Pope Amole II
Nerd Commando Game Studios
- Joined
- Mar 1, 2012
- Messages
- 2,052
Having completed LPs of part VII and VIII, it seemed unappropriate to me to leave part VI, arguably the best one out of the latter trilogy (and, according to the kkkodexian poll, of the whole series) without good showcase. From the powergamer/munchkin/game system analyst point of view, obviously - as I've mentioned before, good bro Azira has already completed a more casual LP of this game, so if this will be too shallow in softcore details for you, you can always try his.
Now, let's get to the meat of it. There are three major things going for M&M VI.
1. Whether or not it is the best one, it's certainly one of the most detailed ones. VII & VIII, for example, were extremely shoddily done - like, they had much better models of monsters & pictures of house interiors (because the tech got better and, probably, most of the budget was funneled into art department), but they had doghouses instead of dungeons, and very simplistic to boot. In VI, there are some dungeons where you can literally get lost and have to solve a puzzle or two to get through them. In VII and VIII, it's generally just a couple of rooms filled with monsters. Heck, the starting dungeon of VI, the abandoned temple, is probably as big as the ending one of VII, if not bigger. And since M&Ms are usually about exploring dungeons & managing your party (and fighting a boatload of monsters, but, being classic monsters, combat was never that interesting in them), gameplay takes a great hit from that.
Another example of this is richness of the world. Mind you, I'm not telling you that VI has very detailed world or is particularly story-driven (it is not), but, at the very least, there were attempts of building it - there are lots of NPCs in the game, and while each has only 3 or 4 different and unique phrases to say, those amount to at least something. In later parts, there wasn't even that.
2. Role-playing system. While seemingly same, there's world of difference between VI and VII-VIII.
The sad part is, the name of this thread is not wrong. While improvements in later parts allowed for full melee and full archer parties, in VI, might tactics are extremely weak. Non-NPC healing is ridiculously weak (and NPC one is 1 use per day), weapon skills are weak (and the best melee weapon in the game is dagger which, ironically, spellcasting mages can wield as easily as full close-on oriented knights) and armor skills hardly help your tanking, so non-caster parties, while certainly not impossible, are hardly pleasant to play.
The good part is, 5 of the 6 game characters can be full-pledged spellcasters, so it's only knight who is useless hunk of meat. Sure, there's a gap of difference between Sorcerers/Druids (they're tier 1), Clerics (tier-2) and Archer/Paladins (tier-3), but if you're such a proponent of multicultural diversity, all of them can work. And, thanks to the "if you can learn the skill, you can get as good in it as it gets" system, the builds of your characters can get really diverse whereas in VII and VIII they were extremely popamole.
Another examples of decency is VI actually having a going economy (without millions of cash collecting dust on your bank account) and resistance system being much better. Instead of "each school has its own mag. resistance" (which made dark magic overpowered and some schools extremely unflexible", it's "there are six global resistances, shared between all of the schools". So air magic's sparks or lightning bolt are electricity, but implosion is physical damage, for example. That's great, flexibility is always great.
3. Grind. Unfortunately, it seems that in metric systems of M&M VI map designers there was only one measure of quantity - a metric fuckton. There can be hundreds of mobs on the overworld, and you enter into small dungeon room - you encounter at least a dozen of bums if not more. Time from time, it makes for curious situations, but mostly it just pads & drags the game. It also amplifies "magic & magic" problem - sorcerers don't really care if there's three or thirty mobs standing there. More fuel for your fireballs. Knights, however, lack area of effect damage, so they're forced to hack those mounds of shit one by one, taking so many damage in the process that their extra HPs quickly become insignificant, because even relatively low-level dungeons are choke full of enemies who will do 30-50 damage per hit. Like, brigand - 2d4+20. Master swordsman - 3d7+20. Lieutenant - 3d3+20. Captain - 3d3+40. Good luck overpowering those early.
Still, M&M VI is a great game if you play it accordingly (and that's what we're going to do). Even more so, to spice the things up, this is going to be a completionist speedrun LP, meaning that we'll try to do all of the stuff in as little time as possible. Mind you, I won't go extremely tryhard on the speed (you can finish main questline in five game days, after all, but that's not what I'm aiming for), because that'd require lots of reloads & extra hassle and I don't really want to bother.
KK, let's start Part I
As usual, a bit of music to set the mood up.
Our party. I think that 1 druid and 3 sorcerers are the best mix for a full-caster party - archers suffer from low mana pool, and clerics, while powerful in the later game, aren't nearly as powerful in its earlier stages. Unlike the druid, who is useful in throughout all of the game (especially in the beginning, since he has a significantly larger mana pool at the get-go ). And sure, straight 4x sorcerers will deal somewhat more late-game damage, but not enough to compensate the full lack of healing & resurrection spells. Besides, unlike in later parts, we'll be relying on elemental skills much harder than on our mirrored ones (dark & light, I'm meaning), so he's gonna be hardly horrible in damage dealing.
Stat distribution is obvious - as casters we're only caring about HP & MP so we're getting as much of them is possible. Skills might be a bit trickier - mass air magic is a given, it's basically bread&butter of this game. Mass earth is for but one spell - sure, the school is absolutely limp and we won't dabble in it seriously, but magic arrow is the best starting spell of them all(if you cook it properly). Water magic for the druid because we'll be rushing town portal & lloyd's beacon - can't be much of speedrun without mobility.
