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Might and Magic seriesDying of Old Age in MM1(7 posts)(7 posts)
(7 posts)
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Posted June 25, 2022
Just an interesting observation that despite, I just made today. Dying of old Age. Once one of your Characters is reaching a certain age. He/She will just pass away while resting. I don´t know what the exact age limit is when this will start but in my case my Paladin Diana had been 96 years of age. And while she still delivered as expected despite her old age in any fight, every time I rested she passed away. Now you can fix this via the Raised Dead spell followed by Resting again, this time she does not die, which means you can get her to full Health.

One normally does not allow his Character to Age that much and one would make sure to use the Rejuvenate Spell to ensure all Characters stay between 18 and 30. In this case I just forgot to do so for several playing sessions.
Posted August 08, 2022
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pplw1: Just an interesting observation that despite, I just made today. Dying of old Age. Once one of your Characters is reaching a certain age. He/She will just pass away while resting. I don´t know what the exact age limit is when this will start but in my case my Paladin Diana had been 96 years of age. And while she still delivered as expected despite her old age in any fight, every time I rested she passed away. Now you can fix this via the Raised Dead spell followed by Resting again, this time she does not die, which means you can get her to full Health.

One normally does not allow his Character to Age that much and one would make sure to use the Rejuvenate Spell to ensure all Characters stay between 18 and 30. In this case I just forgot to do so for several playing sessions.
There is also a fountain of youth sort of spot where you can knock some decades off of your characters' ages. Beware though, it's VERY heavily guarded. One of the things I love about the first game is how it scales its fights, and makes you work for the real prizes.
Posted August 08, 2022
In MM2, I believe the rule is that a character who is at least 80 years old has a chance of dying when you rest, but otherwise functions normally. MM1 is probably very similar in this regard.

At least in MM2, if Rejuvenation would lower a character's age below 0, the spell will backfire; this means the spell will always backfire and age a character who is 0 years old. (At least that's better than having age underflow.)

In DOS MM2, if you use the Rejuvenate spell on a really old character, and the spell would raise the character's age to at least 256, it will actually make the character very young, as the "age" variable will overflow and become small. (It's an unsigned 8-bit integer.) (Does this happen in MM1?) Worth noting that Resurrection does not cause that (the spell seems to be solidly coded), and I don't think Divine Intervention does, either.

In MM3-MM5, there is no death from old age. Instead, as the character gets older, some stats drop, potentially (at, IIRC, 200 years old or so) by up to 50 points. If a stat is lowered to 0 (whether by age or otherwise), the character can randomly drop dead. Worth noting that Luck does not decrease, and Intelligence and Personality actually *increase*. If you can raise the stats that decrease to above 50, you no longer need to worry about death from old age; this is particularly handy for Clerics and Paladins, who can then just spam Divine Intervention without worrying about old age. Seeing as it's quite difficult to get Personality up to the 250 point threshold where you get the maximum bonus, it might not be a bad idea to do this deliberately on your Cleric (except in Swords of Xeen, which has a re-usable +10 Personality (Permanent) bonus that makes maxing the stat trivial).

Speaking of Swords of Xeen, the fountain of youth there lowers age by just one per use. If a character's natural age is 19 and you try and lower the character's age to 18, the character will instead get 255 years older, becoming 274 years old. (This is that age underflow I mentioned earlier; the amount of magical aging is stored as an 8-bit unsigned integer.) Then again, this is also the game with an uncapped HP fountain that can overflow your HP if you use it too much, resulting in a character who, while still alive and conscious, has around -32000 HP.
Posted August 17, 2022
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pplw1: Just an interesting observation that despite, I just made today. Dying of old Age. Once one of your Characters is reaching a certain age. He/She will just pass away while resting. I don´t know what the exact age limit is when this will start but in my case my Paladin Diana had been 96 years of age. And while she still delivered as expected despite her old age in any fight, every time I rested she passed away. Now you can fix this via the Raised Dead spell followed by Resting again, this time she does not die, which means you can get her to full Health.

One normally does not allow his Character to Age that much and one would make sure to use the Rejuvenate Spell to ensure all Characters stay between 18 and 30. In this case I just forgot to do so for several playing sessions.
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JalPhoenix: There is also a fountain of youth sort of spot where you can knock some decades off of your characters' ages. Beware though, it's VERY heavily guarded. One of the things I love about the first game is how it scales its fights, and makes you work for the real prizes.
Thanks a lot for your suggestion with the fountain I will certainly visit it and try it.
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dtgreene: In MM2, I believe the rule is that a character who is at least 80 years old has a chance of dying when you rest, but otherwise functions normally. MM1 is probably very similar in this regard.

At least in MM2, if Rejuvenation would lower a character's age below 0, the spell will backfire; this means the spell will always backfire and age a character who is 0 years old. (At least that's better than having age underflow.)

In DOS MM2, if you use the Rejuvenate spell on a really old character, and the spell would raise the character's age to at least 256, it will actually make the character very young, as the "age" variable will overflow and become small. (It's an unsigned 8-bit integer.) (Does this happen in MM1?) Worth noting that Resurrection does not cause that (the spell seems to be solidly coded), and I don't think Divine Intervention does, either.

