Might & Magic VII: For Blood and Honor Part #15

Part 15: The Other Collectathon

Update 15: The Other Collectathon

I love a good mystery as much as anyone, but are we sure we want to do this?

We put up with Arcomage, you're putting up with this.

Arcomage is an intellectual exercise! It's very high-brow! Plus, it got us rich.

And so will this. I refuse to believe these obelisks don't point the way to a treasure, now settle down.

...I'm just not sure that breaking into The Pit is a good idea, is all. Only one of us made it out alive last time.

Last time we weren't invisible.

Kind of a pity, when you think about it, all these skeletons waitin' to be fought...

If you take a swing at one of them, Zaggut will let you die and the temple in Nighon will bring you back as a zombie.

Damn. Harsh. But probably fair.

So as an interesting factoid, though I cut it for space, I bumped into an enemy about halfway through here and, since I didn't want to fight my way through, I ducked into the Breeding Zone and, because I'm extremely smart, spent like 20 minutes clearing out enough monsters to recast Invisibility. It would probably have been faster to just leave the Pit and recast it outside the door. :v:

Finally! Get to work, Zaggut, find out where my treasure is.

Hmmmm...

What's with the hmmmm'ing?

Well, the message doesn't quite make sense, listen to this: "pirates_fie__ one_surviv___ hide_the_gld_ under_the_and white_flowr__ witching_hur_ bloom_upon____ a_haunted_and"

Pffff, I can guess every letter that's missing.

If it risks me losing my treasure, though... no, we're completing it. What obelisk are we missing, Zaggut? Avlee? The Tularean Forest?

Erm...

The Land of the Giants.

Hot damn, the dice are comin' up Owen! Lots of slicin' and I get to meet the master of dicin'!

I think this is the happiest I've ever seen Owen.

Reminds me of the first time he got to shiv a Titan in the ankle.

They're 'uge! That means they got 'uge guts! Bwaha!

Don't waste too much time playing with them, they don't leave behind anything valuable.

The Tunnels to Eofol are nothing new, except this time no one eats a stoning because I focus much more on running through rather than engaging with the medusas, and I recast Protection From Magic several times.

See, there's the exit, now move it.

Aw, but I wanted another pair of Behemoth talons to put above the fireplace.

You've already got 61, go.

Hey, uh, when I get close to the door I get this buzzin' heada-

So this is what I talked about when I said that something seemed weird with the Dark Team update. I got this exact same message and it's like... I mean, Archibald shouldn't be talking to them like they're perfect strangers, and at that point in the storyline he should still be very much hanging out in his own throne room, plus the whole "I know that we were adversaries"-bit. I'm not sure if coming there too early just triggered the same message or what it was(though it seems like it's when the developers should absolutely have expected a Dark Path Druid to go hunting for a dragon egg), but I also haven't been able to find any screenshots of any alternate messages so... maybe they just generally assumed people would play the Light path and never properly implemented a Dark path pessage here.

That felt somewhat... sudden.

And what's this weird thing he teleported into Owen's hands? He talked about it like it was some sort of weapon. Ever seen anything like it? Zina?

How can it be a weapon? It doesn't have any sharp or spiky parts! And it's too light to bludgeon someone with.

Maybe when you press it th' right way, it shoots light at enemies and turns them to dust.

The imagination on that boy.

Ancient Weapons are alright, I believe they do Energy damage like in MM6, and they should also have the uncapped attack speed in real-time like in MM6, but we don't have Ancient Weapons skill yet, so we can't make use of it for the time being.

Also now we can finally teach Owen GM Armsmaster! What sort of difference does it make?

A whopping 31 bonus damage! Even with all buffs up, that's over a 25% boost. It's absurdly huge and also rad.

So I suppose we're going to do the right thing and rescue Roland, aren't we?

Hell yes we are, getting another major international player on our side? All about that.

Wanna just start choppin' down Titans and Dragons until we run into some devils?

I am also all about profit, and the big boys have big wallets. Let's roll.

And so, a great butchering begins. The titans and dragons don't really challenge us much(except that I forget to put up Protection From Magic at first and one of the Blood Titans one-shots Stashley, whoops. :v:

And yes, that death is canon)

Smell that unspoiled nature, nothing quite like it.

All I can smell is the ozone from those lightning bolts.

Fighting Titans outside is much like fighting Titans indoors, they go down like a sack of potatoes once Owen gets anywhere near them and I frantically mash the attack button. Dragons, on the other hand, have some fresh annoyances to bring to the table.

Don't kill them over the water! There's no way to get their bodies out of there!

Enemy bodies that hit "deep" water just disappear and can't be looted, which sucks. The bodies are also not in a lootable state until they hit a surface, so you can't even grab them out of mid-air. The other thing is that while dragons don't play "keep-away" vertically, they also like to stay at the height they spawn at, and Fly has a limited flight ceiling, which means that dragons spawned on the upper slopes have a tendency to be annoying to reach and fight since our ranged damage output is nothing compared to our melee damage output.

No sign of any devils yet.

Let's take five and tally the loot. Anything notable?

A few pieces, let's see...