Oh, and sure, Cooper should've been the first character, but it's a powergaming issue - it's better to leave water magic mastery (you only want to have one) to your druid and water master needs to be first member of your party (to save real world time, yes), and only Hawk fits to be druid, so there he goes. Just think that he's scouting the way.
Rest? No time to rest - we need to finish this as quickly as possible!
Let's start from stacking all of the useless spellbooks and rings on Hawk, to sell them later - we'll be spamming magic arrows, so there's no need for us to learn pathetic static charges, better to convert those in gold.
Here are our stats. As you can see, druid has 6 extra MP - while sorcerers get bonus mana from intellect, druids get it from both intellect in personality, so, once we'll boost them both, he'll have a great mana pool. That bonus doesn't scale very well, so in the endgame it'll become less obvious, but now it's as good as it gets.
Those extra skillpoints in for of horseshoes will all go to Hawk - remember, we're rushing master water magic (which requires rank 12) as fast as possible.
Let's show our quest letter to the shady guy in the in. Commonly, you ride to Castle Ironfist after that and get fully equipped with bows, but we don't have 4 days to waste on the trip - we'll deal with it differently.
Grabbing all the cash that we can is important. Here we see 4 goblins guarding the treasure chest. That means they're not long for this world, unfortunately for them.
Same situation, more goblins. Now, let me explain why we're spamming magic arrow - see, out of all the starting spells, it's the most damaging one. Others deal 1d6 or 1d8 (max). Magic arrow deals 2+1d6, meaning 5.5 on the average. Considering low-level monsters sport from 10 to 20 hps, that's a huge difference. It has a disadvantage of being able to miss, but that's fixed easily.
Yeah, we burned all of our mana, so it misses helluva lot, but here's the cure - the spell master NPC. She's expensive as hell, but she's 100% worth it. What does she do?
+4 skill points to all magic skills of your party. ALL of them. Elemental magic, self magic, mirrored magic - everything gets the boost. The amount of effective skill points you get by hiring spell master is unsurmountable. It's the best hireling in the game, hands down. Our magical damage output instantly becomes huge, and we don't have to recast spells as often.
TBH, it's ridiculous that many of guides out there completely ignore brokenness of this class. They give advices like "get a banker, get rich!" But the amount of gold you'll get from banker won't match effective skill points you're getting here (especially in the beginning). Or "drag an instructor besides you, it's extra levels". Yeah, indeed, but since each level requires more xp and each skill level requires more skill points, those few extra levels you'll get will never be able to give you enough skill points to chase Spell Master's boost. Maybe in singleton, but definitely not in a party mode. If you're casting spells (and this is Magic and Magic, mind you), you're having spell master. Period.
One of the parts of flavor lost in VII and VIII was skills being learned only in specialized guilds (which require membership - luckily, it's cheap).
Then we gain 4+ luck for each member of our party from this well. Luck scales horribly(at least against common spells - not sure about more specific effects because formulas in this game are pretty obscure), but is more or less decent to have in the beginning of this game. You certainly dont' want any penalties from it.
Now, while we were missing a lot of magic arrows previously, with spell master each one hits, so we're already dealing twice more damage than we should be able to do.
We use this prowess to clean up accessible parts of the overworld as we're really hungry for cash. Small bands of goblins near, ehm, goblinwatch falls first.
After drinking some rejuvenating (not literally) water from local fountains, we switch to the mages. They're good at dishing out ranged damage...
But majority of them is lowest-tier red ones, and they die from one arrow hit.
It's not a big deal to break through them (and collect some herbs afterwards - those are also important).
Then it's time for a huge goblin camp. Goblins are a bit sturdier than mages (lowest tier are 13 hps - need roughly 3 arrows), but they're almost without ranged attacks so we're in no danger and can always run back to the town to heal.
Through all the slaughter, evening came. With it, local shady guild got open - yeah, working hours are also flavorful here. It's not just "6 am to 6 pm" everywhere. Thieves & extortionists work at night, local clerks work at day (and with very short hours - 10 am to 2 pm; yeah, it's good to be a government employed white collar), mages are also kinda lazy (magical shops are 8 am to 4 pm), temples are almost always open (5 am to 1 am), mirrored guilds get active near either midday or midnight.
KK, enough with ranting. In this guild, we get merchant skill for Hawk so we can finally sell all the stuff that we've looted. We also get disarm trap to actually loot more stuff - we're not going to level it, but for this map just novice 1 is enough.
Afterwards, it's time for some extra slaying.
We're lucky with the loot - those plate armors cost a lot.
So much that we can buy perception skill for the entire party. Perception is useful in multiple occasions, and it's good to have it for entire party - unlike in later games, it's used to avoid damage from the traps (which are plentiful). And you don't need anything higher than expert 4 - it's already enough to open most of the chests in the game safely.
Then we have some damn good coffee & some cherry pie in local tavern, resting until morning.
First thing we do, we buy a sparks spellbook from local magical guild. Sparks is one of the most important spells in this game, if not the most important. It's not the highest damaging one (that one is shrapmetal), but it costs 12.5 time less than shrapmetal while still packing a punch. Once we expert it, we'll fire 5 sparks, each dealing 2+8 (expert 4 + 4 from spell master) points of damage. 50 damage for just 4 mana, oh yeah.
We also learn air magic for the Hawk - it's quintessential for each member of our party to be well-versed in it.
