It’s been long since I’ve devoted so much time to a single game and got so much enjoyment out of it. I’m not completely sure, but slowly, it seems like I’m approaching the finale of Might and Magic Book One.Continue reading
I guess I somehow thought I’d breeze through Vagrant Story now that I’m older, that I’ll have an easier time figuring it out completely. It turns out Final Fantasy and Grandia inflated my ego too much. Compared to Vagrant Story, those games are child’s play.
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.
I was at a loss in Dusk, so I started wrapping up some loose ends while figuring out where to go next. Note for self: Find a way to cure petrification on the go.
After completing Tomba!, I had to pick another game to play on my PSP. The choice was between Vagrant Story and Jade Cocoon, and I even picked Jade Cocoon first, but that one ended up having a progress-breaking bug, so I had to abandon it after the first forest. Vagrant Story it is!
This report spanned over a couple of days of gameplay. My new schedule of posting three times a week sort of makes individual updates impossible, so I’ll try and do it this way.
The first thing I did was to go to Lord Inspectron because I thought the lookout in B-3 might be Blithes Peak. It was and I got 2000 experience, as well as another quest – go to the desert people and bring a sample of their trade goods.
One more quest completed!
I freed the prisoners of both Blackridge castles, but nothing happened, other than the prisoners leaving.
I went to explore C-3, to make a nice rectangle on the world map. It seemed empty at first. I ended up in both D-3 and C-4 briefly. I now know there’s a bunch of trees in D-3, with some guy wanting me to climb all of them without leaving the area. I also know there’s something screaming in C-4, and I couldn’t cast spells on the few tiles I’ve been on. My RPG experience tells me it’s a banshee or something of the sort.
Killburn is, at least, a more appropriate name than Hacker or Inspectron, though only slightly.
Eventually, I found the exiled Lord Kilburn to the north, past a few secret passages. He gave me a map to the desert lands, told me to go there and report my findings to the other lords. I didn’t have a quest, so I accepted, simply to get the map. It looks like the game handles quests without too many limitations. I can only have one active at a time, but I can complete other quests without actually having them active.
The Exiled Lord Kilburn Speaks: “Take this map and explore the desert. Report your findings to the other lords. Then they will understand!”
He disappears after this so I have no idea how to retake this quest if you remove it with the clerical spell (3-7). I actually tried removing it and was forced to reload. Luckily, I saved in Sorpigal right after taking it, because to the north west of C-3, I soon found a hermit ho offered to “trade items”. Accepting removed everything from my inventory, gave me Pirate Map A and Pirate Map B and filled the rest of my slot with (USELESS ITEM). Naturally, I immediately reloaded. If there’s a reason to do this, I’ll probably have to make a fake party, get here from Sorpigal and take the items that way, or at least use a fake party to store my current items with them before going here to trade. For now, I won’t be doing that, since it’s basically cheating and there might be another way.
Wyverns are a lot of experience.
As expected (for the most part), in the central region of C-3, there was a series of winding passages with a Wyvern ambush every few steps. These are the Wyvern Peaks I’ve seen from Blithes Peak in B-3. Wyverns are tough monsters. They don’t have that much health (about 50), but they hit by a lot, so it was really difficult to defeat them and I had to do it several times in a row to get to the center of the area. I managed to win a few battles, which gave me nice gold and experience, but I decided to save the rest of it for a later time.
The castle was mostly empty. The throne room was straight from the entrance and the lord’s name was Ironfist. I couldn’t take his quests because I was on the quest for lord Kilburn and I didn’t want to abandon it.
White Wolf looks just like castles Blackburn.
There was another message here, this one labeled B, so I have A, B and C now:
The messages are of the same length, so it’s definitely some sort of code, though probably not programming, as I though earlier. I’m guessing there’s one in each castle, so I won’t try to decipher them yet.
There was also a prisoner, in a long spiral area called the tower. I guess spiraling passages were the only way to (poorly) portray slopes in this game, since there is no vertical dimension. This is why both the Blithes Peak and the Wyvern peaks were confusing to me. I freed him immediately, since there seems to be no downside to it.
Other than that, there was a bunch of empty rooms, some random encounters and nothing else. I guess I explored Castle White Wolf quite quickly.
