Part 19: Bonus Update 13.5: Dungeon Maps
Schizoguy posted:
Goddamnit, remind me not to read this thread while eating. ...aw, who am I kidding, I'm powerless to resist Starburst.
These updates are on the long side though. I'm reading KB again at the same time, and those are nice and short, especially by comparison.
Thanks for the support!
As for making updates shorter, well, there are a few ways I can do that: either I make less progress per update, or I cut out more game content, or I reduce the amount of commentary. We're already progressing at a rate of one dungeon per update or less (which means it'll take 30 updates or more to finish the thread), I'm not sure how much more game content I can cut without making the LP disjointed, and reducing the amount of commentary would sort of defeat the purpose of doing an LP. Would it really have been better to end that last update halfway through the dungeon, or to leave out even more random encounters than I already did, or to include fewer dick jokes? Okay, it probably could stand to have fewer dick jokes, but come on, those practically write themselves.
Anyway, I don't think the length of any of the updates so far has been unreasonable. The last one was the longest so far, with 75 screenshots and 2200 words; by comparison, some of the updates in Nakar's Ultima threads topped 3000 words. (Mind you, one of the things that got me into LPs in the first place was seorin's Arcanum thread, which averaged 4500 words per update, so my idea of what constitutes a reasonable update length is probably a little skewed.) As a general rule, though, I'm trying to keep updates between 40-60 screenshots and 1500-2000 words. If a lot of people want me to split updates up into smaller and more frequent ones, though, then I guess I can.
God damn, but am I ever wordy. Even my explanation for why my updates are long is itself nearly 300 words long.
Drewjitsu posted:
Wow, is it just me, or does this game seem very very difficult compared to subsequent might and magics? Minotaurs at level 8? Wow.
Might & Magic II is no walk in the park either: if you wander around randomly with a low-level party, 90% of the game will kill you. Actually, that's somewhat true even of the later Might & Magic games. I'd agree that the first two games are the hardest, though, for various reasons (most importantly the fact that you can only save at inns).
Bonus Update 13.5: Dungeon Maps
Again, sorry about the scans, but they're the best I can do without completely breaking the spine of the hintbook.
As you can see, we still haven't explored this entire area yet. See that big ol' mess of secret passages in the southeast corner? That's where the stronghold is. And that entire forest is a null-magic zone full of monster encounters. It's pretty maddening.
Words cut off by the scanner: "strongholds", "wandering", "appropriate", "clues", "those". You can get the gist of it, anyway. I tried searching the chequered room in the last dungeon as this page advises, but didn't find anything. Maybe I had to go back and search it after beating the minotaurs?
There are two stairways in this dungeon, each of which takes you to one half of the second floor. It's possible to cross from one end of the second floor to the other without going back upstairs, but only by going through the minotaur's maze.
The guide on how to get through the minotaur's maze is a bit misleading: you actually have to enter through the far west door, because if you enter through the "correct" door, you'll be teleported to another entrance as soon as you go into the maze, whereas if you enter through the far west one, you'll be teleported to the correct entrance instead. The dog statue is in the little spiral corridor in the southwest corner.