The Let's Play Archive

Might & Magic

by Thuryl

Part 61: Bonus Update 39.5: The Home Stretch




Bonus Update 39.5: The Home Stretch

Wounded Land posted:

What's with Preacher's Max SP here? Did you encounter a cosmetic glitch or is it something more sinster?

Ha! I was wondering if anyone else would notice it! It's a harmless glitch. In combat, max SP values above 255 apparently wrap around to zero. Outside of combat it's displayed correctly.

Captain Vittles posted:

I realize I'm a bit late here, but I want to point out that you can also solve this riddle without remembering random dungeon notes as long as you keep up on your Star Trek trivia. As a Star Trek nerd, I loved how they later included items like Quatloos and Fizzbins.


This is all true: in case it wasn't obvious from the thread title, Jon Van Caneghem is a massive Star Trek nerd, and knowing a little about the series will help a lot with several puzzles. I bypassed one of the most annoying math puzzles in World of Xeen this way, and it also helped with one of the word puzzles.

SynthOrange posted:

After learning the secret of the inner sanctum, I was ready to murder someone. And so should the party.

You've actually finished this game? Oh, you poor dear. I hope this thread didn't inspire you to do so; I could never forgive myself.



The big island in the southwest is Luck Island; the Great Sea Beast is in the ocean around the northeast corner of the island. Killing the four beasts is probably not the most efficient way to gain experience, but it's still kinda fun.



The Guire is in the southwest corner of the area. To earn his reward, you have to enter all 19 of those tree-lined spaces on the western side. If you do this early in the game, there's a chance you'll get a worthwhile item as a reward. Of course, there's also a chance you'll get killed by monsters. The Cave of Square Magic is in the central mountainous region.



Yes, this entire cave is one giant magic square. All the numbers from 10 to 16 are set for you, so you only have to enter the ones from 1 to 9. The lever is in the far northwest corner. Do you ever really need an intelligence boost badly enough to do all this?

Well, that's it. We've seen all but two of the areas there are to be seen in the game, and those two will be coming in the next and final update. As the end approaches, I've been thinking a little about how to do Might & Magic II.

The two things I've been least satisfied about in this LP are the underuse of the alternate party members and the limited amount of audience participation. I just didn't have the time or the energy to write about three full parties at once and still keep the thread going at a reasonable pace. Voting on where to go next didn't feel like an ideal way to add audience participation: sometimes it worked well, but other times you didn't really have enough information to make a meaningful decision.

Therefore, the most important change to the format will be a rotating party roster: at least one character in the party will be replaced every update, as decided by popular vote (except for a few updates where I'll need a specific party). This means that the characters you want to see will get the most screen time. The main party from M&M1 will make an appearance in M&M2, but whether they end up doing most of the adventuring will be up to you.

Bonus updates like this one will probably be eliminated: Might & Magic II has an automapping function, so integrating the maps into the regular updates seems like a simple and reasonable thing to do.

If there's anything else you liked or disliked about this LP, or anything else you want me to do for the next one, now would be a good time to bring it up.