Duke Revier's Grand Game Emporium

 It's about time I Let's Played my favorite game of all time - Master of Magic. For most fantasy 4x enthusiasts, this game needs no introduction, but this is considered by many to be the grandfather of the genre, and a timeless classic that largely still holds up today, despite some quirks. The long and short of it is that these games are about ruling over a wizard empire as a heavily customizable wizard emperor, with many traits and spells. And that's not all. Every playthrough is different, because the map, enemy wizards, and lairs all get randomized on every game. This game combines city management, deeply strategic combat, exciting treasure hunts and rpg style hero building all in one! For the purposes of this Let's Play, I'll be using two mods. The first, Caster of Magic for Windows, is actually sold on Steam itself, and can be bought from here:  https://store.steampowered.com/app/1557960/Master_of_Magic_Caster_of_Magic_for_Windows/  It's a standalone recre...

 The endgame was imminent. I wasn't really impressed by Revier's Geomancy getup, and wanted to put him in something more satisfying. I flipped him around jobs for a bit, then recalled the advice offered about his Squire class and greatswords. Thus, I discovered his ultimate move - Jumping on his enemies with the Excalibur! This led to predictably amazing results, as you can see here. Not only was his damage output considerably higher, he also got far more jumps, thanks to its auto-haste! He was truly a speed devil now! My only other bits of preparation were to fill up the party's stock of x-potions, and switch the wizards to statistically better robes, reckoning that the white robes were obsolete and most threats wouldn't be tied to the three main elements anymore. The first fight had some decent offense on the enemy's side, thanks to their monks. However, it wasn't very hard to stack up the damage and bring them down, one by one. The next fight was against one ...

 Alright, let's go through the rest of the sidequests. To begin, you need to read this conversation from a bar in and around Zeltennia. This opens up an island off its coast...where, oddly, nothing happens. To progress this further, you need to go back to Goug after clearing Bethla, where Mustadio's father has excavated yet another machine from the depths. This one requires an entirely different stone, and given that Nelveska Temple had mysteriously opened up earlier through a rumor without being actually visitable, the stone could only be placed there. Sure enough, there's a fight there now. It's pretty rude, featuring lots of fast fighters that can easily attack any member of your team within their first turn, and an extremely powerful robot that spams exceptionally powerful lasers! That being said, my samurai was powerful enough to singlehandedly kill half of them, and Revier handled the other half. This fight is also notable for being one of the few places where the...

Revier's entourage headed for his former family castle, Igros. Meanwhile, Olan tried breaking into Ovelia's chambers to convey her the truth about his father-in-law, Orlandu, but he was injured by the castle's security, and by the time he got to her, Delita got wind of his antics and stormed in! He outright boasted about how he'd done a "good thing" by framing Orlandu as Goltana's killer, and how killing Goltana was completely justified. Ovelia and Olan are aghast to hear of such blatant skullduggery, but Delita, running high on arrogance, goes a step further, and tries to persuade Olan to work for him while outright stating he wants the Church's High Priest dead! This goes too far for the church's agent, who prepares to stab him, but Delita catches her in the act and stabs her! Cutting away from all of that, we see Zalbag pay a visit to their father Barbaneth's grave, with a chemist in tow. The chemist confirms that he had indeed been poisoned...

The averting of the Bethla clash naturally involved shops opening up more of their stock, including this crazily powerful rod! It certainly tempted me to switch someone over to Oracle-ing. Too bad every character is more or less set on achieving their final forms now. I redistributed Orlandu's gear, but the Excalibur remained a frustratingly hard item to utilize, as it could only be equipped by Knights, and the sword equipping passive did not permit equipping it! I didn't want to switch anybody to that class, it was an exceptionally unattractive class, being completely superseded by the Lancer and the Samurai, and being tied down with a rather uninteresting command, at least, with its weapons of choice. In the end I decided to forego using it and just keep it in reserve, pulling it out only if need for it arose. Revier's team passed by a dilapidated trading city, where a woman resembling Aeris sold him a flower, and sighed at her miserable life, hoping to escape it someday....

  Revier hurries towards the border fortress, Bethla, but his journey is interrupted by one of the cabal leaders, who unleashes a poison bomb on his party! He laughs, and boasts about how he's unleashed this poison on Dycedarg's faction's army, meaning they too will be put out of commission! Thankfully, despite his boasting, this was generic poison that wore itself out. Despite this, the fight was quite hard. The enemy was well entrenched, but that wasn't really a problem by itself. You see, this leader was a speed devil, often getting their turns in very inopportune times. Not only that, he was equipped with a magical ice gun, and had no qualms about shooting the party with it! I could've cheesed this fight by making everyone wear ice shields, but I decided to be a sport and bear the pain. Eventually the team got past him, albeit after a prolonged and tense battle that involved many a revive! The upside of this was that the team earned lots of xp and skillpoints, l...

This addendum shall take a look at the sidequests, or rather the first of them, as I am curious in them. I looked up how to initiate them with a guide, and it was pretty simple - head to Goug, hometown of the archeologist Mustadio, then to Goland, where the bar gives news of monsters capturing the local mine. This then leads to a scene in Lesalia's bar, where Revier eagerly volunteers to free the mine, and a mysterious knight offers to accompany him. This leads to a series of bizarre fights against chemists, thieves and behemoths. The experience and skill points from random encounters had added up enough to let Revier unlock full horizontal jumps; you can see how glorious the end results look! 😆 The monk had also finished training himself up, and was qualified to become a samurai, but given how pricey its katanas were, I chose to instead make him travel down the defensive mage path and become an oracle instead. Like I mentioned earlier, this is a rather gimmicky class that casts s...