That when I play, I need to have my homemade maps open so I know where I'm going, the word file I copy/pasted all the spells onto, and the cluebook to know what weapons/armour are better. (I don't use the cluebook maps because I find my homemade ones easier to follow)

So in other words, three files to constantly switch back and forth to. It can get rather rattling.

Graph paper were a common requirement back then for those type of games. Many games included it in the box.

Yeah, I made graph-maps all on word files and had a lot of fun making them :3 (Another reason why I prefer them over the premade maps in the cluebook, but even then I only use the cluebook for the weapon/armour stats as everything else is an outright spoiler)

Yes, I used the cluebook for the items too. I don't remember if there was an ingame method of identifying them (blacksmith?) in MM1, or if it was introduced in MM2 only.

I think that was introduced in MM2. In MM1, you could go by the selling price as a rough indicator of which item was better, but that's really cumbersome and annoying, so I just looked up items in the cluebook like most players. I actually did this in MM2 also since manually identifying items was also a pain.

I agree. Mapping out the game made the locations themselves feel like adversaries, especially ones with traps designed to disorient or disrupt my cartography. Also, if I died, it wasn't a total loss since I still had the map I was making.