Basically making a repository for veterans of the series to give tips and whatnot. Sadly, I have none as I've just started it, but it'd be nice to learn from those who have played it before.

Seeing as I have no idea what I'm doing, despite reading the manual.

Random things that poped in my head - my last game was some time ago, not sure what it's worth.

Take a Sorcerer. You can live with a Paladin instead of a pure Cleric - not recommanded, but possible - but no sorceror is a big challenge.

Bows for everybody. Learn when to fight with pause and when to fight real time. Cast Wizard Eye and walk slowly. You have access to areas you can't handle very fast, pick your fights and come back later if you can't make it, it's normal.

In magic, Fire makes damage, it's a priority. Magic demands a lot of skill points and gold, so keep focused. But then, movement is important too and it comes from Water & Air. Town Portal to save time, Lloyd beacon when you can afford it has A LOT of use, walk on water, levitation are convenient too. I'm not saying to neglect your ability to fight for these spells, but don't forget about them.

Save before any chest. They will kill you. Save often anyway.

Use the temporary bonus as much as needed (fontains, etc). They aren't for show, and you need the help.

Anything that raise your stats-skills is important. When a barrel raise your stat, it can really help, don't let your fighter drink the Intellect barrel for example. Horseshoes are priceless (look for them at each stable). And the magic users are the one who need skill, not the fighters.

Hirelings are useful. I suggest Cartographer until you can cast Wizard Eye better than him - not necessary but damn convenient. and Scholar, Banker or instructor for the basics : gold and exp. You don"t really need the other bonus if you have gold and exp.

Check regulary your equipement, just to be sure nothing is broken. You lose all bonus from broken armor, and it WILL break a lot. You might realized you've been fighting naked for the last hour. So check often.

1_ As has been said. Know your fountains.
2_Using "Wizard Eye," know where the enemy is and try to let them come to you. In as small a group as possible. At the beginning, large groups will destroy your team.
3_M&M6 is biased toward Magic. The knight (if you choose to play one) later on is useful in a few areas but is more or less a repository of hit points that become useful with the "Shared Life" Spell.
4_Fire Arrow is pretty useless so get Fire Bolt ASAP as well as Sparks.
5_Bows are extremely useful at the beginning.
6_Poison will be a big problem early on. So potions that cure it (and learning how to make it) will be useful
7_Depending how you play, you will find various Hirelings useful.
8_When you sell booty to merchants early on, you can spend a lot of money (and money is important in this game) getting things identified before selling. Whether you get something identified or not, the merchant will pay the same price. So you will save money if you get only expensive things ID'ed. Sell the rest w/o ID

1. Learn merchant skill and master it ASAP on one character (eventually on all since it saves money leveling up). Sell stuff in New Sorpigal, since it has the least merchant skill requirement for buying/selling at real item value.
2. When creating party give everyone bows.
3. Forget Wizard Eye, hire a cartographer.
4. Learn and master water magic ASAP. Town portal and lloyds beacon are best utility spells in the game. They also make some longer dungeons much easier, just blast all enemies with strongest spells, cast lloyds beacon, town portal to Mist, recharge at temple, return to dungeon.

Lots of good advice, so I'll just add something that's trite but true for all MM1-6 games:
If an area is too difficult, just come back later. Just shows how there are many ways to play same game. For me it was quite the opposite. Considering how powerful enemies have immunities vs magic or fire, my sorceror would very often do more damage hitting with (master skill 8) staff than casting spells (master skill 12-18). Spellcasters were better for buffs and utility spells than direct damage. Or to take out those pesky low level creatures when you have to revisit an area.

That said, At early-mid game, fireball (or fire ring) was an awesome spell. Later I did use incinerate often. Acid burst was great against creatures who aren't immune. And shrapmetal was amazing if you cast while standing right in fron of a huge creature so that all pieces hit. Another great underrated spell was the electricity one (several ball of electricity, forgot spell name). So damaging magic wasn't totally useless, but my party still relied on might more. Maybe because I mastered everyone in their weapon of choice (fighter axe, druid dagger, cleric mace, sorceress staff).

