MrPopo wrote:I want you to know that I am highly enjoying your progress. You're definitely making progress along the main storyline, so keep it up. It also sounds like there's still some parts of the map you haven't explored yet, so you might want to focus on that.
Yeah, I'm not particularly well versed in any of the A coordinates, nor have I really plunged into C-4 or E-4. There is also the lion statue that demands a password in E-3 that I have yet to find, and while I have gotten my sign from the gypsy, I am unaware of what to do with that info at this time. And then there are the silver and gold messages...
Yeah, I keep a notebook handy for this game.
I'm glad to hear I'm making progress through the story, because the open ended nature of this game has made me feel at times like I'm not getting anywhere. I suspect that the ruby whistle was about getting the gold key, not to face the minotaurs. I don't know what it or the crystal key are for, but I'll find out.
My goals for the next time I get to play:
Try the gauntlet near Erliquin. Go back and explore E-4. Explore more of the ocean area along the -4 row and see if I can find more about the islands there while avoiding whatever that ghost ship is.
Maybe I'll get lucky and find new gear while I'm doing this along with the roughly 20-25k experience I need to get Ack, Prfsnl, and Key up to level 9.
So I will say that presentation-wise you will never feel like you suddenly have landed on the main quest. Rather, you'll reach a point and find something unusual, and resolving that sequence adds more unusual stuff, and then you're given the option to end the game. It'll stick out as something different from the fairly mundane quests you've been doing so far.
Blizzard Entertainment Software Developer - All comments and views are my own and not representative of the company.
Well all right. I'll be keeping my eyes open. I'm guessing that since this is Might & Magic, it'll have something to do with the sci-fi elements I've seen in play.
I have still been playing, even with the wedding. It helps give an outlet while figuring out who gave what wedding gift and how are we going to deal with all the leftover tonic water.
When I popped back into the game, I decided it was time to head out into areas unknown, so I cast Water Walk and headed out to the ocean. I found more islands out there, including the Great Wheel, though I won nothing as I have not yet slain any of the four great beasts. I also found an island south of that where a person over a chasm demanded to know my character's color signs. Thankfully, I wrote them down earlier and managed to get through with everyone. This netted me the Coral Key.
I then headed back into the wilderness and found the Valley of Fire, though casting Levitation and Protection from Fire negated my issues. After exploring the area beyond, a hidden druid provided me the King's Pass but warned me not to help "him". Unsure of what that meant, I decided to quest elsewhere.
Instead, I went and quickly ground through the wyverns again in their cliffs before marching off to Dust to explore a crypt in the city, where some vampires happily showed me that I'm not as tough as I hoped I was. I also headed into Dragaduna and found the Clerics of the South, but barriers prevent me from doing anything further. A nearby giant found me unworthy for something...no idea what that is about.
Heading back to civilization, I moved into the glacier area and discovered an ice princess, who asked a riddle and gave me the diamond key for my answer. After that, I revisited the meatgrinder section I had tried earlier where I cannot rest. I failed on the final fight, but then came back and took on that final battle first before going around to the start and rushing through. My plan was a success, and I teleported away to safety as soon as I netted myself the silver key.
With so many keys, I decided to once again venture forth into areas I had not yet been, so I pushed into the upper Western area. In the northwestern mountains stands the formidable Castle Doom. My first time in, I found myself slaughtered while trying to rest. The second, I entered a secret passage and found a prisoner who gave me the Eye of Goros. I left to revisit town and then returned to free a child held prisoner within.
The experience I had received for these adventures was enough to push Ack, Prfsnl, and Key to level 9, and I had netted new gear that boosted my party, such as Ring Mail +3 for Prfsnl, a Long Sword +2 for Ack, and a Defense Cloak to boost Marurun's AC. Yet there was still more work to do, so I headed down into the swamps near Algary. While I was no match for the dreaded Winged Beast, I also stumbled across a man named Pete and his band of assassins; with a little preparation, I slaughtered them all and drove deeper into the swamp.
