MM7 Refilled for the Merge

[SilverKnight]

Hello.
Thank you for this mod. I started playing Merge from Antagarich with it and have a lot of fun. I really like new monster groups which make you play more cautiously and increased difficulty.

But I have a question: I went to fight dragonflies, but they turned out to be is such numbers that I had to run away to town with four unconscious characters and decided to hide behind angel. But unexpectedly he completely ignored dragonflies and they finished my last unlucky hero.

So after some testing the result was: guards in EI don't fight thiefs, and angel fights them. But angel ignores dragonflies, while guards fight them. So I'm a little confused. Is it a bug? Or was it done on purpose to increase difficulty even more or something like that? Or maybe I installed something wrong?

It's not a big problem, since usually you fight monsters yourself anyway, but I decided to ask before continuing my walkthrough in case it's a bug and should be fixed.

P.S: sorry for my english, I don't speak it well.

[lightbringer23]

Hi SilverKnight!
I'm glad you're enjoying it.

That's quite the interesting little conundrum regarding who fights who. I had to engineer some behind the scenes wizardry with monster group assignment in order to prevent all my newly-added monsters fighting each other first, as soon as you get in range. I suspect the anomaly with the angel, town guards, dragonflies, and thieves is a relic of that solution. I mainly added the angel in order to provide some extra muscle to help against some of the initial added monsters.

I just checked it out with my own copy of the Merge plus MM7 Refilled and I discovered the same result as you report. Interestingly, the enemy thieves also fought the dragonflies. Monster groups in MM7 were highly detailed and complex, as faction versus faction warfare was an integral part of that game. MM7 Refilled sort of tries to restore the "Party vs All the Monsters" feel of MM6. You may yet find a few anomalies regarding the way the town guards react to added or expanded monsters that I didn't anticipate.

No bugs, just a little bit of surprise behavior. The biggest thing to watch out for is to ensure that the new monsters don't all go fighting each other first. If you find that, extensively, then something did go wrong. My added script in the archive should have set that correctly, as described in the readme.

Let us know how your playthrough goes. It should be very hardcore starting out in Antagarich, as I didn't balance it for a new party at level one. I had a high level party full of fireballs, meteor showers, and artifacts from MM8 in mind when I designed it. If you can take it on, you should be quite well rewarded! If you find it too rough, try going to one of the other games' maps for a bit to level up and gain some power. MM6 should still be vanilla. MM8 will have Echo's difficulty -- assuming you're using her mod (and I highly recommend it) -- but it will have goodly increased rewards as well. Plus, MM8 is always a loot-fest, early on.

Cheers,
Lightbringer

[SilverKnight]

If I understand it correctly, monsters of the same group never fight each other. If monsters are not in the same group, then file Hostile.txt is responsible for their fighting and it depends on their type. And CTHostileMonsters.lua just makes all hostile monsters to be in the group 56 (why 56 btw?). So hostile monsters supposed to never fight each other, but their attitude towards player-friendly groups depends on what is assigned in Hostile.txt .
It explains why guards don't fight thiefs etc. But I can't understand why dragonflies are hostile to thiefs. My speculation is that CTHostileMonsters.lua doesn't change their group. But why? In editor mode I saw that unlike other monster groups, dragonflies look like red circles. Is it spawn points? I don't understand well how editor works, but it seems that dragonflies are created in a different way. Maybe it's related to this problem, what do you think?

Let us know how your playthrough goes.

Sure, I'll share my impressions later. And yes, I use Echo's mod, so that mm8 won't be a walk in the park after mm7 with your mod.

[lightbringer23]

Honestly, the main goal of CTHostileMonsters.lua was to keep the new monsters from fighting each other. I didn't try to change their relationship with the guards. In my playthroughs, I actually try to prevent the guards from taking out monsters, because it robs me of the XP. It didn't even occur to me to check out relations between guards and monsters.

