[LP] Might and Magic 6, the Mandate of Heaven

[Chibi-Reaper]

I probably shouldn't be up this late.

But I'll explain. The initiate guilds in New Sorpigal are starter magic shops. They sell the first through third or fourth spell of a given sphere... don't worry, there are only eleven spells to a sphere of magic, so it's not much of a big deal. Thats roughly the first third to half of your spellbook potentially.

The problem is that these aren't individual guilds. They're guilds of the Self and of the Elements.

In other words, they select randomly from their list, like every other shop, but their list includes three to four different spheres... sixteen possibilities on the Elemental guild, and eleven from the Self.

Better yet, there is nothing preventing a guild from doubling up, and selling multiple copies of the same spell.

Now, as far as healing magic goes, most of the Self spells are generally curative or buffing... but of the eleven books possibly available, only two cure HP, and neither of them really do it well. First aid, a Body spell, will cure 5-10 HP depending on your rank, but doesn't scale with your skill level. Neither does healing touch, a slightly more variable healing spell that will still never cure more than 11 HP.

They might have some use at this stage of the game, but it'll drop off fast later on unless you're desperate and have multiple clerical healers casting them on every turn.

That said.... you're in luck. I went back to check and make sure, and one of the books is indeed First Aid, selling for 300 gold. Also fortunately, it seems like the store stocks do stay the same if I save after checking, even if I exit the program and come back later. They only randomly select things the first time you check the door, and then they have to wait the restocking period. Good to know!

You'll still have to pay 750 gold to learn the Body Magic skill at all, if you want that spell, which takes it to a total of 1050 and will wipe most of your spending money. But when it comes down to it, I'm already probably going to buy everyone every skill they can actually learn sooner or later.

Unless you specifically request to not learn something for some reason, I dunno.

 

[Selias]

In that case, if nobody has any objections, I'll buy it.

 

[Vindictus]

[X] Quick trip to Castle Ironfist
-->[X] Turn in the Letter
-->[X] Level up at the Gym
-->[X] Buy everyone the 'Bow' skill and cheap bows
-->[X] Return to New Sorpigal, and kill everything on the map you can reach. Start with the goblins in the Northwest corner, then move on to the cultists in the south, before circling back around to clear the Fort's exterior, and finish with the Goblins outside the Temple of Baa
-->[X] Move on to the Temple of Baa

 

[Chibi-Reaper]

Re: [LP] Might and Magic 6, Assaulting Goblinwatch Keep.

And so, after a group huddle, it was decided that Selias, being the only potential healer at this point, should pick up even the crappy healing spell available right now in order to hopefully prevent the party from dying horribly.

We'll see how that turns out.

Purchase made, we go only a little south of town and spy on Goblinwatch. Quaint little stone building, on top at least. Rustic. Lots of spikes.

And of course, just swarming with goblins. Look at aaall those red dots.

Let me go ahead and expound a little on these little green bastards. Your average goblin has only 13 HP, and so is even less meaty than our level one wizards. He deals 1d9 damage on a successful hit, but a lone goblin is no trouble for any party. Torgamous is swinging that sword they pulled out of a rock around, and it deals a lovely 4d5 damage before applying Might modifiers, so on a solid blow our Knight can split any given goblin right down the middle.

I say 'on a solid blow' because the sound you will become most acquainted with through the course of this game is the sound of a powerful weapon completely whiffing. Over and over and over.

That said, every enemy in this game comes in three varieties, and very slightly different sizes. Goblins are no different. Sometimes, a goblin will take it into its head to become a Shaman, and paint itself head to toe completely blue. Nobody knows why this makes them more powerful, only that it, nonsensically, does. A goblin Shaman gains increased health points, to 21, an increased +2 to hit and damage, and the ranged option of the Fire Bolt spell.

Being just a goblin, of course, the spell will usually be completely minimal and not very dangerous. The goblin Shaman isn't much of a problem, even with the AI getting, as far as I can determine, infinite mana to fling spells at you with.

But then you have the Goblin King.

These jerks got mixed up and painted themselves red. Their HP shot up to a knightly 40, they have a +4 to both hit and damage, and like the Shaman, they have the Fire Bolt Spell.

That's not why the Goblin King is a problem.

The issue is that the Goblin King is the first in a long line of asshole enemies, and can at-will attempt to break your shit if he's in melee range. It's not always successful, but if it is it's indeterminate... the only real defense is having a lot of crap in your pack, and hoping that the gods favor you and he splits something you aren't wearing or using, that will be cheap to patch back together.

Even so, when you come across a group of goblins, your priority should always be to kill the red one first and fastest.

With that said, Goblinwatch is annoyingly placed in that approching it aggros both the goblins near the keep itself and the ones sitting around the little bridge nearby it. You're best served by killing the bridge goblins first, and then moving up to the keep.

They've stored some loot in boxes to either side of the bridge, so it's not like you aren't getting compensated for the effort.

