The objective list I’m left with after my last Might and Magic Book Two session is a bit rigid, so I went through my old notes and added a few more objectives from that. This should give me more things to do.Continue reading
I said I’ll be using the various notes and rumors Might and Magic Book Two is full of to give myself goals from now on, so that’s exactly what I’ll try to do. I took the list I made in my last play, removed the things I’ve already done, cleaned it up a bit and came up with a list of objectives.Continue reading
It’s been two weeks since I last played Might and Magic Book Two. Other games and actual obligations simply kept me away. Naturally, I have no idea where I’m at or where I was about to go, so I’m trying to piece it together.Continue reading
I realized I somehow completely forgot about Thundara and the Snowbeast, so I made it a point to go there next time.Continue reading
Middlegate, Sandsobar, Vulcania and Castle Pinehurst are now completely known to us, but two more towns and four more castles remain. Well, three and a half, so we might tackle the one half this time.
I am not a chronicler of events, nor a historian. I prefer to focus on things that matter to me, not things that might matter to others. Consider this a record of my thoughts, not a chronicle of events.
Lord Hoardall is far from a desirable ally, but we have been at his castle already and I do hate lose ends, so I’ve convinced the group to go back there next. We even took No Name and Harry Kari with us this time.
Woodhaven was even more cluttered than we remembered. I was slightly worried that the lord might be offended of the fact that we haven’t found his Sharp Sabre yet, but in all likelihood, he doesn’t even remember us being here. In any case, he and his men were distracted enough for us to explore the halls freely.
The Green Bishop of Battle managed to get himself captured again, but we also bought another copy of the Green Key, so we freed him once again. Hopefully, this won’t turn into a tradition.
I’m just trying to make fun of repeatable quests here.
Harry and No Name are nowhere near our level of skill, but it has always been my opinion that everyone can be useful with a ranged weapon, as longs as they never shoot over their allies.
The final map of Castle Woodhaven. I’m not sure if the treasure does anything.
We remained at Woodhaven for about a week. It was short, but not without events. I must say, we’ve probably misjudged Hoardall. We all have. He might have an issue with material things, but his treasury is so vast because of it, even I, a paladin, was tested. Of course, I resisted the temptation, but I’m certain Rax and Harry were a few stones heavier as we were leaving.
Outside of that, we found something labeled as M-27 Radicon. I’m not certain what it is, but it looks eerily similar to the J-26 Fluxer, so Lorelei concluded we should take it.
Over the past few months, we’ve been steadily improving our survival skills, hoping to one be able to push through even the densest of forests and steepest of mountains. It might seem arrogant to say we are at that level now, but we are.
We returned to some of the old areas we’ve been to and started scouring through parts we couldn’t get to before. As it were, if a place is difficult to get to, those that do are quite dangerous indeed, so it has been painful.
It paid off, though. We found a cavern or two, secret paths and roads and many other things. It has been extremely difficult for Harry and No Name, but they are slowly getting the hang of it.
Castle Hillstone has its own Zoo, which, apparently, is a place where rich folk keep wild and untamed animals for other rich people to look at. I could understand the attraction in this activity, were I not an adventurer who sees exotic beasts on a daily basis.
Caslte Hillstone also has a dungeon, which we will, naturally, have to explore.
There was also another strange item to be found, this one labeled N-19 Capitor. Our experience with the Inner Sanctum made us familiar with alien technology, so I can now safely say that these items are not from this world. Since there has been one in each of the three castles we visited, I will also assume there is one in every castle.
Lastly, since they are not of this world, I will assume Corak, or someone connected to Corak left the items there for someone like us to find. The lords certainly didn’t put any importance into these items, as they were just placed there as ornaments.
The castle Grand Hall describes the personality of Lord Slayer perfectly. His guests are exotic beasts and monsters from all over the world and his festivities include fighting these beasts, to the death. As for the throne room, the lord had a quest for me, but I couldn’t accept until I paid a visit to Hoardall and formally declined his tasks.
There’s actually a guy selling an Elixir of Remove Quest, or something along those lines at the castle, so that’s what I used. The thing is, the Lord Quests seem to be of the generic type. I picked the page’s quest because I wanted to start from the bottom (there are four quest levels) and I got a task to kill a swamp dog. Easy enough.
This lord somehow captured the Red Bishop of Battle, so we managed to free him with the Red Key. I also freed two more prisoners, claiming they were imprisoned for killing an Earth Wyrm by using Magic instead of Might. Since Lord Slayer gave us a task to kill a Swamp Dog, we should probably keep that information in mind.
In fact, this is exactly what we did as we stepped out of the castle into the swamp and charged into the first pack of dogs we’ve seen. It pays off to keep maps and notes.
The lord rewarded us and gave us another, slightly more difficult task. We are to kill a royal horseman.
Royal horseman? Do the lords have an issue with the queen? We should get to Luxus Palace Royale sooner rather than later.
I urged the party to retire Harry for now and give Sir Hyron a chance to grow for a while.
Our first intention was to go explore Hillstone’s dungeon, but after taking a short stroll through it, we decided against it. Lord Slayer is a peculiar collector of dangerous things. While is Zoo was manageable, his dungeon was way past his Zoo in the danger department.
Instead, we remembered an unremarkable mine close to castle Pinehurst.
Rax clearly hoped to find riches in this mine, but I overheard people talking. The mine was abandoned ages ago and all that was left of the gold once abundant here is fine dust, pretty to look at, but utterly worthless.
Instead, the mine was home to something far less preferable – it was haunted by a dead necromancer and his minions, Sarakin. It was also extremely unstable, with frequent cave-ins taking their toll on us.
This is the spirit you see at the central part of the level. I’m not sure if the “ore” is a type or a pun.