I didn't want to force this move so early, but by some lucky chance I encountered another rare NPC while running across the street - the Gate Master, who allows us to jump at one of the six portable cities in the game once per day. Unlike with VII and VIII, there's no condition of visiting those towns previously required to do so. Meaning that while she's pretty redundant once you get your own master water magic up and running (which should be a priority for any playthrough), she's pretty awesome in the very beginning of the game.
Let's exploit that awesomeness. From the side wall of local bank, we get a fly spell scroll (somehow - let's not think about this too much).
We use it and, via hidden portal located on top of buccaneers' guild (I've sorta missed screenshotting that one), we're brought to the dragonsands.
We were clicking that portal in turn-based mode, so we're not obliterated instantly.
Then, with swift dash we place ourselves inside of relatively safe niche in the nearby shrine...
And pray at it for a huge power boost. TBH, if you visit this shrine later in the game, those +20 stats are mostly unnoticeable, but early - oh, early they're God-given.
Seethwright, for God's sakes, get me out of here!
In Free Haven, while our flight spell still lasts, we rush to the local land lord, getting a knightly promotion quest.
Then we sweep across the map to meet the person who can dish out nomination for said promotion.
Short backtrack and we're done.
We also collect local horseshoes.
Actually, abusing the rest option, we spend a couple of days collecting all of the horseshoes in all the cities, available for teleportation.
We also visit this well in the blackshire - disease is nothing short visit to the temple won't cure, and permanent resistance buff is, well, permanent.
We've gained 6 levels for that measly quest. Nice!
We spend those skill points on air magic, and for Hawk it's also tons of water magic - actually, I kinda screwed up by also giving him air magic. He'll need it, but it could've waited for later. I rushed because he has the best mana pool and he'll be an excellent spark thrower (it's not easy to get a sparks spellbook for each party member so it's just one or two casters in the beginning), but we should've rushed water. This air preference costs us a couple of days.
Having collected enought ingredients, we brew black intellect potions for everyone and black personality potion for Hawk. What can I say? They also give a huge bonus to our performance so they should be rushed.
Finally, it's dungeoneering time.
We dispatch those bats so fast that we're not even able to screenshot it. Feels good to enter abandoned temple at level 6 and with good stats.
Cobras are somewhat harder to deal as they're much sturdier, but even they are hardly an issue.
Defeating them, we grab the candelabra they were unwittingly guarding.
The room across is filled with spiders - not a huge threat at this point. Our mana sure runs down fast, though.
Time to get rewarded for our not so noble actions (and get regenned in the process).
We're also exploiting a graphical glitch here - usually that air magic trainer is accessible only through either jump or fly spells (hence the fly magic scroll in the side of this building; anyway, this guy is a total jerk), but this hole in the balcony (which I prefer to interpret as simply throwing boulders at his door - hard to ignore that) allows us to circumvent the chore.
We had enough money for 2 air magic expert trainings - let's go test those!
My, this view is almost intoxicating! Quite literally, actually, although it's not exactly the view. Nevertheless, turns out it's much better to deal 50 damage for 4 mana...
Than 5 damage for 2. Sure, hitting with each sparks is not often possible, but heck, even 2 or 3 sparks landed still provide better damage to mana ratio.
Of course we'll take you home!
Just hang around us while we're looting those scary skeletons in dangling cages (possibly damaging your tender psyche irreparably in the process) and we're good to go.
After returning the kid to her mother, we remember that we've forgot to visit the local spell shop - that was quite a mistake, considering that another sparks spellbook was waiting for us there.
I've also forgot to show you my party's stats after all those shrines, levels & potions. Here we are. Hmm, that candelabra quest has really hurt our reputation.
A rather "generous" donation to local temple...
And we're back to respectable. Wow, what a cheap respect...
Back into temple. Since Cooper & co have air magic 6, they deal even more damage with sparks. Well, they'll deal once we find the books - atm it's just Coop & Hawk flinging it out.
And it's good that we have them, because look at that monster pack! Lots of crap out there.
We run completely dry in this battle (well, on important party members), but at least we're able to steal some eggs...
And open a chest with relatively fat loot - that pretty looking chainmail is surely expensive.
Eggs also turn out to be quite a commodity.
Back into fray, facing the scary queen spider.
She becomes less than scary after exactly one spark cast.
There are more monsters to mop up, but nothing significant.
KK, let's move to a different kind of vermin.
But I haven't meant rats, yes (though they're also here and, obviously, they're effortlessly easy).
Opening coded door (and solving this quest in the process)...
We run into a swarm of bloodsucker parasites, but they're still not the vermin I meant. Bloodsuckers are more annoying than dangerous, especially when powerful sparks are available.
No, this is what I meant - goblins!
Goblins and some more rats (and I don't know which one is higher on the evolutionary table)
Enough of them to catch all of our sparks.
Our mana & health get finished sooner than we finish the place, so we run out to heal. Unfortunately, it's late in the night so temples are closed, but instead of wasting the night to sleep we make a run across the land, gathering all of the reagents that we've missed without expert wizard eye (quite a lot of them, actually).
We also finish some quests.
Having healed up, we return to cleanse the goblinwatch dry.
It's painful, but easy. Note that our non-spark members fight with their daggers - thanks to the shrine of gods' blessing, they're quite able to inflict at least some damage that way.
Then we brew freshly gathered ingredients into luck potions.
Gathering some rewards also feels nice.
We're finished here at the time, so let's jump to Mist.
Local authorities ask us to investigate into possibly criminal activities of local semi-vigilante group - man, they surely are no bookhouse boys.