When it comes down to it, however, you run into the primary limitation of spells. They cost MP. Sooner or later, you're going to run out. Particularly when you're mowing down goblins. And then everyone has to run back to the town, to chug water until the well's daily allotted restoration juice is run dry, pay the temple to heal your bleeding wounds, or much more affordably, speak with the inkeeper and buy a room. Resting heals you to full, but it also progresses time... if you're in a hurry, then the temple is more expensive, but it also heals you instantly.

More importantly, resting doesn't fix conditions such as poison, disease, or death.

I'm still checking townsfolk for their choice of employment, too... 'Trader' isn't on my wish list, but a four point buff to your merchant skill isn't lightly turned down, when you're only stumping up a hundred gold and a 1% cut of future loot.

We have to get a little heavy-handed to make her talk with us, though. You remember Andover Potbello? He's not a nice person. Taking money from him, even without actually doing anything, has smirched our reputation in the eyes of the peasantry. Filthy plebians don't understand that being a Hero takes a lot of invested capital.... gold doesn't stink.

It even works if you don't have a merchant skill to buff! Though mind you, the inn is really cheap in New Sorpigal anyway, so you aren't really seeing a big effect. You'd need to go to an actual shop and look at the adjusted prices to see a real difference.

Meanwhile, we go to finish clearing up the top-side of Goblinwatch, with a quick break to loot the box in the back... light on gold, but a couple of nice weapons.

And investigate the guard quarters. Once in the furnished room, its occupant, Urok, shows no inclination to attack. Instead he rails at humans, accusing them of whole-hearted extermination of his people, and argues that they had to capture this keep for their own protection, to keep an eye out for the humans preparing armed assaults against the local goblin tribes.

Could we be in the wrong here? Callously hunting down and wiping out another race simply t-Naaaah. Kill all the greenskins you want, more XP!

We'll never see this guy again.

And now, at last, the time has come to venture beneath Goblinwatch, into the keep proper.

The first thing you do is make an immediate right.

There's a Common Rat in the passage. Aside from being smelly vermin, it's nothing spectacular... it drops easily, but insultingly gives no loot whatsoever for its extermination beyond the very rare chance of it maybe having a crappy piece of jewelry on it.

Down the hall, you come to a door, which opens up into a side chamber.

Looks safe, doesn't it? Wizard eye shows the all clear. Empty room.

This isn't safe at aaaaall!

Here and now the game introduces you to the dick move of having Wizard Eye flat out lie to you about whether enemies are present or not. The goblins are there. The game will sometimes pull the equally dick move of not spawning the enemies until you are standing in a given spot, but not this time. They're there all along. But unless you know they're there and trigger them with a convenient spell like Fire Ring, or a fireball's splash damage, they just wait patiently for you to step in and get flanked from both sides. I don't know for sure, but I suspect that if you're being attacked by something outside of your field of vision, they get significantly more accurate. That's how it seems to work, anyway.

The safe bet is to duck in, spy goblins, and duck back out down the hallway a bit so that they're all coming at you from one direction.

In this case, exactly what spawns here is random, and you're unlucky. There are three goblin kings among those dots.

Fortunately, all that they break is Torg's magic ring, and the last goblin drops shortly thereafter.

Feeling good about ourselves, we take the last steps in, eager to finish this quest and get heals. We open the little cupboards in the wall until we find one with a chest set inside of it, and-

 

[Selias]

Well, shit. That doesn't look good. Do I have anything to restore my mana? Looks like I might want to be able to heal myself and the other party members, right now.

EDIT: Whoops. For some reason, I thought that Death was popping out of a chest. I... honestly, I'm not sure why.

 

[Vindictus]

Fortunately, 'Dying' is merely a minor inconvenience. Pity about how you lost all your moneys, though.

 

[Megaolix]

So the chest blew up in everyone's face, I take it?

 

[Chibi-Reaper]

Re: [LP] Might and Magic 6, Death's a Cheater.

If you'll remember, I mentioned before that sometimes chests are not filled only with riches, but also explosions?

You've been lucky so far. There is, as I understand, some variance in whether a chest is or is not trapped, or how lethal that trap is. Without Disarm, to defuse it, or high perception and luck, to see it coming and duck out of the way...

Well, the best thing you can do, especially if this chest contains an important Quest Item that you have to collect, is to heal to full or as close as possible, grit your teeth and man up to take the damage.

Sometimes, it doesn't matter, and the damage is just so huge that you get instantly exploded into bits across the room, or a fine mist, even from full health. This happens often at low levels, when you have less HP to blow away.

Meet Death.

You'll come to be very well acquainted with this fellow. Usually, meeting him is a once in a lifetime experience.

But not for you. For you, he'll make an exception.

For you, he'll make lots of exceptions.

"Though you have been defeated, thy work in the land of the living is not yet done. RETURN, brave ones. I am certain we shall meet again...."

The afterworld echoes with skeletal cackles, and fades away.

You awake a few days later, just outside of the gates of New Sorpigal, with one HP.... and without so much as a penny left in your pockets.

Death himself has just held you upside down, shaken you until all your money fell out of your pockets, and then turned you loose to go continue funding his vacation yacht.

I don't screenshot any of the scrambling about to grab cash for a room at the inn, but at full health and in top shape, we return to Goblinwatch, and to that immediately available room.