If you can believe it, none of us are morally bankrupt enough to wear this thing.

Amoral isn't the same as immoral!

And these things won't see any use unless Owen decides to start punching dragons for more of a challenge.

...d'you reckon that-

I reckon that if someone wants to keep getting healed, he'll stick to his swords.

Aw.

And then there's these two. Any takers?

You can never be too fast, dibs.

Is the air getting thinner up here, or does Zaggut just need to go on a diet?

I'm not the one puffing and wheezing, it's something just over the hill...

Callin' dibs on the red ones!

Awful lotta dragons hanging around in one crater.

Awful lot of gold hanging around in one crater. Come to momma.

Do you think maybe this is some sort of special place to the dragons?

What, like there's some sort of mega dragon in that cave, and he's their king? Perhaps even their god? And fighting him would be a foolish, fatal mistake?

...well no, I was thinking like a religious location, but now I'm thinking that.

That cave is the lair of the MEGA DRAGON. In MM2 and 4/5, at the very least, there were Mega Dragons, which were insane challenge beasts. The one in MM4/5 was almost unbeatable, I remember that much. Sadly, the one in MM7 is just barely stronger than a normal dragon... usually. When you instally Greyface's patch, there's an option for turning the Mega Dragon into a beast worthy of the name. Unfortunately, nothing I've found anywhere explains what the actual differences that makes are, so Team Light will be avoiding it for now, since Team Dark is the one that has a GM Monster ID skill and can tell us what it can actually do. I really hope Greyface made it something really scary.

Let's stay clear of it for now. Not like it's gonna go anywhere. What's next?

Hmmm... that's it for the north of Eofol... now there's just the south.

Now where's my treasure?

Ahem... "pirates_five__ one_survive___ hide_the_gold_ under_the_sand white_flower__ witching_hour_ bloom_upon____ a_haunted_land"

...which means?

...I'll try to figure it out.

There are a few titans left in the south part of the map, but they're still no big deal, no, we've got a third enemy type to contend with.

Devils!

Perfect, variety's th' spice of life!

Ugh, but they don't drop any treasure.

Devils fought outdoors are somewhat more challenging than devils fought indoors. They can keep distance, all of them have ranged attacks, and the Devil Captains can drop Meteor Showers on the party. Additionally, because we don't have Starburst and Death Blossom sucks(it fires off at a fixed distance, rather than auto-aiming), we don't have anything we can really hit them with at range(our bows suck, single-target spells would take too long and they are predictably resistant to fire damage), we're forced to get close to the ground, and thus expose ourselves to Meteor Showers in order to kill them with any speed.

They just keep comin', like they're ants or somethin'.

Hey, don't slander bugs like that. Bugs are our friends, and natural, not like these dickheads.

How's that bee thin' going, by the way?

Oh, great. Just great. Just, uh, don't go in the basement, and don't mind the buzzing.

Speaking of bees! That looks like some sort of huge, gross devil hive.

Probably the sort of place they'd lock Roland up. If they were being dicks.

Y'know they're gonna be dicks, that's how devils roll.

Colony Zod looks grooooooooooooooss.

Aw man, this reminds me of... uh... not really anythin'. This is all new.

Like a beehive except instead of honey, it's just grossness.

At least the devils can't drop meteors on us in here, I suppose.

Hmmm... there's a hollow space beyond here. Owen?

Sorry, chief, can't chop through it. Does make a funny squelching sound when I try, though.

As per usual, wizard eye and the automap slightly spoil the surprise that there's a well-hidden door here to be opened a bit later.

Hm, I suppose we press the button to go up...

If I was making dungeons, I'd have a room just like this except the button drops you into a pit of spikes. No one would see it coming!

Huh, guardin' a bunch of buttons.

We have to be careful, we have no idea what these buttons do. They could unleash hordes of monsters, fill the room with a choking gas or-

Got bored, pushed 'em, what were you sayin'?

None of the buttons do anything unintended and there's no "combination" to find, you just gotta hammer all of them to unlock everything they could possibly unlock, including the passage that was "blocked off" earlier.

This looks pretty cell-like, my guess is if we're finding Roland anywhere, it'd be here.

Anyone know what Roland's bones look like?

Probably more royal-lookin' than that.

More devils, more bones.

And prison loot!

Well, that certainly looks ominous.

Oh, I've heard of these. Black Boxes, they're said to be guarded by the nastiest of traps, but also to contain the best of prizes...

I'd suggest we not take the risk, but you're already working on the lock, aren't you?

Already cracked, here's a nice new shield for you, no reason to thank me.

"Sadly," the Ghost Ring from the Haunted Mansion already gives Zaggut a +50% to his Spirit skill(which is great for casting Shared Life even if I no longer need any Spirit buffs), and while I believe "of X"-items stacked in MM6, MM7 is transparent enough on skill bonuses that I can see it's not the case here. I give the shield to him anyway, though, because it's more blinging than Kelebrim.

'nother cell, 'nother bone.

Wait a moment! Those bones are moving! And they have meat on them!

So you mean... they're a living person?

I guess.

