After finishing MM1 and a very busy summer (finishing my thesis... ugh :S) I finally have time to continue the MM series.

So, after all the help I received on these boards in two threads full of questions, I'm starting a miscellaneous questions thread for MM2.

For starters, before starting the game, a few questions about character creation:
_Is it a good idea to import characters from MM1? Specifically, according to the story, are they the same characters as the ones in MM1 (the manual doesn't mention it)? The ones in MM1 went through the gate, so is it they who arrive in CRON? Gameplay-wise, is it going to be too easy starting the game with level 7 chars, or too difficult starting with level 1 chars?

_What classes to go for? I've had one of each in MM1. I'd like to try the new ones here, so I'm thinking ninja in place of thief (especially since towards the end of the MM1 game the thief skills became less important and his lack of fighting skills made him almost useless) and barbarian in place of fighter. Will the ninja thief skills be good enough? I notice with a party of 6 you can have 2 hirelings. Of what class are the hirelings? Maybe it's a good idea then to take the 2 missing classes as hirelings?

_Is mixed alignment ok? I used it in MM1.

_Any other comments on characters? What races to chose? Gender? what secondary skills are important and what are useless?

Thanks in advance.

I imported my characters and had a good time. I believe that story-wise they are supposed to be the same characters you led to victory in the first game, and the plot of the second game is actually related. When you import you will be brought back down to level 7, as you know, and you will lose all of your equipment. Also, any stats that you had advanced over 20 will be set back to 20. I did not find the game to be too easy at level 7... while the first town was fairly simple to explore, the game quickly caught up in terms of difficulty, and by the end I had become much more powerful than I ever was in the first game. There's also the possibility to increase your stats to MUCH higher levels, so starting with a few 20 stats is no big deal.

Like you, I had one of each class in MM1, so those were what I used in MM2. You can find hirelings of every class though, so if you want to try out a ninja and a barbarian you can. You will have to find these hirelings first though. Ninjas are cool but there is also new equipment designed for Robbers that makes them a bit more useful in the game. Barbarians didn't seem much different from Knights to me, but I didn't use one much. I actually didn't use hirelings very often, except in certain situations where it was useful to have a specific class character with me.

Mixed alignment is fine. As in MM1, it mainly determines which items you can equip, and you can shift your alignment in the same ways (i.e. raise alignment by bribing enemies instead of attacking them, lower it by attacking them without bribing them). Also, in MM2 it is possible to enchant items with a spell, but this can often change the alignment restriction on the item, so be careful.

Gender does not matter as much as it did in MM1. I think there are certain enemies that can use abilities on specific gender characters, but that's pretty much it. I had done some gender-swapping in MM1 and I made sure to swap genders back to what I started with before importing to MM2, so I had 3 males and 3 females.

On secondary skills: The most important secondary skill is cartography which will allow you to generate an automap when you explore. I actually still kept paper maps though because in the game you can only look at the automap of your current area, and I liked to look at maps of other places when I was deciding where to go. The automap also will not record important spots on the map so you have to take your own notes on those anyway. Ohter critical skills are the ones that let you traverse different terrain. The world map in MM2 is completely different from MM1.... in MM2 there are no "walls" in the outside world, but just different types of terrain. If you don't have the right skills, you won't be able to get into mountain or forest squares. You need two characters to have Mountaineering and two characters to have Pathfinder in order to move through those spaces. Also, one character with Navigation so you can traverse the desert. It is also useful to give the Crusader skill to one character so you can take quests from the lords of the castles. Once you've got those, you can fill up your extra spots with stat boosting skills... there are various skills that each give +5 to a single stat, and there's also a skill that gives +5 to thievery which is very useful for a Robber or Ninja.

Finally, some advice: in MM2, it matters where you train! If you train at the most expensive training ground (Atlantium) you will get the biggest HP bonus per level, so you should train there whenever you can.

Enjoy the game! MM2 is a lot of fun.

It won't make a difference on the long run whether you import your MM1 party, you only have to grind less at the start.

I don't recommend replacing your thief, thieves can accompany all classes on their class specific quests. They are much better in combat than in MM1 now, they get an extra attack every 5 levels and can backstab.