Sarakin’s shade was close to the entance of the mine, warning us to go back, but we chose to ignore it. With Alana and myself ready to turn any undead running, and Sir Hyron and No Name giving backup with their crossbows, we didn’t expect much trouble.
You can also free these two at the mine.
We even freed two adventurers that got trapped by a cave-in and they agreed to assist us in the future, for a symbolic fee.
The final map to Sarakin’s Mine.
Eventually, we found Sarakin’s tomb and fought the shade. It was a difficult battle, with Sarakin himself and some of his minions repelling any weapon attacks and spells, but nothing can fully resist Disintegration. Eventually, they fell and revealed a magical fountain, removing any unnatural aging the shades we fought inflicted upon us.
The ghosts and Sarakin are immune to weapons. The vampires do a lot of ranged damage.
Naturally, we did not clear the mine in one fell sweep. As usual, we went back and forth between this place and MIddlegate several times.
At one of these occasions, just as we were about to enter the mine, Robin heard a noise in the nearby mountains. There was a highlander hunting party camping there. They got their hands on an ornamental sword and offered it to us in exchange for some sparring.
Mountain folk are hard, but they were no match four our cumulative experience and abilities, so the sword was ours.
It is a useless trinket, strictly intended for decoration, but someone clearly lost it, so hoping we would find that someone, we decided to keep it.
I started training hirelings for the class quests ahead. The way I understand it, only the classes related to the quest, accompanied by robbers can go to class quest areas, so I need a group of high level guys to do this. Because of that, I was training No Name, the archer and have switched from Harry Kiri, the ninja, to Sir Hyron, the knight at first, but later on started switching in other potentially useful classes. I’m thinking the robber can be Rax herself, but I should probably have as many high level sorcerers, clerics, paladins, archers and nights as I can.
Well, technically, since I can only have two hirelings, I can also only have two of the required class.
These are the hirelings I managed to free until now. Some of them are at my current level.
I also spent some time going from town to town, taking all of the hirelings to Middlegate, since this is my base of operations, offering the cheapest services.
Here’s my usual party report. Lots of upgrades this time.
A level and a far better armor for Lorelei. Plate Mail +4 got upgraded to a Plate Armor +5.
Also a level and an armor upgrade, but Priscilla also replaced her Magic Charm for another pair of Might Gauntlets. She hits almost as hard as Lorelei now.
Either Rax is all maxed out, or she has really bad luck with item upgrades. She did get three levels, though.
Alana gained two levels and her spell level is now 8. She needs spells, though.
Robin replaced her Ice Sickle for a Speedy Sword, so she can start the battle first again. She also gained a level.
Aleen got nothing. Seriously, no level, no items.
So, just to recap what happened this time.
I explored Castle Woodhaven fully. There are treasure rooms, but I have no idea if there’s anything useful in there. Each castle has a bishop you can free by buying the key of the same color at one of the town’s locksmiths. Each bishop gives you experience for freeing him.
I also explored Castle Hillstone. The Lord is Lord Slayer and he seems to be thematically oriented towards might, but I’m not sure if it has an effect on the game. I freed a couple of hirelings from the castle to. I tried tackling the dungeon, but it’s too tough for now, in my opinion.
The Hillstone bishop apparently gives more experience if you do the arena champion thing I found some messages talking about.
I started training hirelings to make myself more ready for the later class quests, since you can only take characters of that class alongside with robbers on a class quest.
I explored Sarakin’s Mine. I thought the gold dust does something, but I couldn’t find out what. I killed Sarakin and was able to use the rejuvenation fountain behind him. I’m not absolutely sure it makes you younger, but I think it does.
I also got the Valor Sword from a fight in the nearby mountains. It doesn’t do anything, so my guess is that it’s a quest item.
I’ll explore some other place, basically. I have absolutely no idea what that place will be. I’ll also keep training hirelings.
With Pinehurst fully explored and Peabody’s son still missing, it was time to find information elsewhere. Maybe another castle would be a good idea, or maybe even a town dungeon?
Alana claims I have issues; that I’m too keen on shooting things. Why wouldn’t I be? Shooting things is fun.
Anyway, she’s starting to think I’m a bit on the crazy side (which is also fun), so she’s being a pain about me writing a journal. She says it would help with my “issues”. Yeah, right. I don’t have any issues.
Still, I can’t deny writing is a useful skill and I sure have been neglecting it since about forever.
We just got out of Pinehurst, where I had a lot of time to practice my shooting. We decided to go to the dungeon below Sandsobar next. Hopefully, there will be shooting there was well.
My bow is getting worn out, though. I’d like to get a new one soon.
We used a portal to get to Sandsobar, stopped by the blacksmith, bought a yellow ticked and then immediately used it to enter a battle at the monster bowl. We fought Vikings.
Vikings share sprites with dwarves.
Vikings are big, which makes them easy to hit. There’s something about hedgehogs that’s very attractive to me, but I prefer when there’s a challenge.
I knew we should’ve visited this dungeon ages ago. Everything in it is week. The only thing that hurts are the ankle traps and you can’t shoot ankle traps.
Well, you can, but it wouldn’t do you any good.
There was a thief who offered us training in thievery. Rax was being silly and accepted. The thief spoke a bunch of nonsense, confusing Rax even more, took the cash and ran away. I think Rax is even worse at disarming traps now.
Rax’s Thievery is down to 69% now, for some reason. I’m not sure if the thief died it, or if it happened some time before, but I did not like it.
There was a note about a spell around the Elemental Plane of Water. Aleen wanted to write it down, as usual, but then I reminded her we already have the spell, because I’m smart like that and I didn’t want to wait around when I could be shooting things.
We couldn’t find a way forward. We explored every path, but they were all dead ends. Then I remembered a fun game I played as a kid – “wall chicken”. Basically, you charge into walls and see who quits first.
