The big Might and Magic editing thread!

[Apeman]

Seeing the increase of Might and Magic editing and mod making threads I thought it might be a good idea to pool our knowledge into one thread. As of late I have been tweaking in MMVI view and managed to change quite a few things, mainly on mapstats, monsters and items.

For my newest endeavor I am changing all monsters in the following way. There are three types of monsters, a weak one, a middle one and a strong one. I'm giving the stats of the strongest type to the weakest type. I change the name of the middle one and give him some improved stats over the first one. Then lastly I change the originally strongest monster into a unique one with it's own unique name.

On mapstats I change the monsters difficulty level to 1 so that in effect you get a lot of the weaker ones (previously the strongest) very few middle ones, and very rarely our unique monster (with stats to rival MM II-V)

In example: stats from left to right --> level, hp, armor, exp

GoblinA Goblin 10 40 14 200
GoblinB Goblin Marshall 12 60 16 300
GoblinC Gwyn Ap Nudd 14 250 20 "1,300"

Unique names are derived from famous monster according to type.
Weapons will be modified to cope with the increased difficulty

Now my first problem and question is that some maps have monsters that appear, but cannot be changed on mapstats. e.g. on the New Sorpigal map there is one small island that almost only spawns type 3 goblins and mages.

Is it possible to change those because I want the type 3 monster only appearing very rarely?

[DaveO]

Perhaps there is a way to change appearance thru one of the text files. There are a few that influence items, shops, etc. I suspect something similar to the loot generator is responsible for monster 'populations' but you'll have to do some deep digging.

I've avoided all replies to editing threads mainly because I was not sure where it was all going.

[matgaw]

I wanted to edit a little MM7. I did a test: changed in MAPSTATS.txt in events.lod dragonflys on emerald island to liches. Result: they really are liches, but... they became friendly and don't attack me. How could I fix this? If I change them back to dragonflys, then they normally attack me. What's going on?

[Bandobras Took]

I wanted to edit a little MM7. I did a test: changed in MAPSTATS.txt in events.lod dragonflys on emerald island to liches. Result: they really are liches, but... they became friendly and don't attack me. How could I fix this? If I change them back to dragonflys, then they normally attack me. What's going on?

One possibility is that the liches check your party alignment/plot flags before becoming hostile. Liches in Castle Gloaming will only be hostile if you violate the borders or are Light side, I think.