Game #35: Might and Magic: Gates to Another World (Genesis) - Shouldn't That Be in the Manual?

I feel like the map is trying to tell me something

I continued my assault on the caverns below each town by attempting to find the snow beast of Tundara. Beneath the town was a strange dungeon with sparse clues, random troves of items, and a teleport square. The map also seems to have the coordinates 13, 12 inscribed, but all I found at that location was a stash of herbs. I cleared the place without any sign of a snow beast. I searched the town as well, and found nothing behind the barrier, and the frozen monsters were nothing more than small distractions. Around the perimeter of town was an anti-magic area with rather difficult enemies. I did manage to walk away with an Invisocloak for my sorcerer, so it wasn't a complete waste of time, but I didn't completely search that area. Still looking for the snow beast, and the emerald ring reportedly on someone kidnapped by it.

Such an intricate puzzle, bypassed by walking backwards into the square

After Tundara, I decided to explore Sarkin's Mine. I heard rumors of a couple hirelings stuck in a cave-in. I found them to the south of that square pictured above. Using the teleport spell I skipped the whole puzzle before I realized I could walk backwards through the trigger. I can only guess the intention was to enter while food supplies were low. Sarkin's spirit also haunted the place. My first attempt failed as I could not harm him with weapons, and I had run out of spell points. I then died searching for the fountain of youth to regain the many years lost fighting his ghosts. When I went again, I made sure I had spells enough to vanquish him. Beyond him was a fountain, which said it rejuvenated my party, but I was still years beyond my natural age. A spell of the same name is said to restore aging, so I'm not sure exactly what this fountain did.

Found a random high level encounter during my explorations, the Lich Lord has 2000 HP while most high level monsters I can handle are 300 - 400

During my frantic search for the fountain of youth I stumbled upon something that would have sped up the game up to this point. Much like I found holding the 'A' button engages auto-battle, I found that pressing the left direction on the d-pad advances the combat turn to the next character or enemy. This allows me to skip to the end of a spell, or even jump through the enemy turns without worry that I'll accidentally auto-battle through my own party. Both controls would have been a nice addition to the manual, but I've reviewed it again and it's not listed. This would have easily cut off a few hours by this point. Combat is the largest time sync of the game.

Preparing myself for class quests, I used skill potions to gain multiple attacks, and made sure everyone had a way to heal

When I came back to the game, I decided it'd be best to pursue the class quests. To give my guys a fighting chance I made an extra four robbers to tag along. The first quest I tackled was the dread knight. I bought some supplies (magic herbs, lava grenades, and skill potions), secondary skills so I could traverse forests and mountains, and a witch's broom to fly to each buffing fountain. Party buffs remained in effect, so my water walk spell remained in effect. With my fully buffed up party I easily took down the dread knight, barbarian chieftain, and Baron Wilfrey (for my archer). After the first quest, all the robbers jumped to level 19 from the 5 million experience gained from completing the robber's quest, which is only to accompany another class.

A conjuror as backup? That's basically fighting alone

With four classes taken care of, I was left with cleric and sorcerer to attend to. I attempted cleric first since I hadn't quite found the starting location for the sorcerer's quest. The cleric's--to return Corak's soul to his tomb--was by far the hardest. I still have yet to succeed. Finding the soul among a group of ghosts was easy. Gaining access to the tomb inside Corak's Cave was easy. However, the final battle against some high level undead in his tomb proved formidable. I believe the easiest way to deal with them would be to gain the last spell level and use Holy Word, which I've already discovered near Woodhaven. I tried to turn undead, but even at level 39 it was not enough. I was easily wiped out, incapable of keeping my buffed stats this deep into a dungeon, and not finding any other spell to disable the undead. My attacks were useless. I'll return when I've reached spell level 9.

See how evil that rock is, it's menacing

I had yet to find the Isle of the Ancients, but then I remembered a way to find them; I chartered a boat in Middlegate for 5,000 gold. A trivial amount at this point, but beyond reason when I first discovered it. They were located to the east of Atlantium. The clues necessary to navigate the maze-like castles of good and evil were in the cavern of Middlegate, but the evil one seemed off (or I didn't note it correctly). There was a strange clue inside the castles themselves about an alphabet being in reverse, which didn't actually seem to be the case. A-B-C was still A-B-C. The directions included numbers, and then letters, which corresponded to engravings above each door. Once I reached the hold of each wizard, I was a bit confused on the hints to enter the numbers 32, 64, 23, 46.

I thought of spelling them out, but numerals are possible by scrolling through the entire alphabet (upper and lower)

Once I'd figured out how to enter numbers, I easily released the good and evil wizards, and realized the completion of the sorcerer's quest. With most of my party obtaining their pluses, I attempted to get the triple crown. Said to be a simple task of purchasing three black tickets and then winning battles in the Arena, Monster Bowl, and Colosseum. I've done that though, multiple times, with no mention of winning the triple crown. I then went and did the same thing with all the colored tickets (green, yellow, red, and black in that order), but still nothing. I wonder if all my characters need to gain a plus.

I arrived here by the ship that took me near the Isle of the Ancients, still not sure what use it has

Before I ended for the night I started to explore the cavern under Atlantium; I managed to find an encounter that allowed me to raise my intelligence to 50+, but perished while attempting to explore the elemental plane of air shortly after, so I lost all progress there. I also decided to repeat the encounter with the thief under Sansobar a number of times, but didn't catch any visible benefit. It's strange, but the stat increases don't seem to happen right away. I have a number of other caverns to explore, including an ice cave, the cave of Dawn (although meant for the ninja quest, it might have some clues), and the fabled Gemmaker volcano. I can also continue exploring the great outdoors. Soon I'll come up to day 140 when the circus opens, and day 180 when I'm supposed to find more tips in all the taverns.

Also, there's another set of messages to decode, if only I could find the proper order, but interleaving doesn't seem to be the key, unless some aren't used at all

I still have no leads on where to find the Grand Axe. I did however manage to collect the Sword of Honor, which I assume is another prize Hoardall will request. I realize now though that I've yet to actually find and speak with Lord Peabody. I'm curious to find out what quests he has to give; however, when I went to Lord Slayer he wouldn't give me a quest as I was already on one for Hoardall. By far the longest game so far, but maybe not had I known about speeding up combat from the beginning. I'm enjoying making incremental progress, but does the game really go on for 80 hours?

Elapsed Time: 8h42m (Total Time: 44h04m)