As usual, one of the walls quit first, and we found the thief den.
We crashed our way in and soon found the guild boss, Rinaldo Junior. I wanted to shoot him, but Rax wanted to be a better robber. She sure could use some improvement, so I let the guy go. Apparently, we are more street smart now, whatever that means.
That’s what the game said – you feel more street smart. My thievery didn’t increase, and I didn’t have any slots for a new skill, so I’m not sure what happened there.
Orcs! I love shooting Orcs!
The entire southern half of the caves was filled with some type of orc-pig mutants. I love the way they squeal with an arrow in their behind.
A zombie gave us an Admit 8 Pass for Corak’s Cavern. I’ve seen it all now. My life is fulfilled.
This zombie underneath Sansobar gives you the Admit 8 Pass.
Some killer canine’s made themselves a den in the south eastern part of the dungeon. I turned the entire pack into pincushions and then Rax took the glory by finding a Dog Whistle in the remains. What good is a dog whistle anyway?
The final map of Sandsobar and the Thief’s Den below.
Not much good, actually. It gives a plus one to luck when worn and can be used to cast the Guard Dog spell. There are far better uses of inventory slots.
We are back in Middlegate and it took just over a week to explore the cave. See how much more efficient I am compared to Alana? Heck, we even have time to go to Corak’s Cavern.
We found Lloyd!
Now both Aleen and I can cast a beacon anywhere we want and then return to it later instantly.
I can’t believe I missed this, but the secret passage to where Lloyd was is behind the stairs out of the dungeon. I should’ve known, since I already knew the coordinates from a random message. In any case, I have the spell now. I just have to figure out how to use it.
Ghosts are no fun. Aleen and Priscilla just wave their hands and they go away, but my arrows fly through them. It’s not fair!
Some guy in the cavern only wants to talk to “clerics and their robber assistants” which means the rest of us will be staying in Middlegate, chilling. Oh well. I hope it isn’t too troublesome for them. I don’t want to miss out on the shooting.
Alana and Rax hired two adventurers of their own professions at the Inn and went for it. Alana said it’s a mentorship program, but if you ask me, they just needed cannon fodder.
I’ve been thinking about this mentorship program and it might not be a bad idea. Here’s my pitch:
We offload our spear gear on some poor sods at the Middlegate Inn and maybe even take them with us every once in a while. They get some experience and proficiency and when we need them for some menial task, they have to help us, because it says so in the contract.
I mean, what good is the money we get from selling our gear when a single leprechaun can take it all away? I call that an investment!
Alana and her gang god back during the night. It seems the keepers took our Admit 8 pass the last time we tried to get in, so we need to find that zombie and get another one. Oh well, there’s plenty of time for that later.
To be honest, I don’t think the four would’ve survived the inner crypt by themselves.
I’ve convinced the team to go to Vulcania.
Lava. Lots of bubbling lava. Aleen taught me how to cast levitate, though, so I’m not too worried.
Apparently, there are other heroes known throughout Cron and someone has been keeping track on their whereabouts on the walls of these volcanic caverns. Scribes are strange folk. Paper is so much more practical.
By the Divines, how I hate mazes. This whole cavern is one huge maze. There’s no change in hell this is natural. Nature is incapable of being so cruel. The design of these passages has intent, and it isn’t good intent.
Ogre’s sure have changed since Book One.
What the inferno kind of names are Thund R. and Sir Kill?
Some kind of weird floating head took a look at our Rax and he instantly turned to stone. Luckily, Alana had something to say about that, but it’s funny. Even when there are no traps, Rax, manages to find one.
Divines damn these tunnels! We’ve been navigating a section for two days only to find an out of tune giant singing a terrible song at the end of it.
Some monsters have interesting names.
And then we realized the passage simply circles back.
At the end of one more passage, we finally found something of minor, albeit very minor use. Two adventurers were tied up there, by whom, we weren’t able to find out. The ninja is completely insane, so there’s no information to get out of him, while the other one suffers from amnesia. He even introduced himself as No Name.
They agreed to be at our disposal in the future, so they are now official members of the Mentorship Program.
Unlocking hirelings apparently serves as a reward for exploration.
And with that, we couldn’t find any more passages to navigate through. The volcanic caves were fully mapped, or so it seems.
The caves below Vulcania are mostly one-way secret passage sections. There was a split in one of them, pointing at “Endurance” on one side and “Help” on the other. I was hoping for a stat increasing pool at the end of the Endurance section, but all that was there was a giant. I listened to it, but as was as I can tell, nothing happened.
The final map of Vulcania and the caverns below.
A fool remembers. Everyone else uses ink. I will write down any information I find into my personal notes.
The mystic Thaumaturge of Good can be freed if you enter Right 32 and Left 64.
Look in Castle Xabran at 6,2 and you will find the Earth disc.
Seek the N-19 capitor at 3,13 in Castle Hillstone.
Look by 0,6 in the Luxus Palace Royale for the A-1 Todilor.
Dead Eye and Red Duke are in Bozorc’s control in D1 at 14,1.
Unlucky Sir Kill and Jed I should not have eaten so much fatty food. They are trapped by a cave-in in Sarakin’s.
The Air Disc is at 15,15 in Xabran.
Star Burst is in the center of the Dead Zone
And finally, we have our usual party report. There have been levels and items this time.
Lorelei simply gained a level this time. She’s at 146 health.
Priscilla gained a level and a spell level, so she can cast level 4 clerical spells now. She upgraded her Iron Helm +2 to a Helm +6.
Rax didn’t get any upgrades, but she did gain two levels. Her thievery is at 70% now. It dropped to 69% for some reason, but it’s going up again, apparently.
Alana gained no levels this time, but she did at least upgraded her Helm from +4 to +6.
