What started on January 5th. with a couple of locations and continued with regular updates, has been concluded with a complete list of in-game locations for the various Dynasty weapons.
Question time again - this time two more questions, number 4 and 5.
4. How many stacks of the same creature can there be on a battlefield in one moment? How to achieve this number? You can control both sides of the battle.
5. You can use four level 40 (starting skills plus any 39 other skills) heroes and each hero can use at most 1 Major Artifact and as many Minor Artifacts, Treasures and Items as you wish. Relics, Potions and Artifacts that belong to a set are banned, though. With that, how do you defeat 1 million Black Dragons?
Round two of Maciek's quiz takes us to two different questions:
* How can a level 1 hero kill 1 black dragon using 1 artifact ... and what hero and artifact is it? This artifact will be banned in the next question.
* How can a level 2 barbarian kill 1 black dragon using 2 artifacts and what artifacts are those? Give at least 3 different answers. No artifact can appear in more than one of your answers. The barbarian doesn't have to survive the battle.
Maciek has put together a really big quiz for all you Heroes IV fans out there. Post your answers and discuss possible solutions!
Here's round one:
100 Medusas got lost in a dark forest with just 3100 gold and no heroes or towns. They find a tavern and an unguarded object (in the white area below). There are 50 Nightmares and 150 Minotaurs on the way to the only nearby town. What could the object be and how could it help the poor Medusas defeat the enemy and capture that town?
Been in some good battles lately? In Heroes VI or other games? Did you also get a screenshot of it? Send it to us.
Send us screenshots of your biggest wins! Your most humiliating defeats ... Your most memorable games. Send it to kalah@celestialheavens.com and we'll post them as Pictures Of The Day along with our thanks.
There's a bit out on the official page about the Conflux web, offering an upgraded experience:
- See your profile progression (player details, Dynasty details, personal stats).
- Generate a gamecard to show your friends how you progress.
- Level up your Dynasty weapons in the Soul Forge section.
- Unlock web "exclusive content" for your game in the Altar of Wishes.
An article was recently posted by the guys at Guru3D, explaining the latest problem with online activation of Ubisoft titles:
We already know that you can only activate the game on 3 different systems, but now it turns out that this affects hardware changes as well.
What the Guru guys did was perform a performance test of Anno 2070. After testing it on a particular rig with a particular setup, they wanted to change the graphics cards to compare the performance. That's when things started to go wrong ...
"For the NVIDIA setup I take out the GTX 580, and insert a GTX 590. When I now startup the game 'BAM', again an activation is required. Once again I fill out the key and now Ubisoft is thanking me with the message that I ran out of activations.
Here's what Ubisofts DRM is doing these days, they don't just verify the number of PCs you work on, nope ... they monitor hardware changes. So once we inserted that GeForce GTX 590 the hardware id # changed rendering our activation invalid."
Ubisoft do of course have a 'solution' to this: "simply" e-mail their support and ask them to reset the activations. I feel, however, that this falls under the category of making things more difficult for the customer than they need to be - yet another piece of evidence that Ubisoft's draconian methods are becoming too much for even themselves to handle.
P.S: I should specify that Heroes VI does not use the DRM used by Anno 2070.
We are seeing a steady stream of new members on the Celestial Heavens forum: The Heroes Round Table. So far this year more than 30 genuine accounts have been made from various locations in the world. The immigration of members from the official forums (which are still undergoing maintenance) is a likely cause for the rise this week.
The MM 6/7/8 project is currently searching for people with experience in IDA.
The project, a "decompilation, reconstruction, upgrading and tuning of the Might and Magic 6/7/8 engine", has yielded some impressive work thus far; all that's needed is some dedicated and talented fans working on improving it still further.
As some of you may have noticed, the official forums were closed temporarily this week, as the whole thing is being upgraded. It is scheduled to be back online on Monday (Jan. 9th).
So what are you going to do in the mean time? Well, since their forum is down, why not visit ours?
