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

[Keyrock]

Finished Castle Portmeyron.  Onward to the Forge to finish Act 1, then I can finally get to Seahaven to train some skills.  They seemed to mostly take care of the performance problems with the latest patch.  I have noticed very few slowdowns and even after pumping the graphics up a bit higher (farther draw distance and higher shadow setting).  They still happen, but they're very rare now.

[Keyrock]

I'm in act 2 now, going through level 2 of the Lost City.  Smooth sailing so far.  My party has just enough magic to survive.  The blademaster's earth magic for healing and the defender's fire magic for Burning Determination, which saves me from being status effected to death, and torchlight so that I can see where the heck I'm going underground.

 

Edit:  And, just took down Montbard.

Edited April 3, 2014 by Keyrock

[Tigranes]

Burning Determination is an all-purpose buff in this game. Level 3 is harder than level 4, and you may not be able to clear level 4, but it's worth checking it out while you're there for some cool stuff.

[Keyrock]

Burning Determination is an all-purpose buff in this game. Level 3 is harder than level 4, and you may not be able to clear level 4, but it's worth checking it out while you're there for some cool stuff.

I'll clear out Lost City, all levels, eventually, but I'm not ready for that at this point.

[Keyrock]

Made it to The Crag.  The trek wasn't as tough as I remember, mostly because I was smarter about positioning and not letting myself get surrounded, methinks.  Next up I'll go back to the Lost City to get the water shard.  I should be able to handle the enemies in level 4 by now.

[Keyrock]

Got the water shard and the Shalassa blessing no problem.  There are some large groups of undead in lev 4 of the Lost City, but none of the enemies are particularly hard.  Went down to Skull Rock and got the air shard.  I only did the bare minimum to get the shard, I'll clear out Skull Rock later as there are some pretty nasty ambushes in there.  The battles with the elemental lords (water and air) were a piece of cake, as are all the elemental lord fights.  I think Gralkor is the only one who's ever defeated me in either this game or my previous, and that's only because you're so much lower level when you meet him.  The battles with the elemental lords get progressively easier as they stay about the same power and my party keeps getting more powerful.  With the Ylath blassing in hand I now have a clear path to both the defender and barbarian promotions, though I doubt I'm powerful enough to go through the Pao Kai nest at my level (19) or take on multiple cyclopses (cyclopi?).  Better test myself against the lone cyclops in the dangerous cave first.

 

Playing this all-might party has taught me one thing.  My fantasy of a zero magic quad-barbarian party is folly, at least at warrior difficulty.  Even on adventurer difficulty I'm not sure how feasible it would be.  Sure, I would be handing out massive physical damage, but I would need a mountain of scrolls.  Without burning determination there would be areas that would be nearly impossible to get through for that party, and there are only so many scrolls you can buy.

[Keyrock]

At lev 19 the cyclops in the dangerous cave was a pushover, I obliterated him, then killed the nearby shadow dragon, who was even easier.  I didn't think I'd be ready for the Pao Kai Nest, but I figured I'd at least clear a path to it and made my way there.  Once there I figured, what the heck, at went inside.  I cleared a good chunk of the first level then headed back outside.  I could have proceeded, but the fights were quite tough and required me chugging a bunch of potions to survive.  I figure I'd head back via a different path (through the jungle), then head to Karthal and do the infiltration through the sewers.  That should get me up at least one more level (I'm lev 20 now) and I can also hit up some of the trainers there, namely bow master, then head back to the Pao Kai Nest at level 21 or 22.  I should at least be able to clear the first level without too much trouble at that point.

Edited April 6, 2014 by Keyrock

[Keyrock]

I got both the Shield Guard and the Warmonger promotion quests done.  I did the Shield Guard quest first once I realized I could steamroll cyclopses (cyclopi?).  As the last time I played, Davros, the "boss" cyclops was much easier than the regular cyclopses, not that any of them were hard.  The extre few levels served me well in the Pao Kai Nest as I had no trouble with the goblins and orcs in there, even the one time I made a tactical mistake and allowed myself to get flanked.  The Pao Kai itself was a pushover.  Next up the Blademaster promotion quest.

[Keyrock]

I'm level 26 and all my characters are promoted, plus I have all the blessings except dark.  I'm at the point now where I'm not the least bit afraid to go absolutely anywhere in the game as I'm just steamrolling a lot of enemies.  I'll hit up that Temple of Meow place and then I think it's time to try out some of the DLC content, as that's supposed to be meant for end game characters, and I'm pretty much there, power level wise.

