Old games are still fun.

[WarLocke]

I was digging in my games duffel a few days ago (I have a terrible tendency to lose or otherwise destroy boxes, so I try to keep the jewel cases together), and found an oldie but goodie: Might & Magic VI: The Mandate of Heaven.

M&MVI dates back from 1998 (or 1997? Somewhere in there), but it's still enormously fun! I've forgotten much of what I learned when I first bought/played it though, and since it's my only experience with the M&M franchise (what are they up to now? IX or X?) I didn't know much to begin with...

This time around I went with a fairly basic party, a Knight/Archer/Cleric/Sorceror group, concentrating (so far) on Fire and Water with the Sorceror (Water Walk/Lloyd's Beacon, yeah), Body with the Cleric (Spirit and Mind spells seem kind of... Meh), and Air with the Archer (Wizard Eye is extremely useful at Expert ranking, and Fly will probably be essential later).

I'm not exactly far into the game (New Sorpigal cleared except for the Temple of Baa, Mist done except for Silverhelm Post, trolling the Ironfist Castle countryside), but am having a blast!

Who was it that was an extreme M&M junkie? With the Druid/Druid/Druid/Sorceror party? Pete? Or am I mixing things up? Would be great to get some pointers...


- WL
Sig disabled until I get around to trimming it.

[--Pete]

Hi,

I've never owned or played a Might & Magic game. Closest I've come is the Heroes of Might and Magic spin offs which I dearly love.

Best of luck with the campaign ;)

--Pete

[Baajikiil]

God, I played that game to death. I did EVERYthing possible in that game. I could never play it again after all the work I put into it the first time. I made countless lists of locations, a few maps, spent hours looking for secrets and optimizing my party.

I did tons of things out of order, and when I finally beat the final opponent, the world exploded... sigh.(I later did it the right way).

Even so, it was quite good. I don't even remember the details, but I remember that one of the key things was to be sure to remember where things were.

I spent hours looking through towns that I had already explored because I couldn't remember where a certain person was.

As I recall, I chose a party to be sure to have all spell casters. I also focused on skills that allowed me to duel weild weapons. My characters ended up able to destroy most things in melee, but also be powerful spell casters. Also, I remember using turn based combat whenever there was a very larger # of enemies in melee with me. It seemed to help alot. Also, near the end of the game, I ended up farming dragons hoping for high end gear. It worked very well, when I could finally defeat one in combat that is.

[Ackpth]

Ahh... I loved that game.

Probably the last of the series to be decent, as the series really slumped off from that point :(

Anyways, there're a few strategies that might make your life easier:

As soon as is physically possible, get the Bow skill for every single character in your party, and practice the backing away whilst firing method of combat. Keeps you alive, wastes just about any enemy. Use Bless with bows, increases the pain. Speaking of Bless: Cleric buff spells. USE THEM. Mind is pretty crappy, I never use it, but for Clerics, Spirit is by the end the best of the bunch. Always have both Bless and Heroism on when you acquire them, as they'll turn your fighters and even your spell casters to juggernauts of destruction. Hitting every single time with ~40 additional damage per hit is just crazy.

Until I get to Water Mastery, I tend to use a Gate Master to town portal my way around. It's usually beneficial to grab one after you get the 5000 gp for the letters because of all the cheese you can perform with one. :ph34r:

For front line fighters, dual wield isn't really all that exciting compared to meaty single weapons, as there is a HUGE speed penalty for dual weapons. Besides, a good deal of damage is going to come from Heroism anyways.

Also, be sure to get a lot (or all, actually) of the condition curing spells (cure poison/disease, awaken, etc) or make some restoration potions, because as soon as you hit some of the harder dungeons, you're going to get baffled, crazed, set asleep, poisoned, diseased, killed, and all that good stuff, and you can't always be running to temples.

Enchant Item is a *really* useful skill with a high level Merchant skill. I'll leave it to you to figure out why.

For outdoor opponents, nothing beats a good meteor storm :)

Best party imo: Sorcerer/Sorcerer/Sorcerer/Druid. Spells are the most powerful damage delivery method, and sorcerers excel at delivering the pain. The difference between knights and sorcerers in close combat is negligible at high levels due to, yes, Bless and Heroism. Shame this party is tough as hell to get through at low levels, though.

