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Kuros
Sep 13, 2010

Oh look, the consequences of my prior actions are finally catching up to me.
I'm not sure if it's been mentioned yet, but the Exile/Avernum series and the Geneforge series are quite good CRPGs as well. Spiderweb Software also made Nethergate and Avadon (Currently in the newest Humble Bundle!) which are solid CRPGs.

They are all worth a look.

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Kuros
Sep 13, 2010

Oh look, the consequences of my prior actions are finally catching up to me.

Tuxedo Catfish posted:

MM6 is the one with the cultists who worship devil-aliens that destroyed your village and are invading the planet. You never meet any elves, except for maybe a few random instructors/townsfolk. Maybe you're thinking of 7?

He's thinking of 7.

When playing 6, I highly suggest Mastering Light first as it's MUCH harder to master light. You can get rep from doing bounty hunts however, so while there are unlimited good rep points, they are harder to get.

Wanna get Notorious rep? Just Armageddon a town. Done.

Kuros
Sep 13, 2010

Oh look, the consequences of my prior actions are finally catching up to me.

Dropbear posted:

I just armageddoned the starting town to go notorious and get the dark magic mastery, then donated a few thousand to a church (you get so much money you really have no other use for it) and everyone forgot the whole genocide-thing and thought of me as a saint again.

Donating to a church only gets you up to the 2nd level of good rep I believe.

Kuros
Sep 13, 2010

Oh look, the consequences of my prior actions are finally catching up to me.

Boldor posted:

Short version: Do exactly this on a normal playthrough.

While you can get reputation from bounty hunts, those are handed out only a monthly basis, so it can take a loooong time to accumulate enough reputation to get the required Saintly reputation, especially because reputation will decay towards neutrality over time. It's much easier to get reputation from doing quests.

If you actually get Master Dark Magic first, and do it late enough in the game, you run the risk of there not being enough quests left to get Master Light Magic without spending ages farming bounty hunts. Note that hiring a Bard gives your party an extra level of reputation, so you don't have to get all the way to Saintly yourself; Glorious is enough. You can also hire NPCs to lower your reputation by two levels to Notorious so you don't have to kill as many peasants, but it's both easy to kill peasants and it's very easy to fix a bad reputation by donating at temples. Donating at temples will get you up to Respectable (one level above neutrality).

A few quests will actually lower your reputation. This includes the one even most people who are new to playing the game complete within the first minute (the one you start the game with), and the mandatory price-fixing quest. The one quest that hurts your reputation the most is close to the end of the game. When you free Archibald, your reputation takes an enormous hit, enough that it's going to be very hard to get Master Light Magic; the only way that will even be possible is if you're somehow gaming the reputation system.

If you have won the game before: you can get Master Dark Magic first; complete only quests that do not give you positive reputation, kill just enough peasants to be able to drop yourself to Notorious, then use temples to fix yourself back up to Respectable. You do not need to be high level for this, as it only takes 9 skill points to meet the requirements for Master Dark Magic. You can then do positive reputation quests and work yourself up to Master Light Magic. This is also a way to actually end the game with Saintly reputation, which normally doesn't happen.

If you're playing MM7, reputation does something different: it acts as a modifier to Merchant skill. Reputation also varies by map. The first thing you want to do upon entering a map with a town is to donate 5 times at a temple to top off your local reputation; this will easily pay for itself quickly enough. The town that gives you the best reputation isn't the castle you call home (the people there will never truly respect you), but the dwarf city of Stone City once you complete its quests. This is where it's most profitable to conduct business before you get a Grandmaster Merchant.

Correction: You only need 4 Light OR Dark in order to Master those skills. You need 4 to Expert and the Master levels only require the proper reputation. Normally spell skills require 12 skill points in order to master. Air, Dark, Light and Spirit are the exceptions.

Kuros
Sep 13, 2010

Oh look, the consequences of my prior actions are finally catching up to me.

Fintilgin posted:

Might and Magic 7 is much more polished then 6 and is my personal favorite of the series, so I would definitely recommend it.

