbello is actually quite a nice payday. 1000 gold and enough XP for a level-up(ignore the high gold value in the last screenshot, I went back later for some more of his randomly selected dialogue).  However, a few quests in the game, especially the one from the local bad man cult, drop our reputation precipitously. We started at a flat 0 and now we're down to -200 on a scale that goes from -1000 to 1000. Thankfully almost any other quest gives us positive rep, we can bribe the local temple to raise our rep and also over time rep tends to slowly head towards 0 if we don't do anything. It's also worth nothing that Portbello means what he says about temples of Baa having cheap healing, they'll heal you for, if I remember right, 1 gold no matter how badly bruised you are, but like completing their quests, this will also drop your reputation.  Anyway, level-ups for eeeeeeeeveryone.     And as we start getting some skills up to 4, we can start expanding them to Expert skills. For some this is more vital than others, for instance for Disarm Traps and Identification it literally doubles the value you get out of each point, and some spells are absolutely not even worth casting without their Expert level expansions(either because they scale the skill pay-off or because they suddenly become full-party buffs rather than single-character buffs).  Unfortunately this is A) somewhat expensive and B) not all skill trainers for expert skills are available in New Sorpigal(or they have certain requirements for accessing them that we don't quite fulfil lyet), so for now the only Expert is going to be Richmond who gets Fire Magic Expertise. During this little interlude I also went and picked up Sparks for Deadeye since people insisted it was good. Let's see how it works out.    Bats incoming! Stand back, I've got this one with my new spell. SPARKS!  Yeah one of the issues of Sparks is that it's not a projectile that gets aimed at targets, instead it goes flying straight out from where you're facing and, unless you angle your view up to fire it like a mortar, it just skips along the floor. This is fine for walking enemies but, as one might term it dogshit useless for flying enemies like bats. ... It's alright, Deadeye, what matters is that you tried! ... Yeah, Deadeye, don't worry about it, it's perfectly natural to have trouble getting your projectiles up sometimes. As much as I appreciate bullying Deadeye, can we kill these bats before they give me rabies again?  Past the first wave of bats, we enter a more natural cave-y looking region of the dungeon.  And we can see an odd phenomenon past the bats. Huh, that looks like fireworks. That's nice, Bobelix. Fireworks in a dungeon... the imagination on that boy sometimes. While I hate to side with him, I'm doing it explicitly to spite Agnes. That totally looks like fireworks. So there's a chest at the center of the cave that blasts out Spark-like projectiles in a radial pattern, including one fired straight up. After a few moments, they'll all explode damaging anyone near them, and of course if the party gets hit, they also take damage. So the trick is to note the pattern(it's consistent, at leaast), run in between two of the "spokes," crack the chest and leg it back out again before the central one explodes and without getting too close to any of the others.  Why are we all running with him? Deadeye could just run in there on his own! We have to show him we trust in his trap-dodging and trap-disarming skills! Ha ha yes if this kills me I'm taking you all with me. Nothing unique in the chest, but the bow is an upgrade over Deadeye's crossbow and the gold is very nice, as I didn't have enough left over after the Expert Fire Magic lesson to cure anyone if they got bit by a bat or a spider and needed the temple. I mean anyone besides Richmond, who'll just have to deal with it for now.  And then the party manages to dodge out of range just in time to avoid getting exploded. The cave is also designed with enough generous space around the sides that if you hug the leftmost wall you can pass through without any risk of getting blasted, so you don't have to wait for the chest every time you want to make the trip in and out.   Also I want to point out what a loving relief it is to be able to see five feet in front of the party in a dungeon with Torchlight up compared to loving Wizards & Warriors. Have I mentioned how much I enjoy everything this game does that W&W does not, yet?  As we get deeper into the cave, bats become less prevalent and the enemies start switching over to mostly spiders and cobras. The spiders are no big deal, but when the cobras land their second attack it really kicks my rear end. Even with Protection from Poison up, it feels like I get poisoned at about the same rate as usual, maybe this'll change once Bobelix is a Body Magic Expert or simply has more ranks in Body Magic, but for now it feels like it could be going better.    The cave doesn't have an awful lot of branches, but here's one of them, and this one is important to head down because...   