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Originally posted by Guest@Mar 26 2005, 01:23 AM
i think there might be a glitch or error with the invulnerability spell though it says the first two attacks to a unit with it are completely disregarded. but the drakes attacks still killled my hero.... any1 know whats up with that?

My understanding of the invulnerabilty spell (a "rare" life spell) is that it subtracts 2 damage from ANY attack. So if a hero with 10 health and invulnerabilty spell on him got hit by a doom bolt spell (a "rare" chaos spell) it would (in theory) only do 8 damage instead of 10. This would also apply to melee attacks (as I said it supposedly affects all attacks).

As for why your hero got smashed by a great drake... that isn't that surprising. Great Drakes normally have a fire breath attack of 30 and a melee attack of 30. (when at a chaos node, as they often are, the node's aura will boost their attacks by 2). You may also notice (if you happen to right-mouse-click on a great drake in combat) that they are +3 (plus three) to hit. The default "to hit" for all creatures in the game is 30%. A +3 to hit creature is 60% "to hit" (yeah each +1 is actually 10 percent. and yes, I know it is a bit of a silly combat system). So......

The short version is that a great drake (not at a chaos node) would do (on average) :

Fire breath: 30 * 0.6 = 18 damage.
Melee damage: 30 * 0.6 = 18 damage.

For a total of 36 health in damage. (this is why you normally don't want to thumb-wrestle great drakes. Shoot them from far away. And unless your name is Torin, don't fight them in melee).

So invulnerabilty would subtract 2 points from each attack. Making the total (on average) damage done by a great drake 32. This is enough to crush almost every hero easily.

As an aside, (yeah I can ramble forever) defense works in the same way that attack does. If your hero has a defense of 10, he/she will on average block about 3 health from every attack. (10 * 0.3 = 3.33...). The default "to hit" for DEFENSE is the same as the default "to hit" for ATTACK. Very few things modify this defensive "to hit" (essentially how effective each of those little shield icons are). The "lucky" ability (that halflings and some heroes have) is one. The prayer spell (an "uncommon" life spell) is another.

Originally posted by Guest@Mar 30 2005, 04:51 AM
so yes, invulnerability is a pretty useless spell / magic item feature as it does nothing. But Wraithform (or whatever it's called) if pretty useful.

While an invulnerabilty spell will not allow your typical hero to go headbutt a great drake (no spell can, although invisibility spell will at least let him/her throw things at it from a safe distance) neither will wraith form (a "rare" death spell). In fact, wraith form's (one of death magics few "blessing" type spells) defensive aspects are generally only useful on very weak units.

Wraithform gives the target "weapon immunity". This raises a unit's defense to 10 against creatures not using: magic, mithril, or adamantite weapons. Three points here: 1. The defensive bonus is not that great. A defense of ten will only block about three damage on average. 2. Any opponent with the "alchemy wizard skill" (such as Jafar) will have ALL of their units with at least magic weapons. Moreover any town with an alchemists guild will create units with at least magic weapons (and mithril or adamantite if near those mineral deposits). 3. Heroes that live long enough will typically have defenses well over 10.

Wraithform IS USEFUL however in that it makes units (heroes in particular) non-corporeal. The major benefits of this are that the unit is immune to the web spell ("common" nature spell, also used by giant spiders), the cracks call spell ("uncommon" nature spell), and gains both the water walking and pathfinding ability.

Normally water-walking and pathfinding is an ideal way to get around however, non-corporeal units cannot benefit from magic roads. If however, the non-corporeal unit simply travels with a corporeal unit, then they CAN use magic roads.

[MoM_Junkie_Vebose]

Originally posted by Guest@Mar 26 2005, 11:15 AM
If you Customize a wizard and choose all Perks and dont actually choose any magic books you can research the two quickest things and after that Spell of Mastery will be available and you will be able to start researching it way before you should... It might be tough to stick it out without having any magic spells but just get some strong units protecting your city and then have another beefed up unit go out exploring it worked for me on Hard. Its easier cause you got many Perks too.

The wizard customization is one of the many truly great features about this game IMHO.