You don't get to make your full party in 8 and instead have to recruit people. This was literally enough to turn me off the game and never get more then an hour or so into it.

8 was the weakest of the trio but I thought it was decent. The best thing about playing 8 is once you get used to how it works and the nuances, you can completely just break the game over your knee.

FYI goons: GOG has the Might and Magic series 50% off right now!

Kuros
Sep 13, 2010

Oh look, the consequences of my prior actions are finally catching up to me.

Boldor posted:

Yeah, but to get to level 4 of a skill, you need 9 skill points. That's what I meant.

You normally need level 12 in a skill to get Master, which requires 77 skill points.

Okay. Understood.

Kuros
Sep 13, 2010

Oh look, the consequences of my prior actions are finally catching up to me.

Greyhawk posted:

So I just got the complete M&M franchise off gog.com

Anyone know of a software tool to help with mapping. I really don't want to go the graph paper and pen route anymore.

M&M2 and onwards have automapping although you need a skill to enable it in 2-5.

Kuros
Sep 13, 2010

Oh look, the consequences of my prior actions are finally catching up to me.

SolidSnakesBandana posted:

I played Might and Magic 6 as a kid and found it to be ridiculously difficult, certainly compared to something like Baldur's Gate 2. Recently I tried to play it again but it kind of boiled down to me shooting a billion monsters to death with bows/crossbows. I would kite these large groups down chokepoints and basically cheese them all to death. I played for a few hours and this never really changed. I feel like I'm missing something about this game. I want to like it, but I feel like the game hates me.

There are two ways to take on MM6. The normal way, which it sounds like what you did, and the power gamer way, which is what most people do when they figure out the secrets. You can actually get to the low-mid 20s in levels without fighting a single monster if you know what you are doing.

Kuros
Sep 13, 2010

Oh look, the consequences of my prior actions are finally catching up to me.

Chinook posted:

Glad you posted this. I had to get a Windows XP virtual machine up and running to try it out, since I'm on Win7-64 bit. Anyway, it's exactly as I remember it:


:( I don't know if I ever got past the 2nd or third level in that first cave.

Take Magic Missile as your first spell. It helps with the early game.

Also, there's a constitution bug, simply keep casting spells (you can cast spells with no SP at a risk) and your Con gets so low that it rolls over and gives you max Con, giving you much more health to begin with.

Kuros
Sep 13, 2010

Oh look, the consequences of my prior actions are finally catching up to me.

SolidSnakesBandana posted:

Maybe they do but who cares? You just got a store's entire inventory. The shops in Tarant have a lot of things that you just aren't meant to have that early in the game. It'd be like robbing the entire Adventurer's Mart at the beginning of Baldur's Gate 2.


I did some threadsearching after my previous inquiry and found this wonderful post about MM6. I'd be curious if the advice is different for MM7. I've never heard anyone talk about MM8.

I'm pretty knowledgeable on all 3 of those games. You can PM me if you want.

Now I need to continue my LP of MM6. :negative:

Kuros
Sep 13, 2010

Oh look, the consequences of my prior actions are finally catching up to me.

SolidSnakesBandana posted:

I am shamefully on the fence about getting MM6 because of the higher price and my little likelihood to play 1-5. Would I really be missing anything by just getting 7 or maybe 8?

You can get 1-8 on Gog for under $10, why not get them all?

Kuros
Sep 13, 2010

Oh look, the consequences of my prior actions are finally catching up to me.

Boldor posted:

In MM6-8 Meteor Storm works okay against even flying enemies if they aren't fire immune, though they only get hurt by the meteors flying through them and don't get much touched by their explosions when they hit the ground. In MM6 Meteor Storm also works well enough even at Expert Level (you can't cast it at this level in MM7-8), which is great since you need to invest 68 extra skill points to get Master Fire Magic after you get Expert Fire Magic. The same thing goes with Starburst. I don't believe there's anything outdoors in any of standard MM6-MM8 that's immune to both Meteor Storm and Starburst, although the main fan mod for MM6 does have such. You can abuse the Fly spell to dodge most missiles thrown at you; the main thing you have to worry about is enemy Meteor Storms, which hurt a lot. MM7 also has a couple mountains that are so high the Fly spell stops functioning.