How the hell is she alive down here? We almost died ten times getting this far! Don't you worry, Angela, we'll get you home safe. I'm Bobelix, the other three are Agnes, Deadeye and Richmond. She seems to be in good enough health... we should probably get her back to her mother right away. Eh, if she's tough enough to have made it this far, she can ride on Bobelix's shoulders while we check out what's behind that door.    That's one hell of a door. It bodes. Yeah, the rest of us are gonna stand behind the corner over here while you open it. Oh that's- -grim, yes, I know. -I was gonna say that's a jackpot. Dead people can't stop us stealing their stuff. Just put your hands over your ears any time Deadeye's talking, Angela. The room has a bit of scattered loot, and the hanging cages can also be looted for some random rings and other trinkets.   Since she's implemented as a follower, albeit at the lowest payment rate, Angela still snags 1 coin from any pile we pick up. See here, Angela? You can have this shiny gold coin for being a brave girl. That's absolutely coming out of your own share. Are we sure this is a smart thing to do? People come to bad ends robbing tombs and graves... What are these old bones going to do? Blow us up?  The game doesn't even bother to explain this one with a sound effect or a damage splash or anything, the party just gets to eat poo poo for poking these two cages at the end of the room. Might and Magic might have entered the realms of 3D, but it's still every bit as willing to gently caress you over at the drop of a hat as the older games.  Okay, point taken. Ow.Thankfully the game is generally semi-merciful with heavy damage. It takes a LOT of damage to drop a character from alive straight into dead, there's a buffer period of KO'd between the two. It still sucks to be in, since every time a character gets KO'd I believe they have a chance to have a piece of gear broken, which would suck. A quick nap inside a chamber full of ancient, mouldering corpses with a small child along for the ride patches everyone right up.   It's starting to worry me that getting assaulted by swarms of carnivorous bats no longer frightens me. That's just you developing some character, Richmond. Ah, good, I was worried it was the rabies again.    Which we are we going, Agnes? Not left, I can sure as hell tell you that.This area is another little crossroads, with the left path being a bridge over a lower tunnel full of bats. I'm pretty sure if you cross over it the bats will aggro and come up for you, because they didn't seem to follow normal aggro rules as I could approach the edge of the bridge and look down at them and they didn't come for me.   Going right, on the other hand, is oops-all-cobras territory. drat, Richmond, maybe you should've had some of that lucky well water after all. As fun as it is to pick on Richmond, we should probably wait until we've hauled him out of the cave to go "I told you so." I can feel my blood coagulating inside my veins. Hear that, Angela? You're going home!  Vision... blurry... is this the temple? Uhhhhhh, yeah, just sit down here on the grass while we go talk to the nice priest.  This would be an interesting bit of dialogue in a different game where we could actually talk to the goblins. All we can do here is feel sorry for Jimmy Goblin as we carve him into shreds and loot his corpse. I get Richmond de-poisoned and, as it turns out, rescuing Angela was enough XP for another level-up!      The big changes are Expert Earth Magic for Agnes as well as some Mind magic, Water magic advances for Richmond, Bobelix getting ready for Expert Body Magic and Deadeye finally getting some magical advances, in his case in Air Magic. He's otherwise busy being mostly invested in non-combat skills, since elemental magic is what I've got on three characters, so I figured he was the one I could most safely dump stuff like ID'ing items and disarming traps on.  As much as I enjoy these regular brushes with death, I'm glad this is going to be our last visit to this place.  Cobra queens aren't exactly unique boss enemies, but I believe there's only one or at most two down here, and they're the toughest thing we've had the pleasure of fighting so far. They're definitely not enemies we want to get close to, so fighting them is mostly a matter of running away, turning around, blasting them, and then turning and running again before their flinch-animation ends. drat, what were those snakes fighting so hard for anyway? You'd figure they'd just start running after we killed the first fifty of them.  Well there's your explanation, Deadeye. Most animals will fight to the death for their eggs or young. Ugh, I hope there isn't a nest of spider eggs down here, too. Can I keep one? Maybe we can hatch ourselves a friend! Not until the next game. What I want to know is why snakes are guarding a chest. Huh, let's find out what's valuable to a snake. And steal it.  