Making Might & Magic VI Harder

[masterpoobaa]

Im begging my mod to make might and magic VI much harder.

In particular ive been pondering money & spellbooks availability.

What i have done so far is:
Modded 2devents.txt
Buy/Sell values all increased by 2x accross the board. This includes spellbooks and taverns. Costs twice as much to buy stuff, and u only get half as much selling loot.
Training grounds cost 1.5x as much.
This will make it much more difficult to build up cash, and make the player more thrifty with purchaces and hire merchant NPC's like mad!

Townhall opening hours a little better at 9am to 5pm. - this always bugged me.

The knife shoppe to sell 1st level bows.

Now to stop people from running to Freehaven and picking up the "cheater-ish" spells of fly/portal/Lloyds ive restricted what the magic shops sell.

The element and self guilds as normal sell lev 1-4 spells.
The Advanced element and self guilds now sell lev3-8 spells.
Initiate guilds sell lev 1-6 spells now instead of 1-7
and the advanced guilds only sell up to level 8 spells.
This rules out being able to buy any of the "green" coloured spell books. Makes the player have to FIND them. This is gonna be fun!
So the highest spells that you can buy is fireblast, jump, acid burst, rockblast, turn undead, feeble, cure disease.

Modified NPCprof.txt
Ive also increased the cost of Hiring NPC's. Make it much more costly to just swap n go when you like, especially ones with the powerful skills like fly, townportal etc.
NPC price increases are:
100 > 250
200 > 500
300 > 1000
400 > 1500
500 > 2000
600 > 2500
700 > 5000
1000 > 10000
2000 > 20000
5000 > 25000

Of course there will be more loot comming in too - in the form of many more monsters from my existing mega monster mod.

[Apeman]

I like some of your ideas. Especially the actual discovery of some spells will make it much more interesting. Will those books be in set places or will they appear randomly in chests?

The money thing is kind of a moot point because I usually have infinite money anyway. Once I reach a certain amount I visit the circus, filling my four inventories with golden pyramids and make a trip to abdul's paradise. You can do this as many times as you want, for a very nice profit.

Your existing mega monster mod? What would that be, sounds very interesting.

[masterpoobaa]

For now i think ill just leave it set to random appearances for spellbooks.
Dont know enough yet to manually program appearances.

Good point about the pyramids thing... but at least it will be a challenge until you get there.

I also need info on where the price of learning expert/master skills is kept. cant seem to find it.


The mega monster mod is pretty std, though i have made a few tweaks.
All monsters get 2x hitpoints, 1.5x AC, 50% increase in probability of finding an item (assuming probably is below 100%), and a 25% increase in damage from monster special effects.

Also for each level the amount of monsters is greatly increased (usually to the map maximum) and location respawn time is reduced by a factor of 4.

[masterpoobaa]

Im also changing weapon/armor/item prices.
Which i never though were particularly well thought out.

Take for example LONGSWORDS
Logsword 3d3+0 $50
Warrior 3d3+3 $200
Crusader 3d3+6 $350
Champion 3d3+9 $500
LionHeart 3d3+12 $650

Consider how rare lionheart swords would be in the real world.
And they are only worth a trifling amount in comparison to a longsword.
What would you rather...

13 nonmagical longswords that any half decent smith can churn out
OR
1 lionheart sword that only a handful exist after hundreds of years?

Thus ive devised a re-pricing scheme as below:
Logsword 3d3+0 $50 x 1 = $50
Warrior 3d3+3 $200 x 2 = $400
Crusader 3d3+6 $350 x 3 = $1050
Champion 3d3+9 $500 x 4 = $2000
LionHeart 3d3+12 $650 x 5 = $3250

That will make powerful things much more expensive to buy (especially with the shop pricing mod) but if you find such an artifact and have good merchant skills, you can reap excellent profit.

[Apeman]

The mega monster mod is pretty std, though i have made a few tweaks.
All monsters get 2x hitpoints, 1.5x AC, 50% increase in probability of finding an item (assuming probably is below 100%), and a 25% increase in damage from monster special effects.

What about experience gained after killing a monster. Does it also have an increase?

Oh, and is it finished? I'd love to try it out.

[masterpoobaa]

No that remains as is... but it would be easy enough to change.
As it stands you do get alot more exp due to the large number of critters.

MOD is pretty much finished now, just have to host it online somewhere.

[masterpoobaa]

Well my mod is finished.
Anyone who wants it is free to send me a line
LHGPooBaa@hotmail.com

[arturchix]

I'll just note that increasing the prices won't increase the game difficulty for me since there are at least two easy ways to earn an infinitive amount of gold. Circus games combined with the over +200 stats from NWC dungeon, trading the pyramids for armor and weapons; and the NWC dungeon 10000 gold chest. If you would like to make it harder, you could disable the teleporter to Dragonsands and back to Sorpigal.

