MM8: Starter classes and the optimal party (long)
No Neck Magurk
can only create one party member at the beginning and must rely on
pre-generated NPCs to round out your party. Having played (and restarted)
the game several times with a variety of characters up to level 18, I can
definitely say that the pregenerated characters do not hinder the game in
any way. On the starter island, you can pick up a pre-generated cleric,
necromancer, vampire and a knight almost immediately, and each of these has
skills, stats and equipment appropiate to their class. Heck, even the NPC
names are good. Anyways, once in your party, you have full control over
their development as if you had created them yourself.
As you advance in levels, you might want to experiment with different
classes. You can find higher level NPCs to swap into your party -- the NPC
taht you've given the boot is never "lost", he or she just goes back to the
Adventurer's Inn where they can be rehired. If you choose to neglect the
development of your starting NPCs in favor of your created character, ie.
with stat-boosting potions and barrels, etc, you can always swap party
members with the higher level NPCs that have been "fleshed" out with higher
stats and skills. One might argue that this takes away from the whole
role-playing experience -- you're just advancing one character if you choose
this strategy, not a whole party, but it is a valid way of completing the
game, I guess. I don't care for this method of playing MM8 myself; I'd
rather take those starting characters as far as they can go. And so, for
those of you who share my distaste for swapping party members back and
forth, I'd like to present my observations of the ideal party.
OK, there are five slots. It goes without saying that slot #5 is reserved
for a dragon that comes later. You might disagree and want to play with an
extra humanoid type NPC, but why? The power and the novelty of the dragon
makes it a "must-have" in any party. This leaves you with 4 slots.
Again, you can get a good Cleric and Necromancer right in the starting town.
The cleric is another must-have character, what with GM protection from
Magic only available to him. The Necromancer can cast those nifty Dark
Magic spells, so he's a must-have as well. Well, this leaves you with two
slots. You want a good fighter, and yeah, the knight fits the bill. Hmm,
it looks like your party is startinfg to look like the ideal party from MM7,
no? Knight, Cleric, Sorcerer. All you need is a thief-like character, with
decent fighting skills and you're set! This leaves you to create a Dark
Elf, (comparable to an archer/thief), or a Vampire (comparable to a
Paladin/thief). The Troll is really just the Monk from MM7 without the
magic -- a good fighter, but not quite as good as the Knight,, and the
Minotaur is a just a ranger that can't wear helmets or boots. You really
can't go wrong with the dark-elf or the vampire, though the vampire will
need a good item to help with disarming traps. So, a party of DARK ELF,
CLERIC, NECROMANCER, and KNIGHT, with the DRAGON added later is probably,
based on distrubution of skills, the best overall party you could have. Take
the vampire NPCin the 5th slot at the beginning if you wish, and swap with
the low-level minotaur you will find in Ravenshore, the second town. These
can serve as "throwaways" in slot 5 until you find a dragon!
The strategy isn't for everybody, admittedly, but I'm pretty sure that you
can get the maximum amount of chaacter buillding enjoyment as well as a
damned powerful party in the long run.
P.S. If you don't like the NPC portraits or voices, use Donovan Hawkins'
"MM8edit" utility to swap to something more amenable. I find that the
scruffy Necromancer Devlin Arcanus works much better for me with the other
*really* evil looking Necromancer portrait. The cutesy starter vampire
chick Elsbeth looks better with the other female vampire portrait, the one
that looks more like Elvira... I like Fred Talimere without a beard. You
get the idea! Using this utility to "customize" is the next best thing to
creating the character on your own, I suppose.
dann cutter
trying out various combos and these definately seem to be the best...
albeit, at various points you will have throw away characters or two...
Spoilers....
However, you are able to sadly fill all of these quite well with
Characters you find on your own... the Dark elf is easy to get, cauri
in the woods... mastered at all the needed levels... Stormlance in the
Mad Necromancer place... knight... Talshire in town... necromancer...
Cheveron what's his name.... Cleric...
I basically didn't find it useful to worry about developing other
characters... money was plentful and basically the high level
characters have the picks i would have anyways if given the time. SO I
concentrated on developing my own char. Sadly this leaves me with MY
dilemma... Basically, Dragon or No Dragon... To use these above gimmes,
you either have to sacrfice having a Dragon, or pick one of the above
classes to start as... I like, personally, having a Dragon. Some may
not, if not, then start as a Vampire. The 50 lvl chars will get GM in
most of the magic you need, which would take you forever. This leaves
you with only having to get some fo the simple stuff taken care of...
But if you want a Dragon, you have to sacrifice one of the above
classes. I dumped the Dark elf, since I enjoy being an archer, and was
a dark elf to start.
However, what I really want is to play as a Dragon... but I PROMISED I
would completely cheat in this game.
(I ruined both 6 and 7 for me by cheating... stupid... I started by
just giving my character a little bonus, then more, and finally made
them GM in everything at lv 60... then mm7 got boring and never
finished - as soon as they are a few years older I will replay without
the editors - btw, with the editors you cna change a bunch of dialogue
and other quest info in the game... a few easy edits and the writing
gets much better)
So... to start as a Dragon, or no... how could I appropriately handicap
myself until I could have gotten to the Dragon anyways...? BTW, where
do you find the rest of the dragons... I know the first and the last...
In article <8alo0c$ip0$1...@titan.uwinnipeg.ca>, No Neck Magurk
<p.ba...@nospam.uwinnipeg.ca> wrote:
...Edit for space...
Bryan J. Maloney
Actually, I've found that the knight is disposable--once you pick up the
dragon. I rather like the mix I have now:
Dark Elf (for merchanting)
Vampire (for levitation)
Cleric (for Light spells)
Necromancer (for Dark spells)
Dragon (for bashing things)
Of course, character party makeup suits play style, so YMMV.