This was the next one I wanted to visit, because I’ve seen the drawn map of the world of Might and Magic and the deserts were definitely in the east. At first glance, D-1 didn’t look like a desert.
No desert here, or is there?
On second glance, they either picked a weird color or for a desert, or I’ve just reached hell.
That’s a hot looking desert, literally.
I didn’t want to go in yet, so I explored the small area I started in when I entered from C-1. I found a message telling me where Kilburn was, but nothing else.
It’s awesome when you get a hint AFTER you do the thing.
It was really the desert and the mechanic is that if you stay in it for too long, people start dying, so you need to move from oasis to oasis.
In one such oasis, to the north, there was a tribe of nomad people who I could trade with for the quest for lord Inspectron. After dying in the desert once, I got the quest a second time and immediately turned it in for 3000 experience. Now, lord Inspectron wants me to find the shrine of Okzar under the town of Dusk.
The fact that I actually had Inspectron’s quest confused me, since I also had Kilburn’s quest. It looks like I’m missing something. Maybe there are different types of quests I can be on at the same time?
Map of D-1, with notes.
Other than this oasis, there wasn’t much else in D-1. There was a sandstorm that does damage to the party, an encounter with a huge group of giant scorpions I couldn’t beat yet and a random whirlwind which can apparently appear anywhere and transport the party to safety, next to the entrance to the desert.
I had no chance at beating this right now. I need more health and stronger spells.
There’s more desert in E-1 and D-2, though.
Desert was only to the north and I started in the south. There are many encounters in this area. One long corridor on the western side is encounter after encounter, which ended in an encounter with two medusas and a bunch of trolls. No head was dropped, but I went to see lord Hacker anyway. He just said I was already quested. There are two possibilities here:
I can’t drop the quest until I’m done with the desert, so there’s nothing I can do there.
After fighting lots and lots of encounters with very little reward other than the experience (which is a great reward to), I finally explored everything other than the desert area. Since I have to fight through a bunch of encounters to even get to the desert area, I decided to approach it from D-1 and use suicide runs to map everything.
D-2, map with notes. Enjoy!
Pretty soon, I found a central oasis, this time a “Clerical retreat”. Inside was a pool giving everyone “worthy” +4 wisdom. I believe everyone got it. I didn’t have any evil characters, but most of them were neutral and they still got the bonus.
There were also three groups of clerics. The northern clerics cure the entire party, the eastern restore their alignment and the western uncurse all of their items. Finally, there was a message about the southern clerics:
The clerics of the south shall deem you worthy, if you can find them!
This probably refers to a whole different area, either D-3 or D-4, since I couldn’t find them in D-2.
Other than this oasis, which is a huge thing for this area, there was nothing else in the desert, so I guess D-2 is now also explored.
This is where the town of Dusk was located, so using fly took me straight to the town entrance. I decided to explore the wilderness first, though. Dusk was on one large oasis, sharing it with the ruins of castle Dragadune and a strange statue of a giant holding some scales. Stepping on it did nothing, but the statue did indicate I need to be worthy somehow, so apparently, I wasn’t.
Whatever it is that I get here, none of my characters are worthy now.
A second oasis was in the south western corner and it was in perpetual darkness, so I had to use Lasting Light to explore it. There was a large square with a path around it, but I couldn’t get inside the square. I didn’t find a secret entrance, so I assumed there’s a way to teleport in there.
I haven’t mapped the big block in the southwest, so there’s no complete map of E-1 yet.
There were also two “roads” through the desert – places where it in fact wasn’t “too hot”, so I was able to roam freely. These connect the Dusk oasis with more roads in adjacent regions and now that I think about it, actually provide a convenient foot route through the desert.
Dusk is supposed to be the last town of the game, I guess. It’s filled with higher level encounters, including one I had with white dragons, and its store is selling enchanted equipment. The whole town also has an undead theme, with NPC-s being ghosts, location names being related to ghosts, etc.
I’m thinking he wants the message from Agar in Erliquin.
The front area had all the regular stuff, including some stairs to the dungeon bellow, while the back area was a huge maze. The southern area was empty, except for an elf waiting for some couriers. The northern area ended in a zone where you can’t rest, and some parts where you also can’t cast spells. The final part was called the forbidden crypt and it was filled with undead encounters. I didn’t manage to fully clear it yet.
