The E regions had nothing for me, so I decided to back to some of the regions I’ve already been to, to wrap some stuff up.
Miscellaneous
I managed to get myself spoiled by reading an awesome blog, so I realized the mad wizard in the cave in C-2 who was saying
Encounter the 13, win the prize!
He was referring to the 13 encounters within the cave, so I cleared those and got the prize (bronze key, 2000 gold each, Potion of Speed).
I went and cleared the wyvern peaks, defeating the ambushes and using some Time Distortion trickery to get past the 8-headed hydra encounter at the wyvern lair. I got that prize to (Wyvern Eye).
Alana, my now male cleric got to level 9 and got his fifth level spells. I got a nice new outdoors spell and the option to remove level draining, which is useless, since from what I understand; level drains go away after combat.
I dropped the quest I was on, but I’m 99% sure that the quest to explore the desert wasn’t really a quest and I just dropped the quest to find the shrine below Dusk (which I have yet to find). Instead, I started dealing with some other quests:
- I redid the delivery from the wizard under Sorpigal to the wizard Agar in Erliquin, so he would send me further to Telgoran in Dusk. Here’s the entire line of “dialogue”, with spelling corrected:
An elderly man behind a desk speaks: “I am in need of courier service, are you interested?”
“Good! Take this scroll to the wizard Agar in Erliquin and you shall be rewarded.”
The wizard Agar speaks: “You have done well to bring me this scroll. Now take it to my protégé Telgoran in Dusk.”
An elf dressed in robes approaches… “Friends, I am Telgoran. This scroll you have brought me will be very helpful. Here’s 1500 gold for your services. I’ll tell you a secret. If treasure is what you want, the brothers you must find… Portsmith and Algary are combined.”
- I went to White Wolf, to see what quests I can get there.
- The first was to find Raven’s Lair, which I already did.
- The second was to find Lord Kilburn, which I also already did, but it wouldn’t complete. I tried going back to Kilburn, retaking his map and then going back to the desert, but it didn’t help.
- I explored the caves below Dusk one more time and found the shrine I needed for Lord Inspectron, which got me that quest solved.
- Inspectron’s next quest was to find the fountain in Dragadune, which I also already did.
- After that, I needed to solve the riddle of the Ruby – also done in advance, in Raven’s Lair.
Three quests gave me a total of 18000 experience.
- After getting a total of 18 000 experience per character, I finally got a quest I haven’t done yet – to Defeat the stronghold in the enchanted forest. I’m not sure how to defeat a stronghold, but I guess that’s what I need to do.
Algary, D-4
I thought to myself, I might as well visit the final town, finally. Well, technically, it’s not supposed to be the final town – that was Dusk, but I keep playing through this game in the wrong order, so I might as well uphold the tradition.
Algary was at D-4, at 7-7, in what seemed to be a swampy area, which is a refreshing change after the desert, though I’m worried about tedious poison curing which is bound to happen.
Algary ended up being so content-filled that I almost ran out of alphabet letters. There were the regular town services and a mystic who could tell me what my character’s resistances are.
I guess the various races also have some inherent resistances.
Then there were a total of four portals, all leading to different areas of the world. One of them led me to a dungeon in E-4. Since It got me right next to the exit of the dungeon, I went out to look around and, on the way back in, was able to get the name of the dungeon – The Fabled Building of Gold. Something tells me I’ll want to visit that place.
There was also a person named Zom, who was one of the two brothers I’ve heard about from previous events. He gave me his half of the clue, B-15. The other brother is supposed to be in Portsmith. Zom was at the docks, which were another named are of Algary, but I couldn’t find anything else of importance there.
There was also a swaze pit, I assumed leading down to the dungeon below Algary. However, it turned out to be just a source of infinite encounters, or at least it looked that way. Also, I have no idea what a swaze is, and neither does anyone else, apparently. Google is bringing me to Might and Magic Book One articles, but I’m not getting any other information.
Portsmith Sex Change
Once I cleared Algary, I did one more thing. I already reversed the sex of everyone in my party once below Portsmith. I flew there again this time, left the girls (Lancelot, Percival, Rax and Robin) at the inn and took Aleen and Alana to the dungeon below. It was risky, but I somehow managed to squeeze through and reach the sex change pool. I now have an all-girl team, ready to take on Portsmith with ease. While I was at it, I also renamed Lancelot to Lorelei and Percival to Priscilla, to make it more appropriate. Robin and Rax are fine as they are.
D-4 Wilderness
Compared to Algary, or even most other areas of Might and Magic Book One, the wilderness of D-4 was pretty much empty. The few things that did exist, though, seemed important.
The swampy areas work like the wooded areas – you can pass through them, but they block your view.
- There’s an encounter with a winged beast, which offers you to take you to safety. Choosing “yes” takes you to a spot where a guy named Paul Pead and his group of assassins attack you. Choosing “no” instead makes the winged beast and its huge group of celestial stags attack. Both fights are impossible right now, so my best bet was to just avoid it. You can also get to Paul Pead on your own, so that’s another tile to avoid.
- In the sea to the south, there was an island with a guy named Og on it. He just sent me away, so I’m guessing I’ll be coming back to him on a later quest.
I think this is one of the four beasts the statues in Sorpigal told me about.
