| 1 | [[quoteright:300:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/might_and_magic.jpg]] |
| 2 | ''Might and Magic'' is a ScienceFantasy cycle of first person party-based [[WesternRPG PC RPGs]], later spawning some spinoffs such as the ''VideoGame/HeroesOfMightAndMagic'' TurnBasedStrategy games. |
| 3 | |
| 4 | Jon Van Caneghem created the first game in 1986, and it became the first series to seriously compete with the ''VideoGame/{{Wizardry}}'' and ''VideoGame/{{Ultima}}'' franchises amongst role-players. The first five games were introduced under his Creator/NewWorldComputing company, before they were bought out by 3DO and ExecutiveMeddling began. |
| 5 | |
| 6 | The games' definitive trait has always been ScienceFiction elements beneath the surface of an otherwise StandardFantasySetting game.[[note]]Up until ''X'', which, due to taking place in the same standard fantasy setting as Ubisoft's ''Heroes'' games, is by the developers' statements prohibited from veering from the canon by having science fiction elements.[[/note]] Usually, the climax reveals that ancient {{Precursors}} are responsible for lots of what is going on in the world, and the BigBad is a robot or an alien. Indeed, as it overlaps with the ''VideoGame/HeroesOfMightAndMagic'' series, it turns out that Devils from ''Heroes III'' are actually aliens. HowUnscientific. |
| 7 | |
| 8 | In terms of gameplay, ''Might and Magic'' games are all centered around first-person party-based DungeonCrawling in an open world. The games heavily emphasize combat and puzzle-solving over story and character interaction. Dialogue is kept to a minimum. |
| 9 | |
| 10 | The first game of the series had a rather non-linear plot for its time (though it lacked most elements of the modern WideOpenSandbox). Its maps were flat areas made of discrete tiles, and all movement happened in the four cardinal directions, one ten-foot "step" at a time. The engine used sprites to simulate a 3D view, and combat was turn based. |
| 11 | |
| 12 | In the first two games, the action was set on VARN (Vehicular Astropod Research Nacelle) and CRON (Central Research Observational Nacelle), flat, square worlds orbiting in space. The third moved the action to a "round" ([[VideoGameGeography actually toroidal]]) planet, Terra. ''[=M&M IV=]'' and ''V'' were set on XEEN (Xylonite Experimental Expansion Nacelle), another flat platform, with a twist: the world of ''[=M&M V=]'' was the [[TitleDrop Darkside of XEEN]], literally the flip side of the world from number four. Installing both ''IV'' and ''V'' on a single computer combines both games into ''World of Xeen'' which allows your party to travel between the two sides of XEEN and complete an extra final quest to merge them into a round world. All these games have the player pitted against [[TinTyrant Sheltem]], a Planetary Guardian constructed by the Ancients, who [[AIIsACrapshoot went rogue]] and decided to protect his homeworld by blowing up all other worlds. Sheltem is finally defeated in ''M&M V'', bringing an end to that whole plot arc. |
| 13 | |
| 14 | ''M&M VI'' started a new story arc in the series. It switched to a different kind of graphics: instead of flat tiles it became a [[SpritePolygonMix true 3D world, with 2D sprites]] for characters and monsters, and the option of real-time combat. (Think ''VideoGame/{{Doom}}'', but with large outdoor areas.) The setting moved to the world Enroth, where ''Heroes I'' and ''Heroes II'' had taken place, joining the continuity more tightly with that of ''VideoGame/HeroesOfMightAndMagic''. |
| 15 | |
| 16 | The plot of this one concerned an invasion of the world by Devils. Said Devils turn out to be alien enemies of the Ancients, and defeating them involved unearthing some of the Ancients' LostTechnology. Along the way this plot traded points back and forth with the ''Heroes'' games. For instance, Archibald Ironfist, an evil mage defeated in the canonical ending to ''Heroes II'', was freed in ''Might and Magic VI'', returned in ''Might and Magic VII'' and helped free a character who then showed up in an addon to ''Heroes III''. |
| 17 | |
| 18 | ''Might and Magic VII'' was effectively more of the same (and was tied very closely to ''Heroes III'' and ''Might and Magic III''). So was ''Might and Magic VIII'', with a rapid scale-back to fantasy rather than science fiction and a nod to the pre ''Might and Magic VI'' games, making the party consist of on-the-road changeable crew members ranging from a single person to five, and the darker, more mysterious and exotic continent of Jadame as opposed to the knightly Enroth or light HighFantasy Erathia. But you could have dragons, vampires, trolls and minotaurs in the party in ''VIII'', so this makes it cool. |
| 19 | |
| 20 | ''Might and Magic IX'' [[WhatCouldHaveBeen almost happened]], but what we got instead was such that many fans wish they [[FanonDisContinuity hadn't even bothered]]. The same goes for a number of failed spinoffs, such as the action-RPG ''Crusaders'', the ''VideoGame/KingsBounty'' remake ''Quest for the Dragon Bone Staff'', and the ''VideoGame/CounterStrike'' [[FollowTheLeader clone]] ''Legends''. It was set on Axeoth, the same planet as ''Heroes IV'', but on a different continent with no story connections. |
| 21 | |
| 22 | ''Heroes of Might and Magic V'' represented a complete reboot of the series after Creator/{{Ubisoft}} bought the rights from the bankrupt 3DO, with a new developer (Creator/{{Nival}} Interactive), and taking place in a new, purely fantasy-based world called Ashan with no ties to previous games. ''VideoGame/DarkMessiahOfMightAndMagic'' is a first-person hack & slash action game that takes place in the same world as ''Heroes V''. |
| 23 | |
| 24 | ''Heroes of Might and Magic V'' was eventually followed by the GaidenGame ''VideoGame/MightAndMagicClashOfHeroes'' and ''Might & Magic Heroes VI'', but there were no further RPG ''Might and Magic'' games in the new continuity in the style of ''Might and Magic I-IX''...at least, until mid-March 2013, when '' Might and Magic X: Legacy'', set on Ashan, was officially announced. The game was officially released in January 2014. |
| 25 | |
| 26 | ''Might and Magic: Duel of Champions'', an {{Allegedly Free|Game}} TradingCardGame that uses the mythos and factions, was released in 2012. |
| 27 | |
| 28 | The InNameOnly online [=PvP=] game ''Might and Magic: Showdown'' was released on Platform/{{Steam}} Early Access on the January 20, 2017. After failing to attract a playerbase, it was cancelled and the servers were shut down six months later. |
| 29 | |
| 30 | !!!Games (Main Series): |
| 31 | * ''Might and Magic I: The Secret of the Inner Sanctum'' (1986) |
| 32 | * ''Might and Magic II: Gates to Another World'' (1988) |
| 33 | * ''Might and Magic III: Isles of Terra'' (1990) |
| 34 | * ''Might and Magic IV: Clouds of Xeen'' (1993) |
| 35 | * ''Might and Magic V: Darkside of Xeen'' (1993) |
| 36 | * ''Might and Magic VI: The Mandate of Heaven'' (1998) |
| 37 | * ''Might and Magic VII: For Blood and Honor'' (1999) |
| 38 | * ''Might and Magic VIII: Day of the Destroyer'' (2000) |
| 39 | * ''Might and Magic IX''[[note]]its working subtitle was ''Writ of Fate'', and as the subtitle was only removed for unknown reasons shortly before release, and every other game in the series has one, ''IX'' is occasionally still referred to with it[[/note]] (2001) |
| 40 | * ''Might and Magic X: Legacy'' (2014) |
| 41 | |
| 42 | ---- |
| 43 | !!This video game series contains examples of the following: |
| 44 | |
| 45 | [[foldercontrol]] |
| 46 | |
| 47 | [[folder: Tropes shared by multiple games]] |
| 48 | * AIIsACrapshoot: |
| 49 | ** If you see a robot or computer in this game, rest assured it's an evil thing that's going to try to kill you. Unless its name is Corak. Or the Dragon Pharoah. Or Melian[[note]]The apparent Guardian of Enroth. He is a stationary computer, and damaged when we meet him, so he is less active on the good front than Corak[[/note]]. Escaton plays around with it: he does exactly what his creators want him to do, and it's ''not'' a case of GoneHorriblyRight -- but due to the details of what that thing he is to do is, that makes your world collateral damage, and he can't go against that part of his programming no matter how much he wants to. A number of other, less sapient, robots met across the games are simply doing what they are meant to do -- guarding places against persons without the proper security clearances (which you do not have, thus them trying to kill you). |
| 50 | ** Sheltem [[ZigZaggingTrope zigzags it]]. He was given two directives - protect Terra, and obey the Ancients. But he was removed from his post for unauthorized experimentation, and he determined that if the Ancients gave him an order to shut down, it would interfere with protecting Terra. So he stopped listening for Ancient orders until he could get rid of the obedience directive. That's just faulty programming, but aside from that, he's out for bloody revenge against the Ancients and all their creations, and considers the deaths he'll cause in his attempts to return to Terra a bonus, and ''that'' has nothing to do with his program. |
| 51 | * AbsurdlySpaciousSewer: There's one in just about every game that doubles as a dungeon. How important it is to the main storyline depends on the game. |
| 52 | * AlwaysAccurateAttack: The Enrothian trilogy has "Implosion", which hits the target directly instead of firing a ProjectileSpell, meaning there is no way to dodge it and only Air Magic immunity can stop it. The same also applies to "Mass Distortion". |
| 53 | * AnimalThemeNaming: Starting with ''III'', each game featured an evil cult named after an animal sound. |
| 54 | ** III: Moo. |
| 55 | ** IV: Yak. |
| 56 | ** V: Bark. |
| 57 | ** VI and VII: Baa. |
| 58 | ** VIII: Eep. |
| 59 | ** IX: Honk. |
| 60 | ** X: Meow. |
| 61 | * ArbitraryHeadcountLimit: A maximum of six main characters in the original DOS-era games (''I'' to ''V''), ''exactly'' four main characters in ''VI'', ''VII'' and ''IX'', a maximum of five in ''VIII''. Several of these offer two additional slots for hirelings; these are for most purposes full-blown characters in ''II'' and ''III'', but serve other purposes in the games from ''VI'' on. |
| 62 | ** VI, VII and IX all provide reasons for ''why'' those four characters stick together: in VI and IX, they are childhood friends that grow up in the same village, while in VII the driving force of the plot for a good chunk of the game is a shared noble title the four got in the prologue. VI and VII fail to explain why you can only hire two Hirelings, however. |
| 63 | ** In ''X'' you are also only allowed two hirelings, but an added limitation makes it more difficult. With some quests, the QuestGiver has to tag along with you, taking up space as a hireling -- quest-related characters could tag along in ''VI'' and ''VII'' as well, but did not count against the hireling limited. (All of the quest [=NPCs=], thankfully, provide some kind of benefit.) |
| 64 | * TheArchmage: |
| 65 | ** Kalohn in ''II''. Also a SorcerousOverlord. Astra in ''V'' is a good sorceress, leading the wizards who don't approve of Alamar. |
| 66 | ** Albert Newton in ''VI''. He also trains your characters to be Archmagi. |
| 67 | ** ''VI'' and ''VII'' established Archibald Ironfist as this by implication -- the first game had him be one of the world's greatest experts in magical rituals, while the second made him an expert in necromancy, and the [[AllThereInTheManual manual reveals]] that he had [[KlingonPromotion defeated the former leader of the Necromancers' Guild]] to become the leader of the Necromancers himself. |
| 68 | ** Gavin Magnus is the Light equivalent to Archibald in ''VII'', and Thomas Grey (who trains your Wizard characters to become Archmagi themselves) probably qualifies as well. |
| 69 | * AttackReflector: An aptly named Painreflection spell (or skill in ''X''). |
| 70 | * ApocalypseHow: [[spoiler:Sheltem's plan for Xeen is to hijack the planet and use it to travel back to Terra, his home. Moving it through space would take it away from its sun and kill all life on the planet, although it would spare the planet itself]]. |
| 71 | * BadLiar: |
| 72 | ** In the opening sequence of ''VII'', the story is told by the point to both Archibald - by his Mooks - and to Gavin Magnus by the elves who fought Archibald's mooks. Archibald's men are clearly lying about their version (they claim they bravely slaughtered the elven soldiers who ran in fear, when it's obvious that the opposite is true) but Archibald obviously doesn't believe them anyway. |
| 73 | ** Adira (a Justicar angel) in ''X'' (with the ''The Falcon and the Unicorn'' DLC) strictly speaking [[CannotTellALie can't lie]], but falls here by just how ''bad'' she is at using ExactWords and [[MetaphoricallyTrue metaphorical truths]], not only presenting an obvious evasion when asked a question by the Empress, but having to struggle to produce even that. This is in stark contrast with her angel colleagues in [[VideoGame/HeroesOfMightAndMagic Heroes VI]], who smoothly manipulated everyone using those two methods, and almost got away with it. The {{Narrator}} says in the beginning that Uriel was notorious for doing this too, saying "Angels cannot lie, but no one every said they always have to tell the complete truth." |
| 74 | * BeefGate: |
| 75 | ** This is pretty much a staple in most games of the franchise. You can go wherever you want, at the beginning, though forests and mountains act as [[BrokenBridge Broken Bridges]] until you learn the fairly easy skill to get them), and in some cases you need an access key to enter specific dungeons or towns. However, if you go off the beaten path (the main roads in ''II'', the Western Continent in ''III'', into the dungeons in ''IV'' or ''anywhere'' in ''V'') too early in the game, you will find yourself in the middle of monsters you can't handle. For extra irony, the DiscOneFinalDungeon in ''V'' is accessible right from the start of the game. You don't need anything special to enter except a death wish. |
| 76 | ** ''VI - IX'' are no better. Although there's a certain linearity to all of them, but you can still wander into harder regions before you should thanks to the open world format: |
| 77 | *** ''VI'' tries to PlotTunnel you by limiting your travel options until you reach Free Haven. However you can reach The Mire of the Damned by going west from Castle Ironfist, which is full of undead (and quite literally so) and if you continue to the west and you somehow get through (possible with Water Walk and by going by south), you can get to Dragonsands, [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin which is instead full of dragons]]. Even after reaching Free Haven many places, especially on the west, are deadly. The Gharik's Forge makes a subversion as it is full of high-tier monsters and is on the starting map, but on separate island and locked by a key, though that is not that difficult to obtain. |
| 78 | *** Once you get to Harmondale in ''VII'', you can access most of the regions except Evermorn Islands, Nighon, Eeofol and the place where VeryDefinitelyFinalDungeon is. The Barrow Downs is merely south of Harmondale and like Mire of The Damned, it is full of undead, spiced up with Gargoyles (literal [[StoneWall Stone Walls]], the strongest ones inflict Paralysis) and Gogs (explode upon defeat, have ranged attacks) for extra flavor. Deyja is deadly ''even'' if you stick to the main road, as you can get ambushed by randomly generated event which requires quite a bit of gold to get out of. [[ThisIsGonnaSuck Both must be visited in order to complete first promotion of Sorcerer]]. Nighon and Eeofol actually invoke this to block you from accessing them too early, which sucks because Nighon hosts the single Water Master in region, preventing you from getting Town Portal as soon as possible. |
| 79 | *** ''VII'' can do this to you semi-inadvertently as well. Each type of monster has three tiers, in some cases the strongest tier of a monster is ''spectacularly'' stronger than the weakest, and any place that type of monster spawns has at least a small chance to spawn a 3rd-tier monster. The Tularean Caves, for example, expect you to be fighting wyverns (93 hitpoints, 7-42 damage, attacks may cause poison). If the RNG hates you, though, you could end up against an ancient wyvern (247 hp, 12-72 damage, attacks may cause ''instant death'') |
| 80 | *** The portal of one Elemental Plane (the place of one of the penultimate quests) in ''VIII'' is on the starting map, though it requires either Water Walk or Flight to get to it. Also, once you get off the Dagger Wound Islands, you're pretty much in the center of the continent and can go wherever you want to, and some places such as Murmurwoods, full of Wisps, and Basilisks that can turn you to stone, or ''the other Elemental Planes'' are locations really not suited for low level parties. |
| 81 | *** ''IX'' has a particularly cruel example with Verhoffren's Ruins which is a dungeon situated on the starting island. It's at least hinted that you shouldn't go in here. |
| 82 | ** This policy is mostly eliminated in ''X'' where the game and story are more linear, but there is one rather sadistic example early on. [[spoiler:The Cursed Ruins are accessible to your party very early, but if you try to go there, you'll likely get slaughtered by the two specters at the front entrance. Not only does nothing in the game discourage you from doing this, it actually tempts you; there's a merchant nearby that sells scrolls for Burning Determination and Water Flows Freely, which, in theory, could protect you from their paralyzing attacks. (Save your gold until you're strong enough to survive the actual damage they do.)]] |
| 83 | ** Still happens in ''X'' at plenty of other points, given that you are handed free reign of the land eventually, although most over world enemies are weaker than dungeon enemies, and regions are still closed off until you access [[spoiler: the elemental shards]]. For example, [[spoiler: just around the bend from a plot-important dungeon is a group of enemies that, unless your characters come prepared or you're not a first time player, is likely to stomp you. It doesn't help that they're holding a [[KicktheDog recruit-able dog captive]].]] In fact, the whole Act II (where most of the game world opens up) is like this and worse - you must follow one exact trail, otherwise the enemies ''will'' kill you. The Lost City is also nasty example: while its 1st, 2nd and 4th floors are pretty manageable by the time you get there, a pair of monsters from 3rd floor (which also guard the entrances to it on other floors) is enough to wipe out your party, forcing you to come back later. |
| 84 | * {{BFS}}: Most if not all of two-handed swords qualify. |
| 85 | * BiggerOnTheInside: |
| 86 | ** All games, but especially notable in ''VI'' where multiple dungeons are bigger than the maps where they are supposed to be located. Granted, some of them are partly underground, but the places such as Castle Darkmoor or Alamos and especially Tomb of VARN have no such excuse. This can be particularly frustrating once you learn Fly which allows you to move quickly in exteriors, but doesn't work in dungeons, leaving you to trek great distances afoot. |
| 87 | ** ''X'' plays with this; rasters of cities/dungeons can be much bigger that the world raster would suggest, but moving on tiles in dungeon moves time slower, implying smaller and more detailed rasters for dungeons than for world map. |
| 88 | * BossInMookClothing: Any time a Gold Dragon appears in one of the later games, it qualifies. These things are ''tough'', and they'd likely qualify as actual Bosses if not for the fact that they weren't unique. |
| 89 | ** Terminator units from ''VI''. One exception aside, they show in pairs at most, have over 1k HP (just about 200 HP lower than actual FinalBoss) and most importantly, their regular attacks have a chance to cause an Eradication. Fighting off these things is more difficult than anything else. |
| 90 | ** In ''X'', you can access two "Dangerous Caves" very early in the game; most Dangerous Caves in the game have actual Bosses, but one of the two you can access early (the one which has a convenient warning outside telling you that there's a grumpy cyclops inside) just has a very powerful monster that might just count as an EliteMook. Nonetheless, it really best not to go in and fight it until you're Level 17 or so. |
| 91 | ** In ''III'' the bosses of various temples are skinned exactly like the mooks inside, they just have an extra attack a round, more HP, and a different name. Only the Dragon Emperor is different. It also has the Eradicators in the final dungeon, who are immune to physical damage and can eradicate your party. |
| 92 | * BoringButPractical: |
| 93 | ** Bows, whenever they appear. |
| 94 | ** While many low level spells are case of CantCatchUp, Sparks are usually an exception. This is because the damage per spark rises with your skill and number of sparks increases with your mastery. Therefore, in VII the grandmaster can cast 9 sparks that each hits for at least 12 damage, which accumulates quite fast, not to mention you can mine the ground with them as you escape, or you can throw them on enemies stuck in a hole. |
| 95 | * BottomlessMagazines: You never have to buy ammunition for ranged weapons, and you have unlimited ammunition. This may be justified for Blasters (although the Master Skill Trainer for them in ''VI'' does claim that the one she found ran out of power eventually); bows and crossbows, not so much. |
| 96 | * BowAndSwordInAccord: Just one possible combination. In the early games, bows are treated as a separate weapon and the player may equip a sword or other weapon as well. Everyone can learn to use the bow in addition to their primary weapon (with other weapons being very class specific, the primary weapon is often something other than a sword). |
| 97 | ** In ''X'', not every class can learn the bow, but it seems that at least they can all learn the ''crossbow''. |
| 98 | * BrokenBridge: |
| 99 | ** ''VII'' won't let you access the place with TheVeryDefinitelyFinalDungeon until you reach almost the end of the game, as you need special equipment to get it. Evermorn Islands are also off limits at first, because they're supposedly shrouded by fog and require a map to get to them that you have to find first in a related quest. |
| 100 | ** Regna in ''VIII'' is not accessible because the Pirate Outpost and the means of transport there don't exist at the beginning of the game (you can even check for yourself - the island is empty at first). Once you reach specific point of the game, said outpost suddenly materalizes and gives you a means of reaching Regna. |
| 101 | ** ''X'' uses this feature, though in the first example it gives a logical reason why the quest solves it: you can't leave Sorpigal because, as the guard tells you, an investigation is underway over the disappearance of townsfolk. Your first quest is to ''solve'' that problem. Once you succeed, he gets out of your way. Why the bridge to Seahaven from Portmeyron isn't cleared for debris until you investigate the elven presence in the Elemental Forge is another matter. |
| 102 | ** Other games in the series tends to use the AbilityRequiredToProceed variant (learning skills to pass mountains and forests in I-V, learning flight or water-walking to get to island areas on maps in VI-IX -- one of the late-game dungeons in ''VIII'' is on the starting map, but you can't ''get'' to it until later), although VII has The Pit/Celeste, with the teleporter to each locked-down until you align (at which point ''both'' activate). |
| 103 | * CardCarryingVillain: |
| 104 | ** Lord Xeen in ''IV'', whose only dialogue in-game is an EvilLaugh. |
| 105 | ** In ''VII'', William Setag's title literally is Villain, and if you join the Path of Dark he'll train your characters to be Villains too (in exchange for helping him kidnap the fairest lady in Erathia, just for the sake of it). Unlike him, however, there's no need for you to blatantly ''act'' like one. |
| 106 | ** [[spoiler:In ''X'' Erebos is this ''in spades''. Not only is he called "the Master of Assassins", he ''loves'' that title, telling you how much he just ''loved'' murdering Michael and corrupting Uriel right before the FinalBattle starts.]] |
| 107 | * CashGate: You ''need'' money. Oceans of money, for magic and level-up trainers. ''III'' and ''IV/V'' have area effects that need purchased skills, like swimming, pathfinding, or mountaineering. Notoriously PlayedStraight in VI and VII, even with merchant skills, completing your ''essential'' spell arsenal will cost you a million at least, and trainers will demand obscene amounts of gold as you level up. Better suit up and start smiting dragons with Starfall unless you want to go bankrupt. |
| 108 | * TheChessmaster: [[spoiler:In ''X'', Erebos is the ManBehindTheMan, manipulating both Markus and Montbard in his genocidal plan of revenge, and even the Player Characters out of his demented desire for a WorthyOpponent. His only flaw is that Empress Falcon is a far more benign Chessmaster, manipulating the heroes too in order to counter his moves, eventually making a brilliant checkmate.]] |
| 109 | ** In ''VII'', the man manipulating Queen Catherine's spy network from his lair in the Erathian Sewers is named Lasker. [[note]]Dr Emanuel Lasker was world chess champion for the first 20 years of last century.[[/note]] |
| 110 | * ColorCodedForYourConvenience: You often find barrels of colored liquid in these games, and drinking the stuff always does ''something''. It's a good idea to take note of the color before you have a character drink it, and then take note of what it does. It will come in useful when you find more of these barrels. (You don't want a Knight to drink the stuff that increases Intelligence; that's better for the Sorcerer.) And by the way, [[spoiler:leave black liquid alone.]] |
| 111 | * ConvectionSchmonvection: As per usual, the lava hurts you if you're standing on it, but if you're slightly above it, you're safe, even if you're in a caldera of an active volcano or in an underground city full of open lava fields. Most jarring in ''VIII'', where the vampiric spell Levitation completely negates the damage from lava. Cannot be even explained by magic resistance, since in no game you can be outright immune to fire magic damage (though some monsters have such immunity). |
| 112 | * CounterpartArtifacts: Elsenrail and Glomenthal. Though they have no story influence, their flavour texts describe them as linked yet opposite, with Elsenrail being the Blade of Light and Glomenthal being the Blade of Dark, and the forging of these Swords of Balance having destroyed the Forge of Chaos. |
| 113 | * CrystallineCreature: ''VIII'' has these in the Great Crystal (although they also show up in prisons of [[spoiler:Elemental Lords]]). They come in two varieties: Crystal Guards and Crystal Dragons. They are some of toughest monsters of the game and the strongest, Ruby Dragons, can wipe out even high-leveled parties as they have tons of health and deal Energy type of damage that cannot be resisted. |
| 114 | * CursedWithAwesome: |
| 115 | ** The "insanity" debuff increases your strength a lot while reducing other stats such as intelligence or accuracy. However, since melee classes such as the Knight or the Troll depend a lot on strength and hardly care for intellect, being insane is ''beneficial'' for them. |
| 116 | ** Since for some age range Intelligence and Personality get a bonus, aging that allows to hit it can be beneficial to casters. |
| 117 | * DamageOverTime: |
| 118 | ** ''Enrothian Trilogy'': |
| 119 | *** Walking on water or lava works like this, as long as you're in contact with it and don't have appropriate counter spell or equipment (Water Walk for water or Levitation for [[ConvectionSchmonvection both]]). |
| 120 | *** The hidden status in ''VI'' in form of radiation damage. Entering a sole specific room in the Tomb of VARN where the reactor is will inflict this on your party and it deals damage to everyone at regular intervals. This lasts even after you quit said room, and can be only removed by entering specific pools of water that are thankfully in abundance nearby. To make it even more confusing, you can get a Crystal Skull item that has a random chance to absorb said damage, and you can get multiple of them (one being hidden at the end of an optional dungeon way at the beginning of the game) to boost this chance. |
| 121 | ** In ''X'', Poison works like this, unlike in the previous games where it was a status that affected your stats, recovery during the resting, and worsened if not treated. |
| 122 | * DarkIsEvil: Along with LightIsGood, the way this trope is treated depends on the installment. |
| 123 | ** Downplayed in ''VI''. On the one hand, even the trainers of Dark Magic clearly explain that Light and Dark spells of the Mirrored Path are not good *or* evil by themselves, but by the application of their morality ("Shrapmetal" or "Toxic Cloud" can be used to kill evil creatures to save innocents), and it's possible to learn both. On the other hand, you need Saintly reputation (best possible) for Master training in Light magic, and Notorious reputation (worst possible) for Master training in Dark Magic. The guild masters also call Light and Dark magic "the magic of good" and "the magic of evil" respectively. |
| 124 | ** Played straight in ''VII'', where you can only learn the corresponding path if your entire party chooses its morality path for good or evil as part of the game's main story. Good party members are enrolled in the Light Guild, and vice versa. |
| 125 | ** Averted in ''VIII''. While only specific classes can use the Mirrored Path spells, they can fight side-by-side, such as a Lich and Priest of the Sun. |
| 126 | ** Zig-zagged in ''X''. While the VeryDefinitelyFinalDungeon of the main game contains nothing but dark-aligned enemies and BigBad himself is dark-aligned, many entities of the same race as he are actually fairly live-and-let-live and on the other hand, most of the enemies in the DLC, including TheDragon and possibly even the BigBad himself, are ''light''-aligned. |
| 127 | * DayOldLegend: Several of the games feature ores of various quality which can be found and brought to craftsmen to make equipment. It's possible to craft items in this way that are not only allegedly ancient, but even unique and legendary. The sixth game and onwards also contain the "antique" modifier which multiplies an item's value by ten, and it's possible to enchant your own items into being antiques. |
| 128 | * DeaderThanDead: It is possible to not only be killed in battle, but to have your body ''completely destroyed'' (eradicated). Getting this problem taken care of is a bit more expensive, to say the least. Getting [[AnimateDead zombified]] is even worse, and you can't reverse it yourself. |
| 129 | * DeathByIrony: [[spoiler:When you finally confront Erebos in ''X'', he gloats about his victory over Michael, calling the Celestial "pathetic", and saying that the reason he helped you is because he wanted a WorthyOpponent. The irony is, to defeat him you have to read the discarded notes from the commanders of Michael's army, gather the pieces of the Solar Sigil and use them to activate the ancient weapon that Michael intended to use against Erebos. In a way, Michael ''does'' help vanquish him, at least in spirit.]] |
| 130 | * DeathFromAbove: Spells Meteor Shower and Starburst. Casting Sparks or Fire Spike while flying is less straightforward example. Crushing Weight in ''X'' as well. |
| 131 | * DeathOfAThousandCuts: This is how blasters work for the player characters in ''VI'' and ''VII''. Each individual blaster shot does very little damage (though it has a very high chance to hit), but each character can fire a blaster many times in a single round (you'll want to have turn-based combat turned off for this or each of your characters will only be able to get one shot in per turn). Some blaster-wielding enemies, however, can outright eradicate your characters in an instant. |
| 132 | * DiscOneNuke: Where do we ''start''? Broadly speaking, the [[WideOpenSandbox open-world gameplay]] in this series makes these inevitable; it's nearly always possible to wander somewhere where you shouldn't be, avoid fights and traps, and find items or boni that let you trivially autofight through the areas where you should be exploring. |
| 133 | ** In ''Might and Magic II'', the circus doesn't care about your level, and it's not difficult to build your stats up to 100 as soon as you have Fly and Lloyd's Beacon. This won't make you into a real power player, but what it will do is set you up to trivially roll over the weaker areas that you ''should'' be exploring at this level or get you ready to take on a PeninsulaOfPowerLeveling. |
| 134 | ** Destroying enemy outposts in ''III''. There are four very close to the starting zone, which are guarded by very weak enemies (and there is one more if the player is willing to brave Wild Fungus, which is also weak but they have electrical attacks so armor is no help). This grants the player an armory of equipment, plenty of EXP, and enough gold to train up to around level 7. Saving Fountain Head is a breeze at that level. In addition, on the way to destroying these outposts, there is a well that boosts AC by 20. Enemies will be completely unable to hit the party for the rest of the day. |
| 135 | ** Also in ''III'', the Swimming skill. Humans get it for free, whereas non-humans need to go into the depths of the Fountain Head Caverns, which have the weakest monsters and a few traps. Even simple resting can keep the party alive enough to reach and pay the toll. After that, the party gets easy access to a fountain that overcharges HP and an orb that overcharges SP. This makes most of the game a breeze up until Wildabar. |
| 136 | ** Finally, a little ways away from the SP charging orb is a fountain behind thick trees, requiring the Pathfinder skill. There is a fountain that boosts the level of the party by 20. At that point, the entire Western Continent is a breeze. |
| 137 | ** An exploit from ''World of Xeen'': start game, go to the Darkside right out of the gate and make a new party. They'll start at Level 5. Take this party back to the Cloudside and start emptying the world into your loot sack. |
| 138 | ** Might and Magic ''VI'' has plenty of these, mainly regarding cash injections and unrestricted spell levels: |
| 139 | *** Sulman's treason letter nets you a solid 6000 gold pieces to start with if you know where to take the letter. New Sorpigal has a flight scroll hidden near the bank, and the Buccaneer's Lair has a hidden gate to Dragonsand, an incredibly high level map full of treasures, and a shrine that gives a +20 bonus to all stats of the party. If you use the scroll, snatch the boni and the treasures, you can flee to Abdul's desert resort and hire a gate master to teleport to any city in the game and arm yourself with the highest tier gear at the start. |
| 140 | *** The spell non-restriction in ''VI'' essentially means you can put your Air Magic on Expert, which is quite easy if you know where to look for teacher, and using the above tactics you can learn powerful spells like Flying quite fast. Similarly, you can get Power Cure right as soon as you get into Free Haven, if you have money for it. |
