The town of Sorpigal was starting to get far too easy and frankly boring. I’d go out murder a few things and run back to the inn like someone scared of its own shadow. I ended up looting some upgrades and purchasing others that allowed me to move to my first cavern.
Short term one of my goals was to buy out the best piece of armor and weapons for each of the six characters I have from the blacksmith. After spending far too much time only getting a couple of kills per save in Sorpigal I managed to fulfill that goal of mine.
I also lucked out and looted some items that were not being sold by the blacksmith. All I can tell is one of them has a sell value of 200 gold. That blows anything for sale out of water at the blacksmith and despite not knowing its stats one can only assume it was amazing.
I even tried looking through the materials provided for the game. While there is an item section it lacks the finer details you would like to know about things. Therefore I have to assume that when something is worth a lot more gold than an item I already have it’s an upgrade.
Over time I slowly started to venture down into the Cavern Under Sorpigal. After a while, I stopped getting lost and even found a rather desirable route before I’d turn around and head back to the inn in Sorpigal.
Always having to be mindful of when I should attempt back to the inn seems like quite a strange tactic. Every time I have not done so has been a grave mistake. There was one time I spent almost clearing out the entire cavern and it seemed I was not getting any more re-spawns.
As such I thought it was time to go up to the inn and reset everything. I ended up getting killed just a couple steps away from the stairway up and out. That defeat was a crippling one at that. The pain of my time being wasted in such a manner I cannot articulate.
Some of the encounters I’ve run into have been amazing. Even more so when the previous things I thought I knew about the game ended up being not as correct as I liked and I needed to have a new understanding. Such as running into this massive group of eight kobolds when I have been used to not seeing anything over six creatures at once.
With this being a turn-based game I needed to take down as many of that kobold in the first round as I could. Otherwise, there was a decent chance one or more of my characters could end up getting focused down and knocked out once they ran out of health.
I always fear my cleric will end up being the one that gets targeted. At least when I ran into a large pack of melee creatures I had a feeling that everything in my backline was going to be saved. As long as my cleric remains up and has mana remaining I always feel like I have a fighting chance.
Sure my tanks and ranger would get taken out a couple of times. During one trip before heading out, I checked to see if some of my characters would be promoted to level three. The cleric was one of them to unlock the next level of spells and a much better healing spell albeit at double the mana cost.
One thing I’ve not played around with much is spells that cost far more than just mana. Once in a while, I’ll notice one of my caster's amount of gems has increased. I’ll admit I’ve not been paying much attention to them I just know I sometimes find them in loot. I just know some spells I have require a gem per cast which seems like quite an odd cost to have along with there still being a mana cost.
With the increased level of my cleric, it also means she is no longer useless in combat if needing to cast bless, heal, or awaken is not required. Before I’d just have to press block to burn her turn. She now has a main damage spell that works on things other than undead and more than enough mana I’m not fearful of spending some on nuking.
Perhaps the biggest disappointment in my entire group so far is still my sorcerer. The damage output is always just so low. It feels like I’m not understanding something to get a bigger output. Granted I’ve lucked out on some amazing weapons for my other characters which is causing some of them to do three times or greater damage on a decent hit.
It’s also kind of sad the class that has such a restriction and a tiny mana pool at that is getting taken out back and beaten by melee with a decent weapon.
At the very least since the sorcerer was a late add to the party he is almost level 3 and will unlock some better spells. Anytime I’m tempted to dump him out of the group and just get a level 1 in instead I can’t help but think some of his utility spells like levitation, leather armor, and jump will come in handy in some clutch situations where I’ll need to have one of these in my party regardless at the right level to cast such spells.
At the very least if I still don’t like the sorcerer in a few more levels I could always just leave him at the next town I go into. Then go and get him anytime I need a certain spell he can only cast. I’m hoping this will just be a character that shines quite well later in the game but there will need to be quite an insane amount of grinding to get there at the rate I’m going.
I’ve also run into areas of the cavern that seem to be not very useful for what I want. One of them is an arena where you can’t use magic. You also don’t earn rewards for winning either. It seems like a strange thing to have as I’m not understanding the reason the player would want to engage with it. It was at least something fun to run into on one of my many exploration journeys down into the cavern itself.
Final Thoughts
While I would say my survival rate of going down to Cavern Under Sorpigal has increased to around 70% now that still seems a bit lacking. What I do know is when I’m down there I can run into quite a long string of combats as opposed to having to run all over the town above just to find one or two. So even if I fail and lose some time it seems to be far more time effective. Not to mention a bit more rewarding.
At some point, it will be time to work out how to get to the next town. On one of my earlier trips down to the cavern, I ended up finding one of my first quests. No idea what I get for it. I just know I wanted to deliver a note to someone in another town. This seems to be the way the game is trying to hint at the next place I should go to. I just hope it’s not a trap.
Other Content
Information
Screenshots were taken and content was written by @Enjar about Might And Magic One.