Unlike the official forums (which are moderated by Ubi), The Round Table is independent and will permit you to be as harsh in your criticism as you would like - just as long as you don't harm anybody. The RT is your place to vent. To chastise. To praise, if you want to.
The official site reveals the locations of the fabled weapons Arachne and Angelic Alliance for those who are still looking.
"The Angelic Alliance sword is obtained as a reward for saving princess Gwendolyn during the Prophecies quest (Haven Map 4). As for the Arachne sword, you can find it in the south-eastern corner of the underground level of the map (Necropolis Map 1)."
Patch 1.2.1 is released today. Finally, it seems, Ubi have listened and started releasing smalle patches at a quicker rate than the big ones - if only to get the more criticial errors fixed. Time will tell if this good trend continues.
Why the patch? "It appeared with the release of 1.2 patch that achievement could be copied from one user to another by using the Compare Profile feature. That means that a further advanced player could regress by comparing his achievement with those of a less advanced player. This only affects achievement and no other part of player profile.
1.2.1 patch fixes this bug and now prevents achievements to be copied."
Last Sunday, the servers dedicated to the H6 Conflux system went down, leaving players without a game to play. An explanation was posted on Facebook the following day:
"Yesterday, some Ubisoft servers were unexpectedly down for a few hours, preventing you from connecting to the Conflux and thus accessing the online services from Might & Magic Heroes VI. As we ensure the technical support of our online services 24/7, our team has been hard at work to resume the service as fast as possible. We apologize for any inconvenience this has caused you.
What Ubisoft call a "few" hours, we call "several". It was in the weekend too - a period And while I am sure that their team were indeed on the case and fixing the problem as quickly as they could, the flaw in the plan is already evident:
They have tried to create a game with emphasis on the online experience. Instead they have managed to create a game that fails to work if something goes wrong on their end. Because your saved game is connected to the Conflux, it will be unavailable of their servers go down. A plan that seemed good to begin with is therefore in reality ... well, bollocks.
The Christmas / New Year tradition that is The Rage of the Carrots has yielded another story for fans of things that completely lacks sense.
The RotC is a one-word story game that was started when our forum was first opened here on our independent server back in 2005. Having gone from pure irritating spam to a real Round Table holiday tradition, rest assured our members will be able to show their creativity again next year.
Here's the funny story:
"Temples filled with moose droppings attacked our Ladys nearest Holy Wombats. Tomatoes rolled merrily along, foaming at the slippery, slimy, magnanimous, banana-shaped Earth. Contemporary chickens of random barns and deep-fryers soared mightily through smoke-filled pink balloons. Understandably, was outraged yet seeking invisible porcupines for a special Christmas dinner.
Any porcupine in distress would poke yellow elephants on bicycles, mopeds, pushcarts or rollercoasters. Therefore, the speculum spread toothpaste around each lilac nosed purple turtle wearing cardboard underwear. Lurking aardvarks ambushed Santa through and ate marinated troglodytes a-la-mode. The troglodytes weren't happy with the sudden drop in atmospheric conditions so tropical that wyverns killed for extreme dancing.
Meanwhile, gremlins argued about pants pinching with the coconuts clicking unforseeable beards. Vampires of Lake Czeger and pirates plundering Port TCP/IP struggled under impressive fungi, while dragons breathed king-sized glowsticks causing riots everywhere. Amidst these squirrelly chipmunks flew Sandro as bats struck concrete hard and succumbed to hunger because they didn't want to steal spongy hobbits food.
Drow Sylvester and Pip trained gaint mutated Driders for treasure mud-holes. "Bonanza" said the crying cowgirl, before cows transformed their succulent udders into steaks! Incidentally, clandestine operations spiralled down into mysterious black-holes, brightly bubbling and sizzling like pregnant hippopotami.
The wolves of Ubisoft failed to satisfy loyal fans! Then tomatoes started flying toward Ubisoft management, halibuts jumped into buttered barns infested by many one-eyed cyclopses and eight-headed pixies dancing feverishly over all gamecontrollers astonishingly."
