Description

Like in real life, time is ticking. The world of Jadame is not an exception and time is also present. And when you speak about time you think about age. Each character of the game has a certain age. When the time passes your characters will become older.

For simplification the designers of the game has fixed a default birth date for each character. This date is the 1^st of January. Each character has one a birth year that is used to define the age of each of tem.

Causes and Effects

The age of your characters will affect the attributes in good or bad. When you build up your character, boosting the attributes is always one of the goals you seek. But in the mean time you can have external conditions that will modify the attributes as well.

Aging is one of the most difficult modifiers to avoid and is always applied a positive increase (you cannot become younger!). Each character has a base age (his normal age) and a current age that is always equal or higher then the base. This age can be modified by different sources. These are the different ways to age:

1. When you play your character will age according to the time spend in the world. This is a natural process and affects your base age only.
   
   
2. Some monsters have a special attack that will increase your age as well. Most of the time undead monsters have this capacity. This will affect your current age. There are not such monsters in MM8.
   
   
3. Casting Divine Intervention (Light GM spell) will add 10 years to your current age each time you cast it. This will affect your current age only.

When your character ages, each attribute is modified according to a table. The following table takes as base 100 point in each attribute and the result in what you will see on the characters attribute screen. For example an intelligence of 100 at 55 years will result in a 150 value. Yes you become smarter when you get old :).


On the characters attributes screen the increased values appears in green and the negative effects in yellow.

If your current age is higher then your base age you can revert the process. In MM8 only one way is possible: drink one black potion of Rejuvenation. Your current age will be reset to your base age.

The only benefit of aging is for pure spell casting classes that don't relay on physical attacks to survive. The only classes that can take a serious benefice out of it are the Necromancer or the Cleric classes.

Links

TELP's Attribute Analysis

Description

During your journey trough the world your team members can be affect by a condition. A condition will always affect the potential of your character and mostly its attributes. A condition is only applied to one character at time and does not influence the others.

Conditions effects are cumulative. This means you can be weak, poisoned and cursed at the same time. In other to restore yourself you must apply a cure to each of them. Character's condition is cumulative with the aging, but aging will be applied first.

Causes and Effects

The causes influencing the character's condition are multiple. Lack of sleep or food can make him/her weak. Several monsters have the special ability to have a leap attack that influence the condition such as Death, Eradication or others.

In standard conditions is Good. In this condition each attribute is expressed at 100%. Some conditions will not affect the attributes but other parameters:


Unconsciousness/Death: If a character's hit point fall to or below zero, the character becomes unconscious or dies. Death results when a character's hit points are reduced too far below zero.

The following table show the conditions effects on the Attributes and the percent change of each of those values.


On the characters attributes screen the increased values appears in green and the negative effects in yellow.

To set your condition back to Good you need to visit a Temple, caste a curative spell (according to the condition) or drink a curative potion related to the condition. Just resting in an Inn or in a camp outside will only heal Weak and Drunk conditons.

Quirks

It is interesting to note that Insane condition is very good for pure Might classes. Since you don't need spell point, Intelligence and Personality are not important and the gain on the other attributes is substantial.

Another quirk is that if all your team members are under a "no action" condition the game considers it as death. Even if your entire group has full hit points. This implies, in a solo game, that unconscious condition results as death even if you have regeneration.

The Drunk and Zombie condition do not appear in MM8, even though the graphics for them exist.

Links

TELP's Attribute Analysis

Description

One of the major points in RPG games in to make progress your characters (team). In order to let them progress: you need to play with them. Progression trough the story will bring them experience. In RPG games, experience is expressed with point (Experience points or XP). In Might and Magic each character has a certain amount of experience (see each character state screen).

The XP awards sources are different according to the different activities in the game. Three major groups rule the XP awards: Quests, Promotions and Killing. Each group has its specific way of rewarding and depends of your team.

In Might and Magic VIII you have a team from 1 to 5 characters. Some rewards are proportional to the number of characters in the team other not. Let's have a more detailed view...

Experience Point Awards

Quests

When you complete a quest your current team receives experience points. This amount is fixed for each character and for each quest. Each member of the group receives the same amount. The health condition of the character makes no difference. Even postmortem a character gets his reward.