--
"Before we judge the lobotomist of old too severely, we
should go to the nearest street grate and see how we are
dealing with our mental health crisis today."
Gil-galad
> CLERIC, NECROMANCER, and KNIGHT, with the DRAGON added later is >probably,
> based on distrubution of skills, the best overall party you could >have.
in my opinion, the strongest party would be 3 NECROMANCERS and 2
DRAGONS. i know you're going to point out the lack of healers, and extra
miscellaneous skills, but when it comes to dealing out some massive
damage, this is definitely the way to go, baby. the dragons with GM
ability use their wings to push back all melee combatants, the necros
can cast some awesome dark spells... i cant think of any monster that
can fight back. this is the party im gonna pick after i finish my first
game.
Christoph Nahr
Maloney) wrote:
>Actually, I've found that the knight is disposable--once you pick up the
>dragon. I rather like the mix I have now:
>
>Dark Elf (for merchanting)
>Vampire (for levitation)
>Cleric (for Light spells)
>Necromancer (for Dark spells)
>Dragon (for bashing things)
That's my party, too. Dark Elf is probably the most munchkinny
character to start out with but I was sick of playing elves so I
picked a vampire instead, the female one with the least disgusting
face. (That's the way to pick character portraits in MM8 -- choose
the one that's least ugly!)
I didn't take the Murmurwoods elf either, I picked the (only) one in
Alvar that would join me. Frankly, starting out with a vampire is a
bit of a pain because I had to initially build up skills that other
party members can do much better -- except that they aren't available
from the start. My vampire was expert merchant and disarm traps, but
the dark elf could GM both. Same for ID item and the dragon. So from
a powergamer point of view, you waste a lot of skill points in the
beginning because the "ideal" NPCs aren't there yet.
On the other hand, this creates a much more credible adventure as
opposed to a strategy/puzzle game of optimal skill point distribution!
--
Chris Nahr (christo...@uumail.xxde, remove xx to reply by e-mail)
Please reply either on Usenet or by e-mail but not both!
Visit http://uuhome.de/christoph.nahr/ for Might & Magic information
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Christian Seitz
The best party is Cleric, Nerco, Dragon, Dragon, Dragon. Dragons are by
far the best class in MM8. They have more HP and do more damage than
a knight + the can cast a few spells. The Necro is only need for town portal
and quick mass death with armagedon. The cleric is usefull with his
protection and healing magic.
Christian Seitz
No Neck Magurk
Necro, Dragon, Dragon, Dragon. I guess I meant that a Knight, DarkElf (or
Vampire), Cleric, Necro, and Dragon would be the most versatile in terms of
skills and being able to use virtually every class of item. You have a Spear
GM, Bow GM, Dagger GM, Sword GM, Mace M, Staff M, Leather GM, Plate GM,
etc, in fact the only thing you don't have in this party is GM Axe, but who
cares? Someone in your party can use just about every relic or artifact or
weapon or armor or shield!
Yeah, the 3 dragons can surely deal out damage like nothing else, but you
can't use much of the stuff you find....
Christian Seitz wrote in message ...
Trebor A. Rude
So consider this an exercise in which party to use until you can get
three dragons in your party. You can get one pretty fast, yes, but you
have to kill (or, at least, have Master Air so you can sneak through) a
bunch of dragons to get any of the others (one in Shadowspire, one in
Ironsand, one on Regna).
But, if you do go the KCSD and one other route, I'd make that other a
Vampire, not a Dark Elf. Why? The Vampire has the levitate ability,
which can be extremely useful at times (and isn't available in any other
way, shape, or form), and is a backup Self caster (with intrinsic
regeneration, no less), which is always a good idea. What advantages
does the DE have? GM Merchant, Bow, Disarm, elemental masteries, and the
Darkfire spell. GM Merchant isn't such a big deal, as gold is quite
plentiful and the Cleric can get Master in it (wish that mastery was a
little more effective, though). And there's always the Enchant Item
spell, and the "swap the characters" trick. GM Bow is nice, but the
Dragon has a great ranged attack, so it's not too much of a loss. GM
Disarm is again nice, but Heal is cheap, and Dragons and Knights have a
lot of HP anyway. And there's always Disarm bonus items and the Earth
spell Telekinesis. Giving the extra elemental masteries seems kinda
harsh, but I almost never used my DE's elemental magics in my recently
completed game. Of course, by not having good
Disarm, you might have a lot more use for Telekinesis, but like I said,
Heal is cheap. Finally, we have the Darkfire spell. This is a great
spell, and can do a good deal of damage to a single target, but the
Vampire has Flying Fist which can suffice, even if it's not as good.
In short, whereas the Dark Elf has a lot of nice skills, they can all
be taken care of by other means, and the Vampire's levitate ability
can't be (Come to think of it, a lot of Heal spells could theoretically
substitute, but I don't know how much good that would do you in the
Castle of Fire. Personally, I'm a terrible bridge-walker, even when
using Jump to avoid most of it). Not to mention the Vampire has
Mistform, which could theoretically be useful in certain situations,
such as the battle for the Heartstone on the Plane of Earth (pity I
forgot all about it until it was a moot point).
Now, the question is, which do you make your starting character? Since
both the CSDDD and KCSVD options have Clerics and Necros in them, one of
those would seem best, so you can go either way as you see fit (or morph
one into the other, more likely). For me, this choice would go to the
Cleric, no question, simply because it would mean I could choose the
Necros for the alliance, then trade up to Taleshire, saving me the
trouble of hunting down the Elemental GMs. :)
--
Trebor A. Rude
tre...@bwn.net
Registered Linux User #89308
http://counter.li.org/
