Might and Magic III: Main Quest and Methuselahs

I don't even have a theory as to why a skull impaled on a stick is helping me out.

      

I ended the last session saying that I had no idea what was going on with the main quest. That resolved in a hurry. Following the Tomb of Terror, the rest of Map F2 was basically a bunch of speaking skulls stuck on poles who outlined the steps of the main quest somewhat literally, in Van Caneghem's usual no-attention-paid-to-meter verse:

Seek the castles on the Isles of Illusion

And right the curse that was cast in confusion

Before the mages slip into eternal slumber

They will each give half the magic number

In the heart of Minotaur Marsh you'll find

The dungeon of a thousand halls that wind

Enter the halls with the golden key

And an Ultimate Adventurer you're likely to be.

Deliver eleven orbs to your King of choice

And give his followers cause for rejoice

Take the reward you will then acquire

To the ancient pyramid on the Isle of Fire

Enter the pyramid on the fiery isle

To face the final test and trial

The Hologram Cards of six will gain

Access to the computer's brain.

Okay, so I have to give 11 orbs to one of the three kings, become an Ultimate Adventurer in the Maze from Hell, then descend into the central pyramid and use the Hologram Cards I've been collecting. I still don't know why, but at least I have a blueprint. Of course, in the tradition of the previous games, by the time you get all of these messages, that's probably what you would have done anyway.
     

The final map of the surface of Terra.

    
F2 also had a pyramid, which again I saved for later. I would note here that Column F basically abandoned the "lair" system used during most of the game, by which you find and destroy enemy "spawn points." Those didn't exist in any of the column's maps. I think there were a couple areas of Column E that lacked them, too.

Before continuing, I made 4 or 5 rounds in the Arachnoid Cavern and sacrificed gems to increase attributes. You'll recall that the caverns have a set of about 12 crystals that increase a single character's luck, accuracy, intelligence, or personality when you touch them. Paying 5,000 gems to an NPC in the caverns "resets" the crystals so you can do it again. Based on the fact that I continued to collect copious gems throughout this session, I really should have made more like 10 rounds.

Moving on to F3, representing the southeast corner of the large swampy island, I found it crawling with trolls. There were a bunch of statues that said they would "remember me" for vast amounts of money; I didn't know what that meant, but I had plenty of money and said "sure" to all of them. One statue said he would "make the others forget me." I assume that being remembered by the statues confers some benefit, and then having the other one make them forget allows me to pay them and get the benefit again.
       

          
The most important feature of F3 was the Maze from Hell, a large dungeon that really wasn't all that bad. Its major combats were with minotaurs and medusas. Minotaurs are extremely hard to hit, but not so much for fountain-enhanced party members. Keeping a "Lloyd's Beacon" set next to that 100-point fountain and another one set to wherever I needed it meant that I could zip out of the dungeon and back every time I needed a boost.
     

      
Medusas were more annoying since they have a ranged attack that turns one or two party members to stone. A couple of characters have "Stone to Flesh," so it wasn't a huge deal, but I learned to "Teleport" or "Jump" to melee range the moment I saw them so I could avoid the ranged attack.
        

I rather prefer my medusas with long red hair.

    
There were "whirlpool traps" at many intersections, but I just "Jumped" these when I could. The corridors held chests that usually caused instant death for the character opening them (unavoidable, not dependent on thieving skill), but I still had to open every damned one because one of them had the final Hologram Sequencing Card. I also got a few more Ultimate Power Orbs.
      

      
The center of the dungeon had a fountain of "Water Mane, fabled ruler of the Great Sea." Drinking from the fountain bestowed us with the Ultimate Adventurer title.
      

     
After I finished with the Maze from Hell, I almost immediately returned to the Tomb of Terror. The vampire king's chamber held four thrones which had rejected me because I wasn't an "Ultimate Adventurer" yet. It turns out that each of these thrones offers a permanent +30 increase in character level, but at the expense of decreasing all attributes to 3.

