We started off in Atlantium. I kind of just wanted to familiarize myself to the game so I went to grind on some water elementals. I fought them for a little while, but didn't get any good loot. I felt comfortable enough with the game to go explore some. That was sort of, kind of, my first mistake.
That is one sexy siren. One minor problem about sirens...
The men in the party fall victim to them. They were all petrified from the singing. So Elayne and Jeanne have to fight this one out alone. Fortunately they are two of my best characters. Elayne is virtually unstoppable, and as a paladin, Jeanne can heal us if we ever need it. I realized after the battle that Jeanne could have used the spell Stone-to-Flesh during the fight. Oh well. I'm not sure if the petrified men got any experience from the battle or not. They probably didn't.
I'm not sure how this event never happened before, since it was over a spot I had already been on before. The game's events are scripted oddly, if you do not enter the spot from the right direction, the event might not even happen. Anyhow I searched and found some decent loot The Dark Trident is of particular interest, and is Elayne's new weapon, making her even more badass. The dark trident also adds 5 defense, which is useful since its a two-handed weapon.
I guess its a good time to explain why I have said Elayne is powerful twice already. Elayne is an archer. Archers excel with bows (duh!), are decent melee fighters, and for some reason have the ability to cast Sorcerer spells. I'm not sure how/why, but she has the highest Might in the party. Might is basically Strength in any other game. So obviously she hits pretty damned hard because of that. Archers cannot equip shields, I guess because it takes to hands to use a bow (although that doesn't stop the knight or paladin from having a shield and a bow equipped at the same time). Because she can't use a shield I decided in the early parts of the game to give her a two-handed weapon. Two-handed weapons are insanely overpowered compared to the one-handed weapons. An average one-handed weapon does 1-10 damage, whereas an average two-handed weapon will do 1-20 damage. In particular, Elayne does 1-30 damage with the Dark Trident. Anyhow with a bow Elayne can hit twice as hard as my main fighters, they hit ~150 in melee, she hits ~300 with a bow. The downside is that if a character is in melee combat (denoted by a checkmark next to the character's name in battle) that character cannot use a ranged attack. So when she's in melee she doesn't kick as much ass as she does with a bow. However! because of her Might and how insanely overpowered two-handed weapons are, she can still hit on-par with the other melee characters. So she kicks ass regardless of how she fights. I keep in the 6th position since she has a higher chance of not being in melee range so she can annihilate things with her bow. This really makes me wonder how much damage a knight could do with a two-handed weapon, but I like how my main melee characters are tanks so I won't try.
I started just trying to finish area maps so I kind of just wandered around. In Sandsobar area I find...
The Farm of Fear, which totally sounds like a dungeon, but isn't. We end up fighting a bunch of Flaming Fears. They are actually pretty tough, since they have an attack that can hit the entire party for roughly 20 damage, and they use it quite often. Fortunately David has a spell called Moon Ray, which does minor insignificant damage to the enemy, but also heals the party 10-100 HP. If it gets really dicey, Jeanne and Sherman can cast it as well. Afterwards we explore some more and find our way to...
LeperCON! For some reason I didn't take a picture of the battle with 250+ Lepers. I think there was also a leprechaun or two, because this is Might & Magic after all, and the developers couldn't resist throwing in a pun. (I'm too lazy to find a picture of a Leper from a previous update to show what they look like). Wandering around afterwards we run into a large party of knights, wizards and other things which almost kill us, but we run like hell away. If I was more careful, I probably could have won the battle.
Back near Atlantium, we find the Neutral Zone, the Evil Zone and the Good Zone.
Both the Evil and Good Zones have a castle that only Sorcerers can go in. I decide against going inside.
Still exploring around Atlantium we run into some dragons. I remember these things killing us pretty easily a while back, so I decide to test my mettle against them now that we are stronger. We annihilate them with very little effort, and I wonder how they ever gave me problems. On a shore nearby we found some rotting corpses, which I think may have been an event battle awhile back, because nothing at all happened.
Next I find myself back near Sandsobar again, I kind of just wandered the world randomly, no reason why I went to where I did and equally no reason why I avoided Tundara, Vulcania, and Middlegate. We found a Royal Territory. Around this area I fought some pretty tough Valiant Knights and Wizards, as seen in a screenshot above. They were in small groups though so they didn't pose much thread like the battle earlier.
The Royal Territory leads up to Mandagual's castle. I don't recall why I did not enter the castle. Strangely enough, on the same secter of the map, there was another castle, Luxus Palace, which is so luxurious it has to have two lines of text. We also did not go inside. Further south we find the Mount Farview which tells us of the Juror's Quests.
I think I've seen some of the Juror's Quest areas in previous updates. Earlier I saw the Good and Evil Zones and their castles for the Sorcerer's test. I don't know how hard these missions are at all, but I'm assuming they're gonna be kind of tough. I'm not looking forward to doing the Sorcerer test. Magic is pretty powerful, yes, but sorcerers are still sorcerers, and have very little defense and hp. I guess its good I have a thief, and Hein is actually a decent enough fighter. I just don't think duoing a dungeon is going to end well.
We tried to explore the Desert of Desolation, but its really annoying. If you move through the desert, you'll get send to this oasis over and over again. As far as I'm aware, eating the fruit doesn't do anything. Its nearly impossible to travel through the desert without getting teleported to the oasis. I tried for a bit, but gave up after finding the Fire Transmutation spell.
What could POSSIBLY go wrong?