The fabled City of Gold lies deep in the Southeastern swamplands, but once inside, a troop of about a dozen Magicians hit the party with repeated lightning bolts and ended my exploration. Next I came across a lone man singing in the woods just north of the swamp, and he sang a special word that he might change on a whim. Nearby stood the lion that demanded a password, so I told the lion and was now able to visit Castle Alamar.
Confronting the King with the Eye of Goros revealed him to be a fake, and he cursed me to the Soul Mate, where I had to map to discover his name: Sheltem. Knowing it, I returned to the world and found the true King Alamar restored to the throne. I also found a maiden imprisoned there that I freed.
I then headed to Portsmith to face the secret there, stopping to buy a speed potion. My first attempt against the hidden succubus, the party died without letting me move. Frustrated, I returned to the pool in the dungeon under the town that reversed gender, turning everyone back into women. I then confronted the succubus with a speed boosted wizard and used magic to flee as my opening move. This gave me the secret of Portsmith, which I told at Castle White Wolf.
From here, I tried once again to battle the minotaurs of the Enchanted Forest, and with magical preparation and buffs from the Thundranium, I vanquished the foe and returned triumphant to Castle Blackridge North. I earned 10000 experience, and his quest line repeated, so I rapidly rushed through it again for more experience and managed to gain enough to put Marurun, Noise, and Elkin to level 9. I then headed to the cave of the red dragon, which I slew for its tooth.
I have now been tasked with getting the ring of Okrim. There is a black knight with a troupe of assassins that also makes me fight him twice, and there are the special monsters to face. I also came across islands with deadly natives to the South as well as a man named Og who sent me away. This world still holds further mysteries.
Confronting the King with the Eye of Goros revealed him to be a fake, and he cursed me to the Soul Mate, where I had to map to discover his name: Sheltem. Knowing it, I returned to the world and found the true King Alamar restored to the throne. I also found a maiden imprisoned there that I freed.
That was my favorite part of the game; it's such a clever puzzle. You might remember the name Sheltem from your time in M&M3-5.
Blizzard Entertainment Software Developer - All comments and views are my own and not representative of the company.
Isn't he effectively the big bad guy of the first half of the series? The overall lore shifts a lot in this series, but I recognized him as being the main villain as soon as I found the crash site earlier.
Yeah, he's the big bad of 1-5. Then starting with 6 you see the story shifting more towards the Heroes sub-series, with the main series intersecting with that bit of worldbuilding. Though 7 does reintroduce the heroes of 3 (remember how they blasted off after Sheltem but then you have new duders in 4? It's because they got lost and ended up in 7).
Blizzard Entertainment Software Developer - All comments and views are my own and not representative of the company.
By now some of you have heard that I have bested the first Might & Magic and moved on to the sequel. This is true. Yet I still wanted to relate to you the final tale of how I saved the world from Sheltem.
When last I left off, I had numerous keys, had saved King Alamar, and brought my party up to level 9. I grinded wyverns again a couple of times to bring Ack, Prfsnl, and Key up to level 10 and then pressed onwards to explore the swamps again. This time I came across the crypt and slew the lich that resided within. Following this, I also hit up a coffin nearby with a vampire and slew him too.
I then used the Walk on Water spell to travel to a nearby volcano; this volcano is guarded by a horde of natives, but I simply jumped over them and moved inside. The Volcano interior requires manipulating two dials based on specific letters of the alphabet, but the answer was given way back at the dog statue, and there are virgins held prisoner in the cave that I could kiss for clues. Kiss, but not release, as that angers the Volcano God.
Upon choosing the right settings, I headed up to visit the Volcano God. He offered me a riddle, which basically just asked me about a statue back in Sorpical. I answered the question and received the key card item. Following this, I went to head back to Castle Alamar, but a section of glacier walls in the forest nearby attracted my eye. I discovered the use for a Crystal Key and decided to go ahead and use it.
This brought me to the Astral Plane. It's a place of seemingly random anti-magic zones, invisible walls, and one way doors. Yet I slowly felt my way around and activated a machine, which teleported me back to Sorpigal.
