Thanks. Very good information. I had no idea which were the good and bad spells. I think the manual does not explain enought about these things. Very good video.
Really comprehensive guide. For the benefit of new players I'd add a couple of notes: All the spread spells (sparks, poison spray, fire blast, shrapmetal) are best used at point blank with your camera as covered by the monster as possible. The combat log in this game doesn't properly show the damage these spells do (the combat log issue also applies to meteor shower and starfall), but the damage of every projectile does count for full damage. The second note, on awaken, is the two big use cases for it are Castle Darkmoor, and Agar's Laboratory. While it is true that getting hit will wake you up, if you get hit by a flying eye while asleep the damage happens first, then the roll to put you to sleep happens, so you can get chain slept if you're unlucky. Having your water user with an "of alarms" affix item (at a minimum), will greatly reduce the frustration of clearing these dungeons.
Mass distortion works the way it's described, and I think it's better than you gave it credit for. It can be resisted and produces low damage when that happens, so that's why it can do variable damage. It certainly sucks when that happens, but the damage potential makes up for the occasional failures. I always try to use it when a high HP enemy is near or at full health. Starts becoming useful early-mid game against Veterans/Captains doing ~100 dmg per hit. I hit Longfang for close to 300 dmg with it in my most recent playthrough. It's very good against the knights in the Warlord's Fortress. Have hit a Cuisinart for 400+ dmg with it, although they can resist it fairly reliably too. IMO it's an A-tier spell. Isn't viable early game due to its cost, but becomes a boss killer option mid-game and remains useful up until you get blasters.
Mass distortion is mainly held back by its high SP cost, high damage range, and many late game monsters being immune to it. Shrapmetal far outpaces it in damage, and Fire Blast does more consistently better DPS and is more SP-cost effective. It's an OK spell but unless you're doing an Earth-only challenge run or something similar, there's little reason to use it as your main source of damage, especially when you have to boost skill points in a mediocre spell school to get its full effectiveness.
@@Fixxxxxer Agreed on shrapmetal being a better option in most cases, although there are times when you can't get in close to make best use of it. Same with Fireblast, although I find it to be substantially weaker than shrap. Sometimes I just want a good ranged option. Maybe different playstyles? I mainly do the fights from TB mode, so guessing that's it.
Sparks was always my favorite. Especially since the Archmage promotion is the easiest in the game, you get an early guaranteed 42 dmg spell at only 4 air skill level and 4 mana per cast. Plus, it might be the best crowd control spell in the game in tight dungeons. Awesome video! Long live New World Computing
Ice bolt is much more mana efficient than Acid Burst and has better damage type (many things are immune to poison, much less to cold), but u have it at C tier and Acid Burst at B
Edit: I was wrong ':) Shield is a lot better than you'd think. Every spell caster just has a small (10-20%) chance to actually cast a spell. Most of the time they are actually using basic ranged attacks. But most of those ranged attacks visually look like spells. Like they do basic fire, electric, etc ranged attacks and you would think those are spells but if you look in the game files, they are actually projectiles and the Shield spell will halve their damage. So it definitely doesn't just apply to Lizardmen lol. The Shield spell also stacks with item enchantments that also halve projectile damage so you only take 1/4th damage. It's very useful early on. The best example is Warlocks, who have the Lightning Bolt spell but also an energy damage ranged attack. Their ranged attack is actually more dangerous because it cannot be resisted, but the Shield spell will halve that damage. Also Hydras, Titans, Dragons etc. But you should have Light Magic by then.
Yes, magic monsters have regular ranged attacks, but they are counted I believe as Energy damage or something like that, which cannot be protected against. For example, when I did solo runs in the Tomb of Varn the Guardian's ranged attack couldn't be reduced by any spell and Shield didn''t do anything. I've only witnessed damage reduction with arrows.
Armeggeddon, Shrapmetal, Hour of Power, Day of the Gods, LLoyds Beacon, and Day of Protection are all a little silly. They trivialize mm6 - mm8, especially when you use them in conjunction with one another. I always tried to delay getting them until reasonably late-but I realize some people like games that are easy so they rush these spells.
Over the 20 or so years of playing this game, I've learned that, yes, Dark Magic spells are very "flashy" and Armageddon is basically a must have spell if you value your sanity (I can't imagine doing Dragonsand or Hermit's Isle without Armageddon), but they are extremely inefficient. A shrapmetal costs 50 mana (3.3x more than fire blast) and does about x2 damage on average than fire blast. Assuming no physical resistance which many late game monsters do have. Also, your master of fire will recover ~20% quicker from casting fire blast than shrapmetal. Which means it's just much more efficient to kill most monsters at point-blank range using fire blast, with some exceptions (GDs and monsters immune to fire). Sparks also work extremely well on weaker monsters. Same thing with fireball - indeed, a dragon breath has a whopping 100 mana cost and has double the recovery rate of fireball. So, in the same time you can cast two fireballs doing 2-12 per skill point and costing 16 mana, vs 1-25 per point (more often than not it will do very underwhelming damage as we all know) for 100 mana. In other words, if you roll a 1, you waste 8 mana and half the time. Three sorcerers or druids lobbing these at 20+ fire skill will clear groups not immune to fire in no time and you don't have to run to town after a few casts. It also deals poison damage which many strong monsters and most importantly undead are immune to. The only place I consistently use Dragon Breath in is Castle Darkmoor where you need to have the possibility to kill the eyes instantly - but other than that the "most powerful spell in the lands" is mostly useless. Regarding Finger of Death - MM6 unfortunately treats every single non-damage effect the same way, so strong monsters like GDs resistant to magic damage will resist this to the same degree. It really should have had separate damage and debuff resistances.
I got a question and/or an idea for tier list/guide. What are the best/reliable ways to find weapons of swiftness or of darkness? Of course I know they're random but I'm sure there's ways to more reliably find those Enchantments. Also I think the different Enchantments could make for an interesting discussion. Obviousness it's your choice on the matter.
Oh really i wont go into dungeon without torchlight then😂 Oh and i wonder where they get photo of the 2 assistant girls from. They are too good compared to everything else.
No that's AOE. I'm talking about spells that release multiple projectiles that all hit one monster close up (shrapmetal, poison spray, fire blast) whereas Fireball is one hit. Also it hurts you close range
This has serious potential, you clearly have a deep knowledge of the game, but getting through two and a half hours of you fumbling is quite a chore. Try scripting out what you want to say and apply some editing, if a spell is good for a certain situation how about show that? Edit in some clips showing good use cases for spells, sparks in a narrow corridor, ring of fire clearing a room through walls, etc. Try to make it more entertaining and less manual/reading descriptions.
I'm just telling what the spell does and gave my thoughts. I don't want to bother scripting my thoughts for 100 spells and then editing on top of that, since my 20 min top 5 video took like 8 hours.
Turn based combat is not "cheese". Might mad magic as in many RPGs of its era was a choice. Twitch for people with infantile attention spans and patience and the classis turn based for a richer more strategic approach which allows us to use our heads not reflexes to beat monsters. It is not "cheese" as it came long before twitch games. Go play one of those and leave Might and Magic which you clearly don't know a alone. I have played it since the first and 1-5 were all turn based on speed stats.
When I said that I was referring to going to turn based on and off to get immediate recovery after casting a spell. When you cast a spell like Hour of Power, there is a long wait to recover, but if you go in and out of turn based you get recovery back immediately.
