Many of you as experienced the NWC 3D Dungeon Engine bugs. The outdoor area Engine being different from the inner area Engine, the bugs here are not the same. With the progression trough the version from MM6 to MM8 several has been fixed or reduced but not all. Several remains, example:

1. Hitting trough a door.

   This enables you to hit an opponent trough a door if you can see him a little on the other side (small gap between the door and the frame). This was a very frequent used bug in MM6. In MM8 much harder to use it since there are view places where this is possible. Also engine improvements has reduce the chance to use it.
   
   

2. Passing trough closed areas.

   Marvelous bug that was never fixed. If a part of a dungeon is locked by a wall or a door that is very thin (generally one polygon only) you can pass trough it. In most locked places of Escaton's Place this bugs can be applied.
   
   To use it, place your team as close as possible in front of the area that can move. Save your game. Load your savegame and press forward running. When the game start the team has some milliseconds before the moving part sets itself to the correct position. During his small time you can jump inside the restricted area.
   
   

3. The gaps between sections.

   This is one of the most annoying one. If the dungeon floor is not flat and the dungeon is on many levels that overlaps each other you have a big chance to fall trough a gap between the polygons. The result is that your team will often fall to the lower level, hurt themselves and have the risk to encounter a nice hostile group of monsters. In MM8 most frequently seen in the Plane of Earth resulting in your death.
   
   There is no way to avoid this bug and you need to save often, cast feather fall and jump over the polygon edges between each section (if you can see them).

Links

- Escaton's Place

Description

When arrive at the Abandoned Temple in Dagger Wound Island (yellow 1 on the map) and your enter the dungeon for the first time you will find a charming knight: Simon Templar. It's not Roger Moor or Val Kilmer but he is a Knight. Well as soon as he pops in front of your team he will ask if he can join you. You can accept or refuse.

The bug can be considered as minor but is annoying and surprising. If enter the dungeon in turn based mode (TBM) the game will make an error as soon as you have finished with Simon Templar and hired him, then it will return to the desktop.

Walkaround

It's not necessary to enter this dungeon in TBM since no monster will attack you directly. So avoid for once the TBM. In real time mode you can hire him or not without any trouble.

If you really want to enter the dungeon in TBM and Simon Templar asks to join you, answer "no" or press "ESC" nothing will happen. The result is that Simon Templar will not be added to your team and you will find him in the Adventures Inn.

If the game crashed, you can reload the auto-savegame and re-enter the dungeon again.

Links

- The Abandoned Temple
- The Region of Dagger Wound Island

Description

This has nothing to do with the natural ageing of your characters when you play. For the normal way of ageing see the related section in the links. No one exactly knows how this bug appears, but when you see it your character will have the same age as the current game year. Since the game play in the 12th century you will see your character become extremely old.

Effects

When you have this bug it's very easy to detect. Your character will be more then 1000 years old. This will have disastrous effects on its performances. All the attributes will drop by 90%, resulting in a weak and slow warrior. (See the related topics).

Walkaround

There is only one known solution to fix it: use a save game editor. Not patch or no other solution is known to fix this.

Links

- The Character's Age
- The MM8 Editors

Description

This is a very enjoying bug. When you open the first time a chest its content is generated according to a specific setting. Each chest has a set of objects and gold that will be put inside. These objects are taken form a treasures list.

Basically, when you open the chest the system generates items and try to place them inside this chest. If a place is found it is put inside, when it fails the item is erased. My speculation is that the system first start to put the standard items (according to the chest treasure level) or gold and then ends up with specific items. If the chest is full the last items will not be added.

This leads to the bug that some items you need are not present. The most famous problem occurs with the quest item: Eclipse. This shield being a specific item, it will be added at the end. This item is also big so don't always fit inside the chest. The result is that the shield is not present from time to time.

Walkaround

The best parade against this bug is to save the your game in front of the chest. Open it and reload if what you seek is not present.

Links

- Artifacts, Relics and Special Items
- Chest Filling
- Eclipse

Description

The Dragon class is a long topic of discussion. Many claims they are too powerful others claims from not. The Dragon class is powerful and even more powerful since it has several bugs.

Accuracy

For those who played with a dragon they know their great accuracy. Well actually the bug here is that accuracy is not taken in account. If the dragon shoot the hit will be 100% sure, if of course the monster is still in the trajectory. This makes the dragon the best might range attacker. You can test this out by playing in TBM (turn based mode) in a wide-open area and shoot on monsters from very far.