There's nothing in MM6 that you can use Meteors/Stars on that fully resist both, either one or the other, sure, but not both

The thing about MM6 is that pretty much all monster groups start on the ground before they start flying, so you can use those spells against dragons and the like as long as you make sure that they don't start flying.

Kuros
Sep 13, 2010

Oh look, the consequences of my prior actions are finally catching up to me.

Fintilgin posted:

I literally could not get over the fact that you couldn't create your own full, custom party to even play 8 past the first fifteen minutes or so. I suppose I should give it another shot sometime, but violating that 'sense of ownership' of my party really alienated me after playing 4-7.

If you really want to, you can download an editor and modify the hirelings to your liking.

Kuros
Sep 13, 2010

Oh look, the consequences of my prior actions are finally catching up to me.

futurememory posted:

Thanks for the recommendations! I was thinking of going a bit more old-school than Baldur's Gate and Torment; I thought if I played something as "alien" as possible to my usual RPG gaming experiences, I'd enjoy BG and Planescape more in the long run. Would M&MIV still be a good recommendation? I've been browsing through the Let's Play thread on World of Xeen and it looks like it could be interesting.

As everyone else will mention, if you are going to play MM4, just get World of Xeen which combines MM4 & MM5 and gives you a 3rd final ending quest line.

Kuros
Sep 13, 2010

Oh look, the consequences of my prior actions are finally catching up to me.

andrew smash posted:

I would start with geneforge and go forward from there, the old interfaces are clunky and will be hard to go back to once you've played avadon.

Keep in kind that you've purchased like 500 hours of gameplay.

I believe the Avernum games have a similar interface (except A:EftP).

Kuros
Sep 13, 2010

Oh look, the consequences of my prior actions are finally catching up to me.

Xerophyte posted:

The Humble Bundle is doing a pay what you want sale for everything Spiderweb Software. You need to pay at least $4 to get Avernum: Escape From the Pit, which you should because it's their best effort and still dead cheap for some 10 years worth of Spiderweb games. If Jeff Vogel once strangled your pet iguana and you want him to suffer as you have then you can opt pay nothing and still get all of Geneforge, the other Avernum games and Avadon: The Black Fortress; this is a p. good deal for nothing.

You can also give it your money to the EFF or Child's Play. They're laudable causes and all but I really wish the Humble Bundles supported a charity less focused on 1st world problems...

Let's just say that just 1 of the games will keep you busy for 30-50 hours. There are 13 games in total (if you could Avernum 1 and Avernum: EftP as one game)

That's a ton of gameplay waiting.

Kuros
Sep 13, 2010

Oh look, the consequences of my prior actions are finally catching up to me.

CrookedB posted:

So, Might & Magic X Legacy early access/preorders available now:

Steam: http://store.steampowered.com/app/238750/
Uplay: http://shop.ubi.com/promo/93655000

Oh poo poo, I'm now super tempted to get it already.

Kuros
Sep 13, 2010

Oh look, the consequences of my prior actions are finally catching up to me.

Genpei Turtle posted:

Me too, but I was also tempted to pre-order the Realms of Arkania remake as well. I doubt MMX will be quite the clusterfuck that was, but you never know...

Very true, but at least it will be me selling TF2 keys instead of using my actual money.

Kuros
Sep 13, 2010

Oh look, the consequences of my prior actions are finally catching up to me.

Iris of Ether posted:

FYI, Wizardry 6, 7, and 8 are on sale for $2.25 (USD) on Steam for the next ~6.5 hours.

Just Wizardry 8 is...apparently also $2.25 for whatever reason. :confuoot:

I just got this myself. Was surprised at the price for the 3 games.