I agonized over this for a while. 120 levels is a pretty massive boost (my characters all hit Level 100 after this session). They wouldn't be worth much if I couldn't hit or damage anything, but I could conceivably solve the attribute problem with fountains, barrels, the crystals in the Arachnoid Cavern, and the slot machines in Slithercult Stronghold, if I ever found any more Quatloo Coins. It would be particularly simple if I had a single character sit in all the thrones. On the other hand, the thought of doing all that exhausted me a bit and the extra levels felt terribly unbalanced. It's not like the game was giving me much grief as it was. In the end, I made what was probably a dumb decision and reloaded, leaving the thrones behind.

I had a handful of Ultimate Power Orbs, which I gave to the evil king for 1 million experience each. When I was done, I think the good king had 6, the neutral king 4, and the evil king 8. I'm walking a fine line here. I ultimately want to favor the neutral king, I think, but I don't want him to get to 11 too soon, because I'll lose the ability to give excess orbs to the other kings. On the other hand, I don't want to get to a point where I haven't given anyone 11 yet and I don't know where to find anymore.
     

The "awards" section keeps track of how any orbs you've handed off.

   
I hadn't leveled up in a while, so back in town, everyone gained about 10 levels, costing millions of gold pieces. When I was done, the NPCs valued themselves at 150,000 gold per day. This was the turning point. Although I still had about 15 million back in the bank, I could see it disappearing awfully fast.

I was just on the cusp of booting the two NPCs when I hit on a realization: if you don't have enough money to pay them at 05:00, they leave the party and return to the inn where you enlisted them. But they don't maintain the debt, and they don't ask for money up-front when they join the party. They also don't shed their items or even forget their default spells. So if you just "Town Portal" directly to the inn and enlist them again, they happily join as if there's no problem. Basically, once you have "Town Portal" and "Lloyd's Beacon," there's no reason to ever pay another NPC. You just warp to the inn when they leave, pick them up again, and warp back.
    

Sure, I'll pay. Welcome aboard.

    
Thus keeping the archer and druid in the party, I moved on to F4. It was a fairly useless map--just a continuation of E4 with the same desert island, same oases, and the same "vulture rocs" (now easy for my over-leveled party) that appear every time you find buried treasure. There were a couple of new wells. One of them gave me a bunch of high-level items for no reason. The other two wanted 10,000 gold each, one for a minor increase in temporary spell points, the other for a temporary +50 increase in levels. The latter stacks, I should mention, so you could get a character to absurd heights. I'll return to this one if I ever encounter a very difficult enemy again.
     

A good buffing point if I need it later.

     
The map also had a pyramid, making one pyramid in Column A, one in Column C, and three in Column F.
     

Whatever that means.

    
Day 99 was coming around by this point, so I went to Rainbow Isle and collected the seashell when it arrived on the beach.
     

This is so you can't get more than one per year.

      
I returned to the nymph Athea in Map A4 and gave her the shell. She gave us 250,000 experience points and gold and again made my male characters fall in love with her. Not bad, but that was it? I'd been following clues about Athea for the entire game. I think the minotaurs offered as much experience.

 
Reflecting that Princess Trueberry wanted me to bring her "true love" or something, I wondered if my male characters' status would do. I returned to her hut and "presented" each character to her. Clearly, that's what I was supposed to do because she had a reaction to them but concluded that "there is not enough love left in the land to release me from my sorrow." She did "cure" the characters at the same time, but otherwise I don't know what to do with her. The whole alicorn horn thing may go unsolved.
      

Clearly, this was the right thing to do, but it had no ultimate effect.

     
At this point, I had nothing left but the pyramids. I explored all but the central one. They took me down a shaft into what was clearly a space ship, and the sections had names like "Forward Storage Sector" and "Main Control Room." The walls offered clearly futuristic technology, and as I explored I was attacked by robots called "iron wizards" and, for whatever reason, "ED-409."
         

That's a disconcerting enemy type.