Primary Attack

The most powerful bug of this class is the base attack. The attack should be classified as Physical or Fire damage or both, actually none of these damage types is applied. It seems that the damage type was forgotten or the designers of the game forgot to change the damage type and its still typed as Energy damage (MM6 to MM8 has energy attack based monsters). This means that the dragon can kill any type of monster with its base attack. The best test is to kill the Lord Brinne's Guardians. They are supposed to be immune to all type of attacks.

Small Monsters

Another annoying bug is that the dragon is unable to hit small monsters in TBM. The dragon, for example, cannot hit the rats; the result is that the rat can kill a dragon whatever level he is. The only way to attack and hit small monsters is to fight in real time. You can try it out in the Smugglers cave in Ravenshore.

Conclusion

The two first bugs will dramatically unbalance the Dragon class making them extreme powerful, but sill not as powerful as Necromancers and Lich that remain on the first step of the podium.

Links

- The Dragon Class
- The Dragon Monster

Description

The Town Portal bug is another minor bug of the game. It does not crash or affect the game play but just enable a short cut if it happen at the beginning of the game.Basically it occurs from time to time that you can use the Town Portal to regions you never visited. It seems that Balthazar Lair is the most sensitive to this.

Activation

The trigger is not know with precision, but it is reported by Sil (of the Community) that the visit of Escaton's Palace without having entered the Balthazar Lair will activate the Balthazar Lair's fountain for the Town Portal spell.

Note: Visiting Escaton's Palace without having visited the Balthazar Lair is only possible when using the Xanthor bug.

Links

- Xanthor
- Entering Balthazar Lair with the TP the first time!

Description

Xanthor is the Wizard Advisor of Queen Catherine Gryphonhead and King Roland Ironfist. All three moves in from Erathia (MM7) to Ravenshore after you defeat the Regnan fleet and the council has acknowledged it. Queen Catherine and King Roland moves in the house 34 (see map) and Xanthor in house 37 (see map). Once you see Xanthor he will ask you to retrieve the 4 Elemental hearts to build the elemental key to open the Crystal.

This is was it supposed to happen in the basic story line. The trigger for building the elemental key seems to be:
- The 4 elemental hearts are in the inventory of your party AND,
- Xanthor is at home in order to make the key.
If these conditions are met, a show off cut scene with Xanthor is shown building the key. After that you are in possession of the key.

Unfortunately a programming bug forgot the second condition. So if you heave the 4 elemental hearts in your inventory the trigger will be activated and you will be in possession of the key after the cut scene.

Implication

This has HUGE implication on the main story line since you can actually reduce to game to:

1. Do only 3 main quests: Find the 4 Elemental Hearts, Escaton's Riddles and free the 4 Plane Lords.
2. You only need, in theory, to visit 5 regions (Dagger Wound Island, Ravage Roaming, Murmurwoods, Ironsand Desert and Ravenshore) as well as the 5 Planes. The regions access is only needed in order to enter the different Planes.
3. Totally ignore the story line.

Under this conditions it's possible now to make a blasting fast game of 21 days. Here is the best schedule you can follow :
- Day   1 (Monday) Dagger Wound Island (4 days) Ravenshore (by boat)
- Day   5 (Friday) Ravenshore (4 days) Ravage Roaming (by the Smuggler's boat)
- Day   9 (Tuesday) Ravage Roaming
- Day 11 (Thursday) Town Portal to Ravenshore (2 days) Shadowspire (by coach)
- Day 13 (Saturday) Shadowspire, Town Portal to Ravenshore (2 days) Alvar (by coach)
- Day 15 (Monday) Alvar (5 days) Murmurwoods (on foot)
- Day 20 (Saturday) Town Portal to Shadowspire (2 days) Ironsand Desert (by coach)
- Day 22 (Monday) Ironsand Desert
- Day 23 (Tuesday) End of the game before 9:00am.

Garrote Gorge and Regna are not accessed here. Shadowspire is used to acces faster Ironsand Desert and Alvar is used to access faster Murmurwoods.

Conclusion

Do not use this bug if it's your first time of playing, it will totally ruin your game and spoil it too much. If your are seeking extreme constraint games like Solo, Fast, Low XP or others, feel free to use it. It will not be considered as cheating by many since it's simply make use of a game "feature" as Christian (3DO Official Poster) likes to point out all the time.

Links

- City of Ravenshore
- Scoring in Might and Magic VIII
- Soloing in Might and Magic VIII