This game. This freaking game is unreal. Completely caught me off guard. A little story.

I downloaded this game from GOG awhile back after I picked it up in some sale for $1.19 or so. I played it for 5 minutes then, not even, just to see if I could understand how to play, and I had no idea what I was doing so I put it away as a "we'll play this and learn it later" game.

So yesterday, that day came. Keep in mind, I never played this game when it was released, so I have no nostalgia or anything to go by. All I knew was that the GOG page for the game said some interesting stuff, and a few reviews that were very positive.

So, yesterday my internet was out all day, and I was browsing through games to play that I already installed, and lo and behold, I saw Master of Magic. I thought, "hmm, that seems interesting, but it's a game I'll have to read the manual to play". So I spent the next hour or so just reading the entire manual since I couldn't be distracted by being online.

So I'm reading this manual and thinking, "wow, this game is deep and sounds pretty awesome!". I finally load the game up, choose a wizard and start, and after about 30 minutes, a stupid dumb grin appears on my face. Oh my god, what have I discovered here?!

I can't believe it. Well, I should, because GOG has never let me down, but for some reason, I didn't think a DOS game could be this good. The only other DOS game I played recently has been Syndicate Plus and that was a let down to be honest (I'm more of a strategy man, not an action gamer).

So yeah, this game is freaking awesome and I'm blown away. I would say this game has aged well, but I haven't played for that long to really get a full grasp of it. The few hours I've spent so far have been magical, though, and I can't wait to play more.

Long story short - Master of Magic is still amazing after all these years!

Another lifelong convert. Welcome to the family!

Are you playing the patched or the vanilla version right now?

Master of Magic is great. I played it with every available race years ago. If I find the time, I have to re-install it and give it another run.

Insecticide. Available in the first link in the stickied thread.

Commentary about what it does and doesn't do (it's half patch, half mod) can be found in my thread, here.

It certainly sounds interesting. Will give it a download later and check it out. Thanks!

I use it and recommend it, but it's your decision to make.

Your story mirrors mine exactly. I got MoM in a sale bundle without knowing anything about it. It's about as close as you can get to a perfect game, IMO. The more you play it, the more you'll notice how many different strategies there are to win. And they're not just slightly different, they're very, very different, leading to very different experiences from game to game.

You'll also start to notice how many later games copied ideas from MoM. I still haven't found one I like as well though, even if they have better graphics and other bells and whistles.

In short, welcome to the cult!

Thanks for the welcome!

The mod is interesting, but I'm reading a few negatives from it as well. Mainly, the combat AI of the enemies and the artifacts being underwhelming. I'm debating whether or not to start a new game with the mod but I just don't know yet....I have to research it more (going to do that right now, actually).

The AI in MoM was never exactly stellar, and I find it much more interesting to just use the itemmaker to create my own set of artifacts. A pin of flying (and nothing else), for example, has a low mana point value and you won't have to fight half a dozen dragons to get one as treasure.

Master of Magic is a great source of fun but there are times it can become really frustrating on higher difficulties. For example when you start on Myrran and suddenly an earth elemtal pops out of some cave and decides to take a walk to your capital or there is no place to build a new city on impossible.

The item-maker is great, but I've found a few great artifacts already, too. I would hate to lose that aspect of the game, so I think right now, I just can't use this patch. I appreciate it's existence and maybe in the future I will give it a go, but for now, I'm enjoying the base game quite a bit so I don't want to mess with it.

You can revert AI aggressiveness in combat back to how it was in vanilla with a single fix:
http://realmsbeyond.net/forums/showthread.php?tid=3663&pid=334035#pid334035

I can't imagine playing without this patch, to be honest. Too many bugged or downright broken features in the vanilla version.

As for the artifacts... I don't know. I never played vanilla much, but I couldn't tell if there was a difference in artifact generation from what I've seen.

From what I understand, the artifacts you find in Insecticide are junk compared to the vanilla game. That's what I've read, anyway.

Still, you I wouldn't mind giving the patch a try if I can fix the AI back to base game. I know the game probably doesn't have stellar AI to begin with, but I wouldn't want it to be completely broken. I don't know. Still thinking about trying the patch because you guys are making it sound good!

I do think it is very good, but don't feel pressured. The more you play vanilla the more you'll appreciate Insecticide once you try it.

It's one of those fan-patches that's been years in the making with lots of input from players, so it's quite polished.

Another one you might like -- from the "More Mods" section on the realmsbeyond.net forum -- is called Plight. It expands all the help text in the game to give you a much clearer understanding of how things work.

Now THAT sounds like an instant-install for me. Thanks for the heads up! Does it change anything else other than help text?

That's also a concern of mine. With Insecticide, I have to really study what it changes because I'm afraid it might go off the path of the developer's vision for the game, and become the modders or community's vision. Which is fine, but I really want to experience the game the way it was meant to be played by the developers.