Might & Magic X Teased by Ubisoft, To Be Revealed at PAX East

[Keyrock]

I almost feel dirty now, having earlier admitted I have two elves in my starting party. Even worse, my very avatar name is from my usual go-to char that breaks open new games, and it's always an elf or an half-elf, just out of tradition and habit. I haven't a thing for elves within RPGs at all, though. And I read just a few Elfquest back in the day. I thought Dragonlance had far too many of them, and dark elves I'm pretty tired of. I hope you'll show some leniency and let me bear this flaw like a scar. Btw, I really think orcs are cool, but I do like dwarves even better.

It's okay, I'm willing to look the other way, just this once.  Let's never speak of this again. 

 

I wonder how viable an all orc party would be?  Barbarian, Hunter, 2 X Shaman, or something like that.  Obviously, a bit light on the magic end of the spectrum.  On the other hand, no particularly squishy characters either.  Doing an all dwarf party would have essentially the same drawbacks and benefits.

[Darkpriest]

I'm assuming that once you complete the quest for the astrologer in Seahaven he will leave my party and I won't be able to hire him any more, correct?  If that is the case I will avoid finishing his quest for as long as possible so that I can keep him in my party and get the 10% exp bonus he grants.

 

There is a scribe in Karthal that provides xp bonus. Just complete the scribe quest once you will reach Karthal

[Keyrock]

 

I'm assuming that once you complete the quest for the astrologer in Seahaven he will leave my party and I won't be able to hire him any more, correct?  If that is the case I will avoid finishing his quest for as long as possible so that I can keep him in my party and get the 10% exp bonus he grants.

 

There is a scribe in Karthal that provides xp bonus. Just complete the scribe quest once you will reach Karthal

 

Same 10% boost?

[Darkpriest]

 

 

I'm assuming that once you complete the quest for the astrologer in Seahaven he will leave my party and I won't be able to hire him any more, correct?  If that is the case I will avoid finishing his quest for as long as possible so that I can keep him in my party and get the 10% exp bonus he grants.

 

There is a scribe in Karthal that provides xp bonus. Just complete the scribe quest once you will reach Karthal

 

Same 10% boost?

 

 

it boosts xp, not sure if it is 10 or more, but definitely not less than 10

[Humanoid]

I've read that there's two of every NPC type in the game, no more no less, so I'd assume it's the same. But he wouldn't be free unlike the quest one I guess.

 

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On melee damage classes:

 

Two mercenaries might be painful in by the mid-game when you find that they lag in the weapon skills department. Master weapon gives 5*15 = 75% damage increase. GM gives 8*25 = 200% bonus.  So that's 175% damage on your weapon, vs 300%, passive. *Every* other Might class and *every* hybrid class can GM a melee weapon, so that's not a factor. Every one of them, except the Defender, can match the Mercenaries' maximum of either Master Dual-wield or Master Two-handed. This is a very deep hole that the Merc ends up in. The Bladedancer and Barbarian pull even farther ahead from GMing those two skills respectively.

 

Supposedly then, the Merc is meant to make up the difference via their ability to GM Warfare. That gives the ability to crit on demand. But what that's doing is making you spend a non-trivial 25 mana to match what the other classes are doing naturally. And I think that's just broken game balance. Even accounting for the fact that they yield greater benefit from the Sword and Axe masteries, they will still underperform. (But that said, if determined to go that route it means a 2H sword is the best option to take full advantage of the ability, and a 2H Axe next.)

 

There is one niche for them however: the ability to crit on demand means the Master Mace bonus effectively becomes a stun on demand. Interesting, but I wouldn't say it's worth carrying a whole class around for when a spell can reasonably do similar things.

 

 

TL;DR:

 

Blade Dancers and Barbarians are the god-kings of melee.

 

Rangers and Scouts are reasonably close substitutes and come with the bonus of being able to perform backup healing duties (Earth and Light mastery respectively).