I did go into the maps where I placed a lot of monsters and I verified that the new monsters react to the player and each other like I meant for them to. I'll admit I am surprised by the thieves versus dragonflies. Hopefully that'll be one of the only anomalies you find.

Now that I think about it, the thieves in the Erathian Sewers attack the rats before they attack the party. Thieves may have an overriding setting that causes that behavior. I know that's the case with some monster types.

It's been over half a year since I made this, so I'm a little fuzzy, but I think Monster Group 56 is something like "Dungeon Monsters". I think it's used to make the inhabitants of a dungeon ignore each other and just fight you. I got help from some of the scripting wizards on the Might and Magic discord that CH operates to create the script and assign the grouping.

The red spheres you see in editor mode represent spawn groups. Each map has 1-3 different kinds of monsters that can spawn, and the spheres represent spawn points. In some cases, I just added more spawn points of the existing type for the map -- like the dragonflies. In other cases, I hand placed new monsters -- like the thieves.

Same goes for items -- blue spheres. Amidst the rats surrounding the entrance to the Abandoned Temple, I placed a few T1 item spawn points, representing their debris. On the other side of the AT mound, I hand-placed a suit of low level chain mail.

[SilverKnight]

Actually since you made the mod assuming it is played after other continent(s), guards-monsters relationship is not important. It's just that I started from Antagarich and becouse of that guards ignoring monsters may cause party annihilation. But it seems quite troublesome to fix it, so I'll play presuming all guards are bribed and can't be trusted .
About monsters fight monsters. Red spheres have "group" variable, and it's not affected by CTHostileMonsters.lua. It seems that actual spawning happens after this script is executed, so spawned monsters group is not 56, but equals to red sphere group value. I tried to change red spheres group to 56 in editor, and dragonflies and thiefs stopped fighting. But unfortunetly I don't know how to change group of spawn points all at once with script, and do it manually is a lot of work. Also, I think it's not that bad if some monsters fight each other. It somewhat balance unreliable guards.

So now I know about potential "surprise behavior", so I'll stop digging into these things and start my playthrough from the beginning.

[SilverKnight]

I finished EI.
In my opinion your mod makes difficulty of EI almost perfect for a new party. There is a few troublesome areas now and I couldn't just use "Day of gods" pedestal and run and kill all enemies easily, like I'd done in original mm7. Also I once had to run away from Temple of the Moon because of unexpected enemy, that was a fun experiance. But it's not too difficult in the same time - my entire party was never wiped, though was close to it a few times.

My final opinion about thiefs fighting dragonflies is that it's actually a good thing, though unintended. It makes EI less hardcore for starting party, and also makes sense - why wouldn't dragonflies attack humans?

As for bugs/strange things I noticed, there was one - in the Temple of the Moon one group of rats ignored me until I came very close to them. I'm not sure if it's "your's" group of rats, but it's just caught my eye in contrast with other monsters which started to chase my group from a far distance.

[Echo]

Right, so this thing is actually made for the Merge. Guess it's going into the install once I unbrick it

Might start in MM7 if you're still after some impressions.

[cthscr]

BTW, Erathia and Temple of Baa maps were updated in 2021-05-11 pack. First has 2 missing arcomage artifacts added, second brings back Shrapmetal for "Priests of Baa".

[Echo]

BTW, Erathia and Temple of Baa maps were updated in 2021-05-11 pack. First has 2 missing arcomage artifacts added, second brings back Shrapmetal for "Priests of Baa".

The link in the first post here included the update? I've downloaded all the newest things (or things I thought were the newest things)

Haven't started playing yet, fixing my own mm8 bitmaps mess, so I can still replace all the files with whatever

[cthscr]

The link in the first post here included the update?

I would say "no" - it [first post] was updated last in December.

[Echo]

I might be blind, but I don't see an updated version of it anywhere else in this topic then

...or your signature, or pinned topics.

[cthscr]

Maps were updated in Merge.

