I've been playing M+M1 on and off for about 2 years, and have painstakingly mapped, by hand, the entirety of the overworld as well as every town, castle, cave and dungeon I've been able to enter so far. It's been an absolute blast and I hadn't looked up any spoilers.

But I got stuck.

So -disgusted with myself - I decided to look up the solution to the Two Brothers puzzle. I've already visited both brothers and so - I thought - completed that part of the quest. I received the code, but didn't know what to do with it

Looking it up on a guide I discovered that it is supposed to refer to overland area C1 at 15-15, which I'm apparently supposed to search to find the Ruby Whistle. But nothing is in that tile, no matter how many times I hit 'search'.

Any suggestions? Is there some other quest item I should be holding? I can't see what, since I have definitely completed all the steps of the two brothers quest up to this point and hadn't received anything else.

OK - just did the quest again from scratch and found the whistle. All I can think of is that at some point many months ago I must have died after receiving the final clue from Zom (or Zam) and then reloaded with only one of them in my party's "memory". Oh well - onwards!

Yeah, the good part about MM1, is that you can't get stuck in an unwinnable situation. Redoing from scratch is always a valid option.

That quest is unique, I think, in that you need to Search a specific tile in the dungeon in the forest.

BTW, how many Black Boxes have you found?
When I replayed MM1 (doing no "farming") some months ago I only found three.

None, I don't think, and I must have put a good 150 hours into the game so far. Do I need such an item?

No. A black box is just a box with the best loot.
I can't remember if I ever got a black box in MM1. Weren't they added in MM2?

In MM2 the best loot chests were called Doomsday Boxes IIRC, and were the equivalent of the Black Boxes in MM1.

I think when I played MM1 I only ever found one black box, which killed my entire party when the trap went off. And yes, I used my robber to open it; I guess he wasn't good enough to disarm it.

Ah, you're probably right.

I think I went farming for black boxes in MM1. Didn't the high level undead in the area close to Algary have a good chance of leaving one?

I didn't find any there.

Your best bet is probably to set off the alarm in Castle Doom and grind the monster breeding grounds there. Setting off alarms increases the monster level for that map.

If anyone is bothered, I finally managed to finish the game last week. This has probably been one of my greatest CRPG experiences (I haven't played all of them like a lotta you hardcoreners, just a handful of classics from the DOS days), it was truly awesome to explore the world of VARN. I did a lot of things wrong but to me that's part of the fun of these games, blundering through without a necessarily "good" playstyle.

- I was only Lv 13 before I got my +50,000xp bonus for finding the Inner Sanctum, and would basically be screwed if I ever had to fight more than 3 dragons at once. Gold dragons? Forget about it.

- I think this was because I didn't do very many of the Castle quests. I did a few earlier in the game, but they seemed to be giving quite low experience, and I think I had assumed they would all be like that, not realising that the greater the Lord, the greater the XP from the quest.

- My party was full Evil, not sure if that would have made a ton of difference, I just thought it was cool.

- Is there any type of monster/trap that can forcibly change your sex? I know about the sex change fountain where you can do it voluntarily. It's just 5/6 of my party was female at game end - I remember choosing a lot of female characters but didn't think it was that many.

-Favourite dungeon to map was probably the Labyrinth that has Okrim dwelling above it or Castle Dragadrune I think.

-I absolutely SUCKED at finding the messages. I think I only had 3 Silver, and 5 Gold. I think I probably played about half the game before fully understanding that you have to be not only on the right tile, but also facing the right direction to find something. I completed the Astral Plane part just by "mistake" because I saved after being teleported out each time and then went back in to map the next path to each Astral Projector.

- Is it possible to complete this game with no Sorcerers? I assumed the Diamond Door/Diamond Key was there so that you didn't need to use Astral Projection if you didn't want, but aren't there some areas where you simply NEED Etherealize/Teleport/Fly? I couldn't imagine playing the game without those three spells myself.

-Anyone else find themselves with something of a gem shortage towards the end of the game? I got a bit carried away with Meter Shower and Power Shield I think.

-What was the point of the wrecked ships? I never found anything in them except for medium level mobs.

Now of the 5 grid-based M&M games I only have #2 to complete - apart from Swords of Xeen which I think I'll be slipping based on what I've read about it.

Oh yeah and my party after finishing the game and killing a few more dragons for the hell of it was:

Female Evil Half-Orc Knight L17 Age 40
Male Evil Human Knight L17 Age 60
Female Evil Human Cleric L17 Age 50
Female Evil Elf Sorcerer L16 Age 39
Female Evil Elf Sorcerer L15 Age 48
Female Evil Human Robber L16 Age 59 ( I came to truly despise this character. Robbers in M&M always seem to level up quick but still suck!)


And one last thing - what the hell was

XX!XX!XX!XX!XX

Supposed to be? It ran away and I never had a chance to slay it.

Congrats with completing the game.
I think most that try give up before the end.

If there's more than one sex change place, I didn't find it.

Should be possible to complete with any party, just much more difficult without spell casters.
Most, if not all spells can be duplicated by items.

I sometimes ran out of gems for my casters, but never for the whole party.
In MM2 there are monsters that steal gems, which can be annoying, but most special "on touch" attacks in MM1 were turned off in the finished version of the game.

Wrecked ships are just another type of fixed encounter, but with the added thrill of fighting Cursed.

My guys were lvl 18-21 when they finished.
I played very methodically and did everything, including defeating the Dragon Town.

The XX!XX!XX!XX!XX: the highest level female (two X chromosomes) monsters maybe? I don't recall what they did, but I know I defeated some.

Congrats on beating the game.

Regarding Swords of Xeen, if you enjoyed Isles of Terra and World of Xeen you may give SoX a try too. It wasn't all that bad.