Yeah, some places extinguish light spells every few steps, but I think the stronger light spells can work longer if I remember correctly.

For weapon identification, I don't know if there is any way to know in-game, unlike MM2. I just use the table in the strategy guide

Some squares are specifically "darkness" squares (as opposed to squares which are just unlit), which take one light unit away. Every time you cast a light spell or use a torch, you put one light unit in to the pile. "Lasting Light" (3rd level Cleric spell) puts twenty light units up for the cost of three.
It all adds up to a royal pain in the neck most of the time. You can still interact with everything and do all your work in darkness, if you like, it's just next to impossible to make a decent map that way.
Early on in the game, before my characters got themselves well established, I got trapped a couple times in darkened areas. Mapping "by feel" is ... less than fun.

I'm a little late, but I'll add a few things anyway:

1) The premade characters do start with better equipment and some gold, but you can take it from them. Just sign into the inn and then take some of your characters and some of the premade characters back out. Transfer all the goods to your guys, sign in again, and repeat with the other premade characters. Now you've got the same starting advantage as the premade party.

2) Dark areas can be annoying... I usually just map them out "by feel" which involves bumping into a lot of walls on purpose. If you are careful you will figure out where you are. If you get lost, use the location spell to tell which square you're on. Once you get the Lasting Light spell these areas will be less of a problem.

3) Figuring out which weapons are best is really annoying. The manual tells you to use cost as a guide but you'll be finding most of the weapons rather than buying them. I suppose you could check how much you'd get for selling them, but this is a big pain. I advise using the table in the cluebook to check them out. There will be a few spoilers, but not much. Just search the PDF for the item you're curious about, that way you'll skip any other unwanted info.

Hey guys, I just noticed something. The game runs really fast..I can't see the combat text nor the trap text and similar things...Is there a way to slow things down a bit?

i tought you could lowr the cycles by pressing ctrl+F11 you have to mske sure that you do that in windowed mode so you can see how fast its on and reduce it to 200 that is how i do it.

Don't do that, it makes the game itself run really poorly, scroll up to post 7 of this thread, it's already been pointed out how to fix it.

it worked thanks makes the game more playeble

Yeah I misread it...Thought you meant the fonts readable and not the speed issue. Thanks a lot :)

Finally most of my chars are level 2 (money is hard to find for me) And I was able to explore and map Sorpigal and the dungeon beneath it, and also got my first quest :)
Now I am outside Sorpigal exploring and trying to find my way...

It's amazing that a game this old is this complex :D

Just a silly question. How much do you guys think it will take to finish the entire 6 pack?

you are futher then me lol my party are some lvl 3 i have walked around the floor below but the arena is still to hardf i fought ghouls but they have more then 1 attack.

Well during my first play through(s) long before GOG existed.

MM1: 100ish hours
MM2: 170ish hours in and my save got corrupted. Lost the will to start over.
MM3: 90ish hours
MM6: 80ish hours

MM4 and MM5 can be played separately or you can put the contents of their folders together for all the content of both games together and then some! I've only played them separately.

MM4: 50ish hours
MM5: 70ish hours.
Swords of Xeen: 40 hours.

Edit: the order I played them in was: MM3 -> MM1 -> MM4 -> (MM5 wasn't out yet) MM2 -> MM5 -> Swords of Xeen -> MM6

One thing I would add when thinking about playtimes is that, especially for the earlier games (MM1 - MM5) there is a lot of optional content. Finishing this content is often much harder than simply winning the game, and means you need to play longer and level up more. Even if you don't do most of the optional stuff, though, there will be plenty of gaming hours in the pack.

What do you mean by optional?
So far I am only playing MM1 and enjoying it very much.. Is it possible to transfer my characters from mm1 to mm2? the same chars and all their equipment?

Well, in MM1 there were several fights that I found that I couldn't win, and I never bothered to actually try to win them before finishing the game. There were also a few tougher dungeons that I didn't need to explore in order to win. In MM2, there are similar encounters, but that time I did finish them all, even though I didn't have to... which made finishing the game proper quite easy afterwards. In World of Xeen, there are several whole dungeons that are meant for a challenge only and are not needed to complete the game, nor do they have any quests associated with them. The Xeen games also have many, many optional sidequests.

Depending on how many of these things you try to complete, you can easily add a lot of hours of gameplay.

Oh and about transferring from MM1 to MM2... yes, you can transfer your characters, but you will NOT get their equipment (probably a good thing, because then there'd be no good loot to find in MM2) and your characters' levels and stats will be scaled back. If you officially finish MM1 before importing, you will have your levels and stats scaled back less than if you transfer characters who have not officially finished MM1. Don't worry though, your characters in MM2 will quickly become far more powerful than they ever were in MM1!

A full explanation of how importing characters works is given in the manual to MM2, which you should have as part of your MM Pack.

Wow, I can't believe people are still playing MM1! The game is almost 25 years old now!

You guys could stumble upon a cheap copy of MM1 on ebay if you're interested in the paper. Maybe someone has uploaded the Might & Magic grid paper online somewhere. If you can find it, you could just copy it into a word document or something, and print the paper.