 

The Crusader is a one-of-a-kind class - a hybrid that is almost as effective with either Might or Magic.

 

Mercenaries, Defenders and Hunters struggle to find a place in a well-balanced group. Mercs struggle with damage, Defenders struggle with game mechanics working against their intended role (until very very late game), Hunters because they're a hybrid with no viable secondary role (no access to healing magic)

Edited January 29, 2014 by Humanoid

[Keyrock]

Maybe I'll make a party with all he classes Humanoid deems unworthy.  I'll call it the Min-Min Party. 

Edited January 29, 2014 by Keyrock

[Humanoid]

But, but, I only listed three classes!

 

 

In all seriousness though, I did the usual thing of starting the game with a vaguely RPish party, taking things that looked interesting and such. But the game is tuned such that that approach turned the game into an unfun slog. If there was an "easy" difficulty (call it Peasant difficulty), I'd go with that combination. But yeah, even at Adventurer difficulty, even fights that were no real threat of dying (given enough potions for longevity) took literally three or more times longer as they are now as you chip slowly away at their health. I was already beginning to feel burnout by the end of Act 1 (the castle in particular). If that's the old school gaming experience they're trying to replicate, then it's one I want no part of.

 

---

 

So yeah, my general advice to avoid that kind of tedium is, sadly, to min-max a fair bit, especially early on where each point you get is comparatively more impactful. For a second playthrough, sure, spread your wings a bit, but I fear a sub-par party as someone's first might end up turning them off the game altogether.

 

- Pick one *melee* weapon skill that your class can GM and advance it to the maximum rank available to you at the cost of all else. Which means Expert at level 3, except for Spear because of stupid trainer availability. (Spears are awesome but be prepared to suffer in act 1) And keep going to 15. Weapon skill is both the best way to improve damage, and the best way to improve hit chance, to the extent that even if it did only one of those it'd still be worth taking over anything else. If this was a multiplayer game, everyone would call it brokenly overpowered.

 

- For magic, you want Expert Earth and Novice Light as an absolute minimum, and on different characters. You also want Expert Fire on either character (or a third one). Putting all your healing eggs in one basket will make things a lot more difficult. The Fire magic is for the Burning Determination spell, which prevents the most debilitating effects you can suffer, and which makes the curative spells in the Water magic list completely optional (and by extension, Water magic itself).

 

- With that sorted, the only real other threat is Feebleminding, with requires either Expert Air or potions to solve. But you'd want the potions anyway unless you always keep a piece of equipment with 100% Feeblemind protection on your Airmancer, and it happens comparatively rarely enough such that Air magic is nowhere near a priority as the ones listed.

 

- Obvious, but abuse the hell out of rest. It's cheaper by at least an order of magnitude compared to patching up your party on the go (it also cures Weakness and Feeblemind), and there are no negative consequences for doing so. It also maximises the utility of your chef - you did hire the chef in the first inn, right? (But only after the Spider Lair, because you have two free NPCs to take to that)

Edited January 29, 2014 by Humanoid

[IndiraLightfoot]

Three hours more into the game, and the combat gets more exciting now. A perhaps somewhat expected, but still nice surprise!

I took 1 point in light magic and tried out that Celestial cloak just for fun, and well, let's say it actually makes a difference. I've also made my ranger just as good at dualwielding daggers as with her bow, if not better, and that means I have basically three melee characters and one mage, and I do feel that I'm getting the balance pretty much right now. For instance, Mamushi, I literally man-handled till he begged for mercy. He hadn't much time for pushing us around, I tell you that. Still now, like level 8, I find that my strong, heavy armour expert, shield-wielding, endurance and vitality-junkie dwarf with a crappy beginner's axe is the one that stands the longest by far. In a few cases, she just stands there against the hardest enemies, while the rest of my party is rather quickly rendered unconscious. I got to improve evade and armour fast for the rest of them. The dwarf, by now immune to poison, outshines the rest. Just wait till she finds a decent axe.

