I've got issues with several points here. :/

About the only way I can think of to make the game unfinishable would be loading up 4 slots from Knight and Thief. And even then I suspect the "unfinishable" part would be more from the tediousness than from actually being unable to make it through parts of the game. Just a matter of how big you want to make the hurdles.

Come to think of it, I wonder what the hardest party would be. I'm guessing 4 light side Thieves. Lower hp and more weapon competition than the other groups of warriors.

It is focused on giving you a lot of options, and pretty much allowing you to explore all the possibilities with one party. I'm not sure any other combination provides the same level of variety in party ability.

I don't think this is nearly as bad as you make it out to be. Show some care with your characters, and the cleric can do his/her thing just fine. That's been my experience, based on several play throughs with the default party. The cleric should be picking up Protection From Magic and Shared Life shortly after the instant death stuff becomes a real factor.

I, personally, like being able to open chests while invisible, and also without having to spend SP while standing far away. Or without having to stand around waiting for my healer to throw Heal (or Power Cure, or whatever I've got) around until everyone is back up to snuff. Disarm Trap can generally stay on par with chests all game, saving you massive amounts of healing that you may or may not be able to afford (especially in the early and mid levels, when chests might still KO your lower hp classes) unless you are very free with the sleeping (which is an option, if you like having to remember to frequently buy food and deal with rest interruptions). Sure, at level 60-70 you might be able to tank it (I actually haven't checked on that), but that's a lot of game to be tanking damage.

Seems like your answer to taking a Thief is to instead take a Knight for physical DPS, and take a spell caster healer to heal until Master Earth comes online. That burns 2-3 party member slots.

You've already stated what to do when your cleric is KO'd -> scrolls and (especially) potions. Sorcerers can actually be wizards (ha! wizards!) at alchemy, and if your cleric going down is a continual problem, then re-evaluate your tactics. Sort of what ZFR opened this thread to do.

I've bolded the important part. Knights are there specifically for those 3 things. Clerics can get to Master Repair, but why spend cleric skill points there when the Knight can GM and be ready for anything? Clerics have more important (magical) skills to worry about. I know I don't care to have to run to a shop every time something really valuable breaks.

Some enemies are dangerous in melee, but you can mow through a surprising number of them with some support.

And you don't need shotgun spells because you can have a Knight! :D

I won't argue that casters can do the most DPS endgame, but this game is far from hard enough to require lots of min/maxing to make it through.

Out of curiosity, what is your preferred method for getting past the medusas in the Dwarf Mines?

I suspect this sort of party actually requires MORE familiarity with the game than the standard party. You have to deal with low hp characters that depend heavily on spell casting to make it through encounters, so enemy resistances come much more into play. You also have to worry about traps owning your face, equipment breakage, and lack of perception.

Need, no. Inconvenient to not have, definitely. I've done it with a Druid covering all my Self and Elemental magics.

-Power Cure is awesome, but you can heal in other methods. If your whole party is taking a beating, then back out of the area you are in, and work more slowly/be more careful.
-GM Protection From Magic is also awesome, but not required.
-Resurrection isn't a particularly common effect. A few scrolls will probably hold you for the game.
-If you are taking more than 7 days to heal a condition, you've got other issues. If you take more than 2 days to heal a condition when you have the spell to heal it, you've got other issues.
-Enslave always seemed like a forgettable spell. Only 3 mind spells stand out to me: Remove Fear, Cure Paralysis, and Cure Insanity.

-Master Town Portal is sufficient; if you need to portal, just evacuate the area until you can. Beacon is awesomely handy, but it isn't necessary. Even the last dungeon can be finished without it (ask me how I know!).
-Use invisibility wisely, and don't leave enemies behind you. You don't need 10 hours of invis to complete the game. Invisibility is dang near cheating (and yes, I like to abuse it too).
-Shotgun spells also aren't needed. One of my favorite strategies is to get right up next to the enemy and hit them until they fall down. It works remarkably well on most enemies, and the rest can be dodged or kited until arrows make them fall down. Meteor Shower and Starburst aren't required spells either; I've done whole play throughs without casting either one a single time.

-Don't try to melee groups of titans, but single titans absolutely can be taken down in melee. Maybe not with an all caster party, but I don't run those. Get your resistance equipment and spells up, and your healer should be able to mostly cover you.

The dragons gave me 2 extra levels.

The Titans that were giving me trouble are dead. The trick was not to engage all of them at once, but to advance slowly, trigger some of them, and thus split them into 2 groups of around 5-6 Titans each. Beating those was fairly easy.

If it's true that Titans attack females (and not mages, my only female, as I thought), then having a female knight, and the rest males would have made this a piece of cake.

Single Titans, even Blood, are extremely easy going mellee only with my party. Eve a group of few to several Titans is easy mellee only. My dwarven knight can both dish out and take enormous damage. It would have been even easier had the Titans not been concentrating on beating up my poor mage.

Anyway, time mop up the remaining Titans and then try the devils. I'll try engaging few at a time, possibly softening them up using starburst, and when I'm satisfied that they're far away from the group that I can go mellee without the rest intervening, closing up and quickly killing them before the metoer shower can kill me.

Great post there, you bring up a lot of valid arguments there.

What about characters dying or getting eradicated instantly with no counter?

Agreed. In MM7, thieves are effectively nerfed Knights that can disarm traps and use basic elemental abilities.


The default party doesn't have any character representing halfway between might and magic. A better default party IMO would be monk, archer, cleric, mage - you get 2 healers, 2 nukers, and good bow damage for when you run out of SP.

You can already do that with an all-caster party. Elemental protection just after waking up to go adventuring, go invisible, open trap, and laugh as it does 10 damage (to a level 50 party where everyone has 200 health at least). My experience is that if trap damage is a problem late-game, you're doing something wrong.