| 141 | *** Another example from ''VI'' would be Alchemy. Unlike in later games, there was not Alchemy skill ''per-se'', instead it was an innate ability of every person. Yes, this means that you can create the strongest potions out of bat, for which you need only three types of ingredients that are scattered practically everywhere. While black potions are far less potent than in later games, you can still add +10 to every stat of all party if you're persistent. |
| 142 | *** Likewise, you can promote your Sorcerer the full way to Archmage before even getting to Free Haven. The first promotion quest is really simple, you must drink from the Fountain of Magic, which is located on the main continent in Bootleg Bay - which is likely third or fourth location you'll visit. The second promotion quest is a bit harder - you must essentially traverse Corlagon's Estate. However, while enemies there may be annoying because of ability to curse and age your characters, they have relatively low stats, none of them have ranged attacks and mostly narrow corridors make easy to keep distance, especially if your Wizard has the Sparks spell and Air Magic Expertise on him. The only problem may be Corlagon himself, but even he's not immune to SaveScumming. And the promotion gives you instant access to Master Level Air magic. |
| 143 | ** ''Might and Magic VII'' clearly tries to dampen this trope with forcing spells to have skill level requirements and promotions, as well as putting more effective BeefGate levels like "Tunnels to Eeofol" where escape from Behemoths is (almost) impossible (several speedrunners *still* went to Eeofol around starting levels and have boosted themselves. That said, Bracada has a guaranteed flight scroll in a chest, and *tons* of free gold and items laying around like colorful candies, as well as super-high level ores for crafting. One clickfest, flight acrobatics and clear Bracada later, your starting party will certainly be equipped to take on the world weeks of playing in advance. Non-combat quests if you know where to look for them can level you up and make you rich just as well. |
| 144 | ** ''Might and Magic VI'' and ''VII'' have the "Assistant" system, non-combatant specialists that take a signup payment in advance and take a bit of your money; some of them giving insane bonuses. A windmaster can cast Fly, letting your party fly everywhere to loot the hell out of the map, and a gatemaster can cast Town Portal. Even the mundane ones have crazy perks: a Scholar will bring unlimited item identification and +5% Experience earned. A windmaster and a scholar can speed up the game in days of gameplay. |
| 145 | ** ''Might and Magic VIII'' admits defeat and takes it to up to eleven (speedrunners with glitches finish the game around 20 minutes). If you know where to look you can acquire a low level (but nonetheless extremely powerful) Dragon and a level 50 Dark Elf very early (said Dark Elf has all the elemental spells and grandmaster -perfect- Disarm Trap skill and Merchant skill, effectively dominating the game in *every* technical aspect). The Dragon especially becomes significantly more powerful than his peers over time, because you can distribute his skill points as you see fit. Several towns also have artifacts hidden in trees and rocks right at the beginning of the game. |
| 146 | ** In ''X'' relics possibly count as these. Even at level one they are stronger than the base equipment you can find. While those in Dangerous Caves won't see light for quite some time, The Mysterious Crypts are completely devoid of any monsters and require just to solve (sometimes arguably rather hard) puzzles. Also, the Tower of Enigma can be gotten into as soon as you get Blessing of Shallassa if you don't feel like fighting Black Guards and houses rather powerful relic for your mage. |
| 147 | * TheDragon: Lord Xeen in ''IV'', who serves Sheltem of ''V''. Xeen himself also has a Dragon (both literally and figuratively) in the form of his pet. |
| 148 | ** [[spoiler:Dunstan]] at first seems to be this to [[spoiler:Erebos]] in the main campaign for ''X'' [[spoiler:(but in truth, Dunstan ''is'' Erebos in disguise, having killed the real one years earlier)]], while [[spoiler:Adira]] is this to [[spoiler:Duke Owen]] in ''The Falcon and the Unicorn''. |
| 149 | ** DragonWithAnAgenda: Kastore to Archibald in ''Might and Magic VII''. |
| 150 | * DudeWheresMyRespect: Played pretty much straight in all of the games. Particularly bad in VII, as your party actually ''rules the town where your own subjects treat you like dirt''. The latter is somewhat justified by the town's complete lack of faith in your ability to rule being a central plot point, but their attitude doesn't improve as much as one might expect after you have clearly [[AuthorityEqualsAsskicking asserted your authority]]. Their dialogue does change after you've cleared out and renovated Castle Harmondale, but you can't put the last of their doubts to rest until you choose a new arbiter and end the war. |
| 151 | ** The problem is, starting with ''VI'', you have a Reputation Score people are mean to you if it's low, and it's ''much'' harder to raise it than it is to lower it. (The bad things you do stick out in people's minds longer than the good things, which makes sense, sort of.) One example: In ''VI'', one of the first available Side Quests you have is from the first NPC you meet in the game, who asks you to get a candelabra from the abandoned temple outside of town. It's not required, but you probably should, because it's an easy job, and a good way to get some fast gold and experience, which you kind of need early in the game. Unfortunately, seeing as the candelabra in question belonged to some evil cult, it lowers your Reputation Score, and the townsfolk aren't going to like you right off the bat. |
| 152 | *** Even ''worse'', having a bad Reputation Score can sometimes require you to do things that make it even worse. Some ''important'' or even mandatory quests require you to find and recruit [=NPCs=], and if you have a bad reputation, they won't listen to you when you talk to them. Threatening them usually works, but that lowers your Reputation Score even more. (You're going to end up as [[HeroWithBadPublicity Heroes With Bad Publicity]] before winning these games, most likely.) |
| 153 | ** In ''X'', the heroes likely wouldn't expect much respect, being Raiders, a type of adventurer with a shady reputation that few people trust. However, much of the first part of the game is spent ''earning'' that trust, and you do so rather quickly. |
| 154 | * DueToTheDead: Grave robbing is bad in this franchise. Looking a sarcophagus or selling human bones and other remains in most games is considered evil, and will damage your reputation. (Of course, taking other stuff in tombs is all right, for some reason.) Although in Terra and Xeen, robbing tombs is an easy way to get cursed, and nothing stops the tombs from being trapped. |
| 155 | ** This is also the original motivation of the heroes in ''X''. They first come to Sorpigal-by-the-Sea to take the cremated ashes of their mentor to another town, which they cannot do because of a royal edict that makes it off-limits due to the political turmoil. |
| 156 | * DumpStat: |
| 157 | ** In ''III'' and ''IV/V'' it can depend on your class. Intellect is useless to non arcane casters (Sorcerer, Archer and some Druid/Ranger spells) except for some skill books in ''V'', and even then, someone who uses arcane casting can read them. Personality is useless to someone who doesn't use divine spells like a Cleric, Paladin, Druid or Ranger. Accuracy and Strength are less useful to a Sorcerer or any class that uses spells to do damage. The only non dump stats are Speed (when the player goes in a round), Endurance (grants HP), and Luck (prevents status effects) |
| 158 | ** ''VI'' has Intellect/Intelligence (the name varies from one game to the next) has no effect on classes lacking arcane/elemental spellcasting abilities (or learn Master Learning starting with ''VI'', which requires 50 Intellect in addition to the usual prerequisites), while Personality is useless for classes that can't cast clerical/Self magic (or learn Master Merchant starting with ''VI''). This makes at least one of the two a dump stat for every class except Druids and Rangers. In fact, this also means that the Insane condition (which increases Strength but cripples Intelligence) is actually a benefit to some classes, like the Knight. |
| 159 | ** Averted in ''Might and Magic VII'' and ''VIII'', as each outdoor region has a Game, Contest, Test, or Challenge that rewards characters with extra skill points for having a certain stat above a certain threshold. Even Knights can benefit from having Intellect of 200 or higher, as they can then gain 10 skill points from a Challenge of Intellect. You can bypass it with temporary boosts though. |
| 160 | * EarthShatteringKaboom: generally encountered whenever the series needs a radical change in the setting (see ''Armageddon's Blade'', the titular artifact of a ''Heroes III'' expansion of the same name). |
| 161 | ** For a milder version, refer to the Dark Magic spell "Armageddon". |
| 162 | ** Occurs as a bad ending for ''VI'', if you destroy the Hive but didn't free Archibald to get a protective spell first. |
| 163 | * ElaborateUndergroundBase: The final dungeon in several of the games is one of these, being the sci-fi corridors beneath the fantasy world. |
| 164 | * ElegantWeaponForAMoreCivilizedAge: Ancient weapons, a.k.a. blasters, are pretty rare and hard-to-find in ''VI'' and ''VII'', but they do exist. Some people even managed to become experts in their use, and can teach the protagonists. |
| 165 | * ElementalEmbodiment: Various games have different elementals as enemies. |
| 166 | ** In ''IV'' there are many different types of golems: water and earth are classical elements, while air and fire are covered with cloud and lava golems. There are also other kinds like wood, stone, and diamond. |
| 167 | ** In ''VI'' some of these are actually artificial constructs that were designed to guard specific locations, such as Gharik's Forge. ''VII'' actually allows you to summon Light Elementals if you've chosen the Light Path. The frenzy of elementals also kickstarts the plot of ''VIII'', where [[ElementalPlane Elemental Planes]] themselves appear as well. ''VIII'' also complements them by various Crystal Monsters in Great Crystals. ''X'' has an important (side)quest involving the original quartet plus light and dark elementals and their lords. |
| 168 | * ElementalPowers: Magic in these games is divided into schools based on elements. The basics are Air, Water, Fire, and Earth, while Dark and Light are more advanced magic (which, in later games, can only be used by players that are Evil and Good, respectively). Each player also has six Resistance scores, measuring how well he can resist each form of magic. (It starts at zero, but magic and items can increase it.) Monsters use attacks based on these elements too, and also often have Resistances (some have two, and some very powerful ones have several). Energy is a special seventh form that usually only comes into play late in the games; this cannot be resisted. Blaster weapons cause Energy damage, and so do some of the most powerful monsters. |
| 169 | ** ''X'' adds another type of magic called Primordial, which also seems to be a type of advanced magic. |
| 170 | * EleventhHourSuperpower: If you can get Blasters at all, they're going to be this. Case in point: in ''VI'' you can get them only after completing the objective in the Tomb of VARN, which is also the third-to-last objective of the game (the following being to acquire the weapons themselves). In ''VII'' you can get them only in Eeofol (which requires a difficult trek through MarathonLevel) and one dungeon in the Shoals (which is only unlocked after completing the mission in Eeofol and is the place of the final task). |
| 171 | * EvilCounterpart: In the games where you have to choose the Dark or Light Path, your party seems to be an Evil Counterpart (or Good Counterpart) to what your party would be had you chosen the other path, and the reasons become obvious when you compare the quests in each path. While the plot is changed in a big way, there are many instances where the Quests you take are only different in terms of cosmetics and what your motives are. One example: If you're on the Light Path in ''VII'', your superior is Robert the Wise, and an enemy you have to kill near the end is a guy named Tolberti. If you're on the Dark Path, the opposite it true. As far as the actual BossBattle goes, the two are the same character in every way except cosmetically. Another good example: For the Crusader to Villain Promotion Quest (which is recommended for Paladins on the Dark Path) you have to kidnap a maiden named Alice; for the Promotion Quest that Paladins take on the Light Path, you have to ''rescue'' her - from the guy who would have told you to kidnap her, had you chosen the Dark Path. |
| 172 | * ExpressiveSkull: If you can have Lich in your team chances are they are going to have such skull. Does not apply to enemy liches however. |
| 173 | * FantasyKitchenSink: ''Everything''. The series had already started as a mix of science fiction ''and'' fantasy fiction, with robots and ancient alien technology joining in as early as III. Turns out most worlds were flat artificial worlds built by cosmic elemental forces in space, led by Ancients, godlike humanoids. Around IV and V, the world-threatening BigBad is already established as a rogue robot, and there are many LostTechnology droids running around. The world protector Dragon Pharaoh lives in a technological havens pyramids and has a lot of high-tech equipment to manage "nacelle" worlds. In VI, it is eventually revealed that this particular world is a normal planet, but colonized by a VARN ship with the ship personnel's passwords directly ripped from ''Star Trek'', the ship being a literal Egyptian pyramid with engines, now protected by rogue elemental constructs resembling Anubis and Djinni. Also the sixth and seventh games give an InfinityPlusOneSword in the shape of blasters, literal laser weapons to destroy the final bosses, though they can be used for annihilating all the enemies up to that point with vengeance. It kicks into overdrive in VII as the party from the third game lands on Antagarich in an escape spacecraft and splits up to support opposing factions, to either restore the Golden Age of Technology or conquer the world with weapons from a ''Star Trek'' style Replicator, respectively. By its zenith, the series had featured everything from cosmic energy beings to standard fantasy races and undead, robots, lasergun-wielding Liches and Terminator robots. The "science fiction" aspect declines sharply at VIII to mere snippets of lore and the BigBad being an android sent to destroy worlds infested by demon-like aliens by caging the Lords of the Elemental Planes and dislocating the elemental balance of the planet. In the ninth game, all science fiction seems axed and the setting is harshly pulled into Norse mythology, and it's all downhill from there. |
| 174 | * FlunkyBoss: Actually it might be easier to list the bosses that ''don't'' qualify. Most have at least a small mob of normal monsters helping them, and a few have dozens. ''III'' never has a boss that isn't surrounded by minions, although the Vampire Lord has no minions in his coffin so he technically can be fought alone. |
| 175 | ** This doesn't seem to be the case as much in ''X'', however. A few bosses have minions, but many fight alone. Of course, the bosses in ''this'' game are ''tough''; a monster even has a special benefit simply for being a Boss that seems to make it immune to status effects or attacks that don't damage it directly. |
| 176 | ** Tolberti/Robert The Wise in ''VII'' avert it as well, as they fight you alone, [[ThatOneBoss not that they need help]], like in ''X''. |
| 177 | * GameplayAndStorySegregation: |
| 178 | ** In general, downplayed with the Blaster weapons. They are hailed as amazing weapons from the time of Ancients. Gameplay-wise they ''are'' pretty good, as they do good damage, they are fast and their damage, being Energy type, cannot be resisted, but at the time you get access to them you usually have multiple artifacts or relics and those are still much better than blasters, and the damage output of Dark Magic leaves blasters in the dust, resistances or no. |
| 179 | ** In ''VII'': |
| 180 | *** If you manage to kill the dragon on Emerald Isle, nobody will reflect on it and Lord Markham will still state that he'll issue a warning not to go there. |
| 181 | *** The Breeding Zone and The Walls of Mist in The Pit and The Celeste respectively are stated to be the training grounds for the factions of Necromancers and Wizards. In reality, monsters here don't give any experience, so good luck doing any actual training there. In fact it's much closer to the RiteOfPassage as you need to pass them to be fully accepted by given faction, so consequently, you'll visit each of these dungeons at most once (to pass the initiation test and to retrieve a promotion quest item) and then you'll forget about them. |
| 182 | *** Celeste is stated to be located partially in the clouds, partially in mountains. If you fall out of Celeste by not-so BottomLessPit, you'll always fall near stables, with no mountains nearby. |
| 183 | ** In ''VIII'' [[spoiler:the ending shows the destruction of the crystal, the gateways to the Elemental Planes and of the Plane between the Planes. Gameplay-wise, only the crystal is destroyed, and even its interior can be accessed if you made Lloyd's Beacon mark in it or the Plane between the Planes (the crystal there is still intact). You can even exit it to Ravenshore, seemingly exiting from the void.]] |
| 184 | ** In ''X'', some blessings are especially guilty of this. For example The Blessing of Ylath is stated to allow you to climb mountains. In reality, it allows you to teleport at specific point into more elevated zone. The Blessing of Shalassa says it allows you to walk on water, and it does ... in shallows. Kinda disappointing, isn't it? |
| 185 | * GameWithinAGame: ''VII'' and ''VIII'' featured Arcomage, a card game that was sort of like a tabletop CCG that you could play in taverns. (An early quest in ''VII'' resulted in you getting the deck you needed to play it.) Each tavern had its own HouseRules. 3DO also marketed ''Arcomage'' as a title of its own. |
| 186 | %%* GenreBusting |
| 187 | * GladiatorGames: Most games in the series have an Arena you can go to where you can fight monsters to win gold (and in some cases, experience). The rules vary depending on which game, and the monsters are chosen at random, although you can usually pick the level of difficulty. (Although the difficulty levels often get more difficult overall as your own experience levels get higher.) Sometimes you have to pay a fee to enter, and other times you can only go on certain days. In at least one game, a promotion quest depends on going there. |
| 188 | * GrailInTheGarbage: Yeah, you can find some powerful stuff in these games lying around in unlikely places. Very early in many games, if you check out the stables in the towns you have easy access to, you're likely to find horseshoes. Of course, a stable is a place where you'd expect to find horseshoes, most likely, but in these games, horseshoes increase your Skill Points by 2 when you use them, making them incredibly valuable. |
| 189 | ** Starting in ''VII'', you can't sell artifacts you find (that are tagged as Special Items), and if you pick up any that you can't use, you may have to ''throw'' them in the garbage. And there's more than you might think. Many can only be used by a specific PlayerCharacter race, like the sword ''Elfbane'' (only a goblin can use it, assuming he or she's a class that can use a sword), or can only be used by Good or Evil characters (Ethric's Staff is useful for your Sorcerer if you're on the Path of Dark, but worthless if you're on the Path of Light, and if you ''are'' on the Path of Dark and find Taledon's Helm, you have the opposite problem.) Also, any character can wear the Cloak of the Moon or the Cloak of the Sun, but because the first augments Dark spells (which you can't learn if you're on the Path of Light) and the second augments Light spells (same problem if you're on the Path of Dark) one of them isn't going to be any good. The only way to get rid of these priceless artifacts - other than just stash them in your castle - is to throw them away. |
| 190 | * GreaterScopeVillain: The rarely mentioned Creators were this in the first five games, a mysterious race described as hostile to the Ancients' experiments and in the habit of creating vile armies to disrupt them, a looming threat by the Great Experiment's distance from the Ancients' home space, but who never actually end up ''doing'' anything to the shown worlds (Sheltem's malfunction is his own)[[note]]Except in a meta sense. The Creators were something of a nod to the team ''creating'' the games, and hence, responsible for everything that happens[[/note]]. A long-standing fan theory was that the Creators were this for the Enroth games through the Kreegans, them being a very vile army, but WordOfGod later stated the Kreegans were separate from the Creators and had their own goals and plans.[[invoked]] |
| 191 | * GreyAndGrayMorality: The Necromancer-Church of the Sun War in ''VIII'' is surprisingly nuanced, given how Necromancers and Light-aligned Clerics are presented in the other games; the Necromancers' Guild of Jadame is fairly live-and-let-live, or at least not out to conquer the continent anymore, and the Church's Jadamean branch has some pretty strongly implied tendencies towards CorruptChurch. |
| 192 | ** It's not only implied, it's explicitly mentioned by Dyson Leyland (a plot-critical hireling). Then again, he hates both sides, so probably doesn't care who you end up with. |
| 193 | ** Another good example: Lady Loretta Fleise (note the name) is Roland's vassal in charge of tax and tariff collecting in ''VI''. (That means she's supposed to be with the good guys.) However, the task she wants you to do before she gives you her approval for the main line quest is go to all the stables and have them jack their prices. She's basically telling ''you'' to do this so no-one can rightfully accuse ''her'' of price gouging in order to rip travelers off. (This originally lowered your Reputation score a full level, but this was a bug that was fixed in the 2.0 version.) Still, this is likely the easiest of the council quests, so it's hard to complain. |
| 194 | *** The other nobles don't seem to like her much, either. In one quest, when you recover an important document (from a dungeon in her jurisdiction) she tells you to go to Lord Anthony Stone to get your reward. (Apparently, she feels it's his problem because the document involves a criminal he was looking for.) If you do that, Stone calls her a "greedy witch", but he does reward you for it. |
| 195 | *** If you complete the quest, Lady Fleise reveals she is using the money to build more granaries in the kingdom to prepare it for the trials ahead. So perhaps she doesn't care how others think that [[ScrewTheMoneyIHaveRules she's greedy, she's looking out for the common man]]. |
| 196 | ** ''VII'' also hints at this at occassion, shown by the vitriolic reactions of the givers of the Light-aligned promotion quests towards you if you're Dark-aligned, sometimes even accompanied by death threats. Best shown in hindsight by Charles Quixote, who becomes a FantasticRacism driven dragonslayer in ''VIII''. |
| 197 | ** ''X'' has also this, where many [[spoiler:Faceless (dark-aligned side)]] don't want to have anything with the war between them and the light quite few of Inquisitors and Angels (ligth-aligned site) being fanatical HolierThanThou warriors not refraining from crossing the MoralEventHorizon to achieve their ends. |
| 198 | * GridInventory: ''VI'', ''VII'', and ''VIII'' had this. |
| 199 | ** ''X'' has it too, and it's also a BagOfSharing. |
| 200 | * GuideDangIt: The identity of the "missing brother" in ''Might & Magic III'' could be one of these, or else an example of ViewersAreGeniuses. (Hint: The other brothers are named Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, and Zeta.) (Answer: [[spoiler: Epsilon.]]) |
| 201 | ** That's actually a BilingualBonus. If you know the Greek alphabet and have met the other brothers, the solution is pretty obvious, since [[spoiler: the missing brother is the letter between Delta and Zeta.]] |
| 202 | ** When holding the Element Orb in ''II'', all entrances to the dungeon are sealed and you are unable to use any teleport spells. The only way to successfully remove the Orb from the dungeon is to actively abuse game mechanics: Give the Orb to a hireling and dismiss them, instantly sending the hireling and Orb to the nearest inn. |
| 203 | ** The location of the replacement arbiters in ''VII''. They make it perfectly clear in the game itself that Judge Fairweather is in Bracada and Judge Sleen is in Deyja, but not ''where'' in Bracada and Deyja. [[spoiler: They're in the taverns.]] |
| 204 | ** The obelisk puzzle in ''VII'' is probably this. [[spoiler:"Pirates five, one survive, hide the gold under the sand. White flower, witching hour, bloom upon a haunted land." There are several haunted lands in Might and Magic VII, although the only one with any connection to pirates is Evenmorn Island. And there IS a patch of sand on that island... but that's not where the white flower appears at midnight. So where is the buried treasure? In a stone circle that isn't anywhere close to any sand.]] |
| 205 | ** Ditto for some promotion quests. The Ninja promotion quest from ''VII'' gets the most infamy, though the Wizard promotion quest from the same game is just as bad. |
| 206 | * GunsAreUseless: Mostly averted. Ancient Weapons, a.k.a. blasters and blaster rifles, in ''VI'' and ''VII'' are pretty good endgame weapons. On the one hand, they do fairly low damage that cannot be increased by your Might score or your skill in Blasters. Also unlike other weapons, they cannot be enchanted. However, on the other hand, they do have an ''extremely'' high rate of fire, so you can deal DeathOfAThousandCuts with them, especially when you fight in the real-time mode. Another advantage they have is that they do Energy damage, a form of damage which most monsters don't have any resistance to, meaning a successful hit always does full damage. |
| 207 | * HammerOfTheHoly: |
| 208 | ** Clerics are unable to use bladed weapons like swords, spears or daggers, being limited to blunt weapons such as maces and staves. |
| 209 | ** Averted by Paladins; while they tend to favor maces, they're percfectly able of using swords and spears. |
| 210 | * HeroOfAnotherStory: Archibald was formerly the antagonist of the ''VideoGame/HeroesOfMightAndMagic'' series before making a ContinuityCameo appearance in ''VI'' and having a more important role in ''VII''. |
| 211 | * HeroicSacrifice: |
| 212 | ** In ''V'', [[spoiler:Corak lacks the power to defeat Sheltem by directly attacking him. His self-destruct system, however...]] |
| 213 | ** In ''X'', [[spoiler: while you are dealing with the revolutionary army in the Battle of Karthal stage, your ally Crag Hack hunts down and confronts Erebos on his own, knowing that he has nothing to lose because he's dying from a lethal curse anyway. As the cutscene shows, Crag dies at the villains hands, but he does so on his own terms, and manages to wound the demon as he does so, making him vulnerable and possible for ''you'' to destroy him.]] |
| 214 | * HoistByHisOwnPetard: |
| 215 | ** In general, the "Armageddon" spell might result in this if you don't keep an eye on your HP while recasting it. Same with spells with splash or area-of-effect damage such as Dragon Breath or Meteor Shower if you don't keep your distance. All of them at least warn you about it in description. |
| 216 | ** It is entirely possible to do this to yourself by using the artifact Splitter in ''VII''. Artifacts and Relics are supposed to differ by Relics having drawbacks, which is technically true... but Explosive Impact doesn't count as a drawback, despite the fact that Splitter is a ''melee'' weapon, and there is no way to completely protect yourself from Fire damage. |
| 217 | ** The Regnans in ''VIII'' first are infiltrated by the heroes by means of a Regnan submarine the party hijacked while on a supply run. Then the party uses a Regnan prototype super-cannon to sink a good chunk of the Regnan fleet. |
| 218 | ** In ''X'', the Runepriest's Searing Rune skill is especially prone to this. What it does is placing a rune on the ground that damages everyone standing on it or on nearby tiles. Normally the rune is placed with one tile space from you in the direction you're looking, so you're safe. However, if you have enemies right in front of you, it will place the rune directly under them... meaning that you're within its range and with its damage it can quite likely spell TotalPartyKill. |
| 219 | * HopelessBossFight: |
| 220 | ** The [=MegaDragon=] from ''II'' is supposed to be a hopeless fight, though it can be defeated by insanely over-leveled characters using powerful spells. You're ''supposed'' to give King Kalohn the {{Plot Coupon}}s to allow him to win the fight. |
| 221 | ** In ''V'', trying to face Sheltem in combat gets you automatically pwned. The only way to win is to [[spoiler: recruit a more powerful ally and watch an awesome cutscene battle]]. |
| 222 | ** There's something like this early in ''VII''. There's a cave on Emerald Island, where you start the game, where there's a Red Dragon, which is likely ''far'' too strong for you to defeat. However, when you first enter, it will be preoccupied with some rats before it sees you. (The idea is for you to grab the two items you need and get out before it manages.) Note that it ''is'' possible to kill it using real time combat mode, bows, and lot of SaveScumming, [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55ldsZkqbbk as this guy proves.]] |
| 223 | ** In ''X'', [[spoiler:the FinalBattle is like this; if you attack him directly, reducing him to about half his health Erebos will drive him away for a little while; he'll always return after a few rounds, fully healed. (Driving him away and killing his Faceless and dark elf minions - who are much easier - does give you time to rest and heal, however.) To win the battle and truly kill him, you have to gather all the Solar Sigil Pieces in the huge arena and put them into the machine, which kills Erebos forever if you are successful.]] |
| 224 | * HostileTerraforming: Kreegans do this with a healthy dose of GameplayAndStorySegregation and HordeOfAlienLocusts. In ''Heroes of Might and Magic'' we see Kreegans as stereotypical demons of Abrahamic mythology who establish towns and have human workers, slaves and collaborators and even taverns, monuments to Satanic deities and medieval technology. They like living in volcanic areas purely for comfort and prefer to raise volcanoes with magic before expanding. In the RPG series they are anything but that: initial spaceships make well-planned hard landings to the most fertile areas and start draining the soil nutrients to feed their population and hive queens and aggravate roaming creatures. Their initial technology is biotechnological with modern hydraulics on doors, and their expansion "cities" are nothing but OrganicTechnology hives like Colony Zod which also drain nutrients from the soil but have rudimentary force fields and elevators. There are ''zero'' human underlings living with them (though they do make use of human underlings, just not directly in their own settlements) and they attack anything that comes near and are straight out of the ''Alien'' franchise. |
| 225 | * HourOfPower: ''VI'' is the TropeNamer, though timed buffs have been present in the series since the beginning. Even before ''VI'', ''World of Xeen'' introduced the Day of Protection and Day of Sorcery spells, which combined all of the cleric's and sorcerer's buffs respectively into a single spell. The TropeNamer is also notable because it includes the Haste spell, which applies the Weak condition to your characters upon expiring. The villains in ''The Falcon and the Unicorn'' DLC in ''X'' have a corrupted version of it called Hour of Justice, which is far more brutal. |
| 226 | * HulkSpeak: Orcs in ''X'' (both [=PCs=] and [=NPCs=]) talk like this, occasionally. (Maximus, the garrison in Sorpigal, is surprisingly articulate; in fact, he says that's the reason the other orcs in his village kicked him out.) |
| 227 | * HundredPercentHeroismRating |
| 228 | * InfinityPlusOneSword: |
| 229 | ** Artifacts, Unique items and Relics, if the drawbacks of the latter two can be bypassed or aren't that limiting. |
| 230 | ** Blasters and Blaster Rifles, if present. One shot does small damage but they fire very fast and accurate shots and have good chance to ''stun'' even Behemoth, so whatever you're shooting will fall quickly. |
| 231 | * InfinityPlusOneElement: Dark (due to Dark Magic containing strongest nukes), Light (almost nothing resists it, except your allies) and if it's present, Energy (Blasters; it's also type of damage dealt by strongest monsters such as Gold, Crystal Dragons or Robots, and it can't be resisted at all by anything in the game). |
| 232 | * InNameOnly: ''Heroes of Might & Magic V'' and ''Dark Messiah of Might & Magic'' are a complete reboot of the series, taking place in an entirely different universe, with none of the ScienceFantasy plot elements of the original series. |
| 233 | * InformedAbility: Happens a ''lot''. Many quests require you to kill a Boss Monster who's supposedly a leader or king of a group of common monsters, but when you actually fight the guy, he's really not much stronger than a typical member of the species. (For example, in one game you have to kill Ethric the Mad, who is supposedly "the first - and thus most powerful - lich" but he's really just the same as any other Power Lich. (Not that Power Liches are pushovers, of course, but Agar and the Lich King are liches in the same game that are stronger.) |
| 234 | * InventoryManagementPuzzle: The Enrothian trilogy is guilty of this. Especially notable since there are items such as halberds or tridents that take the [[GridInventory entire vertical space in your inventory]], but the items are automatically added in the inventory in horizontal manner, meaning that you can grab a ton of gems or rings, which all occupy 1x1 space in your inventory, with all your party members, and then be unable to grab a trident even though about 3/4th of your space is free. Since in some cases it is hard to know what enemy will drop, the only solution is the application of this trope. |
| 235 | * InvulnerableCivilians: Monsters and townspeople simply ignored each other in ''Might & Magic VI''. This was corrected in all later games, where the two would fight if they crossed paths. (This isn't always the case. In the Bracada Desert, the Griffins ignore the civilians and the Golems who act as the constabulary, but ''do'' attack the PlayerCharacters, while in Deyja, the Harpies and Zombies leave the peasants alone, but not outsiders. Mt. Nighon is kind of a strange case. The Warlocks in the town act as the town watch and won't attack you unless you cause trouble, but the ones ''outside'' of town are more malignant.) |