It's only been a few days, and so the trap on the chest we opened hasn't reset yet. But there are three chests in the room. The one with the scroll we're looking for in it is always the same... but we're opening them all. We need to catch up on the loot Death Himself just yoinked.

Hm. A fiendishly clever puzzle. I wonder what the code could- NILBOG. It's nilbog. The Drawkcab Monks are a callback, and Nilbog is goblin backward.

We go ahead and loot that last chest too.

And then it's away!

In the fine tradition of many a questgiver, Janice shells out and then immediately offers another, significantly more difficult, quest for somewhat better rewards. We can also 'finish' clearing out Goblinwatch. "If we want". We will, eventually... there's nice loot to be had.

But there's no time for that now.

Because we are rolling in the XP, and it's time to Level Up. Ding! It says 'level two', but at over three thousand XP, we can actually train to level 3.

There is no level up button, though. It's not automatic, please select these perks or a skill. Oh no. It's hardly that simple.

If you want your level, you're going to have to pay for it.

Being the starter town, and low level, though, it's still reasonably cheap.

And now we come to a pause.

As a Knight, Torgamous is looking good at level three. With that might score and a two handed sword, Torgamous is a beast when it comes to damaging anything that enters melee range.

Assuming that they can land a blow with just a +2 to hit. The basic two-handed sword has no innate accuracy or damage buffs... it's all down to the accuracy stat and Sword skill level. All weapon skills increase your hit bonus with that kind of weapon.... at varying ranks, however, things become a little more interesting.

A couple of levels doesn't really increase a Druid's HP bar by much, or at least nothing near the meaty walls of Knight Flesh. Selias is looking good for MP, though. And Learning already has them slightly ahead of the curve in regards to XP gain... however, one skill point doesn't go far.

As far as weapons go, Staff is a good option for any caster. It actually deals slightly more damage than an equivalent dagger, but more importantly, at Expert rank and above it adds your staff skill to your armor class.

Spear does the same, for more offensively minded melee sorts.

Meanwhile, a sorceror will carry a knife if they want to pretend that they'll be making a substantial difference in melee combat. Protip: they won't. There's reasons to carry a knife, though... particularly the ability to use it in your off-hand at expert and dual wield, or the mastery of the tool offering a slim chance of triple damage.

That aside, one point in meditation is juust enough for our Robot Ninja Wizard to keep up with Selias on the MP front. For now.

Latrio, however, is falling slightly behind.

In any case, with each level getting you five skill points, that's now ten points for each of you to be divided among your skills. And don't believe that you're limited to just what is here.... there are still a lot of skills to be purchased.

Blades End teaches the Axe, Spear, Staff, Sword, and Leather skills for 375gp each. If you can learn them. The mages, unfortunately, are limited to the leather armor and staff... still, having weak armor is better than having no armor, right?

Buccaneer's Lair we haven't seen yet, as they only open between dusk-ish and dawn-ish. They provide the skills Merchant, Identify Item, Perception, Disarm Traps, and Dagger skills for 150gp each. Anyone can learn a Misc. skill, and it's only Clerics who cannot learn to use daggers.

The magic guilds, of course, teach magic. All elemental spheres at the elemental guild, and all clerical spheres at the guild of the self, for the relatively high asking price of 750 apiece. The clerical spheres are, and will remain, only relevant to Selias.

So, do you have any suggestions?

 

[Selias]

Right. So, I'm thinking that one of us should buy Disarm Traps, Identify Item, and possibly Merchant. Not sure about Merchant, though, so I'll leave that to someone who has more experience with this game. I'd like to get leather armor, too. Maybe level up my Learning, Leather Armor, Water Magic, and Body Magic skills? Just to be clear, we spend the points to level up our skills, not pay for them, right?

 

[Chibi-Reaper]

Buying the skill gets it added to your character sheet at level 1. From there, you pay with skill points to level it up.

However, it costs a number of skill points equal to the next level. From one to two takes two kill points. Then from two to three takes three. Going directly from one to three takes five, as you can't skip levels.

 

[Selias]

In that case, I'd like to buy Leather Armor, and level Staff, Leather Armor, Water Magic, Body Magic, and Learning to level 2. Maybe buy Identify Item and Disarm Trap, if none of the others want them. Actually, since Disarm Trap requires 30 accuracy to learn it from a master trainer, according to the website I'm using, does having a higher accuracy increase your chances of success? Having Torgamous learn it might be a better idea, if that's the case.

 

[Larekko12]

What are the relevant stats for the Rouge skills. Int? And how many of them need to be on the same character to work.


Merchant should go the the Druid is it works offo f personality.


Disarm and identity ot the Wiz Kids.

Didn't you pick up a Good Spear? Maybe Torg should pick that up. If her doesn't though he should simply double down on his beater skills. What's the beneift of an Axe compared to a sword? And is there any reason not to specialize?

I'm guessing though that over leveling leather is a bad idea with plate in the wings unless there is some fucker who can weight down like that dark elf in Final Fantasy 4?

