eHHRR8oo: EDIT: For some reason the game started up with Town 3 instead of Town 1; now I see them so maybe I can go from here.

Hope I am not seen as butting in here, but I have finally started up trying to play Might & Magic 1 (never played any of them before).

One dumb situation: I don't seem to be able to add any of the pregen characters in the game into a party to actually "Go To Town" and start.

According to the manual:

"Set Up Your Party
To add a character to your party, hold down CONTROL and press the KEY LETTER next to the character's
name on the list of available characters. A @ will appear next to the character's name, marking him/her as a
member of your party."

However, holding down the CTRL key and pushing in any letters A - F corresponding to the pregen characters at the "View All Characters" screen does NOTHING. No @ symbol appears. (I've tried both left & right CTRL keys in case it matters.)

So am I doing something wrong, or any other ideas how to get going?

N4N: Also what the "silent Chime" do?

PaterAlf: Is there anything I can do against being turned to stone by certain monsters? My whole party is on level 9 and 10 (which means I can cast level 5 spells) and everytime I meet a group of medusas or basilisks the game is over within seconds.

PetrusOctavianus: I don't think there's anything that protects against theit stoning attacks, so you need to kills them ASAP. If you can't act before them you probably need to increase your Speed stat first, since Speed determines initiative.
To cure Stoning I recall there was an item (some oil?) that cured it.

mjhauber: I found protection from Magic to be effective and vital in MM2 for protecting against stone and insta-kill effects, however I never really tried it in MM1 so don't know if it works as well. In general I relied on killing them before they killed me. Stone to flesh only ever seemed to work after combat in MM1 and every time I tried it in combat it failed without explanation.