| 236 | ** Of course, this caused ''other'' issues. Namely that great fun could be had in VII by luring monsters back to town for the sole purpose of watching them slaughter the inhabitants. |
| 237 | *** Not the sole purpose. If they killed the man trying to give you a fireball wand for a future favour, you could take the wand for free. Also, civilians have gold. |
| 238 | *** Most of the time. Some civilians in Might and Magic 8 don't have gold. Although they tend to look quite ragged, so... |
| 239 | * JokeLevel: ''VI'' has one. [[spoiler: In Dragonsand, there's a hidden teleporter that takes you to the New World Computing Dungeon, a place which, in theory, is built to resemble the office of New World Computing (at the time). The place isn't much of a challenge if your party is strong enough to be in Dragonsand (the only monsters are a couple of goblins and lots of peasants, all of them named after NWC employees, and there isn't any useful treasure) but it is kind of cool.]] |
| 240 | ** Actually, there's a way to get there early on, when the items inside are quite helpful: [[spoiler: There's a Flight scroll hidden in the west wall of the bank in New Sorpigal. Cast it and fly to the north end of the Buccaneer's Lair, and click on the wall. It will teleport you to Dragonsand, just outside the Shrine of the Gods. [[SaveScumming Save before trying it]], because there are twenty or so dragons waiting for you and it may take a few tries to get inside the shrine without dying. Click on the obelisk to have 20 stats permanently added to whichever character touches it, and then click on the left wall of the shrine and it takes you to New World Computing. When you reappear outside, you must rush to the western spur of the Shrine and touch its south wall, which returns you safely to New Sorpigal. Meanwhile, you can pick up several useful items including a set of very good chain mail, and find a "chest" that gives you money. Another way to get home is to hire a Gate Master in New Sorpigal who can cast Town Portal once per day, or, provided you left with enough Fly duration, to head southwest, dodging the volleys of dragon breath, to the Desert Resort where a Gate Master lives in one of the houses. You then have the option of 'porting to Free Haven where you can buy Lloyd's Beacon, revisit NWC and put a marker right by the money chest, allowing you to loot, deposit money in New Sorpigal, and return, until you're tired of accumulating funds.]] |
| 241 | ** In ''VII'' they have the "Strange Temple" [[spoiler: which is another version of the NWC Dungeon, which is reached by using a model-temple-in-a-bottle found in a sunken ship. Unlike the version in ''VI'', his has a pretty dangerous {{Superboss}} in it, called a "Blaster Guy C", who's much like a boss that was fought previously.]] |
| 242 | ** In ''VIII'' there is also [[spoiler:another version of the NWC dungeon, the Giant Sword in the Plane Between Planes, which you can only enter if you'll take a flute from Lord Brinne's Tomb in Ravenshore.]] |
| 243 | ** In ''X'', there is Limbo, [[spoiler:which is, like the previous ones, a dungeon resembling the Ubisoft offices, but also resembling a space station, a CallBack to the science fiction levels of previous games. There are a lot of odd monsters there named after the dev team (whom you can actually talk to in this case), and your mission is to defeat the six "Ubimancers" who have invaded the place. Once you do, a guy tells you they can [[BreakingTheFourthWall safely start work on the next ''Might & Magic'' project]].]] |
| 244 | * KarlMarxHatesYourGuts: Played straight, but avoidable. The rule applies, but if the character you use to deal with a merchant has ranks in the Merchant skill, you get a better deal both when buying and selling, and the better the character is in the skill, the better the deal. When the character gets the highest rank in the skill, he both buys and sells at the fixed price. (Naturally, it's best to max out this skill on the character who can use it best, and have him deal with merchants exclusively.) |
| 245 | * LarynxDissonance: Mostly unintentional, due to many [=NPCs=] often being assigned the (ambiguously) incorrect gender. Don't even get me started on that... ''thing'' who runs the [[MindScrew Mind Guild]] in VII. When talking to peasants and other [=NPCs=], a voice will say "Hello" or an equivalent greeting, and if you don't know that it's the voice of your currently active character (not the voice of the NPC he/she's talking to), it can seem like this as well. |
| 246 | * LastDiscMagic: In some games, some magic schools or last mastery levels can be obtained only way into the game. |
| 247 | ** ''VII'': You can get Light or Dark magic only after you choose path and complete an initiation test, which happens into the second half of the game. Even then you need to complete second promotion for either Cleric or Sorcerer to be able to even learn it. Likewise, since second promotion is only available after the choice of path and ''is'' a requirement for Grandmastery of magic schools, the ultimate spells of each magic school such as Power Cure or Lloyd's Beacon can't be used until then. |
| 248 | ** ''VIII'': Both Light and Dark magic can be learned from the start, but their Grandmasters are located at Regna, which is made accessible only quite late into the story. Consequently the ultimate spells in both schools won't be used until then and some spells of lower mastery are far less potent. Averted with Elemental schools - their Grandmaster teachers are located in their respective Elemental Planes, but you can access them and in the case of Plane of Air it shouldn't be much trouble with Invisibility (which you most likely have when you're trying to Grandmaster Air Magic). |
| 249 | * LinearWarriorsQuadraticWizards: Despite the title of the game the Magic part seems to play a more important part in most of modern-era games: |
| 250 | ** In ''VI'' the difference is so big it's absurd. Play the your cards right and a group of pure casters (Clerics and Sorcerers) can be deadlier than hybrid classes or Knight at the beginning of the game already. A Sorcerer with Sparks spell can clean enemies more efficiently than Knight with his sword and all classes can learn bow, the most useful weapon for when mana runs out, anyway. The gap widens even more when you get to Dark and Light magic, as the former has spells like "Shrapmetal" with potential of dealing huge physical damage or the "Armageddon" spell that deals about 50 points of damage ''to an entire map'', something with what Knights and hybrid classes will only hardly keep up with. The latter has powerful spells that raise stats, reduce damage and completely heal the party, meaning with enough skill points and equipment boosting it even SquishyWizard can punch out a ''minotaur''. |
| 251 | ** Toned down in ''VII'' where now spells are tied to magic mastery, so they are not so easy to get, therefore power curve for pure casters is slower. Knights and fighting hybrid classes also get some new skills to keep up, notably Armsmaster for Knight and the Dodging and Unarmed skills for Monk. They can't still keep up with the damage output of Dark Magic however. |
| 252 | ** Both previous games also contain ''Ancient Weapon'' skill - essentially Blasters that deal damage that cannot be resisted by anything. This skill can be learned by anyone, however, and magic is still more useful in general. |
| 253 | ** ''VIII'' plays with this. While there are Knight, Cleric and Necromancer (= Sorcerer in this game) classes, the strongest are Dragons, Dark Elves and Trolls, who are mostly hybrid classes with special quirks. |
| 254 | ** ''X'' plays this straight and it becomes apparent if you have DLC installed and you get to play first of its dungeons. Then you find out that mages are much less dependent on equipment than fighters are. |
| 255 | * LostColony: |
| 256 | ** The apparent fantasy world setting of each game is typically revealed to really be one of these towards the end. |
| 257 | ** Played with in the first five games, in that the settings strictly speaking were not ''lost'', but rather deliberately retarded (the Ancients apparently ''do'' keep an eye on them, just not a close one). ''VI'' to ''VIII'' varied the theme by making it clear from an early point that the world in question was a LostColony (the inhabitants themselves are perfectly aware of it, and in fact base their dating system on ''when'' the colony became lost). IX bucked the trend by ''never'' explicitly revealing it. |
| 258 | * LostTechnology: [[spoiler:In the case of the first five games, possibly deliberately lost, to keep people from messing with the experiments by the worlds' creator that explain why these worlds have names that are written in all Capital Letters. From a certain point of view, Sheltem is ''himself'' a piece of malfunctioning Lost Technology. For the settings of Might & Magic 6, 7 and 8, TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt resulted in a collapse of civilization bringing them down from energy-weapons to Medieval technology, but some pieces of what was before are still around, and when a crisis occurs...]] |
| 259 | * [[LovableRogue Loveable Rogues]]: In ''VII'', William Lasker, the Master of Thieves, who lives in the Sewers in Erathia, obviously qualifies. You hear from some townsfolk that Queen Catherine could likely arrest him any time she wants, but turns a blind eye because she approves of his actions. When you actually meet him, it's clear the rumors are true; first he gives you this first Thief promotion quest (which helps you get even with the guy who conned you in the beginning by robbing his house) and later, he proves to be on the side of the Path of Light by giving you the Rogue to Spy Promotion Quest. (Assuming you pick the Path of Light.) |
| 260 | ** The heroes play this part in ''X'', being Raiders, a type of shady adventurer which many folk believe are lawless folk who refuse to pledge loyalty to any formal authority (both the government or the Dragons), and are OnlyInItForTheMoney. This is true to a certain extent - the eighth rule of their ten-part code is "Treasure is treasure", meaning that if something is valuable, you should take it, and not judge what it was used for. However, a lot of the code does deal with honor among allies and comrades, the ''first'' rule being "Life is worth more than gold", meaning that nothing is so valuable that you should risk the lives of your companions to get it. (The second rule is, if a Raider violates the first rule and lets a comrade die to gain wealth, he is a traitor who deserves death, and a true Raider's duty is to deliver that punishment.) |
| 261 | * MadeOfExplodium: Gogs. Also, less notably, golems and light elementals, and Boulders, as well as arrows when fired from bows with the "of Carnage" enchantment. ''VII'' has The Splitter, an artifact axe which creates an explosion with every impact. Fire Elementals in ''X''. |
| 262 | ** Kreegan burst into flames when they die too, leaving no corpse behind, but that's no threat to you. |
| 263 | * MageMarksman: The Archer class in ''Might'' and Magic II'' through ''VII''. Dark Elves in ''VIII'' and Rangers in ''IX'' count as well. |
| 264 | * MagicSquarePuzzle: The first game has a 4×4 magic square dungeon, the successful solution of which will grant your party +2 intelligence. |
| 265 | * MagikarpPower: In most games specialized casters are weak at the beginning, as they have tiny health pool and mana pool and low level spells aren't incredibly efficient anyway. By the end of the game they will essentially become demigods able to create localized natural disasters or block every status ailment in the game. Notable in the Enrothian trilogy, but also in ''X'', especially in [=DLC=]. |
| 266 | * MarathonLevel: |
| 267 | ** ''VI'': |
| 268 | *** This game in general has ''much'' bigger dungeons than later games. The very first dungeon, Abandoned Temple, is extremely long. Thankfully one of three quest items is near the entrance. The other two? Not so much. |
| 269 | *** Tomb of VARN is giant and unlike most other dungeons, you ''have to'' sweep it all in order to find codes that give you the access to the reactor room that contains mainline quest item. |
| 270 | *** Castle Darkmoor and Castle Alamos also stand out and likewise you'll have to explore them entirely to get to required quest items there because of rather convoluted puzzles. |
| 271 | ** ''VII'': |
| 272 | *** Walls of Mist and The Breeding Zone. Made worse you cannot leave without all monsters respawning, so you need to stock up on mana potions and food to stay there. The Breeding Zone is relatively small, but the tough enemies here will slow your progress down a lot. |
| 273 | *** Eeofol Tunnels, a SpaceFillingPath which you need to completely traverse in order to access Eeofol. Thankfully you need to do this once, since you can activate DoorToBefore once in Eeofol. |
| 274 | *** Titan's Stronghold, like the name would suggest. Made worse by the fact that it consists mostly of looong corridors that seem to go on forever. |
| 275 | ** ''VIII'': |
| 276 | *** Balthazar's Lair, mainly due to overly long puzzle involving switching water levels. Think [[Videogame/TheLegendOfZeldaOcarinaOfTime Water Temple]]. |
| 277 | ** TheVeryDefinitelyFinalDungeon also qualifies and it stands out when compared to the rather short dungeons in this game. It ''does'' make for nice grand finale though. |
| 278 | ** ''X'': |
| 279 | *** [[spoiler: The Tomb of Thousand Terrors and Ker-Thal]]. Worse in that you cannot leave either until you complete them. |
| 280 | * MooksButNoBosses: The Enrothian trilogy has very few bosses, from gameplay perspective at least. In most cases the enemy serving as the boss is just strongest variant of given monster a possible change to the name/small increase of stats (such as Xenofex in ''VII'' who is just a generic devil captain), or stronger monster taken from another dungeon (Corlagon in ''VI'' is a generic Power Lich located in dungeon containing only Specters and Skeletons otherwise). The rare exceptions to this are the [[spoiler:Reactor + Devil Queen]] in ''VI'' or Robert The Wise/Tolberti in ''VII'' who are unique enemies with unique abilities and power higher than you usually expect at that point. |
| 281 | * MonsterTown: |
| 282 | ** Paradise Valley in ''VI''. While monsters can waltz right into most towns in this game and no one minds, this one, which is far away from most of the others, seems to be ''owned'' by Titans, and they'll attack you if you stay on the streets. (The folks indoors are friendlier. Here's a tip: Meteor Shower is very useful against the Titans, since they're huge enough to take multiple hits.) |
| 283 | ** In ''VII'', the towns in Deyja - where Archibald rules - might count too, because most of the population is goblins and other monsters, although in this game, [[WhatMeasureIsANonHuman goblins are available as a Player Character race.]] |
| 284 | ** Of course, the Pit beneath Deyja ''definitely'' counts. Aside from the goblins, the population consists of vampires, liches, ghosts, and death priestesses. (Whether those last ones are human or not is debatable.) You're safe here if you're on the Dark Path (in which case these things are your allies and won't attack you unless you do something stupid) but if you're on the Light Path, this city is a deathtrap, and the quests that take you here are best done by turning yourself invisible. |
| 285 | ** Same game's Celeste as well. Human-like Angels might already qualify, but you can also meet friendly Rocs and Light Elementals here. |
| 286 | ** In ''VIII'' any town barring the one in Murmurwoods and Ravenshore. |
| 287 | * MultipleEndings: Some games can end multiple ways: |
| 288 | ** ''VI'' has good ending and bad ending depending on whether [[spoiler:you have Ritual of the Void scroll on you when you exit the Hive after destroying the Reactor]]. |
| 289 | ** ''VII'' has two of them, one for each path. |
| 290 | ** ''X'' has ModularEpilogue instead, depending on your choices for main quest and some of the sidequests. This also gets expanded with the DLC. |
| 291 | * NeglectfulPrecursors: Subverted. The Ancients seem to have vanished from the face of the galaxy, leaving the inhabitants of their various artificial worlds to deal with the likes of Sheltem and the Kreegan. However, it's not that simple: as VIII makes clear, they ''are'' fighting the Kreegan, they just don't have the resources to save their lost colonies and experiments from the Kreegan most of the time ([[spoiler:or, for that matter, to destroy most infested colonies]]), what with the ongoing galaxy-scale war. Sheltem, a [[SlidingScaleOfVillainThreat multi-world threat]] who is completely impossible for heroes from a LostColony to defeat, rates only a single Corak unit with no backup. |
| 292 | * NoCanonForTheWicked: The first expansion of ''VideoGame/HeroesOfMightAndMagic III'' was going to continue the story from the Evil ending of ''MMVII'' (with Kastore completing the Heavenly Forge). Because the ScienceFantasy elements of ''Might & Magic'' had been hitherto absent from the ''Heroes'' spinoffs (and because the Heavenly Forge was definitely Science Fantasy), the developers scrapped that idea and instead made the Good ending of ''MMVII'' canon (and in ''AB'' they didn't mention the Gate that Resurrectra completed in the Good ending anyway). |
| 293 | * NonStandardGameOver: |
| 294 | ** In ''V'', meeting Sheltem without Corak will get you annihilated without a fight. |
| 295 | ** In ''VI'', blowing up the demon's ship without the ritual of the void will destroy the planet. |
| 296 | ** In ''VII'', during the initial battle between the humans and elves, you need to obtain something from the other side. Each side remains none the wiser if you keep quiet about it, but if you speak with the ruler and tell them, the party will be executed. |
| 297 | ** In ''VIII'', there is a trap in NoobCave where a trap floor starts to open. Unlike the rest of the game, starting to fall alone will kill you here. |
| 298 | ** In the NoGearLevel of Fort Laegaire in ''X'', it can also be caused by being caught by the guards or doing something that triggers an alarm. |
| 299 | * NothingIsScarier: |
| 300 | ** In Might and Magic VIII, the Plane of Air is just pale blue, empty void during the day, and a black, empty void at night. Even the Torchlight spell doesn't work there, because there are almost no surfaces to illuminate. |
| 301 | ** ''X'' has the Sacred Grove and the [[BonusLevel Fortress of Crows]]. Both are dark, creepy places that seem to have no monsters at all. However, in both cases, [[spoiler:triggering an event causes them to appear.]] |
| 302 | ** Also in ''X'' Enigma Tower is a creepy place that doesn't seem to have any monsters, [[spoiler:and it really doesn't. However, it does have some lethal booby traps that can kill you quickly if you don't watch your step.]] |
| 303 | * ObviouslyEvil: Most [[BigBad Big Bads]] fit; Sheltem certainly does, [[http://img3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20110511204907/mightandmagic/en/images/0/0d/MM5Sheltem.png just look at him!]] |
| 304 | ** The Kreegan even more so. Can't be more obvious than looking like demons. |
| 305 | ** In ''X'', it's hard to imagine that [[spoiler:Erebos]] is anything but evil when you finally confront him. |
| 306 | * OldMaster: In the first game a character grows a year older for every level of experience they train up to, so a player's entire party could be pushing 60 or 70 by the end of the game. This carries its own risk, however: once a character hits a certain age, they'll die in their sleep every time you visit an inn. |
| 307 | ** In Enrothian trilogy the characters age as the game progresses. There is some relation with training too, as training for level takes 7 days, but that should not impact the age of your party members too much. There's actually a bonus for characters that 50 - 75 years old in Personality and Intelligence while their physical stats start taking a penalty already, which can benefit them if they're magically inclined. |
| 308 | ** There are fountains of youth to fix this, of course. There are also curses of aging, too, so watch out. |
| 309 | * OptionalBoss: |
| 310 | ** In ''III'' all of the bosses are optional. While it can be difficult to avoid killing them, it is technically not needed. |
| 311 | ** In ''IV'', the Dragon King. Entering the Dragon Cave isn't required for any reason, but he's there. He does Energy damage, which has significantly fewer ways to mitigate damage. |
| 312 | ** In ''V'', the [=MegaDragon=] (See SuperBoss below). |
| 313 | ** Also in ''V'', if you make too many puzzle mistakes in the Temple Of Bark, Barkman will be released to kill you. He has huge amounts of hit amounts though he is manageable at high level (or at a lower level if you know the trick), because he lacks [[spoiler: any ranged attack; this can be taken advantage of]]. |
| 314 | ** ''VI'' has an area called the Temple of Snakes, which contains some medium-level enemies and a lone Gold Dragon (one of the strongest non-unique enemies in the game). But if you know about the secret panel or are unlucky enough to accidentally hit it, you find a small alcove with a few treasure chests and a fat peasant named Q. He has approximately 8 times the HP of the next toughest monster in the game, and continuously casts Finger of Death against you, eradicating a character when it hits. (If you defeat him, there's a treasure in this room that's worth the effort: the Horn of Ros. The strategy guide described it as "A horn that doesn't seem to work". Oh, ''it works'' all right. It shows you the numerical HP remaining when you view an enemy's health bar, which is ''very'' useful. (Buff up beforehand, and hope he doesn't hit your cleric with it. Besides his Finger of Death, which has a low hit rate, he doesn't do anything noteworthy. He just has a crapton of HP, so it will take some time to get him down. But he is not terribly difficult, especially when compared to the [=MegaDragon=] of MM V.) |
| 315 | ** Theoretically, the [=MegaDragon=] from MM 2 counts if you choose to fight him yourself. |
| 316 | ** The Megadragon also appears in ''VII'', where he is once again easy to miss and completely optional. He's a lot weaker than he is in previous games, but still exceedingly tough - he's basically a red dragon with extra attack power and a chance to eradicate anyone who he hits. |
| 317 | ** Terminator Units in ''VI'', being stronger than anything in the final dungeon, usually appear single or in pairs, and are the only enemies in the game that can inflict Eradication. However one optional room contains a whole group of these guarding a chest containing the [[BraggingRightsReward Proclamation Scroll]]. |
| 318 | ** There's something like this very early in ''VII''. [[spoiler:When you go to the Temple on Emerald Isle at the start of the game (the only place to get the Floor Tile, needed for the Scavenger Hunt), there's a guy named Sal Sharktooth and another guard. At first, both seem friendly, like the other guards. However, if you take the Fancy Hat in the next room (another item you need for the Scavenger Hunt), and then talk to Sal, he tells you to give him the Hat; if you refuse, he and the other guard attack you. Sal is tough given your likely level, and you can avoid the fight simply by giving him the Hat (there's another way to get one) or just not talking to him at all. But if you fight him and win, he's worth a lot of XP.]] |
| 319 | ** Similarly, the Red Dragon on Emerald Island from ''VII''. You're ''supposed'' to leave it alone, but with real-time combat mode and a bit of SaveScumming the party equipped with bows can run circles around him and [[CherryTapping Cherry Tap]] him to death. |
| 320 | ** Also in ''VII'', [[spoiler: if you find and access [[JokeLevel the Strange Temple]], you fight a Blaster Guy "C", who is much like Tolberti or Robert the Wise, who you fought before.]] |
| 321 | ** In ''VIII'' there are three Pirate Captains (each with unique name) on their ships presumably leading the assault on Dagger Wound Island during the game's beginning. If you get to them early (possible by going straight to Garrote Gorge, picking Ithilgore the Dragon and Mastering his Dragon Magic skill via Horseshoes found in stables, which gives you Flight), you find out they are much stronger than the pirates attacking the land, and one connecting hit will probably kill anyone in your party that's not a Dragon. Subverted since later in the game, when you're searching for access to Regna, they will be at level of average monster. |
| 322 | ** In ''IX'', there's the dragon by Lindesfarne, which has 39k health. [[spoiler: [[MoreDakka Casting Poison Cloud ad nauseum]] deals ludicrous damage thanks to the dragon's size being so big, it gets hit multiple times as the spell passes through it.]] A bit of a subversion, perhaps, in that the quest leading up to it is very accessible very early in the game. However the quest is entirely optional. |
| 323 | ** In ''X'' there is plenty of these in later Dangerous Caves and some optional dungeons. The hardest of the bunch is probably [[spoiler:the Crystal Spider in the Lost City that guards the Shard of Fire]]. |
| 324 | ** The Dragon Emperor in ''III''. He's guarding a treasure horde and some [[PlotCoupon Ultimate Power Orbs]], but you don't specifically need those (or need to fight him to get them). |
| 325 | * OurDwarvesAreAllTheSame: [[ManlyFacialHair Badass Beards]]? Check. Tough guy attitude? Check. Good in character classes that reply on fighting and heavy armor? Check. In games where you can use them in your party, they fit the bill. |
| 326 | ** ''X'' compromises this a little, with the Rune Priest, a class available to dwarves who breaks tradition slightly by being able to use powerful Fire magic; still, they're otherwise much like other dwarves. |
| 327 | * OurLichesAreDifferent: |
| 328 | ** Actually, the ones presented as enemies aren't much different at all (as far as [=RPGs=] go). ''However'', in games where you can choose a Dark path, Wizards in your party actually ''become'' Liches after completing the second Promotion Quest, complete with the [[SoulJar Soul Jars]] that liches tend to use. This grants a few immunities along with enhanced stats, but it actually does not grant them any special form of immortality. |
| 329 | ** How about a lich temptress? [[spoiler: The villain - and Boss - of the Fortress of Crows is just that, and when you confront her in the BossBattle and show her the amulet of her two victims, her fake beautiful face is cast aside, [[OneWingedAngel forcing her to show her true, horrid, undead form]].]] |
| 330 | * OurMinotaursAreDifferent: Minotaurs are a staple enemy in this series and usually comes packing lot of HP, lot of strength, axes and in case of their highest tier, a chance to perform an OneHitKO. In ''VIII'' they can become party members, though they sadly suffer a lot from RedemptionDemotion. |
| 331 | * OutgrownSuchSillySuperstitions: Averted for the [[SufficientlyAdvancedAlien Ancients]] and their constructs, as both Corak and Sheltem utter the line "May the Gods smile upon me" in ''V''. It is safe to assume Sheltem wasn't referring to the Ancients, as he was rebelling against them. |
| 332 | * OutsideContextProblem: Not too surprising given the [[ScienceFantasy setting]]. |
| 333 | ** In ''VI'' it's the Kreegans themselves. Nobody, not even the nobles, knows how to deal with them properly barring the strategy of killing as many of them as possible. Most of the game is spent by getting access to then reactivate the Oracle Melian, an entity that might know more about them. [[spoiler:They do, and they provide you with a means of getting the weapons that can damage and destroy the reactor in Kreegan's Hive.]] |
| 334 | ** The titular Destroyer in ''VIII''. His visit and creation of the Great Crystal in the middle of town during the introductory cutscene leaves all of Ravenshore bewildered about what the hell just happened, with his intentions shrouded in mist. Then the portals to the elemental planes open and unleash destructive forces on Murmurwoods, the Dagger Wounds Islands, Ravage Roaming and Ironsand. [[spoiler:The plot of the game essentially consists of collecting clues about the disasters in Jadame, trying to stich them together to figure out Escaton's plan, and then stopping him]]. |
| 335 | * PatchworkMap: Most 3D era games have problem with altitude, where the difference between a snowcapped mountain and a lush forest can be few tens of steps. Averted otherwise - while the transitions may seem to be brutal (for example the green fields of Alvar vs. Ironsand Desert in ''VIII''), the neighboring zones are separated by 5 days of walk. |
| 336 | * PaletteSwap: |
| 337 | ** In ''[=M&M7=]'' they didn't even swap palettes, they just re-tinted the already animated sprites. A fan-made patch later corrected this. |
| 338 | ** If you use Hardware Accelerated 3D video setting, they don't appear to be of different colors. But if you change the video setting to Software 3D, the sprites are recolored much more realistically. |
| 339 | ** In most games, here's how monsters work: Each monster has a small, medium, and large variety (in terms of how powerful they are) and the only real physical difference is color. (Of course, the three varieties of a monster tend to be found together.) Boss Monsters are sometimes exceptions, but many of ''them'' are just Palette Swaps of common monsters. |
| 340 | ** In ''VII'', Boss monsters are exactly the same as their strongest variety, for example Xenofex is just the Devil Captain named Xenofex. |
| 341 | * PermanentlyMissableContent: |
| 342 | ** Played straight with anything on Emerald Isle in ''VII'', seeing as once you leave, you can't go back (of course, there's really nothing useful there that you can't get anywhere else). |
| 343 | ** Also the case with the lower floor of Red Dwarf Mines of the same game, once you sabotage the elevator. This is a bit harsher since the Medusa Queen here holds an unique artifact. |
| 344 | ** In ''VIII'', once you destroy the Great Crystal, you cannot access the Plane between the Planes if you didn't place Lloyd's Beacon there. This sucks because there are few optional dungeons in there. |
| 345 | ** ''Seriously'' played straight in ''The Falcon and the Unicorn'' DLC. [[spoiler:Your gear is all confiscated when you're arrested, and you can't get it back until you defeat the boss at the top of the Fortress and get the Storeroom Key; if you don't get it, you can't. [[note]]Fortunately, the guy who arrives to rescue you warns you that he can't take you back and recommends that you take one last quick look around. Also, each area has a multiple save file, so if you saved after winning the BossBattle, it's easily fixed.[[/note]]]] |
| 346 | * PlotTunnel: |
| 347 | ** A situation like this arises in ''VI''. The first time you speak to Roland's son, Nicolai, in Castle Ironfist, he joins your party (you do not get a say in this) and the first time you rest, he runs off (again, there's nothing you can do to stop him). Unfortunately, this means you cannot enter Castle Ironfist until you find him, because it is put on emergency shutdown, because they think he's been kidnapped (and it's probably for the best that you don't enter, because technically, ''you'' kidnapped him). Because this means you ''can't'' complete any important quests, you really have to find him. The worst part is, it's kind of hard. [[spoiler:His constant begging to go to the circus should tell you where he is, but the circus only appears on certain months and in only three locations, and one of those locations is a place you really shouldn't go, given your likely current level. So this could take a while.]] Frustratingly, Nicolai doesn't give you any tangible reward for this, ''except'' that he owes you a favor, which comes in ''very'' useful much later (you get an XP reward for it in the 2.0 version). If you never talk to him about "Boredom", the problem doesn't arise, and he still helps later. |
| 348 | ** To a smaller degree, ''VI'' forces you to visit Free Haven afoot as all stable/ship transport to Free Haven is unavailable at first. This also means that you can't get easily to the northern/western locations, as Free Haven is a hub connecting New Sorpigal and surroundings with those ([[BeefGate not that it is a good idea to go there with a low-level party]]). Once you reach Free Haven and presumably talk with the Council there, you can fetch a ride to the northern/western cities. |
| 349 | ** Happens in both ''VII'' and ''VIII'' at the start. In ''VII'' you are stranded on Emerald Isle until you complete the tournament - you can explore the Isle at your leisure, but it is quite small and there is nothing interesting not related to the main quest. The single sidequest is still related to the tournament and will be possibly completed with the main quest as the items required to both are literally laying on the ground next to each other. In ''VIII'' your main quest is in fact to leave Dagger Wound island, and most of the sidequests are related to the objective. |
| 350 | ** This happens a lot in ''X'', where the plot is very linear. For example, after foiling the attack on the governor's castle, he asks you to go to the Elemental Forge to investigate an elf raid, and until you do that, you can't progress to Seahaven. |
| 351 | * PoisonIsCorrosive: Several games have the weapon modifiers "Of Poison," "Of Venom," and "Of Acid." They add varying amounts of the same type of damage (Poison in ''VI'', Body in ''VII'' and ''VIII'') to the weapon. |
| 352 | * PowerAtAPrice: |
| 353 | ** In ''VI'', Artifacts were safe; Relics, however, had drawbacks. They usually raised one or more stats tremendously, at the cost of greatly reducing one or more others. |
| 354 | ** In ''VII'', the distinction becomes even more pronounced. There are unsellable rare items often obtained as parts of quests, Artifacts and Relics. Artifacts again do not have drawbacks, while rare items and Relics do. From the first category: The Cloak of the Sheep that you find in the Temple of Baa ''might'' be useful, but not to everyone (it renders the user immune to status conditions, at the cost of reducing his Intellect and Personality by 20). There's also Mash, a Relic mace that has drawbacks that might not even be worth the benefit. (It increases your Might by 150, but decreases your Intellect, Personality, ''and'' Speed by 40 apiece.) |
| 355 | ** In ''VIII'', the game no longer displays "Artifact" or "Relic" when you find a rare item, instead a regular class of the item is displayed, like "Longsword" or "Leather Armor", for example. There is still a distinction like in the previous games, though, with some items being priced at 15-20k and having no drawbacks and ones being priced at 30k and having drawbacks. There are also a few unsellable rares, but much less than in the previous games. |