That huge green splot is what happens when Deadeye fucks up disarming a trap and gets the party knocked around. The chest mostly just contained gold and a new axe for Deadeye.  Proceeding through the snake lair, what comes at us next is brown spiders that are annoyingly hard to spot against the brown floor sometimes.  Also note that dense cluster of enemies on the minimap, that's a bunch of enemies that have pathed on to a ledge just above the ramp, which means that as soon as I step on to the ramp, they all drop on my head and get attacks on me while I can't blast them from range. It hurts.  On the bright side, now we get to see Agnes' poisoned/diseased expression, too.  While I chop my way through the spiders, I almost manage to miss the Queen Spider, who's just another spider, but larger and red. She's supposed to have 50 hitpoints but nonetheless goes down to just a couple of casts from Agnes and Richmond, leading me to suspect they must've rolled pretty much max damage on both of them, which is good, because the Queen Spider does not gently caress around if she gets close enough to take a nibble out of the party. She's even capable of spitting poison at range if she feels like it.    She also guards this little pond containing a chest and a skylight. Will Deadeye pick this one without getting everyone killed? Hey, last one was a fluke, who would have expected snakes to be good locksmiths? We have faith in you, Deadeye, from over here, behind the door.He actually does crack it, though, and it contains a fat load of gold, over 5000 gold pieces which is a big cha-ching and will pay for some more expert-level training and some more spells. After that, though, it's just cleanup.  Looping around below the stone bridge.   Deadeye loving up again.  Also, because the dungeon is relatively long and linear, both paths(going over and under the stone bridge) lead to a teleporter that takes you back to the room with the fireworks chest, which is a nice bit of quality-of-life stuff. Most M&M6 dungeons do not waste your time with a huge, long slog back to the entrance, which I appreciate them for even when they gently caress me over.   I'll be happy never to see the inside of another Temple of Baa, no matter how good their prices on healing are. Maybe if it wasn't full of angry animals it would have been a cozy place!  Hey, for this kind of payday? I'd slog through that place twice. I do feel a bit bad about all those dead cobras, though. I never expected you to care about endangered species. Maybe Deadeye wants a pet cobra, too! Hell no, what I'm looking at is how much this doofus is paying us for the eggs! We should've scored a breeding pair and set up a Cobra egg shop rather than going out risking our lives.In any case, the Spider Queen's heart nets the party yet another level-up, and thus more skills at 4 points that need turning into expert skills.  In particular I'm excited to get Deadeye up to Air 4 so Wizard Eye will reveal more details and Spark will deliver 60% more projectiles when cast.    Mind, Water and Body are the respective upgrades for Agnes, Richmond and Bobelix. Now, to find those trainers, let's bring out the New Sorpigal map again... Hmmm...So the Body, Spirit and Mind Expert trainers are in the 20-22 row of houses, those are easy enough. But where the hell are the Water and Air trainers?The Water Expert Magic trainer is out at 37 and thus unreachable to us at the moment until we expand our skill selection. Either Air or Water magic can solve the problem for us, predictably. And now the important one, where's the trainer that'll give me access to infinite arcane power? Says 25 in the margins. ...that's the bank, you're holding the map upside down or something.Agnes is, in fact, correct, it's in that building. But it's not the ground-floor entrance, no, the developers cruelly hid the Air trainer behind the door up on the little balcony, which is unreachable without some intense jank exploitation or learning some advanced air spells. Now, I could be patient and wait with this upgrade, but gently caress patience. We're getting that expert training now. How am I gonna get up there? No one here's invented a ladder, and if they had, they wouldn't loan us one after we did that quest for the Baa guy. Hmmm... I might have an idea. Bobelix? Please, stand over here. Over here? A bit to the left. Uhhhh, I'm seeing something weird, it kind of makes my head hurt... That just means its working, now... step back, and then forwards, and reach out...  At the right angle the bottom of the balcony stops rendering, and thus stops existing, and the party can just reach up through it and knock on the door and summon the trainer. Alright, let's never do that again. In fact, I need something to clear my palate, let's go clean out Goblinwatch. Clean up, you mean. No, I don't think I do, we're stripping that place to the floorboards.   This can't possibly be worse than the Temple of Baa, at least.Next Time: Do goblins have families? We'll empirically test by killing a bunch of them and see if anyone shows up for their funerals.