The no spell book route can certainly be tough going. You start on the myrran plane with a myrran race (trolls or dwarves make good selections for this particular setup). You won't be able to cast any spells to help your units in combat (except for dispel magic and disenchant area...). It is true you can find spell books in nodes and some lairs, but those tend to be tougher fights. Moreover while you can START researching the spell of mastery relatively soon, you won't necessarily finish any sooner than you otherwise would.

The research cost of EVERY spell that you RESEARCH (not trade for or find) is subtracted from the research cost of the spell of mastery. So the more spells you research PRIOR to researching the spell of mastery, the less expensive it is when you finally do research it.

That being said, if you want to try the game casting very very very few spells, this is a good way to do it.


Some things to keep in mind:

The difficulty settings. Successful tactics at one setting may not be successful on another. The nodes and lair fights will become progressively more difficult as you go from "intro" to "impossible" settings. Also while the AI does not necessarily get better they certainly get more bonuses as the difficulty setting goes up:

At the impossible setting enemy wizards get several advantages. They start with more initial "picks". Meaning they can start with more spellbooks and special abilities (like alchemy, or archmage, or conjurer, etc). Moreover their "picks" are not bound by normal selection rules. For example, normally you'd need 1 or more spellbook in chaos, nature, and sorcery magic in order to select the "nodemaster" pick. Also, if you've played much on the impossible setting you may wonder how they can afford/feed their vast armies (usually of spearmen or something equally silly... but they DO have a lot of them). The enemy wizards get large "bonus" multipliers to their gold, food, and mana incomes. Spellbooks give you 1 "powerbase" each (the powerbase is just the total of all of your magical "income" from shrines, temples, nodes, certain races (dark elves, draconians, beastmen, high elves), and mineral deposits (mithril, adamantite, and the crystals found in deserts), volcanoes you've raised also add 1 each. The enemy wizards get something like 4 times that for each. This is why it is usually a good idea to keep nodes out of the hands of enemy wizards (the benefit to you is great, but what it takes away from them is greater still). Warp node (a "rare" death spell) is particularly useful in this regard. Particularly when you can "explore" the planes with the earth lore spell (a "common" nature spell).

I am captain typo (Vebose = Verbose) such is life.

[MoM_Junkie_Vebose]

Originally posted by Minti@Mar 23 2005, 06:35 PM
I read that MoM walktrough/FAQ someone posted a link to earlier on this thread, and there was some talk about life stealer. What the heck is that? Kills settlers? I have never came across any of those.

Life steal is an ability possessed by some summoned death creatures (and one hero) and is also a "common" (level 1) death spell.

Chaos, Death, Nature, and Sorcery. All have at least one "direct" damage type of attack spell where increased mana into the spell (generally) yields more damage.

Death's is "life drain" although adding more mana supposedly affects how well a target can "resist" each point of life drain.

Chaos has "fire bolt", "lightning bolt", and "fireball" (doom bolt, and warp lightning cannot be "increased" in effect by adding more mana)

Nature has "ice bolt"

Sorcery has "psionic blast" (darn you Jafar, that's the 5th hero you've killed today)


Life drain unlike the others has the interesting property of bringing "Normal units" (not summoned units, like hell hounds, or sky drakes. And not heroes) killed "mostly" through life drain back from the dead to serve in your army. This spell is very useful, especially at the lower difficulty settings. And especially when used against weak normal units in enemy/neutral towns. Undead troops don't heal, but don't have any maintenence costs. They DO however reduce unrest in towns (just like all normal units) by 1 unrest for every 2 normal units.

If you end combat with 9 units (the maximum you can have at any one "tile") then any undead units won't show up. Just like you won't get any "prisoner" heroes from lairs to join you if you have 9 overland units at the end of combat.


The hero I mentioned earlier is actually a "champion" that you can either summon with the summon champion spell or might come around and ask to be hired if you have high enough fame. Although he won't do either if you don't have at least 1 death spell book. His normal name is Ravashack and is a "necromancer". He is similar to the hero Malleus in that he ALWAYS has the arcane power skill (a nice feature for caster types). As already stated, he also has the life drain ability at a range and in melee (although his melee attack is normally pretty pathetic). If you somehow manage to get Ravashack early in the game he can create large armies instantly out of the dying enemies in the neutral and enemy towns. While by no means the most powerful hero in the game, he is certainly entertaining and fun.