 

[Chibi-Reaper]

Actually, since Disarm Trap requires 30 accuracy to learn it from a master trainer, according to the website I'm using, does having a higher accuracy increase your chances of success? Having Torgamous learn it might be a better idea, if that's the case.

Click to shrink...

It doesn't actually! Pure skill. The stat limitations are only there to make increasing things in rank very slightly more complex than normal.

When it comes down to it, though, thirty is not particularly high. There's ways to easily boost stats, and the trainer only gives a damn when you actually buy the rank. After that, you can be stat negative for all he cares.

Give me a minute and I'll transcribe a full post on stats or something.

 

[Torgamous]

[X] BODY! I WILL DISARM TRAPS WITH MY FACE!
[X] SWORD! MISSING IS ANNOYING!

 

[Chibi-Reaper]

It's time to explain stats!

We probably should have covered this waaay back in character creation. OH WELL.

Before everything else, you need to understand that there is a wide range of points at which stats are important, which I will drastically simplify and summarize.

It starts at 13. Thirteen is your zero-stat. If your stat is higher than this, you get bonuses to the things your stat effects! If it's lower, then you recieve penalties. Sadness. In general, you like bigger numbers, but there are diminishing returns an once you reach a value of 500 in a stat. If you get it that high. That's as good as it gets! More numbers are meaningless.

That said, you're doing pretty good to break triple digits, so don't get excited about this absolute max cap.

For the stats themselves, we'll begin with Might. As you increase your might, the melee damage you inflict goes up.... obvious, right? After all, you're still hitting things, but you're hitting them demonstrably harder. This is why Torgamous is one-shotting greenskins while the wizards plink away for one and two damage. If you plan to hit things, and hit them a lot, you want a high Might stat.

Intellect and Personality are the Mana stats.

For sorcerors, and sorceror meshes, your Mana total is calculated using your class and your Intellect stats. For Clerics and clerical casters, mana totals are drawn from Personality. Druids draw from both, but less from Intellect than sorcerors, and less from Personality than clerics. It still adds up to quite a bit! This aside, Personality and Intellect may help you to dodge certain harmful effects... high personality makes it slightly more likely you'll dodge being Cursed, while high Intellect makes it slightly less likely you will go insane. However! This is hearsay. I've actually never seen something happen where it's obvious that the stat made a difference, that's just how it's supposed to work in theory. In practice, it's only really important for mp totals. Torgamous, who can never learn magic at all, has no use for either of these stats!

Accuracy is the important stat if you want to hit things reliably. Your basic chance to hit with both bows and in melee is taken from your accuracy. Not as important with casters, who generally have guaranteed-hit spells, but if you have to aim at things, then this is a good stat.

Endurance is important for everyone. This is your HP-determing stat across the board. However, your class also plays a big part in your final HP score. Knights are in general Beeftacular... while wizards are somewhat fragile. This aside, much like Intellect and personality, Endurance is supposed to help protect you from status effects including: Weakness, Disease, Drunkenness, Fallen-Asleep, Instant-unconsciousness (different from sleep), and Fear. In practice, I've never seen evidence of this actually being the case, but that's all right. More importantly, with a higher Endurance score, you recover faster from taking hits, and so your next turn isn't slowed down so much by getting a Goblin Punch in the nads.

Speed is also good for everyone. A high speed increases your armor class and decreases your recovery time from swinging a weapon, firing a bow, or using a spell. Nothing much more to say about speed, really.

Then there's Luck, which... basically, it effects everything, but in a very small way. Mostly, it's supposed to skew gold looted to be slightly more than normal. You want it to be positive, but if it has an effect you probably won't realize it, or click that it's because of your luck stat. Very behind-the-scenes.

 

[Chibi-Reaper]

While I'm here, let's also talk SKILLS.

There's only so many. And I don't need to go into fine detail on all of them.

We'll start by saying that Miscellaneous skills can be learned by anyone. No limitations! As long as you can learn a skill, you can master it. As I've said before, in later games things get more complex, a given class will only be able to push a given skill so far ever, so it's very much picking all the skills you want before you start the game. For now, it doesn't matter! As long as you can buy the skill, you can eventually get as good, or better, than anyone else.

Magic is a little more discriminating. If you recall, there are six classes... Knight, Cleric, and Sorceror are the 'pure' classes... the others are a combination of the three. The Paladin is a fusion of Knight and Cleric, and can cast clerical magic. The archer is a fusion of knight and sorceror, and can cast elemental magic. The Druid is a fusion of Cleric and Sorceror, and can cast both clerical and sorcerous magic.

However, later in the game, you will discover that there are two other, very powerful schools of magic, which only a Pure caster can access. If you don't have either a Cleric or a Sorceror on your team.... well, you're shit out of luck. That said, despite what you might think, either class can access both schools.

There's not much to say here either. Who can learn what is clearcut, and increasing in rank makes your spells better, in a distinct way for every spell.

Armor is an easy set of Skills.