[Echo]

Ooooh I see what you mean now. This mod here will overwrite the updates. Dang. Guess I'll wait for an update here then. Hope it happens :>

[Eksekk]

Am I right that to update this mod you would need to find Arcomage chest in Erathia and add two missing artifacts, and then for all preplaced priests of baa in temple of baa add shrapmetal based on monsters.txt? If so, I might do this myself and upload the update here.

[Echo]

So I've played this mod for a bit (up to level 30 and Erathia/Tularean quests).

I played with a rule that "Once in a dungeon, can't leave until it's fully cleared". If I found that I couldn't complete a dungeon at all, I reloaded a save from before entering it and went elsewhere.

My impressions:

1. It amps up early game challenge nicely, I enjoyed not going the usual route, and spending a bit more time in Harmondale due to more goblins and some other things going on.

2. Despite the script, a lot of enemies were still fighting one another - not all of them, but for instance in the White Cliff caves, trogs were battling the raiders and stuff like that

3. I liked the addition of "bosses" in dungeons/various areas, like a golem hidden in the White Cliff caves, or some stray vampires lurking on Evenmorn island.

4. Sometimes the enemies really didn't make sense though, in a "but why??" sort of way The main offender were hostile dwarves in the Bracada mines. For difficulty, adding some Medusas up there would make a ton more sense. The angel on Emerald Isle is not necessary and feels out of place for sure. It basically removed all challenge the changes there could bring. In trouble? Run to town. Angel kills everything

5. The mod makes moving to another continent via "place of power" an absolute crapfest xD Water Elementals set around the guild absolutely decimated my team and required bending over backwards to get them cleaned up enough to be able to cast Town Portal there (need green proximity light on Master water magic). Is that bad? Is that good? Don't know, but what it is, is a fact

6. Few areas such as Harmondale and Erathia are a little choppy due to the amount of enemies around (it becomes smooth again once they're killed). I think it's a fair payoff for the increased amount of stuff to do so it's a note, not a complaint.

7. I got too many powerful items too early. But, it could in part be, because I have moved some items around making them stronger/weaker. Not all of them, though, some were clearly meant to be very powerful and I didn't feel they were deserved since those were not end-game areas

8. I never picked up any of the box-of-stuff treasures cause they're so gigantic and I'm a hoarder so my inventory is never empty enough for such craziness They look good though, and make sense, so I guess I'd chalk them up to "flavor" ;P

9. Same as with my modling, it would all look better if there were chests. But chests are pain, so understandably, they're not added.

10. Once I hit level 20 or so, the difficulty fell off a cliff - that's similar to vanilla though. With a few skills and spells, it becomes rather easy to steamroll a bunch of mid-game dungeons which accelerates leveling up significantly and makes following dungeons a breeze as well. Levels 1-10 took me longer than 10-30. And the early game was the most fun too - but that's cause I really like challenge and slow, satisfying progression in games


Overall, it was refreshing. And nice that it also affected dungeons!

Sidequestion: how did you place groups of enemies in such neat circles?

[cthscr]

Am I right that to update this mod you would need to find Arcomage chest in Erathia and add two missing artifacts, and then for all preplaced priests of baa in temple of baa add shrapmetal based on monsters.txt? If so, I might do this myself and upload the update here.

Arcomage - right.
"Priests of Baa" - they are Priests of the Moon iirc (216) renamed as Clerics of Baa (along with Acolytes and Clerics of the Moon), you have to select them and remove lines with spell attack parameters - that way Monsters.txt values will be used.

[lightbringer23]

So I've played this mod for a bit (up to level 30 and Erathia/Tularean quests).

I played with a rule that "Once in a dungeon, can't leave until it's fully cleared". If I found that I couldn't complete a dungeon at all, I reloaded a save from before entering it and went elsewhere.

My impressions:

1. It amps up early game challenge nicely, I enjoyed not going the usual route, and spending a bit more time in Harmondale due to more goblins and some other things going on.