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Dec 25, 2020 20:41
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This LP made me start a new playthrough today and it ... holds up surprisingly well, really. It's ugly as sin, but still a good powergaming trip and dungeon crawler. Also, a lot of goofy faces and puns. Might and Magic always did have the virtue of not taking itself very seriously.PurpleXVI posted:
I think that particular island is close enough that you can survive the run unassisted if you want to. The game allows you to run normally over water if you jump or fall in, you just take constant damage while you do it. This requires you find the jump key, which exists and is bound to something. I think 'x' by default? It's weird that the game even has a jump key, you don't need it for anything and it's not a very natural jump. It's useful for the occasional knee-high ledge and getting over the game's tiny, tiny rivers without using bridges, as well as accidentally killing yourself.
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Dec 25, 2020 21:40
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Yeah, I'm pretty sure jump is X and allows you to get over this small gap to that island. I'm also pretty sure there's a scroll that allows you to cast flight somewhere nearby, but of course you might want to use it for... other, possibly very profitable things.
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Dec 25, 2020 22:00
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Torrannor posted:Yeah, I'm pretty sure jump is X and allows you to get over this small gap to that island. Xerophyte posted:I think that particular island is close enough that you can survive the run unassisted if you want to. The game allows you to run normally over water if you jump or fall in, you just take constant damage while you do it. Well, since you guys brought it up, I had to test it, and the party will be regretting that you suggested it.
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Dec 25, 2020 22:47
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It's amazing how much of a difference there is between this game and the last. THe last was obviously complete dogshit from the beginning, but this one actually looks like you could have some fun playing it. I'm a sucker for character building systems like these.
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Dec 25, 2020 23:12
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Mandate of Heaven is a legitimately good game and For Blood and Honor is even better. I've never actually managed to play 8.
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Dec 25, 2020 23:18
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Oh drat. MM6 is one of my fave games ever, but I never knew you could cheese the Air trainer like that.
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Dec 25, 2020 23:20
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Ah, the good old Temple of Baa experience Nothing like walking into the entry-level dungeon and immediately getting jumped by like twenty cobras in the second room. Incidentally, I'm pretty sure the cage trap is supposed to be a fireball, I managed to avoid one by triggering it from the maximum possible distance and it looked like it spawned the same sprite for a moment before it hit the opposite wall. Night10194 posted:Mandate of Heaven is a legitimately good game and For Blood and Honor is even better. I've never actually managed to play 8. I like 8 a lot but it's pretty divisive compared to 6 and 7. For one thing, it's a fair amount smaller than them, with only 9 outdoors areas, and while the elemental planers brings the numbers up a bit they're mostly pretty low on features. The party swap feature is implemented a bit oddly, since you can only create a single character and all the others are recruited from preexisting NPCs. Still, it had some neat ideas like giving every different magic-using class a unique spell category only they had access to, and if nothing else being able to add dragons into your party excuses a multitude of sins.
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Dec 26, 2020 00:23
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kvx687 posted:I like 8 a lot but it's pretty divisive compared to 6 and 7. For one thing, it's a fair amount smaller than them, with only 9 outdoors areas, and while the elemental planers brings the numbers up a bit they're mostly pretty low on features. The party swap feature is implemented a bit oddly, since you can only create a single character and all the others are recruited from preexisting NPCs. Still, it had some neat ideas like giving every different magic-using class a unique spell category only they had access to, and if nothing else being able to add dragons into your party excuses a multitude of sins. I was personally a big fan of it, for a variety of reasons. Please don't talk too much about 7 and 8, though, I want there to be a few surprises and things for me to talk about when I get that far. 