There are four types of Armor. Leather, Chain, Plate, and a Shield. Anyone can learn to use Leather... it's the default and most basic armor. You don't have to wear it if you don't want to, but it helps get in between arrows and your vital bits. Chain is slightly more discriminatory. If you are a Druid or a Sorceror, then you don't get to wear it. Leather is the best you'll get! It's all right, there's some good leatherworks. If you want to wear Plate armor, then you best be a Knight or Paladin, or you best start crying. As I recall, Sorcerors cannot learn how to use Shields either.... but druids can. Archers, however, cannot. I suppose that's to counterbalance that they can wear Chain?

Then there are weapons. Staff, sword, dagger, axe, spear, bow, mace.... and one other weapon that you won't see for a long time. Everyone can use that last one, they don't want you missing out. Keeping things relevant.... Knights can use any weapon they want. They can use all the weapons, if they want. Convenient, for when you find a fantastic artifact weapon that, derp, you haven't trained anyone at all to use.

Druids and Sorcerors are more limited. You have your choice of a big, heavy stick... or a tiny pig-sticker. Staff or Dagger. Choose wisely.

 

[Larekko12]

Staff seems like a no brainer. With nill might unless that triple damage stuff applies to magic being able to get more defensing seems good.

So Tor should become basically coomptent in all mart weapons but focus on one?

 

[Chibi-Reaper]

Triple damage can actually drop some massive hurt on people if you're lucky. If you have the Powerful knives anyway. 2d3+7? Not bad. If it's enchanted for more bonus damage dice, even better. Especially if you're dual-wielding. Might score helps, of course.

Incidentally, your options for dual-wielding are Dagger or Sword. Those are the only weapons you can put in your off-hand. For daggers, you can pull it as early as Expert rank, while with Sword you need to be a Master, no way around it.

 

[Robotninja]

Focus on my magic skills. I want to be a gigadeath dealer.

 

[Chibi-Reaper]

Hm. Until you get the Big magic, fire is your standard Killy-Sphere of the elements. Some things resist it, but Air is a good back-up for the lightning bolts.

Wave wanted Water, then Air, then whatever else.

Torg wants more Beef and better Swording. Reasonable choices.

And I guess that has Selias with a specific spread of points and some insightful and useful skill purchases. Utility skills are good to have. You'll note, if you have merchant skill and nobody else does then aaall the shopping is going to start going through you.

Alright then. Without other specific suggestions, I'll follow Selias' plan, then bump Torg's Body to four and swording to two. Slightly more accurate, and it makes Expert rank available. Similarly, I'll put Robotninja's Fire magic and Latrio's Water magic to 4. I might not make all of these expert immediately, particularly since Water is one of those difficult to get to trainers if I don't misremember, but the option will be there.

I'll also shuffle through the shops... if a good spell happens to show up from death and days passing, then combat efficiency will be much boosted.

I'll start screenshotting again another time. Not quite ready to take another crack at clearing Goblinwatch again. But this is all maintenance and prep work.

 

[Chibi-Reaper]

No screenshot update.

Torg is Beefiest. 78 HP with expert rank and 4 skill levels in body building. Compare wizardly HP bars of 28.

Various purchases/sales. Loot included pair of nice swords. Replaced torg's two-hander with one. Lower max damage, higher average damage, to-hit is now +8. Old sword sitting in pack along with okayish spear, shield, in case of later skill purchases. Nothing spectacular, though.

Bought Merchant before other skills. 150 investment, one point immediately reduced costs and increased sales prices enough to pay for itself.

Spell book acquired: Fire spell number 4, Fire Bolt. Unlikely to see that. Same as goblins cast. (Skill)d4 damage, with skill of four means 4-16 spell damage before resistances for cost of 4mp. Robot Ninja is the Burniest.

Also spied in Element guild: Earth 4, Deadly Swarm. Attacks enemies with bees for 5+ (skill)d3 physical damage. Possible future investment. Did not buy yet, check back later.

New Sorpigal suddenly swimming in Bankers. One-time cost of 1000 gold for net +10% all future gold finds? Yes please. Could not afford two. Hired a Tinker instead. Much cheaper, +4 invisible points in Disarm also good. Still net increase on gold found.

Tune in next time: The true Sacking of Goblinwatch!

Unless there's another plan in the cards?

 

[nick012000]

So, basically, this game has the same class system as Mass Effect, but with Fighter/Wizard/Cleric instead of Soldier/Tech/Biotic?

 

[Happerry]

I think someone should grab Perception.

Edit : A bit late.. oh well, next time. And sack away!

 

[Vindictus]

So, basically, this game has the same class system as Mass Effect, but with Fighter/Wizard/Cleric instead of Soldier/Tech/Biotic?

Click to shrink...

Might and Magic did it first.

I mean, shit, the series is older than I am- It's very much one of the classics.

 

[Chibi-Reaper]

And so, preparations made, we return to Goblinwatch.

Goblinwatch feels like a bigger dungeon than it actually is, and puzzle-doors aside, it's actually very simple. You could easily consider this the 'starter' dungeon.

The game doesn't think so, of course. With various quests and urgings, the game strongly suggests that the first place you should go a-questing is the ABANDONED TEMPLE OF BAA.