Kuros
Sep 13, 2010

Oh look, the consequences of my prior actions are finally catching up to me.
Over the holidays I played through Might & Magic 6 and Might & Magic 7 again. However I loaded up the Chaos Conspiracy Mod for MM6 and MM7Rev4 mod for MM7.

Both I feel add a good amount of change and balance to the games by making enemies harder, adding more enemies, giving them more skills, etc. Some of the new items added are super powerful which is great for melee characters. Plus the MM7 mod has a quest which allows you to multiclass in a way.

I will say I couldn't officially complete MM6 because part 2 of the mod wouldn't install properly, but it was still fun.

I'm currently playing through the remaster of the Bard's Tale Trilogy on Steam. Quite a good pickup as well.

Kuros
Sep 13, 2010

Oh look, the consequences of my prior actions are finally catching up to me.

chaosapiant posted:

I tried getting into M&M6 multiple times and keep bouncing off. The combat is this weird real time mess of mashing buttons and I can't get the hang of it. I really wish it were turn based at least.



What Sundance said. In MM6 through MM8, pressing Enter turns the game into Turn Based Mode. Which depending on your situation, can help slow the pace down a bit so you can catch your breath.

Just don't do it when you have hordes of enemies in your sights as they will all get attacks on you during their turn.

The three games aren't the most optimized, so there are some fun bugs you can play with in order to cheese the monsters and in fact, you will need to do so during the mods.

Kuros
Sep 13, 2010

Oh look, the consequences of my prior actions are finally catching up to me.

Libluini posted:

But you should do it if the horde in question is one of those annoying swarms of fast and agile bastards and still far away -by slowly retreating and shooting, you can butcher impressive numbers of enemies. Just switch to real time and run away if it looks you lose.

Like the mosquitos in the beginning of MM7, super annoying.

Kuros
Sep 13, 2010

Oh look, the consequences of my prior actions are finally catching up to me.

ProfessorCirno posted:

Alternately, treat the game like a really slow, boring, and lovely first person shooter and just run a bit, turn to the side and shoot all your bows real quick, then turn back and keep running, and you can sorta-circle-strafe any "boss" enemies like, oh, say, the dragon in the first cave.

Hey, it's good loot, real early on.

Until you get blasters and utterly destroy everything.

victrix posted:

Wtf, bards tale got a remaster?!

Yea, look it up. The company doing it are done with 1 and 2 and are finishing 3.

You can play with more modern features or classic features like the original games.

Kuros
Sep 13, 2010

Oh look, the consequences of my prior actions are finally catching up to me.

Zereth posted:

Is this the powerful weapon that's only usable by faerie ninjas that you have to pickpocket or kill (I don't remember which) some unremarkable friendly NPC to get, and they don't have a 100% chance of dropping it?

If you're not save scumming in a game like Wiz 8, Ironman aside, you're doing it wrong.

Kuros
Sep 13, 2010

Oh look, the consequences of my prior actions are finally catching up to me.

chaosapiant posted:

Last question for Wiz 8, I promise. Well for today at least. Is the game turn based, or does it use that weird "mashing keys on time" thing that games like Grimrock do? I know the earlier Wiz games are turn based and I thought 8 was too; I just want to verify.

There's a continuous option where you give your characters a default action and then you can queue in actions as needed. Or you can do a more traditional turn based mode.

Kuros
Sep 13, 2010

Oh look, the consequences of my prior actions are finally catching up to me.

xiw posted:

9 is pretty awful but I really enjoyed 10's gameplay and exploration - it doesn't outstay its welcome and it does some really entertaining things with the grid CRPG format.

The setting is absolutely generic though.

I enjoyed M&MX as well, but completely agreed about the setting.

Chairchucker posted:

Yeah, apparently it patched out an issue that broke some doors.

I'll have to get this at some point and play it again. I had Wizards and Warriors way back when it first came out and I eventually got near the end but my save got corrupted or something.

I remember cheesing the super old tree monster that's normally friendly by using Firestorm and Meteorstorm spells, leading the trees back to the boat and then getting them to a point to where I could use those spells to kill them and they couldn't target me.

