In my opinion, the only way a knight can keep up with a spell caster is b\y getting rank 60 bow. With haste, you can reach 0 recovery and basically machinegun down every non-physical immune monster in the game. In fact, with a bow of darkness, you can maintain full hp while doing this, and this is what I am going for.

The challenge then, is to survive until you get all the skills and items you need to become unbeatable. This requires mostly high level, haste skill, and a good bow of darkness or quickness.

As usual with solo challenges, I gave all starting bonuses to my lone character. In this case, I allocated 20 to intellect and personality and 25 to everything else. I gave my knight bow and bodybuilding. I ordinarily would give my knight bow and disarm, but with solo challenges, health matters a lot at the start and disarm trap skill can be obtained in New Sorpigal.

Starting off, I drowned my three characters, and then spent the first half of the day clearing New Sorpigal of monsters while collecting herbs and gold. I left all the chests unopened as I did not have disarm trap yet. Fortunately, after 6PM, I was able to get dagger and disarm trap skills as well as all the useful misc. skills.

With solo melee character, white potions become your best friends. At the start, the most important three potions are Extreme Energy, Extreme Protection, and Super Resistance. These give a huge boost to early game powers and are also not on a timer, meaning as long as you don't sleep, they persist! I also made black potions when possible. The most useful ones are endurance, might, accuracy, and speed.

A further note, dagger is the best melee weapon for most of the game due to the faster attack speed. With haste potion and high speed attribute, you can get 3-4 attacks sometimes before your enemy can retaliate in turn-based mode. Once you get Mordred, it will be your main melee weapon for rest of the game. Furthermore, I won't be levelling any other weapon skills aside from bow at all, so dagger is the best. Furthermore, at rank 1, the other weapons are simply too slow to be useful.

I was very lucky to find some gloves of disarming. With eventually master disarm trap and these gloves, I can open pretty much all chests without getting hurt. I cleared my way to the seer before boarding a ship to Mist for some further adventures.

Mist is a good second area to clear because it is fairly easy. There are only a few ranged monsters (the acolytes with orange belts). So as long as you stay far away in turn based mode, you do not get harmed. The surrounding islands are also easy to clear due to water separating each island.

With Mist cleared, I hired a water master and travelled to Bootleg Bay. Since I play with Greyface patch now, shrines are worthwhile as each gives +10 to a stat. In the unpatched game I think the first one gives +10 and remaining ones give +3.

Hiring the water master was useful as there was a lot of travelling on water. I visited the Shrine of Might, completed the mage promotion and then travelled to Free Haven as the monsters are quite a bit stronger here than Mist.

There are many things to do in Free Haven, including knight to cavalier promotion, restoring the temple (quest can be done without having it), and the 4 horseshoes. There is also a nifty trick involving the Sewer. Right now, the Sewer is too difficult for me to clear, but if you enter via Takao’s house, you can get a good amount of money and the key to the treasure room via the grates. The treasure room is also conveniently placed near the Takao entrance. The chest inside can hold some really powerful items. I was awarded with a doomsday cape of speed (+21) and a lot of gold.

Reputation is very important in a solo knight game when you heal at a temple, you get a specific buff depending on which reputation level you are at. You want to stay at Angelic at all times as Hour of Power is by far the most useful buff.

Saintly will get you day of protection, which is not useful because between Super Resistance potion, Shrine of God and multiple rings of protections, you will not need any more resistance. Eagle eye is helpful, but not necessary.

Hour of Power offers among other things haste, AC, heroism and bless. These provide a huge boost to damage and speed, which makes dungeon clearing easier and safer. Furthermore, this saves me from having to make expend herbs to make potions and use the herbs for +100 hp potions for survival purposes.

That was my long-winded explanation for why I am doing all the reputation decreasing quests first. Now with my reputation in tatters, I donated until I got to respectable.

During this trip, I also ended winter, captured the prince of thieves, did some shopping to get a stellar bow of flame, 2 rings of resistance, a jeweled dagger of poison and a necklace of speed.

These exploited allowed me to train to level 20, get expert bodybuilding, bow, repair item, merchant, disarm trap expert.

The next area to clear is Ironfist. Clearing the land was easy as all the monsters died to 1 arrow. The three dungeons prove to be a bit tricky, but luckily I discovered a "trick" of some sort.

When you fight near a door or a corner in turn-based mode, if the enemies are positioned in a certain way, you can get 5-10 strikes in quick succession while they are waiting for their turn. This made temple of baa and dragoon cavern much easier. I cleared all of temple of baa for the cauldrons and extra experience.

Bootleg bay is naturally the best step. Clearing the land took no time at all, Temple of the Sun and Temple of the Fist were quick. I skipped the secret Minotaur in Temple of the Sun for now. Temple of Tsanta took a while longer as there was no temple nearby to heal and due to the sheer volume of monsters.

Last one was Hall of the Firelord. It can be down right impossible if you don't know the way. But if you do, there are just 2 doors you have to unward. It took me merely 5 minutes to complete the question. I will return to clear it later once I gain more level.

