As it turned out, this desert is quite a "hospitable" place — we've only just arrived and we get a fireball in our face as a welcome present. So we had to start clearing the gogs right away. Sadly, I haven't remembered the gog lesson from MM7; I chased after them and killed them in melee. After killing three gogs in this manner, the party was so badly hurt that they needed to run away and look for the nearest inn — and I was wondering why are those gogs so powerful. However, it quickly occurred to me where the problem was, and after sleeping through the whole day in the tavern, the heroes got rid of the rest of the gogs with bows and arrows.

The next logical step was to find the witness that would tell Bastian that the lake of fire is not a rumor (I only wonder why he couldn't be bothered to see for himself, or send some of his merchants). The village of Rust isn't very large, so we found him easily, and a couple of minutes after that, we've been entering the Troll Tomb.

Now I must confess that just before entering the tomb, I was pondering over the role of 3-D in MM games — how MM6 had many buildings with balconies and terraces that would be reachable by a little corridor in a back wall, and how it had some places where you needed to fly, and how the dungeons had complicated multiple-floor layouts, and how it doesn't seem to be the case with the later MM's... I was contemplating those things, clearing the little rooms of gogs and not paying much attention to the game. The map clearly showed a 4×4 grid of rooms connected with corridors, each to each, so why pay attention? I found the correct tomb, placed the ashes there, went back to the room where the corridor leading to the exit should be... and there was a wall! Ugh!

Grayface's patch has recently added the setting to alter the view distance. And I must say that flying high over the landscape and seeing just the skybox with a scrap of the actual landscape somewhere at the bottom of the screen was one of the most annoying things in MM for me. Especially in places like Frozen Highlands, I would just like to have a quiet, nice flight, enjoy the beautiful music and look over the land . Because of that, I set the view distance quite high; but that can, for some reason, lead to near objects failing to render sometimes. So I thought: The door is surely there, I just can't see it because it's a glitch! Saving and reloading didn't do anything. So I rummaged through my inventory and found a Town Portal scroll. "Heck, let's just get out of here by any means possible!" — I used it and — "Spell failed." Ugh! Finally, I went through "all" of the rooms, and after making a "circuit" and returning to the "same room", the doors were in different places! "Is this a glitch or some twisted puzzle where the doors disappear after I use them??" I was stumped.

Fortunately, Flame's site saved me once more, just by a remark along the lines of "there are multiple levels, so the map is misleading". So I fell for this simple trick — I was contemplating about how the dungeons aren't as much 3-D as they used to be and I totally missed the fact that I'm going down more than I'm going up! After reading that, it wasn't hard to go up everywhere and find the exit. That was a tough lesson .

So now I could get back to the Snapfinger family, and Overdune Snapfinger agreed to go with me. But — I had to remove one of my party members in order to accommodate him. So far, my party composition was Tajos (dark elf, the protagonist), Devlin Arcanus (necromancer), Frederick Talimere (cleric), Simon Templar (knight) and Arius (minotaur). Because I recruited Arius when I was at level ~ 7, he was constantly lagging behind in experience a bit. And he annoyed me a lot by not being able to wear helmets and boots! So I hadn't to think too much to let him go. After seeing that Overdune Snapfinger was level 15 (Arius was level 15 too, at this point) and that he could wear helmets and boots, I decided I would keep him for good — all in all, the minotaur didn't seem to be as good. I guess he could serve as a kind of a "paladin" in might-heavy groups (because it seems that he can develop the Self-magics to a certain degree), but in my party it didn't make a lot of sense.

Now I could go back to Alvar and report to Bastian, which I did, and that started the alliance quest. However, I made no attempt to advance this quest further, because "one region at a time"! Instead of that, I went back into the desert and continued wiping it clean. That constituted a visit of the Cyclops' Larder (with another trapped corridor! Moreover, it turned out that my dark elf's Disarm Trap was not up to the Cyclops' standards. So I had to use a peculiar method: run the trapped corridor, rest 8 hours. Open one chest, rest 8 hours. Open another chest, rest 8 hours. Run the damned corridor again and get out of there.), and to "A Cave", which is an unhelpful name. I must say that I was expecting various things, but not dragons. After a lot of pulling and battling in turn-based melee, I managed to clear the cave. Interestingly enough, the dragons had a chest in there, which I looted of course, and it gave me a Devilbone Bow of Carnage (nice!) and another thing, a great blessing and curse in one package — the Noblebone Bow. All the normal bows roll 5d2 + something (max 7) for damage. This rolls 5d4+12! And it has fireball impact! Great weapon, but now we must pay close attention to where we are shooting, so as not to hit the party as well.