It is not advised for you to start your game by going to the abandoned temple of Baa.

The Abandoned temple of Baa, particularly right at the start of things, is designed to make you hate, in order: The game, the developers, yourself, and life in general. Comparatively, Goblinwatch averages slightly tougher monsters... but it's massively less frustrating overall. I'll get into why later on.

In any case, we venture back into the keep, with an elaborately coiffed and manicured banker and a pudgy, sort of twitchy and nervous Tinker. The tinker offers a few invisible points towards everyone's Disarm skill, and the Banker offers bonus gold for her presence... enough so that the tinker's fee is covered by the bonus, and then some! Bankers are great. Factors too, if you can't find a banker... they're cheaper, but have less effect.

Straight on and through the only other door, our first enemies are....

Surprise! Not goblins!

While there are a ton of goblins present, goblinwatch also features rats and.... these things. Blood suckers. A horrible invention from the mind of some twisted madman, these are what the world of Enroth has instead of mosquitos.

A horrible, twisted cross between a bat, leech, and lamprey, flapping through the air on rubbery wings, seeking large and warm life to attach themselves to, and parasitically feed off of the blood, brains, or supposedly the very soul of their victim.

Supposedly normal bats can spawn in here too, but I've never seen so much as one.

In any case, the blood-sucker series of monsters varies between only six and thirty HP, so they're easily dropped out of the air well before they reach you, if you have a reasonably long stretch of ground between you. And you want to.... because, like rats, if you let them get close in, their horrible rows of glistening teeth carry all manner of horrible diseases.

As our unfortunate robot ninja wizard shows.

Disease is a horrible infliction, which like poison cuts all of your stats by a large amount. I haven't seen proof, but greatly suspect, that disease and poison can also stack on one another. And while poison is relatively simply cured no matter what classes you have available, being a simple combination of potions, curing disease.... takes a lot more. Better yet, it's not one of the inflictions that you can just sleep off, and so your choices are to either have the spell that cures disease ready before you sally forth, have a lot of reagents and bottles on hand to prepare a powerful curative potion, or finish the fight quickly so you can drop everything and run back to the temple, where you can beg for healing. Expensive healing. The New Sorpigal temple makes a lot of money from fixing diseases.

That said, Goblinwatch is designed nicely, and this is one of only two times through the dungeon that anyone takes ill from a vermin's gnawing bite. Most of the way, there's plenty of space to drop things with magic before they become a problem. There are some exceptions, of course... not much you can do about opening a door into a small room and having to back off quickly.

Adding insult to injury, while goblins at least drop money that can be used to fix the wounds they leave, Rats and Bloodsuckers will almost never drop anything at all.

With that said, clear them out and you find the next chest of the keep. A trident, much like a halberd, classifies as a 'Spear' and draws from the spear skill. All spears can be used in one or both hands, but get slightly more damage if you really get a good grip, holding your shaft firmly with both hands before you forcefully thrust.

That aside, the basic trident is nothing really special, and we pick up some gold.

And take the other fork in the path, to where we actually have to punch in the code letter by letter in order to progress on.

Beyond the trick door is a short passage to a large, rough chamber with enemies. Clear them out, and you could almost think you're done.

But we aren't finished yet. Not by far.

In the corner of this chamber, you will find a deep and circular hole. The walls aren't smooth, but they are nearly vertical, and none of your characters will ever be very good at scaling surfaces.

Continuing further in this dungeon requires... a leap of faith.

>> To be Continued.

 

[Chibi-Reaper]

With that said, we're out of MP, and once you drop down you can't immediately get back out. Our health is good, but we're mostly mages... good for a wizard is still not that good. Run completely out of magic, and suddenly you find that this is a party of one, with three tagalongs trying their best to hide behind Torgamous' walls of beef.

So first we run back to town and get heals.

Then we jump into the pit. Or rather, because falling damage is a bitch and nobody has feather fall, we drop slightly into the pit and then hug a wall and carefully slide down as best we can to the bottom.

Where we find a nicely bricked and tiled stone passage.

It leads to a small room filled with enemies and...

Why, what is this? A neat line of four chests just waiting for a-plundering? This surely could not be a trap.

It is a trap. And possibly in more than one way. If you recall, I mentioned that there was some variance in how trapped chests are... some are always trapped, of course. Some are almost always. Some occasionally, and some never, or nearly never. Leaving aside whether or not one of these chests explodes into a fountain of pain and blood on you, there is one chest that, when you open it, immediately spawns a small number of enemies behind you.

It's not a problem if you have high health and mana, but if it catches you flat footed and the chest just belched fire across your face, it's not impossible that the newly spawned enemies will give you a surprise dose of sodomy. Sneak attack from behind joke!

To the north passage, where there is a fork. Continuing straight ahead brings you to a one-way door... once opened, it'll stay open, but it only opens from this side. A shortcut, if you don't like jumping down the hole to get lower every time. Taking the other fork leads you through a room with enemies and some loot haphazardly just scattered around the place and an opening into a pair of loooong tunnels.