We did play different styles. Because I rarely remember an instance where, if fire ball didn't work, lightening might, if not lightening, ice bolt, and if not ice bolt, then rock blast. I would clear rooms with rock blast ricochet shots before even entering.
The same with Meteor Shower, Starburst and Death Blossom. I haven't even got to light or dark magic or the Clerics' Flying Fist.

The knight was good for mid-game close quarter fights, but sparks was more so. There are Diamond Gargoyles and alike, but not that many.

And when the company designed M&M VII, they added Armsmaster skill to pump up the knight.

Bob

Thanks for all the help, guys.

I'm surprised no one has mentioned this, so...

I played MM6 avidly when it came out, and there's one very important secret that everyone who plays this game should know. There is a secret area in the game which can be accessed at any time, even at the very beginning of the game. In fact, following these steps is the most helpful at the beginning, right at level one. This is not a glitch, so don't worry about crashing the game or anything.

I'm having some technical difficulties with the game right now, and haven't played in about 15 years, so I'm doing this all from memory.

Deposit all your money in the bank (I'll explain later). If you click on the south wall of the bank in New Sorpigal, you will get a scroll. I remember it being a scroll of Jump, but other places I've read about this say its a scroll of Fly. Either way, it will serve the purpose to be had here. Take the scroll and run over to the building with three wings, pointing north, east, and west. The building is north of the bank. Facing the door of the north facing wing, Jump/Fly to the roof of that wing. The area where the three wings meet is slightly raised, having a small wall and then capped with an angular tiled spire roof.

SAVE THE GAME. Enter turn based mode, and click on the wall (not the spire). You will be transported to a new area, specifically Hermits Isle. You will be facing north, and directly ahead of you, maybe a football field away, is a small building, a pagoda really. That pagoda is surrounded by a circular wall of dragons. The flying, kill you with one hit kind of dragons. You will be slightly inside of that circle. Good thing you entered turn based mode before teleporting, or you'd be dead already.

The pagoda in front of you has openings to the east and west. Exit turn based mode and run like you're being chased by dozens of angry dragons, because you are. Once you get inside the pagoda, immediately move to the inner southern wall, where you cannot be attacked by said dragons. Make sure all of your characters are alive, as you can only do this next part once.

In the center of the pagoda is an obelisk. Clicking on it grants every member of you party +20 to all stats, permanently. You read that right.

Next, click on the inner south west facing wall. You are now teleported to the secret area which is only accessible (initially) by clicking on that wall. Welcome to the developers area, a pseudo-replica of the offices of 3DO. Inside you will find a elevator, generic npc's named after the developers, and tons of gold and loot. Also, two of the developers are goblins, including the head of the company. Stepping into his office casts fear on every member of your party, but it goes away when you step back out of his office, lol.

Before you start swiping up all the gold you see, first find the treasure chest. It gives you 500 gold every time you click on it, until you reach 50,000. It doesn't give you 50,000 total, it gives you 500 until you have a total of 50,000 in hand, and then stops. That's why you deposited all your gold already. Now you can run around picking up all the gold laying around the office. Later on in the game, it would be wise to plant a beacon in front of this chest using Lloyd's beacon.

All kinds of loot can be found here, and most of it is randomized. Some of it is set, and some of it is hidden though. There are small grey cubes laying about, clicking on them usually reveals one or more items. One cube has 4 cloaks, the blue kind (tier 3 I think?). One cube holds platemail boots. One of the cubes will give you a random quality chainmail, anywhere from the best to worst, so save before clicking on it and be sure to get the best! Also, there's a round symbol of the side of a desk or some such that gives you a club, I think. The bookshelf gives you (predictably) a spell book. Don't remember which one.

If you head down the hall (some of the rooms have loot, wizard eye is really helpful here), there are three vending machines at the end. One machine gives you empty potion bottles. One randomly gives you red, yellow, or blue potions. The last gives you food. All are infinite, and cost nothing. Obviously, you'll never have to worry about food ever again. One side note, the food machine will also give your character negative status effects at random intervals, but nothing that will kill you. And when you're done getting food, you can just grab a few potions from the other machine an mix yourself a cure, so no biggie.

