For reference, the original is 280x192 pixels.at 6 colors (technically 8 colors. Hi-rez graphics on the Apple II were weird in that there were 2 blacks and 2 whites and you'd get weird distortions if you used the wrong black or white next to other colors). To say nothing of the screen holes.
Also the game ran with only 128K of RAM, possibly with only 64K of RAM, I can't remember and I never tried on a system that only had 64K.

It also fits on 4 140K 5.25" diskettes or 2 double-sided diskettes so about half a megabyte. Given that on the Apple II which used single-sided, single density disks you had to flip a disk over to use the other side of a double-sided disk, sometimes it gets confusing as some games will say "Disk 1 side B" others like Gold Box games just lettered all the disk sides by consecutive letters so disk 2 would be sides C and D. Sorry, I must have confused Wizardry IV with Wizardry V. I thought V was the one that was different. It's been ages since I played.

BTW, I would be interested in what that trick was for M&M2, but again I haven't played it in around 20 years.

It basically involves taking advantage of some of the game's tricks to become more powerful temporarily:
* There are some mercenaries that aren't hard to recruit, frequently without any battle, or in one case with a battle that even beginning parties can easily win.
* Mecrcenaries start knowing all the spells, so if you can increase their spell level, even if temporarily, you can cast every spell even early in the game.
* North of the start is a fountain that raises spell level to 9, though it may not be easily accessible before learning certain skills (or an orb to teleport past bad terrain). There's also a similar fountain right by the place you fight to rescue Mr. Wizard; this fight is easily winnable with Implosion and Holy Word, and it gives you the highest level mercenary, who is high enough in level to cast all the sorcerer spells without the aid of the fountain (though not actually required here).
* There's some spots where you can get an item without having to fight, and you can then sell that item for some extra money, to fund some of the skills and/or items you need. (Teleport Orbs are handy.)
* Max HP Potions raise maximum HP by 512 when used (or more if you Enchant them first); this bonus lasts until you rest, stacks with itself, and you can use Divine Intervention to raise your current HP to match.
* Alternatively, if you cast Frenzy, for the rest of the battle, all your spells will hit at full effectiveness; this includes instant death spells.
* Now that you're temporarily strong enough, go fight that one group of 3 Cuisinarts; the XP from that battle, alone, is enough to get new characters up past level 20.

Might and Magic 3 also has ways to become temporarily powerful early in the game, especially if you use that one "cheat" mirror code for more money (since the fountains you need to use cost money).

Easy. You have 2 options:

1. Play the original game via AppleWin or whatever other emulator you have. The images are included in the download. it also gives you super low resolution if you want low resolution. And once you're sick and tired of the sadistic traits of the game, you can fire up Deathlord Relorded and continue where you left off.

2. Fork the game on github, run Visual Studio 2019+ and look at cpu65C02.h. Comment out all the fixes I made. Compile and play.
This is absolutely correct, except that the game worked on the Apple II+ with 48K of RAM.
Deathlord Relorded is essentially a highly customized Apple 2 emulator that only runs Deathlord, with tons of modifications to the emulated code.

I don't want to sound flippant in answering the subset of players who want permadeath and level drain. What I am trying to say is that if you want those "features", then you also need the very small map window (9x9 tiles) that the original game has. Many tricks were used by the designers to make you extremely confused when mapping levels, and they often took advantage of knowing you could only "see" a max of 9x9 tiles.

So if you fancy yourself an old-skool RPG player who has the permadeath and level drain chops, then by all means you must go play the original. Without maps or walkthroughs. After 50 hours in the game, please come back here and give us your thoughts. I'd be very interested.

So download Deathlord Relorded, download AppleWin, insert the boot disk and start a game. Make sure you read the original docs first. I have a link to them in the documentation file in the download. Anyone who loves a real challenge must try to play Deathlord as it was designed by Al Escudero and David Wong.

A couple other questions:
* What's the legal status of this project? In other words, do you actually have permission from the copyright owners to distribute this game?
* Would it be possible to apply the "fixes" Reloaded makes to the original disk images, to play the original without permadeath and/or level drain (but still play on an actual Apple 2 or emulator)? Or do the fixes do something other than simply change the machine code that an emulator would see?

I don't have any permissions. I tried contacting Al Escudero without success. However, there are 2 important points regarding the legality of the project:

1. The project does NOT touch a single byte of the original disk images. Everything is done on the emulation layer, this is (as I said previously) a highly customized emulator.

2. There are already tons of images of Deathlord floating on the Net, so I don't think the bundled original disk images are an issue. Worst case, I can unbundle them and require you to download them independently. However, my images are probably the most reliable images out there. They're created from the base of a flux reading of original floppies by the highly respected Antoine Vignau using the Applesauce flux reader.
I would contend that these images are the only pristine non-cracked images out there of the Apple II version of Deathlord.

As for your second question, it is clear by now that I don't "fix" the original disk images at all. Run them on an emulator and you play the true original. The fixes don't change the code that the emulator would see, it's the opposite. It's the emulator layer that changes the original code when it sees for example that a vampire decides to level drain. The emulator layer says "no way, try again" and moves back the program counter to making another decision.

Hey, thanks for your response!

Option 1, I think, makes sense from how you describe it. Option 2 is not what I call "easy" though of course others' mileage may vary. Will keep all of that in mind.

I've wanted to play a HD version of this game for years. Was very pleased to find that someone is working on that. Is there a release date for when this version of the game may be available on GOG? Thanks!
EDIT: Nevermind. Went back to the first page and realized this version is already available via the supplied link. I've always wanted to play this game and now I can, with much appreciated QoL improvements. Thank you, @hasseily for putting this together and for making it available for others to enjoy.

It really is the ugliest website about a video game I've ever seen.

Dear @hasseily:

Not sure if you still read this forum, but I wanted to take a moment to offer you my sincere thanks and appreciation for providing this game. After more than thirty years, thanks to your efforts, I was able to play and *win* this game! Was so awesome to put the Deathlord down for the count. This remake was top-notch and the improvements made it even more fun than the original, in my opinion. Hats off to you. If you ever do a similar remake of "Moebius" by Origin Systems, or "Demon's Winter" by SSI, or even "Dragon Wars" by Interplay, I'll be there to play those too.

Thanks so much, and honors to your house.

Thank you :)
Thank you very much, I sincerely appreciate it. I made Deathlord Relorded in order to play Deathlord myself, and then polished it in case others saw the interest. It turns out that it garnered a lot more interest than I expected!

I don't have plans yet for other remakes, but seeing how Digital Eclipse totally botched (for now) the Wizardry I remake, I'm thinking the community should show them how it's done. Dragon Wars (for those who don't know, essentially the real Bard's Tale IV) is an interesting proposal, and so is Moebius. The more complex the game, the harder it is to remake. Reading and understanding all the assembly language routines is an immense timesink, and I don't know yet if I'm ready for another.

In any case, thank you and your enjoyment is all I was hoping for.