[Enoch]

So...  How friendly is the game to playing in a living room while looking after a newborn? 

 

Specifically:

 

Can it be played mostly one-handed with either just a mouse or with hotkeys and occasional trackpad input? 

 

As I recall M&M 3-5, melee combats were effectively paused while waiting for player input on a character's turn, but at-range opponents would take their turns if you sat idle.  Does M&MX work the same way, and are the quasi-real-timey elements pausable at any time? 

 

Can the text be effectively read off a 40" TV from 12 feet away? 

 

Will it run well on Haswell i5 integreated graphics? 

 

Is it amenable to short-interval playtimes, or do you really need a couple free hours to get anything interesting done?

[Keyrock]

So...  How friendly is the game to playing in a living room while looking after a newborn? 

 

Specifically:

 

Can it be played mostly one-handed with either just a mouse or with hotkeys and occasional trackpad input? 

 

As I recall M&M 3-5, melee combats were effectively paused while waiting for player input on a character's turn, but at-range opponents would take their turns if you sat idle.  Does M&MX work the same way, and are the quasi-real-timey elements pausable at any time? 

 

Can the text be effectively read off a 40" TV from 12 feet away? 

 

Will it run well on Haswell i5 integreated graphics? 

 

Is it amenable to short-interval playtimes, or do you really need a couple free hours to get anything interesting done?

The game is basically entirely keyboard driven.  I almost never touch my mouse, except when saving/loading games.

 

It is completely turn-based, no need to pause ever.  You can walk away from the game in the middle of combat, come back half an hour later, and it will be in the same exact state you left it.  

 

Can't give you a definitive answer on the text since I don't have the setup you described, or anything close to it (I'm playing on a laptop), but the text isn't tiny, so I doubt it would be a problem.

 

I can't answer definitively whether this will run on Intel graphics (I'm presuming HD4600 or Iris Pro?) as I always run off my Nvidia 650M, but with lowered settings I think you should be okay.  The game does experience slowdowns occasionally, even on high end cards, from what I've read, but, since it;s a turn-based game, it doesn't break gameplay.

 

I sometimes play it in 30 minute sessions when that's all the time I have and can manage to get at least a little bit done.

Edited April 9, 2014 by Keyrock

[Enoch]

So I started mucking about with this game this weekend.  (Hands-free baby carriers should be marketed specifically at gamer parents as the best way to get their fix while watching Junior.)  It is pretty stingy with info on classes & skills going in.  I was alt-tabbing to firefox to figure out what the heck each of these classes were.  And the spellcaster classes are particularly quirky-- no clear healbot/glasscannon split.  I had to look up which schools had the healing spells. 

 

Anyhow, after some experimentation, I think I have a lineup I'm happy with.  Not having an especially exhaustive knowledge of the spell rosters, I wanted to have at least one character who could Master (or Preferrably GM) each one.  My first attempt had a Freemage supplemented by a Crusader to provide Light magic.  But I soured on that idea as it seemed that the Crusader would never have enough mana to be a useful caster unless I really neglected her melee skills.  (And if I'm neglecting her melee skills, why didn't I just pick a full-on caster class instead?)  Also, that run through the first quest taught me that defensive magic is really useful in this game-- at least at low levels, it seems to be a more efficient use of mana than is direct damage.  So based on that I decided that 2 full caster-classes was the way to go.  (Plus, without the classic Cleric/Wizard split, the flexibility that each caster class has to be both a support and damage caster seems to make them all rather powerful.)  As Freemage has a monopoly on Dark (odd design choice there), I wanted one of those, and Rune Priest looked like the best complementary choice.  So the RP gets Earth/Fire/Light, while the Freemage goes Primal/Dark/OtherElemental (with enough Earth to be a secondary healer). 

 

For warrior-types, given the strength of defensive magic, I wanted to lean towards high-damage-per-turn builds, as I didn't see much point in 'tanking' in what I saw of the combat.  And I didn't see much difference between the Pure Basher classes and the "Hybrid" ones-- so long as the hybrids can GM a melee weapon skill, they should be good enough for me.  My experience from prior M&M games is that magical abilities in my front-liners are useful when they provide backup healing and utility casting, and pretty pointless in the more offensive-focused schools.  So that gave me the Bladedancer (earth), Crusader (light), or Scout (light) to pick from.  I didn't want to do both the Bladedancer and Crusader, as both seem tied to Swords as their primary weapon, and diversified weaponry leads to better results in games like this.  (On the other hand, my party is probably weak in armor diversity-- I imagine that I'm going to be finding a lot of nice heavy armor that nobody in the group can wear.)