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Dec 26, 2020 00:28
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Keldulas posted:It's amazing how much of a difference there is between this game and the last. THe last was obviously complete dogshit from the beginning, but this one actually looks like you could have some fun playing it. I'm a sucker for character building systems like these. I mean, the last game was pure poo poo. But as a kid, I had tons of fun playing MM6, it's just that I only revisited it once after the in most ways superior MM7 came out. Which actually had a higher intrinsic replay value, even apart from being a better game.
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Dec 26, 2020 01:42
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PurpleXVI posted:Well, since you guys brought it up, I had to test it, and the party will be regretting that you suggested it. Well, you live and learn. One of the two, anyhow.  In my little concurrent playthrough I didn't try to painswim over but used the fly scroll in the bank wall to get to the island, routing it in with the air expert trainer and temple of the gods teleport after doing my initial world tour of the stat increasing drinking fountains and "freebie" promotion quests. I've metagamed the early game about as much as I can and the early dungeons still kick my rear end if I'm careless. I'm having a lot of fun replaying it and MM6 certainly was a good game when it came out, unlike W&W which was forever dogshit. I'm not sure MM6 still is a good game without nostalgia glasses and a lot of tolerance for mean traps and general jank, but if you like old ugly dungeon crawls it's worth trying. There's a nice fan patch which lets you rebind keys, adds quick save/load, hacks in a surprisingly functional mouse look and fixes a ton of little bugs I didn't even know existed (for instance: dual wield does almost nothing in the base game, was originally not fixed until the sequel). E: oh hey, Purple mentioned said patch in the OP even.
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Dec 26, 2020 04:50
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Update 003: It's A Perfectly Legal Thrill Alright, this update will be somewhat quick as there isn't a whole lot to say about Goblinwatch. It's absolutely one of the weaker dungeons in the game, both in terms of content and presentation.    drat but I can't wait to loot this place. It smells like money. Alright, let's kick in the front d- Hold your horses. See those battlements up there? Maybe there's a better way in than just busting down the front door. You take all the fun out of life sometimes.   If you're not the sort of person to poke at every nook and cranny it's easy to miss that there's a narrow ramp up to the battlements of Goblinwatch on the back side of the fort. There isn't a lot to be gained, mechanically, just a single crate of loot and a handful of dead goblins' worth of gold and XP, but there is a small encounter at the very top.    Sadly it's not a secondary entrance to the dungeon, as far as I remember no MM6 dungeons have secondary entrances or exits.  Oh, the goblins just want us to stop killing them... are we the baddies? Uh, well, you see. Hm. Agnes? Evidence starting to point towards "yes." Look, Bobelix, it's simple. Why do we kill goblins? Because... they have gold? Exactly. So all they'd have to do to stop us killing them is stop carrying money. Since they keep carrying money, they're implicitly consenting to be cut down in large numbers.Jokey dialogue aside, it is a bit jarring to have no option but to murder them by the hundreds when you have NPC's going "hey, why are goblins considered evil?" and goblins going "we took over your fort to stop you killing us."  Let's just get the job done before this gets awkward.   Design-wise, Goblinwatch is somewhat the opposite of the Temple of Baa(the party starts at the black triangle-ish shape in the upper mid portion of the map), with a lot of narrow corridors and hard-to-avoid melee encounters. Rather than being one long line, it's also a few branches that, to some extent, all loop back on the entrance so you never have too far to go to get back.  Also the minimap is occasionally quite bad at hiding secret doors, for instance, there's one on the left side of this room where we've just got a blank wall, and the minimap displays a missing wall. We can't open it from this side, though, so it doesn't really spoil anything, but it's definitely worth keeping a close eye on the minimap, because it's occasionally relevant.   Heads up! Enemy around the corner!  Rats are predictably weak enemies. Oddly enough, despite the fact that you'll almost certainly have gibbed a double-digit number of goblins before busting in here, rats actually have notably weaker stats. Being lower level, doing less damage and having less hit points. Of course, all three of their varieties can also disease you, but with the party having a marginally higher chance of dodging, they seemed to land the attacks needed to stick it less often.   ...who designed this place? The sewer just off the main hall?   Look at what the first serious combat encounter in Goblinwatch does to our party. Imagine if you came in here at level 2 rather than level 5 as the party is. You'd almost certainly be torn to shreds with slightly weaker gear, less HP, less SP and less space to back off than the Temple of Baa would give you. So it's a strange combination of some weaker enemies than the Temple and more "gently caress you" level design.   What the hell kind of sewer is this? Some of these panels have chests behind them, and one of them you really want to find.   As it has the scroll needed to continue. Now, give it a quick look and see if you can figure out the correct code before I get there. There's a series of letters that open one door and only close the one immediately past it, meaning they never close a preceding one that's been opened. Well, that was delightfully easy. Now I suppose we can go get our reward. Hell no. If we go back, they'll send a bunch of soldiers here to clean the place out. As long as we don't return these codes, we can strip this place of everything of value.    This branch doesn't have much of interest, but it does show off the second and final new creature type of the dungeon!  Bloodsuckers, Brainsuckers and Soulsuckers. Basically flying rats that can, like rats, Disease the party. They do a bit less physical damage and have a bit less health, but are harder to hit. Assuming I'm reading these stats right, it also seems that some of them have multiple chances of landing conditions, so they're even more likely to Disease you than rats if they do land a hit.  Anyway the only real feature of the room is that the entrance is designed such that enemies are likely to get caught on it rather than come out to fight you, so they're harder to blast as they come at you and most likely you'll have to run out and eat some melee attacks to the sides and back before you can turn around and start blasting.  In any case, this is the relevant way to go, just gotta blow up some goblins first.  They kind of implemented an alphabetic keyboard here, but they only gave it 16 letters. So what's the code to open this gate? There are so many possible combinations, let me think... It's NILBOG. How the hell did you figure that one out? Well it's by the Drawkcab Monks, isn't it? I used to have all their puzzle books when I was little. It's always a word spelled backwards. Richmond, if Bobelix figured this one out before you did, I'm demoting you.    I do like that they didn't just go minimum effort and have the gates slide apart as wholes, but instead had them move apart as interlocking bars. It's a very minor thing, but it makes opening the gate feel just that little bit more cool.   I also have to say, this dungeon really isn't one that makes a whole lot of internal sense in terms of layout. See, so we open the gate, right? And it leads to caves. Then we beat up a few bloodsuckers and explore the cave and...       ...jump down through a hole in the caves that puts us back inside the fort-looking tunnels. Like, the heck?   So the fort has a treasure room that's not accessible except by going this way. Mediocre loot in the chests, but!   When you open the leftmost one it spawns two goblin shaman and an explosion(the weird blue projectile behind them) behind you, except the projectile isn't explosive enough that it could EVER hurt you at any point where you could open the chest from.     All just so you could loop back to the main exit. This place is starting to make me dizzy. Gods, no kidding. Richmond, you're the smart guy, figure out this stupid place for us. Maybe it was intended as... a lure to waste intruders' time? Then why put actual treasure down here? C'mon guys, it's obviously a dungeon for adventurers to explore! And we're adventurers! He's two for two on you so far, Richmond.    The alternate branch leads to the only sort-of furnished room in the dungeon, which has a few small bits of gold, more goblins and a shitload of rats.   And then ends in caves again. So far the path has been fort-caves-fort-caves.    I can see why it might be considered a "simpler" dungeon than the Temple of Baa due to not really having any traps or environmental dangers, not even anything you could fall off, and just combat after combat, I suppose. Mostly what you're missing out on here is a whole lot of me backpedalling while blasting off all my spell points.  Two holes full of rats guard one of two proper "reward" chests for completing the dungeon.   That's actually a quite nice find, in terms of being our first tier-2 piece of armor, the second tier of leather armor, which goes to Richmond since he seems to be the one getting bonked most often.  Looking stylish! Now he just needs some sort of exciting hat to go with it so he can look properly like a clown.  The second branch is more of the same, but with an interesting factoid! If you hit the "maintenance" button on the Goblinwatch code board, it teleports you down here. Which is frankly kind of cruel since it's entirely possible that fighting your way back to the front entrance might be more than the party has the resources for at that point, while expecting "maintenance" to just open a door or something.    