| 356 | ** In ''X'', Relics have no drawbacks, but in order for them to reach their fullest potential, they have to gain levels, just like your characters do. This is done by your characters using them in battles. |
| 357 | ** Also in ''X'' is a non-artifact example: Most of the Skill instructors who teach the Grandmaster rank require something else other than money. Some costs are very easy, like the Water Grandmaster teacher, who only requires you to walk a hundred steps on water. (If you have the Blessing of the Water Deity, you can do it in five minutes without leaving that town.) Others are a little debilitating; the Dark Grandmaster teacher is a vampire and will only teach you if you let her drink your blood (if you're brave enough to agree, each of your characters lose one point of Vitality, but she keeps her end) and the Dagger Grandmaster teacher is similar, demanding one point of each character's Spirit. (She's a dark elf who claims to collect such things.) Some are ''very'' difficult, like the Warfare Grandmaster teacher. (Once you agree to his terms, you have to fight three waves of monsters, [[{{Mooks}} goblins and plunderers]] first, [[EliteMook dreamwalkers and jaguar warriors]] second, and finally, [[GiantMook two cyclopes.]] Fortunately, you also get some XP for some of these tasks. |
| 358 | ** The Arcane Discipline Grandmaster teacher is tricky, because she [[spoiler: gives you a SecretTestOfCharacter. If you ask for training, she tells you to come back the next day. If you do, she tells you she isn't ready, and tells you to come back in a week. If you do that, she says she still isn't ready, and tells you to come back in a month. (The narrative on the screen tells suggests she might be putting one over on you, but mentions that her mask and stoic voice make it impossible to tell.) If you do come back in a month, she agrees to train you, saying that the waiting was actually the first test: patience.]] |
| 359 | ** Some spells are like this, most notably Divine Intervention (induces magical aging by 10 years, and here age ''does'' have effect on your stats) and Armageddon (hurts your party as well). |
| 360 | * PrecursorHeroes: In ''[=M&M7=]'' you learn the mysterious Visitors from the Stars that most of the plot centers around are in fact [[spoiler: the heroes from the third game, who never managed to catch up with Sheltem and ended up crash landing on Enroth instead. The party ended up splitting up between the Good and Evil members, with the Good members wanting to build a Stargate to find the Ancients, and the Evil members wanting to use Ancient weapons tech to carve out a galactic empire]] |
| 361 | * ProjectileSpell: Most of the single-target spells in the Enrothian trilogy, few exceptions aside such as "Implosion". |
| 362 | * RainbowPimpGear: Somewhat lampshaded in-game, as the item descriptions for a lot of the uglier equipment often tends to describe how awful it looks. |
| 363 | * RapidAging: A staple of the series from the very beginning, every game has traps or enemies that would cause the player characters to age rapidly. After reaching 50, physical stats would decrease, and if a stat ever hit zero, a character could randomly die with every step. In the first two games, aging could be reversed with the Rejuvenate spell, although [[LuckBasedMission it was just as likely to age your characters even further than it was to actually rejuvenate them]]. Starting with ''III'', the game began to differentiate between natural and magical aging, with natural aging being permanent, while reversing magical aging required completing side quests or, in later games, acquiring rare items: ''Terra'' required drinking from Narayah's fountain after raising it from the ocean floor, ''Clouds'' required completing the Druid's seasonal ritual, and ''Darkside'' required restoring the fountain by Venom Lake. Starting with ''VI'', magical aging could also be reversed by drinking a Rejuvenation Potion. |
| 364 | * TheRedMage: Some classes can learn both elemental magic and magic of self, most notably Druids. Their drawback is that they can't learn any advanced magic such as Dark or Light, and the maximum mastery in available magic schools also tends to be limited. |
| 365 | * ReligionOfEvil: |
| 366 | ** The Temple of Moo in ''III'', they hide out in the Ancient Temple of Moo near Fountain Head, and their leader hides in the Cathedral of Carnage. Based on their minions, they appear to be an undead cult that wants to kill people and raise their corpses. |
| 367 | ** The Temple of Bark in ''V'', they have a temple where they kidnapped a woodland sprite in addition to other captives. They are a cult of orcs who worship a tree god who demands blood sacrifice. |
| 368 | ** The Cult of Baa is the biggest example, an ApocalypseCult apparently founded by the Kreegan to use as front, which plays a big role in ''VI'', but becomes TheRemnant in ''VII''. |
| 369 | ** In ''X'' there's the Cult of the Wrecker; according to one NPC, this cult worships a dark and twisted aspect of one of the Dragon of Water (most worshippers of that Dragon are benign). |
| 370 | * RenovatingThePlayerHeadquarters: |
| 371 | ** ''IV'' has the party purchase the ruin of Newcastle from King Burlock's steward. The player must then give the chancellor King's Megacredits in order to build up the area around the town, then build up the keep itself, granting the player access to shops, trainers, and a magic guild. The final act opens the basement for the SwordOfPlotAdvancement Xeen Slayer. |
| 372 | ** The whole point of the first half of ''VII''. You win a castle during a contest, and when you finally get it, it's a complete ruin infested by Goblins, Rats and Bats. Getting rid of the pests and find somebody who can help you repair it is the beginning of your quest. |
| 373 | * RestingRecovery: Played with from ''VI'' onward. Resting in TraumaInn costed you a bit of gold and the rest always lasted to 5:00 AM, healing some of lesser statuses such as Asleep (obviously) or Fear and restoring HP and MP to full unless struck with some of more serious afflictions, such as Poison or Disease. Rather realistic. You could also pitch a tent in open, which always lasted 8 hours and consumed your supplies instead. The cost of supplies depended on type of terrain you slept on, consuming more of your rations for inhospitable landscapes such sa swamp or desert. This allowed for some really weird optimisation, since the road always counted for barren terrain, meaning you could move few feet from desert to road and consume 3 less rations. The resting was rather logically impossible in middle of battle or with enemies nearby and even if safe you could be ambushed by monsters. This gets simplified in ''X'', where resting outside always consumes 1 ration and you cannot get ambushed ever even if the monsters know about your presence, and resting in inn temporarily raises stats. |
| 374 | * RespawningEnemies: |
| 375 | ** ''VI-VIII'' have enemies respawning on maps and in dungeons after certain in-game time has passed. There are few exceptions to this: in ''VI'' some dungeons (such as The Lair of the Wolves) had traps that placed some enemies at fixed points indefinitely, and in ''VII'' the Breeding Zone and The Walls of Mist in The Pit and Celeste respectively completely respawn every time you exit it. Sadly, monsters in these places give zero rewards or [=XP=]. On the other hand, at least Walls of Mist have some goodies and stat-increasing barrels that also refresh when you exit. |
| 376 | ** In ''X'' nothing ever respawns, meaning the number of XP you can get is capped. |
| 377 | * RightOnTheTick: These games use a clock and a calendar, and quite a few important tasks you have to do depend on certain dates and times. One of the worst is the Druid promotion quests in ''VI'' (which, fortunately, are really only necessary if one of your characters is a Druid). The quest for promotion to Great Druid requires you to go and pray at a holy site. Simple enough, right? The QuestGiver requires you to do it on an equinox or a solstice, which means there are four days in a year where you can complete this. At least the place isn't hard to get to. |
| 378 | ** The Great Druid to Grand Druid quest is even worse. You have to pray at another holy site on midnight on the night of a full moon. (Twelve days in a year you can complete that one.) The “catch” is, this holy site is in a dungeon full of monsters, and you must do it ''exactly at midnight''. (You should probably make sure to clear out the monsters first.) |
| 379 | ** Obelisk puzzle in ''VIII'' is probably the worst, as not only you're limited to [[spoiler:a midday of a ''single'' day]] to fulfill the condition but you have to visit all obelisks before that as well, which in case of one on Regna won't happen until the end of the second act. |
| 380 | * RoyalsWhoActuallyDoSomething: Notably played straight in ''VII'', where your party inherits the kingdom of Harmondale after the first quest (somewhat enforced by the fact that you inherited it by winning a tournament, and as it turns out the only reason it was put up as the prize was that the place is politically volatile (several wars have been fought over the place, and the only reason why Erathian rulership is not contested by Tularea at the moment is the toll the wars have taken on Harmondale) and Castle Harmondale itself is a goblin-infested ruin). |
| 381 | ** In addition to the campaign of Heroes II, where you take control of either Archibald or Roland in the final scenario. |
| 382 | * RPGsEqualCombat: All ''Might and Magic'' games are very combat-heavy, with the vast majority of the game world populated by nothing but monsters, and friendly [=NPCs=] only appearing as text or non-interactive animated pictures until ''VI''. That said, ''Might and Magic'' games also have a strong puzzle-solving element, and a heavy emphasis on exploration in earlier games (especially the first two). |
| 383 | * RunningGag: In most of the games, there's a hidden EasterEgg where your party earns the title of "Super Goober". Typically, it involves fighting very difficult enemies to reach an optional location. |
| 384 | * SaveScumming: |
| 385 | ** The games make it very easy, for the most part. Land a good hit, save, opponent misses, save, something bad happens reload, and with patience you can beat things you have no business trying to fight. There are a few exceptions, though - for example, saving in the Arena in [=M&M7=] actually saves you to outside the Harmondale stables on Monday, so you have to win on one try. |
| 386 | ** This was particularly abuseable when it came to looting, as there is a bug in VI through VIII that will occasionally cause a just-looted corpse to remain in the game where you can loot it again with exactly the same loot tables. By repeatedly saving and loading every time the bug causes the corpse to remain, you can outfit your party several times over (with Artifacts and Relics, too, if you're looting a strong enough enemy) and get a ton of gold as a bonus (especially if combined with periodic trips to town and back to the corpse when your inventory fills). Of course, this is really only worth doing on enemies that drop good loot in the first place, like the dragon on the starting island in VII that you can beat by running around it in circles so that its fire breath never hits you... |
| 387 | ** This is also very useful when you have to deal with monsters like Ghosts that cause magical aging. Simply put, this is something that's hard to reverse, and you're going to have to deal with things like this sooner or later. For example, in ''VI'', you have to go to Corlagan's Estate to do the Wizard to Archmage promotion quest (not required, but highly recommended if you have a Wizard) and it has lots of Ghosts. The only ways to reverse magical aging in that game is a black potion (which permanently reduces ''all'' of your stats in the process) and a magical fountain on Hermit's Isle which you won't be able to access until much later. So save often when you go to this place. |
| 388 | ** Averted in ''X'', which doesn't let you save during battle. |
| 389 | * SavingTheWorld: Your goal in most games. Except in ''VII'', where the world is in no imminent danger, and the "evil" ending actually allows you to TakeOverTheWorld. |
| 390 | * SchizoTech: The medieval technology of the playable races is contrasted with the futuristic technology of the Ancients. In some games, your characters can use both. |
| 391 | * ScienceFantasy: |
| 392 | ** ''M&M'' games commonly start out as apparently pure fantasy world, but towards the end it is revealed the world is actually a LostColony, and LostTechnology is brought into the plot. However, the magic is still very real and the Ancients brought elves, dwarves, orcs, halflings, etc. over on the vessels that colonized these planets as well as humans, and themselves seem to have practiced an advanced synthesis of technology and magic. Later games would introduce the Science Fiction elements earlier; ''Might & Magic VI'' and ''VII'', for example, allowed you to mow down Liches with your blaster pistols. Or ''be'' a Lich. With a laser pistol, and scuba gear, and infiltrating a spaceship to steal technology. |
| 393 | ** ''IX'' never got around to having any explicit Science Fiction elements, leaving them to a few references that people that played the older games would recognize as not actually being fantasy after all. ''X'' isn't allowed to have explicit Science Fiction elements, being set in Ubisoft's Ashan setting... [[spoiler:"explicit" being the key word there. Two quests ''heavily'' imply that Ashan is in the old setting after all, one of them featuring what appears to be a character from the mid-90s novels... a character that happened to have been an undercover operative for a post-Silence interstellar state]]. |
| 394 | * ScoldedForNotBuying: In ''VI'', ''VII'' and ''VIII'', most merchants make some comment that ranges from sarcasm to outright anger if you have at least 10000 gold and leave without making any transactions. |
| 395 | * SelfDestructMechanism: ''Might and Magic VI'' and ''VII'', as well as ''Heroes of Might and Magic III'' deal with an alien invasion by the Kreegan "devils". It turns out that the Ancients who originally colonised the world also made a robot who would go to worlds attacked by the aliens and eliminate the threat at any cost. In ''VIII'', he has arrived and his programming kicked in and started the self-destruct mechanism of the entire world, even though you already defeated the aliens. |
| 396 | ** The endgame of ''V'': [[spoiler:Corak initiates his own self-destruct to (finally) take down Sheltem. It works.]] |
| 397 | ** A minor one in ''VI''; if you aren't paying attention and forget to pick up a vital scroll before going to the Kreegan hive to destroy it, the resulting explosion destroys the planet in a rather well-done cinematic. |
| 398 | ** In the spinoff ''Swords of Xeen'', you need to use the mechanism to destroy the Ancient spaceship. One spell lets you teleport outside, since the timer is linked only to attempts on exiting the spacecraft. |
| 399 | * ShopFodder: |
| 400 | ** In ''III'', Jewelry, Ancient or otherwise. It's only purpose is to be sold. |
| 401 | ** Because of a mechanics change in ''IV'' and ''V''[[note]]unlike ''III'', accessories in ''IV/V'' do *not* receive AC bonuses from their materials, so that Obsidian Belt you found does nothing but fill a slot[[/note]], most accesories are completely worthless other than for a few dozen coins. |
| 402 | ** Gems in the later games, from ''VI'' onward. They cost a fortune, take very little space in your inventory (usually only [[GridInventory 1x1 square]]) and they cannot be enchanted, so the sole reason for their existence is to be sold for a quick buck (the games themselves even tend to lampshade it). Gems in the earlier games were used as currency and to power certain spells. |
| 403 | * ShoutOut: Oh so deliciously many. |
| 404 | ** ''Might and Magic II's'' game world is basically a collection of shout-outs, from the many-colored Bishops of Battle to a familiar starship captain running a transport service. Basically any time there's text in the game, it's a reference to something. |
| 405 | ** From the intro video to IV: "When times were good and [[Film/MontyPythonAndTheHolyGrail there was much rejoicing...]]" "Yay..." |
| 406 | ** In ''V'' (and ''World of Xeen''), Alamar ([[spoiler:Sheltem]]) will sometimes say "Pleasant Dreams!" accompanied by an EvilLaugh when your party rests, in a voice that is highly reminiscent of the Guardian from ''VideoGame/UltimaVII''. |
| 407 | ** In VI the passwords of the spaceship are [[Franchise/StarTrek 'krik', 'kcops', and 'yttocs']], and from the found journals you can deduct that the ship could have been... |
| 408 | ** Some of the temples in VI bid you to "[[Franchise/StarTrek Live long and prosper]]." |
| 409 | ** After you complete the Black Knight promotion quest in Might and Magic VII, if you go back to visit the guy who gave you the quest, he'll say [[Film/MontyPythonAndTheHolyGrail "None shall pass!"]] |
| 410 | ** The grandmaster of Unarmed fighting in VII is (Chuck) Norris, and the default human male character portrait kinda looks like him. You can achieve grandmastery of Body Building from a troll named Evander Holifield. The grandmaster of Mind Magic is (Professor) Xavier. Mastery of the Disarm Trap skill can be learned from a crazed redneck named Leonard Skinner. Several [=NPCs=] are named after posters on the 3DO forums. The list goes on. |
| 411 | ** The person who trains to become a Villain in ''VII'' is called William (Bill) [[SdrawkcabName Setag]]. |
| 412 | ** In VIII there's a magic curio shop in Ravenshore named "Literature/NeedfulThings". Quite appropriate. |
| 413 | ** There's a lot of these in the [[JokeLevel Limbo dungeon]] in ''X'' when you talk to the creatures there. (Although very little of what they say is relevant to the plot.) For example, a sphinx-like creature tells you, [[Franchise/GreenLantern "In brightest day, in darkest dungeon, no evil shall escape my bludgeon".]] |
| 414 | * SinglePreceptReligion: Neither the Path of Light nor the Path of Dark on Planet Enroth in the old 'verse had any real detail given to them. They both had priests, the Path of Light was vaguely good (and had a thing against undead) and the Path of Dark was vaguely evil (and had a thing ''for'' undead), and they had predecessor religions involving (respectively) the Sun and the Moon in some way, but beyond that... |
| 415 | * SortingAlgorithmOfEvil: The games from ''III'' usually play this straight with some subversions in the form of a BeefGate. Usually justified since you start in towns where the monsters would be weak so settlements would not get immediately slaughtered by local wildlife, but once you abandon civilisation and reach wilderness the monsters get nastier. |
| 416 | ** In ''VI'' you actually start in the location where the final quest takes place... during a cutscene, as you hightail out of there during the AlienInvasion. Then you meet a warlock who teleports you as far as he can from there on purpose. Said alien invasion also creates the surge of monsters, justifying the sorting algorithm. |
| 417 | ** In ''VII'' the mosters in general get stronger the farther you get from Harmondale, but following the main questline can throw you into some rather nasty surprises. The very first quest requires you to go into a cave with a red dragon, one of strongest monsters there is. You don't have to fight it, though (you just need to survive to grab the quest item in its cave, which shouldn't be too troblesome unless [[DeathByMaterialism you get distracted by gold laying there]]). Once you get to Castle Harmondale and clean it from goblins and rats, you're directed to the Barrow Downs, which are infested by spectres and gargoyles, and from there your next quest is in dungeon full of enemies immune to physical attacks (and if you take wrong path, you'll end up facing enemies immune to magic for a change, which can also cause paralysis and petrification). It's not until you complete this quest that you're pointed to much safer locations in Erathia and the Tularean Forest. |
| 418 | ** In ''VIII'' one of portals toward an item requiring to access TheVeryDefinitelyFinalDungeon is on the starting map, though thankfully on an island inaccessible without Water Walk or Fly. The game world is also rather small this time and Ravenshore, the second region you visit, is in its center, so it is really easy to visit most of regions in short span of time. Story-wise the game tends to put you against weaker foes first though, and some regions such as Regna are inaccessible at first. |
| 419 | * SoulJar: TropeNamer. In ''Might and Magic VII'' and ''VIII'', this is how evil Wizards and Necromancers, respectively, transform themselves into Liches. |
| 420 | * SplashDamage: Some spells, most notably Fireball and Dragon Breath. Also weapons with Explosive Impact effect. Can result in HoistByHisOwnPetard if used too recklessly. |
| 421 | * SquishyWizard: Mostly played straight. In most games specialized casters get the lowest amount of HP from all classes, and they can't learn to wear heavier armor nor learn special defensive skills such as Dodging, making them more vulnerable. There are way to subvert it, as in most games Endurance impacts HP, so Sorcerer with high Endurance will be not as squishy. In ''VI'' every class can master Body Building which adds HP directly, meaning Sorcerers can increase their HP as well. In ''X'' the Runepriest (specialized Dwarf caster class) also subverts it, as it gains extra HP per level. |
| 422 | * StarPower: The Starburst spell. |
| 423 | * SuicidalOverconfidence: In general, the moment the enemies detect you, they chase after you with wild abandon (or shoot at you, if they have ranged attacks, which is smarter approach) no matter if you just entered your first dungeon or you're clad in artifacts from head to toes and possessing weapons that the enemy doesn't even recognize. This is somewhat logical for feral monsters (wolves, harpies) or for those at the top of food chain (dragons, behemoths) but why does a group of lowly raiders still chase you after seeing you disintegrate their pals with weird-looking fireball? |
| 424 | * SufficientlyAdvancedAlien: The Ancients, who create all sorts of planets and bring inhabitants to them for fun. |
| 425 | * SuperDrowningSkills: In most of the 3-D games, water acts as little more than a flat surface that drains your life when you stand on it without the aid of a Water Walk spell or potion. This is particularly jarring, as it is entirely possible to walk on water without the aforementioned spell - your only penalty is listening to your characters yell "ow! that hurts!" repeatedly while the water slowly eats away at their health. |
| 426 | ** IX was the first (and only, unless you count that one stage from VII) in the series to give characters the ability to actually swim (i.e., to go down beneath the surface of the water instead of treating it like solid ground). Due to other issues, however, this ability was completely worthless for a lack of any reason whatsoever to go swimming. |
| 427 | ** There's also the 'plane of water' from VIII, where you can swim freely without losing health. And use Fire magic. |
| 428 | * TakeYourTime: The game warns you that the world will end in the year 1000 (you start in the year 900), and your characters can age, but rejuvenating your characters at least is trivial. Oh, and if you play through 100 years... nothing happens. |
| 429 | ** Similarly, in ''World of Xeen,'' one of the options in the starting town (at least on Darkside) is to spend a week as a laborer for a bit of cash. Combine this with the compound interest the banks provide, and you can spend a century or two before you do anything just accumulating cash. Not to worry, though... apparently XEEN steers and/or accelerates like a tub, because there hasn't been any noticeable climate change yet. |
| 430 | ** Subverted at one moment in ''VIII''. There's a moment where you try to infiltrate Regna so ships with your allies may pass. You can start the quest anytime you want, but once you kill named pirate in Pirate Outpost and access Regna you should finish the quest in one go. It doesn't really matter much how long you take as long as you stay on Regan; but if you teleport elsewhere to do other business, the Pirates will attack Ravenshore. |
| 431 | * TakenForGranite: Many games have 'Stoned' as a status effects that can be inflicted by some particularly annoying enemies such as Basilisks or Medusae. Getting rid of it can be trivially easy or very hard (spell that removes it requires just Expert Earth Magic, but unlike other status-removing spells this one is learned by Sorcerer or associated hybrid classes instead of Cleric, so without these classes it can be problematic). In ''VII'' getting character unstoned in 'evil' temple will turn them into a zombie, somehow. [[spoiler: In ''VI'', you have to free Archibald Ironfist from this fate if you don't want to get bad ending]]. Also one of main quests in ''VII'' and one of sidequests in ''VIII'' requires you to save unlucky beings that were turned to stone. |
| 432 | * TempleOfDoom: Pretty much in every game. ''VI-VIII'' each have one as a NoobCave. |
| 433 | * ThemeNaming: Every game starting with III has a temple with some animal-related name: Temple of Moo (III), Temple of Yak (IV), Temple of Bark (V), Temple of Snakes (VI), Temple of Baa (VI and VII), Temple of Honk (IX), Temple of Meow (X) |
| 434 | ** Archbishop Anthony Stone in ''Might and Magic VI'' even makes a MythologyGag on the first three names. |
| 435 | ** ''VIII'' had the Grand Temple of Eep, the Chapel of Eep and the Church of Eep, all part of a quest to [[spoiler: find rare cheese - the followers of Eep are wererats.]] |
| 436 | ** In some games Artifacts/Relics have some naming scheme to them as well, such as Artifactsin ''VI'' being named after the characters from Legend of Arthur. |
| 437 | ** Every trainer in ''Might and Magic VII'' is named after a Roman emperor. |
| 438 | * ThereAreNoTents: You can rest outside of an inn, but if a place is too dangerous to do so, you can't (a message onscreen will tell you so, and you won't be able to.) And even if a place is considered safe, you might be attacked in your sleep. (The inns, however, are always 100% secure, and it also doesn't deplete your rations, which camping in the wilderness does.) |
| 439 | * TheThreeCertaintiesInLife: Some [=NPCs=] state that there are only three certainties in life: Death, Taxes, and that you'll hear the comment about death and taxes sooner or later. |
| 440 | * TooAwesomeToUse: |
| 441 | ** Various scrolls. Few exceptions aside (such as the Fly scroll in New Sorpigal in ''IV'' or Bracada in ''VII''), there is no shop, monster drop or chest that guarantees access to certain scrolls. Consequently, you will save the best scrolls with the spells you can't get other way until you ''really'' need them, and weaker scrolls will be sold off. |
| 442 | ** Better magic wands with stronger spells. While ''VII'' and ''VIII'' have a spell that allows you to recharge them, it has the drawback of reducing the number of charges every time it is used, and to fully negate that, you must have Grandmastery of Water Magic at level at least 20. Therefore better wands will end up collecting dust like the better scrolls. |
| 443 | * TheUnfought: |
| 444 | ** You never fight Archibald at all in the series (although you do in ''Heroes'', where he appears originally) even if you're on the side of Light in ''VII'' where he's technically your enemy. |
| 445 | ** Same goes for [[spoiler: Escaton in ''VIII'', the BigBad of the game - you do confront him, however he agrees with you and bypasses his programming to help you out.]] |
| 446 | ** Two examples of this in ''X'', both of them in ''The Falcon and the Unicorn'' DLC. You never actually fight Duke Owen, the antagonist in the plot who set you and Rosalie up who is planning to take over the kingdom by wooing Empress Falcon. (He gets his, however; once you win the game, the Empress has him and the other conspirators hauled off to jail.) You do ''confront'' him, however, the final true enemy of the game, Owen's partner the Justicar Angel Adira leaps to defend him, and while you ''do'' fight her as a BossBattle (and a rather difficult one) it isn't finished; when you reduce her to about half her health, Falcon orders her to stop so that she can hear what you and Rosalie have to say. (So while the fight occurs, it is left unfinished.) |
| 447 | * UnintentionallyUnwinnable: |
| 448 | ** In ''[=MM4=]'', people running around with no space in their inventory can lose the Xeen Slayer, and therefore the only means to harm the BigBad. It is actually possible to get another copy of the weapon with a cheat code – then again, you might be playing a translated version where the code was changed into something undocumented. |
| 449 | ** It is possible in Might and Magic VII to make the game unwinnable during the Warrior Mage promotion quest. The quest is to replace a pulley belt on the elevator mechanism in an abandoned mine with a weak belt that's meant to break after an hour, rendering the elevator useless (and you unable to leave the mine if you're still on the lower level at that time). You can still get out of the mine by having the party wiped out by the many medusas and oozes in the lower level... unless you've defeated them all, and aren't lucky enough to have a teleport spell on your person. |
| 450 | * UnknownItemIdentification: Whenever you get a new weapon, armor or accesory, you won't be able to see what it does (or even its name) unless you identify it first. The easiest and fastest way to do it is through the Item ID skill, though if for some reason none of your party members have this skill, the appropriate shop can identify it for a price. You can still equip it even if it's unidentified, though. |
| 451 | * UselessItem: Quite a few through series: |
| 452 | ** ''VI'' has The Flute, which was related to the quest that was DummiedOut afterwards. In Control Center you can get a bunch of Control Cubes and Memory Crystals, but they are of no use at this point of the game. |
| 453 | ** Depending on your path in ''VII'', Dragon Eggs can be this, since they serve no purpose if you're on Path of Light. |
| 454 | ** ZigZagged with scroll of Lloyd's Beacon. Since this spell requires to set a beacon first, you need to have at least two to make any use of it. Therefore having a single scroll of this spell is useless, and good luck getting two. |
| 455 | ** In ''VIII'' you can find the quest item Druid Circlet of Power, but the related quest was DummiedOut as well. |
| 456 | * UselessUsefulSpell: Varies from the game to game. Usually the utility and buffing spells are incredibly useful (Fly, Town Portal, Feather Fall), as well as spells that hit single target (Implosion, Incinerate) or do splash damage (Dragon Breath, Starburst). Status effects rarely work (The only one that is decently successful is Dragon Sleep, and that only works on dragons, and even then, not all the time), spells that hit everything on sight have usually so low damage it is not worth it (Inferno, Prismatic Light), and spells that scale with Level (Energy Burst, Cold Ray, Lightning Bolt, Fire Ball) can be incredibly powerful, but their SP cost also scales with level, so they are usually AwesomeButImpractical until the player gets really high levelled. |
| 457 | ** In ''VI'', various magic arrows and the like that hit for single digit of damage will fall wayside very quickly, since their damage does not scale up with the skill at all or only very slowly. Sparks avert this because of their damage scaling ''plus'' their total number raising for higher mastery and remain good spell from the start until the very end of the game that can be cast cheaply and with low recovery time. This is also true for the sequels. |
| 458 | ** Self-Magic schools are ''extremely'' important when it comes to patching your team with Power Cure or Resurrection, but trying to attack with them is asking to fail. The strongest monsters seem almost always be immune against Mind Magic, so trying to Charm a Behemoth is a waste of time and MP. |
| 459 | ** Dark Containment from ''VI'' costs '''200 MP''' to cast random status ailments on the target, which may not even work. To top it off, it cannot be even bought and only single guaranteed copy can be found once you solve the obelisk puzzle. For that price you may just shot Dragon Breath twice to disintegrate an entire group of enemies that are not outright immune to Poison damage. Maybe for this reason the spell was dropped afterwards. |
| 460 | ** Golden Touch of ''VI'' is usually treated like this, especially since anyone can become master Merchant in this game and the spell gives you 80% of value of item at most (and that's only at Master Light Magic, which is way harder to get than to master Merchant). However, if you can't be bothered to abandon the dungeon in the middle because your inventory is full, you can get some mileage of it. |
| 461 | ** Armageddon deals average damage to ''everything'' on map, but if you don't want to kill every pedestrian there you're restricted to use it in zones such as Eofol, Paradise Valley or The Plane Between the Planes, and against monsters in there the damage is but a drop in a bucket. |
| 462 | ** On the other hand, Paralyze seems to be working even against Behemots, since the immunity against Light Magic is rare. The problem is it might take few tries - and Behemoths are rarely alone. |
| 463 | ** Aversion with Mass Distortion, which is PercentDamageAttack (and percentage raises with the skill), and consequently would be heavily resisted by monsters in basically any other game, but not here. |
| 464 | ** Things change significantly in ''X'', as it ditches all self-magic schools and adds Primordial Magic instead. This newly added school gets important/utility buff spells as Hour of Power, Identify Item and Spirit Beacon (former Lloyd's Beacon), making it essential if you don't want to blow a fortune for services. Fire Magic is best on offense due to low overall resistance of enemies to it, with Air Magic close behind because while enemies are quite resistent to it, lot of its spells have gimmicks to offset it (for example ChainLightning multiplies damage by number of enemies on tile, very useful when you get swarmed). Light magic gets healings and resurrection as well as this game's equivalent of Souldrinker, making it probably most important of the lot. Dark magic as a whole gets nerfed to the point it clumps mostly useless status effects and only Purge and Whispering Shadows may get some use, and the latter becomes obsolete if you get Spike as a companion or the Blessing of Malassa. |
| 465 | * VideoGameCrueltyPotential: Thanks to the 3D engine, you can mow down entire villages full of helpless villagers in games ''VI'' onward. |
| 466 | ** If you want to master Dark Magic (and you want, seeing as it has strongest spells in the game and best defensive buff), you need to have worst reputation possible, which requires you to do some nasty things. |
| 467 | ** Within five minutes of starting a new game in ''VII'', you can "encourage" a swarm of vicious dragonflies to slaughter an entire town... and get away with it totally blameless. ''And'' get an awesome item ''AND'' save quite a bit of money by taking stuff you'd ordinarily have to buy from the peasant's corpses. |
