MIGHT & MAGIC VII

Cheat!


By Lu Richardson
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This is a vast game, with loads of exploring to do, many quests to 
complete and oodles of puzzles to solve -  and the first time you 
play it you will no doubt find your way impeded at every turn.  Your 
characters are so weak you will get killed time and again before you 
can have a good look around.  Very slow.  Most frustrating.

If you are as impatient as I am, you'll want to whisk through the 
game at first, then play it again more slowly (as it should be), 
taking your time over it - perhaps discovering all manner of things 
you missed the first time around.

Well, why not cheat?  It's not all that difficult, really.  When 
you begin to get fed up of dying every five minutes, pause.  Look at 
your characters' stats.  Make a note of their names followed by 
their stats.  Say Zoltan has 30 points of Might, 9 of the next 
statistic, etc.  Write it all down.  Note also the skills.  If you 
have any points to spend, use them all on the very first one, for 
each character, making a note of it.  For instance, you may have at 
the top an Axe skill of 3 for Zoltan, as an example.  Now save your 
game.  Make a copy of it somewhere safe in case you mess up.

You need only convert the first stat figure of each character to 
hexadecimal with a calculator:  for instance, in the case of Zoltan, 
30 will be 1E.  Naturally, there is no need to convert, say, a 3, 
since it will be 03 in hexadecimal.

Use an editor on your saved game and search for the name of each 
character.  Say your first one is Zoltan:  find his name and then 
look carefully through each following sector till you see 00 1E 00.  
Change the 1E to 63, or whatever you want; then there will be a few 
00s and then the next statistic.  Change them all.

Then change the skills.  If the first one is 3, look for 03.  Change 
it to 63.  This will be followed by 00, which you leave alone, then 
you can change the next 00 or 01, or whatever it is:  you should end 
up with a row of 63 00 63 00 63 00... until you have about 33 63s.

Changing the statistics will give you a lot more hit and mana 
points, and you can then get on with the game and concentrate on 
solving problems without worrying too much about your health.  Or 
finding those pesky people who improve your skills and whom you 
can't ever remember, nor where they live.  Of course, you'll still 
have to become Grand Masters of certain things to really be able to 
get on.

As to how to play the game, now that you can, the pattern in all M&M 
RPGs is always the same:  in each section of the map, you visit the 
town, get info and quests, stay above ground to clear the sector of 
nasties (getting advancement and items for your trouble, for which 
you have to get back to the town), then you enter the various 
suspicious buildings or go underground to fulfill your quests.  
There is no need to follow a particular order to complete them.  
Sometimes, you even have to leave one sector unfinished and go to 
another one to find the necessaries to do what you have to do.

Play it by ear.  That's the whole point of the exercise.