Might and Magic 6, 7, 8 merge based on mm8 engine. [upd. 15.02.2022]

[x1diablo]

Both Shadowspire and Balthazar Lair are inaccessible in Town Portal.
I visited them many times, but they remain grayed.

here is my savegame https://filebin.net/14ylfmlxgbrs7pll/sa ... t=1tso2fhw

Is this an issue with my installation only, or it's a common problem?
Could anyone confirm this?
Thanks!

P.S. Lloyd's beacon over continents is cheating IMO, each continent should have own set of marks.

[raekuul]

You are drinking from the town fountains before trying to TP, right? I've made this mistake before

[justl]

P.S. Lloyd's beacon over continents is cheating IMO, each continent should have own set of marks.

why should it be cheating? you have reached the continent on your way through the game and the destinations on it - so you can set your mark whereever, whenever you want.
if you see it as cheating, there shouldnt be any dimension door spells eather, cause it brings you to another continent...

[x1diablo]

P.S. Lloyd's beacon over continents is cheating IMO, each continent should have own set of marks.

why should it be cheating? you have reached the continent on your way through the game and the destinations on it - so you can set your mark whereever, whenever you want.
if you see it as cheating, there shouldnt be any dimension door spells eather, cause it brings you to another continent...

It makes traveling between continents (time and space) too easy, and with this all Dimension Door stuff is used only two times at all.

You don't need to find High Magic spots in each continent - just beacon to one you already discovered, and this kills some part of the gameplay.

[cthscr]

Having 5 LB slots per continent can be considered cheating (or cheesing) also.

[x1diablo]

Having 5 LB slots per continent can be considered cheating (or cheesing) also.

in the original games there were 5 slots per continent.

[x1diablo]

You are drinking from the town fountains before trying to TP, right? I've made this mistake before

is this an original mm8 bug?

[darkdill]

First stop is 'Scripts/General/AdaptiveMonstersStats.lua'. When someone talk about bolster changes he should study this file well. For instance, what different const.Bolster.Types do.

Looks hard to understand.

But in any case, the bottom line is that those cases of peasants having 30k HP shouldn't be happening, even if your characters are level 999.

[cthscr]

Having 5 LB slots per continent can be considered cheating (or cheesing) also.

in the original games there were 5 slots per continent.

No. Proof: Planes aren't part of Jadame continent.

You are drinking from the town fountains before trying to TP, right? I've made this mistake before

is this an original mm8 bug?

Sigh. "Town Portal teleports the party to any town where the party has drunk from the central fountain." In-game spell descriptions, read them.

[raekuul]

You are drinking from the town fountains before trying to TP, right? I've made this mistake before

is this an original mm8 bug?

Sigh. "Town Portal teleports the party to any town where the party has drunk from the central fountain." In-game spell descriptions, read them.

In fairness, this is easy to mess up - especially coming fresh off of MM7 where you didn't have to drink from the fountains to open TP (the Pit doesn't even have an eligible fountain), or MM6 where you were using an NPC for TP early on (I remember MM6 grandfathering your TP destinations in - if you TP there with an NPC, you can TP there yourself later. I may be misremembering) though the MM6 central fountains are also generally far more helpful than the MM8 ones as well as actually being "central fountains" - I always miss the Shadowspire fountain my first time through because it's not the fountain I expect it to be.

P.S. Lloyd's beacon over continents is cheating IMO, each continent should have own set of marks.

why should it be cheating? you have reached the continent on your way through the game and the destinations on it - so you can set your mark whereever, whenever you want.

if you see it as cheating, there shouldnt be any dimension door spells eather, cause it brings you to another continent...

It makes traveling between continents (time and space) too easy, and with this all Dimension Door stuff is used only two times at all.

You don't need to find High Magic spots in each continent - just beacon to one you already discovered, and this kills some part of the gameplay.

Yeah except no - Lloyd's Beacon

• requires more Water skill than Town Portal/Dimension Door, and therefore should be more game-breakingly useful (and the requirements to cast LB at-will trivialize using Dimension Door out of Jadame anyway)
• Still requires you to physically travel to the spot you're setting your beacon at
• still would trivialize The Lincoln and Escaton's Palace even with the Continental Limiting

Besides, devoting beacons just to cross-continental travel ends up making it less helpful since you're going from 5 LB spots to at most 3.

It also doesn't help that you're arguing this from the wrong side - the three games are not happening simultaneously (the reason you need Dimension Door in the first place is because you're jumping around in the timeline, not just because you're hopping across great distances) and so your beacons should be inaccessible across continents just because of all the temporal-chronological shenaniganry you get up to (but this is likely an engine limitation at this point)

[x1diablo]

Sigh. "Town Portal teleports the party to any town where the party has drunk from the central fountain." In-game spell descriptions, read them.

OMG, how could I miss that requirement? I've played these series so many times
Thanks!

[raekuul]

As I said above, it's because it's easy to miss. MM7 didn't require it at all (and The Pit doesn't even have an eligible fountain), and MM6 the central fountains are actually central. In MM8 even when you remember that it's explicitly required, you're playing "find the right fountain" half the time.