Kuros
Sep 13, 2010

Oh look, the consequences of my prior actions are finally catching up to me.

extra row of teeth posted:

Watching my dad play Might and Magic: World of Xeen is what got me into gaming. He let my dumb little 5 year old rear end play with cheat codes on :3:

I don't remember any real cheat codes for the game except to get you some money/gems early on and to get Xeen Slayer Swords.

Kuros
Sep 13, 2010

Oh look, the consequences of my prior actions are finally catching up to me.

Glagha posted:

Dove back into World of Xeen after a long gap and I thought I'd be pretty lost but it's surprising how quickly I managed to stumble on the old threads of what I'd been doing and got right back into making progress. The Xeen duology, other than some kinda bleh combat and some Might and Magic-isms that never felt great to me, hits a real sweet spot for me in just giving me a big ol' world to explore with little dungeons all over and quests to find.

Side question for anyone who played it, I've heard people say that you can head right on over to Darkside pretty early on without much trouble, but I've been mainlining Clouds because I don't need two worlds to explore at the same time. Should I consider poking my head into the other world for a while or just finish the main quest of Clouds before starting?


Thuryl posted:

The main issue with checking out Darkside early is that if you go outside the starting town, you'll get overpowered for Clouds really fast; Clouds has an expected endgame level of about 20, while Darkside's is close to 100, so the power curves are obviously pretty different between the two games. If you don't mind that, then go for it. Darkside's early-game content is balanced for a party of around level 5 (which is the level new characters start at if you create them in Darkside), although it's possible to do it with a fresh level-1 party. On the other hand, if you do decide to wait until you've finished Clouds to start Darkside, the game will catch up to your power level pretty quickly.

I agree with Thuryl on this one. While it's tempting to go to Darkside, saving it for later will ensure that Clouds is a bit of a challenge instead of allowing you to just blast through it with no consequence.

If you really want to make Xeen a bit of a challenge, try this mod: http://www.jeffludwig.com/xeen/

The mod also messes with the item lists a bit to balance out everything instead of simply loading everyone up with Obsidian.

Kuros
Sep 13, 2010

Oh look, the consequences of my prior actions are finally catching up to me.

Glagha posted:

I found the golem dungeon and everything was fine until oh my goooooood diamond golems. Why do they have a billion hp?

Only 1000 HP, but also high AC for Clouds. I suggest having casters spam Implosion.

JustJeff88 posted:

I tried the very similar mod for M&M3; it definitely bumps the challenge up, but it fixes some balance issues that were bad in 3 but less pronounced in Xeen. In my personal opinion, I think that 3 is better off with Jeff's mod but Xeen is as close to perfect as can be as it is. Mind you, that mod for 2nd or 3rd playthrough is a nice change of pace.

My main gripe with 3/4/5 is that monsters don't respawn and with how the costs with leveling scale, you'll get capped by gold eventually unless if you cheat it in or hoard gold in the bank and wait for decades with dummy characters.

Kuros
Sep 13, 2010

Oh look, the consequences of my prior actions are finally catching up to me.

JustJeff88 posted:

A very good point; I had forgotten that. In that case, try his mod... I only played with it myself for two or three hours, but one thing it definitely topped up were monster spawn rates. You might very much enjoy that. Mind you, I think that the whole aging concept in the Might & Magic games, and indeed in most games generally, is bloody stupid. I don't know any why to eliminate or get around it, however. The fountains of youth only work for unnatural ageing.

The one quibble that I have with the Ludwig's patch for Xeen is that it changes how gear is equipped, and I really liked how they implemented all of that in 4&5; 3 was not as clever.

Aging in 3/4/5 isn't too much of an issue really, per a guide:

guide posted:

Age, whether artificial or natural, affects statistics other than Luck starting
at 36; at this age a character gets -2 to Might, Endurance, Speed, and
Accuracy, and +2 to Intellect and Personality. At age 51, the penalties and
bonuses become -5/+5; age 76, the penalties and bonuses become -10/+10; at age
101, -20/+20; at age 201, -50/+50.