| 468 | ** The Dark Path choice in ''VII'' requires you to do this quite a bit in your objective to TakeOverTheWorld. Also, while some promotion quests are the same or very similar for both paths (Archer, Cleric), some require you to do some horrible things, like kidnap a woman, kill a traitor or rob a castle's vault blind. |
| 469 | ** The Armageddon spell in games VI-VIII would cause massive damage to everything in the current outdoor map, if it was not immune to magic or darkness damage. This meant that, while weak enemies and civilians would be instantly killed by one casting of the spell (generally killing off every peasant in every town on the map at once), stronger enemies and the party would generally take multiple castings. And yes, the party *was* vulnerable to the spell it would cast. The cruelty potential comes from the fact that the spell was the quickest way to get the worst reputation, if used on the innocent. The reputation was needed for ranking up in Dark Magic and being able to cast Armageddon more times each day. |
| 470 | *** Fortunately, you could undo all your butchery just by using the Dark spell "Reanimate" on the slain peasants, as long as you hadn't looted their dead bodies. This should have turned them into zombies, I suppose, but they showed no obvious sign of it and didn't seem to mind. Bringing the dead back to life didn't fix your reputation, though... putting a few shillings in the church poorbox was the quick fix for that. |
| 471 | ** Even as early as the second iteration you could commit genocide, though it was limited to enemy races. Specifically, it was possible to find peaceful goblin villages and wipe them out. |
| 472 | ** One quest in the second game requires you to go look for a couple of lost artifacts for Lord Haart. One, the +7 Loincloth, is worn by a peaceful barbarian shaman and can only be acquired off his dead body. |
| 473 | * VideoGameFlight: |
| 474 | ** Mostly averted in the Enrothian trilogy, as once you learn "Fly" you can basically go wherever you want to, a few really scarce exceptions aside (such as the central volcano in Nighon in ''VII'', which requires hotkeying the "Jump" spell to get to the top, or the Plane of Fire in ''VIII'', which has paths suspended over lava so high that you can't fly above it most of the time). It is as broken as it sounds. Played straight, however, in dungeons, where the spell doesn't work at all for some reason, mostly to prevent SequenceBreaking. This also makes trekking through bigger dungeons a hassle. |
| 475 | ** ''X'' plays this straight, as the Blessing of Ylath, which allows you to leap mountains, just allows you to use portals that teleport you to higher altitude at specific points. |
| 476 | * VirtualPaperDoll: The 3D games all had a graphical interface for equipment, although the [[RainbowPimpGear best of it tended to look awful]]. |
| 477 | * WideOpenSandbox: The first three games don't really tell you where to go. You're expected to explore the game until you pick up enough clues to stumble into the real final quest. Most JustForFun/{{egregious}} in II, where the backstory in the game manual is almost entirely a RedHerring and the real villain is a GiantSpaceFleaFromNowhere unless you've played I. |
| 478 | ** In all games, there's far more material in the sidequests than in the main quest, and often, the difference between sidequest and main quest can only be determined in hindsight. |
| 479 | ** The exception is ''X'', where the game is pretty linear, and even divided into four Acts. (There are still a few sidequest you can do at any time, however.) |
| 480 | * WildCard: There are some rare items you can find in some games (Deck of Fate in ''VI'', Genie Lamp in ''VII'') that can give you bonuses to abilities, Skill Points, gold, or food. However, the bonuses they give seem random, along with how much of the bonus they give, and sometimes if you use them, they can turn the user to stone, kill him, or even Eradicate him. [[spoiler:In truth, these effects are not random at all, but depend on dates. Each month grants a different type of boon, using them later in the month gives you more of that month's boon, and something bad happens if you use them on certain days of the week. Unfortunately, these things are so rare, that you either need to combine trial and error with SaveScumming or [[GuideDangIt use a cheat sheet]] to find out when to best use them.]] |
| 481 | * YouAllLookFamiliar: In most games, encountering a shopkeeper or dungeon doorman will display a nifty animated shot, but shops of a given type use the same art. |
| 482 | * YouCallThatAWound: NPC hirelings in the early 3D games were entirely immune to whatever perils the rest of the team was facing, even though they were always standing right there with you. Though it is possible for your characters to use a dark magic spell that would sacrifice an NPC hireling to restore that character to full health. |
| 483 | * ZergRush: Yeah, the amount off enemies these games, especially the Enrothian trilogy (and especially ''VI'') like to throw at you at one time is astonishing. Even when outdoors with Flying active it's problem to withstand ''hundreds'' of enemies in ''Mire of the Damned'' from ''VI'', and indoors when you get ''surrounded'' by tens of Dwarves by triggering a trap in ''Snergle's Caverns'' is really difficult situation that can easily either at least deplete your ressources or outright kill you. ''VII'' and ''VIII'' were not as bad, but places such as Eeofol Tunnels or Eeofol itself spring back memories of ''VI'' still. |
| 484 | [[/folder]] |
| 485 | |
| 486 | [[folder: MightAndMagic I-V]] |
| 487 | * AchievementMockery: For completing the [[BonusDungeon Dungeon of Death]] in ''World of Xeen'', you are awarded [[spoiler: the title of "Goober." If you complete it knowing the Blackstone Tower password, you're instead named "Super Goober."]] |
| 488 | * AlienSky: On the Darkside of Xeen, the sky is yellow during the day, and reddish-black at night. |
| 489 | * ArtifactName: The Archer class in ''III'' through ''V''. In the first two games, it has the special ability of being able to [[ShortRangeLongRangeWeapon use bows in close combat]], but starting in III, it has no special link to ranged weapons and instead is just a MagicKnight class. |
| 490 | * BalanceBetweenGoodAndEvil: |
| 491 | ** The second game has a quest for Sorcerers requiring you to release ''both'' [[SdrawkcabName Yekop]] the Good Wizard and [[SdrawkcabName Ybmug]] the Evil Wizard. When you release one, they will say that equilibrium must be restored, and direct the player to release the other. |
| 492 | ** The third game mildly involved this. The plot involved the BigBad disrupting the balance between Good and Evil. However, the alignment of the party members was not really all that relevant. At one point the players have to choose between an evil king, good king, and neutral king, and the choice turns all the party members into that alignment. This has little effect other then destroying the other two castles (locking out of those dungeons). |
| 493 | * BagOfSpilling: The end of the first game is the titular Gate To Another World that brings you to the second (and you can import your save in the second game). But, doing so resets your level to [[OldSaveBonus 7]] and wipes all your equipment. |
| 494 | * BigBad: Sheltem in games ''I'', ''II'', and ''V'', Xeen in ''IV''. The third game doesn't really have one; while the villain is still nominally Sheltem, he doesn't make an appearance at any point other than the opening movie and a short scene near the end. |
| 495 | * BigGood: Corak is running the overarching plot of the series as best he can. |
| 496 | * BonusDungeon: |
| 497 | ** Quite a few dungeons in ''Terra'' do not have any purpose other than the experience: The Slithercult Stronghold only has a use for Quatloo Coins. The Dragon Cavern just has hard enemies and lots of treasures. The Cursed Cold Cavern, Arachnoid Cavern, and Magic Cavern have the keys to the dungeons, but so do the hirelings in towns. The dungeons underneath the castles have treasure and some hirelings, but aren't required to beat the game. |
| 498 | ** ''Clouds of Xeen'' has the Golem Dungeon: It has several King's Megacredits, but the player can have all the coins they need if they've completed the other dungeons beforehand. There is also the Volcano Dungeon, which only provides access to the HiddenElfVillage Shangri-La. |
| 499 | ** The Dungeon of Death in ''World of Xeen'', for a given definition of "bonus." [[spoiler: It's full of FakeDifficulty alongside its legit puzzles, between monsters who you probably don't have the weapon for and traps that come straight out of nowhere, and while it gives you ridiculous amounts of money and levels, at this point they're a BraggingRightsReward. ''Completing'' the dungeon gives you AchievementMockery, especially if you complete it with the Darkstone Tower password, and the whole thing is JVC's prank on people who need HundredPercentCompletion.]] |
| 500 | * BraggingRightsReward: In the first two games, your entire party is awarded a ridiculous amount of experience for beating the game. |
| 501 | * ChainOfDeals: |
| 502 | ** ''Terra'' has a downplayed version: The Sea Shells of Serenity are given to Athea the nymph for her song, which puts males in love so they can give their love to Princess Trueberry, and if she gets enough, she gifts the Alicorn of Icarus. The Sea Shells are technically not necessary, but they do give lots of experience and gold. |
| 503 | ** ''Clouds'' has the Seasonal Druids quest: The Summer Druid gives the Last Bloom of Summer, which goes to the Autumn Druid for the Last Fallen Leaf of Autumn, which goes to the Winter Druid to get the Last Snowflake of Winter, which goes to the Spring Druid to get the Last Raindrop of Spring, which goes back to the Summer Druid. Completing the quest does allow the Spring Druid to revert any unnatural aging. The Spring Druid's raindrop allows the quest to be started again, which can allow the player to revert unnatural aging the next time. |
| 504 | * CrapsackWorld: Universally. Varn, Cron, Terra and Xeen are all turbulent lands with very few places of safety, where even the towns are overrun by monsters. Terra and Xeen probably have it the worst, since most of their towns are cursed places lost to monsters, and "safe" areas are [[HiddenElfVillage hidden away from the rest of the world]]. To give you an idea of how much of a CrapsackWorld Terra is, Zealot, King Righteous isn't much better than Tumult, King Chaotic or Malefactor, King Malicious. |
| 505 | * DarkIsNotEvil: In ''Might and Magic III'', Malefactor, King Malicious, certainly does nothing to live up to his name, except rant a lot and have you fight some of his guards. Although he does claim he'll have a nightmare rule if he is given the Ultimate Power Orbs. |
| 506 | * DegradedBoss: |
| 507 | ** In ''Terra'', the Cleric of Moo, the boss of the Temple of Moo, is a common enemy in the Cathedral of Carnage. |
| 508 | ** [[spoiler: In the [[BonusDungeon Dungeon of Death]] in ''World of Xeen'', the final level is filled with Lord Xeens. Like the original, all of them can only be killed by the Xeen Slayer Sword.]] |
| 509 | * DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything: The ending of ''World of Xeen'', where Prince Roland picks up his scepter and places it in Queen Kalindra's box... |
| 510 | * DungeonBypass: ''IV'' has a set of five magic mirrors which you can use to teleport between towns by specifying one of the locations of the others; the objective of the main quest is to find the Sixth Mirror, a sixth portable one. Unfortunately, it eventually turns out to be in the possession of the BigBad, Lord Xeen. Fortunately, this means you can just walk to any mirror (at any time) and type "Lord Xeen" to teleport to him instantly via the mirror in his possession, bypassing the final dungeon (or even the entire game, if you want, provided you're capable of beating him.) |
| 511 | * DungeonTown: Virtually ''all'' towns in these games, fitting the [[RPGsEqualCombat traditional approach]] of {{Role Playing Game}}s of the time. ''IV'' and ''V'' crank this up by having only half of the "towns" provide full town services; the "cursed towns" only have a tavern and a mage guild each. Even the full-service towns have monsters openly roaming the streets, however, with the exception of [[spoiler: Shangri-La and Olympus]]. |
| 512 | * EncyclopediaExposita: In the third game, Corak's notes can provide the player with lore on any zone the party is currently in. |
| 513 | * ExcusePlot: The earlier games didn't have much of a plot: |
| 514 | ** ''I'' has heroes from Sorpigal on the world of [=VARN=] traveling to find the source of the chaos on their world, discovering it's King Alamar, finding out Alamar is Sheltem, then defeating him while he gets away in the struggle. |
| 515 | ** ''II'' has the same heroes traveling through the magical gates to CRON, utilizing TimeTravel and the magic gates to stop Sheltem from flinging [=CRON=] into the sun. |
| 516 | ** ''III'' has unrelated heroes from Fountain Head on Terra adventuring across the land. They aren't even given a reason why they go on their adventure. But they eventually end the chaos of the monsters around the world and find Sheltem engaged with Corak, who uses the distraction to flee. Corak and the adventurers pursue. |
| 517 | ** ''IV'' has a very sparse plot as well. Not only does it seemingly have nothing to do with the Sheltem story arc that began in ''I'' and ended in ''V'', it is little more than "Go kill the bad guy Lord Xeen and bring me his Macguffin". The game reveals absolutely nothing about who Lord Xeen, the main antagonist, is, until literally the end of the game, where TheStinger reveals [[spoiler:Xeen was Sheltem's henchman]]. |
| 518 | ** ''V'' has the most plot: The dragon orb finds its way to the players, who are tasked with bringing it to Dragon Pharaoh. To do this, they must restore Kalindra's castle and restore her to health. Then, find Corak and sneak him to Sheltem. |
| 519 | ** ''World of Xeen'' has a final quest which is: "Complete these puzzles and restore the world because the Dragon Pharaoh told you to." |
| 520 | * FakeKing: Alamar is Sheltem. He does it again in ''V'', but it's a bit of a subversion as "King Alamar" is obviously the BigBad from the get-go: no one pretends he is the ruler except for the Ogres, whom he pays. Everyone else follows Queen Kalindra. |
| 521 | * FloatingContinent: The titular [[TitleDrop Clouds of Xeen]] in IV, which orbited over each tower, and the Skyroads in V. The latter almost qualify as a WorldInTheSky, as the Skyroad level is as big as the world map itself. |
| 522 | * GameplayAndStoryIntegration: In ''Clouds of Xeen'' King Burlock asks you to bring him the Sixth Mirror, a portable version of the mirrors in the five towns that can teleport people to and from. A player can immediately state "Lord Xeen" to the mirror, and be teleported to the Sixth Mirror, immediately sparking combat with Xeen. |
| 523 | * GreaterScopeVillain: |
| 524 | ** [[spoiler: In ''III'', Sheltem's already caused a breakdown in the BalanceBetweenGoodAndEvil, and by the time you encounter him and he runs into a transport tube, you've already "fixed" the balance, for what little it matters.]] |
| 525 | ** Sheltem in ''IV''; he is [[BigBad Lord Xeen's]] boss, but doesn't play an active role in the game's events. He's on the Darkside at the time. |
| 526 | * HijackedByGanon: ''II''. The manual leads you to believe that [[DishingOutDirt Gralkor]] will be the BigBad. [[spoiler: Actually, saving King Kalohn from Gralkor's Mega Dragon is the penultimate quest, while Gralkor himself is just an elemental plane guardian and not even the most powerful. The actual final enemy is Sheltem, who resides deep within Square Lake Cavern and will be a GiantSpaceFleaFromNowhere if you haven't played the first game.]] |
| 527 | * ImmortalityInducer: In ''I'' and ''II'', the Rejuvenate spell and other means of reducing aging can reduce one's natural age as well as eliminating magical aging. The existence of rejuvenation magic has very minor plot implications, as there is at least one character (Queen Lamanda) who was around in the year 800[[note]]The game starts in 900[[/note]], and one character (King Kalohn) who lived from at least 500 to 800 (though it's mentioned that he was getting old at the time, so rejuvenation apparently has its limits). |
| 528 | * InGameBankingServices: Banks appear in games ''III'' through ''V''. You can deposit gold and gems there for safekeeping but as days go along, you'll slowly accrue interest on both. Regular deposits plus careful planning can result in a load of gold and gems for your party by game's end. |
| 529 | * InSpiteOfANail: For obvious gameplay reasons, the world of ''Might & Magic II'' is not dramatically changed if you alter the world in the past and [[spoiler:save King Kalohn from the Mega Dragon. The ''only'' difference is that he, not his daughter, rules in Luxus Palace Royale]]. |
| 530 | * JackassGenie: Might and Magic 5 has several Jackass Genies. While some will offer the player a choice between money, gems and experience, three fit this trope. Commonly, they either kill a party member, kill the person who rubbed the lamp, or kill the entire party. |
| 531 | * TheKeyIsBehindTheLock: In ''V'', the key to [[spoiler: the Western Tower is inside the Tower. You're supposed to first enter the tower through the Skyroad.]] |
| 532 | * LadyLand: Portsmith in the first game ([[spoiler:due to it being ruled by a succubus]]). There are actually traps all over the town that drain the male party members' health. |
| 533 | * LuckBasedMission: The random encounters in the first game can vary wildly in difficulty, from trivial to completely unbeatable. |
| 534 | * {{Magitek}}: [[spoiler: A plot element through the first three games. The Elemental Lords of Cron were a result of large-scale elemental manipulation by the Ancients to create the peoples of the game, which were then to be crashed on Terra to supplant the indigenous ecosystem as part of the Grand Experiment.]] |
| 535 | * MeaningfulName: |
| 536 | ** In the second game, Lord Hoardall has a lot of gold in his castle, and his quests always involve bringing him some treasure. Similarly, Lord Slayer's quests always involve killing someone. |
| 537 | ** A hint to the Arachnoid Cavern's riddle is given: After the Lord who claims to be first, the rest of the lords must be arranged in a way that Lord Word would find agreeable. This is a hint to alphabetize their names. |
| 538 | * MonsterProtectionRacket: In ''IV'', [[spoiler: Joe the Exterminator is actually responsible for the bug infestation in Vertigo]]. |
| 539 | * NighInvulnerability: Lord Xeen in ''IV'' can only be killed by the [=XEENSlayer=] sword. In ''Swords of Xeen'', the final dungeon enemies require one of six specific items to defeat the Source. |
| 540 | * NotQuiteFlight: Levitation in III to V. You can float over pit traps and hover over clouds, but you're not ''flying'', and in IV you can't levitate in the sky without a cloud to hold you up (requiring you to use other methods to reach certain [[FloatingContinent Floating Continents]]). |
| 541 | * ObstructiveBureaucrat: Want to build a dungeon beneath your castle with a lab, so you can make a weapon to beat Lord Xeen with? Why, certainly! Just get the appropriate permit! The guy who issues the permit in question has been kidnapped? Well, that's no excuse for not following proper procedure! |
| 542 | * OldSaveBonus: Might and Magic II allowed you to import characters you used in the first game. The feature was dropped in subsequent installments though. Might and Magic V however introduced another feature: If you had both Might and Magic IV and V installed, you could combine them into one massive game called ''World of Xeen'' which allowed you to travel between the two sides of the titular world featured in each of the stand-alone games, as well as introducing some new content and an exclusive new ending. |
| 543 | * OmnicidalManiac: Sheltem's main M.O. involves crashing planets into their suns. |
| 544 | ** In ''V'' he wants to move the world of Xeen like a vehicle, so he can return to Terra. The fact that everyone on the planet will freeze to death in deep space is a nice little bonus. |
| 545 | * OnlySmartPeopleMayPass: |
| 546 | ** ''Terra'' was chock full of riddles. The Lords of the Arachnoid Cavern were a fantastic example: They gave a math problem and the player had to complete the puzzle in a certain order (start with the man who claims he's first, then go in a method Lord Word might like, which meant alphabetically). While most riddles aren't required to beat the game, they do give hints on how to complete the game, not to mention the solving dungeon riddles will get the PlotCoupon. |
| 547 | * OptionalBoss: In ''Terra'', none of the boss enemies need to be fought: The Minotaur King and High Priest of Moo are in a separate part of the dungeon, the Vampire Lord is still in his coffin and can be avoided. The Eye Master, Mummy King and the Top Jouster are hard to avoid, but possible. The Slithercult Queen, Cyclops King, Rat Overlord, and Dragon Lord are in optional sections. |
| 548 | * PeninsulaOfPowerLeveling: ''II'': |
| 549 | ** The Black Bishop of Battle. With proper use of DiscOneNuke technology such as the circus or the sewage fountain and skill potions, it's possible to beat the Black Ticket Triple Crown at a relatively low level. Once you've done that, releasing the Bishop from his prison in Luxus Palace Royale earns each party member several levels worth of XP each time he's released, which is a fast road to ''real'' power. |
| 550 | ** Once the Black Bishop stops giving appreciable XP, you're probably ready for the Cuisinarts. There's a spot on the world map with a fixed encounter with three of these [[OptionalBoss Optional Bosses]] [[BossInMookClothing in Mook Clothing]], and if you're prepared to beat them, you can get ''millions'' of XP per battle. Combining this with the various methods of farming up your attributes, you'll rapidly ascend to the necessary level of godhood to finish the game. |
| 551 | * PlayableEpilogue: The bonus content for having both ''IV'' and ''V'' includes several dungeons that are only accessible after beating ''Darkside''. Generally, the dungeons are on Cloudside, but the keys are on Darkside (mostly in Castle Alamar). |
| 552 | * PlotCoupon: |
| 553 | ** ''Terra'' has the Ultimate Power Orbs: Giving 11 to one of the Kings grants the player the title of Champion and the Blue Priority Pass Card, which opens the final dungeon. The other plot coupons are the six Hologram Sequencing Cards from six dungeons, which are required to activate the escape pod that ends the game. |
| 554 | ** ''Clouds'' has the King's Megacredits: 15 are needed in three sets of five to open the dungeon that gives the player the Xeen Slayer, the only thing that can damage the final boss. |
| 555 | ** ''Darkside'' has Energy Credits: 20 are needed in four sets of five to restore the four floors of Kalindra's castle. The Songbird of Serenity restores Dimitri's mind, Queen Kalindra's Crown restores her health. |
| 556 | ** Xeen's Scepter of Temporal Distortion is needed only in ''World of Xeen'' to get the ending, otherwise, it's just an item. The Cube of Power is technically one, but the player never picks that up: The Dragon Pharaoh immediately gets it after defeating the FinalBoss on the Darkside of Xeen. |
| 557 | * ThePowerOfLove: ''III'' has something like this. Visiting the nymph in Thorn Blossom Orchard "inflicts" a status condition on all male characters in your party called In Love that increases all his stats by 1, and then continues to increase it as time goes on. |
| 558 | ** [[spoiler:Unfortunately, the nymph never reciprocates the love, and if the bonus ever reaches a +10 bonus, it turns into a negative aliment called Heartbroken, which is like Weakness, except it cannot be cured except from a Temple.]] |
| 559 | ** [[spoiler:A sidequest for Princess Trueberry near Swamp Town can only be completed with the power of love: You must speak to her with a group of adventurers who have the "In Love" condition, whom she will promptly "cure" of their love. Repeat the process until she has cured ten people to lift her curse and get a ton of experience and the Golden Alicorn to get a ton more.]] |
| 560 | * PuzzleBoss: The Barkman, a {{Superboss}} from ''V''. It's got an almost unconquerable amount of HP, and you're expected to be fighting it at well below the level that would let you fight it head-on. However, it has no ranged attacks and no ContractualBossImmunity to [[PercentDamageAttack Mass Distortion]], meaning that [[spoiler: it's possible to kite it with Jump spells until its HP is whittled down to a more manageable level]]. |
| 561 | * ReallySevenHundredYearsOld: Kalohn in ''II'' is over 300 years old as of the battle with the Mega Dragon, [[spoiler: and is alive 100 years after that if he wins the fight]]. |
| 562 | * SdrawkcabName: |
| 563 | ** The second game has a pair of wizards named [[WesternAnimation/{{Gumby}} Yekop and Ybmug]]. |
| 564 | ** ''Darkside of Xeen'' has the [[FunWithPalindromes palindrome-obsessed]] Drawkcab Monks, and the player can become a Drawkcab Master if they wish. |
| 565 | * SealedGoodInACan: Corak, the Planetary Guardian created by the Ancients for the purpose of stopping their previous, rather defective Planetary Guardian, Sheltem. Promptly ends up stuffed inside a small box by Sheltem in ''II'', with the player's main goal to unseal him. In ''V'', he is sealed again [[spoiler:although he willingly does it, because it hides him from Sheltem until the final battle]]. |
| 566 | * ShaggyDogStory: |
| 567 | ** [[spoiler:The ultimate fate of your Terran player character party from ''III'': they go to assist Corak in his fight against Sheltem, but their pod is damaged on the flight to Xeen, and they get flung on to another planet, Enroth, arriving in ''VII'']]. |
| 568 | ** The quest for the sixth mirror in ''IV''. The five mirrors serve as stationary portals between five major towns, but there're rumors about the sixth, portable, mirror, and the king sends the protagonists on a quest for it. Turns out, [[AllMythsAreTrue the mirror does exist]], but [[spoiler: it's in the possession of evil [[BigBad Lord Xeen]], and breaks during the final fight]]. |
| 569 | * SolidClouds: ''Clouds of Xeen'' uses a downplayed version of this trope -- the eponymous clouds aren't solid enough to ''walk'' on, but they are solid enough to levitate over. The Skyroad in the sequel, ''Darkside of Xeen'', also has cloud tiles that work the same way. |
| 570 | * SorcererKing: |
| 571 | ** Kalohn the Conjurer from ''II'', the SoleSurvivor of the group of magicians who created the Elemental Orb and Talons. After defeating the Elemental Lords, he ascended to rule over Cron until his death in battle against the Mega Dragon. |
| 572 | ** Astra, the Good Witch of the wizard town of Sandcaster in ''Darkside''. |
| 573 | * SuperBoss: The [=MegaDragon=] in ''V'', which is immune to all but physical damage (and has 90% resistance to it), along with a multi-target attack doing 10d200 damage (with eradication - which will instantly kill characters and [[DeaderThanDead eradicate their bodies]] ). It is only second to Barkman, which almost has as many hit points but lower damage. |
| 574 | * StoryDifficultySetting: The Xeen games have an "Adventurer" difficulty setting, with combat made much easier than the standard "Warrior" setting. |
| 575 | * TakeThat: Computer Gaming World's reviewer Scorpia infamously criticized the second game for overemphasizing the HackAndSlash and MontyHaul aspects, as well as the timed puzzle at the end. Jon Van Caneghem, being very proud of said puzzle, got very angry at her, and in retaliation included a monster named Scorpia in ''III'' that looks like an obese gray-skinned woman with a poison attack and was significantly weaker than the other monsters surrounding her. |
| 576 | * TimeTravel: Vital to the plot of ''II''. [[spoiler: The penultimate quest requires the players to change the past by giving King Kalohn the Elemental Orb and Talons, which allow him to defeat the Mega Dragon. Also, the Elemental Planes are in the past, as is the hint book in the form of Castle Xabran.]] |
| 577 | * TrialAndErrorGameplay: You never know where exactly a deadly trap or encounter is present in the first game - until you actually spring the trap or trigger the encounter (though later on you get the means to avoid some of the traps). |
| 578 | * TwoLinesNoWaiting: In ''II'', [[spoiler: Gralkor is largely responsible for the current state of Cron, having fought King Kalohn in the year 500 and sent the Mega Dragon to kill him in 800, and averting King Kalohn's fate is the longest and most involved quest in the game. However, it has nothing at all to do with Sheltem's plot, except that King Kalohn will, for no adequately explained reason, give his saviors a password that they'll need in the final dungeon.]] |
| 579 | * UnintentionallyUnwinnable: A bug in ''III'' can cause your characters' stats to drop to a minimum if you level them up too much (it generally becomes a problem at around level 90). |
| 580 | * VideoGameGeography: The map is flattened. In ''III'', the world is a toroid, and in ''I'', ''II'', ''IV'' and ''V'' it's flat. [[spoiler: (Actually, only the setting of 3 is set on a planet at all; the others are spaceships. The ultimate end of ''World of Xeen'', if ''IV'' and ''V'' are installed together, turns the planet into a proper sphere.)]] |
| 581 | * VillainBeatingArtifact: |
| 582 | ** Lord Xeen in ''IV'' is only vulnerable to the Xeen Slayer Sword. The same applies to his copies in the optional Dungeon of Death. |
| 583 | ** ''V'' has a soul box required to defeat Sheltem, who would otherwise kill the party without using combat. In this case, it's used to transport someone who is powerful into his lair without being detected. |
| 584 | ** In ''Swords of Xeen'', the final dungeon enemies require one of six specific items to be defeated, as they would otherwise make it difficult to reach the Source. |
| 585 | * WhamEpisode: The logs in the crashed escape pods in ''V'' provide a lot of exposition for the entire Sheltem story arc that the fifth game concludes. No other place in the entire series provides that much backstory for either Corak or Sheltem. |
| 586 | * AWinnerIsYou: ''II'' pointlessly gives you 2 million experience for finishing the game. Thankfully, most of the others had satisfying conclusions. |
| 587 | ** ''IV'' plays with this trope; completing the main quest rewards you with "One Million Experience!!" It veers a couple different ways thanks to the sequel. First, it's actual useful [[ExperiencePoints XP]] for your characters to bring into the sequel, and second... well, if you have both ''IV'' and ''V'' you can travel between the worlds at will, and there are low level quests in ''V'''s starter town that give more XP than that. |
| 588 | * AWorldHalfFull: Xeen gets the worst [[CrapsackWorld crapsack]] stick out of any of the games. Not only is it a turbulent world full of monsters and dungeons with civilization limited to small pockets, but roughly half of the ''towns'' are ruined and cursed hellholes, the Queen of the Darkside is a prisoner and a vampire, her most loyal followers are trapped in an out-of-phase castle, and the majority of the other castles are controlled by minions of Sheltem or other villains instead of merely selfish yet potentially helpful lords. So what's different from the other games? In the other games, your involvement doesn't usually ''fix'' much beyond merely saving the world from Sheltem's current plot and completing a couple of quests. On Xeen, you can break the curses on the towns, establish a castle-town that will be a vital center of civilization, [[spoiler: and reunite the two sides of Xeen both physically and [[PerfectlyArrangedMarriage metaphorically]]]]. Furthermore, unlike the selfish and amoral lords of Varn and Cron or the kings of Terra who only care about their own feud, King Burlock, his younger brother Prince Roland, and Queen Kalindra are all [[BigGood actively involved in fighting Sheltem and in protecting and rebuilding their world]]. |
| 589 | * WorldLimitedToThePlot: In ''II'', the past is empty except where it relates to the modern day. No cities exist in any time period except 900, nor castles (except Castle Xabran, because it was destroyed in 899), nor any quests or major characters except those you're pointed at in 900. This isn't for deconstructive reasons; it's because only a couple of quests rely on time travel, the focus of the game is on the current century, and filling out the entire world five times would be absolutely too much work to no purpose. |
| 590 | * TinTyrant: Sheltem wears full plate armor, a horned helmet, and a BadassCape. |
| 591 | * WarpWhistle: |
| 592 | ** ''Terra'' had a portal in each of the five towns: saying a special keyword would teleport the player to another town or one of the islands around Terra, as well as a few secret locations. |
| 593 | ** ''Clouds'' had the Serpent Mirrors. Unlike the portals in Terra, they only required a name, such as "Castle Burlock" and they would teleport the player wherever they wanted to go. |
| 594 | ** ''Darkside'' has the Sun Mirrors. After fixing Queen Kalindra's sundial, they would teleport like the Serpent Mirrors. |
| 595 | * YourPrincessIsInAnotherCastle: After bringing Castle Kalindra back into phase with the material world and fighting your way through it, you discover that Queen Kalindra herself was kidnapped by the vampire Count Blackfang and has to be rescued from Castle Blackfang. |
| 596 | [[/folder]] |
| 597 | |
| 598 | [[folder: MightAndMagic VI]] |
| 599 | * AbilityRequiredToProceed: The Superior Temple of Baa requires Perception at least on level of Expert to proceed. Without it, you can't open the doors and they will hurt you instead. |
| 600 | * AbsurdlySpaciousSewer: You can explore the sewer beneath Free Haven. In addition to fighting vermin, Baa cultists, thieves and other foes, you can track down the Prince of Thieves. |
| 601 | * AllYourBaseAreBelongToUs: In a heavy dose of {{Irony}}, the Goblinwatch fortress in New Sorpigal is full of Goblins who took it over. To add an insult to injury, they also changed the access codes. An early quest requires you to get new codes and optionally clean out the place, if you feel like it. |
| 602 | * AllThereInTheManual: Before the FinalBattle in ''VI'', you are told that you need a spell called Ritual of the Void before you storm the Hive (if you don't, destroying it will destroy the world in the process, resulting in the bad ending). If you talk to Nicolai, he says that his uncle - as in, Archibald - knows that spell, but releasing him from the curse that turned him to stone requires something called the Third Eye, and he doesn't know where it is. Fortunately, Roland's letter in the preface to the instruction manual mentions it's "in the well". (There are actually four wells around Castle Ironfist, but checking them all shouldn't take longer than five minutes. Note that the Third Eye isn't actually there until you ask Nicolai about it.) |