[mightandmagicplayer]

This mod is really cool overall, but there's a few things that bug me:
1)Some areas will cause HUGE amounts of lag that did not happen in the original games. For example, I can play MM6 standalone fine, but even in the first temple dungeon, the multilevel area with the bats will lag my system. This also seems to happen in other dungeons with lots of enemies and complex terrain.
2)I HATE the idea of bolster causing enemies to scale with my level and equipment. I'd much prefer it to either have fixed scaling (200% = +200% hp), or be based on continent/area. As it is, leveling up and using good equipment just makes the game harder, which is counter-intuitive. I like the general concept of having stronger enemies (and being able to adjust it in extra settings), but scaling enemies to your party always causes weird problems.
3)I don't really think the transition area should be in Dragonsands. That's basically an endgame area, and if I want to hop continents early on (for example, to promote my thief), it encourages sequence breaking.
4)Speaking of promotions, leveling certain skills/classes in much easier in some games than others. In MM6, to promote your wizards, you literally just drink from a well, then go do an easy dungeon for the 2nd promotion. In MM7 promotions in general are much harder. I don't think there's a good fix for this, but its kinda odd when you bring along monks and thieves in your party.
5)The MM6 reputation mechanic is completely fucked. The candelabra quest still gives you -200 rep (I think all quests have their original values), but the game works off of MM7/8 rep systems, meaning that guards attack you at -25, temples raise by only 1 point at a time, and merchant skill becomes useless fast, since you hit 500+ rep after a few quests and get perfect item buy/sell values.
6)I can't remember if this happened in the original, but you can seem to find relics/artifacts super early on. I found 2 relics in a chest in the Temple of Tsanta in Bootleg Bay, which is one of the easiest dungeons in the game.

[cthscr]

Main problem with multiple instances of LB to me is N * 50 * 5 * 20 kB increased size of the savegame. LB destination images aren't even saved in vanilla mm8 savegame, you can guess why.

still would trivialize The Lincoln and Escaton's Palace even with the Continental Limiting

You can always forbid to use LB on certain maps thanks to GreyFace.

In fairness, this is easy to mess up - especially coming fresh off of MM7 where you didn't have to drink from the fountains to open TP (the Pit doesn't even have an eligible fountain), or MM6 where you were using an NPC for TP early on (I remember MM6 grandfathering your TP destinations in - if you TP there with an NPC, you can TP there yourself later. I may be misremembering) though the MM6 central fountains are also generally far more helpful than the MM8 ones as well as actually being "central fountains" - I always miss the Shadowspire fountain my first time through because it's not the fountain I expect it to be.

Never was a problem for me 'cause I started from MM8 back in 00s.-) Problem is presence of different behaviors in Merge (#593). Though one can name this a parity. Personally, I'd dislike removing fountain requirements - don't like an idea of immediate TP after map loads.

[Pol]

Man in the middle post, please read.

[darkdill]

1)Some areas will cause HUGE amounts of lag that did not happen in the original games. For example, I can play MM6 standalone fine, but even in the first temple dungeon, the multilevel area with the bats will lag my system. This also seems to happen in other dungeons with lots of enemies and complex terrain.

I get this a lot too, but I didn't find anything about it when doing a search for "lag". Is there an explanation and/or fix for it?

[mightandmagicplayer]

1)Some areas will cause HUGE amounts of lag that did not happen in the original games. For example, I can play MM6 standalone fine, but even in the first temple dungeon, the multilevel area with the bats will lag my system. This also seems to happen in other dungeons with lots of enemies and complex terrain.

I get this a lot too, but I didn't find anything about it when doing a search for "lag". Is there an explanation and/or fix for it?

I've never actually played MM8 before, so my current theory is that it either has to do with the combat AI or pathing AI of MM8 combined with the massive amount of enemies in MM6. I don't know any real solutions, but a workaround for me is to just enter turn-based mode, where the lag magically disappears.

[joanthedark]

1)Some areas will cause HUGE amounts of lag that did not happen in the original games. For example, I can play MM6 standalone fine, but even in the first temple dungeon, the multilevel area with the bats will lag my system. This also seems to happen in other dungeons with lots of enemies and complex terrain.

I get this a lot too, but I didn't find anything about it when doing a search for "lag". Is there an explanation and/or fix for it?

It's caused by Pathfinding, you have to go to properties of your mm8.exe and under Compatibility tab uncheck the Windows 95 compatibility.
You can also disable Pathfinding in the in-game "Extra Settings" if you want a more vanilla experience, since that will remove the lag altogether.

[mightandmagicplayer]

Disabling pathfinding in "extra-settings" doesn't do anything for the lag.

[darkdill]

1)Some areas will cause HUGE amounts of lag that did not happen in the original games. For example, I can play MM6 standalone fine, but even in the first temple dungeon, the multilevel area with the bats will lag my system. This also seems to happen in other dungeons with lots of enemies and complex terrain.

I get this a lot too, but I didn't find anything about it when doing a search for "lag". Is there an explanation and/or fix for it?

It's caused by Pathfinding, you have to go to properties of your mm8.exe and under Compatibility tab uncheck the Windows 95 compatibility.
You can also disable Pathfinding in the in-game "Extra Settings" if you want a more vanilla experience, since that will remove the lag altogether.

Unchecking Windows 95 compatibility did the trick. Thanks.