It was time to hit up some new towns and go exploring outside of the gates to start mapping out the lands. I had at least two more main towns to hit before wandering outside the not-so-safe gates of any of these towns and finding the kind of horrors that lurked beyond.
The first town I did a quick little search of was Vulcania. I was mostly just looking to hit up any shops looking for upgrades and seeing if there was a way to unlock any hiring without having to put too much effort into it. Vulcania was a total bust, so I ended up taking a portal onto the next town.
The town of Atlantium is supposed to be the best town from what little I can gather and my former knowledge of some Might and Magic games. I did end up finding some upgrades in town and quickly spent a few thousand gold.
While at some point I’ll be doing a more in-depth exploration. For the moment I was just looking for anything quick before returning to what I was doing before. Then while in Atlantium I spotted an interesting sign that I could not pass up seeing what was inside.
Out of all the towns I had been in I had yet to see one of them having any kind of jail. So naturally I knocked on the door and entered the place like I owned it. I was quickly sent to the grave and re-spawned back at the inn in Vulcania. I was not going to let that death or the next keep me from wanting to see further inside the jail.
The third time around was the charm, and I defeated a couple of fights before discovering something rather interesting. There were two people inside saying they did nothing wrong and since I broke in it only made sense to free them. They offered to join me if I’d take them.
Up to this point any hireling I could hire have been melee or tanks. Not quite useful for me since I already have the first two rows of combat quite filled. One of them, however, ended up being a cleric that I would not mind having a second one of. The other is an archer who I did not care much for, but I’ll take over yet another melee character.
What is quite interesting about the whole ordeal is I took a look at the cleric's spell book. He has everything. Now he can’t use everything since most of it he lacks the caster level to cast. At least they are not that many levels behind my group and for the most part will just remain a level or two behind for quite some time which I’m more than fine with.
Even more interesting is when they did level up, I did not need to spend any money to train them. I do believe they are charging me some kind of daily fee to keep them hired. I guess that is a bit of a trade-off. Granted with the spells the cleric came with that is quite a cost saving. Even more so since he has lower-level spells that I’ve wanted for the other cleric I have yet to discover how to obtain them.
Having a truly full group now I decided to press my luck and venture outdoors. Any attempt before now has always granted me a quick death and very little if anything being learned from the experience. While I did get killed a couple of times around this time, I was able to make it to different towns, explore any areas, and learn some stuff.
What can be a bit annoying about this game is when you zone into a new area. Often you have no idea what the zone is called. While I do have the games guide as it’s included, and it has maps. It takes a little effort to work out where you are in the world if not given any names to go from.
I would quickly learn there are many tiles while out in the wild you want to avoid ever stepping on them again. Some in colder places might put you into a blizzard or similar and drop you off at a random spot on your current map or even the next.
Then you had stuff like getting killed by an erupting volcano. Along with other stuff that just did some damage and once and a while might kill off one of your group members. Not knowing where the closest towns were when your group started to get picked off one by one was a bit aggravating.
At the very least things seemed to get rather easy as long as I followed any roads I had found and did not step off them. I still could end up in quite a bad situation, but it seems they are there to help create the safest possible route to other towns, castles, and who knows what else I’ll discover at some point.
Some of these roads seemed to run me quickly through a zone that does not give me a lot of information if I wanted to remain somewhat safe. At the time I was following signs to another town. I was expecting it to be in the current zone I was in, not yet another zone away.
After a while, I started to add my notes to the out-of-game maps that were provided. Many of the outdoor zones are simply called things like Region A1, B1, C1, and so forth. It was not before long I no longer needed to be in an area that had its town for me to look it up on the map. I was even writing down which towns were in. Along with understanding that if I would go east for instance A1 would lead to A2. Then if I went down from there, I’d find myself in the area known as B2.
I’d still sometimes find myself lost. It was at least not as bad as the early days in this game the first time I stepped out of the gates. I even found some interesting things along the way that I have no clue what they are used for. I must have just had some dumb luck acquiring things without having to explore a cavern for a clue about where to find them.
Final Thoughts
I still have lots to explore regarding the outdoor zones. Many of them just ran along the roads they had and did not explore much further. Having another cleric came in handy even more so when my first one took way too much damage and got taken out. While out exploring I even found some gear showing me there must be some insane stuff out there to loot. In the meantime, I was just thrilled to loot something with +12 on it. Shame it was not a weapon!
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Screenshots were taken and content was written by @Enjar about Might And Magic II.
Looks like a pretty complex game. Something like this would get so confusing for me in so little time.
It sure can be. The game comes with a guide book with maps and what each spell number casts.