2. Despite the script, a lot of enemies were still fighting one another - not all of them, but for instance in the White Cliff caves, trogs were battling the raiders and stuff like that

3. I liked the addition of "bosses" in dungeons/various areas, like a golem hidden in the White Cliff caves, or some stray vampires lurking on Evenmorn island.

4. Sometimes the enemies really didn't make sense though, in a "but why??" sort of way The main offender were hostile dwarves in the Bracada mines. For difficulty, adding some Medusas up there would make a ton more sense. The angel on Emerald Isle is not necessary and feels out of place for sure. It basically removed all challenge the changes there could bring. In trouble? Run to town. Angel kills everything

5. The mod makes moving to another continent via "place of power" an absolute crapfest xD Water Elementals set around the guild absolutely decimated my team and required bending over backwards to get them cleaned up enough to be able to cast Town Portal there (need green proximity light on Master water magic). Is that bad? Is that good? Don't know, but what it is, is a fact

6. Few areas such as Harmondale and Erathia are a little choppy due to the amount of enemies around (it becomes smooth again once they're killed). I think it's a fair payoff for the increased amount of stuff to do so it's a note, not a complaint.

7. I got too many powerful items too early. But, it could in part be, because I have moved some items around making them stronger/weaker. Not all of them, though, some were clearly meant to be very powerful and I didn't feel they were deserved since those were not end-game areas

8. I never picked up any of the box-of-stuff treasures cause they're so gigantic and I'm a hoarder so my inventory is never empty enough for such craziness They look good though, and make sense, so I guess I'd chalk them up to "flavor" ;P

9. Same as with my modling, it would all look better if there were chests. But chests are pain, so understandably, they're not added.

10. Once I hit level 20 or so, the difficulty fell off a cliff - that's similar to vanilla though. With a few skills and spells, it becomes rather easy to steamroll a bunch of mid-game dungeons which accelerates leveling up significantly and makes following dungeons a breeze as well. Levels 1-10 took me longer than 10-30. And the early game was the most fun too - but that's cause I really like challenge and slow, satisfying progression in games


Overall, it was refreshing. And nice that it also affected dungeons!

Sidequestion: how did you place groups of enemies in such neat circles?

Great critiques, and very appreciated! I'm glad to hear it was overall an improvement. Except for EI, I didn't design it for an MM7 start party at all, so I'm glad to hear it still worked for you, even if as a sort of hardmode. My goal was to make Antagarich less boring for someone who finished MM8 with your monstrosity, and proceeded to MM7.

Some replies:

2. Sad to hear that. I tore my hair out trying to comprehend hostiles.txt , even with Greyface's documentation. Fortunately, cthscr and another on the CH discord helped me out with a simple groups script. Hopefully it's a minority of monsters that fight each other still. A few of the MM7 monsters (including those trogs) seem to be almost hardcoded to hate everyone else first. You should've seen my first tests with a bunch of endgame monsters in Nighon! What a clusterfumble that was.

4. Yeah, I figured some of them might be a little squirrelly. I think what I had in mind (it was a while ago) for the dwarves in Red Dwarf Mines was to play on the war between the Warlocks and the Dwarves. I figure maybe the Warlocks may have had a small hand in the crisis at RDM, or are at least taking advantage of it, and have either mind-controlled or persuaded some renegade dwarves as muscle. Plus, there weren't a lot of opportunities for hostile dwarves to fight, without picking fights against friendlies.

The Angel in EI was mainly a concession for the potential of parties starting in at level 1 in Antagarich. I can remove him if it feels totally unnecessary -- not to mention, the group of thieves and rogues destroyed the poor flapper when I tested hostility for SilverKnight.

What did you think about the diamond (or was it a pair of emeralds?) I dropped at your feet at the start? I think I wanted to help a lvl 1 group gear up for all the new challenges.

5. Hmmm.. I didn't really consider needing to make your first continental jump at that location. Yeah I surrounded that place with a large number of full Water Elementals. Good job defeating them! Since it looks like I'll be releasing an update here soon, I'll reduce the numbers. I still like the idea of some being there, but maybe not so many.