| 603 | * ArcWords: "The Mandate of Heaven." |
| 604 | * AsLongAsItSoundsForeign: Enrothian writing looks like a random jumble of Greek letters. |
| 605 | * AwesomeButImpractical: |
| 606 | ** The more food you can buy at once at an inn, the more it will cost. You can get 60 days' worth of food in Dragonsand, but for over 1,000 gold; most inns offer 20 days' worth of food for only a few hundred gold. |
| 607 | ** The Relics have even better stat bonuses than the Artifacts, but also have significant drawbacks. |
| 608 | ** Mastering a skill can provide significant benefits, from tripling the bonus that you get to adding other perks (e.g. letting you fire two shots in a row with a bow). However, fulfilling the requirements is often prohibitively expensive in terms of skill points; most Expert skills require Rank 4 (a total of 9 skill points, while Master skills require skill ranks of 7-12(27 to 77 points), as well as high stat values and/or a PrestigeClass, so you'll have to think carefully about which skills are worth the investment. |
| 609 | ** Some of the more powerful spells. |
| 610 | *** Armageddon does powerful damage to everyone in the zone- monsters, innocent bystanders and even the player's party. It can also only be used outside. |
| 611 | *** Likewise, Meteor is another powerful Fire spell with a chance of hurting your party that can only be used outdoors. The same goes for Starburst, which is the Air spell equivalent and is even stronger than Meteor. |
| 612 | *** Divine Intervention, the ultimate Light magic, restores all party members' health and mana and cures all adverse conditions. However, it can only be cast at dawn or dusk and ages the caster ten years for each casting. |
| 613 | * BadassInDistress: King Roland in both ''VI'' and ''VII''. Shortly after the Night of Shooting Stars, he's captured by the Kreegans, and while the PlayerCharacters never find him in that game, they find journal entries written by him that give them clues to the Kreegans' plans; the game ends with his fate left ambiguous. In ''VII'', the heroes are able to rescue him. |
| 614 | * {{BFG}}: Unlike in the next game [[spoiler:the Blaster Rifles aren't compact at all, being as long as two-handed swords, which are only head shorter than your characters.]] |
| 615 | * BigBad: The Kreegans. |
| 616 | * BigGood: King Roland Ironfist (sort of; he's missing in action and the ambiguous nature of his fate only ''inspires'' the heroes to SaveTheWorld (if that is their goal in ''VII''). He's a playable character in the ''Heroes'' series. The Oracle may be this as well. |
| 617 | * BlatantLies: If the party member dealing with a merchant doesn't have the Merchant skill, the merchant will claim to be practically giving away their wares, will contemptuously describe the items you're selling as practically worthless, and will say that your damaged gear is almost impossible to repair. If, however, you have the Merchant skill, the merchants will give you better prices, showing that the default responses were an attempt to cheat consumers without much business savvy out of their money. |
| 618 | * BraggingRightsReward: There's something like this in ''VI''. The second-to-last mission requires you to go to the [[ElaborateUndergroundBase Control Center]] to get the Blasters and the even stronger Blaster Rifles to use to destroy the Hive in the FinalBattle. The strongest monsters in this dungeon are Terminator Units, and they not only have over a thousand HP, high defense, and powerful attacks, their attacks have a change of Eradicating your character if they hit. Usually, these things are found alone, or occasionally in pairs, but in one room, there's ''a dozen'', along with a lot of other robots. Trying to get past them [[TooDumbToLive is probably a bad idea]], and you really don't have to (the Blaster Rifles are elsewhere, and you could easily destroy the Hive with three Rifles and one normal Blaster even if you never found all four; all you will find here is a bunch of Memory Crystals and Control Cubes that are no use whatever) but if you actually manage to do it, there's a scroll that gives each member of your party the title of "Super Goober". This even shows up with your list of Awards and completed tasks. This dubious title doesn't bestow any benefit or cost you anything, but it does signify that you won what was likely the hardest battle in the game. |
| 619 | * BrutalBonusLevel: The Caves of the Dragon Riders in Kriegspire. It is chock full of the strongest knights, notably Cuisinarts, and Wyrms, and no sidequest ever takes you there, so there is no reason to visit it. There are, however, plenty of goodies both on enemies and in chests, so if you want some Artifacts or Relics, it's a good place to go. Be prepared to fight for them, though. |
| 620 | ** Agar's Laboratory, which is also found in Kriegspire, is another instance of this, being filled with Cockatrices and Beholders. There are no quests attached to it, and Beholders are some of the most annoying enemies in the game, but the dungeon is capable of giving your party a huge boost in Intellect [[labelnote:Explanation]]The cauldron you find at the end of the dungeon will grant +50 Intellect permanently, up to 255, but only if your characters are Cursed. If they're not, the cauldron will instantly kill them instead.[[/labelnote]]. The treasures you find in there aren't bad either, and Beholders do have a good chance of dropping enchanted rings. |
| 621 | * ChekhovsGun: In the letter from Roland included in the manual, he will tell Nicolai to find the Third Eye in the well. You'll need to get it near the end of the game just before [[spoiler:freeing Archibald]]. |
| 622 | * ChekhovsGunman: Xenofex, the Kreegan king, is like this. In ''VI'', he only appears briefly, in the cinematic opening scene, and you do not encounter him in the game at all. Also, the [=PCs=] start the game with a letter from him that they have to give to a guy at the nearby inn for some strange reason. (The FinalBoss is the Hive Queen, another powerful Kreegan.) Xenofex doesn't appear in-game until ''VII'', when the heroes do actually fight him when they rescue Roland from the Kreegan. (Unfortunately, the Kreegan aren't as vital to the plot this time around.) |
| 623 | * CompanyCameo: The cult of Baa, the servants of the main antagonists of this game, has the Creator/NewWorldComputing logo as its emblem. One piece of dialogue even makes a reference to a "New World" that the cult is meant to usher in. |
| 624 | * DarkIsNotEvil and LightIsNotGood: Some of the spellcaster hirelings in ''Might and Magic VI'' talk about Light and Dark magic, and they point out that despite the stereotype that light is good and dark is evil, magic is only as good or evil as the use to which it is put. Also, see GreyAndGreyMorality below. One NPC also suggests that the Church of the Sun (light-aligned) wasn't completely good, while the Church of the Moon (dark-aligned) wasn't completely evil. |
| 625 | ** DarkIsEvil and LightIsGood: However, if you want to master either Light or Dark magic, you need to have Saintly (the best possible) and Notorious (the worst possible) reputation respectively. Another NPC, different from the one mentioned above, respects the Church of the Sun's humanitarian efforts despite its status as a heretical religion, and attributes its downfall to its petty feud with the Church of the Moon. |
| 626 | * DivineRightOfKings: The game has "The Mandate of Heaven" as its subtitle and a major plot point is that after a series of disasters, the people of Enroth start to believe that the Ironfist dynasty has ''lost'' that mandate. |
| 627 | * DoomedHometown: In ''VI'', Sweet Water, the hometown of the PlayerCharacter is destroyed during the Night of Shooting Stars when the Kreegan invade and your characters are forced to flee with the aid of the warlock Falagar during the intro. Much later, at the climax of the game, it turns out the Kreegan's main Hive has been built [[WhereItAllBegan outside the ruins of Sweet Water.]] |
| 628 | * EarlyInstallmentWeirdness: While not the first game in the series, as the first 3D game and the first of the trilogy set on Enroth it has some strange quirks regarding the mechanics: |
| 629 | ** Your party members can only be human. Every subsequent (and prior) game offers a choice of races. Related to this, there are no towns with non-human peasants and no non-human hirelings, lords or skill teachers. |
| 630 | ** Every skill that characters can learn can be also mastered. Related to this, there is no Grandmastery level. This has created some bizarre things like the Archer supposedly being a master marksman when ''every'' class can learn and master Bow. The sequels introduced maximum learnable expertise per skill depending on the class. |
| 631 | ** All spells from a given magic school can be learned as long as the user knows that school. Nothing prevents a Sorcerer from learning "Lloyd's Beacon" at normal level. Consequently, some spells work differently at low skill expertise: "Town Portal" for example will only teleport you to a nearby fountain and only if outside on normal skill level. In sequels, you can only cast "Town Portal" after mastering Water Magic. |
| 632 | ** Alchemy as a skill does not even exist, and anyone can create black potions right off bat. However, the potions generally have a smaller effect; notably stat-increasing black potions only increase one stat by 15 while decreasing another by 5 instead of raising one by flat 50 points. |
| 633 | ** Instead of basic elemental resistances, they are divided into Fire/Cold/Electricity/Magic/Poison and spells deal one type of this magic (or physical); for example "Toxic Cloud" deals Poison damage, instead of Dark damage like in sequels. |
| 634 | ** Enemy [=NPCs=] ignore townspeople and other neutral or friendly [=NPCs=] and go directly for the player characters. From the next game onwards, this is averted. |
| 635 | ** In order to learn weapon, armor and miscellaneous skills, you need to become a member of certain specialized guilds. These guilds will be removed in the next games, where you'll learn such skills at the weaponsmith, armorsmith, temple and tavern. |
| 636 | ** Clerics and Sorcerers can learn both Light Magic ''and'' Dark Magic. In VII, they (or rather, their second promotions) can learn only one or the other, depending on whether you choose the good or evil path. In VIII, Clerics can learn only Light Magic and Necromancers (which serve the role of Sorcerers) can learn only Dark Magic. |
| 637 | ** There is no Arcomage minigame at the taverns. |
| 638 | * EvilVersusOblivion: You will need Archibald's help to save the world from the Kreegans, since only he has a spell capable of containing the explosion caused by the destruction of the Hive. He's willing to help, albeit because he still thinks of Enroth as his kingdom, and doesn't want to see it destroyed. |
| 639 | * GildedCage: Nicolai feels like he's in this situation; that's why he "convinces" the [=PCs=] to take him with them. (In fact, it is strongly implied that they actually ''did'' kidnap him because they felt pity for him, even though [[GameplayAndStorySegregation it required no action on the player's part.]] |
| 640 | * HandWave: Some [=NPCs=] mention that the troubled economic times are why the banks don't pay interest to customer savings accounts. The only purpose the banks serve is to protect your money, since you won't lose money in the bank when you die. |
| 641 | * HighTechHexagons: The Kreegan locations feature these prominently. The entrance to the Hive combines this with a DilatingDoor. |
| 642 | * HiveQueen: The Kreegan Queen, the final boss of ''Might & Magic VI''. |
| 643 | * IronicName: Paradise Valley is a barren land full of powerful monsters. Apparently, it used to be a green place that lived up to its name, but a curse caused it to wither. |
| 644 | * JokeLevel: A secret dungeon found at the Shrine of Gods is modeled on developer New World Computing's offices. The villagers are named after employees while the random goblins (who present no challenge whatsoever by themselves, especially not to a party strong enough to reach the dungeon) are [[BitingTheHandHumor named after the management]]. |
| 645 | * MaliciousMisnaming: Some [=NPCs=] may deliberately call your characters by the wrong name, generally a name that shares the same first letter as the character's actual name, if your Reputation is too low to meet their approval. |
| 646 | * MeaningfulName: In VI you can find Artifacts and Relics at random from high level monsters. Artifacts are special, very strong items named after characters from the King Arthur saga (like Lancelot, Galahad, Pwrcival etc.), while Relics were even more powerful but almost always had an additional drawback. Relics are named after characters from the Greek mythology (like Ares, Hermes, Minerva) etc. The properties of the relics were related to those of their patrons, like the Ares mace having additional fire damage, or the Hermes boots increasing your speed. |
| 647 | * MythologyGag: In ''Might and Magic VI'', the archbishop Anthony Stone asks you to find the Prince of Thieves, who has been consorting with some unwholesome temple. He mentions "Moo," "Yak," and "Bark," which are references to temples found in preceding Might and Magic games. |
| 648 | * MasterOfNone: |
| 649 | ** Despite the various maximum limits for skill not being established until the next game, the hybrid class characters can end up like this if you're not careful. While they may master all skills they can learn, you still have only so much skill points, meaning you must decide what to concentrate on in order to avoid this trope. It can happen on specialized classes too, but it's easier to screw up hybrid classes such as Druid due to more skills to choose from. |
| 650 | ** Some [=NPCs=] encourage you to develop multiple skills at once. Since skills take more points to advance at higher levels, this makes a certain amount of sense, but it's possible to fall into the trap of not developing key skills enough. |
| 651 | * NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast: "Slicker Silvertongue" doesn't really sound like the name of a trustworthy person... |
| 652 | * NoFairCheating: [[spoiler:So your friends told you the passwords for The Tomb of VARN reactor room or you looked them up in walkthrough? Tough luck, but they won't work unless the character entering them has the corresponding scroll as well, meaning you have to find them either way. Same applies to Obelisk Puzzle; you may know where the chest is but it won't activate unless you visit every Obelisk.]] |
| 653 | * NoobCave: Goblinwatch and the Abandoned Temple of Baa are easy starting dungeons to help prepare adventurers for what lies ahead. |
| 654 | * NorthIsColdSouthIsHot: The snowy regions are to the north while the deserts are to the southwest. |
| 655 | * NotBrainwashed: [[spoiler:Wilbur Humphrey is shocked by his Council representative, Slicker Silvertongue, refusing to vote in your favor, and wonders why Silvertongue would disobey him. He sends you to the Superior Temple of Baa to find a way to cure Silvertongue of his brainwashing, but what you instead find is proof that Silvertongue is a willing traitor]]. |
| 656 | * NotSoOmniscientCouncilOfBickering: The High Council is said to be this if you ask people, since they not only won't let you see the Oracle until you get their unanimous approval, but have also had difficulty passing laws. That said, [[spoiler:the problem is actually due to the traitor on the council, the only one who doesn't follow his liege's orders]]. |
| 657 | * NothingIsScarier: The Temple of Baa is suspiciously devoid of any enemies should you enter it. However, progressing through the temple makes them appear, and [[spoiler:literal army of of skeletons will spawn when you approach the altar]]. |
| 658 | * OnlySaneMan: Osric Temper is said to be this for the Enrothian nobility, since he's the only one who focuses on the threat of the Kreegans. The quest that gets you his vote on the Council is the one that most directly involves the threat, since it requires you to kill an outpost full of Kreegans. |
| 659 | * PrestigeClass: You can take promotional quests to upgrade your character classes up to twice. The quests are provided by the six Lords of Enroth. Party members who aren't part of the class in question will instead get an honorary title, which can be required for Master ranks in certain skills. |
| 660 | ** Knight-->Cavalier-->Champion |
| 661 | ** Paladin-->Crusader-->Hero |
| 662 | ** Archer-->Battle Mage-->Warrior Mage |
| 663 | ** Druid-->Great Druid-->Archdruid |
| 664 | ** Cleric-->Priest-->High Priest |
| 665 | ** Sorcerer-->Wizard-->Archmage |
| 666 | * TheQuisling: In the letter from King Roland [[AllThereInTheManual seen in the instruction manual]] for ''VI'', he says that he suspects there's someone like this among the ruling class of Free Haven, a traitor working for the Kreegan. And there is, [[spoiler:Regent Wilbur Humphrey's representative on the council, Slicker Silvertongue. (Honestly, [[NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast with a name like that...]]) One quest you're required to do exposes him. (You'll meet him again later in the game, and you can kill him if you want; [[IneffectualSympatheticVillain he's a wimp]].]] |
| 667 | * ReactorBoss: There's one of these at the climax of the game, and it's [[TrickBoss suspiciously easy to deal with]], so long as you have Blasters, because once you destroy it, the ''true'' FinalBoss, the Kreegan Queen, appears, along with an army of Kreegan backing her up. |
| 668 | * RenownedSelectiveMentor: Discussed by some [=NPCs=], who say that the trainers who teach Master levels for skills live in remote regions, so they won't be swamped by prospective students. Said trainers not only usually require high skill levels and an Expert rank in the skills they teach, but also will expect you to have high stats and/or a PrestigeClass (or honorary) title. |
| 669 | * SeaSerpents: The Sea Serpent line of monsters in ''VI'' consists of wyrms swimming around in the Eel Infested Waters oceanic region. The [[PaletteSwap second tier]] ones are named {{Sea Monster}}s (the ones in the tier above that are Sea ''Terrors'', so named because, in addition to being one of the most dangerous non-boss creatures in the game, their attacks also inflict supernatural fear). |
| 670 | * SealedEvilInACan: Archibald's statue for the majority of MMVI, [[spoiler:until you have to unseal him to get his help containing a greater evil.]] |
| 671 | * SdrawkcabName: Quite literally. An early sidequest requires you to infiltrate Goblinwatch, a fortress near New Sorpigal, the first town. The goblins, who have taken over the fortress, have commissioned a group called the "Sdrawkcab Monks" to change the code that leads to the lower levels of the dungeon. |
| 672 | * TheSmurfettePrinciple: Lady Loretta Fleise is the only woman in Enroth's nobility. Her representative on the council is also the only woman in the group of six. |
| 673 | * TakenForGranite: Archibald's punishment at the end of ''Heroes II''. You have to release him here (well, you can choose not to, and you are warned that doing so is risky, but if you don't, you won't be able to avoid getting the bad ending). |
| 674 | * TeleportingKeycardSquad: Happens on occasion, mostly in The Temple of Baa whenever you open a chest containing the key you need to progress. |
| 675 | * TeleportInterdiction: [[spoiler:While you can still teleport out using Town Portal in The Hive, Lloyd's Beacon doesn't work there thus you can't place a beacon to teleport in right back.]] |
| 676 | * UniqueEnemy: |
| 677 | ** There's a single [[spoiler:Fallen Defender]] at the bottom of The Hall of the Fire Lord. It guards the chest [[spoiler: with Crystal Skull and it is similar to Defenders of VARN except being immune to physical attacks instead of magic]]. While stat-wise he's not that stronger than other monsters in the dungeon and he's lacking status effects, said immunity might be a bit problematic. |
| 678 | ** There's a single Golden Dragon in the Temple of Snakes. |
| 679 | * YeOldeButcheredeEnglishe: There are a few occasions when the pronoun "thee" is used to address the party, most notably the death cutscene and the ending. |
| 680 | * YinYangBomb: Unlike ''VII'' and ''VIII'', this game allows your Archmages and High Priests to learn and master both Light and Dark magic. Since the requirements for mastery are completely opposite reputation, it needs a bit of know-how, but it can be done. |
| 681 | * YourPrincessIsInAnotherCastle: After you do all the quests to get the council's approval for you to visit the Oracle, Slicker Silvertongue still votes "no," and you have to expose him as a traitor. And then it's revealed that in order to activate the Oracle, you need to find four memory crystals in four different dungeons. And ''then'' you're told you need to go to another dungeon to retrieve a Control Cube in order to finally enter the Control Center. And '''then''' you need to fight through the Control Center's droids to get your hands on enough Blasters to take down the Kreegan Hive. |
| 682 | [[/folder]] |
| 683 | |
| 684 | [[folder: MightAndMagic VII]] |
| 685 | * AffablyEvil: |
| 686 | ** Archibald in ''Might and Magic VII''. It probably helps that he does something approximating a HeelFaceTurn: personally helping free his brother from the Kreegans and bringing him back to his wife, despite the fact that Archibald knows full well that Catherine Ironfist wants him dead[[note]]He was probably - and correctly - gambling on Roland interceding in his behalf... but, of course, if he hadn't brought Roland back himself he wouldn't have been in a position to be executed by Catherine in the first place[[/note]], and that the last interaction the two brothers had was Roland sentencing Archibald to be [[TakenForGranite transformed to stone]] for some future generation to take mercy on. He ends up promising to stay peaceably on his little island off the coast of Avlee, and apparently kept that promise, as that is the last we heard of him. And judging that Sandro left for Jadame, it is apparent that he gave up on evil. |
| 687 | ** The Warlocks of Nighon are pretty friendly too, even to those who choose the Light path. Their leader even ''apologizes'' for not being able to train you if you ask for a Warlock promotion while on the Path of Light (other Dark promoters tend to insult you instead). [[DarkIsNotEvil Assuming they're truly evil at all, despite being creepy]]; when you travel from Stone City to Nighon through Thunderfist Mountain, you encounter a large battle between a horde of Gogs and the dwarves of Stone City and the Warlocks, where the dwarves and Warlocks are clearly allies. (They only attack the Gogs, not each other and not you, unless you attack them.) |
| 688 | *** Actually just because they team up with dwarves once doesn't give a free pass. They clearly invaded Erathia to murder and enslave along with ''demons''. Politeness to the victor after Erathian military went to town over their island does not equal DarkIsNotEvil. Their cloaks have a clear description of hordes of slave labor. |
| 689 | ** Seknet Undershadow, the Assassin trainer in ''VII'', is most definitely evil and will send you to murder an innocent woman in cold blood to qualify as an Assassin. But if you have chosen the path of Light, he will politely tell you that you need to speak to the Spy, not him; and no matter when you visit him, there is tea available which, if you are brave enough to drink an Assassin's tea, is very good for you. |
| 690 | *** Tor Anwyn, the Warlock you need to consult for the Warlock promotion quest, has similar qualities. What really makes these two gentlemen stand out as Affably Evil is the fact that some of the instructors even on the path of Light [[GreyAndGrayMorality are very acidic towards those following the path of Darkness.]] |
| 691 | *** Steagal Snick is pretty much {{Jerkass}} to your characters and does indirectly call you a crybabies when you're Path of Light, but his first quest involves fixing Dwarves' DugTooDeep mistake so Medusae won't get out and attack innocent civilians. Bonus points for the quest being done deep in enemy's territory. His second quest is also the only second promotion quest that doesn't change between paths, the only difference being the quest giver. |
| 692 | * AllYourBaseAreBelongToUs: |
| 693 | ** ''You'' can do this in an early part of ''VII''. Outside of Harmondale, there's an open-air goblin outpost with some magical cannons that shoot powerful fireballs. If you manage to get onto it (the goblins sometime fry themselves by accident by aiming at targets that are too close) about two dozen more goblins surround the place, at which point you can commandeer the cannons and use them yourself. (It's not only an easy way to get rid of them, [[RuleOfCool it's downright fun]]. So long as you don't aim at a target that's too close, [[SplashDamage like the ones in the fortress who were already dead when you got there did...]]) |
| 694 | *** If one looks into the chests there, one can find a letter that says the goblins having the outpost is itself a result of this -- apparently, it was originally built by Harmondalians, but was overrun by goblins some time ago. |
| 695 | ** This might happen to ''your'' castle in the same game, depending on your actions. [[spoiler:In the beginning, a [[SnakeOilSalesman member of the Mercenary Guild]] offers to give you a Wand of Fireballs for free in exchange for a "favor to do later". If you accept this offer (and the Wand does make the scavenger hunt easier) then the Guild calls you after you choose a Path and tells you that the favor [[AnOfferYouCantRefuse is to steal a tapestry]] from whoever you've allied yourself with. If you refuse to do this, Harmondale - and your castle - is invaded by goblins and swordsmen in two weeks. (Actually, it's better to refuse and let the attack come, because if you do steal from your allies, it will take two years game time or a jail sentence for them to forgive you, and there's almost no reward from the Guild; on the other hand, fighting off the attack earns you gold and experience.)]] |
| 696 | * ArtificialStupidity: Champions of the Sword types are some of the toughest monsters in the game, in part because they self-buff with Bless to improve their accuracy and Heroism to improve their damage before they attack. As in, they won't actually attack until they're done casting buffing spells. So if you've got someone in your party who can cast Dispel Magic, casting it every other turn will keep the Champions of the Sword in an endless cycle of casting their buffs, having them dispelled, casting them again... |
| 697 | * TheAtoner: In ''VII'', one of the warlocks you meet on Mount Nighon admits that they and the Kreegan were allies during the events of ''[[Videogame/HeroesOfMightAndMagic HoMMIII]]'', something they ''deeply'' regret, not just because [[NotWhatISignedUpFor they realized what the Kreegan's true goal was]], but because the Kreegan army abandoned them and left them to die after their plan failed, causing their numbers to be decimated. (Quite possibly, this is why they are more approachable than the other "dark" folks in the game.) [[spoiler:However, at the end of ''Armageddon's Blade'', Nighon allies with the Kreegans once more, though that alliance is even more short-lived]]. |
| 698 | * BigBad: The Kreegan ''could'' be this: we are ''told'' they are a threat, and the chronologically next game, ''Armageddon's Blade'', backs that up, but in the game itself they don't actually ''do'' much of anything. [[spoiler:Kastore and his faction of Terrans, on the other hand, take an active hand in ordering minions to do Bad Deeds, especially if the Lords of Harmondale are their minions.]] |
| 699 | * BodyguardingABadass: After you complete the Wizard Promotion Quest and successfully build a golem, if you built it correctly the golem stays in the main hall of your castle, and fights on your side if an enemy invades it. [[spoiler:He can be very useful later if you decide to refuse the Mercenary Guild's demands and get raided by them.]] |
| 700 | * CameBackWrong: A word of advice: asking a necromancer (from the "evil" temples in ''VII'') to revive your dead teammates is a bad idea.[[spoiler: Character comes back, but with a "zombie" condition... And it can be pretty much of a JumpScare if you are unprepared]] |
| 701 | ** You can try this yourself, should you have access to the ''Reanimate'' spell - it works on your dead party members in addition to dead [=NPCs=]...the result will be the same, however. |
| 702 | * CanonDiscontinuity: A couple examples of this game and [=HoMM3=] harboring some canon differences. |
| 703 | ** In [=MMVII=], the devils are long-armed spiky alien things. In [=HoMM3=], which takes place ''at the same time''[[note]]specifically, Might and Magic VII takes place in the gap between base Heroes III and the Armageddon's Blade expansion[[/note]], the devils are... pretty much your standard red-skinned black-robed horned humanoid devils. There is no explanation even attempted for this - at least, not in ''VII'' or ''Heroes III''. ''VI'' (which also takes place at the same time as ''Heroes III''[[note]]parallel to the base game[[/note]]) implies 'caste system' is the answer for some discrepancies (it also features -- prominently in the intro movie -- devils that are long-armed spiky alien things with horns and red skin). |
| 704 | ** In this game, Tatalia is just a duchy of Erathia, ruled by Lord Markham, and populated by humans. In [=HoMM3=], Tatalia is an independent nation ruled by the lizardman King Tralossk and full of swamp-dwelling monsters such as gnolls and wyverns as well as humans. |
| 705 | * CardCarryingVillain: Many Deyjan characters act like this, such as William Setag (the NPC who promotes Crusaders to Villains, quite fittingly), and, most surprisingly, Kastore. In ''III'', Kastore had Neutral alignment (unlike Maximus and Dark Shade, who were labeled as Evil), but Kastore is the one who acts the most like a stereotypical villain, complete with EvilLaugh after you return from Colony Zod (and in the final cutscene). |
| 706 | * CashGate: The beginning of the game gives you one: you must buy a Lute from a female peasant near the harbor. You ''may'' buy a Seashell from another near the Dragon Caves, but another copy is located in storage taken over by Dargonflies, where you can get it for free. [[VideogameCrueltyPotential Or you can sic the Dragonfiles to kill the peasants and take the items of their dead bodies for free]]. |
| 707 | * CoolStarship: [[spoiler:The ''Lincoln'', the ancient seedship that Archibald's and Gavin's advisors arrived in and serves as TheVeryDefinitelyFinalDungeon of the game. It is guarded by an army of deadly droids, cames up with living quartiers and armory, and has of course a healthy supply of blaster weapons. Being parked underwater also does not seem to have had any ill effect on it.]] |
| 708 | * CuteMonsterGirl: The female goblins in ''VII'' qualify, not just the ones available as PlayerCharacters, but the ones in Deyja and The Pit. Necromancers may count as well. |
| 709 | * DarkHorseVictory: The main characters' efforts to restore Harmondale in ''VII'' lead to [[NiceJobBreakingItHero Erathia and Tularea going to war over the area again]]. The war has three possible victors: 'Humans' (that is, Erathia[[note]]Both sides have human ''and'' elven citizens[[/note]]), 'Elves' (Tularea) and [[spoiler:Harmondale. Turn the Gryphonheart Trumpet over to the Arbiter and the area ends up as an independent kingdom]]. |
| 710 | * DarkIsEvil and LightIsGood: In ''VII'', good characters can learn light magic and evil characters can learn dark magic. (Anyone can cast both types of spells from scrolls, however.) |
| 711 | * DefeatMeansFriendship: [[spoiler: After Archibald is deposed as king of Deyja in ''Might and Magic VII'', he is quite friendly to your party even though your quests led to his defeat (whether you're working for his WorthyOpponent Resurrectra or his DragonWithAnAgenda Kastore.)]] |
| 712 | ** [[spoiler: It probably helps that your involvement wasn't ''that'' central - the tensions between Kastore and Archibald was there before you showed up - especially not in the Light path, and that if one did the Dark path, one also helped arrange Archibald's back-up plan in case he was deposed. [[UnwittingPawn Unwittingly]].]] |
| 713 | * DoorToBefore: If you speak with people in Harmondale, they tell you that a specific altar south of the goblin fortress is in fact a teleporter to Eeofol. If you investigate it further, you find nothing of note. However, once you access Eeofol [[MarathonLevel the long, long way]] you can find an exactly identical altar there, and clicking on it will not only teleport you back to Harmondale, but also activates that one so you can get back to Eeofol. |
| 714 | * DoubleUnlock: First Druid promotion requires you to complete first Cleric promotion beforehand, as one of places you have to visit is on Evermorn Island which are only accessed once you complete task required for first Cleric Promotion. |
| 715 | * DramaticIrony: At the end of Might and Magic VII, ''a'' Corak informs the Ultimate Adventurers that "The Corak you saw crash was not me, and he may very well have died in that crash. Then again, perhaps not. We are very hard to kill." Neither ''a'' Corak nor the Ultimate Adventurers knew what happened to ''the'' Corak after he crashed on Xeen, but those who have played Might and Magic V do: [[spoiler:While he did indeed survive the crash, he didn't survive the confrontation with Sheltem.]] |
| 716 | * DugTooDeep: A SideQuest you can take in ''VII'' features an odd twist to this Trope. The dwarves of Stone City have an infestation of troglodytes on the lower level, but not because ''they'' Dug Too Deep, but because a bunch on evil wizards called the Nighon Warlocks on the other side of the tunnels did, and left ''them'' to deal with it. (The QuestGiver, naturally, offers you a reward if you get rid of them.) |
| 717 | ** Played straight, however, with the Red Dwarf Mines in the same game. The dwarves broke into a lair of medusas who petrified most of them, and as part of the main quest you have to rescue the dwarves. (The first Archer promotion quest also involves shutting down the only elevator to the lower levels to rectify the dwarves' mistake.) |
| 718 | * EasyLevelTrick: There's a little hidden Day of the Gods pedestal in the outskirts of Emerald Island. The stats buff that it gives to level 1 characters is so disproportionatedly huge, you will be able to blitz through the dragonfly nest and all the vermins of the Abandoned Temple in a single go without braking a sweat. It won't be of much help against the red dragon, though. |
| 719 | * EvenEvilHasStandards: Archibald may be a tyrant, a usurper, and a bad brother, but he does not like what the Kreegans do to Roland. It probably helps that his own position as King of Deyja was usurped by Kastore by the time you get around to rescuing Roland. |
| 720 | ** The fact your quest to finish off Xenofex is there as well on the Dark Path may count as well, since the Kreegans are EvilerThanThou. Also overlaps with PragmaticVillainy since it is not cool to rule the world when everyone is dead. |