It's really only notable at ages 101 and above. 2/5/10 stat penalties/boosts are minimal unless those stats are already super low.

Kuros
Sep 13, 2010

Oh look, the consequences of my prior actions are finally catching up to me.

Thuryl posted:

A fun thing about flight in the later M&M games is that your party's hitbox is way flatter than you'd expect it to be: you can often dodge projectiles just by moving up or down slightly, even if it looks like they should still hit you.

You could also do the swap glitch on official versions of MM6 to have a single pixel hitbox. :shepface:

Kuros
Sep 13, 2010

Oh look, the consequences of my prior actions are finally catching up to me.

Zereth posted:

How did that work?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cjc562_n1kY

Here you go.

Kuros
Sep 13, 2010

Oh look, the consequences of my prior actions are finally catching up to me.

Bholder posted:

So I'm planning on replaying Might and Magic 6, and I've already played it a couple of times some time ago and only just learned that there is a modding community for it.

First off, are any of the gameplay mods worth trying out, or I should just remain with the bugfixing ones.

Second, what are some spicy team builds, I already did the classic paladin/archer/cleric/sorcerer team and a knight/archer/druid/sorcerer team which was fun for the triple fireballs.

There's a mod called the Chaos Conspiracy that I played through... mostly as I couldn't get the 2nd half to work. However, it does add a ton of changes and new things to the game and does make it harder as well. You get to choose a difficulty as well at the start and it ramps up pretty quickly. I would stick with the standard difficulty, near the later portion of the game you will have to exploit AI or just cheat since the monsters get crazy strong, plus they are more numerous.

At least for stock MM6, I really like running Cleric/Druid/Sorc/Sorc since Mace/Daggers are good enough for up close fighting until you get your spells. The team build gives you 2 healers, 3 elemental casters and 3 light/dark casters.

Cleric gets Mace, Chain, Shield, Bow, Body, Mind, Spirit, Light, Dark
Druid gets Dagger, Leather, Bow, Fire, Water, Air, Body, Mind, Spirit
Sorc #1 gets: Dagger, Leather, Bow, Fire, Water, Air, Light, Dark
Sorc #2 gets: Dagger, Leather, Bow, Fire, Water, Air, Light, Dark

Body Building, Learning and Meditation goes on everyone. One person gets Repair Item, one gets ID Item, one gets Disarm Traps and one Perception. Of course everyone eventually gets Blaster. Earth magic I find pretty drat useless barring Stone to Flesh as the other two useful spells IMO are Protection from Magic and Stone Skin and those are covered by Hour of Power and Day of Protection.

Usually I end up pumping up the following skills to high levels for the damage: Dark, Light, Air, Fire.
Weapon and armor skills I master then leave alone.
Meditation is okay to put extra skill points into for the SP, Body Building gives you a small boost of HP, but not much due to the classes. Master Disarm/Perception/ID item/Repair item should cover everything. I believe 10 in Repair/ID allows you to repair everything and ID everything.

Early game will be tough, but once you get around mid game and start pumping levels into Dark. Light, Air and Fire, your spells will start doing amazing damage and you can just tear through enemies with Shrapmetal, Inferno, Meteor Shower, Starburst, etc.

Kuros
Sep 13, 2010

Oh look, the consequences of my prior actions are finally catching up to me.

Skwirl posted:

Cool, any advice for starting characters. I'm phone posting but when I get home I'll probably start a game of either 3 or 4+5 depending which I own.

3 allows for hirelings who's costs increase the higher level they are. You can have a max of 8 characters, 6 PCs and 2 hirelings. A typical party usually has: 2-3 fighter or fighter/caster hybrids, 2-3 casters, 1 Ninja or Robber and one of your choice.

4 & 5 only allow for 6 PCs.