7. Can you give me some examples? I can certainly take a look. I do remember that I gave the golem in White Cliff Caves some pretty good stuff. My idea there was that Gold Golems are tough buggers -- especially at low level -- so I thought the treasure should be pretty good. Don't know if that was one of your spots.

I know in a few places I placed random spawns, not hand placed. Instead of, say, a Champion's Sword, I would have just placed a T5, or T4, or whatever, treasure spawn. Could be a scroll you'll never use, could be a Griffon Bow of Darkness.

Anyway, let me know of some specific treasures, and I'll see what I can do. I mostly placed things for flavor, without a lot of starting balance in mind, but I can adjust to better accommodate a starting party. It's interesting that both you and SilverKnight approached MM7 Refilled as a starter hardmode! Part of what's so cool about modding -- folks take what you do in all sorts of directions

8. You were my inspiration for this one! I fondly remember seeing trade goods as loot in your modling, like that group of mercs south of the Plane of Air portal, or several groups in the east side of Shadowspire. It was so cool seeing those things that I never messed with in the base game. Those boxes are pretty big, though, aren't they?

9. You and me both. I wanted to make campfires, pedestals, challenges, and most of all chests a big part of things. Much more complicated than I thought the would be. Good luck with your efforts to do so in your Convergence!

10. Yep, that's Might and Magic for you -- ESPECIALLY the Merge! The boosting works really well though, even within the starting continent. I think you just set the percentage boost to 105%, and it'll start applying. Might have to leave and return, maybe move between continents. I have it set to 100% at level 40ish (started in Enroth) and your Serpentmen Warriors have about a thousand hp!

[lightbringer23]

Sidequestion: how did you place groups of enemies in such neat circles?

Oh yes! IIRC, I just sat myself on the ground, spun in a circle, and hit the place button in front of my face. I varied the click speed to place more loose or dense groups. I think I did it for treasures in a few spots too. I think I recall using the "land" button to get the things to settle to ground.

[Echo]

2. Sad to hear that. I tore my hair out trying to comprehend hostiles.txt , even with Greyface's documentation. Fortunately, cthscr and another on the CH discord helped me out with a simple groups script. Hopefully it's a minority of monsters that fight each other still. A few of the MM7 monsters (including those trogs) seem to be almost hardcoded to hate everyone else first. You should've seen my first tests with a bunch of endgame monsters in Nighon! What a clusterfumble that was.

I see. Well it was nothing prevalent or game-ruining so no worries there

The Angel in EI was mainly a concession for the potential of parties starting in at level 1 in Antagarich. I can remove him if it feels totally unnecessary -- not to mention, the group of thieves and rogues destroyed the poor flapper when I tested hostility for SilverKnight.

I hardly noticed the thieves. I mean, I know where they were, but either the angel killed them, or the dragonflies, unsure. Or maybe I have - simply lured them to the HP-restoring well? Don't remember tbh They were not an issue.

What did you think about the diamond (or was it a pair of emeralds?) I dropped at your feet at the start? I think I wanted to help a lvl 1 group gear up for all the new challenges.

For me - unnecessary. I didn't sell them. In fact, as usual, I dropped all my starting gear in the nearby chest and pretended it didn't exist. I like to start without any freebies Diamonds I kept for later, for when I have Merchant master

The thing about Emerald Isle is that it has the Pedestal of the Gods and it trivializes local enemies. Any more help is completely unnecessary. I actually forgot to use it for the Dragonflies area, but they just followed me to town and got demolished by the Angel

7. Can you give me some examples? I can certainly take a look. I do remember that I gave the golem in White Cliff Caves some pretty good stuff. My idea there was that Gold Golems are tough buggers -- especially at low level -- so I thought the treasure should be pretty good. Don't know if that was one of your spots.