| 721 | ** A fairly subtle example, but when you complete the Villain and Assassin promotion quests, your reputation in Deyja gets worse. The people of Deyja may be necromancers, but they apparently don't like villainy or assassination. (Maybe the fact that the Villain promotion quest requires you to kidnap a defenseless maiden while the Assassin one involves ''killing'' one has something to do with it; that ''is'' kind of rotten.) |
| 722 | * [[ThreateningShark Everything's Even Worse With Sharks]]: You have no idea. In ''VII'', the obligatory ElaborateUndergroundBase is actually an Elaborate ''Underwater'' base[[note]]allowing for that to mean a ''backup'' spaceship parked underwater, with the security systems turned on[[/note]], and to get to it, you have to fight your way past some nasty sharks. Stat-wise, these monsters aren't much worse than anything else you've fought at this stage at the game, but in this underwater terrain, ''you'' and handicapped in more than one area. You can't use any weapons except Blasters (which you likely aren't very skilled with at this point) and you need to wear special clothing that resembles wetsuits here with prevents you from wearing ''any'' armor at all. (The suits themselves provide no protection whatsoever.) You can still wear magical rings, so the best thing to do is plan ahead. (And cast a Lloyd's Beacon when you finally get to the place, so you can come and go without having to swim to it.) |
| 723 | * EvilPaysBetter: |
| 724 | ** The choice of path determines whether you will get to use Light or Dark Magic. Thing is, while Dark Magic has some very strong nukes (and even basic Toxic Cloud does more damage than Grandmaster Elemental spells), Light Magic has mainly buff magic of spells packed together which barring Day of Gods can be gotten from other magic schools, which you have probably upgraded higher (and Light Magic doesn't include Protection from Magic anyway). Its strongest offensive spell targets only one monster (while Dragon Breath from Dark magic nukes an entire group) and can be used only outside and during the day. To add insult to injury, its grandmaster spell must be found in ''The Pit'' first, and it has serious drawbacks. |
| 725 | ** The promotion to Lich for the Dark Path comes with neat change to your avatar but most notably offers immunity to Body and Mind magic, something that cannot be achieved in any other way. There is no equivalent advantage for the promotion to the Archmage. |
| 726 | ** The promotion to Warlock for the Dark Path gives you a pet dragon whelp which gives all your Warlocks mana regeneration and +3 to all magic skills. The Light Path counterpart, the Archdruid, has no such bonus. [[DownplayedTrope Though, in order to compensate]], the promotion quest to Archdruid is one of the easiest of the games (involving finding an item on a mid-level dungeon and taking it to a ''low'' level dungeon) while the promotion to Warlock involves going to the Land of the Giants, the very last zone of the game, and find an item inside a cave with a very powerful SuperBoss Dragon. |
| 727 | * TheFairFolk: The Faerie King in ''VII'' and his unseen subjects. Some human characters are scared to death of him, while the elves are cautious of him (insisting they're "only distantly related"). [[spoiler:When you actually meet him - two quests require this - he seems to be a borderline case who likes playing jokes on mortals, but is more-or-less harmless.]] |
| 728 | * FluffyTheTerrible: Queen Catherine of Erathia keeps griffins as pets; they won't hurt you unless you cause trouble around the city. (This leads to a rather big problem for one side quest if you take the Dark Path; it requires you to kill ''every'' griffin in both Erathia and Bracada, including them, meaning you'll have to pay a fine of 25,000 gold for Catherine - who's your ally - to forgive you if you do; since the reward for the completing this quest is only 5,000 gold, it might be best to skip it.) |
| 729 | * ForTheEvulz: The Villain promotion quest (the second promotion quest for Dark-aligned Paladins) requires you to kidnap a woman simply for the sake of kidnapping her. |
| 730 | * GhostTown: Evermorn Island has some abandoned towns with buildings falling apart where nobody lives. |
| 731 | * HellOfAHeaven: If you choose the Path of Light in ''VII'', you gain allies in Celeste, a city among the clouds fully of angels and beautiful temples and palaces (not to mention merchants that sell some really good stuff, which becomes cheaper if you don't upset your allies). It seems like a great place, but it's ''dangerous''. If you take a wrong step and fall off the streets, you'll plummet to the desert below and likely be killed in the fall (unless you prepare and use Feather Fall). To make this worse, a lot of the folks there jovially tell you not to [[BlackComedy "have a falling out while you're here!"]] You have to wonder just how many visitors "got" the joke the hard way... |
| 732 | ** If you're on the Dark Path, then Celeste is instead a BonusLevelOfHeaven, as the folks there are your enemies the times you have to go there. (As if the danger of falling wasn't enough, the Angels and Rocs are ''tough''.) |
| 733 | * TheHiddenHour: The Obelisk Puzzle has a flower that only appears in "the witching hour". |
| 734 | * {{Irony}}: If you chose the Dark Path, before sending you to kill Xenofex, [[TheStarscream Kastore]] says that ruling a world full of dead is not fun. That wouldn't be too weird, except Kastore is at that time the ruler of the Pit, where everyone except a few goblins and you (possibly), even the guards, are some kind of undead. |
| 735 | * JustifiedTutorial: The scavenger hunt serves as both a tutorial of sorts, as well as an introductory stage to set up the plot for the remainder of the game. |
| 736 | * KickTheDog: In the Dark Path ending, [[spoiler:Kastore tests his newly created blaster by shooting one of his followers]]. |
| 737 | * LadyLand: In Nighon, all the warlocks outside are women, and all the men are particularly shabby peasants. Oddly, this directly contradicts the canon of ''Heroes of Might and Magic II'' and '''III''' - in ''II'' the Warlock's Guild is men-only, and in '''III''' a single woman was admitted to the Warlocks for political reasons[[note]]her name was Sephrinroth, and she claimed to be an illegitimate child of King Gryphonheart[[/note]]. |
| 738 | ** Note that inside the houses, this is not the case; Tor Anwyn, the Warlock trainer, is male, and there are several female trainers of skills that Warlocks cannot learn, implying that they themselves are not Warlocks. |
| 739 | * MasterOfNone: The hybrid classes are sadly this due to not being able to reach the full potential of most of the weapon and armor skills they can learn, while the most specialized classes can. Though to balance this out, the hybrid classes often can reach higher levels in some non-combat oriented skills. |
| 740 | ** The Paladin is a mix between the Knight and the Cleric, but isn't as strong as the former, and unlike the latter he cannot reach the Grand Master level in Self Magic nor Master in Light or Dark Magic, meaning no Power Cure, Resurrection, Hour of Power or Dragon Breath. The Archer (mix between Knight and Sorcerer) suffers from the same problem, though in its case Grandmaster Archery can be quite useful as well. |
| 741 | ** The Druid is [[TheRedMage a mix between the Sorcerer and the Cleric]] and thus, able to access every school of magic. but again, only at Master level at most. However, it's the only class that can reach Grandmaster level in potion mixing, and it is the class that can have the most points to cast spells with (as it both benefits from Intellect ''and'' Personality, and is the only class that can reach Grandmaster in Meditation, the skill that directly adds magic points). |
| 742 | ** And then there's the Ranger, a mix between the Druid and the Knight, whose skill in magic cannot go higher than ''Expert'', nor can upgrade much the multitude of weapons and combat skills that make the Knight so powerful. Grandmaster in Identify Monster is not a fair trade. |
| 743 | * MonsterKnight: Due to all playable races having access to every class, you can have a Goblin Knight (in fact, one of your four pre-made party members is one) or even a Goblin Paladin in your party if you choose to do so. |
| 744 | * MutuallyExclusiveMagic: |
| 745 | ** Light Magic can only be learned as a skill by the second promotions of Cleric and Sorcerer on the Good path (Priest of the Light and Archmage), and Dark Magic can only be learned as a skill by the second promotions of Cleric and Sorcerer on the Evil path (Priest of the Dark and Lich). You can still use scrolls or wands you've picked up to cast spells belonging to those schools in a more limited fashion on either path, however. |
| 746 | ** Subverted with elemental magic schools and schools of self-magic. There are classes that can learn both, but they can't achieve Grandmastery in either, thus the Grandmaster spells or spells at Grandmaster potency from both subsets of schools are again mutally exclusive. For this reason it's better to have two specialist casters (Cleric and Sorcerer). |
| 747 | * NoCureForEvil: Averted. Even though DarkIsEvil in this game, most of the healing and curing spells belong to the Self schools (Body, Mind, and Spirit), which are neutral and can be learned by the Cleric, Paladin, Ranger, Monk (starting with their first promotion, the Initiate) and Druid classes on either path. The only exception is the Light magic spell Divine Intervention, which, although very powerful, is only meant to be used in emergencies. The Dark magic has also spells that heal in Soul Drinker, though in its case it functions as LifeDrain, and is less potent than Divine Intervention. |
| 748 | * NotJustATournament: This is the PlayerCharacter of ''VII'' [[ItBeganWithATwistOfFate start their adventure]], which starts with the them being granted the titles of Lords of Harmondale - complete with a free castle - after winning a scavenger hunt. It soon becomes obvious why this prize was so easy to get; not only is the castle a wreck and infested with goblins, Harmondale is in disputed territory, and its lords rarely survive long. The heroes quickly have to resolve a war between their two disputing neighbors in order to be recognized as serious rulers, and even worse, have to choose between the Paths of Light and Dark, a choice that can change the fate of the world. |
| 749 | * OnceMoreWithClarity: In the opening cinematic, Archibald's goblins and Gavin Magnus's elves spy on a group of "sea monsters" who had just come up out of the sea. After completing the second-to-last quest of the game, you see the same scene again, from the point of view of one of those "sea monsters." |
| 750 | * PlayerHeadquarters: ''VII'' is unique in which not only gives the players one (Castle Harmondale), but it's an important part of the plot, which follows the player characters going from mere adventurers to powerful lords. The game begins with the party winning the castle and its surrounding lands in a contest, only to find out that said castle is a ruin overrun by goblins, rats and bats. After cleaning the castle and ask the Dwarven King help to repair it (for which you need to do a pretty rough quest first), monarchs from other nations will start to show interest in your lands and will seek alliances. Once its fully repaired and upgraded, the castle has its own blacksmith, armorsmith, magic shop, healers, a golem to defend it from attackers [[note]]if you complete the Wizard promotion quest[[/note]], you can return to it via Town Portal, and you use the Throne Room to meet with the ambassadors from various countries (Erathia and Avlee at first, the Wizards of Bracada and the Necromancers of Dejya later). |
| 751 | * PlanetHeck: The Pit is an underground city that resembles a FireAndBrimstoneHell, although it has mostly necromancers and undead beings rather than demons; Archibald rules Deyja from here, and it's full of bad things. (Even if you're on the Path of Dark; if you're on the Path of Light, it's best not to come here except when you have to.) |
| 752 | * PrestigeClass: Like in ''VI'', you can upgrade your character classes twice, but in this game the second promotion will be different depending on your alignment: |
| 753 | ** Knight-->Cavalier-->Champion (Light)/Black Knight (Dark) |
| 754 | ** Paladin-->Crusader-->Hero (Light)/Villain (Dark) |
| 755 | ** Archer-->Warrior Mage-->Master Archer (Light)/Sniper (Dark) |
| 756 | ** Druid-->Great Druid-->Archdruid (Light)/Warlock (Dark) |
| 757 | ** Cleric-->Priest-->Priest of the Light (Light)/Priest of the Dark (Dark) |
| 758 | ** Sorcerer-->Wizard-->Archmage (Light)/Lich (Dark) |
| 759 | ** Monk-->Initiate-->Master (Light)/Ninja (Dark) |
| 760 | ** Thief-->Rogue-->Spy (Light)/Assassin (Dark) |
| 761 | ** Ranger-->Hunter-->Ranger Lord (Light)/Bounty Hunter (Dark) |
| 762 | * RealIsBrown: ''VII'' has an extremely desaturated palette compared to the previous games, dominated by grays, dull greens, and browns. |
| 763 | * TheRemnant: The Cult of Baa in ''VI'' is a powerful and influential religion that worships the Kreegans and are the major antagonists for most part of that game. However in ''VII'', after the Kreegan's defeat in ''VI'' and ''Heroes 3'', they're pretty much this. When you enter their only temple in Erathia, the description mentions that it's in a decayed state as if to mirror what happened with the cult, and you can read a letter from Xenofex telling the remaining cultists to regroup and go into hiding, hoping that maybe in the future they can recover from their loses. |
| 764 | * {{Retcon}}: In ''V'', the escape pod carrying the heroes from the third game is said to have burned up in XEEN's atmosphere, with its passengers having safely beamed down per Corak's instructions. This gets changed in ''VII'', where the same heroes have never landed on XEEN and instead land on Antagarich. |
| 765 | * ScriptBreaking: A particularly glaring example is often encountered, due to a rather poorly thought-out triggered event. When you first travel to the Land of the Giants, [[spoiler: a dethroned Archibald Ironfist telepathically contacts you and begs for your help]]. The problem is that you will very likely trigger this event long before [[spoiler: Kastore overthrows Archibald Ironfist]]. The game will continue normally and the latter event will not come to pass until properly triggered by the storyline, rendering the former event somewhat nonsensical and contradictive. |
| 766 | * SheatheYourSword: |
| 767 | ** If you choose the Light Path, the first mainline quest you have to do (in order to gain Light Magic) is one where you have to enter the front door of the Walls of Mist and exit the back door - without harming any of the monsters inside even once. Unfortunately, they ''will'' attack you, they are ''very'' powerful, and the Walls of Mist is a complex maze that requires finding three keys to complete. (And it you leave out the front door, you have to start over... [[CuttingTheKnot unless you keep the keys in your inventory]], in which case they stay there even after you leave a dungeon. You can therefore retrieve keys one at a time then use them on pedestal and leave through back doors.) Turning yourself invisible is probably the best idea. |
| 768 | ** This strategy is not mandatory but ''highly recommended'' for a few other situations in the same game. For example, any time you got to the Pit (if you're on the Path of Light) or Celeste (if you're on the Path of Dark) it's best to turn yourself invisible and sneak your way through, seeing as the monsters in the city will be hostile and some of them can summon other monsters, meaning you'd be facing a ''huge'' army in a matter of seconds if you try. Also, when you approach Colony Zod late in the game (which you have to do regardless of the Path you're on) it's best to both turn invisible ''and'' fly to get there, unless you can fight your way past the army of over a hundred Kreegan surrounding it. (Many of which can drain your SP if you try.) |
| 769 | * ShopliftAndDie: A character with the Stealing Skill can try to lift an item from a store (except a Magic Guild) without paying for it. Failing to do so won't get you attacked, but even trying (whether you are successful or not) will lower your reputation, and require you to pay a fine in the town where you shoplifted. (A successful act of theft incurs a bigger fine than one where you fail and get caught. Possibly justified because you don't have to give the item back.) The craziest part is, the fine you have to pay for shoplifting is in most cases more than the one you have to pay for killing a peasant. (Meaning they consider stealing worse than murder.) |
| 770 | * TertiarySexualCharacteristics: Female lich player characters have pink eyes (in contrast with the males' red) and wear a lot of jewelry. |
| 771 | * TooDumbToLive: During the War Over Harmondale quest, you get an opportunity to betray both Erathia and Avlee. You can then confess your betrayal to the respective rulers. Said rulers promptly [[NonStandardGameOver have you executed]]. (What makes this especially dumb is, so long as you just keep quiet about it, they'll never suspect a thing and you'll get away scott free.) |
| 772 | * UnreliableExpositor: In the opening cinematic, Lieutenant Kalic narrates to Archibald how he and his band of goblins ambushed and slaughtered a band of elves... as the video shows a band of elves ambushing and slaughtering Kalic's goblins. Archibald is not impressed until Kalic gets to the part about the strange "sea monsters" coming out of the sea. |
| 773 | * VideogameCrueltyPotential: For the Emerald Isle tutorial quest, you need a lute that you can either buy from a bard for 500 gold, or kill the bard for. Also, you can lead dragonflies from the swamp into town, let ''them'' kill the bard, and that way you get a free lute and none of the problems being a murderer causes you. This can also be used to obtain the Wand of Fireballs without committing to a future favour. |
| 774 | * VillainProtagonist: You become this if you choose the Dark Path. Of course, even though this causes you to be an accomplice in a few ''very'' evil things, whether you truly ''act'' like a villain is up to you. Still, your victory will mean a war on global scale that will kill everyone that resists an army of crazed goblins and liches and undead wielding ancient weapons. [[TakeOverTheWorld Considering said wielder of such ancient power are not the most moral people...]] |
| 775 | * WhenTreesAttack: In the Tularean Forest you get attacked by trees. This is the result of the Mercenary Guild stealing the jewel called Heart of the Forest. A quest later when on Light-aligned path requires you to return it to the Elder Tree, fixing this problem. |
| 776 | * WombLevel: The Colony Zod gives off this vibe. |
| 777 | * YeOldeButcheredeEnglishe: Like in the previous game, there are characters that use "thee" (not even "thou") as a general substitute for "you". |
| 778 | [[/folder]] |
| 779 | |
| 780 | [[folder: MightAndMagic VIII]] |
| 781 | * TheAlliance: The mid-game portion of ''VIII'' is helping to arrange this trope, as part of an attempt to avert the destruction of the world. Three of the members are set (the Dark Elves, the Minotaurs, [[spoiler: the Ironfists of Enroth]]), two are chosen by you from mutually exclusive options (either the Dragons or the Dragon Hunters, and either the Clerics or the Necromancers). It works, incidentally; the destruction of the world at the beginning of ''[[VideoGame/HeroesOfMightAndMagic Heroes IV]]'' occurs for an entirely different reason than the threat in ''VIII'', [[spoiler:although it is later revealed that the whole ordeal of ''VIII'' has removed an energetic warding called "The Dome" from the planet, which made the later world-destroying accident possible to occur]]. |
| 782 | * TheArtifact: In the previous game, you needed to have at least 50 Personality in order to unlock Grandmaster Merchant. Back then, it made gameplay sense because the only one who could reach that level was the Cleric, whose Personality was their main attribute. However, in this game, it is only the Dark Elf who can reach Grandmaster Merchant, but unlike the Cleric, the Dark Elf has no gameplay use for Personality (Personality determines spell points for Self casters like Clerics, whereas spell points for Elemental casters like Dark Elves are determined by Intellect; of course, ''[[GameplayAndStorySegregation storywise]]'' it makes sense that personal charm helps with haggling). Fortunately, this can be circumvented by equipping your Dark Elf with Personality-boosting items, getting the Grandmaster Merchant, then removing said items and replacing them with the previous gear. |
| 783 | ** The Hammerhands spell. Since the Unarmed and Dodging skills were removed from the final product (or, rather, no class could learn it), the Hammerhands spell (which was only useful to those using Unarmed) was completely useless. |
| 784 | * AscendedExtra: |
| 785 | ** The Elementals are the biggest ones. While they're regulars in the series, in previous games they're simply enemy monsters to beat. Here, they're central to the plot: it's revealed they aren't really evil, but the kidnapping of the Elemental Lords drove them insane. You need to visit the four {{Elemental Plane}}s to acquire four items in order to release their Lords from the BigBad. There are also elemental [=NPCs=] living in homes on the four Planes, including skill teachers. |
| 786 | ** Many of the races PromotedToPlayable: |
| 787 | *** In previous games, dragons were usually high-level enemies who appear late in the game to give the players a challenge. Here not only do they appear much earlier and have a lot more variants (including undead ones), most of them are initially friendly, and they're split in multiple factions with a leader each. The one friendly faction (initially, at least) has its own town with friendly NPC and quest givers, including the Dragon Promotion quest, and you can ask them to join TheAlliance during the second half of the game. |
| 788 | *** Like the dragons and elementals, minotaurs and trolls were just tough enemies who appeared late in the previous games. Here, they have their own cities full of friendly [=NPCs=], some of whom are quest givers. |
| 789 | * BottomlessPit: There is a single instance of this in ''VIII'' and for the Enrothian trilogy as a whole. In the first dungeon (the Abandoned Temple) there is a hall where trying to open a door leading out results in hallway you just came in closing down and floor starting to open. To disable the trap and unlock the doors you must push 8 buttons in the corners. Should you fall down, it's immediate Game Over while you're still falling, unlike the usual case of having a damaging floor at the bottom that cannot be escaped. |
| 790 | * BrutalBonusLevel: War Camp in Plane of Fire. There is absolutely no reason to visit it, story-wise or no. It is a small, two-room dungeon that has some of the toughest enemies of the game, but there aree possibly some artifacts or relics on the second floor if you can survive enemies there. |
| 791 | * CantDropTheHero: Whereas the other games have RequiredPartyMember either averted or played straight, only the character created at the start has to be there for the entire game. The other four members can be hired and dismissed at will, outside one or two quests which have a required party member. |
| 792 | * CorruptedContingency: Escaton, the game's main "villain" is [[spoiler:a robotic contingency that's only supposed to activate if the world's residents cannot stop the Kreegan invasion. His purpose is to destroy the doomed world to deny the Kreegans a foothold to attack further worlds. However, he underestimated the world's defenders and now the world is slated for destruction even though the Kreegans are already destroyed. Unfortunately, [[FailsafeFailure in order to keep the Kreegans from subverting him,]] his programming does not allow him to stop the process of destroying the world once he's started even though he really wants to.]] |
| 793 | * CouldSayItBut: [[spoiler:Once you reach Escaton, he reveals to you that he is programmed by his creators, the Ancients, to destroy any world the Kreegans have infested. He can't go ''explicitly'' against his programming even while he is aware of the fact Kreegans are no more in the world where ''VI-VIII'' take place. However, he gives you three questions the correct answers to which compose a hint where the elemental lords are imprisoned, and he rewards you for the correct answers by giving you an item, stating the only reason why he is giving it to you is that you don't know how to use it. Said item is the keys for the above prisons.]] |
| 794 | * DarkerAndEdgier: Not only is the party full of traditionally evil species like vampires, dark elves, trolls and minotaurs, and the Necromancer class is substituted for previous games' Sorcerer class, but also the GreyAndGreyMorality is darker for "both" sides of TheAlliance the player needs to set up. Even the "good" races and characters of the earlier games took a level in evil combined with MotiveDecay. The towns and their surroundings are even more harmful than in ''VI''. |
| 795 | ** Charles Quixote, the harmless crazy kind paladin who rode along with you to kill a dragon and save an innocent woman, suddenly has become a downright murderous, sadistic [[WarForFunAndProfit dragon slayer with a financial interest in Garrote Gorge.]] He not only kills dragons for hides and other parts, but also to enslave their children and [[WhatTheHellHero murders their parents before their eyes.]] |
| 796 | ** Sandro is as Sandro does, though now he seems to be solely interested in destroying the Church of the Sun, he still mass murders innocents in the skeleton converter and clearly has sadistic plans for a prisoner youth. If he becomes a member of the alliance, he however provides valuable insight in your quests to avert world-ending disaster. |
| 797 | ** The Church of the Sun is clearly implied to be corrupt, and quite evil in their own and committing vices behind closed doors. They also have a strong KnightTemplar streak, which isn't actually ''new'' (it was flaw implied for them in ''VII'') but makes for a darker and edgier setting with the Church of the Sun as the ''primary'' Light-aligned faith around instead of their more reasonable Path of Light offshoot like in ''VII''. |
| 798 | ** Two of the alliances you have to make to fight the Destroyer are choices between two mutually exclusive options: either the Priests of the Sun or the Necromancers, and either the Dragons or the Dragon Hunters. Thanks to this trope and GrayAndGreyMorality, neither is explicitly designated the Good choice, though players trying to be as close to "Good" as possible generally side with the Priests of the Sun (since siding with the Necromancers means letting the skeleton transformer continue operation ''and'' making all the vampires able to [[DaywalkingVampire walk in the day]]) and the Dragons (since the Dragon Hunters want to exterminate and enslave their entire species and kidnapped the dragon leader's egg, which you return to him for the alliance quest; the Dragons are brutal and merciless in their revenge, but it's hard to blame them). |
| 799 | ** There is also the Cataclysm itself and the game doesn't refrain from showing or telling you it claimed many lives. Whether you trek through the flooded minotaur city Balthazar's Lair or visit the troll town of Rust where half the village was burned down, you can feel the hanging threat of world-ending disaster that was somewhat lacking in ''VI''. The elemental planes are also extremely hostile, though their denizens say they're usually quite peaceful. |
| 800 | * DarkIsNotEvil: Played straight and hard in many cases alongside LightIsNotGood. Dark Elves, who are described as "elves who follow a dark path", are anything but evil: the women are fiercely protecting their children from wolves, the merchant master is friendly and helpful to everyone and definitely *not* employing their race's (in other settings) traditional schtick of slavery, sacrifice and underground tyranny. If anything, they are elves who split off from Vori and settled with a more gothic architecture and [[ProudMerchantRace mercantile pursuits]] with a dash of blackmail and threats, and that's only applied to criminal smugglers who murder people at the drop of a hat. Their homes have tasteful interior decoration as well. |
| 801 | * DeathFromAbove: An advice for new players: a patches of dark ground with smoke rising from them on starting island are bad spot to stay on for too long unless you want your character/party to meet this fate. Though you can take advantage of this and lure large groups of enemies towards these spots for easy kills. |
| 802 | * DestroyerDeity: The eponymous entity of the subtitle is more of a PhysicalGod-slash-SufficientlyAdvancedAlien but he does have godlike powers and his sole purpose in the world is to destroy it. It's up to the PlayerParty to [[DidYouJustPunchOutCthulhu punch him out]]. [[spoiler: Except as it turns out you wouldn't be able to, ''but'' the Destroyer doesn't ''want'' to destroy your world and invokes DoubleThink to give you the tools and information needed to stop him, leaving you free to do just that. It is the Elemental Lords, godlike entities in their own right, that kill him once they're freed]]. |
| 803 | * DiscOneNuke: |
| 804 | ** It's possible to recruit a Dragon very early in the game, if you know where to look. Having a Dragon in your party makes the rest of the game MUCH easier - if you have spare horseshoes and gold you can master his Dragon skill right there and then, which gives you access to Flame Burst (great and relatively cheap crowd controlling spell) and notably the ever-so broken Flying. This is probably the reason they're the only race you can't choose for your starter character. |
| 805 | ** There are two quests to rescue level 50 characters. Once you have access to any form of flight and invisibility these both become just a matter of knowing where to go. Once rescued they become recruitable. |
| 806 | ** On Ravenshore there is one hollow tree near the river that contains random artifact. That may help you greatly at the beginning of the game. |
| 807 | * {{Dracolich}}: Undead dragons show up in this game, in Shadowspire of course. The game reveals they are results of experiments by Zanthora the Mad, a local necromancer. |
| 808 | * EasyLevelTrick: If you get lucky and get Water Walk scroll from the magic shop on Dagger Wound Island, you can skip the entirety of The Temple of the Snake and just dart for the docks. |
| 809 | * ElementalPlane: The original M&M universe has (at least) four Elemental Planes (the classic Fire, Water, Air and Earth). While an important background element right from the start of the franchise (as ''II'' and ''III'' established that the Ancients' method of world/Nacelle-creation involves manipulating both elemental energies and the four Elemental Lords), the planes themselves only play an important role in ''VIII'' (portals to them have opened, and they're preparing an invasion for reasons at first unknown) and ''Heroes Chronicles: Masters of the Elements'', where the main character has to sojourn to the planes in an attempt to stop an invasion (motivated by entirely different things than the one in ''VIII''). |
| 810 | * FirstTown: Blood Drop Town, set in the Dagger Wound Islands, a place inhabited by Lizardmen. |
| 811 | * InsaneTrollLogic: There's a troll who tells us how he traveled to Ravage Roaming and talked to Zog in hopes of finding a clue as to where the ancient troll home can possibly be. Zog kicked him out and nearly killed him, but still ended up giving the troll a clue by complete accident - namely, he mentioned that he's going to feed the troll to his basilisk. Since basilisks live in Murmurwoods, the troll concludes that the home must be in Murmurwoods. What's amazing is that this train of logic is ''[[RightForTheWrongReasons actually true]]''. |
| 812 | * LavaIsBoilingKoolAid: Lava in Ironsand Desert and the Plane of Fire is ''weird''. It looks essentially like red-colored water and strangely enough it also emits water-like splashes if hit by projectile. It also has the same properties as pools of water - as long as it is not considered deep, you can stand even directly on it. At least it eerily glows during the night. |
| 813 | * LaterInstallmentWeirdness: This game makes a lot of changes regarding its precedessors: |
| 814 | ** You start with just one character rather than a full party, and you have to fill the remaining slots by hiring adventurers at taverns and houses. Said people can be fired at any point if you wish to replace them with somebody else, and to complete certain mandatory quests, you ''need'' to have certain characters in your party. |
| 815 | ** This game has a maximum party size of five as opposed to four, and not all slots have to be filled, so your party can range from one to five characters. In the previous games you had the same full party of characters from beginning to end. |
| 816 | ** There are no hirelings (of the non-fighting townsperson variety from earlier games, as opposed to the new recruitable adventurers), though townspeople still exist. |
| 817 | ** Rather than every character being identified by their class, only human characters are identified by their class (Knight, Cleric or Necromancer) while non-human characters are identified by their race instead (Dark Elf, Vampire, Troll, Minotaur or Dragon)[[note]]behind the scenes, the game ''does'' still keep track of race and class separately, but the UI only shows the class[[/note]]. Vampires more-or-less replace Paladins, Minotaurs more-or-less replace Monks, and Dark Elves more-or-less replace Archers, with Trolls as a second all-Might class in addition to Knights. Dragons are a special class that can only be recruited and not made at startup. Sorcerers are renamed/replaced with Necromancers. |
| 818 | ** This game does away with the separated Elemental and Self Magic Guilds, as well as the need to pay a fee to become a member. Instead, spells of all four schools of Elemental Magic (Earth, Air, Fire and Water) and all three schools of Self Magic (Body, Mind and Spirit) are sold together in a single magic shop each. Light and Dark Magic spells still have their own specialized shops. |
| 819 | ** There's only one promotion for each class instead of two. |
| 820 | ** In addition to Elemental, Self, Light and Dark Magic, this game introduces three new schools of magic that are exclusive to a certain class (Dark Elf, Vampire and Dragon), representing their inherent racial abilities. They each only have four spells (one for each level of skill) as opposed to ten or eleven, and these spells are learned automatically when the magic skill in question is upgraded rather than needing to be learned from a book. |
| 821 | ** In the previous two games, both Clerics and Sorcerers could learn Light and Dark Magic (although in VII, you had to choose one or the other). In VIII, only Clerics can learn Light and only Necromancers (the equivalent of Sorcerers) can learn Dark. |