A basic overview:

Knight = Pure Fighter with weapon focus
Barbarian = Pure Fighter with HP focus, but doesn't have access to as much gear as the knight.
Paladin = Fighter/Cleric
Archer = Fighter/Sorcerer
Ranger = Fighter/Druid
Druid = Some Cleric + Sorc and they have some unique spells in 3
Sorc = Focus on Damage spells
Cleric = Focus on Healing spells
Robber = More thievery, less fighting
Ninja = More fighting, less thievery

A typical 6 man team is: Knight/Paladin/Archer/Robber/Sorc/Cleric

Although you may want to change that in 3 to: Paladin/Archer/Robber/Druid/Sorc/Cleric as certain spells like Water Walking are only available for Rangers and Druids in 3. Typically it's best to fill in the hireling slots with a Barb/Knight & a Sorc/Cleric if you want to have more healing or damage.

In 4 and 5 Rangers & Druids don't have any unique spells and just draw from Sorc & Cleric pools.

Kuros fucked around with this message at 22:59 on Aug 21, 2019

Kuros
Sep 13, 2010

Oh look, the consequences of my prior actions are finally catching up to me.

Thuryl posted:

Rangers and Druids are actually worse in 4/5 than 3, since they no longer have any unique spells at all; they just get all the low-level spells from the Sorcerer and Cleric spell lists. They seem great early on but hit a wall around mid-lategame in Clouds or pretty early on in Darkside where they just stop getting access to new spells; in Clouds you can sorta argue it as balancing earlygame versatility vs. lategame power if you're feeling particularly generous, but in Darkside they're just not good. A Ranger can remain viable as a physical combatant with some utility magic, but I'd still rather have an Archer or Paladin.

Yep, Rangers/Druids are useless in MM 4 and 5. However MM6 is where Druids shine.

JustJeff88 posted:

You're right; I had forgotten that they lose their uniqueness in 4&5. There is a very good patch by a guy named Jeff Ludwig for 3 and 4&5 that makes druids and rangers much more balanced though. I recommend it heartily if you've played the base game a bunch and want to shake things up.

The mods can be found here: http://www.jeffludwig.com/xeen/

One change I really like from the Xeen mod: "Robert the Burgler has been added in the town of Vertigo! He'll teach you Thievery skill if you lack a natural brigand in your party makeup... if you got the gold."

Now you can have your Kni/Barb/Pal/Arc/Sor/Cler team!

Kuros
Sep 13, 2010

Oh look, the consequences of my prior actions are finally catching up to me.

JustJeff88 posted:

I had forgotten about that! It is indeed a great feature. Mind you, I don't know how much that training costs...

That mod would be perfect for an all-caster Pal/Arc/Ran/Dru/Cle/Sor team, because Rangers and Druids are much better than they are in vanilla.

The training is 30k, which is paltry in the grand scheme of MM4&5. And yea, Dru/Ran have unique spells in the mod.

Kuros
Sep 13, 2010

Oh look, the consequences of my prior actions are finally catching up to me.

Thuryl posted:

Yeah, aside from a few oddballs the majority of hirelings in the game came in pairs, although you could mix and match them freely once you'd found them. (Having them also wasn't as beneficial as it looked because a lot of encounters in the game were scaled to party size, so adding two hirelings to your party meant that suddenly you'd be fighting 8 enemies instead of 6.)

If I remember correctly, encounters also scaled to your Max HP and also your Disposition. Picking up the 1000 max HP bonus from the Dragon's Cave early on will cause more enemies to appear in battle, the same with changing your Disposition from Cautious to more reckless levels of Disposition.

quote:

This reminded me that I paid waaaaay too much for a copy of M&M2 for the Genesis and that I should probably play it some day.

To be fair, it came with box and instructions. Also to be fair, I'm a twat.

I got my copy when my parents bought me a used Genesis with a few games from a neighbor when I was a kid. Imagine trying to run through M&M2 as a 9 year old. I had to fumble my way around so much back then.

Kuros fucked around with this message at 00:03 on Sep 10, 2019

Kuros
Sep 13, 2010

Oh look, the consequences of my prior actions are finally catching up to me.