      
Each section had a couple of teleporters to other sections, but you don't find out the passwords until you enter those sections via the pyramids. I could see parts of other sections from my "Wizard's Eye" spell, making me think that the various sections are supposed to be a different scale than the normal dungeon, and in fact the space ship spans the entire continent. More on the implications of this next time.
    

The party samples absinthe.

    
As commenters have noted, crystals and heads throughout the ship offered explicit spoilers to the game's various riddles.
      

      
The Forward Storage Sector in A2 asked me for a password to "raise the sunken island in Piranha Bay." I knew from some dungeon ages ago that it was YOUTH. The island occupied about 6 squares that were formerly water, and it held a fountain that reversed magical aging. Some of my characters were in their 50s because of undead attacks and other aging effects, so it was useful for them.
    

      
A lot of the crystals in the ship magically aged my characters by 200 years, reducing their attributes to single digits accordingly. I could have used the Fountain of Youth to reverse this, but it was an annoying process and mostly I just reloaded, causing me to double my previous reload count.
     

That almost makes it sound like a good thing.

      
There were a ton of Ultimate Power Orbs in the sectors, and I think it's time to head to the neutral king and solve that part of the quest.

But as I ended the session, I ran into a huge problem. I noticed that my characters were performing poorly in combat, and when I took a look at their attributes, I saw that their might, accuracy, and endurance had fallen into the single digits. Then I realized that their ages had advanced to 216 years old--naturally, not magically. When I checked the current date, the game told me that it was year 698. It had been 506 just a few hours ago.

I have no idea what would have caused actual time to pass so fast during any of what I've described above. Does anyone have any ideas?
    

My real attributes are what you see here minus 100, minus some attribute-boosting items.

      
Figuring that if time had really passed that much, I'd have more than doubled my bank account, I visited the bank in Fountain Head and discovered that I had just as much gold in my account as my previous visit. So clearly I didn't earn interest for those 192 years. I wonder if I should take this as a sign that it's a game bug rather than a real passage of time.

My last alternate save game is from before I entered the pyramids. It wouldn't be torture to replay the pyramids, but I'd like to avoid it if possible. To see what happened, I hex-edited the year in my save game file back to 506, and the game restored my ages and attributes appropriately. I figure if the passage of years was a bug, I'm justified in keeping that hex edit. If it was intentional, I should roll with the punches or (more likely) reload and go through the ship sectors again. Opinions?

Other than visiting the central pyramid, the only things left on my list are side-quests, most of which I don't understand. For the record--and not because I want spoilers--these are:
     

• What was I supposed to wish for at the Wishing Well in E4?
• What was going on with those heads who said they'd remember me in F3?
• How do I cure Princess Trueberry and get the alicorn horn from her?
• Of what use is the Fountain of Kartera in D1?
• No mystery here, but if I waited another few years, I could get all the benefits from the thrones in Greywind and Blackwind castles.

     
No matter what, I suspect the next entry will be the last. We'll see if we can puzzle through what's really happening on Terra and how it relates to the VARNs and CRONs of the previous titles.

Time so far: 61 hours
Reload count: 41 

*****

A couple notes on upcoming games:

1. I need opinions and perhaps help with Die Drachen von Laas. First, I can't get the DOS version to work at all. Running the executable brings up a screen with a header showing the game's title, but nothing happens after that. I have an Amiga version that works. I haven't been able to find a manual.

How would you go about translating the German text from the game? I don't want to type it all into a translator, but my second solution--take screenshots, paste them into Word, PDF the Word document, run OCR on the PDF, and copy and paste the results into Google Translate--isn't exactly more elegant. I can't figure out a way to extract it from the original files. How would you do it?

If we can't come up with a workable system, I might have to ditch this one. It would be too bad, because it's the first RPG from some important developers, and it looks pretty. On the other hand, when I expanded my list to include non-English titles, I was thinking of having to translate things like "intelligence," "hit points," and "attacked and missed," not the full narration of a text adventure.

2. This is a long shot, but if anyone has won, or has the hint sheet for, The Kingdom of Krell (1987), I'd like to hear from you.