We're happy to oblige, but not without some preparations. We become more adept at learning stuff (hard to investigate without that)...
And stock on high-quality spells. Fireballs will be our second bread & butter spell - they're not as flexible or as mighty on lower levels as sparks, but they'll still carry us through this game. As I've said (and you already see), there are lots and lots and lots of trashmobs in tightly packed formations, just asking for it.
We also buy two more spark spellbooks, although at higher price than it would've been in New Sorpigal - eh, it's not that much higher, and we finally have an entire party of sparkcasters. We'll need it soon. Now, actually.
Also, a water walk spell. It'll quickly become useless (because fly is much better), but since we don't have fly yet, we might as well use it.
Now that we're fully prepared, we can get some job done.
Before taking on silver helms, set's evict some illegal immigrants out of this area.
Let's evict them straight into underworld.
I must add that this location seems strangely intolerant towards denizens of India. Why so hate, NWC? Don't you understand that it's a white male patriarch we must relentlessly fight to make this world a better place?
On the other note, those guys trap their chests good. Actually, since we're kinda stranded here (you enter the teleporter in and have to go though a couple of highly-populated islands to get to the teleporter out) we could've been in a pinch, but don't worry!
We bought that water walking spell for a reason.
Then it's some more racial intolerance (with a colonialismic tint, even). It even made me feel a lil' bit guilty, because look at those guys - they love each other so much that they die holding their hands (and dancing, but those are indians, after all - I doubt they do anything without dancing).
However, we're merciless. These are the two last immigrants remaining, and soon there are none.
Now it's silver helms turn.
Immediately, Captain & some of his Guard try to stop us. As I've said, Caps are tough muthas - they have 200 hps and deal 43-49 damage per hit.
Thankfully, with our turbocharged spark spells, it's just a 5-6 casts to get him down.
His friends try to run away, but they don't go far.
Hearing their cries, a monk came to their help - too late and too fatally for himself, obviously.
Actually, there's a whole bunch of dudes down the corridor, so we carefully lure them out in small bunches - they're stupid enough to buy into it, and this slope is great for spark throwing.
But, of course, the most effective way is just firing them from point-blank range. It's just that it's too hurtful against non-solitary adversaries.
Having dealt with that room, we move into other ones, meeting as much resistance there. Well, monks with their low hps are not much of resistance...
But swordsmen can be (and note that we ran out and healed in the temple).
On of the greatest boons of sparks is that they bounce of the walls (rest of the spells just explode when hitting them), so in choke points like this one we can hit enemies with all five of them easily.
Finally, we find some hard evidence against these buggers.
And a key to some place we've never heard about. Well, whenever you see a key lying around, be sure to grab it - it definitely will get useful (at some point). That's the best IRL advice I can give you today.
Releasing some prisoners, we learn that this place is not as simple as it seems.
Before that, let's clear the perimeter - in this narrow corridor, Captain is perfect target for our sparks.
Indeed, there are secret passages here, and with some quirky stairs also.
You can start to help us by getting that dress off, baby...
Nah, you're not in our taste, to be honest, so keep it zipped.
Silver helms appear literally out of thin air to ambush us...
And while they knock the Hawk out, that's not nearly enough to defeat us.
Wow, you government boys are sure stingy - I bet your mayor's ink jar costs freaking more than you've just paid me. Whatever.
Back into Sorpigal. With water walk on, we can explore a couple of surrounding islands. Exploring contents of this cook pot...
We find ourselves ambushed by its angered owners. But I'm not sure that there's food in this pot - it clearly doesn't hold enough for this horde. Must be something else, but what?
Nevertheless, these crowds are perfect test for our fireball spells...
And they work awesome, but not nearly enough. We kill lots of bad guys, but Harry & Andy lie in comatose state.
At least we can retreat easily. And come to kick their ass almost immediately.
Second island is much easier - yeah, lots of mages & goblins here, but not of the highest tier.
And fireball is still awesome.
There's an expert water magic living here (on an island that's only accessible by water walking spell). As I've said, trainers in Enroth are elitist dicks.
And the third island features obelisk (which we obviously read) and two more horseshoes.
Only now do we visit Castle Ironfist.
We unload our rescued damsel in distress & our incriminating letters here, gaining some cash and lots of xp.
And local self guilds teach meditation which is awesome for us - there's no such thing as enough mana for caster party.
Training time - we get to lvl 12 in one go. Unlike with VII and VIII, no matter how much you train, it still takes only one week (which makes this completionist speedrun possible).
With all the levels and horseshoes, we get the desired skill level for Hawk.
Rest of the bookhouse boys are far more spread out in their knowledge - we get some fire magic (for fireballs, obviously), learning (more xp - more fun) and meditation (as I've said, having enough mana is crucial - it saves us lots of tedium).
So we expert our meditation (each skill level of meditation acts like an extra level gained so now our mana pools are as if we'd been 8 levels higher than we are)...
And master the water! We had to jump to mist for this one, though.
We buy enchant item spell there (which is huge for our economy - gold is quite precious in this game)
And after waiting for our gate master to recharge, we jump into free haven where we buy our own town portal spellbook. Time to part our ways, sweetheart.
We then hire a mystic (who looks suspiciously identical to the gate master we've just fired, but maybe it's just a coincidence). What's a mystic, you'll ask?