When you're ready to leave, head back to the entrance, SAVE!!!!!, and enter turn based mode. Click on the door and you end up right outside the pagoda again. This time, you need to reach the outer north facing wall. There you will find a symbol, the company logo of a sword going through the globe. Click on the sword between the hilt and the globe and you will be teleported safely back to New Sorpigal, now decked out with tons of loot, more food than you'll ever need, 50,000+ gold, and a permanent +20 to all stats. Not bad, eh?

Don't forget, all items and enemies in the game come back after one month, so you can repeat this process monthly. The chest o' 50,000 gold is always available, of course, for those with Lloyd's Beacon. Just go back and forth from the chest to the bank for infinite gold.

Search for some of my post in this thread (might magic).

Except now there is an addendum - to quickly train lots of levels in one go means you can finish the game faster - but you will missed a lot of pilgrimage which could have made you life much easier.

I already wrote a guide in a forum post format. read it. You can finish the game very easily if you follow it (while being legal, non cheating way).

in short:

- do the january strength pilgrimage first before fighting most monster. but after drinking strength fountain.
- hire a gate master and do the horse stable mission.
- do non fighting mission (stop snow, find knight(?) at a bar). bring letter.

to help with cash remember that you only need to open the goblin door and have the password paper. cleaning can be done later, like after learning bow and buy the best bow there is (in frozen cap).

2nd Feb and my character already level 15 and master water and expert merchant (already level 7 + 30 personality hough). and without having to do any new scorpigal figthing mission. Only now I'm cleaning up the goblin thing and rescue girl, cobra snakes and what not - to be master in merchant.

by the way, buy fly spell and use gate travel and hire horse and travel shortener and touch the obelisk. Expert disarm trap + disarming armour is enough to open the bonus chest.

after you drink from most of the well, touch the dragonsand shrine.

while you travelling for the horse mission, don't forget to buy supplies wherever you go. drink black potion.

the game should be easy then.

1. Best hireling combo is the mystic+spell master one. Pretty much nothing can beat them (unless you play, say, knight-heavy party) - together, they give all your characters +7 bonus to all their magical skills. And you can get them in the first town. If your natural magic skill is, say, 4, they result in a 175% damage increase for the most spells.

2. Artifact+non artifact rings of magic stack multiplicatively, providing 125% bonus in total.

3. Stats suffer from pretty serious diminishing returns, so going out of your way to pump them past 100 isn't that necessary. For example, against tough monsters, attack 100 provides 65% to hit, attack 200 - 78% to hit.

4. Min-maxing is the name of this game. Spend as little as possible on the non-combat skills - the only exceptions are the merchant skill (you want 13 so you can sell for 100% in new sorpigal) and learning (lots of combat xps in the game, you can put up to 12-14 into it relatively early). Also, you really want to have at least 20 (if not 30) in your maIn magical skills.

5. Mind magic is broken and doesn't work. Dual wielding also is broken in a non-fan-patched game. Dagger is the best weapon through the most of the game, btw..

Just tried an Elemental Magic Team in M&M 6.

Paladin, Sorcerer, Druid, Sorcerer.

No satisfaction in Whomping people. And Cuisinart is a bear. But, it does give a lot of Magic choices. And the Druid makes a fair replacement of a Cleric.

What do I wish I knew early on--- trying different party combos.

Not quite. He can't learn Dark and Light magic skills. It's a major drawback.

Two sorcerers makes the loss of the Cleric's Light/Dark acceptable. But I do miss some muscle. LOL.

It's been years since I played MM6, but the blaster weapons are very useful. Use blaster weapons in real time, not in turn based mode. You can fly up and down while shooting Titans to avoid damage from them, and also go to the Arena and move left/right while shooting dragons from a distance. This is a fast way to get exp in later stages of the game.

In mid-game, shrapmetal (dark magic) is a very useful spell for taking down bosses if you stand very close and spam shrapmetal.

I wish I'd known how handy sorcerers would be in the late game. In my most recent playthrough I went with 1 cleric, 3 sorcerers and by mid game they were really shining. In the late game they were shredding all opposition using 1 grandmaster of Light magic (the cleric) and 3 GM's in Dark magic (the sorc's).

For hirelings I went with a Mystic (+3 to all spell schools for all characters and Spell Master (+4 to all spell schools), which effectively allows each spell to be cast at 7 ranks higher.

Muhahaha, a very fun party indeed :)