Robin also gained no levels, but she didn’t get any upgrades either.
Aleen gained now levels, but she did get one major upgrade. Her Defense Ring +2 is now a Defense Ring +7, so her armor class is finally starting to look decent.
White Knights are the bane of my existence. For some reason, the only thing that has even a remote chance to deal damage to them is Disintegration, and even then, not one has it been an instant kill. Basically, I’m better off just running away with white knights.
Outside of that, things have become much easier once I got Raise Dead and Stone to Flesh. I can now recover from almost anything, so the risk of losing progress is greatly reduced. This means I can stay away from town longer and thus explore much faster.
As for the writing, it’s probably as bad as ever, but at least I have something of a system now.
Three town dungeons are cleared. I assume the one under Atlantium is probably too difficult, but I might try clearing Thundara. There’s the snow beast there as well.
After a year, we are certainly getting stronger. That much we can be sure off. We are also certain there is something sinister troubling the world of Cron. What that is, however, we have no idea. It’s time for some diplomacy.
It has been a year and we know nothing of this world. There must be a reason Corak summoned us here, but he is long dead now and I made wow not to dabble in necromancy. We must get information the conventional way. We must visit the castles. Lord Hoardall is obviously of no use, so we will put our hopes in the other lords.
We arrived at castle Pinehurst after a day’s journey. The guards allowed us entry after we have proven to possess the key, which must function like some sort of pass.
Hoardall was a lord, but at least his castle seemed like a castle, although filled with clutter. Pinehurst, however, is built as a cryptic puzzle. Immediately upon entry, I knew this place would be a pain, with the two entry doors uselessly marked as Left Door and Right Door. It took a day to get here, though, so I urged the group to stick with it and pick a door at random.
Rax hoped her thief’s luck would help, so she decided for us to take the right door. We entered a rectangular room filled with even more doors and a sign saying the unmarked ones are dangerous. As the sign said, some of the doors had more cryptic labels, but some remained unmarked. At this point, I wasn’t certain I should trust the sign, but we would find out soon enough.
Before looking behind any of the doors, I wrote down all of the labels, hoping to find some meaning in them. To my surprise, the meaning was clear, as long as the labels were read from the correct point, in the order they appeared on the doors.
Beware the time traps. The world will end in the year 1000.
For the first time since we arrived to Cron, I felt like I had some concrete knowledge of the situation. In Varn, messages like this one were left behind by Corak. Since he was the one who brought us here, I feel it would be prudent to assume he is the author of these messages as well. Because of that, Aleen, Priscilla and myself decided to take them seriously, though Rax and Lorelei remained reserved. As usual, Robin didn’t really care. She just wants to shoot her bow at enemies.
I died a bunch of times in castle Pinehurst, due to some of the monsters paralyzing the entire group, etc.
We lost a year. We took a stroll through one of Pinehurst’s hallways, fighting enemies along the way and stumbled into a force field. As soon as we entered, everything around us started to speed up greatly. We got out noticing nothing. Upon our return to Middlegate, though, the Innkeeper asked us where we were for a year.
There’s two of these traps in Pinehurst, that I know of.
The world ending in the year 1000 might not have seemed urgent before, but if these traps are expected to be common in the days ahead, then those days might turn into years very quickly.
This is starting to turn into a full on siege. We had to go back to Middlegate to resupply and rest before venturing back into Pinehurst. Not counting the year we lost, we have been exploring the castle for three days now, and we have yet to see any official or anyone willing to even talk to us, for that matter.
I’m beginning to think the lords of Cron aren’t lords at all – just pawns in some strange, incomprehensible game.
Slowly but surely, though, we are learning about the world.
And now we’ve lost another year. I knew there was going to be more time traps such as the one we already fell in and I urged the party to remain alert, but there is simply no way of recognizing it until it’s too late. This time, there was no need to go back to Middlegate. Everyone already knows how time dilation feels.
We found an item in one of the hallways, which was already described to us as the J-26 Fluxed. We have no idea what it is, but we took it as important and picked it up.
I don’t know where it was described to me, but the game says so, so I’m rolling with it.
We found the throne room and it only took us three years. Lord Peabody actually seemed like a normal person. His castle wasn’t some elaborate puzzle. It simply served as a laboratory for his experiments with time. The traps we stumbled into were regrettable, but they weren´t actually traps – they were simply consequences of some of his failed research.
This one actually has an almost normal name.
The lord had a favor to ask of us, though. His son Sherman went missing and he asked us to find him. In return, he would allow us the use of his Way Back machine, which is a time travel device, as best as I can figure out. Having something like that under our control would greatly help us in stopping the eventual cataclysm.
There is a dungeon below castle Pinehurst which we fully intend to explore. It seems we would stay here for even longer than expected.
We encountered a Leprechaun. Our hard-earned money is gone again.
We found the Yellow Room and freed the Bishop of Yellow Battle, by using the Yellow Key. This is the second Bishop we freed, the first one being in castle Woodhaven.
We entered the dungeon.
Rax keeps dying to traps she is supposed to disarm. Aleen was forced to fly us back to Middlegate several times in order to resurrect her. She constantly boasts about her skill in thievery, but I’m starting to wonder.
The dungeon was taken over by demi-humans, helped by some traitorous soldiers. We are slowly navigating through it, but the constant fighting is taking its toll. Luckily, the soldiers have some high-quality equipment, so we are at least getting something out of it.
There was a lever with a cryptic message next to it, advocating accuracy over speed. Aleen figured it needs to be pulled in a precise manner, so she advised Robin to try and do it, but as far as we can tell, nothing happened.
Robin seems more sluggish than usual. It’s possible the lever she pulled may have affected her somehow. Her hands do seem steadier.
I have no idea what the leaver did, but Robin is acting after Aleen now, so it’s possible it reduced her speed and increased her accuracy. I should pay more attention in the future.
