Hi all-

I'm currently playing Might and Magic Book One and I was wondering if the age of your characters actually functions as a kind of timer or whether there is a way to make your characters younger at any point in the game. Any help would be appreciated.

In MM1, characters age one year whenever they level up (which leads to odd situations where some characters age faster than others). Also, some enemies can age your characters, and casting certain high-level spells will age the caster. Very old characters receive a penalty to stats (I think) and can die when resting. Fortunately, the Rejuvenation spell will lower your characaters' age, and there are other ways to lower age as well.

Practically, you only have to worry about age if you're casting lots of spells that age the caster or if you're facing lots of enemies that can age your characters. Casting Rejuvenate repeatedly can usually fix any age problems you have.

In later games, time is actually modeled, and months and years will pass as you play. Characters age normally over time but can also be artificially aged by certain enemies or events. Later games make a distinction between "natural" and "artifical" aging, and there are ways to remove artificial aging. Again, it's rarely a problem since artificial aging can be reversed without too much trouble.


EDIT: Just to be clear, character age does NOT act as a time limit on the game for any of the games in the series. You have as long as you need to complete the games.

Great! Thank you for your reply!

No problem!

I forgot that in games with natural vs. artificial aging (i.e. MM3 and later, I think), there is often no way to reverse natural aging. Theoretically that would put a time limit on the game, but it would take an amazing amount of real time to get all your characters old enough that it would matter. So practically speaking there's no time limit.

First time I played MM3 my characters died of old age...

Is it that big a game? :P

It's quite big, but the problem was unnatural aging due to radioactivity, and I hadn't found a way to cure it.

Unnatural aging in Might and Magic III was a case of Guide-Dang-It for me. Raiding some tomb I managed to get all of my characters over a hundred years old save for one character, whenever I rested, all but one of my character died of old age. I had to use a walkthrough to get myself out of this pickle.

Pro tip, guys, whenever a monster or a trap casts a spell on one of your characters but said character does not appear to be damaged, go check the status screen just in case you're not repeatedly doing something that's unnaturally aging your characters.

Starting from Might and Magic IV, it's unnatural aging is much less of a trouble to solve.

Good to know... MM3 is actually the only one in the pack I haven't played yet. I'll get to it eventually.

Thanks! I'll keep checking my age!

The problem with MM3 was that you had only one save slot per game. So you could save over unnatural aging without noticing it. Also getting the fountain to cure it was much harder than MM4 and MM5.

In MM4 and MM5, you had multiple save slots (which hopefully you used regularly). Even if you save over unnatural old age, you could reload a previously saved game.

And also, the quest to unlock the cure to unnatural aging in World of Xeen is much simpler and faster than in MM3, in my opinion.

I'm in Might and Magic 4/5 and I've worked a lot to get gold, but have forgot about the aging mechanic where my characters are now all 77 years old, lol...

Is there any way to decrease this stat?

You probably only started playing the game (otherwise you wouldn't be interested in working for extremely low amount of Gold). I think it is better simply to start over.

Working is useless unless you exploit it, e.g, you can make temporarily characters and work them to death while amassing Gold in Bank for interest. Then you make new characters and can inherit all that Gold!

However, I'd advice against this, game can quickly lose its fun if you do this.

Quck reply, I like that ;) Yes. I'm completly new to the Might and Magic series and for what it's worth: I love the games (from 3 on basically).

I was already making enough gold by doing various quests throughout the game, and exploring the place but at one point I got greedy I guess because I wanted to do more training of skills which cost-a-lot for some of them.

I guess I could start over but that'd be a chore to be honest since some time went over since I started to power-play the game.

So there's no way to reverse aging? I read something about a 'fountain of youth', could this help me out in my quest for not aging?