Xenowars | Defense, Dungeon, And Dung
Might And Magic 1 | The Power Of The Sorcerer
After a lot of slow progress grinding it out in B-1 and C-1 I ended up getting enough levels on my sorcerer to discover just how OP these things under the right conditions can be. It’s been a rather amusing ride up to now seeing even the cleric out-damage the sorcerer. Now the sorcerer out damages the entire group combined and then some.
To get to this point was no short feat of a miracle. There were far too many deaths and lost progress. I even looted an item or two I’d try and make it back to the inn with before succumbing yet again to an encounter I was not expecting to go as sideways as it did.
I however needed a couple more levels before I unlocked the next tier of sorcerer spells. I had no clue at the time just how powerful they would become. It’s crazy I went from going maybe two or three points of damage on average to over 60 after hitting multiple creatures with a single hit.
My poor melee on the other hand has been left in the dust. I don’t see any way for them to even catch up even if I looted end-game items. It makes no sense at all. I am half tempted to find my way back to Sorpigal which I have yet to do and dump one of my melee in exchange for another sorcerer.
Sure I’d have to power level that sorcerer for quite some time till they were high enough level to be useful. They would get knocked out and I’m sure even get killed quite a few times as well. It’s however something I’m still considering doing. For now, however, my current make of classes is going stay the way it is.
As far as the power of the Sorcerer itself I now have a few amazing spells. I sometimes don’t even know what I want to use as an opener let alone a second and third spell if the fight even makes it that many rounds in.
Before getting to that point, however, I was not done yet making some rather costly mistakes. Text tends to go by quite quickly in this game to the point you might not even notice say your spell damaging your party as well.
I have no idea if it’s a game bug or if that's just how it is. Fire Ball from the looks of it seems like quite a powerful spell I was expecting to go quite heavy into using. It deals with all “monsters” 1 to 6 damage per level on the monster.
Instead what Fire Ball is doing is hitting my group first and then the monsters. After using it a couple of times I could have sworn I noticed my group members naming saying they took damage. I had one cast of Fire Ball knock out my cleric which told me yes it was hitting my party.
I even tried casting Fire Ball only on the back line of the monsters. It still would crush my party. I have some thoughts on perhaps another way to go about using this spell. That however would have to be for another time. As I was about to ramp things up.
One of the biggest spells that I tend to now use on every open when my sorcerer who has the highest speed in my group and tends to go first is called Weaken. Like a lot of these powerful spells, they have a higher mana cost and a gem cost. Thankfully I have a decent chunk of gems I’ve been saving up.
As far as what Weaken is doing. It’s hitting every single enemy and thankfully not my group. While its base damage is 1-2 it is also reducing armor by 1 softening up the target for my group of melee.
It spells itself happens to be in the middle of doing its thing in the cover of this post where it shows almost all the creatures are listed as being damaged. I’ve yet to find a group of creatures that won’t damage all of them regardless of the size.
There are rare occurrences where just two damage alone was enough to kill some rather weak creatures hiding in the back. It’s rather funny to watch my sorcerer start to rack in the kills before anyone else has even swung a melee weapon.
That is however not the most powerful attack the sorcerer has either. Something I’ve been loving a lot unless I hit something that resistant is Lighting Bolt. It’s hitting between 1 to 3 creatures for up to 6 damage per creature level. I’ve seen this spell hit for 24 damage so far on three targets off a single cast. Killing all three.
The crazy part is when you start decimating the pack of creatures you ran into like that they start to do something rather odd. Many of the weaker ones can on an individual level choose to flee the fight. I could have sworn in one fight alone I noticed five creatures flee quickly while I burnt to a crisp their front line.
Damaging is not the only interesting thing the sorcerer can do either. There are also a couple of spells that can attempt to cause a single or multiple creatures to not attack till they take damage. This tends to be why I open with the spell Weaken first before attempting to hit the black line with something like Web.
In many cases, however, these control-type spells seem to fail. Even worse I might get one to work and a round later the creatures break from it without even taking damage. While it’s sometimes cool I can cast web on three creatures and in the next round two of them are still not attacking.
I’ve learned at least at this stage how massive these packs of creatures are. I’d rather just have massive amounts of damage killing them off than hoping a control spell works.
I have tried using control spells on much smaller but more powerful packs of creatures where it seems they are more intended for. Yet every time they have failed or only lasted a single round of combat. It makes me wish I had gone for damage output instead of using a control spell instead.
Final Thoughts
Having these spells that seem to be quite overpowered, however, is not a guarantee of success. They have led to me becoming way too overconfident and getting killed. Even worse I now want to stay out on long grinding sessions till I can’t find any further creatures in an area before returning to the inn. So I’ve lost out on what would been some insane experience and item gains thinking I can take out anything I come across and get killed in the end.
Things have at least turned around a lot since last time. The number of times I’m getting killed is getting fewer for now. It feels like I’m in the right place for my party level. Mostly due to the power of the sorcerer but I have looted some upgrades along the way as well to help things along. I no longer view the sorcerer to be worthless. I’m glad I did not kick it out of the group and replace it with a different class.
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Screenshots were taken and content was written by @Enjar about Might And Magic 1.