Not long after that, Tajos got Master Bow, and upgraded it to Grandmaster after some more adventures. So while all other party members do ~ 12 damage with one shot, Tajos can get over 80 per shot! The only problem is that the game sends arrows wherever it wants. If you are in a dungeon and even if no monster is in sight, the party won't shoot straight ahead. It will shoot towards the closest monster anyway, so the arrow explodes on the wall and hurts the party badly. Because the monsters' and the characters' HP are on different scales, such a blast means that especially the necromancer and the cleric are heavily wounded. In some cases, such an unlucky shot even managed to kill the two, which meant that I had to run away and visit a temple. But still, when it works, it's wonderful, and I believe it's worth the hassle, although the next time I will blast myself, I will still think "&♯*♮$♭!? Shot myself once again? Oh my gosh." and so on.

Compared to the dragons, the Chain of Fire was quite easy. The only problem was that I weren't saving often enough. So when I took a step into the trapped room with the chest and the fireball trap killed the whole party in an instant, I had to go through all of it for the second time. And I can't say that this trap is my favorite either — it just shoots fireballs at a horrible rate until you're toast. Fortunately, the chest could be opened with Telekinesis, which I already possessed. And the content was absolutely worth it, though I can't remember what I found inside anymore...

After clearing the desert, I visited Garrote Gorge. The Dragon Hunters made the worst possible impression on me: their stubborn bloodthirstiness and remarks about how the "dragon scum" needs to be wiped out really put me off. The "icing on the cake" was provided by a random house-dweller that said something like "when we sailed around Regna, I saw a great beautiful dragon. Oh how great it would be if I could kill it". Ugh. I knew that I had to pick sides between Dragons and Hunters and it didn't take any work at all. So I visited the dragon cave and offered them the alliance. I guess they also proved bloodthirsty to a certain extent, since they demanded that I wipe out all the dragon hunters. However, in contrast to the hunters' wanton killing, they at least had a reason to kill. Anyway, after collecting the quests, I at least led some of the nagas right into the dragon hunters. I got rid of all of the nagas, but one of the explosive arrows wounded one of the dragon hunters' pets. So I had it follow me around and killed it when no one was watching. The rest of the hunters had to wait for another day.

From now on, I finally got rid of the "one region at a time" strategy, because it was clearly unfounded. This led me to poke my nose into Murmurwoods. I've finally rescued Cauri, found the Ancient Troll Home solved its basilisk/wisp infestation problems. There was a minor problem though: I was unlucky and I couldn't get a Protection from Magic from the self-magic shop in Ravenshore. Hence, I was plagued by the perpetual problem "the only guy who can Cure Paralysis (Stone to Flesh) has just been paralyzed (stoned)". I had a little stockpile of useful scrolls though, and that helped me to overcome this nuisance. I also attempted to visit the Druid Circle, but it was immediately clear that the enemies are way too powerful to me: I had to come back later. (And, by the way — why are the unicorns so aggressive here? Isn't a unicorn supposed to be a peaceful animal?)

And, more importantly, I went to Ravage Roaming as well. It wasn't too hard to follow the road up to Balthazar Lair, so — after fighting off a couple of gorgons and determining that my explosive arrows don't harm them at all — I came to the entrance of the Minotaur city. It seemed that draining the whole lair will be a tough task, but fortunately there was a parchment telling me exactly what to do. So the whole problem was reduced to running around, getting rid of some of the tritons (and yes, I managed to blow myself up with my own explosive arrows more than once. All in all, they proved to be very efficient though. The best method is to stand at one end of a longer corridor and fire them into the room on the other side. No matter what the arrows hit, they will blow up the monsters inside. The only problem occurs when the party decides that firing right into the floor under their feet is an awesome idea.) and pulling the levers correctly. I'm wondering what the levers actually do — I'd like to know if they have some deeper meaning, or if the game just concatenates the letters that you've pressed and that's it. I suppose the former, because when you pull one lever, others seem to go up and down and it looks like it could operate according to some set of rules — can anybody confirm that?

Anyway, after draining the lair, the Minotaurs joined the Alliance. And after all those adventures, it was high time we visited a training hall and upgraded our skills. This, in conjunction with fortunate store offerings in the Alvar's elemental "mushroom shop", finally gave me the two most important strategic spells of whole game: Fly and Town Portal. I always found it interesting how the MM6-8 gameplay can be divided into two very different stages: pre-Fly-and-Town-Portal and post-Fly-and-Town-Portal. It gives a totally different viewpoint on the same game . By the way, I was quite surprised to see that I couldn't town-portal pretty much anywhere, just into Dagger Wound Island and Balthazar Lair. After I read the spell description more closely, it turned out that I can portal only to places where I've drunk from the town fountain. And I thought that these things can't hold a surprise for a relatively seasoned MM player like me . I also got my Patriarch and War Troll promotions — and Frederick got his Priest of the Sun. I was carrying that book on my back for the whole game, and I could have handed it in for the promotion in the first 10 minutes of the game proper! Ugh.

I thought I would get further than this, but even the haphazard recollection of just some highlights of everything that happened took too much writing. So the rest of Alliance, Regna and venturing into the Planes (I've cleared 3 out of 4 now) will have to wait until I get into a writing mood once again .