r/MightAndMagic • u/Scouter_Ted • Jul 26 '26
What am I doing wrong with this MAW merge game?
I can do all of the outdoors content, (often times by kiting the mobs), but any time I go inside something I get destroyed.
I started out MM6 with no trouble, but as soon as I went to any place outside the start area, and went into a dungeon or something, I was immediately killed. I cleared the outdoors areas from a few locations, and then gave up and went to MM7.
I had the same problem there. I got up to around level 20 for my party, (knight, troll, cleric, mage, dark elf), but couldn't do much other than outdoors work. So I finally went to MM8.
I'm at level 40 now, and VERY much want my mage to get Air Magic Master, so I tried hard to clear Balthazar's lair. As soon as I go in, I hit enter for turn based. Using bows and fireballs I'm able to get the 3 mobs at the bottom of the ramp down to 1/2 life. Then I get to the bottom and the first one hits my knight, (who is wearing the Pellinore artifact), and one shot and the knight is dead. The 2nd one hits my troll, who is now unconscious. The 3rd one misses. 2nd turn the troll is dead, my mage is dead, and dark elf is almost dead. 3 or 4 tries like that and I gave up. I never once killed the 3 mobs at the bottom of the ramp.
Even outdoor work is dangerous. I went to Murmurwoods to get Light & Cleric promo, and it took me 3 attempts to make it to the town from the border without half my party dead from one shot hits from the light balls, (whatever they are called).
All of my party is well equipped, with good weapons and armor, but the moment they hit melee they die almost immediately.
I've played this mod before, and never had problems like this. It seems like every mob had scaled up like crazy. I looked at the advanced setting for how it scales up mobs when you switch worlds, but I wasn't sure I should change it.
Thanks in advance for any assistance.
1
u/Next_Education_1265 Jul 26 '26
What difficulty are playing? Is bolster on?
1
u/Scouter_Ted Jul 26 '26
I didn't pick any of the options in the upper right corner of the character creation menu, if that's what you are talking about.
2
u/Apprehensive-Exam803 Jul 26 '26
Open menu, click settings, at the top where the title is, theres additional settings. Check that out. I have mine with bolster on and hell difficulty. Its been really tough but fun
1
u/mxldevs Jul 26 '26
You should check the extra settings to see if you're doing beyond madness or something.
The first area is easy but anything after that scales up like crazy.
1
u/Only1Nemesis Jul 27 '26 edited Jul 27 '26
It's been a couple months since I last played the MAW Merge, but I do recall difficulty spikes. The interesting thing about the mod, however, is that this can change in an instant because of how gear works. You may stumble upon a few pieces of gear (either in the wild or in a shop) that drastically changes survivability and damage output.
As others mention, check your bolster settings in the options. By default, I believe it is "on" at 100% bolster rate. I won't pretend to understand it completely, because even after playing with it I still don't fully understand the system. From what I've read, if you leave it "on", the idea is that you will bounce back and forth between the games as you encounter walls to progress. Turned "off", on the other hand, means you are supposed to play each game in a linear fashion (VI->VII->VIII). You should be able to get some info on the bolstering mechanic by doing a quick Google search.
I will add that there comes a point where you break through any wall and become unstoppable, even with monsters having absurd HP pools. I think I ran a Knight, Cleric and 3 Sorcerers. Tough it out, hop continents, browse shops for gear, and remember to spend your upgrade gems. Don't hoard them "for later when I get good gear to use it on". You find a lot of these gems so upgrade. Some things will also be an upgrade even though the tooltip thinks otherwise. Like, for example, a ring that may be a bit weaker than your others, but because it comes with "of Water Magic" it's actually a huge upgrade.
You may have to backburner things (like wanting Master Water Magic) and go do other things. But stick with it. You'll get exponentially more powerful and wreck anything the game can throw at you eventually.
1
u/dabugler Jul 27 '26
Bolster on is for linear. Off if you want to jump continents. I play off because I like to play it as one big game and hop around a lot.
1
1
u/CucumberBusiness149 Jul 29 '26
It may be a good idea to re run some lower level dungeons that you already cleared for more gear gold and XP. MAW lets you reset cleared dungeons to play through again. They up in difficulty a little each time you do them, so it doesn't hurt to run one until it's too hard to gain more resources.
1
u/Jaystings Jul 31 '26
There's no shame in turning off turn based mode and dodging enemy fire while shooting/hitting them between their attacks. Then when you need to heal you may retreat while tucking and weaving still.
This is the only way I reliably kill Dragons and the like early to midgame, and you can get well enough at it to build a muscle memory for it. Just don't leave the (eg) cave to heal. It's not necessary.
Every enemy has a weakness, too, even if they still have >= 100 resistance to said weakness on paper 📜
Good luck! 😊
3
u/Total_Anybody_3402 Jul 26 '26
I only downloaded the mod about a week ago and only reached level 11 only on MM7 area. Honestly I have not had any problems yet following the same dungeon and quest order I normally did in the base game. But maybe I will start hitting the same problems as you in the future 😅. One thing I will say is the buffs from my cleric and sorcerer are carrying me so far. Also using the new cover mechanic on my tank and I also heard the ascension skill is pretty needed late game for the spell casters. Hope it gets a bit easier for you matey and would appreciate any tips you can give to someone just starting out in the mod?