Barbarians are almost like knights, they get more hitpoints but can use less weapons and armor.

Mixed alignments are good, so are mixed genders. There are locations only males/females can enter, so it won't hurt if archer and cleric have a different gender than paladin and mage so both genders have both casting options, but it's not too important.
Race is unimportant.

There are at least 3 hirelings of every class, you have to find them before you can hire them, pay them depending on level and they take a share of the experience.

Thank you, thank you! Great replies Waltorious and kmonster as usual.

I think I'll keep the 6 basic classes then, and take the other 2 as hirilings, maybe skipping the barbarian. I'm tempted to import the party, but I like character creation... I'll see..

I'm starting the game tomorrow, so that's when the questions will probably start coming in...

I had totally forgotten about the class specific quests! That is indeed a great reason to have a robber around.

So a question on hirelings. Other than getting paid, are they treated exactly same as party members. i.e. do they count towards class-specific quests, do their secondary skills count (Crusader, Navigator... etc)?

They are mostly like your party.
They can complete their class quests alone, even if the manual says otherwise and their skills count like normal.
Training for hirelings is free, but the daily fee increases with every level (it caps at 50.000). I've enchanted multiple items (Thunder Sword, Ancient Bow, etc.) up to +57 and it never happened to me. Those items were without alignment restriction, so it seems those are safe to enchant.

Interesting... I checked around with google and it seems that items that do not have class restrictions (i.e. any character can use) will not gain alignment restrictions when enchanted to high levels. Whether or not an item STARTED with an alignment restriction might matter too.

Anyway, for the OP this isn't anything to worry about. Alignments can always be shifted in order to equip the items you want.

Question about Party Disposition: Inconspicuous, average, aggressive... etc. Does it affect only random encounters, or does it affect fixed encounters or other gameplay elements as well?

I'm 99% sure it's only affecting random enounters. I played with it for a while and didn't see a big difference.

By the way, I also recommend the basic 6 characters. I didn't like ninja or barbarian. Later in the game, the barbarian's extra hp is only a small fraction of total hp and his lack of equipment makes him a liability. And the ninja ends up failing too many traps, in my opinion. I've heard of people using ninjas very well, though.

I've seen it written that it's best to have an all-the-same alignment and all-the-same gender party. There are some places you can't get to unless your whole party has a specific alignment or gender. I didn't do that and I didn't miss too much of the all-the-same places, but you might (raising some stats depends on it). You can convert your party at various locations, though.

Thanks.
For all-same-allignment/gender places, you could still leave the rest in inn, and only go with small portion of your party, right?

Also, class quest questions. Lets say I want to do the ninja only quest, and the only ninja I have is a hireling? How can I do it then? Can I use the robber in my party to accompany the ninja?

Yes, that's exactly what I did. Also, with the new Lloyd's Beacon spell it's even easier to warp back to town to drop off some party members and then teleport right back to where you were.

Yes you can do it and yes you can take your robber with you. The robber can accompany anyone on their class-specific quests, I guess because he can remain hidden, but also because it means you can actually open chests and doors while on the quest.

As for party disposition, I never really used it but I think it's just for random encounters. You can turn it down if you're trying to escape from an area, but usually you can escape with teleportation magic more easily anyway. Or you can turn it up if you are trying to grind so you will encounter more enemies. But there are plenty of set encounters that are better places to grind.

What I did is:
KPRACS for my main team
I used a K and S and C for my hirelings, alternating between what I needed
And then I made a team of 5 robbers (4 characters + 1 hireling)

I brought my robbers with me to do the Mt Fairview tasks for each of my groups. In that way, I had some cannon fodder. And after they got their 50k XP infusion, they were actually valuable to the party.

After I had my robbers going well, when I needed to go through alignment-only areas, I could get my robbers set up and go with them. I made them all good males to accompany my good males, but it would be entirely possible to either A) set up more robbers with more variation or B) find the spots where you can change gender/alignment and get your robbers converted for the trip.

I've decided to make a new party after all, rather than importing. Just love character creation... 6 main classes.

Still level 1. Exploring Middlegate.

This might be a stupid question, but how do days pass? It's not done on resting... Does it have any effect in game?

Book One doesn't have days.
Book Two has days, years and a day & night circle.