It's simply the second-best NPC hireling in this game. It works the same way as the spell master, only adding +3 bonus instead of +4. Stacking bonus, as you can see, so all of our spells are cast at +7 skill level. Those lvl 7 sparks? Oh, they just deal up to 106 damage per cast. Those lvl 4 fireballs? 38,5 area damage. Oh, nothing to see here, move along.
KK, that's end of the quite formiddable part I.
Now, let's get to the meat of it. There are three major things going for M&M VI.
1. Whether or not it is the best one, it's certainly one of the most detailed ones. VII & VIII, for example, were extremely shoddily done - like, they had much better models of monsters & pictures of house interiors (because the tech got better and, probably, most of the budget was funneled into art department), but they had doghouses instead of dungeons, and very simplistic to boot. In VI, there are some dungeons where you can literally get lost and have to solve a puzzle or two to get through them. In VII and VIII, it's generally just a couple of rooms filled with monsters. Heck, the starting dungeon of VI, the abandoned temple, is probably as big as the ending one of VII, if not bigger. And since M&Ms are usually about exploring dungeons & managing your party (and fighting a boatload of monsters, but, being classic monsters, combat was never that interesting in them), gameplay takes a great hit from that.
Another example of this is richness of the world. Mind you, I'm not telling you that VI has very detailed world or is particularly story-driven (it is not), but, at the very least, there were attempts of building it - there are lots of NPCs in the game, and while each has only 3 or 4 different and unique phrases to say, those amount to at least something. In later parts, there wasn't even that.
2. Role-playing system. While seemingly same, there's world of difference between VI and VII-VIII.
The sad part is, the name of this thread is not wrong. While improvements in later parts allowed for full melee and full archer parties, in VI, might tactics are extremely weak. Non-NPC healing is ridiculously weak (and NPC one is 1 use per day), weapon skills are weak (and the best melee weapon in the game is dagger which, ironically, spellcasting mages can wield as easily as full close-on oriented knights) and armor skills hardly help your tanking, so non-caster parties, while certainly not impossible, are hardly pleasant to play.
The good part is, 5 of the 6 game characters can be full-pledged spellcasters, so it's only knight who is useless hunk of meat. Sure, there's a gap of difference between Sorcerers/Druids (they're tier 1), Clerics (tier-2) and Archer/Paladins (tier-3), but if you're such a proponent of multicultural diversity, all of them can work. And, thanks to the "if you can learn the skill, you can get as good in it as it gets" system, the builds of your characters can get really diverse whereas in VII and VIII they were extremely popamole.
Another examples of decency is VI actually having a going economy (without millions of cash collecting dust on your bank account) and resistance system being much better. Instead of "each school has its own mag. resistance" (which made dark magic overpowered and some schools extremely unflexible", it's "there are six global resistances, shared between all of the schools". So air magic's sparks or lightning bolt are electricity, but implosion is physical damage, for example. That's great, flexibility is always great.
3. Grind. Unfortunately, it seems that in metric systems of M&M VI map designers there was only one measure of quantity - a metric fuckton. There can be hundreds of mobs on the overworld, and you enter into small dungeon room - you encounter at least a dozen of bums if not more. Time from time, it makes for curious situations, but mostly it just pads & drags the game. It also amplifies "magic & magic" problem - sorcerers don't really care if there's three or thirty mobs standing there. More fuel for your fireballs. Knights, however, lack area of effect damage, so they're forced to hack those mounds of shit one by one, taking so many damage in the process that their extra HPs quickly become insignificant, because even relatively low-level dungeons are choke full of enemies who will do 30-50 damage per hit. Like, brigand - 2d4+20. Master swordsman - 3d7+20. Lieutenant - 3d3+20. Captain - 3d3+40. Good luck overpowering those early.
Still, M&M VI is a great game if you play it accordingly (and that's what we're going to do). Even more so, to spice the things up, this is going to be a completionist speedrun LP, meaning that we'll try to do all of the stuff in as little time as possible. Mind you, I won't go extremely tryhard on the speed (you can finish main questline in five game days, after all, but that's not what I'm aiming for), because that'd require lots of reloads & extra hassle and I don't really want to bother.
KK, let's start Part I
As usual, a bit of music to set the mood up.
Our party. I think that 1 druid and 3 sorcerers are the best mix for a full-caster party - archers suffer from low mana pool, and clerics, while powerful in the later game, aren't nearly as powerful in its earlier stages. Unlike the druid, who is useful in throughout all of the game (especially in the beginning, since he has a significantly larger mana pool at the get-go ). And sure, straight 4x sorcerers will deal somewhat more late-game damage, but not enough to compensate the full lack of healing & resurrection spells. Besides, unlike in later parts, we'll be relying on elemental skills much harder than on our mirrored ones (dark & light, I'm meaning), so he's gonna be hardly horrible in damage dealing.
Stat distribution is obvious - as casters we're only caring about HP & MP so we're getting as much of them is possible. Skills might be a bit trickier - mass air magic is a given, it's basically bread&butter of this game. Mass earth is for but one spell - sure, the school is absolutely limp and we won't dabble in it seriously, but magic arrow is the best starting spell of them all(if you cook it properly). Water magic for the druid because we'll be rushing town portal & lloyd's beacon - can't be much of speedrun without mobility.
Oh, and sure, Cooper should've been the first character, but it's a powergaming issue - it's better to leave water magic mastery (you only want to have one) to your druid and water master needs to be first member of your party (to save real world time, yes), and only Hawk fits to be druid, so there he goes. Just think that he's scouting the way.
Rest? No time to rest - we need to finish this as quickly as possible!
