Clouds of Xeen: Tired of Getting Sand Kicked in Your Face?

 

RPG combat or Broadway production?

       

One of the joys of the entire Might and Magic series is that it exemplifies the atavistic desire, inherent in RPGs in general, to get knocked down, get stronger, and get revenge. All of the games in the series have moments when you come face-to-face with enemies who used to scare you--sometimes hours later, sometimes only minutes because in the meantime you managed to level up twice, or find particularly useful fountain, or learn a new spell. Such moments, promised by Charles Atlas ads, are maddeningly elusive in real life.

    

This session began as I wrapped up the starting city, Vertigo. Most of it took place in two areas: the interconnected mines of the Red Dwarf Range and the city of Rivercity. I had access to the former because it was right outside the gates of Vertigo, and the latter because each city's magic mirror will teleport you wherever you want to go if you know the name of the location. I knew about Rivercity from one of the tavern patrons in Vertigo.

  

I tried the outdoors first. The gates of Vertigo dumped me into overland map area F3, at coordinates 10, 12. The game map shows this on the far eastern side of the map. For the first time in Might and Magic history, the world map doesn't wrap. [ed. I was wrong; it doesn't wrap in MM3 either, but the world there is meant to be spherical.] Instead, a black void forms the borders of the roughly-square land. The center of the map has a large lake with Castle Burlock on the northeast shore and Darzog's Tower on an island in the middle. From there, the map is divided into quadrants--a desert to the northwest, a volcanic wasteland to the northeast, an icy tundra to the southwest, and a forest to the southeast. There are depictions of elemental lords in the corners, and I wonder if they'll play a role here as they did in Might and Magic II. There are also representations of creatures that are probably real creatures, like a giant in the tundra and a pegasus in the desert. In other words, it's the usual colorful, densely-packed Mike Winterbauer map.

       

The light side of Xeen.

      

I couldn't explore it openly yet because my characters lacked sufficient skills in "Pathfinding," "Mountaineering," and "Swimming." The first two require only two characters in the party to be trained; the latter requires all characters to have it. I had only found the trainer for "Pathfinding" (in Vertigo), and he wanted a hefty 2,500 gold pieces. 

     

Yep, that looks like a mad dwarf.

     

So instead of immediately lawnmowing my way around the area, I just started poking around the areas I could reach. I immediately started getting attacked by orcs. They were harder to hit than I imagined, though I did start with some pretty miserable "Accuracy" statistics. They also had some kind of breath attack that didn't seem to do anything to me, so perhaps it was just an animation.

Picking my way along the mountains, I found the entrance to a dungeon. As I approached, a dwarf appeared on the screen and announced, "Step right up! This way to the action-packed, treasure-filled mines of the Red Dwarf range!" The mayor in Vertigo had said that the dwarves were facing an invasion from the "Mad Dwarf" clan and had asked for help, so I entered.

       

Once was funny; every time I entered, not so much.

       

The mines were a good introduction to the game's dungeoneering conventions. They consisted of five regular mines and four "deep" mines, none of them terribly large or hard to navigate. The mines were connected by mining carts that say, "Where to?" and ask you to type in a location. Scraps of paper found amidst bones have the codes for the upper mines: MINE 1, MINE 2, MINE 3, MINE 4, and MINE 5. There's one scrap of paper in each of these that has part of the name of the first deep mine, ALPHA. From there, you find scraps of paper with the names THETA, KAPPA, and OMEGA, although once you figure out the pattern, you could probably guess your way there. I found that the mirror back in Vertigo will happily take you to any mine, but to get back, you need to return to MINE 1 and take the exit.

        

This guess didn't work out.

        

All of these areas had roughly the same features:

   

• Monsters. They consisted of mad dwarves, giant bats, giant spiders, and tiger moles. None of them were very hard, but accumulations of battles were enough that I couldn't complete more than a level or two at a time without returning to Vertigo for rest and healing. I don't have a "Cure Poison" spell yet, so every poisoning (from giant spiders or traps) means a return to town to a temple. Also, the mad dwarves concentrated their attacks on my own dwarf, Suss, which got her knocked out and her armor broken quite frequently.

        

Tiger moles come bursting out of a box.

      

• Barrels, full of liquids of different colors. Drinking gives you a +2 permanent boost in the attribute associated with that color. This can only be done once per barrel. These barrels first appeared in Might and Magic III, and they will continue to appear, with the same color associations, through at least Might and Magic VIII. My typical approach is to try to balance the party by giving the barrel to whoever has the lowest figure in a particular attribute. Since personality (blue) and intelligence (orange) are wasted on non-spellcasters, I generally only let spellcasters drink those barrels.