Heeeeeeey, check it out, it's a hat for Richmond! Poor guy, he's really not going to have any sort of even vaguely coherent look. Alright, is that everything? Unless you think we should start prying the tiles off the floors. Good, let's blow this joint.   Loaded down with loot, including a pair of spellbooks(nothing new, just another Protection From Poison and Deadly Swarm book, to round out Agnes and Richmond's spell options, respectively) the party tromps back to town, but ends up having to stand around staring for a few hours since I manage to arrive at literally the one hour of night where even the temples and inns are closed for business. Though since I chose to Wait rather than Rest for the right hour to roll around, I got a chance to show off what happens when the party goes too long without sleep. First they get the Weak status:  Resulting in these goofy faces. If I kept it going for long enough, they'd eventually start going Insane from lack of sleep. Thankfully being Weak is one of the few statuses that go away with rest.     We get our reward and Janice gives us another reason to head west to Castle Ironfist. Looks like this place is tapped out unless we learn how to walk on water. We should stock up and get ready to head over to Castle Ironfist, it's a bit of a walk.In the real world this is delayed slightly as I go outside, fat-finger the attack key, and blow away a peasant with one of Richmond's firebolts. Thankfully the autosave option had saved just as I left Goblinwatch, so I only had to re-do a little amount of play, as I didn't feel like slicing apart like a hundred peasants just to get some peace. Plus it's a bad idea to go to Ironfist with too-low rep. After re-doing what little I had done previously, I get in some training, with the most important things being Expert Identification for Deadeye. This doubles his effective ID skill from 4 to 8, meaning that only a few things shy of Artifacts are outside of what he can ID now, which leads to one of my small complaints with the game. It'll EAGERLY let you overspend points on skills like Disarm Trap and Identification without giving you any hints how much is an important amount to have. Other skills, like Perception, also have very vague functions(turns out that it rolls 1d20 plus Perception skill, and if the total is 20 or greater, the character takes no damage from trapped chests that the idiot trap-disarmer bungles, according to people who have dug through the game's code, at least). So it could use better in-game documentation. Yes, it's a shame we can't walk on water, even after all our other training, I would have loved to expand my knowledge of Water magic, but the trainer for that is on an island just offshore. You guys are awful quick to give up. Let's have a look at this island.  So let's talk about this island! Xerophyte and Torrannor are right that it can be reached without Water Walking or Fly spells! However, it's well-populated with monsters, as is visible. Including several goblin kings and mages that still do enough damage for it to hurt. Some of them, we can snipe from the shoreline.  But most of them, I want to say 3/4ths or 2/3rds are too far away to aggro or hit. So they'll be waiting for us when we get across.    We have now put ourselves down at ~2/3rds health for the entire party, have plenty of enemies to fight, AND we're in a situation where we can't easily back off to replenish resources or effortlessly juke around these dickheads. Alright, I admit, this might not have been a perfect idea. This island really isn't lightly populated.  There's a cabin over there! Run for cover!  On the bright side, we did find the trainer we needed. Go ahead and pay the nice man, Richmond.   I get cocky and decide to loot this chest on the way off the island, snagging a third-tier suit of Enchanted Leather armor with a bonus poison resistance effect on it! Score. Now to make it back to shore alive.    It could literally not have been a closer call.  Thankfully Bobelix is swole enough to drag everyone back to the inn where a good night's rest revives them.  We're not going swimming again. Never again. Anyway, everyone set for the trip to Castle Ironfist? Trained and sharpened. Picked up some fresh spells. I made sure to pack plenty of supplies!  Hang on a moment, though. Didn't Janice say those cultists were robbing people on the road? Maybe we should rethink this.  Now that we're forewarned, we may as well travel in style. We can afford it, too.Vote of the Post Does the party travel by foot or by coach to Castle Ironfist?
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Dec 26, 2020 21:29
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I'm adopting the habit of flipping virtual coins to choose. And the coin chose by foot.
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Dec 26, 2020 22:28
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