After this, more wyvern grinding and doing a few quests brought the rest of the party to level 10, but I needed to reach level 11 at least with Noise. Why? The Etherealize spell let's me go through magic barriers, but you can't unlock it until level 11. What to do? Well, the magic fountain of Dragadune converts gold to experience, and I now had somewhere around 500k in gold, so I went and pumped Noise up. This was enough to get Noise up to level 12, and a couple of grinds of wyverns later, made it to level 13, the highest level necessary to get access to all spells.
With Noise at 13 I now had all of the sorcerer spells. I returned to Dragadune and moved to the top level to visit the Clerics of the South. I used Etherealize to get through the barriers and ring the gongs as necessary. This reset all of the stat upgrades in the world. What did I do then? I went back and nabbed them all, of course!
With boosted stats, a sorcerer with the most powerful spells, and now enough experience to get Ack, Prfsnl, and Key to level 11, I decided to take a crack at the great beasts. Without issue, I swept the Scorpion, the Winged Beast, and the Dark Rider. I spun the Wheel of Luck, nabbed enough experience to pump Ack up to level 12, and considered hunting the great beasts again or return to Dragadune to ring the gongs for stats...
...and then I realized I was simply holding off finishing the game. I returned to the Astral Plane through the Crystal door and activated each of the machines before reaching the center and using the key card.
A single screen congratulated me for beating the game, gave each character 500k experience, and told me my score. I was given the option of continuing, but I felt it was time to move on. I took the steps to upload my roster to Might & Magic II.
All told, I spent over 60 hours playing this game...and I enjoyed every moment of it. I will write more in depth thoughts later in the Games Beaten thread, but all in all, I had a wonderful experience. I recommend it.
Tomato Adventure is slowly getting better and, thankfully, harder. Pretty dead easy near the start, but it does start to ramp up once you hit the first Super Kid (main area boss). Especially once you start getting party members and Incredible moves, things really start getting more fun.
The Incredible moves are basically what they softened and turned into the Bro Badge mechanic in M&L Bowser's Inside Story. The harder aspect in Tomato Adventure is that if you mess up an attack action ONCE, you lose all your collected meter no matter how full it is, so it creates a real risk-reward system for trying to make your attack actions harder to do more damage and build meter faster, but if you fail once, you need to start it over. This also explains why Gimmicks (attacks) have charges that you need to expend your entire equipped stock of to have automatically recharged. Otherwise you'd just spam the same Gimmick you're good at over and over and over again. This game has really begun to grow on me. I'm about halfway through it now, and I'm pretty comfortable saying that it's a quality game that really stands on its own, and isn't just some interesting relic of Alpha Dream's pre-Mario & Luigi era. ^w^
I identify everyone via avatar, so if you change your avatar, I genuinely might completely forget who you are. -- Me
Yes, I ported the party over. Ack, Marurun, Elkin, Key, Prfsnl, and Noise now found themselves level 7, with higher stats than they started with and no gear but a decent chunk of change. I swapped off the weapons that the base starting characters in M&M2 get, and with a stop off in the shops, I was off to the races. Having level 7 characters with solid stats instead of level 1 chumps allows you to move past some of the initial difficulty curve, which returns from Might & Magic I, though it doesn't let you bypass it completely. Once again, there are some tough things hidden in the world out there, so expect to get your ass properly kicked.
Still, let me give all of you RPG fans some advice: if you can port in a party, do it. Always. I don't care if the party gets reverted to level 1 and loses everything, it's still worth it just to have an understanding of how this party will function together.
Back to the game, I took my startup capital and bought a few spells. Yep, here's where a change occurred in the series. In the first M&M, you gain spells by leveling up. After M&M2, you buy them in shops or find them in the world. And while this game also suffers the lack of spell and gear explanation that the first game did, you can at least access a checklist of spells you know by hitting the 'C'ast button while in a character's stat page. Another change: M&M2 is where the skill system started, so I also bought the ability to map the world, because hey, yet again, this is where in game maps began!
Now with some magic and the ability to get maps, I fully explored the starting town, Middlegate, and then hoped a portal to the next town, and the next, and the next, gearing up as I went and exploring each. Finally, with a ton of kick ass gear in place and a little experience under my belt, I headed back to Middletown and took my first quest: find a goblet in the dungeon under town.