The "monsters" or summoned units with the life drain ability are Demon Lords, Death Knights, and Wraiths. Demon Lords and Death Knights are both "very rare" (level 4) death spells. So they normally aren't summoned until later in the game. But wraiths are a "rare" death spell (level 3). So if you begin the game with 11 death spell books you could select them as a starting spell.

Wraiths are basically ideal for conquering neutral towns. (and converting some of the enemy troops there into loyal death units).


BTW spells are grouped into 4 levels for each type. Level 1 or "common" spells are the most common, least expensive to research and cast, and in general the least powerful. Next is "uncommon", "rare", and "very rare". Their are 10 spells of each type at each level. So... their are 10 common death spells, 10 uncommon death spells, etc. etc. Just as their are 10 very rare nature spells... or chaos

Depending on what you select for your wizard during game setup, you can start with vastly different numbers and strengths of spells.

Ten spell books of any one type of spell book will guarantee that you will have research access to ALL SPELLS of that type. So why take 11 books in any one type? Two reason mainly... With more than 7 books in any type, spells of that type cost less to research and cast. But also you can begin the game with ALL of the common spells for that type, two uncommon spells, and one rare spell. This is an excellent way to get an idea of what spells are like for each of the spell books.

If you take less than 10 spell books for a particular type, you are not guranteed to be able to research all of the spells of that type. This isn't necessarily a bad thing. You can also trade for and find spells (of any level) if you have even 1 book of a particular type.

Some fun starting selections:

Take 11 life spell books. Choose "true sight" and "prayer" as your uncommon spells, and choose "Torin" as your rare spell. (this is particularly nasty if Torin has both "agility" and "lucky" skills).

Take 11 sorcery spell books. Choose "flight" and "phantom beast" for your uncommon spells, and choose "invisibility" as your rare spell. Flying invisible heroes are very difficult for most enemies to attack. This works well for ranged magic type heroes. "Spell lock" is also nice for those pesky "dispel" and "disenchant" spells cast by opponents.

Take 3 chaos, 2 nature, 3 sorcery, artificer, runemaster, node master. You start the game with create artifact spell. And more importantly can create artifacts for a profit. (actually any combination that uses the "runemaster" and "artificer" picks will allow you to do this). If you make a sword that costs 100 mana to create, you can break it on the anvil for 200 mana. Once you get a hero (any will do really) you can boost them up with some crazy artifacts.

[MoM_Junkie_Vebose]

Originally posted by FreeFreddy@Aug 23 2004, 06:29 PM
Btw, my advise is: choose Myrran-ability and take as race the Night Elves, they produce one magic point per population and their ranged units (magicians, clerics etc.) are more powerful than any of the other races.

Dark elves are great fun. Of particular interest are their night blades. These units cost 2 gold and 1 food to maintain (modest). But have the invisibility ability. Meaning only undead, creatures with true sight spell, (and sky drakes, and (arch?)angels) can see them. They are great for protecting nodes from enemy troops and spirits. They can also make effective "walls" at choke points to prevent enemy troops from freely passing through. And because they are invisible, most enemy troops cannot attack them.

Dark elf priests are powerful to be sure. But one could argue that beastmen priests are better because they have twice as many hit points and only one less magic attack strength. As such they tend to be a little more durable. (enemy wizards tend to target priest/shaman/magician/warlock units with direct damage spells. At only 4 hit points for the typical priest unit, this can mean a short combat career).

When playing dark elves keep in mind that they grow "very slowly" meaning they have a -20 per turn growth rate. If you want to take full advantage of their 1 "magical power" per population point (the highest in the game, followed by draconians, beastmen, and high elves, which all yield 1/2 point per population) be sure to plant your settler units in favorable growth rate areas. Choose areas with rivers if you can. And plains if you can't. Stay away from mountainous areas and deserts if you can. (those towns will grow very slowly). Also spells like "change terrain" (nature; uncommon), "gaia's blessing" (nature; rare) and "stream of life" (life; rare) are all great ways to improve growth rates in towns.

For areas that contain "powerbase" generating minerals (mithril, adamantite, quork and cryx crystals). I like to place dwarven settlers if I can (whether they are my "home" race or not. Dwarven towns grow slowly as well, but a well placed dwarven town can easily generate 10 mana per round as soon as it grows to 1 population. Where it would take a dark elf town many many many turns to reach that mana output. And a miner's guild built in a dwarven town will increase their bonus even more.

