Going to start Sword of Xeen after finishing MM4 and 5.

I have the old version of MM sixpack installed. From the new one I only installed World of Xeen for the full speech. Does SoX have full speech too, or can I just stick with the old one?

Any good spoilerless maps out there? It doesn't seem to have a guidbook.

Anything I should keep in mind when creating a party? Is ninja good instead of robber? I plan on going with Paladin, Archer, Ranger, Ninja, Cleric Sorcerer.

Any other general tips?

Thanks

Swords of Xeen is a fan-created game and does not have speech.

From my Swords of Xeen section of my Web page, I have the following information:

GENERAL HINTS:
Party creation general suggestions:
I highly recommend creating your own party. Make 1 Knight, 1 Barbarian, 1 Archer, 1 Cleric, and 1 Sorcerer. The sixth choice is up to you, though in my opinion Robbers and Ninjas are useless since you can obtain Thievery in Impery. Since the Elf and Gnome get a +10 Thievery bonus, you may want to select them to learn this skill. Rangers and Druids won't get to use their mass damage spells much, so in my opinion a Paladin is the best choice for this game.

Game play general suggestions:
There are unfortunately, a lot of bugs in this game especially for saving Sand Town. I never could save the people there(unless you have to wait a long time to see the results). The desert area seems bugged as well, so just get the shrines there and the Elder weapon and get out. The monsters there aren't worth the time you'll spend hunting them down. I do recommend the Jump spell to get past the mountains until you can obtain the Mountaineering skill. There might be a Merchant skill trainer in the game somewhere, but I did not spend much time trying to find one. I did NOT document all treasure areas on my map annotations, so there is additional treasure located in the game. There is another fountain of hit point restoration(infinite hit points) in the Undead Tower, but it only adds +25 hit points at a time with the other one adding +200. Save the +levels for the end of the game, you'll be better off for the end game doing this. The +levels are at A1, A3, Pyramid of Power, one of the Shrines in the Desert(+2 levels), and the Dragon Cavern(+1 level for 3 characters). Until you get Day of Protection, Giants are best taken out using the "Jump and shoot" technique. Use the Jump spell to stay unengaged, cast Energy Blast or Sparks(preferably at a high character level), and repeat until the Giant is dead. You'll need to repeat this procedure for the Diamond Golem, Armadillo, and Death Knight(IIRC) monsters in the game.

What webpage are you referring to?

I'm playing through it now. It's quite good and has some pretty neat ideas and content, but there's a bit too much empty space, it's riddled with spelling and grammatical errors, and the challenge is annoyingly unbalanced at times - monsters just seem haphazardly thrown around the map, so weak monsters that waste your time are mixed in with absurdly powerful monsters like the ones DaveO-MM described (some of which you may just have to avoid and come back for later). The "jump and shoot" trick that Dave mentions is vital, since some otherwise easily-killed monsters have outrageously destructive melee attacks.

You might want some heavier melee muscle. Even heavily buffed, many of the monsters I fight can hardly be scratched by anyone but my knight and barbarian.

Also, if you create your own characters, you should probably spend some time rolling up decent stats. Unlike World of Xeen, you won't have many opportunities to increase your stats until later in the game, and even then there aren't all that many.

Be prepared to buff your party as much as you can. Even early on, the game pretty much assumes that you're doing this. If you don't, you'll have a much harder time, and some monsters may just be unkillable.

It probably sounds like I'm just complaining here, but while it's not as good as MM3 or World of Xeen, it's a solid fan game and well worth playing. I was able to save Sand Town, but in addition to clearing out the sorceress' tower (I found 30 gems), I had to comb through every inch of the surrounding territory and kill absolutely everything, including the minotaurs and a vulture roc. Once I finished that, the town was restored immediately. So, it's not time-limited as far as I can tell, but that's not to say you didn't hit some other bug instead.

Thanks. I'll take a barbarian instead of paladin then.