That’s pretty much all there was to D-4. There’s also a large labyrinth swamp area with darkness and an anti-magic field, filled with encounters, but as far as I can tell, nothing of note was actually inside.
The Two Brothers
I went back to Portsmith, now that I had all girls, and didn’t leave until I found the hidden passage where Zam, astral brother of Zom was hiding. He gave me his hint – C-15, so the two hints are 1-15 and C-15. I simply assumed they combine into C-1, 15-15, because it was the only pair of coordinates that actually made sense. I went to that exact location:
I don’t know what an astral brother is, but I’ll go with it.
You found a chest upon which an inscription reads: Property of XX!XX!
Inside you found a ruby whistle, 2000 gold and a note: The stronghold lies at B-3, 14-2. Blow twice to enter.
I did just that. It was the sealed temple in the forest labyrinth of B-3, so I knew how to get through it, since I’ve already mapped it. The game actually asked me how many times I want to blow the whistle, which was a nice touch.
Forest Stronghold, B-3
The temple in the enchanted forest ended up being a Minotaur stronghold. The top floor was laid out like a city, while the bottom floor was a maze, where you had to find the correct pat through a room full of conveyor belts. At the end of the path was an encounter with a gray minotaur and a group of regular minotaur. I tried beating them several times and on my last try I used Time Distortion to escape, which ended up removing the encounter and telling me I’ve won, even though I didn’t. In the throne room were two secret rooms with about 9000 gold in each of them. There was also a statue in the southwestern corner of level 2, which simply gave me 10 000 experience for completing some mission. Later on, after talking to a guy about it, I went back to this statue to search around it and get a golden key. In order to do that, though, I had to go restart the quest to deliver the scroll all the way back in Sorpigal, because the bag with the key is only there right after you get the experience.
The Minotaur Stronghold in the Enchanted Forest. The final version, hopefully.
Other than that, I’ve found another checkered room, so I started tracking those as well, and the gold message number 3 and number 9, meaning there are now nine of them, not eight, and I have only four.
Defeated, if you consider me running away as winning.
Lord Inspectron gave me 10000 experience for clearing the stronghold, though, so I guess that was a decent consolidation prize. He also gave me his next quest – find the stronghold in the Quivering Forest. I have no idea where that is.
Throughout all of this, I got a Ruby Idol, which is a random item I don’t know the meaning off, but it might be useful. I also got a Magic Sling and I managed to get and keep a Large Shield +2, which I usually lose by dying with it before going back to an inn. Sadly, I still did that mistake with another great item I got – the Belt of Power. This thing increases the wearer’s might by 5, which is amazing, but I ended up losing it moments after getting it. It happened after I was done with the stronghold for the first time, when I decided to go train for a bit at the Wyvern’s Peaks. The belt dropped off the first encounter and then, instead of flying back to Sorpigal, I ended up dying in the second encounter. Luckily, the Lightning Bow I got during my return to the minotaur stronghold was a nice consolidation prize. The thing is, I have no idea if the Lightning Bow or the Magic Sling are actually better than any of my items.
I was very confused when I stumbled into this statue. Took me a while to figure out why it’s there.
D-3 Wilderness
D-3 seemed like the logical next step, since I’ve already been to C-3, D-2 and D-4. This whole area contained one huge and annoying quest. There was this guy called Arenko Guire. He asked me to climb each tree in the region without leaving to get a reward. The problem is, the trees can curse you, make you fall down, get hit by lightning, disease or poison you and even better, they often ambush you with an enemy group right after doing one of the above. Basically, if you’re unlucky, you can die in a few turns.
And what was my reward for doing that? Well, I could pick either gold, gems or an item. Since I had plenty of the former, I chose the latter. I got the Bells of Time. It’s a usable item which ages the user by 10 years. Wow, is that useful!
In hindsight, the gems would’ve been the better option.
Well, there was also a cave nearby, so I could at least try my luck there.
D-3 Cave, the Magic Square
The cave in D-3 was one huge magic square puzzle. For those unfamiliar with magic squares, the goal is to have all the rows and columns have the same sum without reusing numbers. In a 3 by 3 square, this means using numbers 1-9 one time each, in a 4-4 it’s 1 to 16, etc.
The cave was a 4 by 4 magical square with the numbers 10 and above already entered, so all I had to do was to figure out the rest. The trick to magic squares is that there is an algorithm on how to solve it, which I remember from elementary school (I was all about math back then).
I did actually feel smarter after that one.
Solving the square gave me 20 gems per character, 200 gold per character and 2000 experience per character. More importantly, it gave me two Intelligence per character, permanently.
With the puzzle solution and the quest on the surface, I can now mark D-3 as cleared!
An Observation
Remember that statue in Sorpigal?
Services rendered, secrets unfold, the brothers together lead to treasures untold… Five towns you must travel for this quest to unravel.
Well, I think I’m done with this part of Might and Magic Book One. I started out in Sorpigal, took the scroll to Erliquin, went ahead to Dusk, and then found the two astral brothers in Portsmith and Algary. That’s five towns in total, and I ended up getting into the minotaur stronghold and got the treasure – some gold and a golden key.
It’s probably not that huge, but I love having realizations like that one.
