Might and Magic III - Part 3

An update four months after the last one. Thats not too bad, right? I mean, it could have been a year. This should be a shorter update, I didn't really do much in the game, basically just reacquainting myself.

 

We start off by going into a dungeon.

 

The Temple of Moo, to be precise. Its right outside Fountain Head, so its probably easy enough for milk drinkers (to use an appropriate Skyrim term) like us to complete.

 

So we'll have to face the undead. Not too bad, we already cleared out the dungeon of Baywatch, which also had undead in it. We're actually probably overpowered for this dungeon. Crusader is a skill that characters can get, and as far as I know, its sole purpose is to let you enter castles.

 

There are numerous skeletons and piles of bones in the corner of each room. Most don't give anything, but some have decent looking skulls.

 

I never showed a picture of a zombie last update, so here's one now. They're pretty slow moving, but have a ton of health. When they hit someone, they may cause the disease status.

 

Theres nothing really worth mentioning about skeletons other than they also have a high amount of HP.

 

Strangely enough, theres not that many places to bash down walls. This message is misleading.

 

Cathedral of Carnage sounds kind of intense. What is the secret code for though?

 

Hein more or less proved he is the same Hein from MM2 with this chest. There was decent enough loot in it though, so it was worth it.

 

Evil things? Thats pretty ironic since Castle Whiteshield is home to the Good King. I guess he just throws evil things in the dungeon so he doesn't have to worry about them.

 

Getting close to the boss and we've got two people unconscious. This is gonna go well. We spend a lot of time casting healing spells to get them up to par. Unfortunately it nearly took all of David and Jeanne's SP to do it.

 

Aww the Cleric of Moo is really just some dude. I was hoping it was like a cow or maybe a minotaur.

 

 I have no idea what this message is for, but obviously its important. Too bad I won't remember it when I have to.

 

Oh God! What the hell is that?!

 

Oh, its just Fire Mane. It looks more like a lion, why is it the mascot of the Cult of Moo? Thats really all there is to the Temple of Moo. We go back to town and train some and then do a little more exploring around the Fountain Head and Bay Watch areas.

 

Outside Fountain Head are quite a few wagons. Some house NPCs such as...

 

Sophena the Seeress. For a small amount of fold she'll tell you the fortune of one of your characters. This particular fortune is for Ian the Sorcerer. In MM2, Fools were pretty annoying, so I'm expecting the same in MM3, however I don't think they'll have the same ability to shuffle the party around like they did in MM2. Sophena also casts Wizard Eye on the party which is pretty cool I guess. Wizard Eye adds a small minimap to the top right corner of the screen. Unlike the map we make while exploring, the Wizard Eye map is completely visible, even tiles we haven't been on. I don't know how it works in dungeons, like if it lets us see hidden passages behind walls we can bash through. I didn't bother spending money for the other characters fortunes cause I'm pretty poor.

 

For 100 gold you can buy potions of might from this wagon. Potions of might increase Might by 5 for a short time. Pretty useless if you ask me.

 

Some wagons are the base of operations of Orc and Goblins. Destroying the wagons nets a bunch of experience, but is also a double edged sword.
 

Once you destroy the wagons, the monsters it corresponds to will no longer show up in the area. At the beginning of the game it might actually be better not to destroy them, as you can get money and experience from fighting them over and over again. Since we're pretty decently armed and higher in level we destroyed the wagons. Goblins and Orcs don't really give that much experience or gold anymore.

 

Outside Bay Watch we find some more huts that were bases and shrines for Orcs and Goblins. We destroy them as well.

 

This hut is important to keep in mind. When you touch the orb the party gains extra SP past the max SP of the character. I'm not sure how much extra we gain, but as long as someone has less than their max SP, you can keep touching the orb and the entire party gets more. Theres a well near Fountain Head that works the same way, except for HP. These are very abuseable, and I intend to abuse them. However, as soon as you rest, the benefit is cancelled and you health and SP go back to your regular max. But with crazy high SP and HP you won't really need to rest that often.

 

We found a pyramid, but we need a keycard or something to get inside. Thats pretty advanced technology. Maybe there is some credence to the ancient alien "hypothesis" about Egypt. (Bahahahaha, yeah right)

 

Uh, sure!

 

Oh swampland... Swampland sucks, and I'm not looking froward to it.

