Fighting 20 gold dragons in the arena though, they can just run around spamming shrapmetal and they hardly even notice the dragonfire!

During the initial playthrough I got everyone to level 10 learning. After completing the hive the first time I put everything into learning and dark magic (water for the Archer) until I maxxed them (skill level 60). Then I started on everything else

So, you can spend a happy time generating cash and dropping it down the well as much as you like. But I don't do it much. If the characters get too powerful, the challenge goes and the game becomes boring.

In Might & Magic III, the best weapons are made of obsidian, because there's an enormous plus on both to-hit and to-damage. It's very very rare for these to come up with a second enchantment. Ordinarily enchanted weapons (e.g. "Toxic") are not as good, partly because you get the odd monster immune to Poison, but mostly because although there's a big plus on to-damage, it does nothing for the to-hit. I had played the game many times before, to my astonishment, it gave me a Poisonous Obsidian Longsword — Poisonous is one of the lowest secondary enchantments that do damage.

I then did some multilooting experiments, and IIRC it took in excess of 3000 reloads before I got another one.

Obelisk treasure trick never worked for me, but getting a Guinevere at level 15 helped a fair bit (looted the gold dragon in the Temple of the Snake )

I sell (and enchant) everything I get, but Arena awards give me the most cash I find. I'm up to 372,500 for one combat now (with the aid of a Divine Power potion and a few items of power). The money from the Arena goes up faster than the money needed for training, so I always have spare cash. Even training 4 people.

Never realised Armageddon worked on dragons. Thought flying creatures were immune!

It will get everything in Sweetwater except for the Devil Warriors and Devil Kings (I think).

Other things that are immune (I'm sure I'm missing some):

Titans
Minotaurs
Elementals
Skeletons
The Water elemental/beast/spirit type creatures in Eel Infested Waters.

There are zones I've never tried it in so I just don't know about some.

I go there every Sunday religiously

After I cleared out the local Titans, I started casting Armageddon. After 15 days, there was one dead red dragon and all the other red and blues were well above half their hit points. Also, they weren't going up in the air like they usually do.

Somewhere along the line I concluded that monsters didn't regenerate hit points as long as you didn't leave the zone even if you rested at the inn, so I started using the inns in those places. It always seemed to work but then I would almost never clear either of those zones more than once or twice in a normal game.

So maybe they do regen to some extent or just some times when you rest at an inn and I just never noticed. I could probably test it out.

I took Light, Dark and Fire to skill level 60. Everything else is in a pretty ordinary range (15 or so). I also never took Learning above level 16 and never bothered with body-building. It's 1169 which I guess is year 5.

Those 3 schools pretty much allow me to do anything I want to do - Shrapmetal, Dragon's Breath, Meteor Shower, Ring of Fire and Inferno are just about all I use in combat. And Armageddon, of course, for clearing some areas to some extent.

I can also melee really well, doing over 200 damage with my dagger, and mobs generally can't do much damage to me with regular weapons. I don't think I fully appreciated how much difference the main buffs - Day of the Gods, Hour of Power and Day of Protection - would make once I got Light and Dark so high (I really hadn't planned to raise Light magic that high when I started). I'm pretty sure I could have waltzed through Warlords without any magic at all; I may go back and retry that.

As I had hoped, everything is pretty easy at this point, even the Tomb of Varn. Darkmoor was quick and I cleared the Control Center with Shrapmetal in a couple of hours game time.

I use rapid-fire shrapmetals when fighting the dragons in the Arena (using that I can kill the 20 dragons in less than a minute), and in the big room in the Hive when you enter. The rest of the time, yes I just use the blasters...

My problem in the Arena wasn't killing the Gold Dragons - it was being able to survive long enough. I haven't tried it in about 100 levels; maybe I'll give it another shot.

However the hop into the stands technique (jump into the stands, go right to the back row. That has a vertical wall in front of it that protects you from most of the dragons allowing you to take them out 1-2 at a time as they fly over it) would probably work at your level. I was able to take out the 20 gold dragons using that technique at level 90 or so.

Most zones and dungeons haven't repopped yet, but I took him into Dragoon's Keep in Freehaven and he could clear that by himself with no problems. I had him take on a crowd of about ten fighters and such, including a couple of Veterans, and he handled it easily. With a Lionheart sword he hits for up to 189.

Even with the resists where they are, he can still get poisoned by a large rat (I always wonder how much resistance is enough), but the biggest issue is that is sword can be broken by the Veterans and he can't repair it without going to a shop.

(Yes, it's true. My magical monster-reference says that rat inflicts Disease I or II "×2". I was never sure about this, and nobody from the community ever was, but I think it means that it has two attempts to inflict disease. The probability increase would be considerable -- for example, if it had 40% chance to disease you, now it has 56%.)