[Humanoid]

As far as I can tell, the target of enemy attacks in this game is completely random - i.e. 25% for any one character. (Previous games behaved similarly, but with hidden modifiers in that certain enemies might prefer attacking certain classes or races - e.g. goblins would mostly try to hit the dwarf)

 

The idea then, is to use the Warfare skills to put that shield and heavy armour to good use. If you try to raise the survivability of your other party members too much, it rather defeats the point of the Defender, who performs no other real role. So really, you want to use Challenge every single turn if at all possible. But there's a catch - unless it hits, the effect doesn't work. And Defenders, with the massive hit chance penalty from wearing heavy armour, don't hit all that often. As a result, the Defender is not a very commonly taken class, as there's a lot of catch-up work that needs to be done to make it work. But to give it the best chance possible, there are a few things you can do.

 

- Attack with your Ranger first every round. With four strikes per round, there's a good chance all the little strikes will eat up the target's block charges (the number of possible blocks - or more specifically, block attempts - per round is limited). Attacking with your Defender after the block attempts are exhausted means you only have to deal with misses (which is a function of your weapon attack value versus the target's evade score). To make this more convenient, put your Ranger to the left of your Defender in the party layout (you can drag and drop them anytime).

 

- The expert Earth spell Poison Spray reduces the target's evade, and as a bonus is an area effect spell. Consequently you want to use this before the Defender attacks as well - and as the Ranger also benefits from this, you actually want your Earthmancer to act first. (My party setup left-to-right is Rune Priest - Bladedancer - Barbarian - Crusader to use this logic)

 

- As with any melee class, weapon skill is god-king. But for heavy armour classes, the heavy armour skill provides an equivalent attack value boost (but no damage increase, so it's still strictly inferior). This more or less means you want to max out these skills in this order at the expense of all else. The defensive skills aren't of much benefit if you can't get the enemies to attack you in the first place, and your natural survivability is pretty high anyway, so skills like Shield, Endurance and Dodge take a back seat until you're maxed out offensively. Besides, with this approach, it means you should be able to get away with ignoring the Perception stat, and get much better value elsewhere.

 

Note: In theory it'd be even better for the first move per turn to be the expert Light spell Radiant Weapon, which is meant to strip the target of all their blocks for the turn. I'm informed, however, that it doesn't actually work....

 

The general opinion on Defenders is that they're a bit of a drag for the first half of the game, maybe even two-thirds. They're sturdy throughout the game, which is nice, but can't reliably use that longevity to actually protect the rest of the party. Once Defenders reach Grandmaster Warfare, the game changes because Taunt is vastly more reliable than Challenge (I think it skips the hit check, and less foes are immune to it), and with Master shield, you have a lot of blocks, each of which can trigger retaliation attacks. When you get to this stage, Defenders are very impressive indeed.

 

 

---

 

EDIT: Block mechanics aren't immediately obvious, but it's fairly simple. There's the number of block attempts per turn (call it X), and then there's the block chance (call it Y). The first X attacks against a target are rolled against Y% to determine whether it's blocked. Now, block chance and block chance bonuses from items and skills may look pitifully small, but that's only a bonus on top of a base block chance - this is 50% for player characters. (For enemies it'd be whatever hardcoded value was set for this enemy type) So with a 10% bonus from stats and items for example, every block attempt is calculated at 60% chance to block.

Edited January 29, 2014 by Humanoid

[IndiraLightfoot]

Wow, much obliged, Humanoid!

 

And yeah, the block mechanics are pretty apparent, especially highlighted when you met Mamushi.

 

I really love my dwarven defender, so these tips are fantastic. I should have thought of some of them myself. I already use Challenge from Warfare for my blade dancer, but forgot how squishy she was. I have a few questions, though:

-I now have two dual-wielders in my party, both decent at dodging. Which should be hitting first, is it really the Ranger with two daggers or the Bladedancer with two swords?

