A couple of years ago, I wrote a couple of posts about my first MM7 game, and it seemed that at least some people liked to read that, so I'll try to do sort of the same with my first MM8. If it gets annoying, though, then you can of course tell me to stop .

As per Peter's and Ossie's recommendations, I picked a Dark Elf as my main character (his (randomly generated) name is Tajos). After setting up stats a bit and picking two skills, I appeared on the Dagger Wound island just in front of some wagons. Of course I tried to click them first, so I immediately helped myself to a large load of fruit and similar stuff. After wandering a bit around the village, (and I must note that it seems to be much more "organic" or "chaotic" in comparison to e. g. New Sorpigal. I had some trouble navigating around. The towns of Jadame seem to favor "shopping malls" — one building with multiple entrances, each housing a different shop. Many times, I couldn't find stuff — I would just say: "OK, this house sells armor" and go further, not noticing that it has 3 more doors that sell weapons and magic and whatnot else) I was able to start the main quest line going, recruiting Devlin Arcanus and Frederick Talimere from their houses.

After visiting the shops and outfitting the characters with at least the basic gear, I attempted to fight the pirates. Let's just say it didn't work out very well, so I continued strolling around the island, visiting more huts, going through portals and doing various fetch quests (like the Cure Disease scrolls). Eventually I would venture into the Abandoned Temple, welcome Simon Templar in our party and cheese my way through (e. g. in the very first big hall, I killed all of the couatls over the stairway railing). I liked that dungeon quite a lot. The spike pit trap in particular was very interesting (and useful; when I would later explore the "tree of little snake chambers", I would always open a chamber, run like bunny to the half-opened trap, and shoot the monsters from the other side. Sadly, when I left and came back again, the floor was back together), the only problem was that I didn't really understand which of the trapped plates was the "sixth" one (I only got it when looking at the Flamestryke's maps).

By the way, I explored the temple quite thoroughly, so I found the circular room in the depths of the "tree of snake chambers", and looted the Prophecies of the Sun from it. And for a long time, I was really at a loss as to what the heck to do with it, because the lizard who wanted the snake prophecies didn't know anything about this one . Anyway, after returning a couple of times to rest (had to rest on grass because I couldn't find the tavern! I found it only later, just before going away) and fulfill various quests, I was ready for Ravenshore. So I boarded the ship and the real game started.

It's quite interesting that what I was doing for the next few hours didn't feel very heroic. Blackmailing a poor man who has already been blackmailed by ogres? (And killing all of his guards on top of that?) Check. Killing all the wolves miles and miles around? Check. And why those centaurs insist so hard on being killed?

I should also mention that for whatever reason, I employed a strict "one region at a time" strategy, which in the hindsight wasn't probably needed. I guess that, knowing how different power levels the regions had in MM6-7, I just thought that if there's only a couple of regions, there will be sharp increases in difficulty — which seems not to be the case. And while I appreciate that the game places marks on the map for you, and you can place your own, I still resorted to my MM7 custom of drawing maps by hand and writing each building's purpose into and around the buildings in tiny, almost illegible letters . Still, these hand-drawn maps (currently I have Ravenshore, Alvar and Shadowspire) are a great asset, because if you look for a certain teacher, for instance, you don't need to click all the 30+ markers one by one; you just need to give the map a good look.

So I did whatever I could in Ravenshore and only after wiping out all monsters and dungeons, I would go to Alvar (the quest line wanted me to go there anyway). That was a material for quite some more hours. The first thing I stuck my nose in was the Dark Dwarf Compound — and the boulders chased me away in no time. Ouch! I had to resort to killing ogres. Visiting their fortress was quite a challenge, because you start surrounded by lots of ogres and mercenaries right when you enter (this forced me to make it a habit to hit Enter just after entering any new area). I even had to reload once because of total party wipeout. After surviving that initial chamber, the rest of the dungeon was quite easy though. Soon the whole place was robbed blind, the Arion's daughter saved and the ogres killed. Since I was able to obtain the Jump spell from the local guild, I felt in a good shape to do similarly with the wasps. I looted the tents nearby (Peter, when you were talking about those Jump scrolls, did you have these in mind?) and entered the hive (interestingly enough, I thought it would be high in the mountains, so I first jumped up the cliffs, cleared whatever was on top, and only then I was forced to look for it elsewhere... like in the place where it actually was).

It's quite interesting how fast things can turn around in this dungeon. I was able to get up to the top without too much trouble, but going down was more tricky. At one occasion, I would accidentally fall down the hole into the lower floor, and that resulted in a total party wipeout, because I couldn't for the life of me (quite literally!) jump back up! Either a wasp was in the way, or I just didn't time it correctly (since I was in turn-based mode, it wasn't so easy). And the critters were shredding me in the meantime. I had more such slip-ups, but none of them proved so fatal (although I usually had to run away immediately).

And finally, I was also able to (more or less) clear the Dark Dwarf Compound. Getting rid of those boulders was really hard, though, especially the top tier ones that could fire Rock Blasts (really dangerous bouncing through those corridors). I was quite relieved when the boulders were killed and I could battle some normal dwarves. I looted much of the place, but I wasn't able to cope with that rock-blast-trapped corridor. I found no way of switching the trap off and it couldn't be circumvented by jumping or "hugging the wall". The only thing I was able to devise was a "run like a bunny method" — run towards the next door as fast as possible, open it, rush inside, and only then get rid of the enemies. Loot the chests, aim for the next door in line, run as fast as possible and repeat. I was able to get up to the (first?) room that had a chest with an artifact (and I was able to get there only because it was possible to open the door right from the previous room; the dwarves wandered out and I could kill them before actually running in). The next door after that was way too far, and the trap way too close.

I found this trap to be quite annoying, mainly because it just fires immensely powerful Rock Blasts at a crazy frequency. It feels quite over the top and needlessly ugly to the player. The only possible solution that I can think of is temporarily hiring a Vampire from an Adventure Inn and use its levitation spell, but I haven't done this yet. If you had any tips for circumventing this trap, I would like to hear them. By the way, I have no idea how many times I was reloading due to total wipeout in this horrible corridor.