On the Map, there is E1 to E4. With the Swamp town being in the middle of the E’s. I decided to just go for the next. I ended up cleaning them out a lot quicker than I was expecting. The loot was amazing.

Since I decided to do a general grid pattern search it was just easy to stick with these for exploring the new areas. While it was tempting to just do one giant pass up or down of the E zones. I decided that kind of takes the fun out of exploring what each little area has to offer.

Granted quite a few times I'd end up going over a couple of tiles here or there. There would also just be things that caught my eye and I'd dive deeper into an area I had not explored yet.

Fighting in the swamp area I noticed there were some dens to take out. I was starting to miss that giant cache of experience gains. At this point, the amount of experience needed per level was starting to take quite some time. I was not disappointed either. Some of the ones I found would give out 50k-100k experience.

There was also of course the fat loot just waiting for someone to do up. My eyes ended up popping out a bit after finding a couple of spots that rewarded me with 50k gold. It sure felt like a different time than just a little while back when I was so broke I could not even afford to revive one of my characters. Now I had well over a million gold in the bank from all the finds I'd come across.

There was also just a lot of stopping and seeing what items I had just looted were upgrades. Since this was quite a higher-level area, I was starting to find some rather insane stuff.

I ended up having to make a couple of trips to town just to sell off loot. My tanks were starting to have so many rings and other things equipped. It got to the point where they had little to almost no inventory space left to hold anything I was looting. It was tempting just to hire another character for extra carrying capacity at this point.

Some of the stuff I was finding was also worth quite a lot. It was so tempting to just want to sell off that Pearl amulet for 40k gold. While it gave a couple of armor it was nothing insane. I’d later find armor that I could sell for 100k gold. This area of the game just felt like a gold mine.

After I finished with E2 I started to work on E3. It felt like the deeper I was going in the enemies themselves were not getting that much harder. The rewards however were just getting bigger and bigger.

At one point I was starting to find treasure stashed amounting to 100k gold and five items. With some of those items sometimes being worth 100k or more combined. The gold was just flowing to a point where I was kind of lost for words about what to do with it all.

Don’t get me wrong. At some point, I'd head back to town. Spend 200k-300k on training up my characters and buying a bunch of spells. That was however no longer my biggest cost.

The issue with wearing nice gear was the repair bill if it broke. My main tank alone if he got knocked out would have 23k in repairs just on his chest piece alone. Depending on how things went I might have 100k worth of repairs every time I enter into a town.

While it felt like I was rich. I was also starting to have some massive costs as well. At the very least what I was looting outweighed it by so much. It was starting to feel like nothing in terms of risk vs rewards.

I also find a couple of dungeons while out exploring these new areas. No shock to me I lacked the keys to enter into any of them. It seems I'm missing a dungeon somewhere that will allow me to progress forward on several dungeons in this area.

Like many of the areas before it. There were often many clues. These clues were often far more alarming than the first part of the game. This scary-looking skull was telling me finally what to do with some of the hologram cards I was finding. Going to an island of fire did not sound so appealing at the time.

I was even finding some random stuff like skills as well. Thankfully if you run over to the magic guild in town. There is an option to read up on what a spell somewhat will do. One spell I found was called Divine Intervention. It will fully heal my entire party when used. It however has quite a nasty cost of aging the character by five years and a whopping 200 mana cost. If I was already in quite a dire situation, I doubt my cleric would have 200 mana left to spare.

I’m also at the point now where my casters have so many spells. It takes me a moment when I need to open up the spell list just to find the spell I want to swap to. I'm also kind of lazy on buffing. It would be one thing if my buffs were group-wide. While some of them are others are single targets only. This is a bit of a bummer.

At one point I was walking along just murdering everything. Next thing I knew most of the party was dead from falling into a quicksand. I decided to return where it happened and test out if having levitation on made any difference. I was able to walk right over the spot without falling. It seems having this buff was going to be a lifesaving requirement moving forward.

After heading north for quite a bit I ended up hitting a nice desert area. I’ll take the break from the swamp anyway I can get it. The only downside I could not just rest anywhere. I could however rest on tiles with palm trees.

The creatures here were starting to hit quite hard. I was also no longer killing most of anything that got too close to me before it got to melee range. I might have even been jumped a couple of times. So, this area required a decent amount of healing and recovery.

This area ended up being E4 on the map. To say it was rewarding just clearing the surface of it is an understatement. 500k experience just from taking out the hut the barbarians were using to spawn back. I’ll take that trade almost any way.

Final Thoughts

After a while of clearing what had remained. I used the town portal spell to get back to the swamp town. It ended up taking quite some time to go through all the loot. Most of it looked like upgrades. I was swamping loads of gear between my characters as I'd upgrade one item and then pass it down the line to others.

I’d say this exploration I went on of four different zones ended up being quite a huge success. Between all the item upgrades, gold, and even finding new spells. I have a feeling any lower-level dungeons I've yet to get around to won’t be standing much of a chance when I run them.

Information

Screenshots were taken and content was written by @Enjar about Might And Magic III.