For example if the reward for a quest is 10'000 XP, each member will receive 10'000 XP. If the group has 1, 2 or 5 members the reward is still 10'000 XP for each member present for the award. If you change team members and go back later, there is no additional award given to them.

There is one known exception: Stanley's Pirate Treasure Quest awards only 15'500 XP to the character that talks to the quest-giver. It is important to use 'you' (the main character), and not a Hired NPC, when asking for the award from this quest. Also the quest award is given immediately to the character that asks for the quest, if you have discover the treasure before the quest.

In the whole game you can receive:

The Priest quest gives a better reward then the Necromancer alliance. This gives an approximation of the experiences points you can receive for your main character.

Promotions

The class promotion is done in the form of a quest, but with some special computation. When a class promotion quest is completed, there is always an XP reward, even if there is no character of that class in your team at the time. A single, total award is divided among the number of characters in your team at the completion point. If anyone in the team gets the Promotion as well, that character gets a bonus.

For example, in a team composed of Necromancer and a Cleric that does the Lich promotion, only the fresh promoted dead bony corpse (here the Lich) receives a bonus. The base award for the Promotion is divided equally between the team-members present (NOTE - this bonus is not awarded to qualifying characters if you go back later).

All promotions quest have as reward 25'000 XP as base per character (assuming you have a 5 character team) and a bonus for the actual Promotions of 10'000 XP. There is one exception - the Knight promotion. In this case, the Promotion is worth 35'000 XP, and the bonus is 15'000 XP. There is an extra bonus given to all members of the team of 5'000 XP from Blazen Stormlance's daughter, Leane Stormlance. The Knight Promotion Quest can be completed without talking to her first, but the quest says to talk to her and then Don Quixote.

The Promotion Quests are unbalanced in terms of complexity compared to reward. The condition of a character has no influence on the reward distribution. Even if the character is dead they will still be promoted... and they will still be dead ;).

If your main character completes each quest alone (Dismiss the other characters before getting the award), the total XP amount to:


If your main character is a Knight add another 5'000XP. This 'Dismiss and Grab' technique boosts the final score by about 840'000 above the base.

Killing

This is another fun element of the getting experience. Many parameters are used to calculate the experience points you get when you accidentally slain a monster. Each monster has a base point-value (experience given). Each member of the team present when the monster is returned (cf. Blade Runner) gets a portion of the points. The points awarded to each character is uplifted a percentage based on their Learning skill.

Two important things here are the condition of your character and the learning skill. A member of the team will only receive XP if he/she can do actions. A dead, eradicated, sleeping, etc condition will automatically disable the award. Weakness, Insanity, Cursed etc. conditions on characters are still active and still share the prize.

In equation this gives you:

Where P is the base point value for the poor dead monster, n the number of active characters and a the learning skill factor. A learning bonus of 12% implies an a factor equals to 1.12.

Get a Necromancer/Lich with Master Dark skills as early as possible. Armageddon can clean an outdoor area very quickly but there are limitations - 3 times a day at Master, 4 times a day at Grand Master. The inner regions - Dagger Wounds Island, Ravenshore, Shawospire, and Alvar can be cleaned with three; Garrote Gorge (except for the Dragon Pets), Murmurwoods, Ironsand Desert, and Ravage Roaming require four (not completely cleaned but close). The three outdoor Planes require five or more. If you have two Necromancers with Master Dark, take the combination to the Planes and use everything you have.

It is difficult to evaluate the number of monster XP available in the game if you kill every single living entity (including Villagers and friendly guards). In a 'typical' game the average for your main character, in a team of five Adventurers, is 1'300'000 XP. The learning skill rises as points are applied.

If your Primary character rises to a Learning skill of level 10 Grand Master, you can achieve about 2'000'000 XP from the Killing by the end of the game - even if you have a Five-Member team.

Levelling Calculator

If you really want to know how much XP you need to level up a character to a certain level, here is a tool you need. You can choose between the level you want to reach giving you the minimum XP need or for a given amount of XP what is the level you can reach.


For the one interested in the algorithm to compute the XP amount out of a level this is a code written in JavaScript:

function levelToXP (level)
{
   return 500*level*(level - 1);
}

And of course the counterpart, the algorithm to compute level out of the XP amount:

function XPToLevel (xp)
{
  return Math.floor(Math.sqrt(0.25 + xp*0.002) + 0.5);
}

Conclusion

Experience is vital for your characters in order to evolve. Once you have enough experience they can train to gain new abilities. In Might and Magic the final score is a direct equation based on the Experience, the more you get the higher the score will be.