 

So I notched the difficulty up to Warrior, and set up a Bladedancer - Scout - Rune Priest - Freemage group.  The other Protip I learned from my first party-building experiments is that giving each character 1 point in bow/crossbow on character creation gets them a free missile weapon.  Ranged didn't seem to be very effective given how often enemies pop up in your lap, but if it's worth a 1-point investment for each character (and I think it is), then putting that point in at character creation saves 100 gold or so, which is nice. 

Edited April 28, 2014 by Enoch

[Humanoid]

Bladedancers are just as powerful with daggers as they are with swords, perhaps moreso given the utility of chewing up block charges. Not that you shouldn't have taken the scout - you probably ended up with the better balance as a result. The Crusader being committed to the shield means they'll fall away rapidly midway through the game as a damage dealer, they are very definitely healers.

 

Aside, you'll probably find you won't have the points to really push three magic skills on each spellcaster, I'd focus on two for the majority of the game as to not spread yourself too thin.

Edited April 28, 2014 by Humanoid

[Keyrock]

Archery is a lot more useful now than it was when the game first released.  My last all-might group I ran the game with regularly took down some enemies before they could ever reach me as long as I had several tiles between them and us at start, or, at least, they'd be very hurt by the time they reached melee.  When the game first came out archery was heavily underpowered.  It's not superpowered now by any stretch of the imagination, but it's a lot more viable.  I agree that straight damage dealing with casters isn't very good.  I mainly used casters for healing, buffing, and debuffing.

[Enoch]

Bladedancers are just as powerful with daggers as they are with swords, perhaps moreso given the utility of chewing up block charges. Not that you shouldn't have taken the scout - you probably ended up with the better balance as a result. The Crusader being committed to the shield means they'll fall away rapidly midway through the game as a damage dealer, they are very definitely healers.

 

Aside, you'll probably find you won't have the points to really push three magic skills on each spellcaster, I'd focus on two for the majority of the game as to not spread yourself too thin.

 

Yeah, not knowing how skillpoint-rich the game is over the long haul, I wasn't too sure about how aggressively to specialize.  When I said I was looking for spellcasters who could Master a school, I really meant "had the option to, if I decided it was worthwhile."  For now, I'm basing most of my magical-skillpoint allocation on which Expert-tier spells I want to unlock.  When I get an idea of which higher-level spells I want, I'll re-assess which schools I want to continue pushing.  (I also don't have much of a clue as to whether Trainer availability is going to be a bigger restriction on my ability to Master/GM a school than skillpoint availability is.) 

 

I probably don't have a full enough understanding of the block mechanics yet to appreciate the effectiveness of Daggers.  (I'm guessing they scale up in no. of attacks moreso than other weapons, and opponents sometimes have abilities that stop the first X no. of incoming blows?)  Still, I don't feel bad about sticking with swords on my BD.  She started with a free point in it, and it's rarely a bad choice as far as good-weapon-availability goes.

 

I've also been avoiding putting points in the "support skill" stuff (i.e., things not named after a weapon or school of magic).  I figure that direct investment in weapon skills and stuff that unlocks better spells probably has the best ROI early on.  Will re-assess as I advance. 

[Humanoid]

Prior to the DLC, you'd budget for about level 30 - in reality you'd get another couple levels or so further, but you'd be stuck inside the final dungeon by that point and won't be able to properly use those skill points. 30 levels at 3 points per level means 90 points to spend. GMing a skill is 25 points, plain Mastery is 15, so the rule of thumb is that you got to GM three skills total and master one if you fully focused your skill points.

 

Someone who's played through with all the new post-release dungeons would have a better idea of what the new effective level cap is.

[Humanoid]

And yeah, each enemy has X number of block *chances* per turn - they get used up regardless if the attack actually succeeds or not. I think fully levelled Daggers plus Dual Wield is seven attacks per turn, versus three for swords.