Oh....shit... Turns out it only happens to one character. I guess the others characters see the one person screaming in agony as his/her face melts off in an Indiana Jones-like fashion, and realize they should get the fuck away. So Jeanne, who is in the third character position, gets eradicated. I don't know why Jeanne got eradicated versus Swift, who is the party leader...Anyhow, a quick pitstop at Atlantium to resurrect Jeanne, and we decide we've had enough of the area around Sandsobar.
So we decide to explore the area around Tundara. The tundra surrounding Tundara is almost as annoying to explore as the desert, but slightly less. Snowdrifts can cause random damage to the party, and you can get snowblinded and lost, which teleports you to a road by the tundra. We eventually find the Air Transmutation spell, although I think I might have already had it before.
In the snowfield we find a talking Death Spider who asks us a "riddle" which is more like a direct question. Since we don't know the answer, it tries to kill us, which result in a battle that was pretty damned easy.
Wish I could have said the same for this battle... These guys just plain tore us up. 1800 damage! The person with the highest hp in the party is Thund R the barbarian, and he only has 500 hp! Thankfully there was only three so we were able to run away. We're close enough to Tundara, so we make a pit stop there to revive the dead, and then go back into the snowfield, because we totally learned our lesson.
Eventually we find an ice dungeon. We check it out. Those Valiant Knights from earlier are a normal enemy here, so the experience and loot is pretty good. The dungeon is only moderately annoying.
Uh, okay...
Oh, haha. Oh wait... These guys are actually kind of tough, and theres a lot of them. I lamented in a previous update about anything with "insane," "mad," or "crazed" in their name because they turn out pretty hard since they can go into a frenzy which hits 6 party members for a bunch of damage, but it kills the enemy in the process. That still holds true. Good thing these guys are relatively weak. We can kill them in one hit, however, there are still a bunch of them, so they can still attack. Their frenzy attack only does 15 damage, but since it kills the enemy in the process, another enemy moves up in the queue who can then frenzy and so forth. Fortunately they also have a normal attack, so that helps out. We eventually kill them all and get some half decent loot.
Turns out this dungeon is a little gimicky. Each path has a sign, which corresponds to a large group of monsters. Unfortunately just past the sign denoting what you will fight, there is a trap. The traps does two things. One, it propels you into the battle. Two, it halves the party's level. The level drain is the bad part. Its only temporary (until the party rests), but it can make these battles long and grueling. The monsters aren't too tough, but the level drain makes it so I can't use my insane spells to make the battle shorter. I can't use Megavolts or Inferno which targets 10 monsters. I have to use lesser spells like Lightning Bolt and Fireball which only target 5 monsters. And fireball is pretty annoying since it randomly doesn't work for seemingly no reason. Another annoying part is that the tight corridors mean only a few of my characters can melee the enemies. While this is good for Elayne, some characters aren't too good with ranged, like Ian, Hein, and Sherman. David cannot use a ranged weapon at all.
Each area had 50+ of the monster mentioned in the sign. Arachnids, rats, ogres, and thieves. The loot was pretty good though, so in the end it was worth it. A few characters got some new weapons. I actually found my First +10 item, and then shortly after I found a +15 Dagger. The +15 of the dagger almost put it on par with some of my melee characters' weapons. Too bad its only a dagger, although it was better than what my sorcerer had equipped.
There was also a path available to males only, and another only for females.
If you ignored the sign, it yells at you and teleports you a few steps back. So we come back with only the male characters.
Well, thats why we're here.
Oh okay, that was underwhelming. I didn't see much stat increase, and I'm not sure if this was permanent or just temporary. When I returned with only female characters, the same thing happened.
Upon returning to town, I saw that it was Day 140 which means that the circus is around. So I then spent the next hour or so cheating the system to increase my stats. I've already outlined how to do this in a previous update, so I won't repeat it here. However last time I did this I only did like Might, Endurance, and Speed. And I thought you could only enhance to 50. Turns out I was wrong, you can do it to 100. So I finished the stats I increased last time, and then increased the remaining stats to 100 as well. But thats when I noticed something odd. Why was everyone's stats peaking at 100 even? They all have equipment that increases stats, so why were they capped at 100? So I removed all my gear on Swift, and saw that a few stats fell below 100. I went and did the trick to increase his stats again, and they did increase. Then I re-equipped his gear, and his stats went OVER 100. I had everyone remove all their gear and continued stat increasing. So now the entire party has 100 base in every stat, and a little higher if their gear permits it. I know this is kind of game-breaking, but I honestly don't think its gonna matter too much. Might & Magic II is a hard game. You need any advantage you can get.
Ending stats from last update.
Sadly we only gained a single level, except for Sherman, who didn't gain a level at all. Stats in this game are kind of weird. Endurance didn't seem to have much effect on the hp of the party. However increasing the Intellect and Personality of my casters greatly affected their SP (Personality affect Cleric spell characters, while Intellect affect Sorcerer spell casters). I'm not sure if I trained my characters before or after the stat increase though. The only way to get HP as far as I know is to train, so it is possible that the Endurance doesn't have a direct affect on hp, until you train. When you train, the game specifically says how much hp was gained for that level. If that is the case, it doesn't really explain why the SP changed, because you would expect SP to increase the same way HP does. I don't think we found that much armor to warrant the increase in AC, so maybe Endurance doesn't even affect hp and just increases base armor class.
I'm not gonna lie like I usually do and assume I'm actually gonna update more often. I have no idea how often I will update, and you should all know that by now. I mean, the last update was nearly an entire year ago. Hell, Part 1 was made in 2010... At this rate, look forward to an update in March!
End of Part 15
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