Level 40 to 80 is the most difficult time for the solo knight. The enemies get tougher and more numerous, but our knight's improvements are quite gradual. We already obtained good gears during early game through vendors in Blackshire, Whitecap and Kriegspire etc. So there is no major upgrade to items. Our main offensive bow skill is lacking as we had to get expert and master in numerous misc skills. This means our bow is only at rank ~25. Not nearly fast enough, even with haste.

One of the problem is that most enemies in high level dungeons have a ranged attack as well as strong physical attack, such as the doom knight family.

Another one is volume. As the monsters become more durable, their numbers remain the same. As it takes much longer to dispatch stronger enemies, I find that I get swarmed very quickly.

The interesting thing is that as difficult as it is, once I get rank 45+ in bow and a bow of swiftness or darkness, the game becomes considerably easier as I can kill most mobs and remain at full hp.

I am currently level 60 (eligible to train to level 66). In about 30 levels and the correct items, I can probably get to late game and clear Dragonsand without too much trouble.

I also completed the Free Haven Promotion quest by killing the guy in Devil's Outpost. However, I did not clear it as it was simply too tedious at this point as is no temple in Kriegspire. I will return to wipe it out.

The next dungeon to tackle is Gharik's Forge. It's difficult for several reasons.

1. The mages deal a lot of damage and hang out in groups. I don't mind the insanity debuff though as it raises my damage.

2. The main problem is the dungeon is located in a remote island, which means whenever I want to heal, I have to water walk or fly back to the temple, which requires scrolls or NPC, both of which offer a one-time use, and there is a lot of healing required as this place is filled with monsters. If I rest, I lose all my buffs and it would be equally challenging to complete the dungeon.

3. I forgot how to do the bridge puzzle.

I imagine this dungeon will be quite time consuming. I just got to the bridge trick, and I already had to take 2 trips back to town. I imagine another 5-6 more will be needed due to the large room of mages that follow.

Any tips?

Start in New Sorpigal with a windmaster and gatemaster. Cast Fly, portal to Dragonsand and fly to the village. Dismiss the windmaster and then re-hire the one in a house in the village.

The key to this is that once the windmaster casts fly, she does NOT have to be in your party for the spell to have effect. You get two hours of flying even if you dismiss her right away.

So now Town Portal back to New Sorpigal, get your heals and keep flying back to the island. Fight, fight and when you need healing, get outside the Forge and have your new Windmaster cast fly. Back to Dragonsand, dismiss the gatemaster and windmaster and hire them again. Rinse and repeat.

If you need more fly time you can hire her when you get to dragonsand village, have her cast fly and then dismiss and re-hire her.

I know about the bugs with the Shadow Guild and Castle Kriegspire jeweled egg bug, which are present in the latest "official" patch of MM6. I never had the issue of NPCs not appearing in their house after being dismissed in any version of the game though.

I actually did not have to rely on NPCs too much for Gharik's forge. I had to heal about 3 more times after the bridge, and it was fine just to hire a windmaster and a healer.

I'm not sure if this is a bug or an intended feature, but whenever I activate turn-based mode while fighting one or more enemies, on my second turn, I get to attack as many times as I can until the enemy I was targeting was dead.

Here is a sequence:

- Activate TBM
- My first attack
- Enemy's first attack
- My knight gets pissed off by that enemy's attack, and attack at 0 frame until that monster dies.

With this "feature" as well as creative use of strafe and doors, I was able to kill mages easily. Fire Elementals are even easier due to my 101 fire resistance.

With this quest completed, I was able to train to level 70 and get rank 35 bow. It's still a bit far from max rank, so I think I'm going to need to hunt down a bow of swiftness or darkness if I want to progress easily into clearing dragonsand and paradise valley.

Fortunately, there are still many quests that I can complete. I imagine I can reach level 90 before having to do memory crystal quests.

I'm currently going through Lair of Wolf. It will be a long one due to the werewolf refresh, tons of ooze and annoying greater werewolf knockouts, so I think I'll take it slowly.

I'm also noticing that the yellow herb is the hardest to come by and get used up the fastest as the best white potions require 1-2 yellow herbs.

I may have to spend a few weeks just shopping at different general stores to collect yellow herbs.

My last few play throughts, I was "speedrunning" the game and rarely picked up a herb.

After turning in the quests, I decided to try clearing Dragonsand. Repeatedly hiring Gate Master and Wind Master in Dragonsand as well as using the NWC stat buff made it possible.

Basically, I would hire a wind master and a gate master, donate in NS temple to get Hour of Power, fly to Dragonsand and activate the NWC buff, then start clearing Dragonsand from one end to the other, luring a few enemies at a time.

It is a bit tedious, but the experience is amazing. With all the buffs, I was able to get my bow to a recovery speed of 16. This means if I get a bow of swiftness/darkness, which is -20, I can get the recovery to 0!

I believe bow of swiftness cannot be shopped right? They can only be found on high level monsters?

I found a few goodies while killing dragons and wyrms, including poseidon, which will become my main weapon (replacing Mordred, but I will keep it for when I need life stealing more than damage).

I also realized that I have been using an amulet with +4 speed this whole time! I think I looted it from Goblinwatch and forgot to upgrade!