Might & Magic Update

One of these treasures doesn't belong:

I have to hand it to Might & Magic I here. I'd forgotten that they had 10' poles as loot. They don't seem to do anything - you can't equip them, and the (U)se command does nothing.

Maybe it's a quest item . . . some items seem to be. If garlic, belladonna, and wolfsbane do anything except satisfy a quest chain designed to get you to move around the map . . . I don't know. They don't seem to be.

When I last mentioned the game, I was really hurting for cash. I was constantly broke, barely able to afford food and had to re-load when I found a cursed item because I was too broke to conceive of finding enough cash to remove it.

Basically, I spent a fair amount of time grinding. I got killed a number of times, and had to re-start from my last save (a native feature of the game.) I lost a lot of time when I'd get massacred by some wandering monsters before I could save.

But once I got rolling, it was fine. I got just high enough level to beat a group of wyverns over at the Wyvern Peaks and survive to rest and replenish. So then I could repeat that. The wyverns were worth a substantial amount of xp - 1333 - 2333, most of the time - and dropped between 300-700 gp per character per fight. I went from "slow level raise" and "broke" to going up a levels quickly and accumulating a 150,000 gp in no time.

I played before a long time ago, so I know that a) there was a castle with a fountain that converts gp to xp, and b) it was Castle Dragadune, and c) where to go to get to said castle.

So I did. My first time I spread the gold out, which leveled everyone. From then on, I built up some gold and then went back and dumped it all on my cleric. Once the cleric was level 14 and had the 7th-level spells that max out the game, I did the same with the wizard. Once they were both level 14, I did a few runs to fill out my gold, used the Duplication spell to copy a few useful magic items out to the group, and then started in on more quest-like things:

- Discovering the secret of Portsmith.

- Clearing the Minotaur's Lair

- Finding some aliens (M&M is a magic-flavored-with-superscience game)

Now I'm chasing down clues since I'm strong enough that the monsters I was grinding off of have started to flee from me.

So, so much note-taking in this game. At least these days I can just take a screenshot or a picture of the screen with my phone. Fun stuff. If they only had Gems to (P)eer in Ultima style it would be save me time remembering how to get around.