(no I can't spell Verbose consistently)

[MoM_Junkie_Vebose]

[i]Originally posted by FreeFreddy@ Feb 17 2005, 07:49 PM

Of the normal units with the very good strength I know of two. First, the Stag Beetle of the klakons. Very strong in combat + fire breath. Second, and this ones are the gods in calculated combat, are the paladins of the humans. Pierce, magic immune, strong enough, protected enough. You'll see.

And about the city wall, I think it's there for the buildings of the city not being destroyed after a combat, should an enemy enter your town during it, but I'm not 100% sure.

As I may have mentioned before. Different strategies may be very successful at one level and not so much on another. (this is part of what makes the game so replayable).

Stag beetles and dragon turtles are fun. But are FAR from the most powerful units in the game. Paladins, war trolls, warlocks, and slingers are all very powerful normal units. Believe it or not you can actually use a nomad or high man or orc spear man unit to take out a great wyrm. Seriously. It all depends on how boosted they are with spells. As for how each of these units does against each other in their "normal" unenchanted states.... isn't really applicable. They simply won't exist like that in combat.

Most of these powerful units work best in stacks of 8 or so. Especially trolls and slingers.

Paladins are VERY powerful units. But take a long time to be able to build. Cracks call is very nasty at taking them out. (yes flight, or wraith form is a good counter for cracks call). Guardian wind is a great spell to cast on paladins (pesky slingers).

War Trolls are great fun too. Regeneration is great. I don't care much for death magic on the impossible difficulty setting, but war trolls with black channels is great. Normally black channels is bad (because the unit won't heal). But regenerating trolls with black channels still regenerate. And instead of costing 4 gold and a food to unkeep, cost 1 mana instead. You could "retire" a black channeled troll unit to guard duty in a town by taking off black channels (now the unit costs nothing to maintain, but doesn't have the black channels boost either). Be careful of angels (with their dispel evil ability) and life wizards with dispel evil, or holy word. Banish is another bad one (but keep in mind both banish and holy word are rare spells, and not normally selected by enemy wizards as starting spells when they have 11 books of that type).

Warlocks are ideal for taking out opposing enemy heroes with casting ability. Doom bolt is very nasty, the 4 magic shots after are great too. However their are many downsides to warlocks. They normally move at only 1. (so they aren't gonna travel fast without some help). They are the most expensive normal unit it the game (tied with War Mammoths) at 5 gold and 1 food. They take a VERY long time to be able to build them (Wizard tower is the most expensive building in the game). When you finally can build them, your building town cannot reduce the cost of building them through iron or coal deposits (like you can with "non-magical" normal units). 240 production points is very difficult to do in one turn even for a city that produced a mechanicians guild.

Slingers are kind of ridiculous. They do lethal damage at a range. They are relatively inexpensive to maintain (2 gold and 1 food. Vs 4 gold and 1 food for paladins and war trolls, and 5 gold and 1 food for warlocks). The building requirements are very low. (an armory is all that is required to build them, although a fighters guild is well worth building.) On the down side they only move at one. Their ranged attack can be utterly removed for that combat through the "common" (level 1) chaos spell "warp wood". Or largely negated by a guardian wind spell (missile immunity) on an enemy target. That being said. The lucky ability combined with the fact that their are 8 of the little buggers in the unit make them particularly nasty on the battlefield.

Things you want to do to make your "powerful" normal units more effective (and live longer too).

Build them in towns where you have an alchemist guild AND mithril or adamantite mineral deposit nearby. Mithril weapons and armor will add 1 to attack and defense to EACH MEMBER in the unit. (N/A for trolls, they can't build alchemist guilds). Adamantite will add 2. This brings up an interesting point about the numbers of critters in a unit. A halfling slinger unit starts with 8 hit points (1 for each guy in the unit). A warlock unit starts with 4 hit points (again 1 for each) Paladins start with 16 hit points (4 for each guy in the unit). A "lion heart" spell adds 3 health and attack to EACH FIGURE IN THE UNIT. So this spell would add 12 hit points to a warlock unit, 12 hit points to a paladin unit, but add 24 hit points to a slinger unit. This holds true for most unit spells, like giant strength or stone skin, or flame blade, or holy armor, etc. They produce a bigger effect in units with more figures per unit. So souped up slingers are WAY more powerful than a normal slinger unit. But a souped up dragon turtle or stag beetle or golem is only moderately more powerful than a normal one. This has to do with figures per unit.