Links

- Scoring in Might and Magic VIII

Description

Reputation is basically the general estimation in which the public holds a person. The better a reputation is the better the public is willing to deal with the person. This can have many influences one the game.

Reputation is present in the game since Might and Magic VI. The implementation has been various trough the games, but always without great success. Only Might and Magic VII was able to manage something acceptable (if you played the Light side). If reputation makes it back in Might and Magic IX it is to hope that it will be well implemented else scrap it!

In Might and Magic VIII the reputation is still present but useless. You cannot change it. In fact the reputation can be seen on the general team state screen but has not effect and is not activated. It is an old remains of the previous games.

Effects

Well reputation has difference effects. First the prices of the services and goods in a town or a village. The better you match the reputation the town folk likes (it's generally a good reputation), the better the services and the prices of the goods will be. Second point, if you are in a good town and you made evil acts the local authorities will throw you in Jail for a certain period. Finally reputation can influence to willing of the NPC you encounter. For example they will be more pleased to give you information or quest to perform.

Causes

Your reputation will vary with time. Each time you do an action it will change, for the good or for the worth. We find as modifier killing a peasant, commoner, guard or other NPC that walks around. Donations to a temple can grandly influence your reputation and most important perform a quest will be most of the time very rewarding (for good or worth).

Generally your actions will result in a better reputation but some actions will make it worth. Killing innocents will not bring an aura of glory on you but making a local town happy can be very rewarding.

The Game

Since the game does not make use of this feature you are free to make donations to a church and then kill the priest to get your money back. No one will care! So happy peasant killing...

Quirk

When you do donations to a temple you get not a better reputation but if you give enough the priest will caste a good spell on you. Most of the time "Hour of Power" (Light) or separate protective spells (self-magic), this depends of the temple.

Description

One of the major points in RPG games in to make progress your characters. One of the best way to make them progress is by training them. Training means to level up and gaining at each level new abilities.

In the Might and Magic games each level trained means more hit point, magic point and development point (proportional to the level). The development serving to advance your skills (abilities). Training is not a requirement to finish the game, but it will grandly simplify your game. MM8 has shown now many new type of player that likes to do solo level 1 games.

To be eligible for training you need a certain amount of experience. The experience is acquired by different means: Quests, Promotions Killing. For more details see link about experience below, there is a long explanation about the experience points.

Training Locations

To train your characters you need a training camp. Most regions of Jadame offer such a facility. Each camp has some constraints, and the price of training will increase with your level and the quality of the camp. A camp that can train high level characters will be more expensive.

Here are the camps you can use around Jadame:


In each training camp you can learn Body Building and the Armsmaster. The price is in the last column and informs you also which camp is cheaper to train. The Merchant skill and Glamour (Dark Elf) will affect the price of training as well of the skill prices.

Important to Know

Might and Magic VIII has for the first time a level limit fixed at 200 (training camp in Ravage Roaming and Shadowspire). You cannot train higher even if the game allows high level (using an editor allows it without problem). Why such a limit we don't know but it doesn't affect much game play since reaching that level will take a long time and you will probably have finished the game long before.

Training takes 8 days. When you enter the training camp each level you train will take you 8 days later at 9:00am. So the best is to enter the training camp at the last minute of the day before it closes (it closes at 6:00pm).

The total training time is compute by the maximum level up per character times 8, so the best it always to train the same number of levels for each character in order to save some time. In MM8 you can easily spend years in training camps with the effect that your team members will become old, with all the implication that it brings with.

A good tip is to train 1 level at time, then go fighting until evening and come back for the next level. Since you have some spare time left over between each level, use it wisely. Remember that you come out of the camp at 9:00am and that the camp close at 6:00pm all over Jadame.

Links

- Scoring in Might and Magic VIII
- Soloing in Might and Magic VIII
- Experience
- The Character's Age
- The Character's Conditions
- The City of Alvar
- The Village of Blood Drop in Dagger Wound Island
- The Village of Garrote Gorge
- The Balthazar Lair
- The City of Ravenshore
- The City Twilight in Shadowspire