In MM3-MM5, there is no death from old age. Instead, as the character gets older, some stats drop, potentially (at, IIRC, 200 years old or so) by up to 50 points. If a stat is lowered to 0 (whether by age or otherwise), the character can randomly drop dead. Worth noting that Luck does not decrease, and Intelligence and Personality actually *increase*. If you can raise the stats that decrease to above 50, you no longer need to worry about death from old age; this is particularly handy for Clerics and Paladins, who can then just spam Divine Intervention without worrying about old age. Seeing as it's quite difficult to get Personality up to the 250 point threshold where you get the maximum bonus, it might not be a bad idea to do this deliberately on your Cleric (except in Swords of Xeen, which has a re-usable +10 Personality (Permanent) bonus that makes maxing the stat trivial).

Speaking of Swords of Xeen, the fountain of youth there lowers age by just one per use. If a character's natural age is 19 and you try and lower the character's age to 18, the character will instead get 255 years older, becoming 274 years old. (This is that age underflow I mentioned earlier; the amount of magical aging is stored as an 8-bit unsigned integer.) Then again, this is also the game with an uncapped HP fountain that can overflow your HP if you use it too much, resulting in a character who, while still alive and conscious, has around -32000 HP.
Wow - Thanks a lot for taking the time to share your observations, insights and experiences across the various MM games. You must have played them quite a lot. I have come across similar variable overruns in games like Bard´s Tale when tempering with Character Values and items using old fashioned "Diskmonitor" As I am in the middle of MM2 grinding to get my Attribute Values closer to 200 I will certainly try the if I can get the age variable to overflow. I am told that when beefing up my Attributes I also need to be careful as adding an item that increases Strength by 20 while having a strength of 240 will move it bake to 4.... so no overflow but not very helpful.
Post edited August 17, 2022 by pplw1
Posted August 17, 2022
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pplw1: Wow - Thanks a lot for taking the time to share your observations, insights and experiences across the various MM games. You must have played them quite a lot. I have come across similar variable overruns in games like Bard´s Tale when tempering with Character Values and items using old fashioned "Diskmonitor" As I am in the middle of MM2 grinding to get my Attribute Values closer to 200 I will certainly try the if I can get the age variable to overflow. I am told that when beefing up my Attributes I also need to be careful as adding an item that increases Strength by 20 while having a strength of 240 will move it bake to 4.... so no overflow but not very helpful.
One exploit to raise stats further in MM2: Equip an item that increases the stat and has a spell attached, then use the item until it breaks. If you do this, the stat bonus from the item will become permanent. Note that this even works for AC.

The Uncurse Item spell is useful here. Ignore anything the game or manual says about curses; they (for the most part) don't exist. This spell, instead of removing a curse, will set the number of charges of the item to 1. Useful for items with a spell but no charges (as Recharge Item doesn't work on them), but also useful if you want to intentionally break the item to make the bonus permanent.

Speaking of curses, it *is* possible for an item to be cursed, but only if the byte corresponding to its enchantment bonus and alignment restriction is set to 255. This means that the item would have to be +63 with a specific alignment restriction (I forgot which exactly). Such an item will curse a character who tries to equip it, and can't actually be equipped. Incidentally, items that temporarily boost stats will factor in the entire byte, including alignment restriction, into the bonus, so a "Good Only" (for example) piece of gold armor will drastically boost level when used. However, there is a catch; if you boost a character's spell level too high, the character will lose the ability to cast spells.

Interestingly enough, it is possible to get non-casters to cast Cleric spells; you need to find the spot where you can learn all the spells, then give the character temporary SL and SP, and then the character can cast Cleric spells during battle.

(This is all assuming the DOS version of MM2; other versions may have different quirks and/or bugs.)
Posted August 18, 2022
Genesis MM2 has that bug in the hiring screen where you can browse outside of the character data and end up generating characters and items with insane stats.
Posted August 18, 2022
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GeistSR: Genesis MM2 has that bug in the hiring screen where you can browse outside of the character data and end up generating characters and items with insane stats.
At least that version is reasonably playable.

The European SNES version is so buggy that it's borderline unplayable, or at least not that fun. Instant death spells always work, damage spells do 50 damage when resisted (even if they'd do less damage if not resisted), an enemy's frenzy causes enemy attacks to fail, and the game may even get into a state where you can no longer form a party at the inn and go adventuring. (There's other things, like Max HP potions only giving 2 Max HP instead of 512.) I hear this version was planned to be released in the US, but was cancelled for unknown reasons; I highly suspect this version could not pass NoA's QA.

(Japan, incidentally, got a version of MM2 that's completely different from any other version, to the point where it may very well be an entirely different game.)

By the way, a couple other quirks of the Genesis version that I saw from watching videos:
* An enemy that saves against a a spell takes 1/4 damage instead of 1/2; this makes certain enemies, particularly the Mega Dragon, harder to kill.
* I think the Mega Dragon doesn't use its breath attack, preferring instead to eradicate one character per round.
* Enchant Item's SP cost is 50 *plus* the enchantment, rather than 50 *times* the enchantment.

(By the way, on DOS, casting Enchant Item on an item without a bonus doesn't require any SP.)
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GeistSR: Genesis MM2 has that bug in the hiring screen where you can browse outside of the character data and end up generating characters and items with insane stats.
NES MM1 has a bug that allows you to change items into other items, allowing for a rather quick glitched speedrun.

Then again, NES MM1 has a pair of bugs that, when combined, will allow a single Locust Plague to wipe out your entire party; if you see a Locust Plague, kill it before it reaches the front or you might as well reset, as you're not going to get another turn once the Locust Plague attacks. (NES Locust Plagues do 255 damage (as opposed to 10 total on PC), and when an enemy kills one of your characters, it seems your party doesn't get to act for the rest of the round.)
Post edited August 18, 2022 by dtgreene
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Might and Magic seriesDying of Old Age in MM1(7 posts)(7 posts)
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