Wish I could remember where they were/what they were... I know my knight had 2 very strong swords very early on. But I absolutely can't remember where from I would have had more, but when I saw the items were clearly meant to be weaker, and were strong due to my own item changes (cutlasses in Harmondale, for instance), I just left them on the ground, lol. I think those fiery cutlasses look cool so I swapped them around to be much higher on the food chain

Anyway, let me know of some specific treasures, and I'll see what I can do. I mostly placed things for flavor, without a lot of starting balance in mind, but I can adjust to better accommodate a starting party. It's interesting that both you and SilverKnight approached MM7 Refilled as a starter hardmode! Part of what's so cool about modding -- folks take what you do in all sorts of directions

Starting hardmode is the best starting mode

8. You were my inspiration for this one! I fondly remember seeing trade goods as loot in your modling, like that group of mercs south of the Plane of Air portal, or several groups in the east side of Shadowspire. It was so cool seeing those things that I never messed with in the base game. Those boxes are pretty big, though, aren't they?

Yeah, they're very cool for flavor And I'm sure people who don't hoard diamonds "for when I have Master Merchant!!" and pick up every single ingredient in existence "Because WHAT IF I NEED IT AFTER ALL?!?!?!" can pick some up

9. You and me both. I wanted to make campfires, pedestals, challenges, and most of all chests a big part of things. Much more complicated than I thought the would be. Good luck with your efforts to do so in your Convergence!

You can place campfires with ease! Campfires, bags with random garbage, food bowls, resistance kettles, barrels - they're all in "sprites" category, and they're automatically working! There are many of them added in the Convergence!

10. Yep, that's Might and Magic for you -- ESPECIALLY the Merge! The boosting works really well though, even within the starting continent. I think you just set the percentage boost to 105%, and it'll start applying. Might have to leave and return, maybe move between continents. I have it set to 100% at level 40ish (started in Enroth) and your Serpentmen Warriors have about a thousand hp!

I'll have to embrace boosting one day... My problem with it is I always absolutely hated worlds scaling with your character level - vide Oblivion, Skyrim. First thing I did was install a mod that delevels the world. I want the final enemies to absolutely wipe the floor with my weak character, and I want some noobass bandits to be ultimate pushovers once I get stronger. Nothing killed my fun in Bethesda games more than getting stronger and stronger only for bridge-dwelling bandits to also become masters of the universe wearing the best armor, best weapons, and being basically capable of killing the big baddie themselves. Or the big baddie being killable by level 1 character wielding a stick. The worst.

But in the case of Merge, it might be completely impossible to create a de-leveled experience, which requires you to travel across 3 continents "back and forth" to reach content you are capable of doing, after you hit the wall on your chosen starting continent. Would be cool as heck, but it's either straight up impossible, or would need some maestro of balance to accomplish

Especially given the fact the items/spells/skills don't have additional ranks and scaling, they are meant to be maxed out in 1 continent gameplay. But imagine if they did!

Anyhow, delusions aside, right now my small wish is to have bolstering option which gives all enemies their new abilities and which kicks in at full force from day 1. You know, for more early game hardcore challenge

[Eksekk]

I know my knight had 2 very strong swords very early on. But I absolutely can't remember where from

I also played MM7 Refilled from the start (up to about 15 level), and IIRC they were on that island in Tatalia where you get golem part and where is Tidewater caverns entrance (actually, there were 3 swords, and I chose 2 strongest to equip (in the future, didn't have master sword yet)). BTW, IIRC there are some sellable crates on the ship, and actually the ones that give 2-3k when sold, so it might be worth to jump (spell) up there.

Oh, and my impressions on the mod from my limited playtime: Emerald Island was easy due to that Day of the Gods pedestal (its effects on low-level party are much more intense than effects on high-level party), after arriving to harmondale it was a struggle (those goblins completely surprised me and were difficult to dispose of). Later, in Hall under the Hill, I had to simply outrun the enemies to complete quest, and arriving at tidewater island in Tatalia was very difficult, had to utilize hit-and-run tactics. Overall, very early game was easy, then it became really hard, but I liked it!