MM3/4/5 Modifications under construction

[ludmeister]

If a bit of shameless self-promotion can be indulged, I'd like to take a moment to announce that I am in the process of creating two mods for these classic games.

I understand the philosophy by which the Might and Magic series got away from the Might and Magic 2 tendencies to mob the party with constant attacks. In MM2, you could never make any meaningful progress towards clearing maps of any and all resistance. Part of the fun of MM3/4/5 was that you could. At least for some.

But not me! When I fire up a Might and Magic game (as well as other RPG) I want to toast bad guys. I want to be challenged in toasting bad guys. And I crave good character development... I want, for instance, my 90 STR Knight to feel significantly stronger in battle than my 45 STR Rogue. Hence, the stock attribute bonuses seemed rather cheap to me... it used to be useless to increase attributes past 50. Become a Disciple of Bark, and your attributes were set in WOX.

I am about 99% finished with my World of Xeen monster spawn mod, which contains numerous changes to the game engine, as well as the events. I have put a couple of new events on the Clouds side, with the intent to make character development more fun. I have playtested the WOX mod, and have (I think) squashed the showstopping bugs ;-)

(RuneCaster-- You can find Sapphire bows under normal circumstances in this mod... or purchase them for the right price if you are lucky!)

I should be able to post the WOX mod on my site in the next couple of weeks.

I also have a MM3 monster spawn mod in development as well, and development is going rather smoothly. The MM3 event structure is very similar to WOX (although the event files themselves are not nearly as clean looking as the Xeen event files are). I'm able to edit the MM3 default save without issues, and have had much success editing the MM3 engine as well. This mod, for the most part, intends to enhance MM3 the way the World of Xeen monster spawn enhances WOX.

May all your Might and Magic experiences be enjoyable... and to quote one of my favorite non-MM characters, "may butts be liberally kicked in good measure!"

[Rune_Caster]

That is great! For your information some monsters do respawn in Might and Magic 4/5 Bat Queens in Nightshadow do actually respawn although that is the only monster I have seen respawn as none of the other monsters respawn in Nightshadow. How about useless enchantment generations like "metals" on accessories and "attributes" on weapons and armor?

Crystal Water - Award Disciple of Bark and + 19 all stats (all characters!)

Corak's Escape Pod
Strange Energy Device + 50 all stats if they are under 50! Also temp ages character 50 years. (I think it might be a challenge to go through darkside with everyone under 50 in stats) lol as it takes a while to unlock Corak's Escape Pod.

List of attribute improvements for Might and Magic WoX

[GreatEmerald]

I could see this being quite useful for normal playing on WoX, given the scarce resources available there.

[ludmeister]

How about useless enchantment generations like "metals" on accessories and "attributes" on weapons and armor?

"Metal" accessories are still available, and "attribute" weapons and armor are likewise available. The former *are* quite useless, but some of them can bring quite a haul when sold (even in stock MM3/4/5 an Obsidian Amulet sold for 200,000 gold). In my mod it is somewhere in the 500,000 gold range... not too shabby

In the former case, I rarely used those stat enhancements on armor and never use them on weapons (except in the early going if I haven't gotten something else that's enchanted). At least, that's with stock MM3/4/5.

However, halfway through my playtesting in the WOX mod, I began thinking that with the increase in usefulness for statistics in my mod, that may change. Stat bonuses stop once a character reaches 250... both in stock MM3/4/5 and my mods. In the stock games, the related bonus for 250 in a statistic was +17 (or maybe 20). In my mod, it is 50, and the progression for the bonuses is a bit more smooth (IMHO).

So... at 250 Speed a character has a base AC of 50...! Increasing Speed by 30 (Velocity?) has the potential of raising AC by 10... and Obsidian's AC bonus is only 13 now. Maybe a Velocity Cloak has the edge there... maybe your answer will differ based on whether you're equipping a Paladin or a Ninja. Likewise, a 250 Might grants a character a +50 base damage bonus (to each hit!) and a 250 Accuracy grants a character a +50 to hit... etc.

At the very least, it adds a dimension of balance to the game that it lacked before.