I'd love to see a mod which implements difficulty settings - easy, normal, hard, impossible. For impossible deny access to training grounds, start with no equipment and all monsters are significantly stronger.

[HodgePodge]

Is it just me or does anyone else find MM6 already very difficult? I guess you can have your party run around and avoid as much combat as possible but isn't that defeating the whole purpose of the game? Personally, I like MM6 just the way it is.

Now if MM7 were made more difficult, let's say like with more monsters to battle in the outdoor areas and tougher dungeons, I'd like it as much as I do MM6.

[PhoenixReborn]

I'd love to see a mod which implements difficulty settings - easy, normal, hard, impossible. For impossible deny access to training grounds, start with no equipment and all monsters are significantly stronger.

So you could never level up?

[jeff]

Actually I like MM6 much as it is, but if you could tie the respawning of an area's monsters to the experience level of the party that would make the game a bit more interesting, something similar to Wizardry 8. Going back to Sorpigal late in the game killing all monsters in the area does not give you enough experience points to level up, but with upgraded opponents adventuring there would still have risks.

[arturchix]

I'd love to see a mod which implements difficulty settings - easy, normal, hard, impossible. For impossible deny access to training grounds, start with no equipment and all monsters are significantly stronger.

So you could never level up?

Yes. I once finished a game combined various difficulty rules: peasant mode (start game with no equipment, skills and gold), knight solo mode (kill other 3 party members), and finish the game on level 1 with - now that was hard, especially the Tomb of Varn. But it was really fun - I found out alternative resources of the game I had never used before.

Maybe walking backwards would have made the game even more challenging.

[HodgePodge]

So you could never level up?

Yes. I once finished a game combined various difficulty rules: peasant mode (start game with no equipment, skills and gold), knight solo mode (kill other 3 party members), and finish the game on level 1 with - now that was hard, especially the Tomb of Varn. But it was really fun - I found out alternative resources of the game I had never used before.

Maybe walking backwards would have made the game even more challenging.

I've seen and even attempted to play the 'Peasant' Games too but after a while, I found it very boring to not be able to gain any Levels or Spells or Skills. Like what's the point? More challenging sure, but in my opinion, less fun.

[masterpoobaa]

Well i do what i can... would take alot to implement mods that disable the teleporter and have level/respawn locks.

I did my best...
And in a short while ill start work on MM7

[accabear]

and finish the game on level 1 with - now that was hard, especially the Tomb of Varn. But it was really fun - I found out alternative resources of the game I had never used before.

Maybe walking backwards would have made the game even more challenging.

Sounds fun, staying at level one the whole game. How long did it take to finish the game and how did you get skill points? I would imagine that the game would get rather dry while attempting to do a level one game.

I think a way of making the game harder would be too restrict the spell books to a particular skill level, reducing learning bonuses and increasing the training cost significantly per level to the point where a significant amount of your budget has to be spent on it.

[HodgePodge]

Sounds fun, staying at level one the whole game. How long did it take to finish the game and how did you get skill points? I would imagine that the game would get rather dry while attempting to do a level one game.

I think a way of making the game harder would be too restrict the spell books to a particular skill level, reducing learning bonuses and increasing the training cost significantly per level to the point where a significant amount of your budget has to be spent on it.

Here is a link to Klaravoyia's M&M Specialty Games. Most of them are really challenging.

Oh and accabear, have you visited TELP's Might & Magic Forums yet? You can discuss all the Might & Magic games with some old time fans who still keep these boards alive & well.

[accabear]

Thanks Hodges, even more stuff to help me procrastinate! Hmm... I am probably abit too impatient to attempt any of those peasant games or variations, but still very interesting nevertheless. Actually with peasant games it doesn't exactly make the game too hard. It pretty much just slows down your start. Also I probably wouldn't want to try those because it would cause even more procrastination. Also in regards to making the game harder, make spell effects last for less time and maybe even take wizard eye out of the game?

[HodgePodge]

… I am probably abit too impatient to attempt any of those peasant games or variations, but still very interesting nevertheless. Actually with peasant games it doesn't exactly make the game too hard. It pretty much just slows down your start. …

True, the first Peasant game I attempted was with MM7; and I knew I was in trouble when my whole party got killed by one Dragonfly.

[accabear]

I think that a MM6 peasant game would be much harder though. At least in MM7 you could just run around grabbing some loot from chests and guard luring!

[HodgePodge]

I think that a MM6 peasant game would be much harder though. At least in MM7 you could just run around grabbing some loot from chests and guard luring!

You may be right but in Might & Magic 6 there is a Shrine & a Secret Dungeon which you can access right from the beginning of the game that will give your party +20 to all Stats & Resistances and in the Secret NWC Dungeon you can find Armor, Weapons, Spell Books, Gold, Food, and other goodies. I suppose you could restrict your party from visiting the Shrine & Dungeon, but they are there for the picking.