The area below Dusk was just filled with traps and when I say traps, I mean traps that can outright kill you, not just do some minor damage. Some of these traps were avoidable (jumpable), but a lot of them weren’t, so I guess the trick was to figure out which ones to take head on and which ones to avoid. Luckily, the temple in Dusk brings dead people back to life cheaply, at just 200 gold a pop.
The dungeon also had several portals, leading to different places in the world:
There was also what the game described as “a cavernous passage” to the Ruins of Castle Dragadune, which I also haven’t explored yet.
Now, I am not a smart guy. I mean, I am with some things, but not when it comes to using the tools at my disposal. I’ve explored most of this floor, taking trap after trap, before I remembered there’s this not-at-all weird spell called Levitate (2-5). What does this spell do? It helps avoid trap damage. Yup! Except it didn’t work, which should tell you how smart I really am – I went ahead and wrote this passage before actually trying the spell out. I guess levitate only works on certain traps and on floor damage, such as the acid floors from that cave in C-2.
One thing did work, though. Psychic Protection (Sorceror, 4-6) worked like a charm against Mind Blast traps. Since these are the traps that can outright kill anyone, this was extremely useful.
Most of the place was just encounter after encounter, but eventually, I got to the end of it and my reward was a pool which gave everyone “worthy” +4 Accuracy. My entire party got it, so I guess everyone was worthy, whatever that means.
I had a nice, lengthy session of Might and Magic this time, with plenty of progress. Since there’s a lot that happened, I’ll try not to go into details too much.
Since I explored B-1, B-3 and C-2, I decided to go fill out the blanks and explore B-2 as well. I thought it was going to be a minor area, but it ended up being quite complicated.
I’m not sure who the Ice Princess is, but she loves riddles.
There was an ice princess, whoever that is, giving me a riddle in a secret area:
Conqueror of worlds, maker of dreams, the greatest force of all, yet elusive it seems.
At first, I tried with “mind”, but it was wrong, so I got teleported to the west. Later on, I guessed it as “love” and got a diamond key. Even later on, I returned here and got the same riddle again. I answered it again and got a bronze key. I realized I could get infinite bronze keys like this. Since they sell for 250G each, it’s possible to earn money this way, but I’m not sure how effective that is.
The wilderness of B-2, map and notes.
Carved in a tree: 9-9 Raven’s Lair
The black knight hits for insane amounts of damage. I don’t stand a chance right now.
Eventually, I got the idea that the Bronze key might open the door below Portsmith and I ended up being right, but this only happened after I got out of Raven’s Lair.
Raven’s Lair had a nice, simple layout which sort of reminded me of a key, before I fully mapped it. There’s two symmetrical areas in the middle, a web of secret passages to the west, a line of encounters following with a pretty much impossible Rakshasa encounter to the east and a cell complex to the north.
Based on what his laboratory looks like, I’d sooner call Ranalou a mad scientist than a wizard.
There are two key points in this dungeon:
Glass that glitters, rubies that glow, when I twinkle I cast a rainbow. What am I?
My first thought was prism, or something of the sort. It ended up being “crystal”, which was close enough. Luckily, answering incorrectly would simply send me to the next room, so I was easily able to guess it. My reward was a crystal key.
There are stair leading down in one of the rooms. Since level one was tough enough for me, I decided not to explore deeper right now. Instead, when I mapped most of the top floor, I got out. I had the bronze key to try out.
As expected, the bronze key opened the bronze door. The front area, prior to the bronze door, was infested with orcs and ogres, as I already said. The inner area, on the other hand, was filled with demons. It even says so on the central gate:
Demons in conference, do not disturb.
Other than that, the dungeon had several other things of interest:
Dust demons cast sleep and hit for pretty high damage.
That was pretty much it. Other than the demon group in the center, this dungeon is fully mapped and pretty much cleared.
The dungeon below Portsmith, map and notes.
Things changed and I’m stronger now, so I returned to this twisted maze. I got through the traps with simple persistence, since I don’t know of any method to detect a trap before stepping on it. I could now travel more easily, so even getting teleported to C-2, which happened a few times, wasn’t a huge deal.
I got to the final room and found a wizard named Ranalou there.
I am the wizard Ranalou. Are you here to use the portals (Y/N)?