Let's start from stacking all of the useless spellbooks and rings on Hawk, to sell them later - we'll be spamming magic arrows, so there's no need for us to learn pathetic static charges, better to convert those in gold.
Here are our stats. As you can see, druid has 6 extra MP - while sorcerers get bonus mana from intellect, druids get it from both intellect in personality, so, once we'll boost them both, he'll have a great mana pool. That bonus doesn't scale very well, so in the endgame it'll become less obvious, but now it's as good as it gets.
Those extra skillpoints in for of horseshoes will all go to Hawk - remember, we're rushing master water magic (which requires rank 12) as fast as possible.
Let's show our quest letter to the shady guy in the in. Commonly, you ride to Castle Ironfist after that and get fully equipped with bows, but we don't have 4 days to waste on the trip - we'll deal with it differently.
Grabbing all the cash that we can is important. Here we see 4 goblins guarding the treasure chest. That means they're not long for this world, unfortunately for them.
Same situation, more goblins. Now, let me explain why we're spamming magic arrow - see, out of all the starting spells, it's the most damaging one. Others deal 1d6 or 1d8 (max). Magic arrow deals 2+1d6, meaning 5.5 on the average. Considering low-level monsters sport from 10 to 20 hps, that's a huge difference. It has a disadvantage of being able to miss, but that's fixed easily.
Yeah, we burned all of our mana, so it misses helluva lot, but here's the cure - the spell master NPC. She's expensive as hell, but she's 100% worth it. What does she do?
+4 skill points to all magic skills of your party. ALL of them. Elemental magic, self magic, mirrored magic - everything gets the boost. The amount of effective skill points you get by hiring spell master is unsurmountable. It's the best hireling in the game, hands down. Our magical damage output instantly becomes huge, and we don't have to recast spells as often.
TBH, it's ridiculous that many of guides out there completely ignore brokenness of this class. They give advices like "get a banker, get rich!" But the amount of gold you'll get from banker won't match effective skill points you're getting here (especially in the beginning). Or "drag an instructor besides you, it's extra levels". Yeah, indeed, but since each level requires more xp and each skill level requires more skill points, those few extra levels you'll get will never be able to give you enough skill points to chase Spell Master's boost. Maybe in singleton, but definitely not in a party mode. If you're casting spells (and this is Magic and Magic, mind you), you're having spell master. Period.
One of the parts of flavor lost in VII and VIII was skills being learned only in specialized guilds (which require membership - luckily, it's cheap).
Then we gain 4+ luck for each member of our party from this well. Luck scales horribly(at least against common spells - not sure about more specific effects because formulas in this game are pretty obscure), but is more or less decent to have in the beginning of this game. You certainly dont' want any penalties from it.
Now, while we were missing a lot of magic arrows previously, with spell master each one hits, so we're already dealing twice more damage than we should be able to do.
We use this prowess to clean up accessible parts of the overworld as we're really hungry for cash. Small bands of goblins near, ehm, goblinwatch falls first.
After drinking some rejuvenating (not literally) water from local fountains, we switch to the mages. They're good at dishing out ranged damage...
But majority of them is lowest-tier red ones, and they die from one arrow hit.
It's not a big deal to break through them (and collect some herbs afterwards - those are also important).
Then it's time for a huge goblin camp. Goblins are a bit sturdier than mages (lowest tier are 13 hps - need roughly 3 arrows), but they're almost without ranged attacks so we're in no danger and can always run back to the town to heal.
Through all the slaughter, evening came. With it, local shady guild got open - yeah, working hours are also flavorful here. It's not just "6 am to 6 pm" everywhere. Thieves & extortionists work at night, local clerks work at day (and with very short hours - 10 am to 2 pm; yeah, it's good to be a government employed white collar), mages are also kinda lazy (magical shops are 8 am to 4 pm), temples are almost always open (5 am to 1 am), mirrored guilds get active near either midday or midnight.
KK, enough with ranting. In this guild, we get merchant skill for Hawk so we can finally sell all the stuff that we've looted. We also get disarm trap to actually loot more stuff - we're not going to level it, but for this map just novice 1 is enough.
Afterwards, it's time for some extra slaying.
We're lucky with the loot - those plate armors cost a lot.
So much that we can buy perception skill for the entire party. Perception is useful in multiple occasions, and it's good to have it for entire party - unlike in later games, it's used to avoid damage from the traps (which are plentiful). And you don't need anything higher than expert 4 - it's already enough to open most of the chests in the game safely.
Then we have some damn good coffee & some cherry pie in local tavern, resting until morning.
First thing we do, we buy a sparks spellbook from local magical guild. Sparks is one of the most important spells in this game, if not the most important. It's not the highest damaging one (that one is shrapmetal), but it costs 12.5 time less than shrapmetal while still packing a punch. Once we expert it, we'll fire 5 sparks, each dealing 2+8 (expert 4 + 4 from spell master) points of damage. 50 damage for just 4 mana, oh yeah.
We also learn air magic for the Hawk - it's quintessential for each member of our party to be well-versed in it.
I didn't want to force this move so early, but by some lucky chance I encountered another rare NPC while running across the street - the Gate Master, who allows us to jump at one of the six portable cities in the game once per day. Unlike with VII and VIII, there's no condition of visiting those towns previously required to do so. Meaning that while she's pretty redundant once you get your own master water magic up and running (which should be a priority for any playthrough), she's pretty awesome in the very beginning of the game.
