I started playing recently, and my automap was working fine and dandy but now it doesn't work anymore.

Even if I start a new game, the automap is off, visited squares in my map remain as if undiscovered :(

Can anybody help?

Thanks!

Did you make sure you actually have the cartography skill?

Maybe you lost it in the Eastern Tower?

Yes! That was it!

Thank you!

Hi! I belive i had the same problem. How i recover the skill? And why did i loose it?

You might have lost it on the Eastern Tower. There is a Book of Great Power that gives you +levels (5 if I recall correctly), but strips you of all your secondary skills.

You can get it back just next to your starting location in Castleview in one of the rooms.

Even better is a hidden location on the Clouds side, where you can buy all the secondary skills in 1 shot. On recent playthroughs I wait until I defeat almost everything and max up levels by training before using any +level books, potions, etc.

How are you able to max out your levels? There just isn't enough gold in the game.

I should have said, maxed out to as much as I could without grinding gold/xp. But the Bank can get you LOTS of interest while you're out adventuring, especially when you're a millionaire.

Abusing the bank for interest is just silly. I saw a speedrun for MM3 (which has a simalar bank and a gold-to-experience fountain) in which the player got a few characters to level 200, which is absurd.

I think the games have partially coded (but nonfunctional) time limits coded in that would prevent such bank abuse.

The problem is that there is no reasonable way to get enough money to get your experience.

Whenever I play World of Xeen, I set a few ground rules. One that I have considered is no leveling up past 50. (Level + events and fountains acceptable) Another is that I pretend the late game +50 to all stats less than 50 doesn't exist, as I don't like the effect it has on my gameplay.

I'm no speedrunner...a thorough play will take me a few days or a week now. Level 200? Wow. I have always made use of the bank; most of the time you just don't need all that gold & gems on you, so might as well let it accumulate. But only while there is still adventuring to be done; no fun just waiting around for payday. Who could turn down that kind of interest in real life?

My ground rule was to save any permanent level bonuses until I had completed almost everything and trained up to the limit of the party's gold or xp. I forget which was the limiting factor. I was tempted to just take them; +5 levels changes the balance a lot more at Level 10 than at Level 60 or 70. Revisiting those locations (like Eastern Tower) collecting them was a very late task, probably just before the Megadragon and going to endgame.

Now, aging the party 10 years doing labor for the guy in Castleview is just silly!

For the Isles of Terra speedrun, I think it was more on the order of 100 years. Thing is, you get 200 million gold per character (to convert to experience) plus enough money to actually train to level 200 (26467000 per chraracter). Just watch out for integer overflow.

In World of Xeen, you can't convert gold to experience, so you can't just use this trick to get level 200 characters early; you still have to earn all that experience.

What I like to do is complete Dragon Tower as soon as possible, this way I can get the 20 million experience for everyone when it still matters. I can then get access to the 50 (!) level fountain (using Teleport because the enemies in the Dragon Clouds aren't manageable at low levels) and reach natural levels in the 40s early.

One reason for stopping at level 50 is that you actually have to play through the darkside to get access to any place that would let you train higher. (Note that, at level 50 with a +50 bonus, the Labyrinth of Lost Souls is no longer a serious challenge.)

Limiting the leveling, that's an interesting challenge. You could also limit gear to a certain level, say Platinum, or limit spells to 1 per combat. My "rules" are usually: use a 2-handed weapon if available, can't bash anything the thief could open, hit up every interactable object (lawnmowing lol), can't answer puzzles etc until the party has the clues, kill every monster, and no Town Portal to a town you haven't walked to. I love this game; it's like my comfort food. I've been through it fewer than 10 times though, so I haven't set any special challenges.

I would advise not limiting spells. Magic is underpowered in this game, especially at higher levels, and is more interesting than using physical attacks.

If you want a serious challenge, try one of these two challenges:

1. No training. You may use fountains and level up events, but you aren't allowed to use experience and money to train your characters. For an added challenge, allow either fountains and level up events, but not both. (I have seen a claim of someone beating the Mega Dragon with a natural level of 1, but the player did use the +50 level fountain.)

2. No physical attacks. All damage must be done with magic. There is one specific enemy in Clouds that you will need to make an exception for, but no other enemy is actually completely immune to magic. (Enemy magic resistance doesn't work quite as you would expect.)

Cool, I may someday, at least #2.