Oh man, I should just stop even commenting on how long it takes me to make an update, cause it just gets longer and longer. I have no excuses.
This may be a fairly lengthy update.
We're starting out where we left off last time:
The Cyclops Cavern!
First thing we find are Bugaboos. They are not exactly hard, but they aren't exactly easy either. They have high health, hit rather hard, and come in fairly large numbers. We can still manage to defeat them though.
As can be expected from dungeons in this game, there are bones strewn about in corners. Its interesting to note that almost every set of bones has a different description, so a lot of care and writing went into this. Unfortunately, the majority of the bone piles are empty,and just a waste of time.
On the plus side, this one was not. However, the scroll is mildly useful. Acid Stream only targets one enemy, and as the name suggests, does acid damage. Too bad the monsters in this dungeon seem to be immune to it.
An army of fungi!
Damn Ogres, always digging up my yard.
Funny story about this, actually. We'll get to it later...
Its probably just blood, right? Nothing ventured, nothing gained, or something like that? Do your thing, Hein.
OH MY GOD, IT MUST HAVE BEEN EBOLA BLOOD!
At least Hein was able to fish out some loot before he died.
We found another blood pool, which had similar results, except that it gave
resistance to electricity. Yet another blood pool gave us the Green Key, but I didn't take a screenshot of it for some reason.
And here's where the funny story comes in. See, I went to town after having three people killed off from the blood pools. Identified my loot, sold the useless stuff, equipped the good stuff, and then stayed at the inn. That was my downfall. Back in MM2, in order to save, you would stay at the inn. In MM3 there is actually a save option by pressing that big crystal that has the direction you are facing on it. I forgot about that. So I went back to the dungeon, and there was a grate that we needed to bash down, which I did. That grating separated the Cyclops from the rest of the dungeon. Cylopses are really freaking bad ass, which of course resulted in a game over (this is a Might and Magic game afterall). So when I re-loaded my game, it was from before I ever went into the Cylcops Cavern, and I lost all the items and the Green Key. Such is life.
Well, since that didn't end well, I decide it was pretty fruitless to try again.
Time to queue up some music! We're headed to:
LUNATIC FRINGE! (insert guitar riff)
Its a floating decapitated head!
OH DEAR GOD, WHAT THE FUCK!?
Actually, I had already mentioned Screamers in Part 2, but I didn't show these frames of their animations. Anyways, Screamers suck, and Insanity is a terrible status ailment. More or less after each battle with the Screamers we would have to go back to town and cure the insanity. Well, I guess thats why this area is called Lunatic Fringe.
There are quite a few wagons in Lunatic Fringe, some are worth going to, others not so much, in particular:
This bitch right here. She sells you a completely useless unenchanted ring for 1000 gold, and its only worth 50 gold. This might actually be a good deal later in the game, I'm not sure. MM2 had a spell that could increase the enhancements on an item, and you could make like +50 items if you put enough time in it (I never actually even got that spell, but whatever), so MM3 might have that spell as well. This of course assumes that the spell can only be used on clean items with no enchantments. Whatever, we'll find out later, right now I'm miffed about losing 1000 gold. Well, 950...
Theres a lot of forest in Lunatic Fringe, so in order to properly explore it all,
we need the pathfinder skill, so we go back to Baywatch and get it.
When we return we stumble upon two dungeons,
but both are locked.
If I didn't have my problems with the Cyclops, maybe I could have gone into this dungeon.
I do have a
quest in Swamptown, but I remember hating that place when I first played this game, so we'll hold off on it for later.
Wait, what? Aren't Screamers decapitated heads? Egg pods? This is more disturbing than anything... Like even more disturbing than floating decapitated heads...
Did you even think I wouldn't destroy this?
Well, that explains the army of about 10 Screamers that I just killed and that I didn't take a screenshot of for some reason.
We found a lot of gypsy chests, and they have moderate qualities of items, although nothing particularly noteworthy.
I'm not exactly sure what this guy did, so it was probably a waste of 100 gems. Maybe he temporarily increased magic resistance.
These two guys are worth mentioning. For their fees they will permanently increase the stats they mention. Its pretty decent, but we're really dirt poor because we kept having to restore our sanity after every battle, and sometimes we didn't even make it to the city before someone died from being too crazy, which made the recovery cost even more...
Too bad we didn't find this chick until we were pretty much done in Lunatic Fringe...
So we cross into Spider Country, or I guess,
Poison Point. Turns out Spiders are worse than the Screamers. Poison is way worse than insanity, but ultimately does about the same. In addition to spiders, theres also:
Magic Mantises, which also poison.