Let's exploit that awesomeness. From the side wall of local bank, we get a fly spell scroll (somehow - let's not think about this too much).
We use it and, via hidden portal located on top of buccaneers' guild (I've sorta missed screenshotting that one), we're brought to the dragonsands.
We were clicking that portal in turn-based mode, so we're not obliterated instantly.
Then, with swift dash we place ourselves inside of relatively safe niche in the nearby shrine...
And pray at it for a huge power boost. TBH, if you visit this shrine later in the game, those +20 stats are mostly unnoticeable, but early - oh, early they're God-given.
Seethwright, for God's sakes, get me out of here!
In Free Haven, while our flight spell still lasts, we rush to the local land lord, getting a knightly promotion quest.
Then we sweep across the map to meet the person who can dish out nomination for said promotion.
Short backtrack and we're done.
We also collect local horseshoes.
Actually, abusing the rest option, we spend a couple of days collecting all of the horseshoes in all the cities, available for teleportation.
We also visit this well in the blackshire - disease is nothing short visit to the temple won't cure, and permanent resistance buff is, well, permanent.
We've gained 6 levels for that measly quest. Nice!
We spend those skill points on air magic, and for Hawk it's also tons of water magic - actually, I kinda screwed up by also giving him air magic. He'll need it, but it could've waited for later. I rushed because he has the best mana pool and he'll be an excellent spark thrower (it's not easy to get a sparks spellbook for each party member so it's just one or two casters in the beginning), but we should've rushed water. This air preference costs us a couple of days.
Having collected enought ingredients, we brew black intellect potions for everyone and black personality potion for Hawk. What can I say? They also give a huge bonus to our performance so they should be rushed.
Finally, it's dungeoneering time.
We dispatch those bats so fast that we're not even able to screenshot it. Feels good to enter abandoned temple at level 6 and with good stats.
Cobras are somewhat harder to deal as they're much sturdier, but even they are hardly an issue.
Defeating them, we grab the candelabra they were unwittingly guarding.
The room across is filled with spiders - not a huge threat at this point. Our mana sure runs down fast, though.
Time to get rewarded for our not so noble actions (and get regenned in the process).
We're also exploiting a graphical glitch here - usually that air magic trainer is accessible only through either jump or fly spells (hence the fly magic scroll in the side of this building; anyway, this guy is a total jerk), but this hole in the balcony (which I prefer to interpret as simply throwing boulders at his door - hard to ignore that) allows us to circumvent the chore.
We had enough money for 2 air magic expert trainings - let's go test those!
My, this view is almost intoxicating! Quite literally, actually, although it's not exactly the view. Nevertheless, turns out it's much better to deal 50 damage for 4 mana...
Than 5 damage for 2. Sure, hitting with each sparks is not often possible, but heck, even 2 or 3 sparks landed still provide better damage to mana ratio.
Of course we'll take you home!
Just hang around us while we're looting those scary skeletons in dangling cages (possibly damaging your tender psyche irreparably in the process) and we're good to go.
After returning the kid to her mother, we remember that we've forgot to visit the local spell shop - that was quite a mistake, considering that another sparks spellbook was waiting for us there.
I've also forgot to show you my party's stats after all those shrines, levels & potions. Here we are. Hmm, that candelabra quest has really hurt our reputation.
A rather "generous" donation to local temple...
And we're back to respectable. Wow, what a cheap respect...
Back into temple. Since Cooper & co have air magic 6, they deal even more damage with sparks. Well, they'll deal once we find the books - atm it's just Coop & Hawk flinging it out.
And it's good that we have them, because look at that monster pack! Lots of crap out there.
We run completely dry in this battle (well, on important party members), but at least we're able to steal some eggs...
And open a chest with relatively fat loot - that pretty looking chainmail is surely expensive.
Eggs also turn out to be quite a commodity.
Back into fray, facing the scary queen spider.
She becomes less than scary after exactly one spark cast.
There are more monsters to mop up, but nothing significant.
KK, let's move to a different kind of vermin.
But I haven't meant rats, yes (though they're also here and, obviously, they're effortlessly easy).
Opening coded door (and solving this quest in the process)...
We run into a swarm of bloodsucker parasites, but they're still not the vermin I meant. Bloodsuckers are more annoying than dangerous, especially when powerful sparks are available.
No, this is what I meant - goblins!
Goblins and some more rats (and I don't know which one is higher on the evolutionary table)
Enough of them to catch all of our sparks.
Our mana & health get finished sooner than we finish the place, so we run out to heal. Unfortunately, it's late in the night so temples are closed, but instead of wasting the night to sleep we make a run across the land, gathering all of the reagents that we've missed without expert wizard eye (quite a lot of them, actually).
We also finish some quests.
Having healed up, we return to cleanse the goblinwatch dry.
It's painful, but easy. Note that our non-spark members fight with their daggers - thanks to the shrine of gods' blessing, they're quite able to inflict at least some damage that way.
Then we brew freshly gathered ingredients into luck potions.
Gathering some rewards also feels nice.
We're finished here at the time, so let's jump to Mist.
Local authorities ask us to investigate into possibly criminal activities of local semi-vigilante group - man, they surely are no bookhouse boys.
We're happy to oblige, but not without some preparations. We become more adept at learning stuff (hard to investigate without that)...
And stock on high-quality spells. Fireballs will be our second bread & butter spell - they're not as flexible or as mighty on lower levels as sparks, but they'll still carry us through this game. As I've said (and you already see), there are lots and lots and lots of trashmobs in tightly packed formations, just asking for it.