Usually none of my characters get KO'd from trap damage above level 15.


Usually I skip the physical DPS and just have a cleric, 2 mages, and a druid.

Years of playing Guild Wars have taught me how to play the game without consumables.

Clerics with master repair skill can usually repair anything except an artifact or blaster. The largest problem with knights is lack of flexibility. They can do a crapload of damage in melee at no cost... and that's it. They are largely ineffective at ranged combat (although late-game you get blasters and I suppose you could always grab a stack of wands + level 20 grandmaster water on your mage). They can't "nuke" or do area damage. They can't buff or heal.


No need, usually I only melee dangerous enemies with shotgun spells. Shrapmetal does over 30 points of damage per skillpoint on average at grandmaster level. Shotgun spells also outdamage knights with far fewer invested skillpoints. Here's my analysis.

Knight with artifacts and large amount of strength, with every buff and all skills maxed:
-65 damage from strength and equipment
-120 damage from armsmaster
-120 damage from weapon skills (dual wielding)
-60 damage from melee damage buff
So a knight is probably doing around 360 damage per turn, assuming it never misses. This requires maxed strength, maxed armsmaster and relevant weapon skills, and maxed buffing skills from the character who does the buffing.

Mage with maxed grandmaster sparks:
-9 sparks
-Each does 2 + 1 damage per skillpoint = 62 damage
Damage is roughly 560.

Mage with maxed grandmaster poison spray
-7 bolts
-Each does 2 + 1d2 per skillpoint
-Average damage per skillpoint: 10.5
Average damage is roughly 630

Mage with the Flak Cannon from Unreal Tournament, oops, I mean Shrapmetal:
-9 bolts
-Each does 6 + 1d6 per skillpoint
-Average damage per skillpoint: Around 31
Average damage: over 1800! (toughest enemies in the game have no more than 1300)

You could argue that the knight gets faster attacks due to armsmaster bonuses, however each level of mastery with shotgun spells also decreases recovery time, and it all evens out with a good Haste buff.

Archer promotion? Invisibility. At that low level, characters shouldn't really be fighting medusas. Later on, there's a glitch with Acid Burst that makes it do physical damage instead of water damage - that's very useful for hunting medusas. And there's always blasters.

Agreed. It's similar to playing as a Vanguard in Mass Effect - high risk, high reward.

Trap damage isn't a problem above level 20. Equipment breakage isn't a problem in practice with master level repair item. Lack of perception is irrelevant if you know all the secrets in the game.


-Grandmaster town portal and beacon can be used as a survivability tool. Taking too much damage? Portal out in the middle of combat. In MM6, healing is weak and Divine Intervention caused characters to age, so I would just place a beacon in front of a temple and use that as a cheap "Beacon Intervention".
-Invisibility is near-required for the Walls of Mist.
-No shotgun spells = missing out on DPS.

A good high level caster party can easily melee versus 1 titan. 2 grandmaster poison spray or shrapmetal casters can quickly turn even a red titan into 1200 gold + a good item. Just have protection from air and protection from magic on at all times.

OK, I did the devils:

_ Like with Titans, not activating all at once. It's a bit more difficult since there are more of them. Move in slowly, then as soon as some are far enough from the herd close in with mellee.

_ As long as you keep moving (forward! - it's not always so with backwards movement) meteor shower can't hit you. Even when engaging in mellee, don't enter turnbased, and as soon as you notice the red dots of meteor shower on the minimap start running. Sometimes this avoids getting hit.

_ The devils are weaker than titans so can be killed with ranged. The yellow ones easily, but then again they don't cast meteor shower, so killing them isn't as useful. The red ones can be done too. For the blues, it's mellee only.

_ Regeneration heals around 50 HP at a time. When cleric and mage drop to the negative 100s, retreat and wait it out. Just make sure preservation (or regeneration itself) doesn't run out on you, or you get killed.

Yes. In my case however flight was disspelled when mage went unconscious, and her SP was drained by the devils.

(Towards the end, the cleric's SP was drained too, but fortunately by then I had the upper hand, and with regenearation active I didn't need much healing).

To me, playing Turn Based, the most difficult part of the Land of Giants was the Devil Captains draining spell points.
With only one elemental caster that means the party is sitting ducks for the Meteor Shower spells when the Fly spell fails.
Airburst is the best spell to kill large groups of devils outside, but Dragon Breath does more damage if you want target Devil Captains specifically.

The Titans and Dragon have decent resistance to Fire, Air and Physical, but not much against Dark, so Dragon Breath is very effective if you have a Dark party. And Blasters are very effective in Real Time.

I have cleared out the entire Land of Giants except for the Devils, but I think I will use Invisibility to sneak past them. As long as they can't cast Meteor Shower they are mostly harmless.

I played MM7 as a Light party when I first played it 15-20 years ago, but I quit due to the spell point draining devils.
That was actually one of the few things I remember from the game, so it definitely didn't impress me as much as MM6 did.

the most difficult part was selecting 3 archers in party creation and clearing the entire map in 5 minutes :^)

I guess it's easy if playing real time, 'cause then you can strafe and dodge the attacks.

In turn based it's more challenging.

Instead if using Invisibility to bypass the Devils I decided to use the terrain to my advantage.
As long as you are out of sight of the Devil Captains and hovering at a safe distance above ground, the party can't be hit by Mana Drain or Meteor Showers, but only by harmless Fireball spells, but my Sorc can still hit them with Starburst.
So that's what I did. This was the most tactical moment in the game, and quite satisfying, actually.

The rest of the game was a cakewalk after clearing the Land of the Giants.