-Well, my mage uses some similar spell all the time. It's an area of effect and it lowers their defences, but I think its prim magic, and it's just a novice level one.

-So, the best order for me would be: Mage, Ranger, Blademaster and then Defender last?

And a basic question: How do I switch the portrait order down at the bottom UI? Some drag and drop + shift-thingie?

 

You've already got a really good grasp of the mechanics. It's almost down to a science, and in a good way!

Great to know that Radiant Weapon doesn't work yet.

 

*Cyberwave!*

Edited January 29, 2014 by IndiraLightfoot

[Keyrock]

Poison Spray is pretty much my favorite spell so far.  Cast it right at the beginning of battle and the damage really adds up after a bunch of rounds.  I even plan my attacks around it, knowing approximately how much of an enemy's bar will take a hit each round, I can tell "okay, he's going to drop dead next round anyway, I'll attack someone else).  I actually think my Hunter is almost as good a defensive character as my Defender.  Late game, I think the Hunter may actually become my best defensive character (also, I'm really looking forward to getting Harpoon and Snare).  While my Hunter doesn't use a shield, spear skill grants extra blocks, as well as two-handed skill.  More importantly, the Hunter can grand master endurance, dodge, and arcane discipline.  Part of the reason I created my party the way I did is that I have two characters, both orcs, coincidentally, that can grand master arcane discipline (Hunter and Shaman).  Combine that with orcs' natural ability to shrug off status effects, and I have a pair of characters that are really difficult to disable.  While I haven't reached late game yet (I'm somewhere in the midst of act 2), my hunch is that magic damage and effects will become every bit as much a concern as physical damage, if not more, in late game.  Hence, my thinking that arcane discipline will become more and more important going forward.

Edited January 29, 2014 by Keyrock

[IndiraLightfoot]

Sure I get killed here and there, but I come back, tackle the challenge again and succeed.  That's the fun of it for me.

Tell me about it! And I do enjoy my party being wiped out every now and then. Speaking of which, in Act 1, there are a few really tough enemies. You can return to them later, no? It would be a shame if Act 2 locked you out somehow. I mean, there are even one or two master trainers on that peninsula. Early on, I even had to leave certain levels in dungeons be simple because they were too tough for my party, and that's something I've missed in many CRPGs as of late.

[Humanoid]

Daggers first - that is, always the lower damage attacks first. Plus you have four dagger attacks per round (assuming expert daggers) as compared to only two sword attacks. And use your Blade Dancer to Shatter instead of Challenge. Theoretically if your Ranger has Shatter it's viable too, double the chances to apply the effect, but Rangers have fewer points to spread around for utility skills since presumably they'd be raising magic skills instead. And as the amount of armour reduced scales with Warfare skill, it's not an optimal long term choice to leave the Ranger on one point of Warfare anyway.

 

The Prime spell, Sundering, though useful, is different to Poison Spray in that it reduces armour, not evade, therefore it increases your damage but not your chance to hit. Shatter is also an armour reduction, as is the Master Earth spell Acid Splash. They're all good abilities, but don't affect hit chance and therefore won't help your Defender tank hits for you.

 

And yeah, I think that order is pretty much optimal.

Edited January 29, 2014 by Humanoid

[Humanoid]

And yeah, they don't lock out prior areas if you've progressed to the next one, so it's perfectly okay, and in fact assumed, that you leave the harder challenges in the first area alone.

 

 

The Cyclops and the Dragon are just loot, the two Spectres and the tomb they guard is linked to the Crusader-to-Paladin promotion quest, I think. Also the Light and Air Elementals in the Forge, they're part of content meant to be tackled later (though the Light elementals should be beatable on the first visit there)

 

Counterintuitively perhaps, I think the Dragon was easier than the Cyclops.