 

At this point I did have 10,000 gold, so I left it. It was not worth it. There was some good gear, but not worth 10,000 gold.

 

We travel east of Fountain Head and into new territory. We find some new enemies. I want to say that Wild Fungus can cause some status on the party based on what I remember from a long time ago, but they never came in large numbers and we killed them too fast for them to attack us. In some cases we even killed them with ranged attacks.

 

OH NO! BUGS!

 They look pretty pissed. Fortunately they aren't too hard, but they are stronger than the Wild Fungi at least.

 

This is the fountain you can see in the image with the Oh No Bugs. It temporarily raises Might. I didn't bother checking by how much since the temporary effects are generally really short durations, like 6 hours or something.

 

I'm pretty sure we already found the pirate's treasure and paid more than it was worth... We don't even have 2000 gems so we can't find out even if we wanted to.

 

Finally we find a new dungeon to explore!

 

 I only went inside to get the name of the cave. I didn't even cast light to see whats inside. The Danger Sense bat on the top of the screen was active though, so something is right near the entrance. We'll have to find out in the next update. Hopefully not 4 months from now...

 

Sort of, kind of, not really the ending stats. Since I'm abusing the HP fountain and the SP orb, I don't actually know how much HP/SP the party has. The greyed out numbers are our magically enhanced values. For HP, I'd say you can probably subtract about 50 to get the regular health, except for Jeanne and Elayne who looks like they have taken some damage. For the SP, you can probably subtract 100. Swift and Hein have no innate magic ability, so they're real max SP is 0. Subtracting 100 to the others makes sense. I'm not sure why Hein is higher in level than everyone else. I need to get Elayne some new armor, she has less Armor Class than the Sorcerer...

 End of Part 3

 

Might and Magic III - Part 2

I took these screenshots awhile ago, so hopefully I didn't get them mixed up.  I planned to actually post two updates back to back, but I got lazy so...

Last time we ended before going down into Fountain Head's dungeon.  Theres really not a lot going on in the dungeon, just quite a few messages on the walls.

Some dungeons we probably won't be going to anytime soon.  I remember Slithercult Stronghold is kind of hard.  Fortress of Fear I don't remember at all.  Judging that we need to unlock it with the Yellow Key, its probably pretty hard too.

Well, crap.  We don't have a password.  (He says something like "BEGONE!" if you get the password wrong).  Guess we have to explore the dungeon some more.

There are probably jokes/references with these statue names, but if there are, they went over my head.  My party actually already has Danger Sense and Find Hidden Doors.  I think I ended up buying Direction Sense, even though its actually pretty useless.  I want to say there was a fourth statue that I didn't take a screenshot of that teaches Swimming.  Swimming is a very useful skill to have.  Obviously it lets you move through water. In Might and Magic 2 we had to cast Waterwalking all the time because of the way skills worked in MM2. In MM2 a character could only have two skills, and sometimes there were more important skills to get, so I would use Waterwalking in lieu of Swimming.  In MM3, each character can have unlimited skills so theres no reason to be stingy.For every character with Swimming, it lets two people go in water.  So essentially you only need three swimmers (four if you have hirelings), but if one of them dies or gets knocked out, you won't be able to swim, so getting swimming on all characters is a good idea.  Same goes for Pathfinding and Mountaineering, but we won't be getting those for awhile.  Danger Sense, Find Hidden Doors, and Direction Sense also stop working if the person with the skill dies or gets knocked out, but they aren't vital skills like Swimming.

Oh cool, now we know how to get the password.  Kranion is that old guy that wants us to give him Silver Skulls.  We actually found five Silver Skulls so we head back to him in order to get the password.

Now we have the password RATS, not sure if the case matters, but it probably does.  Armed with the password we can get past that statue now.  And we immediately see warnings about the Rat Overlord.

This Rat Overlord must really think he's badass or something.  We're not afraid.  

You might be wondering whats up with everyone's faces.  They're probably diseased or poisoned.  Or both!  Poison and Disease lower certain stats, I'm not sure which.  If the stat gets to below 0, the character will die on resting.

And here he is, the Rat Overlord himself.  He's really just an over-glorified Mooserat.  He takes forever to kill, but he's not all that particularly hard.  Once he's taken care of, theres a chest behind him which Hein miraculously unlocks (is this really the same Hein from MM2?).