For more on these one-word stories, have a browse backwards in our forum Campfire.
Have you ever dreamed of having H3 units in a proportional size, like they march and squash in the RoE intro? Now you have the chance. Grab Artas' mod when it's fresh and install it. All units were altered in size with respect to their originals and I certainly can warrant a smile on your face, when you see them fight on the battlefield.
How to install: 1. Unzip.
2. Extract attached Heroes3HD file to your game folder and run updater.
3. Then run as usual.
Notes: Tested with H3C english version. Installer will automatically back up your original h3sprite.lod file in the folder PatchWise.bak
Known bugs: Naga Queen, Dread Night and Great Basilisk contain white pixels. Solution not found yet.
Thanks to the sterling work of Maltz, we now have a complete set of walkthroughs for Might and Magic: Heroes VI.
For the noobies out there, a walkthrough is something that is intended as a guide through a game, which means that there will be spoilers. It can be regarded as a 'recipe' on how to complete a story-based game (and H6 is very much story-based), though not necessarily the only way to do it. These walkthroughs can function as your friendly guide, offering advice and suggestions while you play. Whether you want to follow the advice or not; whether you use this thing casually or thoroughly, I am sure it will be of use.
From all of us to all of you: Happy Christmas, everybody!
Here's to hoping the patches of Heroes VI amend the game to be not only playable, but fulfilling its potential; that the coming year sees a good expansion released; that user-made maps start to come in and fill up our database ... and that you all are well.
Ubisoft have announced a Christmas treasure hunt on on their official page. By playing this map and finding the clues in it, you can win a Michael Figurine.
"Centuries ago, the angel Nava undertook a journey among the minor islands at the center of the Archipelago. Her quest has been chronicled on various Obelisks located all over the four main islands. Explore the land and collect all eight clues, and retrace Nava's steps to find her final resting place. The first adventurer to collect the eight clues and find Nava's resting place will win a special prize: Michael Statue! You have until December 31th 2011 11:59 PM CET."
Included in the statement are also instructions on how to add a custom map to the game:
Extract the content of the archive.
Put the .scn file into your 'Documents\Might & Magic Heroes VI\Scenario' folder.
When you start Heroes VI the map will appear at the bottom of the skirmish map list.
Please note this map is only meant for single player. Only use the default starting position.
In case you can't open .RAR files, we have put a .ZIP version here.
Gamasutra have released an article with their reviewer's top 5 downloadable console games of 2011. Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes takes first place of the games available for Xbox Live Arcade, PlayStation Network and WiiWare:
1. Might & Magic: Clash Of Heroes (Capybara Games/Ubisoft, XBLA/PSN/PC).
2. Trenched / Iron Brigade (Double Fine Productions, XBLA/PC).
3. From Dust (Ubisoft, XBLA/PSN/PC).
4. Rock Of Ages (Ace Team/Atlus, XBLA/PC).
5. Outland (HouseMarque/Ubisoft, XBLA/PSN).
Ryan Langley on M&M CoH:
"It's an amazingly unique puzzle game -- you fight by pitting wildlife, demons, and soliders against each other by merging three or more together, and having them charge off to battle after predetermined amounts of turns, and when the opposition is waiting to charge in your direction, you'll be setting up walls and opposing forces to take them down. (...)
What this list also proves, at least to me, is that of all the publishers out there trying this whole digital download thing, Ubisoft has the right idea. And that might sound crazy with all the discussion on Ubisoft DRM and all its weird PC game shenanigans, but whoever is in charge of the company's smaller download games initiative should keep doing what they're doing."
After the release of H6, the word is that most of the really major complaints have been addressed. Of course, there are still bugs in the game, but that's to be expected. Still, they spent more than two months making this patch, so I think we have the right to have high expectations.
Please scroll down and look to the left of the screen and take our poll: rate how well you think the game plays after 1.2 has been applied. Don't consider how long it took them to make the thing, just the result: how good the game is right now.
Also, please pop by our forum to report any confirmed bugs you may encounter.
