If there was one dungeon I could blackball out of Might & Magic VI it would be Castle Darkmoor. I hate this place with a passion. It’s not one of those places where you can just suffer quickly through it either. I spent three separate days chipping away at this place giving up every night when I wanted to rage.

I hate this place so much that I waited over a week and a half after I had cleared it before even thinking about writing about it. As such this place is a bit fuzzy in my memory of rage and hatred. I can only hope to forget this place soon.

There never feels like there is a right time to come to Castle Darkmoor either. I however decided that if I did it when I did. I then could go and enjoy the rest of the game never coming back here again. So I took the plunge and went for it.

There are four large factors why I hate this place so much. Quite a lot of the time half your party is being put to sleep or being insane. Making it so if you are lucky you are only doing half as much damage output as you would hope. While other times your highest damage dealers are out cold.

There is also no point in trying to cure either. As soon as they get cured they get blasted with insanity again.

While I’m sure I could have tried to get rings that have resistance to such painful nonsense. The fact of the matter is I have yet to see any rings in this play though that offer such resistance. On top of that, it’s not like I’d get four rings let alone have extra space in my inventory to hold onto such items forever.

The other thing that gets my blood boiling is that buffing for this place is worthless. You will constantly get de-buffed. It’s not even worth trying to cast any kind of buff just for a single fight it will be long gone before whatever you kill.

This brings me to the next thing I hate about this place. You can be walking along and have nothing left on the floor you are on. Then ZAP de-buffed through the ceiling from the creatures lurking above you. You can even hear them trying to damage you through the ceiling or floor yet they thankfully can not.

Finally, when you have all this insanity going on. You end up facing massive hordes of creatures all at the same time. You can quickly be dead without even thinking about it.

Just in case I’ve not said it enough-- I HATE THIS PLACE.

Now with all of that out of the way, it’s time to dive into this nightmare of a place. With something not so bad. Ogres are quite easy to kill and the only creature I can stand in this entire place. While sometimes you will face quite crazy numbers of them. They are a joke and easy to kill.

There were also just a lot of situations like this one here. You can see a lot of red dots all over the map. As soon as I step out I’m getting attacked from every which way. I’m also almost out of mana again.

I doubt it was even a further 30 seconds after that screenshot before I had to go back into town yet again for mana. This ended up happening to such a degree I was just dropping a beacon every few steps in this place. As I got tired from running at the entrance to were ever I was trying to clear next.

Then you had rooms like these. They needed to be fully cleared before you could click on the thing in the middle to progress forward. Sometimes it would open a side wall like this one did to the next area. Another one would just say the way was clear. The final one would teleport you up to the treasure room.

You would think based on the viewpoint I have that my party is at. That I could just cast a line of sight spell and clear out that entire room in a few casts. NOPE. Zero damage was done. I would end up running into a few situations like this where it felt like you should be using a line of sight spells but they seldom do any kind of damage.

At least once I got rid of all the flying eyes and lich leading up to this room. I just had lots of ogres to clear out and they were not so bad.

The next place that opened up had an insane amount of these flying eyes surrounding the building that you had to go into. I first decided to clear out as many as I could find on the outside. I did not want them flying through the open windows after me once I went into the next area.

My entire group, like I had, went insane. At least I could get a couple of the flying eyes oftentimes in small groups. They were more manageable that way.

The inside of the building was filled with a lot of liches to clear out. These things for the most part drove me insane. This was at least at a point I had cleared most of the room out by then. You can see another cube in the air.

A lot of my time if could help it was spent hiding. Yep, that is the trick to this place just hide. I would try to find corners or build walls that I could lure a bunch of creatures to without getting aggression from the other side.

Once I had them all nice and balled up as best as I could. While being safe on the other side of a wall or corner I would unload all my mana casting a ring of fire.

Once I was out of mana to cast a ring of fire I’d portal out and restock on mana. I then would return and just keep doing the same thing over and over and over again.

Once everything was dead in an area it was time to loot. Just look at all those dang liches I took out while standing behind a wall. A bunch of flying eyes did end up finding me. They are almost like their watch doges going after me while they could not get to me.

In the final backroom, I did end up finding my first crystal hiding in a corner. This one was Memory Crystal Delta. If I recall I need to collect some more of these found in other dungeons around the game. Hopefully, I have not missed any up to this point.

Once the final room was cleared. I clicked on the red cube and was teleported to the treasure room.

I did not care about getting a bad reputation I looted all the coffins in the treasure room. I striped all the loot I could find on the floor. Took all the loot I could find out of the chest.

On my way out I also destroyed the Book of Liches which a quest gave me a petty 5k gold for doing.

Now this place is over I have zero plans to ever come back here. I just can’t stand the place. The sooner the experience is lost and forgotten in my mind the better.

Other Content

• Might & Magic VI | Many Other Things
• Might & Magic VI | Clearing Out Blackshire
• Might & Magic VI | Dragoons’ Keep

Information

Screenshots were taken and content was written by @Enjar about Might & Magic 6.