GorfZaplen posted:

Might and Magic 3 is awesome. The little dragon in the ui was freaking out in an area so I kicked a wall down and two giant rats destroyed most of my party. My survivor opened the chest they were guarding and was zapped by it, giving me a game over. I haven't even left the first town

The various creatures on the UI indicate different things depending on if you have certain spells active like Levitate or have skills like Spot Secret Doors.

GorfZaplen posted:

How do I "get good" at the combat system.

You may be tempted to just hammer attack but do invest in bows/slings asap as that does help with early combat, excepting spell casters who fling fireballs your way. Eventually you'll want to fling your own spells at enemies down hallways depending on what you're facing, but if some monster is tossing spells at you, it's best to get out the way and bait them into melee for the most part.

Also as Thuryl said, buffs help A LOT in 3-5, there are some which you'll want to remember and even have beacon spells for if possible.

Kuros
Sep 13, 2010

Oh look, the consequences of my prior actions are finally catching up to me.

SoR Blaze posted:

Trip report on Might and Magic 4-5 so far: it owns! I'm surprised with just how forgiving it is on the player, one nice little QOL feature I found was this: I created a sorcerer with pretty average endurance (10), which meant no hp bonus at level-up. When she kept getting one-shot by goblins over and over, I checked the character sheet and saw that she started with 1 hp and had gained 1 each level, for a total of like 5 hp. I was worried that I had made a mistake I'm character creation, as even a +1 bonus would have effectively doubled her health. I found a barrel of green liquid, which gives a permanent +2 to endurance, and when I had her drink from it, she retroactively gained all the hp she would have gotten at previous level-ups, which is something even modern games don't bother to do and I really appreciated.

The game seems to be really generous with stat-up items in the dwarf mines, does this carry through the rest of the game? I read you can get your stats up to 250 at the maximum, will I find most of these items throughout dungeons? Also, how much of an effect does natural aging have? Will it significantly hamper me at the endgame if I rest a lot? I've been trying to do it only when totally drained of sp. Is there anything I should be on the lookout for, or should know before I continue onward(i.e. permanent missables etc)? I checked beforeiplay.com but I didn't see an entry for xeen.

I'm really just amazed at how much quality of life there is to this game, especially compared with its contemporaries like Wizardry 7(which also rules but I doubt I'd ever finish).

AFAIK there aren't any permanent missables. Stat barrels aren't everywhere, but depending on the characters you'll want to spread out the stats in certain ways. The gains from stat barrels are permanent.

Red = Might. Give to your melee attackers.
Orange = Int. Give to Sorcerer casters, Sorc, Archer, Druid, Ranger.
Blue = Pers. Give to Cleric casters, Cler, Paladins, Druid, Ranger
Green = End. You'll want to give more to your melee attackers, but as you found out, spreading this around helps. Eventually around 50 permanent End for spell casters is fine, with more going to melee attackers.
Purple = Speed. Spread this around.
Yellow = Accuracy. Spread this around
White = Luck. Spread this around.

The stats start to have diminishing returns around 20, but really kick in at 50 where you have to get 25 in a stat in order to see a difference. The difference between a stat at 11 and a stat at 50 is a +10 adjustment. That same stat at 50 and then 250 is also another +10 adjustment due to those diminishing returns.

As for the age, you would have to REALLY go out of your way for permanent age to be an issue. Aging from enemies and traps can be cured in a couple of places.

As a tip: There are certain things you will find that give permanent LEVELS, if you want to get the maximum effect from these, save often and then come back for them late in the game as levels get amazingly cost prohibitive due to the formula used for the cost.

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Kuros
Sep 13, 2010

Oh look, the consequences of my prior actions are finally catching up to me.

Thuryl posted:

The Club is the weakest at 1d3 damage (average damage 2 points per hit), while the Great Axe and Flamberge are strongest at 3d7 and 4d5 respectively (average damage 12 points per hit for each). So the difference in power between the strongest weapon material and the baseline is 5 times the difference between the strongest and weakest weapon type.

Nothin like raiding a high level cache and getting an obsidian club. :shepface:

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