I dunno, this sign seemed out of place, there were no undead around, so I'm not sure if it was trying to warn me of something.
Maybe that sign was alluding to the fact that Elayne was so poisoned that she didn't even realize she was dead. Ironically it was when we returned to town that she actually died...
Too little, too late.
Uh... what?
Theres some sort of freakishly mutated two-headed bug behind the well that I didn't really want to deal with. Fortunately drinking from the well a second time sent us back to Poison Point.
Oh good, time to kill spiders.
Must be some pansy ass barbarians.
Unfortunately, destroying the shack didn't stop the spiders from spawning on the map. I'm pretty sure it should have, so maybe it was a bug in the code (pun intended). Actually, now that I think of it... The developers might have left it that way because of that joke/pun I just made...
I'll, uh... I'll keep that in mind for when I find some grass.
Eventually we find a cave, and we decide to go in.
The aptly named Arachnoid Cavern.
More bones, more nothing.
This little guy is actually pretty tough. He's fast so he can get a lot of hits in on his turn. I don't believe he can cause poison however. The other black spiders are pretty numerous here, so thats why we're poisoned.
Bang a gong, we are on!
So the way the gongs work, when you hit them,
it spawns a bunch of Dino Bugs or Spiders in another area of the dungeon. There are four gongs in the dungeon, I think two spawn spiders, and the other two spawn the dino bugs. Its kind of a decent way to grind I guess, if you're okay with getting poisoned over and over and over. Although, now that I think about it the dino bugs are a good way to get money. Each one drops 200 gold, which adds up when you fight about
large groups of them, which the gongs will summon.
Some messages on the walls that don't exactly mean anything to me at the moment.
The main hall of the dungeon is a large circle. In the middle area theres a few walls that you can bash down, and inside each area is a thrown like this. Incoming image dump of the dialogue of each king...
Lord Prayer, Lord Magic, and Lord Word all teach skills for gems. Lord Magic teaches Prestidigitator, and Lord Prayer teaches Prayer Master, they're essentially Mage/Cleric versions of the same skill. They give +2 spell points per level of the caster. Clerics and Paladins can get Prayer Master, and Archers and Sorcerers can get Prestidigitator. Well, everyone can get either skill, but its only helpful for those classes.
Lord Word teaches Linguist, which I had no idea what it did, so I gave it to all my spellcaster just in case. Turns out I wasted gems for it, since only one person needs in the party needs it. Linguist lets you talk to skulls on sticks, which is something I don't think we've run into as of yet.
The Lord of Endurance had this crystal in his room. I didn't screencap what it did, but I think it permanently increased Personality by 5 for one person.
This Toxic Worm is REALLY strong, and we shouldn't have fought it. Fortunately I've been abusing the
Magic Shack so I was able to obliterate it with spells, because my melee characters couldn't even hit it.
The toxic worm, along with breakable walls that my characters weren't strong enough to destroy, helped me decide not to continue exploring this dungeon for now. We'll come back sometime later to figure out the Lords' puzzle.
We can't actually explore the Crystal Mountains, but theres a road cutting through them which connects Poison Point with the both the City of
Wildabar, and
Castle Blood Reign. But since we haven't even gone into Castle Whiteshield yet, we'll back off of Blood Reign and head to Wildabar.
A little background on the city of Wildabar, or as I like to think of it as: "Things we're going to fight."
See, told you!
Its kind of funny, really. Mad Dwarves in MM2 were badass and could go into a frenzy which could decimate the party at the expense of the dwarf's life. It pretty much caused quite a few game-overs in my MM2 playthrough. In contrast, MM3's Mad Dwarves are pushovers. Sure, they have quite a bit of HP, but they're pretty slow, and most importantly they don't go into frenzies. Which is quite nice when you
fight armies of them...
Ninja are kind of weak, but hard to hit. They kind of prove my point in my MM2 opening of why I think Ninja are useless. In fact, like the mad dwarves, we also fought an
army of ninja, including an upgraded
"Sonic Ninja," and didn't even break a sweat.
Oh, right. These guys.
I'm not sure what Navigation does, but I think it has something to do with fleeing, or avoiding whirlpools.
Looks like Gordon's been here.
I kind of like the random bits of lore the game gives.
And that all for now. I really need to get Elayne new armor. She probably died the most for this update, even more than the Ian the Sorcerer. Well, with an armor class like Ian's, its not really that surprising, he's a freaking tank. We didn't find any loot really worth mentioning. We found some decent padded armor for Ian, thats how his AC is so high. That, and I kind of give him first pick on the accessories. Maybe I should give Elayne first pick on accessories...
End of Part 4.