Roland's pinkness is easy to overlook against the orangey background of the hive, but he wriggles around in his cage so when you're actually playing, it's easy to spot that it's not the same as the generic bone cages(which are no longer lootable. boo, MM7, boo).

Hm, think he'll be alright heading out by himself?

Didn't leave any devils alive on the way out, and we didn't leave anythin' alive on the outside. He'll be 'right.

Lets head back downstairs and look for any place to use this key.

Hey! This one's open now! Guess all that hittin' earlier did the trick!

Or maybe the buttons opened the wall.

That's silly, gotta be the hittin'.

Probably a lot of devils hangin' out in this big room before we killed all of 'em.

The point here is to open the door across from the elevator, which is done by killing all of two(2) devils and pushing the buttons they guard. It's... not very challenging.

I don't quite know why we're killing them all at this point, but this is the last batch of devils in here.

Well, they're pricks, is why we're killing them. Throwing meteors at us-

-undermining all of Enroth-

-not droppin' any nice swords.

Aaaand there's the last one. Think he's anything special?

None of them have been special so far, why would this one be? Just kill him and get it over with, then loot his office. Or lair. Or whatever this is.

Iron Feather would be a nice sword except that dual-wielding one-handed swords is always better than a single two-hander, and any class without Master access to Swords is usually better off using some other weapon entirely.

'nother one for the mantlepiece then. We done here?

Everything lootable is bagged and tagged, time to head for the exit.

Hm, I don't see Roland anywhere. I hope nothing happened to him.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F84qotDOLns

Oh hey, the history books updated, maybe they'll tell us what happened!

What do you mean they updated? Books don't write themselves.

Then explain this, smart guy.

But, how. What? What?

Zaggut. Zaggut! Snap out of it, you can break down later, for now I need you to figure out that obelisk riddle.

Right, yes, of course. Hmmm... haunted land... I suspect that's Evenmorn Island.

I've missed that haunted hellhole.

And now?

Now we look for some white flowers.

Oooh! Oooh! White flowers ahead! I'm setting us down.

I can't help but notice a shortage of pirate treasure, Zaggut.

That's because now we need to wait for the witching hour, between midnight and 1 AM.

The fabulous obelisk treasure! So, was it worth it?

Ha, ha ha, god no. It's shit compared to MM6's obelisk treasure and honestly it's even less exciting than the arcomage treasure since you probably find it later. It's mostly gold, some generic items that suck, a couple of high-level ores and then two fixed artifacts.

Feather Fall and Water Walking for one party member, so they can survive while everyone else dies from falling off a cliff or drowning. "Of Protection" is +10 to all resistances which is incredibly minor at this stage of the game.

The Hero's Belt is at least okay for Owen because with GM Armsmastery that's an effective +10 to all melee damage done, which is still a sizeable amount.

Was this all? There isn't a second chest, is there?

This... appears to be it.

I'm gonna need to take out some aggression on someone. Wasn't there one task we were missing for the losers in Celeste?

Zina, we're going to the Pit. And no invisibility this time.

Oh dear, I suppose I had better raise the defensive spells first.

Despite the damage done during the party's first visit to a hostile Pit, caution is no longer needed to survive here.

Anything that doesn't get caved in by a swing or two from Owen gets one-shot by Zaggut casting Destroy Undead.

And that's for killing us all last time! We just wanted to play card games!

The necromancers can summon ghosts, but they're INFINITELY less annoying than the light elementals the wizards over in Celeste summon, so it's survivable. Firstly because they all go down in one hit, secondly because they don't spam them out quite as quickly and lastly becaise they don't explode on death, so they don't do any real damage to the party.

Hrm, we're all a bit dinged up. Think they'll heal us in there?

We're here to raid them, of c-

...why do I even try to apply any sort of logic to this world.

Round of heals, bartender! And make it snappy! Oh and pass us the keys to your basement.

Welcome to the Temple of the Dark. It actually looks pretty nice!

It's got this nice courtyard.

A lovely little prayer room.

Wall vampires!

Priests on the edge.

Fine dining facilities!

Luxury accomodations and a lovely library for those bookworms out there!

But it doesn't seem to have a goddamn altar piece. Where the hell is it? It better be in this treasure vault.

Well, more crowns and gems are still good. But where the hell could it be?

Maybe they hid it under the pond.

Why don't you jump in and find out? Dumbass.

The pond surface is actually permeable and there's a short section of corridor below it with some cells. :v:

Fun as killing vampires in cells is, that's still not an altar piece.

I don't quite "get" this underground section, it looks and feels like part of the entry hallway should be a collapsing floor/pit trap/elevator, but as far as I can tell, it isn't. Perhaps it's something non-implemented.

I feel like we've gone over every inch of this temple, killed everything here, but still no altar stone.

Not even a stupid puzzle that could be hiding one.

You'd figure an altar stone would be on or near the altar.

...hang on.

This is just the worst day.

And yeah, it was literally the last thing I found in the damn Temple, I actually had to look it up because it was actually in a logical, but non-flashy place.

Let's just get it turned in and then we can all pretend this day didn't happen.