Important hotkeys:
ENTER to switch into turn-based mode for fighting (so targets stop moving) - or out of it
A to automatically attack an enemy (computer chooses the target)
Left-click on a target (one of those insects) to attack a target YOU choose - difficult if targets are moving
S to automatically shoot (with spell IF YOU HAVE ONE PRE-SELECTED, otherwise bow) or attack an enemy
B to make one of your characters miss their turn (like you want everybody to shoot insects a little way off, but one of your people has neither bow nor spells to shoot with).
C to open somebody's spell-book, usually when you want to cast a not-pre-selected spell
PaladinDurin, you didn't say what you must have already figured out to get from the edge of a wooden jetty, just outside town, with no killer insects in sight, to being surrounded by them. Nor what sort of modern games you are used to. So forgive me if I write too much.
MM7 was written back when downloading games was still in the future. Even if you had mail- (or online-) ordered rather than walking into a real-life store, you were still supposed to have received a physical copy, in a box, with not just a CD in its case, but also a paper booklet with a glossy cover. This is the manual. The game is firstly about exploring and learning, starting with the displays and controls, and you were supposed to have the manual open beside you as you did this.
With GoG, you should get the manual, at least as a downloadable extra. My copy of the game is a physical one, not from GoG, and though I do have MM6 from them (as part of the 1-to-6 bundle), this was before Galaxy, which I've never used so know little about. So HOW you'll get into the manual, I cannot help with.
(Also, the publishing company had the developers under some time pressure, I've heard, and the developers were writing for people many of whom would already know the system from playing the previous game, MM6. This makes for a shortage of tutorial-type hints and tips from conversations with friendly peasants.)
My advice before playing "for real" is to do a few dummy runs of just the starting area. For this, every time you start NEW game, might as well simply click OK to what you are offered on the CREATE PARTY screen. Watch the cutscenes, or click ESC when you are tired of them (twice, because the intro is made up of two cutscenes). When the game's main first-person view comes up, hit ENTER to go into turn-based mode - not because you want to fight, but as a way of pausing the game while you explore the user interface.
Along the bottom you see four faces - your four adventurers in oval surrounds, and surrounding that what I reckon is meant to be a sand-glass timer shape. A colored background means that person is ready to do something. Green color means you are safe, yellow means enemies close enough to shoot at, and red means enemies right in your face - or behind your back. A white line to the timer glass shape marks the person whose turn it is first. If you click the little CAST SPELL box to the right (which really means "Open spell-book") then this is the person whose spell-book you open.
Un-colored background means that person is on cool-down from what they've just done.
If you'd simply accepted the party offered to you, then the leftmost picture is Zoltan the Knight, the one person who never has anything in spell-book, because Knights never do. Roderick the Thief won't either until a lot lot later.
Hit ENTER again to un-pause (return to what the manual calls "Real Time" mode, which is continuous action, but the in-game clock runs much faster than real life) so you can click around your four people at will. First time of doing this brings up the STATS screen, after that brings up whichever screen you ended up with last time (often INVENtory). In STATS, hold down right mouse button over each entry for help on what it means. Now select INVEN and, as previous posters wrote, start equipping your people. Eg Roderick has some Leather Armor, so click it, drag it across to his full-length picture at the right, then click again to place it on him.
When you get to Serena, she has a green book from which to learn the Heal spell. Click it, drag it across to her picture, and click again for her to learn the spell. Return to main view screen, then hit C key to look inside her spells book, where you can now see a picture for this spell. I'd say make sure you are on the correct page, which for this spell is Body Magic, but right now that is the only page she has. Click the picture to SELECT HEAL then SET SPELL to make this her pre-selected "Ready" spell.
With Alexis, Fire Bolt spell goes to one page of her book (where Torch Light already is) and Feather Fall to another. Set Fire Bolt as her Ready spell for automatic S-key shooting.
Start moving forward. One of the book ends at the bottom right will start flashing (if you hadn't already looked inside it) - if so click it now. This is your Current Quests log detailing objectives the game would sort of like you to do sometime, maybe. On the starting island, the six items you are asked to deliver to the contest Judge MUST be found and delivered to finish this tutorial area and move on to the game proper. The two clickable tabs on the right are page-back and page-forward.
Next you will be interrupted by the woman whose face-in-rectangle picture is middle right on the main view screen. This area is for hired help (you can have at most two at a time) and tag-alongs (like her). The message asks you to talk to her, so hit CLOSE then do just that by left clicking her picture. This opens her conversation window with chat-up line at the bottom of screen and conversation topics on the right. Click GREETINGS first. "Greetings" changes to EMERALD ISLAND so click that. Read through the information this gives you. Click CONTEST to read what you are supposed to be doing here (this does sort of duplicate what is in Current Quests logbook). Ignore TOUR OFF until you've practiced often enough to be fed up with it. Hit CLOSE.
Now move about the town looking for everything and everybody that can be left-clicked to do something with. Hold right mouse button instead for info. Never mind that a few (Keg and Cart, for example) do nothing. Anything showing up under right button without a capital letter (e.g. "flower") is just decoration. Every building has a front door to left-click on and at least one has a side door too for something different.
You particularly want to find the house where Lord Markham and his contest judge are (at an in-game time of day when they are open for business).
If a well, fountain or pool of water can be drunk from, but clicking it gives "Refreshing!" as the result, this means it sometimes does something significant, but you either do not qualify or have exhausted it (for the time being). If one of your people does not qualify, another might, so try everybody. If nobody qualifies, then maybe you need more of something. Or less of something else.
As I wrote above, the game is about exploring, which includes finding out, by trial and error, what everything does (learn how to SAVE GAME)! It also includes discovering, eventually, what the game wants us to do as its end objective. Meanwhile, go with the flow. When the flow stops, go to other parts of the world and wander about looking for new people who want you to do things for them.
It is about managing which of your four people will do what, getting them the best stuff to do it with (that you can afford), and buying then improving the skills you want them to have.
It is about fighting, in self-defense, monsters and people that want to kill you. Or running away to come back later. Much later, when your people are many levels better. It is also about going out to pick quarrels with monsters and people you have been asked to kill (or steal from). Unlike MM6, we do not have to go everywhere and kill everything (friendly peasants excluded). It may even be advantageous to leave a few known hostiles alive (for the time being).
Oh yes, nearly forgot to say, people who are friendly may have things to say - and later, after you've done something, they might just have something different to say if you talk to them again. This applies to more than just people who give us quests. Not often, not with most people, but it does happen.
Post edited December 04, 2020 by RSimpkinuk57
