Bugs
Might & Magic VI has a few critical bugs that undermine combat as it was intended. You've already played the game, maybe more than once. It's a great game -- and it should have been even better.
The good news is that Bob Young, the head programmer for Might & Magic, has tracked down these bugs and made sure that they won't be in MM7. I've been told that NWC would write a patch for MM6 only if they could fix the file corruption problem -- at which time they would also address these other problems. The save game routines have been entirely re-written for MM7.
These are the bugs that affect combat and some ways that you can cope with them.
1) The Turn-Based Attack Time Bug
I first dubbed this bug The Magic-User's Bug because it is triggered by the use of Magic. It turns out that most actions with a Recovery Time will also trigger it. Here's the problem.
Any character who uses a Bow, Spell, Potion, Wand or Scroll will no longer have their Attack Time correctly implemented. These other actions cause the game to use the Recovery Time of that action instead of the correct Recovery Time from use of equipped Weapons.
This is especially serious beacause lost time means lost opportunity. One of the major objectives of the game is to develop your characters and their inventories so that they have lower Attack Times. This bug means that most of our efforts concerning Speed, Weapons, Armor, Shield, Skill, Ranking, and Enhancements are pointless.
This bug corrupts the game engine. If you do something that triggers the bug, then re-load or load another game, the character will still be afflicted. The corruption only clears after you close the program and re-load from disk. The save files are not affected.
The bug only affects Turn-Based play. Some people have noticed that their characters deal more Damage in Real-Time mode; this is why. It can be exploited if you're using slow Weapon combinations or have a big Armor Penalty -- but only if you don't use Spells with long Casting Times.
This doesn't mean that everyone should play Real-Time. As we'll discuss in the next part, there is another bug that affects both TB and RT play. The effects of that bug are overridden by this one. The TB player won't get the full benefits of their efforts, but game play can still be fun. Most TB players will find it easier to live with this Bug if they take some of the following special steps.
a) Don't use Weapons directly after using a Spell with a long Casting Time. A classic example would be casting Day of Protection. Any Attack your character made after that would carry the same 500 time unit Recovery Time -- until you reset it with a different non-Weapon action. Have your character use a Bow or cast something with a reasonable Casting Time before using a Weapon.
b) Don't have characters mix Weapon combat with other Recovery-based actions. Keep your strong Weapon-using characters free of the bug by avoiding use of Bows and Magic. They can have Spells and Scrolls cast on them, just not by them. They can't drink Potions or use Wands. You can keep this up for quite a while with one or two characters if the others are doing all the other work.
c) If you're in a situation where you want to rely solely on your strength in Weapons in the way the game intended, then you'll want to do the following: Drink your Potions and Cast your Supporting Spells, save and exit the game, then re-start the program, load your game and get ready to rumble.
2) Armor Penalty Corruption
MM6 has problems with corrupted save files. If it gets too bad it will crash your game.
One type of corruption probably afflicts everyone's game by the time our characters reach level 40 -- and possibly much sooner. It shows up first as distortion in one or more character's Armor Penalties. Subsequent occurances are cumulative. Characters may temporarily acquire grossly distorted Armor Penalties. The corruption will eventually settle down, leaving all characters, Armors and Rankings affected All Armor will carry a Penalty equal to its Penalty at Normal Ranking.
In other words, almost all benefits of Ranking disappear. The lone exception is that advanced Ranking in Leather will still reduce the Shield Penalty.
Credit for bringing this bug to my attention goes to Darksaying, an occasional poster on the 3DO board. He claimed that the corruption is not as pervasive in version 1.0. I can neither confirm nor deny this, though I can tell you that a corrupted ver 1.1 save file will yield the same false Armor Penalties if played in ver 1.0.
I have been unable get either the game or an editor to correct this corruption. However, if you typically play with the Turn-Based Attack Time Bug active, then Armor Penalty corruption really doesn't matter to you. On the other hand, if you're fighting in Real-Time mode this might be a real concern. Here are four different strategies for coping with it.
a) Don't wear body Armor at all during phyical combat. Instead, concentrate on items "of Defense." Use the Stone Skin Spell (raises Armor Class by 5 plus 1 point for each level of Skill in Earth Magic) and the Supreme Protection Potion (+20 to AC). These are all cumulative.
b) Wear only Leather, and only when you really need the extra Armor Class points to avoid being Hit. A really potent Enchantment on the Leather would help justify the 10 time unit Penalty.
c) If you're not using a two-handed Weapon, use a Shield. With Master Ranking and the best Shield you'll be able to boost your AC by 57. (The next best Shield can boost your AC by 54 and is much easier to Repair.) Advanced Ranking in Leather will still reduce the Shield Penalty. However, since that would gain you only 10 time units at most, you might want to put your Skill points elsewhere.
d) If you really feel ripped-off by this bug, edit yourself some rings "of Defense" with Armor Class boosts equal to the strength of your body Armor, then don't wear the Armor. You'll probably also want to edit up something else if your Armor carried an Enchantment. Let your conscience be your guide.
3) The Haste and of Recovery Bugs
The Haste Spell and Potions were supposed to reduce Casting Times. They don't, and this is true for all versions in both Real-Time and Turn-based modes. They do correctly lower Attack and Shoot Times by 25 time units, though you'll need to save the game and re-start the program to enjoy all the Attack Time benefits in Turn-Based mode.
Items of Recovery didn't work in version 1.0, so NWC tried to fix it in version 1.1. They only partially succeeded. Such items do reduce Attack, Shoot and Casting Times by 25 time units, but only in Real-Time mode. There will be no items of Recovery in MM7.
This is especially unfortunate since this Enchantment is the only way to reduce a character's Casting Times aside from improving the character's Ranking in the various schools of Magic. The only remedy is to learn to play in Real-Time mode.
4) Clock Discrepancies
The time of day advances at different rates in Turn-Based and Real-Time modes. This was not intentional. Time flies about twice as fast in TB as it does in RT. As noted earlier, a minute of game time takes about 114 time units in RT mode and only about 57 in TB mode. If you're racing against the clock, you might do better in RT mode.
However, there are some buggy fluctuations in the rates. Sometimes you'll find that a minute of game time will take 104 time units in RT mode. If you re-load or enter a new place (a province or dungeon) you may find that a minute of game time takes about 50 time units in TB mode. I haven't found both discrepancies present at the same time, but who knows?
The nod goes to Lesley1Ann of the AOL MM6 forum for noticing this quirk.
© John C. Macaulay (Bones)
May 4, 1999
