Dragoons’ Caverns is yet another dungeon I tend to skip over for way too long. There are just some parts of it I use to struggle with back in the day before I learned how to properly deal with the situations found within this dungeon. Nowadays it is a breeze but I sure let that keep me away for long enough.
This dungeon can be found in Ironfirst. If you take the first left when going down the road if you entered from the New Sorpigal. You then take another left after clearing out a bunch of creatures and keep going till you see the barred doorway. You know when you hit the right spot.
This place is filled with things like thugs to ooze. If you enter here early on you either tend to not have enough damage to deal with the Thugs or run out of mana far too quickly to deal with the massive amount of Ooze lurking below.
As you enter into Dragoons’ Caverns there is a decent hallway and some space before you run into anything. Giving those who heavily focus on ranged combat like myself some breathing room. If however, you are not careful you can end up with far too many Thugs and up still going after you by the time you hit the exit to the dungeon.
You then are faced with two doors before going deeper into the dungeon. The first way I went was the one that could open if I recall. I ended up finding a chest with a flute in it. Flute as far as I can recall I have never found a use for it.
The flute instead sat in my inventory for the remainder of the game. This I think is the only reason it was placed into the game in the first place. I have found there are lots of useless stuff that end up bogging down one of my character's inventories.
While sure I could dump it on the ground and when that zone reset it would be gone. However, if I recall there is a way to get lost items back when speaking to the Seer. Making holding onto this item even worse!
After that, I cleared by way of a button. One should always press a button when they find one in Might & Magic VI. Things usually don’t go wrong when you do and I was just fine for doing so this time around.
Once I had done so I got to backtrack to near the start of the dungeon. Where I got to go down the other path as that door was now opened.
One of the paths I took from that point led me down to the sewers of the dungeon. These are mostly filled with ooze. While I would not say the loot was worthwhile clearing out. It’s better to not have them around in case you mess up at a later point where you could fall here getting trapped by a bunch of them.
That could become an issue if you are out of mana as ooze can only be damaged by spell damage. Thankfully by this point in the game most of my weapons have damage enchants on them. So if worst comes to worst I’d still have a decent chance of getting out alive. It would just be slow and annoying.
I ended up clearing out the hordes of ooze with a ring of fire on my mage and sparks on my druid. Not a bad combo. I do however at some point need to train my druid up to use fire damage as I rather love the ring of fire.
A nice side benefit of clearing out the ooze. If you end up passing under this narrow bridge you have a decent chance of falling off when you try walking over it. With the ooze out of the way that would not be an issue anymore.
Furthermore, I could get all the thugs and creatures at the top guarding the bridge to fall into the waters. I did so in increments by slowing moving up and shooting a couple at a time if needed to get their attention.
I did not want all of them coming down at once. I then would dwindle the ones that did fall till there was nothing left. I would repeat this process till the top was clear.
This also meant when I did go up there I would not lose out on any loot these guys can drop. As many of them can fall off the edge to the lower section as well. Making it even more of a pain if you do happen to fall off the narrow bridge.
Once that was all done I ran back the way I came till I was at the top again. I then kept clearing till crossed the bridge and had a few more buttons to press. It was then time to drop down below the swear line of the dungeon.
There are some elevators you take to get down. The issue is there tend to be a lot of creatures waiting down before for you to come into melee range as you slowly get lowered by the elevators.
They are also quite hard to hit with just arrows even if you pan down the point of view you have. I like to load up the spell sparks and shoot a bunch of them down below. There however becomes a point where you just need to jump down and finish off whatever is left standing.
Quite a fair bit of clearing later you end up in the final room. Once it is cleared you can get to looting chests without interruptions. That would be if a few of these chests are teleports that take you to other parts of the dungeon.
This can create a real issue for someone who is not expecting that to happen and has not cleared the dungeon fully beforehand. Since I had killed everything already I did not worry about this part of the dungeon.
One of the chests contained a harp which happened to be one of the reasons I was coming here anyways for. The harp itself is for a quest from Andrew Besper in Ironfist. After turning it in, I was off to speak with the king about a matter.
Later on I would find myself in New Sorpigal in the town hall talking with Frank Fairchild. He was rather interested to know some information I had discovered in a scroll from this dungeon. Rewarding me with 5k gold and experience.
It is always nice when you get to finish off several quests from running one dungeon. This place ended up being more rewarding then I tend to give it credit for.
Other Content
- Might & Magic VI | Snergle’s Caverns
- Might & Magic VI | Snergle’s Iron Mines
- Might & Magic VI | Free Haven Sewer
Information
Screenshots were taken and content was written by @Enjar about Might & Magic 6.