Nothing special about either of them. There'll be a couple of enemies close to the opening that might close on you before you can handle them, but aside from that you have plenty of distance to drop everything as you continue on.

Right to the end, where on either side there is a large chamber absolutely swarming with blood suckers. There's usually a few Brain suckers in the mix, and there's decent odds that there will be at least one Soul Sucker flitting through the horrific cloud.

Soul sucker. Where have we heard that before?

Ah, thaaat's right.

Every month, the various Town Halls throughout the land offer a bounty on a specific monster. Kill one, return to the town hall, and you recieve free money. This is one of those timed optional things, by the by... not in that you have a certain number of days to do it, but in that the offered bounty changes with every month. More annoyingly, kills you make before you check the bounty board do not count, so if you happen to have just cleared out the last goblin in the entire region, and the bounty is 'goblin' when you check.... well, you have a problem.

Better still, the list of bounties is completely random and draws from every single monster in the game. It worked out well this time, that the bounty was on something we could actually hunt down and feasibly kill... but you'll often laugh when the first bounty offered is something like a Gold Dragon. And laugh. But not in the amused way. In the sardonic, slightly bitter fashion of realizing that there's no possible way you could actually kill a monster on that level right now, even if it was sitting just outside.

That said, while it's free money, it's nothing fantastic either. 800 gold, or with the banker's help, more than that, is certainly nice... but in general, if you can actually kill the monster on offer, then particularly as they get harder it's usually much faster and easier just to wander around killing things with gold drops until you make the same amount.

In other words, if you get lucky, this can be nice, but it's not something you should put too much effort into.

We step back into goblinwatch again and finish off the last couple bloodsuckers in this chamber, then press onward to find the above.

Why, what is this? A treasure chest straight ahead? Temptingly... why, certainly those two visible alcoves to either side could not conceal an unexpected misfortune.

It's absolutely a trap. Disarm does nothing for this one, sadly... those alcoves are just secretly teeming with rats.

With that said, usually the chests on the far ends of these tunnels have some pretty good stuff, but this time there's not much worth noting. A simple wand, and... that's really all. Nothing special beyond that. Bum luck.

So we turn around and head down the other one. Somewhere along the way, someone got bitten and their leg started turning all funny colors, but I can't recall who. The important thing is that we ducked back to the temple again.

And we came across this beautiful sight.

Supposedly, 'Scholar' is the lowest tier of this sort of hireling. Teacher and instructor will both offer more bonus XP, sure. But that's not important. The xp is negligible, a side effect.

The Scholar offers full identification of everything.

What this means is that, as long as she's in the party, we never need to spend a single skill point on identification... from a plain ring to the legendary axe Conan, Belinda here can peg it all with just a glance.

The downside? Well, it's not really self-reliant. If we should die, she goes away, and we're shit out of luck on the identification front again. And since we're dropping the tinker to make a slot for her, the most probable cause of death, exploding chests, just got somewhat more likely. But it's a compromise we can live with.

There's some really fantastic hirelings in the game, offering water-walking, flight, unlimited wizard-eye, constant resistance buffs and more. But Banker and Scholar are the solid picks that I tend to default to before anything else.

We boot out the tinker and start identifying all the crap in our sacks. Most of it is junk, but a hidden gem among the dross is shown.

Now, you would think that Torgamous would need this most.

Unfortunately, at 25 Might, the next stat level where there is going to be any perceptible increase in anything is 30. A stat boost of four is a nice thought, but at this point it's just not going to do anything. Perhaps counterintuitively, it goes to one of our mages. Increasing Selias' might to nine means that if they have to bonk something with their stick, they're doing almost reasonable damage for this level sometimes!

Ideally, none of the mages should be hitting anything, still.

That done, we finish up the last bit of the final tunnel beneath Goblinwatch and face the final chest.

And it's a doozy.

This is more what I was expecting from that other chest, rather than just a handful of gold and a basic leather vest.

For this starting region, the axe and mail are pretty nice finds. Unusually good, much like the pirate cutlass Torg is swinging around right now, but still reasonable enough that you can expect to find a couple here and there if you're lucky.

What makes this chest fantastic is that amulet.

Throughout the game, you're going to run across, and most likely craft, various enchantments on items. 'Antique' is one of the rarer ones... not because it makes things particularly useful, but because of economics. All that the 'Antique' enchantment does is add an extra zero to an item's True Value.

Enchantments of any sort will effect this in some way, making the most reliable, if slow, way of making money a combination of enchantment and the merchant skill. If your merchant skill is high enough that your buy and sell prices are pretty close to an item's True Value, and you can afford the first capital investment, then you can easily buy up a lot of enchantment-grade items, put randomly selected enchantments on them, and sell them back to the store for a profit.

If you're lucky, you might even get a better piece of equipment than something you're currently wearing this way. Antique is just specifically a modifier on the sales price, though.

In any case, we won't get nearly the full value for this amulet at this point, but just loook at it. That's a find. Beautiful. (Let me call up my friend, who is an expert on antique amulets...)

In any case, that is that. There's no ding, no special notification, no note in your journal. But Goblinwatch is now cleared.