Aleen just realized something is blocking her teleportation spell while in the dungeon. This might end up troublesome.
There was a hallways with a sign proclaiming NO KNIGHTS. We chose to ignore it and suddenly, we were someplace else. It was the same dungeon, but a different part of it.
We met a friendly face in the dungeon. An old knight offered to take us to the Luxus Palace to fight bad guys. This dungeon was challenge enough, so I politely declined.
An ancient curse was placed at the end of a hallway. It was probably placed by some misguided wizard, as there was no sense of malice behind it, but it did end up draining our magic and preventing us from being fully prepared for the ambush that followed. Aleen and I managed to retreat to safety to return and retrieve our friends´ bodies, but luckily, Robin managed to hold her ground and dispose of the last enemy with the last bits of strength she had remaining. We rested and moved on.
All of the recent combat experience has put a strain on the powers provided to me by the Divine, but it also taught me how to tap into them more efficiently. I am now able to take my allies back from the brink of death.
There was another hallway with a sign, this one banning paladins. Again, ignoring it took as to a different part of the dungeon.
Though her skills at disarming traps are questionable, one cannot deny Rax’s loyalty. We were ambushed by a group of wild men and all but here were felled. She hid, waited for them to leave our bodies and then dragged us one by one all the way back to the temple in Middlegate. Without her, we would have long perished by now.
Another leprechaun.
Aleen´s power is frightening. She is able to outright destroy several creatures at a time if she chooses to.
I’m talking here about the Disintegrate spell. I’m aware it was extremely useful in some versions of Might and Magic Book One, but that wasn’t the case in the version I played. In the first game, this spell would simply miss the vast majority of times.
In Might and Magic Book Two, though, it’s simply amazing. It targets a group of up to four enemies and it has a decent chance to outright destroy any of them. If it fails at that, it does exactly 50 damage, which is a very decent amount. Finally, it can fail completely, but this happened very rarely and it almost never happens on all the enemies it targets. Usually, at least one if not more are outright destroyed.
What’s even better is that it has a measly cost of six gems and six spell points.
Adventuring is a profession that enables one to see the world. Over and over again, events demonstrated how some things that seem universal are simply cultural.
For instance, the mountain men that sometimes attack us could easily pass for women in some cultures. Their very existence proves the definition of masculinity is certainly not universal.
I thought I’d use the opportunity to make fun of sprite recycling.
We found a pool within the dungeon today. We all stepped into it and felt changed, but we aren’t sure in what way.
The pool said that all who are worthy attained a new level of accuracy, but the attribute didn’t increase for anyone. Either there’s a Clerics of the South type of procedure that needs to be done in Might and Magic Book Two, or the message meant something else.
Another hallway and another sign – No humans. This one is strange, since there was another one exactly like it at the dungeon entrance, but there was nothing that happened to us even though we ignored it. This one, however, sends us to the same spot the other two sent us.
The dungeon below castle Pinehurst is now fully explored. All that remains are the strange hallways.
Priscilla was waiting for us at the Middlegate Inn while we returned to the dungeon and carefully navigated towards the hallways blocking access to humans and paladins. The later was home to a magical grail which used to belong to the hero priest Agate, but we aren’t sure what the former did. We felt a surge of power as we touched upon the back wall and I can personally say that I do feel different, but I’m not sure what exactly happened.
The irony here is that Priscilla is the only one among us able to make use of the Agate’s grail.
This time, Lorelei waited for us in Middlegate, so we could access the last blocked hallway of the Pinehurst dungeon. This one was well worth the trouble, though it didn’t seem that way at first.
It contained a completely uninteresting piece of ivory jewelry. We took it anyway and brought it back to Lorelei. Upon touching it, she immediately felt a surge of strength she never felt before. This is something she will treasure for a long time to come.
I’m guessing this and Agate Grail are class items and I’m guessing there’s one for each class.
With that, castle Pinehurst was fully explored. There is no reason for us to go back to the dungeon and we know where we can find Lord Peabody if any news off his son comes up.
I got a “surge of power” from a non-human hallway and two pretty awesome items from the class-related hallways, which are only wearable by the classes I had to leave behind to get it. I’m not sure what the surge of power did, but I think it increased some of my attributes.
My final map of Castle Pinehurst and the dungeon below.
As for the two items, Agate’s Grail increases personality by 15, while the Ivory Cameo does the same for Might. Lorelei now has over 50 might.
A fool remembers. Everyone else uses ink. I will write down any information I find into my personal notes.
The world will end in the year 1000. Beware the time traps.
To win the Queen’s Triple Crown, take a Black Ticket to the Arena, Monster Bowl and Coliseum. After victory has been achieved, return for your reward.
This is a helpful tip, but it makes no sense why it would be here.
A man in Pinehurst dungeon can transport us to Luxus Palace.
And finally, we have our usual party report. There have been levels and items this time.
Lorelei gained another level and found some upgrades. Her Iron Helm +1 was replaced with a Helm +7 and she got rid of her Hero Medal +2 in favor of the Ivory Cameo. Her might is now at 52.
Priscilla also gained a level, though she started to fall behind now. She replaced her Hero Medal with the Agate Grail and upgraded her Iron Helm and Magic Charm. She replaced her Ice Sickle with a Tri-Sickle +5, sacrificing some frost resistance for a lot of extra damage.
Rax gained a level and upgraded her Great Shield +2 to a Great Shield +4. That’s about it for her this time.
Alana gained a spell level as well as a character level. She didn’t get any new items, though. The important thing is that she can now raise the dead.
Robin gained two levels, replaced her War Hammer +2 with Priscilla’s ice Sickle +3 and upgraded her Hero Medal.