Finally, it is worthy to note that someone has beaten the game in 5 game days :blink: And someone has solo'ed the game with a Knight (and 3 tombstones). Set those as your goals. ;)

Have fun with the game, it's one of the best.

[Kharohz]

I also love the M&M series. Including Heroes of Might and Magic.

I enjoyed Might and Magic 2 the best. Turned based IMO was better. (Yes, I know they have a form of Turned based in MM6 and up, but it just isn't the same)

[WarLocke]

Best party imo: Sorcerer/Sorcerer/Sorcerer/Druid. Spells are the most powerful damage delivery method, and sorcerers excel at delivering the pain.

Question: How the heck are you supposed to afford spells/skills/equipment/training with the above party (especially if you have a Gate Master who takes a 20% cut of found gold)? I only have 2 spellcasters, and even with a Merchant and Duper (+14 to Merchant skill) I'm barely scraping by.

Enchant Item is a *really* useful skill with a high level Merchant skill. I'll leave it to you to figure out why.

Yeah, as soon as I read the description I had ideas. ;) Unfortunately, you must need an extremely high Merchant skill to make it very profitable. With Water 4 Expert and Merchant 4 Expert (plus another 6 from a Merchant), I could make a profit, but it probably wasn't as fast as simply trolling the countryside would have been. And then not all items can be enchanted, and shops go for long periods of time without restocking... argh.

For front line fighters, dual wield isn't really all that exciting compared to meaty single weapons, as there is a HUGE speed penalty for dual weapons.

Eh? I would have though dual-weilding gave you attacks at a similar rate as for one weapon (or maybe averaging the weapon speeds), but you got two swipes each attack. That's not the case? Ugh, guess I should have taken Spear over Sword for my Archer, then...

Until I get to Water Mastery, I tend to use a Gate Master to town portal my way around. It's usually beneficial to grab one after you get the 5000 gp for the letters because of all the cheese you can perform with one.

What kind of cheese? :huh:

As soon as is physically possible, get the Bow skill for every single character in your party, and practice the backing away whilst firing method of combat.

Yeah, this is the only way I'll do the Temple of Baa. Stupid snakes and spiders. I hate being poisoned and diseased. :angry:

[Baajikiil]

For front line fighters, dual wield isn't really all that exciting compared to meaty single weapons, as there is a HUGE speed penalty for dual weapons. Besides, a good deal of damage is going to come from Heroism anyways.

What I liked about dual weapons was getting double the mods.. My druid weilding a mace/ lifestealing dagger was as good as any of my other fighters. I think I ended up with 2 characters weilding a spear in right hand and sword in left hand. I don't even remember what the third used, but I seem to recall that he used an axe. Unless I went back and read up on the game again, I hardly even remember the spells.

Now that you mention it, buff spells were big time important. Keep them running all of the time if you can.

Also, I used archery alot, retreating and shooting can save you alot of annoyances. By the end of the game though, I think I only used it when the opponents couldn't reach me.

Hmm maybe I should get the game back from my brother and check to see what my end party looked like :)

[Artega]

Considering my computer is pretty much unable to play ANY game that requires a 3D accelerator (which is every NEW game, and a very large percentage of anything made after 1999 or so), I am forced to play the old games (typically five or more years old), and sometimes even THOSE don't run too well on my computer (Quake II was made in 1997, and I can't exceed more than 15 fps at 400x300 res!). Fortunately, a lot of the older games are/were REALLY GOOD games, too. I still regularly play the Infinity Engine games, though my protagonist always ends up a Paladin of one form or another. I intend on playing Icewind Dale II as soon as I can buy it, but because of my low processor speed and lack of anything capable for displaying high-resolution (800x600 is HIGH for my computer) high-definition models, I doubt I'll be able to run it (at decent framerates.)

The old games I typically play include Quake II, C&C: Red Alert 2, Age of Empires II, Half-Life, Diablo, Diablo II (yes, D2 is an old game - it's nearly three years old!), Warcraft II, Descent, Descent II, and Lords of the Realm II. They don't feature quick or flashy graphics (not that I could run them), but they are still a good bit of fun. I get bored pretty easily because I've played them all to death, but that's the price of having an obsolete machine :(