The availability date of patch 1.2 has been revealed on the Might and Magic official site: December 20th, so in less than a week. Here is a summary of the change log:
Major bug fixes (Week of the Plague, Dynasty weapons, unit abilities, scripts, localization)
Skirmish AI tweaks:
- Tries to defend all owned town (previously the AI focused on its starting town)
- Previously if a hero stronger then the AI's hero threatened a town, the AI hero let that town undefended. Now the AI calculates all of its nearby hero's army and creature growth and defends the town if it finds it possible
- Always defends the last owned town if it can causes reasonable losses to the attacker hero
- Huge speed improvement, AI thinking is approximately 2-3 times faster than in the previous version
- Further improvement of cooperation among primary and secondary heroes
- Improved exploration and target priority
- Pre-calculated army contraction. The AI calculates how many creatures can the target collect (including possible creature growth) before the AI's hero can reach it and calculates if it is worth to chase it.
- Further improvement of Town portal usage
- In case of an FFA the AI tries to attack and capture towns from a weaker player
Combat AI tweaks:
- General target choice improvement for the units
- Improved ability usage
- Improved racial ability usage
- Improved ability selection and different builds for Magic/Might, Tears/Blood heroes
- Improved creature ability usage
Gameplay improvements:
- The unit setup after using the Tactics ability is remembered from battle to battle
Intel support:
- Fog calculation
- Variance shadow mapping vs. hardware shadow mapping
We, the fans, are far from happy with the current status of the newly released game.
Heroes VI was released on October 13th 2011. When the game went Gold, the programmers at Black Hole knew there were still problems that needed fixing, so they planned to release a patch for release day - essentially meaning that when the game was available in the stores, you could get version 1.1 right away. Not a bad idea in itself - and they kept their word - but there were still problems. Players are still reporting a myriade of bugs and issues affecting not only the stability and balance of the game, but the developers' prized Conflux system as well.
Just to explain: the Conflux was supposed to replace the DRM system. Essentially it means that there is no intrusive scheme protecting the game from piracy, but if you go online to the Conflux (with a legit copy) you can get bonus features such as special "Dynasty" weapons. I can't imagine what the programmers must have felt when they learned that a bug makes all these weapons available in one place! Related, Malz has also found a way to farm exp points ...
As was the case with Heroes V, the developers (Ubi or Black Hole; I don't know who made this decision) have opted not to follow my advice: releasing small patches quickly to deal with the most urgent issues ... and then release the bigger patches later, taking care of balance and optimization issues. This would, in my opinion, make the fans see that the devs were working on the game (even if not all bugs could be fixed at once), and it would make the game more or less playable from day one.
Instead, what we have is a game that - two months after release - still isn't working properly. What we have is players already reporting that they have stopped playing the game altogether and moved on to other things. I wonder if Ubisoft are thinking that those players will come back, or that new players will come later, replacing those that have left. Seeing as this game's replayability is likely to be low because custom maps are not usable in multiplayer except hotseat (again a decision I fiercely disagree with and which must be changed), I don't see how they get those numbers to add up.
Irina, our M&M ComDev, has issued a statement in an effort to calm the mob ... and I hear on the grapewine that 1.2 should be released next week; the "play with the devs" event is certainly a pretty strong whip on their backs. With this upcoming release in mind, I think a small reminder of what happened last time is in order ...
What started on 
Been in some good battles lately? In Heroes VI or other games? Did you also get a screenshot of it? Send it to us. 
The 
Last Sunday, the servers dedicated to the H6 Conflux system went down, leaving players without a game to play. An explanation was posted on Facebook the following day:
Thanks to the sterling work of Maltz, we now have a complete set of 
Happy Christmas from Celestial Heavens
Ubisoft have announced a Christmas treasure hunt on 
After the release of H6, the word is that most of the really major complaints have been addressed. Of course, there are still bugs in the game, but that's to be expected. Still, they spent more than two months making this patch, so I think we have the right to have high expectations.
We, the fans, are far from happy with the current status of the newly released game.