We also buy two more spark spellbooks, although at higher price than it would've been in New Sorpigal - eh, it's not that much higher, and we finally have an entire party of sparkcasters. We'll need it soon. Now, actually.
Also, a water walk spell. It'll quickly become useless (because fly is much better), but since we don't have fly yet, we might as well use it.
Now that we're fully prepared, we can get some job done.
Before taking on silver helms, set's evict some illegal immigrants out of this area.
Let's evict them straight into underworld.
I must add that this location seems strangely intolerant towards denizens of India. Why so hate, NWC? Don't you understand that it's a white male patriarch we must relentlessly fight to make this world a better place?
On the other note, those guys trap their chests good. Actually, since we're kinda stranded here (you enter the teleporter in and have to go though a couple of highly-populated islands to get to the teleporter out) we could've been in a pinch, but don't worry!
We bought that water walking spell for a reason.
Then it's some more racial intolerance (with a colonialismic tint, even). It even made me feel a lil' bit guilty, because look at those guys - they love each other so much that they die holding their hands (and dancing, but those are indians, after all - I doubt they do anything without dancing).
However, we're merciless. These are the two last immigrants remaining, and soon there are none.
Now it's silver helms turn.
Immediately, Captain & some of his Guard try to stop us. As I've said, Caps are tough muthas - they have 200 hps and deal 43-49 damage per hit.
Thankfully, with our turbocharged spark spells, it's just a 5-6 casts to get him down.
His friends try to run away, but they don't go far.
Hearing their cries, a monk came to their help - too late and too fatally for himself, obviously.
Actually, there's a whole bunch of dudes down the corridor, so we carefully lure them out in small bunches - they're stupid enough to buy into it, and this slope is great for spark throwing.
But, of course, the most effective way is just firing them from point-blank range. It's just that it's too hurtful against non-solitary adversaries.
Having dealt with that room, we move into other ones, meeting as much resistance there. Well, monks with their low hps are not much of resistance...
But swordsmen can be (and note that we ran out and healed in the temple).
On of the greatest boons of sparks is that they bounce of the walls (rest of the spells just explode when hitting them), so in choke points like this one we can hit enemies with all five of them easily.
Finally, we find some hard evidence against these buggers.
And a key to some place we've never heard about. Well, whenever you see a key lying around, be sure to grab it - it definitely will get useful (at some point). That's the best IRL advice I can give you today.
Releasing some prisoners, we learn that this place is not as simple as it seems.
Before that, let's clear the perimeter - in this narrow corridor, Captain is perfect target for our sparks.
Indeed, there are secret passages here, and with some quirky stairs also.
You can start to help us by getting that dress off, baby...
Nah, you're not in our taste, to be honest, so keep it zipped.
Silver helms appear literally out of thin air to ambush us...
And while they knock the Hawk out, that's not nearly enough to defeat us.
Wow, you government boys are sure stingy - I bet your mayor's ink jar costs freaking more than you've just paid me. Whatever.
Back into Sorpigal. With water walk on, we can explore a couple of surrounding islands. Exploring contents of this cook pot...
We find ourselves ambushed by its angered owners. But I'm not sure that there's food in this pot - it clearly doesn't hold enough for this horde. Must be something else, but what?
Nevertheless, these crowds are perfect test for our fireball spells...
And they work awesome, but not nearly enough. We kill lots of bad guys, but Harry & Andy lie in comatose state.
At least we can retreat easily. And come to kick their ass almost immediately.
Second island is much easier - yeah, lots of mages & goblins here, but not of the highest tier.
And fireball is still awesome.
There's an expert water magic living here (on an island that's only accessible by water walking spell). As I've said, trainers in Enroth are elitist dicks.
And the third island features obelisk (which we obviously read) and two more horseshoes.
Only now do we visit Castle Ironfist.
We unload our rescued damsel in distress & our incriminating letters here, gaining some cash and lots of xp.
And local self guilds teach meditation which is awesome for us - there's no such thing as enough mana for caster party.
Training time - we get to lvl 12 in one go. Unlike with VII and VIII, no matter how much you train, it still takes only one week (which makes this completionist speedrun possible).
With all the levels and horseshoes, we get the desired skill level for Hawk.
Rest of the bookhouse boys are far more spread out in their knowledge - we get some fire magic (for fireballs, obviously), learning (more xp - more fun) and meditation (as I've said, having enough mana is crucial - it saves us lots of tedium).
So we expert our meditation (each skill level of meditation acts like an extra level gained so now our mana pools are as if we'd been 8 levels higher than we are)...
And master the water! We had to jump to mist for this one, though.
We buy enchant item spell there (which is huge for our economy - gold is quite precious in this game)
And after waiting for our gate master to recharge, we jump into free haven where we buy our own town portal spellbook. Time to part our ways, sweetheart.
We then hire a mystic (who looks suspiciously identical to the gate master we've just fired, but maybe it's just a coincidence). What's a mystic, you'll ask?
It's simply the second-best NPC hireling in this game. It works the same way as the spell master, only adding +3 bonus instead of +4. Stacking bonus, as you can see, so all of our spells are cast at +7 skill level. Those lvl 7 sparks? Oh, they just deal up to 106 damage per cast. Those lvl 4 fireballs? 38,5 area damage. Oh, nothing to see here, move along.
KK, that's end of the quite formiddable part I.