Aleen gained two levels and a spell level, but she already got my favorite spell (Disintegrate), so that’s not important. She upgraded her Hero Medal with a hand-me-down from someone else.
I’m thinking I should go back to Woodhaven and fully explore it, or maybe visit one of the town dungeons. I should also maybe reduce the amount of details in these logs. Seven pages!
There was a small part of the desert that wasn’t mapped yet, so after writing down the message Aleen deciphered, we asked her to fly us there. This was a mistake.Continue reading
It’s been a year since we arrived to Cron and the New Year’s celebrations took over our last few days. With a new year, it was time for new efforts.
We went back to the swamp, or at least, we intended to. We flew to the western edge of it, but the first step into the marshes got us into a sinkhole. Moments later, we were surrounded by dust and dirt.
A brief look around the area told us where we were. This must have been the entrance to the Plains of Earth. There were mountains to the northwest, so based on our previous experiences, we concluded this was the south-eastern edge of the material plane of Cron.
Since we were here now, we decided to make the best of it and figure out some spells before we flew back into Middlegate. Alana and Priscilla meditated together for a while and it soon bore fruit. They constructed a prayer to the elemental forces to encase them into the very elemental force of earth.
We ate lunch at the Slaughtered Lamb tavern before Aleen flew us back to the swamp.
The western part of the marshes was far more unstable, with sinkholes and quicksand forcing us to fly back and forth constantly. One should never get used to death, but it certainly seems we’re getting used to our own.
I thought I have to remember where the line split was. It was unnecessary,
That being said, we mapped out most of the swamp and concluded there is nothing left there to look for. We know of the cave in the middle of it as well as some dangerous creatures in the south, but that’s it. It was time to redirect our efforts.
We could hear the ocean west of the swamp, but a thick forest was blocking passage. Instead, we opted to move in from oaken grove, were the druids already began to move back into the area. It seems the creatures of Cron are extremely persistent.
The south was mostly covered in water.
The first thing we noticed was the artificial peninsula with the sign marking the “Evil Zone” wasn’t a peninsula at all. The narrow strip of land was actually connected to a similar flat area to the south, this one marked the “Good Zone”. On both of these, a small fortress was built. No guard were in front of either – only a sign proclaiming “Sorcerers only”. It seems Aleen will be able to decide on her allegiances soon.
To the south of this strange geographic construction was another island. This one was of natural origin, but obviously cultivated. It was owned by a name named Murray, who transformed it into a resort.
Each tile on the island gives you an option to use it in some way (have a drink, take a mud bath, etc.). The effect is different for every tile and it can go either way. One of them requires me to buy a ticket from one of the cities (paid customers only). I’ll try and see what I get from it later, but I’m not really interested right now.
We were already at the entrance to the Plains of Water before, but now, thanks to our experiences, we knew exactly where the portal was. We soon approached the mountains dividing the southwestern corner of the material plane and the elemental plains and started scanning the horizon.
Something caught our eye. It looked like a crumbled roof, peering out of the mountain tops.
We marched towards it and soon discovered an old ruined tower, belonging to what was obviously a military garrison. In one of the rooms, affixed to the table at the center, there was an old scroll, barely holding together. Aleen took a look at it and gasped.
It was a spell scroll containing instructions on how to cast the clerical spell of Water Transmutation.
This one was completely, absolutely unexpected, but now I have to (re)visit the other four corners.
To the north of the mountain range, there was also, of course, the city of Atlantium. We decided to pay a visit to it on foot for the first time and took another look at the various shops and establishments.
Now that we had money, it was easy to spoil ourselves with the finest meals at the local tavern, but far more important was that the smithy was selling magical rings of defense. At 9000 gold a piece, they did not come cheap, but the protection they provide to some of our physically less hard members is priceless.
Rings of Defense +2 apparently add four armor class, so I bought them for anyone who has a free slot, which included Alana, Aleen and Robin. Alana now has an armor class of 32, which is absolutely amazing.
Did you see that armor class!?
The Sandsobar region was quick to explore. It’s located in the southeastern corner of the material plane, right next to the elemental Plane of Earth, where we already were.
Aside from the city itself and the famous healing fountain to the south of it, there was nothing of note.
We were back at the southern edge of desert.
Cron’s elemental origins are constantly apparent, especially in instable areas such as this one. Frequent earthquakes would trigger avalanches and landslides, inflicting pain and exhaustion upon our group, forcing us to frequently return to Middlegate.
Eventually, we mapped a large part of the desert and found that there was an oasis at the center. Hoping to find something magical and amazing, we stumbled onto a pull. Against our better judgement, which must have been just as exhausted as the rest of us, we decided to step into it.
As we got out, our bags contained nothing but ooze, with small pieces of their former content. Some strange liquid completely melted everything we had.
It took as a week of flying, teleporting and portal travel before we finally had our most important items back – the castle key, the different colored keys we bought at the locksmith’s and the strange tickets the blacksmiths were selling.
That’s a week of our lives completely wasted, all due to carelessness.
Still, the southern desert region was explored.
Aleen was up all night, trying to decipher some code, bits of which we found written in green lettering throughout Cron. She was fiddling with the cipher for a while now, but last evening, she seemed to have hit a breakthrough and did not sleep until she was done.
It turns out, some other random text that only Rax knew about, but wrote down just in case, was the cipher key. Once she realized that, it was just a matter of time before the cipher was broken and the hidden message was revealed:
For each individual to become true, see the jury which resides at Mount Farview. Travel in groups of appropriate class. A Robber can aid all others with their task.
None of us is completely sure what this means, but Corak did leave use notes back in Varn, which turned out to be extremely helpful. Perhaps he was prepared for what would happen in Cron as well, so he decided to aid us before he passed away.
In any case, we have already seen things related to our individual professions, so there’s a strong chance that all of this is somehow connected.