Come back after enough time, and it'll just be teeming with a monster infestation again, heh. But by that time, we'll be advanced enough that if we felt like it, we could clear the whole mess in a single run.

In any case, having killed out the keep... we are as a whole still 700-ish XP away from a level. Bummer.

Also, you may be startled to see the low only triple-digit number on the gold, there? Don't worry! I've just been putting it in the bank every so often. It's advised, as you progress, to put your money in the bank whenever it breaks a certain level... at initial points like this, that would be 1000 gold, I've found. Later on it might be more meaty sums... five, ten, twenty thousand or more. It only matters if you die, of course, but there is nothing that stings worse than rolling around town with a hundred grand in hand and then suddenly this cocky sack of bones in a boat rummages through your pockets.

You can't buy anything with money that's in the bank, of course, but you can withdraw it from any of their conveniently placed outlets throughout the land. Currently, our gold total is at roughly four thousand.

In any case, once again, we have options.

We could clear the overmap, hunting around the area for enemies to crush and, hopefully, get a level-up ding before continuing to anything else.
We can take a coach to Castle Ironfist and slum around there. Or walk, I guess. It's quite the hike, though.
Alternatively, we could ride a boat to the Islands of Mist. The sorcerors of the party would have some vested interest in this region. There's a few goblins squatting by the docks and preventing the shipping lanes from running as they should, but we can crush them with ease.

(sigh)

.... Or we could check out the Abandoned Temple of Baa

 

[Larekko12]

Any timed quests?

Where can Tor Learn Chain? and is that Chain Mail Good enough to make it worth the effort?

What's on the Island of Mist. More Spell schools? a College? A whole lot of Wizard mobs witb loot?

 

[Torgamous]

Where can Tor Learn Chain? and is that Chain Mail Good enough to make it worth the effort?

Click to shrink...

Chargen. Already done.

Considering learning Shield, though, since I now have a free off-hand.

 

[Chibi-Reaper]

Any timed quests?

Where can Tor Learn Chain? and is that Chain Mail Good enough to make it worth the effort?

What's on the Island of Mist. More Spell schools? a College? A whole lot of Wizard mobs witb loot?

Click to shrink...

I'll speak about timed quests briefly.

Might and Magic is one of those older games that doesn't help you out much. Mist and Ironfist Castle are referenced obliquely by peasants sometimes, but they don't actually tell you much about them that helps at all. You're expected to have played other games in the franchise, and pick up on little clues. Most likely, your first time there you will no nothing about the new region you have just entered.

In the spirit of that, I'm not going to say anything beyond what I have. Sorcerors, and elemental casters in general, like Mist.

 

[Chibi-Reaper]

Now, I'll explain Time-sensitive quests.

There are three types of these.

The first is Monthlies.

Strictly speaking, they aren't really a formal quest, because there are only two things really wrapped up in Monthlies. The town-halls give out bounty hunts... and one other thing that I'll explain when we find it. The only reason this is considered time-sensitive is that, like I explained in the updates, they have to be fulfilled in the same month. Allow it to become the first of next month, and you fail! The biggest issue with these is travel times.

The second is actually timed quests. Once you take up the quest, you have a limited time-frame to complete it... or the quest giver is upset at your tardiness. Thinking of it, I can only really recall one timed quest off-hand, and while you are penalized for tardiness, you still complete it fine even if you're late.

The third are the bar-none most frustrating element of the game. Time specific quests. You have to do X and Y on, for example, the solstice or equinox. In other words, there are only four days a year when completing this quest is at all possible. Slightly more forgiving is something like 'midnight of the full moon'. They do mean midnight. Exactly midnight. But if you botch it somehow then you can try again in only an in-game month.

Leaving that aside, this is very much an RPG where nothing happens unless you are there.

With one exception.

I showed off everyone's stats before. You may have noticed, but there was a small, unassuming line stating your character's age. There are curses and mystic shenanigans that can artificially age your character, and those are difficult to cure... requiring the rare and somewhat toxic drink of a specific Black Potion, or a trip to find the far away and dangerously guarded Fountain of Youth. Either of those will cure unnatural aging.

But with every year that passes in the game, your characters grow a year older.

Why does this matter?

Whether you have naturally reached that point or not, once you have reached a certain age thresh-hold, your character will simply flat-out die every time they go to sleep. No muss, no fuss, no saving throw. You had a good run, it's time to check in. And so, in a sense, the entire game is on a time limit.

It's a very lenient and generous one, however. You would have to be really trying and dicking around in order to naturally reach a point where you start dying every time you try to rest. Well, were it not for one thing.

The prison system. The law is lax, but if you manage to get yourself arrested, you'll be cooling your heels in a gaol cell for a while. This isn't like the elder scrolls, or anything, where you have the opportunity to sneak a lockpick in, or even the chance to fight your way free of guards. If you're nicked, you know it, and the next thing you know it could be a year later and you're blinking at the sight of natural light.

So it's not impossible to get a band of sixty year olds tromping about to save the world and complain about their bunions and achy joints (while everyone else important in the world, curiously, stays exactly the same forever), it's just very hard.