Yay!  We saved the town.  Morphose must be a shitty protector if he got overpowered by a rat...

So before saving Morphose, this fountain would spawn three bubble men if you threw gold in it.  Now it gives experience for every gold thrown in.  I think its 1:1 but you have to select the character to throw the gold in.  I guess its pretty nice, but really, money is pretty hard to come by at the moment.  Everytime someone gets diseased or poisoned we have to go back to the temple and pay to get the ailments removed.  Not to mention the cost of spells for Elayne and Jeanne.  Spells for Ian and David aren't nearly as expensive, but it still eats through the gold.

So we make our way to the next city.  Baywatch is pretty close to Fountain Head, probably not even a day away.  Still we manage to get there by nightfall so only the tavern is open.

You REALLY couldn't think of a better name for the food?  This doesn't sound good at all, but we're starving.

We hear the latest gossip.  Apparently there's a special skill for classes.  I had no idea.  We'll have to keep this in mind.  

Now we can travel between Fountain Head and Baywatch freely.  Well, once we find the orb thing.

You would think with a name like Baywatch, it would be a nice peaceful town, right?  Things couldn't be further from the truth. 

Throughout the city there are numerous zombies and skeletons walking about.  They're actually not too hard, they just have a bunch of HP, and can cause disease on whoever they attack.

Each pit had some items, and causes poison or disease on whoever dives in.  

Some places of interest in Baywatch are Oro the Ranger and Darek the Explorer.  Too bad they want an arm and both legs for the skills they teach.  We will be back...  eventually.

And then there's this guy.  He just randomly spouts on about magic seashells and nymphs and evil wizards.  No idea what he's going on about, but we listen mainly because we're nice people, but lets face it, its probably important.

Uh... suuuurrrreeeee....

Thats... not creepy at all.

I honestly have no clue what the Quatloo coins are for.  For now I just give them all to Ian to hold on to.

Well here's a statue of the sea nymph that Brother Alpha was rambling on about.  So we throw in some gold.

Well, thats not very nice.

Now that we've finished exploring the town of Baywatch, its time to go down to the dungeon.

JESUS CHRIST, WHAT THE FUCK?

Screamers are really annoying.  They scream, which if I recall correctly damages everyone in the party and has a chance to cause the Insanity status ailment.  Insanity, like Posion, Diseased and Weaken, lowers certain stats, and if they go below 0, you die on resting.  These things drove me insane (haha!) since I had to cure Insanity every so often by leaving the dungeon and going back to the temple to cure it.  On one occasion someone actually died because I rested and their stats went below 0.

This dungeon is kind of annoying, and not just because of the Screamers.  Its basically a long hallway, and every other step is an alcove on both sides with a breakable wall.  Furthermore, every other step is a trap, either an acid pool or a hole.  You can avoid the hole by casting Levitation, but the acid pools are unavoidable as far as I know.  When you break the breakable walls, theres a Screamer and an old skeleton. The skeletons for the most part don't give any good items if you search them.

With the exception of Lloyd's Beacon.  I haven't had a reason to use it yet, but its a very useful skill.  You can use Lloyd's Beacon to set a warp point that whenever you cast it next, it'll let you teleport to that particular location.  Its very useful for when exploring dungeon when you need to get out and go sell stuff, or go to the temple to restore your condition.

Um... beautiful... yeah...

Oh God! I think she looked better as a skeleton! We also freed a knight.

What... just happened?  Brother Beta makes Brother Alpha seem normal.  He gave us another Quatloo Coin.

Its kind of an abrupt ending, but thats all for this update.  Finding Brother Beta was the only important(?) thing to do in the dungeon. Apparently there is nothing to do to save Baywatch from the undead curse.  Oh well.  Baywatch is actually pretty unimportant, since its so close to Fountain Head.  Wildabar is the next city, probably, judging from what Brother Beta said.  Its pretty far off from what I remember.  There are a few dungeons we'll be going through before going there.

In keeping with tradition of my Let's Try and Play Might and Magic 2, here's the parties's ending stats.

I'm not really sure why David has less health than Ian.  Thats kind of strange.  Maybe Ian has more endurance.  Elayne is weaker than I expected too, I actually expected her to have either the same health as Hein, or more.  You would also expect a Paladin like Jeanne to have more health than a robber.  This will probably all change later but its kind of interesting at this point.

End of Part 2.