It definitely is. The game isn’t big enough for there to be anything else. I’ve seen special areas or characters connected with most of the game’s classes up to now. It looks like I’ll be able to take a robber along with one of the characters to each of these.
But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. We’ve been to three of the four corners of the material plane, and we would like to visit the fourth. The problem is, there’s a volcano blocking our way.
As usual, here’s where the valorous group of adventurers is currently at…
Lorelei received absolutely no upgrades this time. Some nice items dropped, but the alignment requirement was sadly wrong, so I was forced to sell them.
No upgrades for Priscilla either, but she did get up to spell level 3, meaning she can now cast Walk on Water as needed, as well as Cure Poison, saving up Alana’s spell points.
No upgrades and no additions to Rax, sadly. A nice set of Thief’s Picks dropped, but again, they were of the wrong alignment.
Alana got a Defense Ring +2 since last time, bought at the shop in Atlantium. Her Armor Class is now 32, the highest in the party.
Robin also got a Defense Ring, since she had an empty slot. She also reached spell level 3, so I now have two transport services in my party. She can now cast all the extra costly spells, so Aleen can finally dish out some serious damage.
Aleen also got a Defense Ring, but more importantly, she got to spell level 6. Disintegration, Super Shock and Fantastic Freeze sound awesome.
The desert was large and dangerous. The result of our exploration was not matching our efforts. There was a dangerous cave and there was sand; nothing else. Within a few days, we were back in Middlegate.
To the northeast, there were the goblin lands. A few weeks ago, we went there, hoping to find Vulcania, but gave up after several goblin ambushes. We were stronger now.
We were much stronger now.
The goblins posed no threat at all. Even their orc leader could barely put a dent in our defenses.
I’m thinking “Bozorc” is a pun of some sort. Maybe “boss orc”?
In fact, they were pathetically week, to the point where we took pity and them and decided not to raid their villages.
There was a reason he goblins settled there, though. Dragons don’t bother with pathetic creatures and goblins don’t bother with pride, so the nearby dragon flight served as convenient, though slightly dangerous protection.
Wyverns are stronger than in the previous game, but not by much.
For us, the flight served as a source of gold and danger for a while, but not for too long. They seemed far to organized, so we did not want to risk meeting the brood mother (or –father, we do not discriminate).
The area near the road in D-1 had frequent goblin ambushes. Goblins are weak, but they attacked in scores here, so it was a bit annoying to fight them. There were also a few goblin villages where the game gives the choice to raid or ignore them. For now, we ignored, but they probably reset anyway.
North of the road, you mostly fight Cloud Dragons and Earth Wyrms. Both can be defeated, but with some bad luck, both encounters can be extremely dangerous. The biggest danger, though, is the fact that one of the encounters, which seems to be random, is against an extremely dangerous opponent whose name I forgot. What I do know is that can do several hundred points of damage to everyone in the party, so there’s no chance in hell I can defeat it right now.
At the far end of the dragon infested area, there’s a cave called the Dragon Dominion. Suffice to say, I got in and immediately went out.
At the far east of the road, in a small canyon, there’s a fixed encounter against a large group of orcs and their leader. As with goblins, orcs are weak. Their leader can pack quite a punch, though, so it’s important to kill him first. The encounter provides decent experience for the effort, but not much else. It might be quest-related or something.
Further east, we realized how close we to Vulcania when we gave up a few weeks ago. “Just around the corner” would be a very appropriate phrase here. Unfortunately, the name of the city is Vulcania for a reason. It was built near a volcano, and the volcano is active.
Getting murdered by falling debris did not interest us so we returned to Middlegate, as we always do.
Vulcania is at the very edge of E1. A few steps past the city, you get a chance of randomly being hit by eruption debris and outright killed, so there was no point in trying to explore the place for now. There’s also an alternative route into E1 in the northern part of D1, but the same thing happens a few steps in.
We’ve been to Sandsobar, but we are still not familiar with the lands between it and Middlegate. We knew there was the castle Hillstone along the way, but that’s all we knew.
Instead of visiting Hillstone and getting another, undoubtedly pointless task from the local madm… err, lord, we decided to explore the nearby marshes. Certainly, there would be poison and disease, but there’s bound to be treasure as well.
First, we took a walk along the edge of the marshlands, simply to get an idea of how large they actually are. The walk took us several days, so it’s safe to say the marshlands are large.
Several days later, after some preparation with items and spells, we stepped into the muck, starting from the eastern side.
Mostly, it was empty and flat. Packs of aggressive swamp dogs roamed freely, but they posed no threat to our experienced group.
Several large rocks decorated the landscape, with bright lights floating around them. It was a thing of beauty from a distance. From up close, it was pain and death for the careless – lightning bugs.
There was a cave in the middle of the marshes, with signs discouraging random adventurers from entering. For now, we decided to take heed, but soon, we would be back and ready to loot and pillage, or more likely, carefully map and explore.
As I said, the two swamp areas (D4, C4) were mostly empty. A few cliffs have fixed encounters against lightning bugs and you get attacked by swamp things, acidic blobs or random low level swamp-themed enemies. Other than that and the cave, belonging to a person named Dawn, if I remember correctly, there was nothing else.
Keeping up with our tradition, we went back to Middlegate and decided to return to the western regions, to fight orcs, corrupt merchants and gryphons, but with no intention to try and explore the snow wastes.
As it turns out, the Circus was in operation. The last time we were in the area, the season just ended, so all we found was empty ground.
It was entertainment for the common people. Our party would easily be able to handle the various tests and games, so we opted out, for the sake of giving the common folk a chance. Lancelot took part in the strength challenge once, just to get a single cupie doll as a souvenir and we moved on.
Instead, we went and took care of the orc army camped nearby. Within hours, several hundred orcs were no more.