        

In Might and Magic VI, these barrels will actually respawn.

         

• Crates. Wooden boxes appear plentifully among the upper mines. I got sick of messages saying I was too weak to open them, and I ended up letting Saoirse, my paladin, drink all the red barrels until she was strong enough to do it. A strength of 24 turned out to be sufficient. Most of the crates were empty, but some had caches of weapons and armor, and some released tiger moles.

        

I would think that our weapons would be enough.

         

• Mining veins. Ends of corridors often had sparkling veins of gold that I could mine, sometimes three or four times, for various amounts of gold. But there's a chance of a damaging cave-in each time you try to mine the ore.

         

A lucky lode late in this session.

      

• Chests. More significant treasure was found in these.

• Locked doors and grates. You can bash these, taking inevitable (but small) damage, and earning no experience--or you can try to have the robber or ninja pick them for experience but also the risk of significant damage, sometimes even death. I've never been sure how the thief is taking damage in these situations. Does she slip and stab herself with the lockpick?

• Secret doors. These must be bashed. You identify them automatically with the associated skill, which causes the little lizard on the lower-right part of the view window to wave his arm frantically.

• Traps. The most infuriating parts of the game are the invisible, unavoidable, undisarmable traps that you have to cross, sometimes repeatedly. The ones in Might and Magic III at least had blades on pendulums and such, so you could see them. These just shoot fire or gas out of the ground, often both damaging and poisoning the party. "Jump" is supposed to help you cross them safely, when you know they're there, but it failed every time I tried to cast it.

          

A trap gets me again.

       

The mines beat me down after a while, so I took a break from them to explore other areas. I met an herbalist named Myra who offered me potions for Phirna root. I killed some more orcs and got special experience for destroying their "observation post." Most important, I found a couple of fountains near Vertigo's entrance, one which gives you a temporary 25 hit points, and the other of which gives you a temporary +5 boost to armor class.

      

These would be nice in real life.

     

These fountains, plus the bonuses from donating at temples, proved to be key to clearing these early areas. You have to time them right. Enhancements always disappear at 05:00, so you want to get them immediately after that to get a full 24 hours out of them.

   

I activated one of the pyramids and found my party transported to the city of Castleview on the Darkside of Xeen. I immediately hustled to another pyramid to get back, but not before Myra's counterpart, an herbalist named Zelda, shoved a Dragon Pharaoh's Orb in our hands and said we should take it to someone named Ellinger.

        

Whoops! I think I'm here too early.

      

Back in Vertigo, I took the magic mirror to Rivercity, which a Vertigo tavern patron had assured me was "full of action." I immediately met that town's primary opponent, insane beggars, which have a melee attack that drives characters insane. To avoid bankrupting myself at the temple, I adopted a "shoot first" policy, the moment I saw them in the distance. The city also had a lot of robbers--much harder enemies that I couldn't defeat without the fountain and temple bonuses.

       

Trouble with a capital "T," and that rhymes with "B," and that stands for "beggar."

      

The robbers were cash cows, delivering 200 gold each. That wasn't quite enough to keep up with the excellent training offered by various desks and tents in the city, including "Armsmaster," "Bodybuilding," "Mountaineering," "Navigation," and "Swimming." The latter was pretty cheap, though, and I did ultimately give it to all my characters so they could finish exploring Rivercity itself, which has a large harbor, including a back entrance that leads to the ocean outside. A brief foray outside showed me that the city is in map C3, at the south end of the world's central lake.

          

So, like, 10 feet?

        

The town's quest involved the recovery of a magical pendant for Barak the Sorcerer. That name seems familiar, but I might be thinking of Baruk the Sorcerer from the Malazan books, or perhaps a former U.S. President whose first name was "Barack." He said it was stolen by some "sorceresses." (There was some slightly deeper plot involving Barak, as tavern rumors said that the tavern had hired the sorceresses to run him out of town, but the reasoning behind this was never explained.) They were in the northwest section of town. They were capable of casting a fireball spell that damaged all my characters, so it was important to close quickly with them, avoiding walking in the same column or row when they were in the distance. Once in melee range, they were pretty easy.

       

Probably best not to make any comment at all.

       

In a room full of treasure chests that each imparted 1 gold and 1 gem, I found one that had Barak's pendant, which I returned. My reward was the "Enchant Item" spell. More important, he removed the poison from Rivercity's central well, which now gave a 100 point bonus to spell points, making the rest of this area (and the mines) much easier, as my paladin and druid were able to cast a lot more "Cure Wounds" spells before having to rest.