[Keyrock]

And yeah, each enemy has X number of block *chances* per turn - they get used up regardless if the attack actually succeeds or not. I think fully levelled Daggers plus Dual Wield is seven attacks per turn, versus three for swords.

The bladedancer is a good way to get around/disable blocking, just by sheer volume of attacks.  The other way to get around blocking is two-handed grand mastery, which I think Barbarians are the only class that can attain that.  When my barbarians in my last party reached grand master two-handed it made a huge difference as I now suddenly had two characters (I had 2 barbarians) that were completely unblockable.

 

If I ever do a 3rd run through the game, I'll likely go with an all-hybrid archer-heavy party.

Edited April 28, 2014 by Keyrock

[Enoch]

Thanks for the input.

 

Also:  Is there a way to "wait" a turn when enemies are near, but outside my line of fire?  I recall doing that in the old school M&Ms, but haven't found the option in this one.

[Keyrock]

Thanks for the input.

 

Also:  Is there a way to "wait" a turn when enemies are near, but outside my line of fire?  I recall doing that in the old school M&Ms, but haven't found the option in this one.

Just have each of your characters defend for a turn.

[IndiraLightfoot]

And sometimes your entire party gets greyed out and you simply can't end turn, or at least so I thought, until I found out about this useful little command that forces an end-turn in M&M X Legacy even if all of your characters are unable to take any action (and it ends the turn otherwise too - very nice):

Press Ctrl+Alt+R and just keep on having fun. At the very end, with a stretched out boss fight, that saved me like five times.

Edited April 28, 2014 by IndiraLightfoot

[Enoch]

So I'm now through what I guess is the first chapter, having cleared Port-whatever Castle on the map outside Sorpigal.  Frankly, my attention to the plot stuff has waned.  (This may be a side effect of playing while a mostly-sleeping baby is strapped to my chest.)  I'm not too certain why I'm working for the people I'm working for, other than that it seemed like the only way to access new content.  I mean, I thought my party's medium-term goal was to get into that city that starts with a K, but I don't recall how rescuing and working for the guy who rules this castle is supposed to lead to that.  

 

Still, I'm having fun.  Smashing through mooks in someplace called an Elemental Forge.  Ran into a couple Air Elementals that totally wrecked me, so I'll have to loop back there later on.  (I managed to deal with the Light Elementals across the way, though, and all it got me was access to a door I can't open yet.) 

 

Party-wise, we're all level 10 or 11, I think.  My Scout is out-performing my Bladedancer as a melee combatant.  I think this is mostly because I've had better luck in finding Axes than I've had in finding Swords.  Also, the Bladedancer seems to usually act earlier in the round and thus gets blocked more.  (I'm not sure if this is due to party positioning, something in their attributes or equipment, or a weird streak in random initiative rolls.)  The Runepriest is the clear MVP so far-- Celestial Shield, Regeneration, and Poison Spray are pretty indispensible.  He's also just a skillpoint or two away from Experting Fire for the spell that stops all those annoying "Stun" effects.  (Rather atypical for an RPG to have such a key general-use buff spell in the "Fire Magic" category-- that's usually a pure-direct-damage school.)  It bugs me a bit that I'm going to have all these short-duration buffs on the same character.  The Scout can also use C-Shield, and the Freemage has 1 point in Earth for Cure Poison and Regeneration, but they're all less effective versions owing to the RP's larger investment in the schools. 

 

I do feel like I'm under-utilizing the Freemage so far.  She's got enough Prime to get Identify (expert level), but I don't yet see a strong reason to continue investing in that school.  Likewise with her 1 point in Dark for secret-detection purposes.  I've poured most of her points into Air-- some nice direct damage, and Gust of Wind is handy against melee opponents.  The spells for sale in the Water school don't look that appealing, so I might just start investing in the magical-crit-boosting skill to give her lightning bolts extra oomph. 

Edited May 2, 2014 by Enoch

[Humanoid]

Combat order every turn is fixed in portrait order, but you can drag and drop the portraits to set any order you like.

[Tigranes]

You can play with dynamic order where you just use F1/2/3/4 (IIRC) keys or click on portraits to quickly access each dude.

[Keyrock]

You can play with dynamic order where you just use F1/2/3/4 (IIRC) keys or click on portraits to quickly access each dude.

Yep.  You can go in whatever order you like, the game will default to whichever character went first the previous turn then proceed in order to the right, but you can click or hotkey to any character to have them go next, as Tigranes wrote.