Create buildings that boost the initial level of troops created there. (fighters guild and war college each boost the starting level 1 and are cumulative).

Take the warlord pick if you can. (costs 2, but often worth it, troops can go to higher levels than normal and start out at +1 level).

Movement spells/abilities. Pathfinding is a good way to double the speed of slow-poke normal units inexpensively. Pathfinding is a skill possessed by some hereos (Shuri the huntress, Marcus the ranger) and is an uncommon nature spell "pathfinding". Nomads can build ranger units that have a pathfinding effect. You can even combine units that have the forrester and mountaineer abilities to get a pathfinding effect. (almost all high elf units have forester as well as some heroes (Rakir the beastmaster and Alorra the elven archer) and some nature summoned troops (like war bears and sprites)). Almost all dwarven units have the mountaineer ability as do everyone's favorite hero "Brax the dwarf" and Bahgtru the Orc (stone giants and fire giants are a couple more with mountaineering). The endurance spell (life, common) is particularly effective when combined with pathfinding allowing your army to cover great distances quickly. Flight is good too, but can become expensive if your force is large. Windwalking (Jaer the wind mage, Djinn summoned sorcery creature, and "windwalking" a rare sorcery spell all grant this ability) is an effective means to transport large numbers of slow moving troops over any terrain. Keep in mind though that just because a hero can windwalk doesn't mean they are "flying" once they are in combat. More than a few great wyrms are happy about that distinction.

Have them hang out with heroes with the armsmaster skill. (this skill adds additional experience to normal units stationed with the hero each round. EVEN UNDEAD normal units can gain experience this way). Dethstryke (a champion hero) always has this skill. Lots of "fighter" type heroes can get it. (even ones that are fighter-mage types, like Reywind, Aureus, Mystic X, and Warrax can get it).

Late game life spell "crusade" ("very rare" level 4) is effectively identical to the "warlord" wizard pick but IS CUMULATIVE. So with warlord AND crusade all units are effectively 2 levels higher than normal. (and can go above even the "ultra-elite" status normally achievable for normal units to become "champion" normal units). A champion level engineer unit will mop up most other troops. Nevermind what a champion level slinger unit or paladin unit with adamantite weapons can do.

Spells particularly useful for making an extremely powerful normal unit stack:

Offense is good. Defense is usually better. (don't get hit)
Holy armor, stone skin, iron skin, invulnerability, wraith form, are all good defensive spells for armoring up units and heroes. Chaos channels with demonic skin is bugged to be (far) more powerful than it should be. Use it to your advantage; the computer will. (in fact the computers chaos channeled units can have all 3 effects! Demonic skin, demon wings, and fire breath.)

If you are gonna get hit, you may as well live to tell about it.
Healing, lion heart, regeneration and the charm of life (global enchantment) are all great ways to make your troops survive combat. (I don't recommend raise dead. It is *cough* a little buggy). True sight is an excellent spell to make your fighter types able to safely fight phantom warriors and phantom beasts, or to let your mages/archers take out those air elementals and night stalkers.

Can't hit what you can't see or reach.
Flight and invisibility are a particularly nasty combo.

Spell lock. A must have for units surrounded with enchantments. (don't forget to recast it if it gets dispelled)

For the brave, fool-hardy or bored. Berserk (uncommon death spell) can be a lot of fun on a unit with first strike (paladins, elven lords, colossus, death knights, Roland the paladin, Mortu the death knight, some cavalry, etc.). Berserk basically doubles their attack and removes all defense. It is also useful/fun on units that basically have no defense anyway. Werewolves in particular (they regenerate anyway), phantom beasts, and phantom warriors also normally have no defense (although if you can cast phantom warriors, you may as well cast phantom warrriors again because it is a lot less expensive than the berserk spell).

