Pretty much everyone still hanging around these taverns are old-timers, so I'm hoping you all get as much out of this as I did.If you're like me, you've mentally put certain spells from the various games into the "don't bother" category over the years, as they never seemed to work, weren't implemented properly, or were outright broken from the start.
The Merge Mod seems to have fixed them all.
From Mass Distortion now being a legitimate HP killer, to Berserk and Enslave creating entire armies of opponents that will fight on your side (or at least each other), every spell across all three games now seems to work as intended (assuming the target fails the relevant save). Maybe it's the higher levels you get from playing through all three games with the same characters finally busting through enemy resistance, or maybe it's a fix in the Merge Mod itself, but regardless, you can now enjoy the benefits of every spell in the game in ways that just never seemed to work before.
And the best thing - the absolute most awesome best thing for someone who has played these games at least 20 times and has never seen this before - is Shrinking Ray.
Shrinking Ray never worked in my entire experience with MM6-8. Whether the opponents were simply always immune to it, or I just got unlucky and it never punched through the relevant resistance, or it was just never implemented as intended, I've never once seen it work. It works in the Merge Mod, and it is quite simply the best thing ever.
If you're like me, and have never really paid attention to this spell because it never worked in the first place, you may have not realised one extremely interesting quality at GM level: "Spell will also affect nearby creatures". The unexpected pure joy I received from trying this spell for the first time in Merge Mod and seeing an entire landscape of Dragons, Titans and Death Knights reduced to tiny doll-sized versions of themselves, complete with corresponding reduction in HP, damage and effectiveness, cannot be described. I realise we are now all older and more time-poor than when we first discovered these games, but I'm telling you, make the time to play the Merge Mod, and especially to try out some of the things you've long since dismissed as broken. It's fantastic!