    

In the southwest, blue robbers gave way to black "robber bosses." Defeating them all netted me a chest with 5,000 gold and 100 gems and a second chest with 1,000 gold and Princess Roxanne's Tiara. That's one quest I'll be able to solve immediately.

          

This early in the game, this is a nice reward.

        

The mid-west section of town, behind the training hall, had a bunch of fearsome foes called "yang knights" that I was unable to touch, let alone defeat. Saving them for later, I leveled up, drank from the bonus fountains, got blessed by the temple, and returned to finish the mines.

        

I'll be back.

      

The deep mines were much the same as the first five, although more spread out. There were a couple of corpses that somehow gave everyone "Danger Sense," "Direction Sense," and "Cartographer."

          

This is a skill I naturally have. I think it comes from all the years working with maps.

      

The vein walls got a lot more lucrative, some delivering over 5,000 gold their first try, and descending amounts after that. The final battles were in deep mine Omega, where I met a number of mad dwarf clan sergeants and ultimately the clan king. After I killed him (I forgot to take a screen shot, but he looked like a regular mad dwarf, just a different color), we returned to Vertigo's mayor for our reward: The Red Dwarf Badge of Courage and 50,000 experience points.

     

If you want a sad story, read about the life of Stephen Crane, author of The Red Badge of Courage (1895).

        

I had well over 75,000 gold by now, so I visited all the trainers in Vertigo and Rivercity, and got the party trained in the navigation skills they need. I also visited the two guilds in the cities and got caught up on spells. I couldn't quite buy all of them, but I got the vital "Cure Paralysis," "Power Cure," and "Cure Poison" spells for my cleric spellcasters and "Lloyd's Beacon" for my druid. I also got "Day of Protection" for my paladin and "Day of Sorcery" for my sorcerer. These are extremely useful high-level spells making their first appearance in the series. "Day of Protection" simultaneously casts "Light," "Protection from Air," "Protection from Earth," "Protection from Fire," "Protection from Water," "Heroism," "Holy Bonus," and "Bless." "Day of Sorcery" simultaneously casts "Light," "Levitate," "Wizard Eye," "Clairvoyance," and "Power Shield." I'm astonished to have them both this early in the game.

    

Miscellaneous notes:

   

• It occurred to me during this session that neither Rivercity nor Vertigo has a dungeon. I think this is the first time in the series that its cities don't have dungeons. 

• The Rivercity trees mostly say, "What did you expect, money?" when you search them, which is making fun of the trees in Vertigo, I guess. But occasionally one of them does have money. Screw you, Rivercity trees.

• I think the mad dwarf/clan sergeant/clan king trio might be the first appearance of the famous Might and Magic "triad." If we had something that fits the bill in III, let me know, but I don't remember any. These triads are groups of progressively harder enemies that have the same icons, but with slightly different colors or decorations. By Might and Magic VI, every non-unique enemy in the game will be one of three flavors.

• I'm not sure the developers didn't over-do it a bit on the sound. Was III this loud? If so, I must have played with the sound very low or off a lot of the time. Every combat is a cacophony of clangs, screams, and thuds.
  

• My characters all ended this session at Level 8 or 9.  

          

My paladin at the end of the session, before we bought all the skills and spells.

       

• I found modest item upgrades throughout the session, including the first accessories (e.g., steel necklaces, iron rings), some of which might not do anything. I've found two attribute-enhancing items: a rapid broach [sic] and a chance charm. Suss has a shocking hammer, which does some extra electrical damage, and Grey Witch has a frost dagger. I haven't found any missile weapons that my druid or sorcerer can use.
  

• I haven't tried it yet, but apparently saying WARZONE to the mirrors will take you to an arena.

• As you can see, I didn't make any changes to my starting party after the first entry, no matter how much good advice you may have given. This is because I scheduled that entry to post almost 10 days after I finished writing it. I got impatient waiting for it to be published and played this second session. I may still replace a character or two; I can probably make up experience in the WARZONE.

• In the next paragraph, I use the phrase "more bad-ass." My grammar checker wants me to replace it with "worse-ass."

      

With no active quests, I have to decide how next to proceed. I'm trying to think of an original approach. I could lawnmow using a variety of patterns and from a variety of starting points. I could role-play and try to head directly for Darzog's Tower and the source of my dreams. I could go to the magic mirror and start feeding in destinations from the game map. I could even use the pyramids to try out the opening city in Darkside. Whatever I do, I'm sure I'll be too weak for some of the areas, but I definitely feel a lot more bad-ass at the end of this session than when I started.

     

Time so far: 7 hours