Flame blade and lion heart both affect ranged missile (not magical) attacks. Flame blades +2, lion heart is +3. Combined with adamantite weapons Slingers become firing squads. Eldritch weapon is particularly interesting. (I mentioned in an earlier post that few things can improve the "to hit" the defense of a unit; only lucky, and prayer (and maybe high prayer) but eldritch weapon essentially has the opposite effect: lowering a targets defensive effectiveness making each shield only 20 percent effective instead of 30. Strangely eldritch weapon can even allow slingers to kill "missile immune" troops with their ranged attack. Magic immunity and Missile immunity each give a defense of 50 (yes 50 shields) to a unit. With 50 shields each at normal (50 * 0.3 = 15) effectiveness 15 hits are blocked on average. (more than most missile ranged attacks.) Eldritch weapon lowers it to 10 blocked. (50 * 0.2). Same thing holds for magic immune creatures and magical attacks too. Of course as the review already indicated, if you think some of these units can get crazy powerful, they are nothing compared to souped up heroes.

The true gods of the battlefield are heroes souped up with artifacts and spells. One can make various arguments for each but I think many will agree that Torin and perhaps various incarnations of the Warrax the Chaos Warrior and Mortu the death knight make for the most "powerful" critters in the game. Maybe not when they first show up, but end game. I myself prefer a troop of mages (Malleus and Ravashack are always there, sometimes Morgana if she has arcane power, Aerie (again if she has arcane power, sometimes Yramrag the warlock too). Magic immunity doesn't mean sky drakes or paladins can't be taken out with one ranged shot from a souped up mage.

strategic walkthrough

[MoM_Junkie_Vebose]

Originally posted by Guest@Mar 26 2005, 01:23 AM
i think there might be a glitch or error with the invulnerability spell though it says the first two attacks to a unit with it are completely disregarded. but the drakes attacks still killled my hero.... any1 know whats up with that?

My understanding of the invulnerabilty spell (a "rare" life spell) is that it subtracts 2 damage from ANY attack. So if a hero with 10 health and invulnerabilty spell on him got hit by a doom bolt spell (a "rare" chaos spell) it would (in theory) only do 8 damage instead of 10. This would also apply to melee attacks (as I said it supposedly affects all attacks).

As for why your hero got smashed by a great drake... that isn't that surprising. Great Drakes normally have a fire breath attack of 30 and a melee attack of 30. (when at a chaos node, as they often are, the node's aura will boost their attacks by 2). You may also notice (if you happen to right-mouse-click on a great drake in combat) that they are +3 (plus three) to hit. The default "to hit" for all creatures in the game is 30%. A +3 to hit creature is 60% "to hit" (yeah each +1 is actually 10 percent. and yes, I know it is a bit of a silly combat system). So......

The short version is that a great drake (not at a chaos node) would do (on average) :

Fire breath: 30 * 0.6 = 18 damage.
Melee damage: 30 * 0.6 = 18 damage.

For a total of 36 health in damage. (this is why you normally don't want to thumb-wrestle great drakes. Shoot them from far away. And unless your name is Torin, don't fight them in melee).

So invulnerabilty would subtract 2 points from each attack. Making the total (on average) damage done by a great drake 32. This is enough to crush almost every hero easily.

As an aside, (yeah I can ramble forever) defense works in the same way that attack does. If your hero has a defense of 10, he/she will on average block about 3 health from every attack. (10 * 0.3 = 3.33...). The default "to hit" for DEFENSE is the same as the default "to hit" for ATTACK. Very few things modify this defensive "to hit" (essentially how effective each of those little shield icons are). The "lucky" ability (that halflings and some heroes have) is one. The prayer spell (an "uncommon" life spell) is another. [/b][/quote]
Doh. I read the sky drakes as great drakes. Still the math is similar. Only they have a 20 melee attack (also at +3) and a 20 lightning breath (only the lightning breath is armor piercing unlike the great drakes).

not at a sorcery node:

breath 20 * 0.6 = 12
melee 20 * 0.6 = 12

subtract 2 from each attack (from your heroes invulnerability)

leaves 20 damage (on average). Still a lot, and half that is armor piercing (meaning your hero can only "defend" with half of the number of shields that he/she has)

If the drake didn't have to move more than one move (of its 4 total) to attack you, it would be able to attack twice in one round. (for about 40 damage minus your heroes defense).