To do this, I had to venture down some stairs and then search the dungeon for the goblet's location, past a bunch of nasty goblins. I killed them fairly easily and took the goblet back upstairs, to then be told to visit this guy's sister for yet another quest. I followed up and returned to the dungeon to rescue her sons, unlocking the first hirelings in the game. M&M2 also introduced the hireling system to the series, where you can pay people to join up with you, though you have to be wary about resting because they charge you on a daily basis. As I like to sleep a lot, I decided against hiring them. But she also recommended I donate to temples, so off I went.
I raised a few levels, bought a few needed skills, such as the ability to scale mountains and dense forests, and visited each town via the pay-to-portal system so I could donate to the temples. This resulted in my getting the Fe Farthing, which in turn I tossed into a fountain in Middlegate to discover a Castle Key. What does the Castle Key do? Why, it lets you visit castles without having to fight your way inside. With this puppy under my belt, I also bought a green key for sale in the starting town and headed out into the world.
The overworld of M&M2 is no longer the dungeon maze of M&M1; it feels like a legit world, though combat is still done in a separate battle screen as opposed to the wandering monsters visible in later games. It makes for a strange hybrid between what I experienced in the first game and the third game which served as my real entry to the series. Most fights are located in specific spots, so once I find them, I can avoid them, though that doesn't mean I haven't wandered into a random encounter happy to kick my ass. Thankfully death is less of an issue here than in the first M&M, where resurrection meant a permanent drain on Endurance. It makes up for the fact that I have randomly stumbled across dragons and the like more than once.
Anyway, after going out and exploring the world, I explored a cave for Corak and found the spell Lloyd's Beacon. I also wandered over a river and found a guy who willingly taught me Walk on Water, so I'm doing well for mobility. I discovered a mountain with Judges that informed me of promotion-type quests, which must be performed by specific classes (and only specific classes). I also wandered into a nearby castle, accepted a quest to bring back a magic ax that I found easily enough, grinded on castle guards, and then found the green bishop, who gave me some experience and informed me that I'd get more for beating the Green Triple Crown.
What is the Triple Crown? There are three arenas in the five towns; you must buy colored tickets and then go battle in the arenas. For each colored ticket, you have to battle in all three at that level. Each color represents a rising level of difficulty, from green to yellow to red to black. So if I want to best the Yellow Triple Crown, I have to buy three yellow tickets and use them at the three arenas to engage in combat. In fact, after my meeting the green bishop, I went back and completed the Green and Yellow Triple Crowns. I also returned and freed the green bishop again as well as the yellow bishop in a different castle. That means I now need to do the red and black versions and save those bishops from the other two castles, though the Black Triple Crown will likely feature some tough fights. Still, I bested the Yellow Triple Crown easily enough, so hopefully the Red won't be too bad. The experience and gold gains are nice too. I managed to boost my characters up a few levels during all this time, so the party is all level 10 now.
I have also encountered several of the promotion quests, for the Knight, Paladin, Archer, and Cleric, though I'm nowhere near strong enough for them, and the Knight one is the only one I can easily get to due to skill limitations (and it requires I cast Walk on Water before swapping to just my Knight). Thankfully, the Robber quest involves simply helping any other class do their quest, so Prfsnl will be backing up everyone in their journey and likely getting a boatload of experience in the process. Completing just one of these nets the fight bonus along with 5 million experience for the upgrade; for comparison, it takes around 150k to level right now, so yeah, this will help.
Where do I go from here? The Red Triple Crown is high on my list, as is continuing to explore the landscape and find out what else I can uncover. There is a druid cave which requires a password, but the fights in that area are stupid easy; druids only silence the party and don't actually do any damage, so I just hack them to death and grab loot. The password is spread across rocks in the area, though considering I've uncovered a D, R, and S so far, I'm guessing the password is "druids." One way to find out. In the meantime, only two map squares are currently fully mapped, and the map is composed of a giant 5x4 grid, just like the first game, so I have 18 more squares to go.