We also took the secluded path behind the Circus grounds, where we knew wild Gryphons roamed. There were more than we expected, and the path was far longer than we thought, but after a while, we found a clearing, where the Archer was waiting.
The Archer?
In Atlantium, several inscriptions told legends of famous adventurers, each mastering their own craft. We already met the Jouster and the Guardian, who we’ve failed to mention in this journal. This one was the Archer and we wanted to talk to our own archer, Robin, in private. Our issue with that was that our own archer was not able to get here on his own yet, so we told the legendary adventurer we would be back later.
I already mentioned Atlantium in one of these side notes. I found the Jouster, which is supposed to be the knight, in B3. The Guardian, I’m guessing the paladin, is in C3 and apparently, the Archer is in B2. I have no idea what I need to do with these guys, but the Archer seems to require me visiting him with only Robin in my party, which I can’t do, since I would have to fight a bunch of gryphons on the way to him.
The circus provides a bunch of challenges you can take part in, but all you get for winning are cupie dolls, so there’s no point. I remember a random NPC asking for one of those, though, so I took one with me, just in case.
After hundreds of orcs, corrupt merchants and gryphons slain, the cold northwest suddenly seemed very alluring.
This was where Tundara was geographically placed. An information such as this is something your average city-dweller does not possess, since portal travel is the standard in Cron and moving about the world on foot, by carriage or on horseback seems far too dangerous.
The snow did not hide much, but it wasn’t all for nothing. On the southern edge of the plains, just slightly north of Pinesworth Castle, an abomination of a spider had its lair. It was the size of a comfortable mansion and it seemed hungry.
Then it spoke!
It gave us a riddle. We are to guess what Mark lost, or it would devour us. How this is a riddle, we had no idea, but we met Mark already. His camp was south of Woodhaven and every traveler knew he lost his keys. This was our answer and our reward. The Death Spider, was it called itself, gave us Mark’s keys. How the creature had them in the first place, no one is likely to ever know.
For a death spider, that’s quite a mundane quest.
We brought them to Mark and returned to the snow plains. The area around Tundara was highly unstable and after a few days of exploration, an avalanche pushed us past the mountain barrier, into the icy area beyond.
Mark lost his keys. You lose your head if you don’t have them.
We’ve been to a similar place before, to the south. Down there, a whirlpool pushed us to the very edge of the elemental plane of water. This, on the other hand, was obviously the elemental plain of air. Taught by our experience, we set up camp and spent some time in the area.
A few days of meditation was enough for Alana and Priscilla to create a new spell – Air Encasement. With that, we took flight and returned to Middlegate before some powerful creature would destroy us, together with the camp.
These air elementals sure look like ghouls to me.
The ice plains cover almost four entire map regions, but the A1 and A2, which I explored this time, had almost nothing in them. There was the Death Spider in A2 and there was Tundara itself in A1, but other than that, there wasn’t anything of importance.
Of course, half of A1 was part of the Air Elemental Plane, though I don’t really understand how that works. On one hand, there’s a portal leading to the Plane in the area, which would imply that this wasn’t the Plane yet, but on the other hand, the message about learning the Air Encasement spell was written like this was the Plane already.
Giving Mark his keys gave us 10.000 experience points, which isn’t a huge reward, but it’s repeatable, so it could be a good source of early levels. For me, flying back and forth 20 times for a single level doesn’t sound like fun.
The air elemental area, of course, has encounters with air elementals. They hit the entire party for over 100 damage per character, so they’re beyond me for now.
The World Map in Might and Magic Book Two wraps, which I don’t think is something that happened in Secret of the Inner Sanctum. In the first game, the area map wrapped if you used Teleport or Etherealize, but that’s it.
It wraps in a weird way to, like it wasn’t supposed to. Snow suddenly cuts off in A2 and the desert from E2 starts in a straight line. The elemental plains are even weirder, since there’s one in each corner of the map. Basically, you move from ice to fire in a single step.
It also wraps in the north and south, so it isn’t simulating a sphere either.
I’m thinking it might be some sort of side-effect of the game engine and not something intentional. For the sake of being able to write a story, I didn’t use this to enter the fire and earth plains yet.
As usual, here are my characters, and here’s where they’re at…
The Might Gauntlets provide 7 strength when worn and another 11 or so when used. The using part isn’t important, but the constant extra 7 to strength provided a nice boost to Lorelei’s damage.
Priscilla recently reached spell level 2, so she’s more useful in that department as well, being able to take over protective spells from now on. The Ice Sickle +3 dropped randomly, which pretty much proves that the Ice Sickle +2 I got in the snow area wasn’t some special artifact.
The chain mail and the shield were Rax’s upgrades this time. Her thievery is at 72%, but we still get hit by traps very often. An important change in Might and Magic Book Two is that traps are now able to hit twice, it seems. This means that traps can kill you if you’re low on health in Gates to Another World. In Might and Magic Book One, traps would only hit once, meaning that as long as you have at least 1 health left, no trap can ever kill you, only knock you unconscious.
Alana got the helm, the shield and the splint mail this time, so things went well for her. Her spell level also went up to 6, so she can cast strong spells. The only spells I know right now are Rejuvenate, Water Encasement and Stone to Flesh. I hope to learn more soon, but I guess I should start exploring dungeons for that.
The Great Bow is the obvious upgrade this time. Compared to a regular old Long Bow +1 (I think that’s what I had), this was amazing. Robin also reached spell level 2, so she took over Eagle Eye and Protection from Magic, allowing Aleen to conserve her spell points.
I don’t think Aleen got any upgrades this time, except maybe Padded Armor +2. She used to wear a normal padded armor, but I can’t remember when she replaced it. There’s no level 11 for Aleen yet either, which means there are no level 6 spells.