Depending on which hero it was at demigod level and which artifacts they were carrying... and the random rolls... it could have gone either way. But I think the crux of it is that invulnerabilty does not work quite how you thought it did (by completely removing attacks).

Okey, some things to correct here, as I noticed that during playing the game (and I used to play it maaany times ).

Life-Leeching
1. First of all, if a unit or a hero has a life-leeching ability (artifact, skill), the increased chance to hit REDUCES the chance to leech the life (thus also reducing the chance of killing an enemy completely with life-leech). Therefore are the Deathknights and heroes not so good to have this ability - little use of it then, as they have good chance to hit. And the better the chance to hit is, the less the possibility to leech life.
2. Second, the ranged attacks DON'T leech life. No, they don't. I tested that many times, especially on Ravashak when he still was weak and had little chances to hit. Didn't work. Also doesn't work with the Demonlord. (This is a bug)
3. Third, ANY unit can be raised from dead through life-leeching. I was able to have a colossus killed with the wraiths once, and I had him after as an undead unit. But, a summoned unit turned to undead state costs additionally 0.5% of mana to their normal mana cost. Thus useless on summoned units, they're better as non-undead then. Also it works on heroes. Oh yes. Got to love this unique Lifepriestess hero when she passed away with help of the wraiths early in the game.
But the during the combat summoned units can't be raised from death after the combat ends. No way. Tried that with Air Elementals and Earth Elementals. Enemy can have them, but players not (this is a bug).

Invisible Units / unexplored terrain
1. Any invisible unit CAN be seen by computer enemy. You have to think, the computer enemy is the computer that runs the game, and as such he knows and sees everything in the game. Yes, the computer enemy players should behave as if they wouldn't see the invisible units, but they don't in this game. They can see and attack invisible units on the map, just that they "can't see" them in combat (at least that works).
2. Also, the enemy computer players don't need the map / player revealing spells (Nature's Awareness, Awareness, Earth's Lore) as such, they can see every player and every place on the map at once. Just think on Jafar, when he casts his Floating Island near your starting city, should be known to everybody, is a common event. He doesn't have any units near your city, neither does he have any terrain-revealing spells cast. So this is also the awareness-cheating of the computer.

Heroes with chance to hit
Some heroes have that skill that increases their chance to hit (forgot the name) additionally. Now, if you create an artifact for them that has the maximum possible bonus value to hit on it and the hero has this chance-to-hit increasing skill AND the hero has a high level like Demigod AND the hero is a melee attacker only - they very often won't hit the enemy anymore. This seems to be also a bug of the game, in that with this combination the chance to hit of a hero goes over into a negative value because of the too high number. How to negate it? Don't add the chance to hit bonus to an artifact for this hero. Should be fine then (was then for me).

With that said, there are many more bugs in the game, like the game crash on casting the Chaos Channels Lycantropy spells sometimes. Or also that the volcanoes converted to mountains and further by the Change Terrain or that very rare Nature global spell spell stop to produce mana. A pity there was no additional patch for that, but this is how the game will remain now seemingly forever...

[another_guest]

Thanks to both of you for your in-depth posts

I used to play MoM quite a lot, but I've learned a few things from your posts... If I ever get to play it again, that knowledge will come in really handy.

To take out drakes with heroes, I usually sent in two ranged heroes. They should of course be beefed up as much as possible (high attack, chance of hits,...) and preferably have a walking range of 6. It's still not easy to avoid 4 drakes at once, but it's possible, even if half of the turns consist of running without a chance of shooting. It should also be noted that ranged units with arrows and such have a quite limited amount of ammunition, whereas units with magical attack and a decent "mana pool" (or whatever those were called, the MP figure) can easily attack 20 times or more in the same combat. So I preferred sending in heroes with a ranged magical attack.

[MoM_Junkie_Vebose]

Originally posted by FreeFreddy@Apr 8 2005, 05:00 AM
Okey, some things to correct here, as I noticed that during playing the game (and I used to play it maaany times ).

