Personally I love M&M 1 and while I did already start 3 I would prefer to beat them in order.

Except here's the thing...

I have major OCD when it comes to RPG's in which I refuse to continue the game, until I have the best weapons and armour I can buy at the start of the game. (Unless the store randomizes thus selling massively super powered armour for 10,000 gold at the beginning)

So really I have done nothing for a long while but grind and grind and grind. And to be honest, I'm getting rather bored. Though it's not like I can continue anyway, because I need the Gold and EXP to level up regardless, and I need to level up before I can actually go anywhere.

Can anyone give me tips on how to make the best out of my game?

Take the equipment from the starting party. If you make your own characters, they start with nothing but clubs, and the clubs aren't even equipped at the start. But you can visit the inn, take half of your characters and half of the pre-made characters, transfer all the equipment the premade characters have to your characaters, visit the inn again and repeat. This gives some nicer starting gear without having to grind for it.

In MM1, the majority of equipment you will use will come from treasure after battles, rather than from shops. Remember to always search using the S key after every fight. Treasure you find is liable to have traps on it, so have your Robber attempt to open it. If you are wounded from the fight, you can rest before you search (in case the trap goes off), but don't leave that square! If you move before you search, the treasure will be lost forever.

Always use your protective magic. Protective spells will last until the next time you rest, so the first thing you should do after waking up is cast them again. in the beginning all you have is Leather Skin but it should be on all the time. Later you'll get more spells.

Explore the first town, map it out, and gain some levels. The statues in town have messages that give clues to important things you can do in the game, so write them down. Remember that you need money to train for levels, and gaining levels is MUCH more important than buying equipment, so save your gold for that. You'll find better equipment from battles soon anyway. Once you've gained some levels, you can explore the caverns underneath the town. After mapping both of those out, you can try leaving the town and exploring the overworld. Remember to return to the inn to save often. In the overworld, you're free to explore in any direction so if you are having trouble somewhere just try going somewhere else.

Keep an eye out for magic weapons, which have a "+1" or "+2" next to them. These have a bonus to hit as well as to damage, so they can be better choices than non-magical weapons, even if the non-magical weapons have higher base damage. If you don't know which weapons (or armor) are better than others, you can check the selling price in shops, but it's probably easier to just use the cluebook to look up item stats. That's what I did. But beware of other spoilers in the cluebook. The easiest way is to search the PDF for the specific item you want to check, that way you skip all the maps and other hints in there. The cluebook is included with the extras.

There's very little guidance given in MM1, you just have to explore and figure things out. Don't be afraid to move to new places if the current area you're exploring is too hard. And have fun! I was surprised at how much I enjoyed such an old game when I played it for the first time a few years back.

Thank you so much :D

I think I'll start over from scratch, but I'll have to redownload the game. As, seeing as I found the pre-mades to be clutter when forming my party everytime I loaded my save, I deleted them all >_<

Yeah, that would require restarting. All characters are saved in a single file, which is either ROSTER.DAT or ROSTER.DTA (one of them is MM1, the other is MM2, I forget which is which). So if you deleted characters, the only way to get them back is to restore the original ROSTER file, but that will delete your custom characters.

If you're restarting, I might add that rolling decent stats is helpful, especially speed which is useful for all characters. This lets characters act before enemies do in combat. If you need a slow character, your healer's not a bad choice because then he or she can heal after people get injured. But you can also tell a character to Wait during combat, which means if your healer goes first he or she can "defer" the turn and let others act, then go at the end. So high speed is always good.

But there are also ways to raise stats in-game, so don't worry too much about rolling characters. Good rolls do make the beginning easier, though.

Well, to be honest. I loaded the game just now, and I admit I am very attached to the characters I already have, and I made sure to give them excellent stats :3 besides, I am almost finished getting all the equipment I need anyway, as I have two knights, a robber, two sorcerers and a priest. (Seeing as the latter 3 hardly require any equipment it saves effort)

There is something fun about having "earned" your items.

(not really exactly on topic but...)

The general wisdom on this board is to save your money for training, but my thinking is that leveling up gives harder opponents, so it's better to buy improved equipment. You can always level up later.

Good advice :3

I would disagree with this. In my experience, leveling up means characters hit more often and for more damage, and it's a much bigger difference than simply getting a better weapon would provide. Besides, very soon all the equipment you use will be found after battles anyway. I don't think I bought a single piece of equipment after leaving the first town.

Also, leveling gives your spellcasters access to higher spell tiers which is absolutely critical. You want your sorcerer(s) casting fireballs and lightning bolts as soon as possible, as this makes combat (especially outdoors) much easier. Higher-tier priest spells are also critical for tougher fights when a lot of healing is needed. Leveling even improves the effectiveness of many spells, which will do some amount of damage per level. Or the example of power cure, which heals a certain amount per level of the caster and therefore remains very useful for the entire game. Provided you keep gaining levels of course.

Also, leveling doesn't have that big of an effect on which monsters you will face. Some areas have level scaling, but it usually involves facing larger numbers of opponents rather than tougher opponents, and most areas have a more or less "set" difficulty. For example, I tried exploring a certain dungeon early and found monsters that were way too tough. Coming back at higher level the encounters were the same, but I was able to handle them. When I returned to lower-level areas I started to see much bigger packs of monsters but at that point I was able to steamroll them without any trouble.

So in summary: leveling is a very good thing to do!

EDIT: A more concise way to say this is: gaining levels only ever made things easier for me, even with level scaling of encounters.

Okay thanks :3 I'll head that

I wasn't suggesting that you should avoid levelling up, but that it might be advantageous to acquire better equipment first.

For my part, i certainly had more success after trading up to nearly all weapons +1, which made continuing to level up all the easier. Yes, eventually weapons +1 will drop, but for me I've found a grand total of 2 useful weapon upgrades this way. The club +2 wasn't really doing it.

That actually might be true. In my case, I didn't get to a town that sold +1 weapons for a while, just because I didn't explore in that direction, so by the time I got there I already had better stuff. But if you do see +1 weapons for sale they're probably worth getting.

I wouldn't have, but a certain quest encouraged me to go there. And there's an awful lot of mobility options.

Well, continued with my old (current) party. Doing pretty well actually :3 found some new great places for grinding. EXCEPT I heavily regretted going into the room opposite the Sorpigal jail. As there is a hidden pit that drops me into the sewers below, I did fine drudging through there for a while. Except I sneaked up on 8 goblins. I was given the option to avoid fighting them, but I chose to fight... as I was cocky and thought they'd be easy enough. needless to say they creamed me.

Yeah, the trapdoors down to harder levels you haven't mapped yet are pretty brutal. Sorry for the loss of exp.