| 822 | ** VI and VII had equal numbers of classes that could learn Self or Elemental Magic, but VIII has one more class than can learn Self (Cleric, Minotaur and Vampire) than Elemental (Necromancer and Dark Elf). And there are also no classes that can learn both in this game. |
| 823 | ** The skill teachers will also tell you where to find a teacher of lower expertise if you're not advanced enough for the one you're talking to yet, unlike the previous game. There is also only a single expert teacher for each skill while previous games had two, a few exceptions aside. |
| 824 | * LogicalWeakness: Each elemental and, notably, each elemental lord is of course weak to their opposing element. This is exploited by Escaton, who imprisons each of the elemental lords in a [[TailorMadePrison prison made specifically of that counter element]]. |
| 825 | * LordBritishPostulate: In the Tomb of Lord Brinne, there are several [=NPCs=] with names of various developers of the game. They are supposed to be completely immune to any and all attacks, but possibly due to an oversight, the basic Dragon attack can actually kill them. |
| 826 | * MagicalMysteryDoors: The Troll Tomb in Ironsand Desert. It mostly consists of interconnected rooms with at maximum 4 doors each. While the minimap is available as usual, the dungeon exploits the fact the identical rooms on different floors are shown as the same, so while you know ''where'' in dungeon you are, you don't know from it at ''which floor''. Thankfully, the dungeon is small enough so it is hard to get truly lost. |
| 827 | * TheMaze: [[spoiler:Escaton's palace]]. |
| 828 | * MeaningfulName: Escaton the Destroyer, which sounds like eschatology, the study of the end of the world. |
| 829 | * MonsterTown: Many, to the point that there are only two towns inhabited purely by humans (Garrote Gorge and Murmurwoods) and two other towns of near-humans (Ravenshore and Alvar, both inhabited by Dark Elves). The rest? All inhabited by monsters you fought in previous games: Lizardmen (Blood Drop Town), undead creatures - and human Necromancers (Shadowspire), Minotaurs (Balthazar's Lair), Ogres (an unnamed town in Ravage Roaming), Trolls (Ironsand), and Dragons (Dragon Cavern). |
| 830 | * MuggingTheMonster: There is a troll in a house on north coast of Ravenshore who tried to attack '''Escaton''' because he looked rich and he thought he would be an easy prey. Needless to say, it went poorly for the troll. |
| 831 | * MutuallyExclusivePartyMembers: The lich Helvatia Deverbero will only join your party if you sided with the Necromancers' Guild, and the priest Verish will only join your party if you sided with the Church of the Sun, making those two characters mutually exclusive. |
| 832 | * NinjaPirateRobotZombie: Crystal Dragons ([[CrystalDragonJesus not Jesus, unfortunately]]), [[{{Dracolich}} undead dragons]], Pirate Mages; this game is full of weird combinations. |
| 833 | * NonIndicativeName: Even if they're female, the promoted class for Dark Elves will always be called "Patriarch" rather than "Matriarch". |
| 834 | * OneGenderRace: While Knight, Cleric, Necromancer, Dark Elf and Vampire player characters can be male or female, Minotaur, Troll and Dragon player characters are always male. This is the only game in the series without two gender options for every race or class. |
| 835 | * OneTimeDungeon: The Great Crystal Interior can be accessed once [[spoiler:the key from the Hearts of the Planes is created, but is destroyed once you reach the end of game by freeing the Elemental Lords, which is the main reason of your trek to the crystal in the first place. In a bit of a strange subversion, if you place Lloyd's Beacon there before it gets destroyed, you can still teleport in it and exit it by its doors, even though the crystal is gone in Ravenshore]]. |
| 836 | * OrcusOnHisThrone: Escaton spends the entire game after the intro in his palace on the Plane between Planes, doing nothing but maintaining the spell that calls the Elementals to the Ravenshore Crystal. It is implied the spell would weaken if he left the Plane Between Planes, and since he doesn't have any agents around to send after you there is nothing he ''can'' do but sit and wait for either the Elementals to reach the Crystal or adventurers to breach the Plane Between Planes (it also doesn't appear as if he has any means to observe the planet in detail). |
| 837 | * OurDwarvesAreAllTheSame: Averted. The land of Alvar features renegade Dark Dwarves (in other words, the dwarven equivalent of Dark Elves, or [[TableTopGame/DungeonsAndDragons D&D]]'s Duergar) as monsters. The previous games had typical dwarves. |
| 838 | * OurElvesAreDifferent: The main elves on the continent of Jadame are Dark Elves, as opposed to the Wood Elves of the previous games. |
| 839 | * PersonOfMassDestruction: Just what have we seen of Escaton is enough for him to establish him as this, [[spoiler:and thankfully the rest of his plan isn't completed]]. |
| 840 | * PortalNetwork: The starting archipelago has one, which needs a power stone to be operated, but since the bridge network was built quite some time ago the citizens stopped to use them and consequently the stones became rare. Since the bridges are obliterated by the initial eruption before the game even starts, the network becomes once again the sole way to travel through the islands. You can get one early in the game, though the last portal near the docks still needs to be activated from the [[DoorToBefore other end]]. |
| 841 | * PrestigeClass: Like in the previous games on Enroth, you can upgrade your character classes. Unlike the previous games, there's only one promotion instead of two: |
| 842 | ** Dark Elf --> Patriarch |
| 843 | ** Necromancer --> Lich |
| 844 | ** Cleric --> Priest of the Sun |
| 845 | ** Knight --> Champion |
| 846 | ** Troll --> War Troll |
| 847 | ** Minotaur --> Minotaur Lord |
| 848 | ** Vampire --> Nosferatu |
| 849 | ** Dragon --> Great Wyrm |
| 850 | * PromotedToPlayable: Minotaurs, Vampires, Trolls and Dragons were enemies in the previous games. Here, they're all playable characters. |
| 851 | * RagTagBunchOfMisfits: Much more than in other games. Let's see, your team can include humans (Knights, Clerics, or pre-promotion Necromancers), Liches (when Necromancers are promoted), Vampires, Minotaurs, Dark Elves, Trolls or Dragons. |
| 852 | * RedemptionDemotion: Sadly, Minotaurs. When they appeared in the previous games as AlwaysChaoticEvil enemies, they were a nightmare to deal with, having high HP, brutal physical attack, and the Minotaur Lords could easily one-hit kill one of your characters by casting "Finger of Death". As playable characters in this game, they're by far the worst class, being only good as {{Crutch Character}}s in the early levels. |
| 853 | * RemixedLevel: The entry part of the Dark Dwarf Mine in Alvar has exactly the same layout as the troglodyte part of the Stone City in ''VII''. |
| 854 | * ToServeMan: In the deepest part of the Cyclops Larder, you find cages with humans, the implication of their fate being this. |
| 855 | * TwentyBearAsses: Has sidequests like this. And, par the course of this trope, enemy does not always drop the stuff. |
| 856 | * ShoutOut: Many Dark Elven banks and homes have [[Characters/DungeonsAndDragonsRaces spider motifs as preferred furniture, akin to a similar dark elven race in another fantasy setting]]. |
| 857 | * SuddenNameChange: A quite a few monsters that reappear from ''VII'' have their names changed despite using the exact same model and possibly even statistics. The most notable are Behemoths, who got renamed to Plane Guardians/Plane Protectors/Plane Overlords, and Light Elementals have been changed to Dancing Light/Wisp/Will'o'Wisp. The latter might be justified by avoiding confusion why the light elementals don't have any relation to the plot despite being, well, elementals. |
| 858 | * SuperNotDrowningSkills: The Plane of Water takes place underwater. Unlike in ''VII'', however, you don't need to fetch Scuba Gear and your party can breathe underwater indefinitely just fine. |
| 859 | * SunkenCity: Balthazar's Lair, where Minotaurs live, is an underground city that became this due to a massive flood when the Gateway of Water was created. The Uplifted Library ''was'' sunken before the game's events, but the eruption of the nearby volcano thanks to the creation of the Gateway of Earth, well, uplifted it. |
| 860 | * TailorMadePrison: The elemental lords are imprisoned in prisons made mainly from the opposing element. |
| 861 | * UniqueEnemy: The Phoenix and its variants appear only in War Camp in Plane of Fire. |
| 862 | * WickedWasps: This game has Wasp Warriors as enemies in Alvar. While their zone is secluded by mountains, they can fly over it to attack you if they detect you, which may be rather nasty surprise early in the game. Their dungeon is also rather confusing requiring a perfectly timed Jump spell to get to second floor, but thankfully it is purely optional. |
| 863 | [[/folder]] |
| 864 | |
| 865 | [[folder: MightAndMagic IX]] |
| 866 | * EmptyRoomPsych: ''IX'' was loaded with these, due to the game being largely unfinished at the time of release. |
| 867 | ** The city of Thjorgard is by far the worst offender, being a large sprawling town with lots of rooms you can enter and explore. Typically in most towns, even though there are lots of buildings, most of them have dud doors that only emit a knocking sound when interacted with. In Thjorgard there are numerous empty mansion-esque buildings with absolutely nothing inside. |
| 868 | * FalseFriend: [[spoiler: Forad Dorre.]] Not very surprising if one catches the BilingualBonus: [[spoiler: Förrädare is the Swedish word for traitor.]] |
| 869 | * FantasyCounterpartCulture: The naming conventions of people and places in this part of Axeoth are primarily Scandinavian-inspired, and the gods take their cues from Myth/NorseMythology. |
| 870 | * LuredIntoATrap: [[spoiler:Forad Dorre does this to the coalition you painstakingly gathered while you're distracted with another quest.]] |
| 871 | * PrestigeClass: The class system in ''IX'' was that your players started as either Initiates -- associated with Magic -- or Fighters -- associated with Might -- and then each had two promotion options, who in turn each had two promotion options, each focusing on some aspect of the archetype, thus leading to eight different endgame class possibilities. |
| 872 | [[/folder]] |
| 873 | |
| 874 | [[folder: MightAndMagic X]] |
| 875 | * AcidTripDimension: |
| 876 | ** The meditation session that is the part of the Bloodcaller promotion sidequest is full of trippy light, bloody/fiery walls and an EmptyRoomPsych with weird Dwarf in it. |
| 877 | ** [[spoiler:Dream Shard dungeon, which is the retelling of ''true'' Dunstan's adventure before he got killed.]] |
| 878 | * TheAlcatraz: Fort Laegaire, the first dungeon of ''Falcon and the Unicorn'' DLC, is this. It is built on some [[OhMyGods Dragon]]forsaken rock in Savage Sea full of sharks, nagas and mermaids (the hostile kind with powerful water magic). Should you try to fly by air, the ballistae will shoot you, and any external helpers, down. It is also protected by powerful magic barrier to block you from magically contacting anyone outside unless you're on a balcony of main inquisitor, which requires passing by an army of guards. [[spoiler: After finding Rosalie, who can contact outside help via magic ritual, you have to destroy all ballistae, kill the main inquisitor, after which you can escape once the ritual is performed and the help arrives]]. |
| 879 | * AndThatLittleGirlWasMe: The narrator is really [[spoiler:a grown Ann Morgan]], haunted by the events she lived through and telling the story as a way of dealing with it. |
| 880 | * AscendedExtra: Two for the ''Falcon and the Unicorn'' [=DLC=]: |
| 881 | ** [[spoiler:While Rosalie is a somewhat important person early into the game while accompanying you to one plot-critical quest and is central to a sidequest which is given to you by Montbard with his last breath, she drops out of the story after Act II closes. However, once you get imprisoned in Fort Laegaire in DLC soon enough you find she was arrested there as well, and to progress you need to rescue her. She will then InfoDump to you why she and you were imprisoned and she will tag along with you until you finish DLC apart from break in Agyn Peninsula between the two dungeons.]] |
| 882 | ** Perren is a bandit leader that is only [[TheGhost mentioned briefly]] when you enter the Portmeyron castle and the bandit guarding the entrance confuses you for his men at first. In Fort Laegaire one of quests is to kill him in exchange for information. |
| 883 | * BigBad: |
| 884 | ** [[spoiler:Erebos the Master of Assassins, the greatest warrior of the Faceless, mentioned only briefly in the background story.]] |
| 885 | ** The expansion, ''The Falcon and the Unicorn'', has [[spoiler:Duke Owen, an ambitious noble who seeks to use the chaos Erebos caused in the main campaign to make a bid for the Imperial throne. Far more subtle than Erebos, his long-term EvilPlan is to woo Empress Falcon, marry her, become her royal consort, and once an heir is born, arrange for an "accident" to befall her. However, he has to get rid of "complications" first, like the ones who got rid of Erebos...]] This is actually [[TimeForPlanB a back-up plan.]] The original plan was to take advantage of the situation in the Agyn Peninsula to discredit the Empress politically ([[spoiler:Duke Owen is the leader of the nobles opposing the Empress's reform plans, which is how he intends to make her marry him -- by framing it as a reconciliation move]]), with some minor help to one of the bandit groups in the Peninsula to help keep the situation unstable, but then [[PlayerCharacters a certain group]] went and managed to get the situation ''resolved'', and the Empress turned out to have arranged it... |
| 886 | * BigGood: Empress Gwendolyn Falcon is likely the straightest example of this Trope in the franchise, [[spoiler:as she is ''directly'' sponsoring and supporting the heroes and they don't even know it until late in the game.]] |
| 887 | * BloodKnight: |
| 888 | ** Orcs as usual, even if they are members of your party. |
| 889 | --> '''Cynical Orc male PC:''' I hope some brigands attack. Crushing skulls helps up to sleep. |
| 890 | ** Crag Hack as well. He is ''very'' motivated to fight a dragon, and he seems rather disappointed if you talk one mini-boss out of a fight. |
| 891 | * BonusLevel: Four of them: |
| 892 | ** The Fortress of Crows could probably count, seeing as it was created using fan feedback and polls, but the player doesn't need to do anything special to enter it. |
| 893 | ** The Dream Shard dungeon is the second one, only available to players who purchased the Early Access beta version. |
| 894 | ** The Supreme Temple of Meow is unlocked through [=UPlay=], and can only be reached partway through Act III. |
| 895 | ** Finally, there is Limbo, the JokeLevel of the game, which is only available after completing Act IV. (See below.) |
| 896 | * CallBack: ''X'' is ''full'' of them to older games (not just in the mainline ''Might & Magic'' series itself, it also calls back to older ''Heroes'' games). Allowing for plot importance to be to side-quests, it even calls back to ''the mid-90s novels'' [[spoiler:and in the process heavily implies that Ashan actually is in the old universe after all]]. |
| 897 | * ChainLightning: A new master spell of Air Magic is called exactly that and its gimmick is that it deals the base damage multiplied by number of enemies on the target tile to ''each'' enemy on that tile. It hurts a lot if there are three enemies. |
| 898 | * ChestMonster: Not chests themselves (those are not even trapped this time), but barrels ''can'' contain monsters to surprise you. |
| 899 | * ContractualBossImmunity: In ''X'', Boss monsters have a special Skill simply called Boss, which gives them several immunities. They are immune to several effects that are useful against ordinary monsters, like Mana Surge, Poison, Skull Crack, Knockback, & Immobilizing effects (like Icy Prison, Immobilize, Stun, and Time Stasis). |
| 900 | * CorruptChurch: In the first expansion to ''X'', ''The Falcon and the Unicorn'', [[spoiler:it is revealed that much of the Holy Inquisition is in [[BigBad Duke Owen's]] pocket, including at least one Angel.]] |
| 901 | * DevilInPlainSight: In ''X'', [[spoiler: The first NPC you meet is a seedy guy named Dunstan; clearly he's a criminal (he even admits it) but he seems generous enough, and you really wouldn't expect him, of all people, to be the BigBad, Erebos the Master of Assassins, which he is. (Well, truthfully, the real Dunstan and his fellow Raiders except one were killed at the hands of Erebos's minions while exploring the Tomb of a Thousand Terrors years ago; Erebos was able to assume his appearance and personality as a result.]] |
| 902 | * DirtyCoward: [[spoiler: Marcus Wolf spends most of his boss fight fleeing, leaving his guards to do the actual fighting. He then threatens to kill Ann Morgan once you have him cornered, however she manages to escape so he flees once more. When you finally catch him the battle is over after a single hit. If you have DLC installed and didn't finish him off there, you can take him away from his cell in Fort Laegaire as a hireling, but once Lev and Orna arrive to your help, he backstabs Rosalie and tries to escape with one of his griffins. It does not end well for him. Rosalie thankfully survives.]] |
| 903 | * EliteMook: Most enemies have stronger version that is even called 'Elite X'; how much stronger it actually is depends on the monster in question. |
| 904 | * EnemyMine: |
| 905 | ** [[spoiler:In ''X'', the Blackfang Marauders are a group of brutal highwaymen who ambush and rob travelers, and you'll likely grow to hate them before you get to Karthal. However, once you ''do'' get there, they prove the lesser evil, and you have to form an alliance with them to liberate the city from the revolutionaries.]] |
| 906 | ** They help you again (well four of them go) in the ''Falcon and the Unicorn'' scenario, where four Blackfangs with almost as much influence in the prison as the guards sell you supplies and tell you where to find Rosalie, [[spoiler: so long as you do them a favor by getting rid of an inmate they don't like.]] |
| 907 | ** The same place has also [[spoiler: Marcus Wolf (if you let him live, that is)]] who you can free to get a second hireling besides Rosalie, resulting in this kind of scenario. However, this bites you back later (well, almost). |
| 908 | ** [[spoiler:Also in ''X'', there's a small group of Dark Elves whom you meet in the Tomb of a Thousand Terrors who is willing to help you - one of whom is an assassin who claims she ''would'' kill you if someone had paid her too - because they have an enemy in common.]] |
| 909 | * EvenBadMenLoveTheirMamas: Mamushi, an evil naga Boss leading a cult you fight early in ''X'' curses you for "siding with [his] mother's slayer" before the battle starts. (And you ''are'', but more than likely, his mother was just as evil as he was.) |
| 910 | * FrameUp: ''The Falcon and the Unicorn'' opens with your party being arrested for a combination of the crimes [[spoiler:Erebos]] committed in the main campaign and things you technically did, but which were done under orders from the legitimate authorities and in circumstances that paints what happened in a different light. It later turns out that you are not the only victim. In your bid to escape, you find Rosalie, the NPC who gave you one of the first quests in the game, who knows what's really going down. |
| 911 | * GetBackHereBoss: The Boss of the Battle of Karthal stage, the boss is [[spoiler:Markus Wolf, who flees when he sees you. You have to fight your way past an army of Mooks and two other Bosses before you finally corner him; when he finally fights you, [[OneHitPointWonder he'll collapse with one hit]], and your mission is completed.]] |
| 912 | * HateSink: [[spoiler: Erebos is the BigBad but he has rad design and his evil doings are so over-the-top he avoids this trope. Marcus Wolf, on the other hand, is DirtyCoward and opportunist that leaves others doing the job for him, and won't refrain from WouldHurtAChild or WouldHurtAWoman when cornered. Which is probably a single way for him to hold his own, because he is down after one hit. If given second chance he rather backstabs a woman who only helped him instead of performing a HeelFaceTurn.]] |
| 913 | * InsurmountableWaistHeightFence: ''X'' seems to use this, unfortunately. In Sorpigal, a lot of buildings are inaccessible at first due to obstacles that would seem incredibly easy to bypass, like the exit being too narrow or a rope barricade that seems no more secure than a closeline. |
| 914 | * InteractiveNarrator: The unnamed female narrator in ''X'' tells the story of ''your'' characters in past tense, as you play it. |
| 915 | * KillAndReplace: [[spoiler:Erebos killed Dunstan and impersonated him for at least a decade.]] |
| 916 | * KnightTemplar: Uriel, who was so obsessed with wiping out [[TheLegionsOfHell the Faceless]] that he was willing to plunge the world in bloody, genocidal war just to accomplish this. [[spoiler:The villains of ''The Falcon and the Unicorn'' seek to finish what he started]]. |
| 917 | * LaResistance: This seems to have caused the crisis in ''X'', and it's a villainous example. After the chaos that Uriel caused in the war prior to the events, the young Empress Gwendolyn Falcon of the Agyn Peninsula introduced a set of reforms to stem the unrest (first and foremost, [[DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything separating the authority of the church from that of the state, seeing as blindly following an angel was a mistake that caused the war]]) that many of "the more conservative" nobles objected to, causing political upheaval and threats of succession, possibly leading to outright insurrection judging from the state of things currently. (In Sorpigal, you hear both sides of the issue, some citizens supporting the Empress, and others supporting the dissidents.) [[spoiler:As it turns out, the resistance is a side effect of the true threat, and there are two separate resistance movements, both led by an UnwittingPawn of the true threat. The leader of the first, less potent one is an officer who was driven mad by witnessing the true evil behind the plot, and believes that Gwendolyn has been replaced by a demon and that the Faceless are ruling the Peninsula; he even thinks your characters are demons when you confront him. His dying words when defeated and a journal you find give you a hint at the true evil behind it. The second, more organized revolutionary is Markus Wolfe, the leader of the Blackguards; by the time you get to Karthal, he will have control of the city, and the heroes' mission will be to ally themselves with loyalists and liberate it before focusing on [[TheManBehindTheMan the true evil behind it]].]] |
| 918 | * LightIsNotGood: |
| 919 | ** The FallenAngel Uriel in the backstory of ''X'', a psychotic KnightTemplar who tried (and nearly succeeded) in plunging the world into genocidal chaos. |
| 920 | ** The villains in ''The Falcon and the Unicorn'' DLC qualify too, all of them using Light magic; the Inquisitors talk like members of a crazed CorruptChurch while goading you. Probably because [[spoiler:The ultimate mastermind behind the scheme is a Justicar angel who's just as bad as Uriel was, and has the potential to cause just as much of a disaster.]] |
| 921 | * LuxuryPrisonSuite: Well, luxury as far as medieval fantasy setting goes. While most of prison cells contain next to nothing, the cell block of Perren's Thugs is very well supplied and thugs have even their stock of vine and a something like living room where they hang out. Perren himself has his room very well eqipped - the better room is only that of Caindale, the boss of the place. |
| 922 | * MamaDidntRaiseNoCriminal: This is the motivation for the Justicar Eileen giving you the "Lost Lambs" quest, with a twist. She knows her sons are criminals, actually, having been kidnapped years ago and corrupted into such a life, but as their mother, she can't bring herself to make the decision whether they deserve forgiveness or death; she wants ''you'' to make the decision after finding them. [[spoiler:It's [[GameplayAndStorySegregation up to the player what the Raiders do when they encounter each]], but it's clear that each of the three brothers have different attitudes towards what they are. Luke is the only one who genuinely seems sorry for everyone he's hurt, and there is one witness who can back that up; Kirk admits to being a murderer, and while he ''is'' sorry for the fate of his victims, he is ''not'' sorry he had to do so. Ripley, on the other hand, is a cruel man with a great deal of blood on his hands. (Even the Narrator says "He deserved to die" in the epilogue should you choose not to spare him.) While the choices of fates of Luke and Kirk won't affect much besides the conclusion, if you leave Ripley alive he will kill Eileen and get killed anyway in epilogue.]] |
| 923 | * TheManBehindTheMan: ''The Falcon and the Unicorn'' reveals that [[spoiler:Luke's bandit clan, which was a major source of problems in the first act of ''X'', was part of Duke Owen's plot to destabilize the Peninsula.]] |
| 924 | * MightAsWellNotBeInPrisonAtAll: In ''The Falcon and the Unicorn'' DLC, in order to escape from [[TheAlcatraz Fort Laegaire]], you need help from another inmate named Neela, one of the Blackfangs. Neela and her three henchmen have almost as much influence in the place as the guards, having almost complete control of the supply lines and access to information outside via their Naga allies. One of her henchmen predicts that in a year, Neela will ''own'' the place in all but name. |
| 925 | * MysteriousBacker: In ''The Falcon And the Unicorn'', at least one prison guard in Fort Laegaire sees the injustice of what happens, and gives you limited help (the keys to your cell, the location of someone who can give further help, and advice on how to avoid the other guards to get there) but not much else. |
| 926 | * NatureHero: If you have an orc character in your party in ''X'', his or her dialogue sometimes suggests this; they complain a lot when they're in towns, but are rather exuberant when outdoors, praising "Mother Earth" and "Father Sky". |
| 927 | * NiceJobBreakingItHero: [[spoiler: If you don't off Marcus Wolf during the Battle of Karthal then make the [[HorribleJudgeOfCharacter monumental mistake]] of freeing him from his cell in Fort Laegaire (as a hireling he is [[TheLoad bordeline useless]], not even saying that he threatened to kill Ann Morgan back in Karthal), once Lev and Orna arrive he will stab Rosalie in the back and try to run away on Lev's griffin (if you tried to interact with it you know [[TooDumbToLive how bad idea this is]]). It is implied that Rosalie ''does'' die from her wounds for a moment, but Orna the Angel ressurects her immediately afterwards, so thankfully for you, it is ultimately subverted.]] |
| 928 | * NoGearLevel: The first part of the Fort Laegaire stage of the ''The Falcon and the Unicorn'' DLC is like this. (And when you ''do'' get gear and are able to fight, it's makeshift stuff; you can't recover your regular gear until you leave the place.) |
| 929 | * NoGoodDeedGoesUnpunished: Said almost verbatim by Narrator at the beginning of [=DLC=]. |
| 930 | * NumericalHard: The Warrior Mode raises the stats of enemies and makes everything more expensive (from items to skill trainings to services). That's about it. |
| 931 | * OutlawTown: The Crag in ''X'' is a WretchedHive where pirates and orcs live; not all of them are bad, actually, and your mission is to convince the Pirate King to ally himself with the governor. [[spoiler:(It's easier than it sounds, as the Pirate King is actually the governor's estranged father, who everyone assumed was dead until you speak to him. The hardest part is traveling there.)]] |
| 932 | * ThePasswordIsAlwaysSwordfish: [[spoiler: Very literal example in ''X''. The password to get into the second level of the Skull Rock dungeon is "Swordfish".]] |
| 933 | * PointOfNoReturn: ''X'' has ''three'' situations like this; fortunately, in two of them, you get a warning first: |
| 934 | ** The first time is when [[spoiler:You enter the Tomb of Ten Thousand Terrors, an action that starts Act IV of the story. The entrance locks behind you, and there's no way out until you find the exit. (The storyline implies that this was a trap.)]] |
| 935 | ** The second time [[spoiler:Is before the Battle of Karthul stage. Once it starts, you cannot return to the Ayran Peninsula until you complete this stage ''and'' the next, in which you defeat Erebos. Fortunately, an NPC gives you a warning first, and there is a merchant you can buy supplies from after the battle.]] |
| 936 | ** The third and most brutal time [[spoiler:is the final part of the ''Falcon and the Unicorn'' DLC, where Rosalie takes you to Empress Falcon's Summer Palace to warn her. She does tell you that you won't be able to return once you leave, but there are no merchants, healers, or any other facilities here; other than what you bring, you have to rely on treasure you find to heal yourself.]] |
| 937 | * PowersThatBe: In ''X'', the gods worshipped in the Agyn Peninsula are the Dragons, gods who represent ElementalPowers. They are depicted as robed, hooded figures with angelic wings, holding swords. The six main Dragons are named Elrath (Light), Malassa (Darkness), Sylanna (Earth), Arkath (Fire), Ylath (Air) and Shalassa (Water). At various parts of the game, you have to visit the Elemental Forge and solve puzzles to gain the blessings of each Dragon, giving you abilities that let you access areas you weren't able to before. There is also a seventh Dragon named Asha, the Dragon of Order, worshipped as a Creator Goddess and believed to be the mother of the other six. There are altars depicting her three incarnations (the Maiden, the Mother, and the Crone) dotted around the Agyn Peninsula. If the Player Characters pray before the Maiden, their Stats and offensive scores improve; the Mother increases their Destiny Scores; and the Crone cures all negative status ailments. |
| 938 | * PredecessorVillain: In ''X'', the political crisis that has befallen the land is the result of a GreatOffscreenWar started by a FallenAngel named Uriel, explained by the {{Narrator}} in the cinematic opening sequence. Uriel [[VillainousLegacy actually is dead, so far as the game indicates]], and the main villain wasn't exactly ''inspired'' by him, but does indeed use (relatively, and on a smaller scale) similar methods and espouses similar beliefs. [[spoiler: Both of them want the Elder Wars between Angels and Faceless to begin anew, and both manipulate human politics towards that end -- Erebos just happens to be one of the few ''Faceless'' with that goal]]. |
| 939 | * RetGone: The Pirate King Crag Hack in ''X'' is suffering from a curse after insulting an undead sorcerer, which is ''supposed'' to do this to him; the doctor who examines him says it will not only kill him, it will cause him to disappear, and make everyone forget he ever existed. The heroes embark on a quest to gather ingredients for a cure, but it fails to work. Still, [[spoiler:Crag has the last laugh on the sorcerer; in the FinalBattle, he engages [[BigBad Erebos]] alone, dying on his own terms and wounding the demon enough for the players to kill him. Not only is Crag Hack remembered, he is remembered forever as a ''hero''.]] |
| 940 | * RiddleMeThis: ''X'' has ''lots'' of these. A lot of treasure chests have to be opened by answering riddles, and several challenges require solving puzzles in order to proceed. Quite frankly, these are ''everywhere''. (And some are ''very'' hard, especially because you have to type them out. The answer to one chest-riddle is [[spoiler:Palimpsest]]; the answer can be found by [[spoiler:listening to the gossip in Seahaven,]] but it isn't obvious. Many fans who figured it out swore it was a made-up word, but [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palimpsest as you can see here]] it is not.) |
| 941 | * SelfDeprecation: |
| 942 | ** In one scene in ''X''. If you speak to a guy in a tavern, he tells you he's trying to develop a card game that sounds a lot like Arcomage (see GameWithinAGame above) but he's not having much luck finding interest and doesn't even know what to call it. (Ubisoft had nothing to do with Arcomage, and in fact, could not have used it in ''X'' even if they had wanted to for copyright reasons. Whether this is a straight example of SelfDeprecation or a TakeThat depends on your point of view.) |
| 943 | ** The ''Forbidden Saga'' quest, also in ''X'', which is about finding nine books the Inquisition has deemed heretical and wants to burn, but which the quest giver wants to preserve. The books are poetic retellings of the first nine games in the series (the ninth ends with a comment about it being 'obviously unfinished') written by a Lord Caneghem... |
| 944 | * StarCrossedLovers: |
| 945 | ** In one rather poignant Side Quest, [[spoiler:an inquisitor tells you to spy on Lord Haart (the mayor of Seahaven), claiming he has suspicions he's hiding a dark secret. If you find out what the secret is, it's rather scandalous; his lover is a dark elf who saved his life years ago (dark elves are universally thought of as evil in these games). He does nothing to discourage you from exposing his secret at all, and whether you tell the inquisitor the exact truth [[ExactWords or manipulate the words a little]] to make his actions seem legit is up to you. (Lord Haart is also the primary Grandmaster trainer of the Sword skill, so reporting him to the inquisitor means you have to get training from a different and harder to find NPC.)]] |
| 946 | ** This is also the whole point of [[spoiler:the Fortress of Crows side quest, which takes place in a dungeon created by fan surveys on the Uplay website. An EvilSorceress has cursed the restless spirits of two lovers, keeping them apart eternally, and the heroes' mission is to defeat the villain and reunite them.]] |
| 947 | * TalkingTheMonsterToDeath: [[spoiler:Salvin, the mysterious elf that speaks to you once you enter The Tomb of Thousand Terrors and is the father of the elf woman that helps you escape from there is the second miniboss during the final assault on Karthal. You're presented with options why are you fighting Marcus Wolf. If you choose last option, 'for the little girl', he will realize his error and commit suicide. Crag Hack is not amused, to say the least.]] |
| 948 | * WorthyOpponent: [[spoiler:Erebos kickstarts the whole plot because he searches for one after Michael is defeated. In the end he sees one in your party.]] |
| 949 | [[/folder]] |
| 950 | |
| 951 | [[folder: MightAndMagic Duel of Champions]] |
| 952 | * ColorCodedItemTiers: The game divides the cards into five tiers: white are common, green are uncommon, blue are rare, orange are epic (often unique, meaning you can have only one copy in your deck) and purple are exclusively Hero cards. |
| 953 | * DefunctOnlineVideoGames: Shut down in October 31, 2016. Lasted for 4 years. |
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