 

Edited January 29, 2014 by Humanoid

[Keyrock]

 

Sure I get killed here and there, but I come back, tackle the challenge again and succeed.  That's the fun of it for me.

Tell me about it! And I do enjoy my party being wiped out every now and then. Speaking of which, in Act 1, there are a few really tough enemies. You can return to them later, no? It would be a shame if Act 2 locked you out somehow. I mean, there are even one or two master trainers on that peninsula. Early on, I even had to leave certain levels in dungeons be simple because they were too tough for my party, and that's something I've missed in many CRPGs as of late.

 

Yes, you can come back and fight the cyclops and shadow dragon later.  In fact, I don't think I had much of a chance against either one in act 1 on warrior difficulty.  Maybe if I'd min-maxed my party, I might have had a sliver of a chance, but min-maxing is not my idea of fun, though I get some people really enjoy that sort of thing, more power to them (literally).  Personally I'm enjoying the "slog", but maybe I'm just a masochist like that. 

Edited January 29, 2014 by Keyrock

[IndiraLightfoot]

Humanoid, you're the best. Thank you!

 

The great thing is that your tips are improving my very first party, a party that I picked for "RPG-reasons", whatever exactly that is in a dungeon crawler like this, but anyhow... Although a suboptimal one for min-maxing, your know-how will help this party survive the ride and hopefully enjoy the game a tad more. And I get to keep my tactics as well. Kudos!

 

Great to know that you can return, let's just hope the shuffling of portraits is just as easy. I can't wait to play it again, but now, back to work.

[Hurlshort]

The Spectre tomb is crazy tough.  I killed the two guards, but once I got inside it was a total bloodbath.  I'll have to come back when I get stronger.

[Humanoid]

All the weirder that the Druid promotion quest is just "hey, go talk to this other NPC" with no combat involved whatsoever.

 

Haven't promoted any of my characters yet, so not sure which is closer to the norm though.

[IndiraLightfoot]

In honour of my joyful playthrough of Might & Magic X with my ranger Indira as their leader, I hereby change my avatar to something more appropriate.

[Keyrock]

I wonder what the Hunter promotion quest will be?  I'm salivating over the idea of the Harpoon ability.  Every time I use it I'm going to yell "Get over here!"

 

As an aside, I think the barks in this game are fantastic, some of the best I've heard in any RPG.  Obviously, they get repetitive after a while, but that's unavoidable unless the developer wants to spend the time and money to have 500 phrases for each race/gender/demeanor combination, which falls under the blanket of "resources that could have been better spent elsewhere".  One minor quibble:  Why must dwarves always be Scottish?

Edited January 29, 2014 by Keyrock

[Humanoid]

I turned them off when I noticed it was mostly them trolling me. "Hey, did you hear something? Oh, no it was nothing." Nothing on the alert meter, it's just something that happens anywhere, anytime.

 

Also "Ow, that hurt" - zero damage received.

[IndiraLightfoot]

Hehe!

 

One of my party members left the intinerant merchant wagon and declared loudly in her distinctive Scottish dialect: "This will be a great day...", and then one second later the night fell.

 

EDIT: I think I had rested the party just outside the wagon first, though. Kenji's crunchy frogs are a delight!

Edited January 29, 2014 by IndiraLightfoot

[Keyrock]

My favorite one so far was when I entered Seahaven.   "Look at them all just stand around.  It's like they're waiting for us to show up and solve all their problems for them."  I'm also fond of "Yes!  Running on Mother Earth, beneath Father Sky!"  The enthusiasm in the delivery gets me every time.

[IndiraLightfoot]

Yeah, that first one I even had in Sorpigal, perhaps the third time I returned there. It's classic!

[Gorgon]

I think I have been thwarted by this game on warrior difiulty. Once I get deeper into the forest I just get slaugthered mercilessly. Good healing doesn't help if my guys die in one hit.  I had better luck with my abandoned all caster party. At least they were making progress until their mana bars were gone.