Life-Leeching
1. First of all, if a unit or a hero has a life-leeching ability (artifact, skill), the increased chance to hit REDUCES the chance to leech the life (thus also reducing the chance of killing an enemy completely with life-leech). Therefore are the Deathknights and heroes not so good to have this ability - little use of it then, as they have good chance to hit. And the better the chance to hit is, the less the possibility to leech life.
2. Second, the ranged attacks DON'T leech life. No, they don't. I tested that many times, especially on Ravashak when he still was weak and had little chances to hit. Didn't work. Also doesn't work with the Demonlord. (This is a bug)
3. Third, ANY unit can be raised from dead through life-leeching. I was able to have a colossus killed with the wraiths once, and I had him after as an undead unit. But, a summoned unit turned to undead state costs additionally 0.5% of mana to their normal mana cost. Thus useless on summoned units, they're better as non-undead then. Also it works on heroes. Oh yes. Got to love this unique Lifepriestess hero when she passed away with help of the wraiths early in the game.
But the during the combat summoned units can't be raised from death after the combat ends. No way. Tried that with Air Elementals and Earth Elementals. Enemy can have them, but players not (this is a bug).

I agree that Ravashacks life draining ability is not as effective as his to-hit ability gets higher. However I know for a FACT that Ravashack the necromancer can AND does life drain using a magic ranged attack. (master of magic patched to version 1.31). A simple example is to take mr. low level ravashack into a wimpy neutral town after ravashack has been damaged. In combat you can actually watch his health go up during combat (no, no healing artifacts. no regeneration. no smoke and mirrors). And have a neutral normal unit animated (raised) and join your army after combat. (just ravashack in your force, no ghouls, no wraiths, no boogie men). I don't doubt that you have played master of magic MANY times (it is a FUN game!), but I can assure you that this is the case. Is life drain bugged? Yes. Can it work at a range? Yes. (if you like I could somehow pass along a saved game file that might better demonstrate this).

Also I agree that many summoned units can be raised through life drain (although as you pointed out it is usually not worth it because of the fact that they can't heal, AND cost 50% more than a normal summoned unit). If I seemed to indicate that this was not the case in my earlier posts it was not my intent. Undead and heroes can be killed by life drain spell, but neither can be raised (become undead in your service) because of dying from life drain. I am not clear if you indicated that your wraiths raised an enemy hero that joined your side. If this is somehow the case this is certainly news to me. As for animating earth elementals or air elementals or fire elementals, phantom warriors, or phantom beasts (or even a demon) save your mana. There is a FAR FAR FAR FAR FAR easier way to have these troops join your armies (and not have them become undead either). Most would call it a bug. Some call it an intended feature:

What you'll need:
1. A unit that can safely avoid combat (an invisible unit that the enemies can't see, a flying unit that the enemies can't reach, or even a really fast unit that the enemies can't reach)
2. The "word of recall" sorcery spell. (common; meaning you could start with this spell if you had 2 sorcery spell books)
3. Any combat summoning spell that you want the creature of.
(Chaos: fire elemental)
(Death: demon lord (which will summon a demon in combat))
(Sorcery: phantom warriors, phantom beast, air elemental)
(Nature: earth elemental)
4. Enough mana and casting skill to both summon the unit and cast word of recall on the summoned unit.

Enter combat with the unit mentioned in #1. Summon the unit. Cast word of recall on it. Don't win combat. (just hit 'D' for done until combat is over. Or move the unit around until combat is over).
After combat you will have your new summoned troops wherever your summoning circle is. The units won't be free (in fact some are expensive) but the casting cost is quite low (just what they cost in combat). Air elementals are the fastest (natural) creatures in the game flying invisibly at a 5 movement points per turn. (great scouts if you can afford to maintain them)

BTW word of recall is one of my favorite spells as it is VERY useful as a troop transport. (as fast as having a magic road connecting any two points). I am a big fan of having a high casting skill. Whenever I conquer a neutral town I deem worthy of keeping, rather than leaving behind any of my combat force, I'll simply cast summoning circle in the new town, and "word of recall" newly created troops from my troop production town(s). This keeps my experienced fighting force intact, and I don't have to create low level unenchanted normal units in the new town, I bring in highly trained and well equipped (mithril or adamantite) troops.

Also word of recall (and recall hero, but recall hero can only be cast on heroes in combat) can transport troops from one plane to another. This is great if you or someone else has the planar seal spell in effect.