(Y) Good, inside this room are 6 portals, each of which leads to a castle. The statue of judgement requires you to find one prisoner from each of these castles before you may be found worthy.
(N) Then be gone! (Teleport back to start)
So, now I knew what to do with the two prisoners I found in Castles Blackridge and I also know there are more. I couldn’t find a way to figure out which portal leads to which castle, so I figured it out by trying to use them. Once that task was done, I went back to this “laboratory” and searched for secret areas.
There were a few. I realized the place holds even more Thundranium. I found two more at the end of corridors laid out similarly to the first one. Each had a bunch of encounters and each had a portal trap which took me across the world map. It was annoying, but I got through it.
There was one more, secret portal room with portals leading to each of the five towns. I thought this would be useful when I found it, but later on, I figured out the Fly spell and it pretty much became useless.
Rhino Beetles love to spray acid. It can get nasty in larger groups.
There were two small rooms with caged “experimental monsters”. I could beat them with some luck, but I didn’t bother. I guess they belong to the wizard Ranalou.
Why “Korin Bluffs”? Because of what happened in the next section.
I was here and I just figured out a few spells, namely Fly and Water Walking, so I decided to explore the bay with the later spell. There was an island at the center with a couple of encounters and a lookout point, telling me what I can find in the four cardinal directions:
Atop this peak looking:
N – A cave beyond White Wolf.
E – Large beasts above Wyvern Peaks
S- Distant uncharted isles.
W- A pirate ship beyond Korin Bluffs
So, Korin Bluffs is to the west of the island, so I decided to start calling the cave the “Korin Bluffs Cave”. B-4 will be called the “Uncharted Isles” and C-3 will contain the “Wyvern Peaks”.
The wilderness of B-3. Map and notes.
I thought the cave mentioned would be in the unexplored area close to White Wolf castle, but it wasn’t. I found a few hidden passages there and ended up in two secret areas filled with random encounters and ending with a teleport trap taking me to the lookout point above. I wasted a bunch of time getting through both, but at least I got a lot of experience, as well as some items and I also managed to pretty much fully map the B-3 wilderness. There’
The Korin Bluffs Cave, map and notes.
s only one unmapped tile I have left, but I can’t find a way to enter it, so for now, I’ll assume it’s completely inaccessible.
I wonder if there are other such lookouts. I wouldn’t mind naming a few more locations.
I’m slowly getting into the mindset of the game. I started using spells I have on my disposal regularly, I memorized key sequences so the battles are much quicker and I’m even memorizing spells. Fly, Jump, Water Walking, all of this is becoming extremely useful now. I like that there’s basically no direction for me to go to. I can do things in any order I please, as long as I’m able to survive, but slowly, the story and the game are unfolding in front of me, no matter how I do it. It’s refreshing to experience this type of game design.
I’m slowly but surely creating a powerful party.
Oh, by the way, based on the fly spell, it looks like there are a total of 20 overworld areas in Might and Magic Book One, labelled A-1 through E-4. Right now, I managed to visit five and almost fully map four. I guess I have a long way to go.
I also decided to change how I’m doing this a bit. The various map formats, their uploading and handling, etc., is taking far too much of my time. From now on, I’ll supplying the final images of maps with notes here, but I will also bee linking to my Might and Magic Book One Google Drive folder, which I’ve made public for viewing, but not for editing (in case we have nasties here). If you want, you can always make your own copies of all the files.
If you want my working map files, you can find them at the bottom. They all all Excel files whose names start with Maps. The 0-0 file is a template.
Also, I seem to have made a mistake with one of my previous postings. I somehow got into my head that it’s Blackridge West, when it’s in fact Blackridge South. I’ll make a correction in the final files, but I won’t be changing the posting. I like to keep my mistakes visible.
As promised, I spent a lot of time racing with the GoGoCar since last time. It took me a while, but I managed to master the race and get the gold, so I have some tips compiled and ready.
I decided to go with Castle Blackridge next. It was a big step, entering my first castle, but in my head, it was either that, or mapping C-1, to the east of B-1, just so I could try and make it to C-2 on foot, without using any portals.
Progress was huge in Tomba this time. For a moment, I actually thought I would complete the game soon. Alas, it wasn’t as soon as I thought, but still, that’s a lot of progress! As I said it will, it all started with me searching for some more chests and then visiting the mole people.