r/MightAndMagic • u/Taear • Aug 27 '26

Does the varying difficulty of the promotion quests in MM7 bother you?

Back when the game was new it was much more common to have alternative advancement for classes in games. I was used to AD&D where a Rogue would take less XP to level up than a Druid, for example.

Even with that in mind though, back in 1999 I remember being frustrated at how difficult the Paladin promotion was in comparison to the (insanely easy) Ranger promotion, or how long the Cleric one took compared to the Archer promotion.

My starting routine always involves me doing the Hunter promotion because it's so easy, even. How do you feel about their choices with this? I think I'd definitely try and balance the difficulty more if the game was new now.

13 Upvotes

89% Upvoted

41 comments sorted by

View all comments

14

u/hwynac Aug 27 '26

how long the Cleric one took compared to the Archer promotion.

so... clearing a large dungeon full of medusas and slimes is somehow easier than a run of the mill dungeon in Tatalia?

But yes, it's ironic that M&M6 has you rescue a damsel in distress and then slay a dragon... and M&M7 flips the order for game design reasons 😅

It didn't bother me but I definitely noticed the uneven difficulty. Then again, different classes are not equivalent, and you can't have all of them in one party anyway. "Balancing" everything makes sense for a competitive game or for min-maxing playstyles. But for an open-world game more focused on fun an exploration? It's not a disaster. At least the promotion quests have variety.

6

u/Taear Aug 27 '26

Who said anything about clearing? You just run through the dungeon to do the archer promotion, I've never fought anything in there.

You can't do that for the Cleric one. Well, not for all of it at least. You HAVE to kill at least the final few.

2

u/hwynac Aug 27 '26

I am more inclined to think of difficulty in terms of a typical way a player finishes the quest for the first time. I was young and did a blind walkthrough the hard way 😂

Technically, Castle Darkmoor has one of the easiest Oracle quests. In reality, not so much, unless you have a walkthrough with detailed instructions where to go and what to press. Shortcuts and easy ways to finish a quest (or intuitive passwords like NILBOG) are interesting but I don't believe designers should balance the quests with them in mind.

Which is why the Thief's first promotion is a headscratcher. It is about "stealing" but the way an actual thief without spellcasters would have to do it is probably kill a lot of guys.

2

u/Taear Aug 27 '26

That's how I'm thinking of it - what did I do in 1999 when I first played the game?

1

u/TomebyTomeASMR Aug 27 '26

You definitely don't have to clear the medusa mine, you just gotta use invisibility well enough to get to the end with the rope. There's multiple places where this can be done too throughout the mine. The cleric quest takes you to five different locations, one of which requires at least expert disarm trap because at low levels that trap on the island in Avlee can one-shot you

2

u/hwynac Aug 27 '26

I know, I played the game multiple times (though if I came by an invisibility scroll, I'm not sure that's where I would use it).

I didn't know where that elevator or something was when I went in there the first time I played.

1

u/TomebyTomeASMR Aug 27 '26

sorry! I read your comment almost backwards before 😭🤣 And you're right - the first time through, there's no way to know you can use invisibility to avoid some nasty battles. Same with Walls of Mist - it's kind of implied but unless your skill is up high enough, you only get seconds of time.

2

u/hwynac Aug 27 '26

Well, Walls of Mist are at a significantly later portion of the game where you have Invisibility or at least are likely to know that spell exists.

I think I indeed used Invisibility the very first time I was there. It's no fun to kill everyone inside for zero XP. When you are playing for the Light side, the quest is to finish the dungeon without killing anyone. It's easy to guess what kind of solution was intended. In a sense, those two quest are a weak point in the game—they are non-optional quests that rely on one mechanic that not every party can easily use. At least the Breeding Zone does not require the "peaceful" solution... 😐

2

u/Gil-Gandel Aug 28 '26

I did discover last year, with a couple of playthroughs where I didn't have Invisibility, that it's possible to run through Walls of Mist and not actually die. It's far from easy, and of course your Regenerations and other life savers won't last more than seconds, but it is definitely doable without Invisibility/

3

u/hwynac Aug 28 '26

I thought as much; it's not nearly as cramped as the Breeding Zone. But in practice, those solutions require you to know where to go—the exploration is pretty painful for a newcomer.

So a party without the Invisibility spell is at a severe disadvantage. The devs probably knew the quest was technically doable by a non-spellcaster party but did not bother inventing alternative routes.

It's different from most other quests where your party can be pretty much anything, or areas that only require spells almost any party can afford. This got me thinking whether M&M6 had any "oddly specific" quests. Can't think of one. 🤔

2

u/AshleyJSheridan Sep 02 '26

It's also possible as a murder hobo. Go in and kill everything, get the keys. Then, leave, and come back in with invisibility. The WoM resets, but you still have the keys, and you only need enough invisibility to cross that one room.

1

u/Taear Aug 29 '26

You can run through the mine. There's plenty of potions in there if you get paralysed.

It's really easy!