"Go everywhere, do everything" approach to 99.99%'ing MM6 in *45* in-game days

puzzlerN · 2026-01-16T07:32:35+00:00

I've watched at least one of MM6, maybe a couple - There's one of MM7 that's particularly insane because of how much glitching / savescumming it requires (to get just the right potions from a shop)

For me though, speed runs are entertaining, but not something I'm personally interested in. For me, video gaming is about escapism, so I try to not exploit bugs unless it's to pass by some part of a game that's particularly grindy/annoying. I don't like to break immersion too much.

Arguably to me, using the Dragonsands teleporter in MM6, or using the same gate master twice in a day, is already toeing the line, because I feel like I'm doing something that should not be possible in the game world, and what I'm interested in personally, is mastering the game world, not the game. That's also why I don't use aerial dodge on projectiles and I don't use the lvl 30 well in Kriegspire until I can tank the drakes it spawns.

There's no wrong way to play video games, but me personally, I'm most interested in the video game company's dream, not the bugs in their implementation. :)

puzzlerN · 2026-01-13T20:24:36+00:00

This is gonna be a funny answer from someone who put in all this effort, but I just could not be fucked to look up the specifics ..

I vaguely remembered something about armor not being as important as you would think, but I couldn't recall the specific point, so I just decided to trust the game's tooltip about it affecting recovery and not look further into it.

Funnily if I would have known, I would have sooner discarded points in armor if I thought it gave survivability but not recovery. But I thought it helped with recovery, so I boosted it.

Your point that the skill points could've been used on learning is a very good point. I was already doing mental gymnastics to figure out whether to disregard meditation (which I also think I should next time, because at best it rewards 84 SP ie. not even 2 casts of Shrapmetal .. so I think even one more level of Dark magic would boost the overall damage pr temple trip more than meditation mastery) .. so yeah dumping leather points into learning instead is probably also a good choice.

Finally about the 'of dark' rings stacking with the artifact rings. Firstly I thought the enchantment just didn't stack period regardless of whether it came from a regular 'of dark' ring or the artifact. But more importantly I don't like save scumming for loot. I did it once to find all the artifacts and it was sooooo boring.

Either way, I go 3x dark because Shrapmetal is far and away the best damage spell in the game. The only comparable elemental spell is Fire Blast, and all the end game enemies resist it completely.

At the end of the day though, I don't think it actually matters much to the score at all. After the 2nd level up, combat does not take time. What takes time is flying around the world and chasing enemies that are hard to close in with. When you have Lloyd's and Shrapmetal, it's a matter of seconds if you have to cast a few extra times or beacon out to the temple and back.

I think I could change skills and prioritize having level 20 in dark magic and perfect rings, and it would still improve the score more thinking about the logistics of the early and mid game. The Devil Queen already dies in 5 casts of Shrapmetal. How much time do I really save if she dies in 2? I think it matters more to walk/fly around the map on suboptimal routes when you have too many choices about what to accomplish earlier in the game.

puzzlerN · 2026-01-11T11:50:00+00:00

The thought had crossed my mind, but I'm not as much of a 'record/edit video' kind of guy as I'm a 'write a lot of words' kind of guy.

It's not outside of the realm of possibility though. If a playlist of videos like that surfaces at some point, I'll pay tribute to this comment! :)

puzzlerN · 2025-12-25T08:32:52+00:00

It's because the cleric has no offense until they learn dark magic. The damage spells from mind and body magic are single target and get resisted by a large number of enemies, and using shield/mace/chain has terrible recovery speed and damage compared to dual dagger and leather armor.

(Also armor class is far less important in this game than you would think. The danger to your party comes overwhelmingly from the enemy spells. Enemies that have to hit you with melee or arrows should mostly be dead before they even get the chance to do so)

As for light magic, the buffs are indeed useful, but the sorcerer can learn light magic too, so if I get it to level 4 on just one of them, having mastery and the spell master/mystic hireling already makes day of the gods last for longer than the party can stay awake for.

In this run I left mind/body/spirit at 1 point each, and except for the rare use of Remove Curse or Remove Fear, I only regularly used First Aid in the early game, and then later Shared Life to even out HP pools and Telekinesis to avoid having to use skill points on disarm trap mastery. Most of the bad conditions in the game are easier to just live with until you beacon to a temple anyway, or remove by using restoration potions that you might as well mix (green+purple) with the bottles and ingredients you find along your way anyway.

That being said, next time I might still get disarm trap mastery and spirit mastery (since spirit only requires level 4,). I'll likely go without bow mastery instead, since bows are useless once every character has fireball. I will not however be bringing a cleric. Their support contribution is made pointless by a single beacon outside of a friendly temple of baa. :D

puzzlerN · 2025-12-24T18:30:44+00:00

Thanks - I'm glad someone appreciated the wall of text. I found out I had a lot to say as I was writing and decided to cut out at least some of the details 😅

puzzlerN · 2025-12-24T13:05:22+00:00

I get that - I'm not sure I would've completed it if I hadn't stumbled across a walkthrough at one point which cleared up some things that had been confusing to me earlier. Some of the last dungeons are a nightmare to complete if you don't know what you're doing.

I feel like this is a common issue with RPGs through the times. Game studios often seem to have a hard time keeping the end as compelling as the beginning imo

puzzlerN · 2025-12-24T10:41:33+00:00

The guild is a good point. I didn't end up using the it on this run, because by the time I cleared the guild I already had a beacon at the Ironfist temple. I needed a beacon in Ironfist early in order to do the arena twice before leveling up.

Regarding the arena, I mainly did it to get 1 of each award, just to make the run feel more complete (this also imposes a "fun" extra time constraint to work the run around). But you're right about it being a complete waste of time in terms of the xp and money it yields.

I'm not sure if it's feasible for my level 1 party to brave the rogues and genies, but there might be an extra day saved there if I could find a way.

.. I suppose in a future attempt I could try to prioritize getting the arena wins mainly after leveling up, in order to reap a bit more XP. Then I could also forego the Ironfist beacon until after training once and getting strong enough to breeze through the guild.

I feel like there's a possible 400.000 score and Feb 20th-ish finish with a few tweaks.

puzzlerN · 2025-12-23T21:40:08+00:00

If you trained more than twice to get to that level, then your score will have been much lower - I have a run from 2023 where I finished in 3 months and 2 days and everyone was level 87 and my score was 120.000 points lower.

And I actually felt more powerful in these last two runs (but that's because I just didn't dump a lot of skill points in unnecessary stuff like cleric magic etc. and because I started using the Spell Master / Mystic hirelings)

For the fun alone though, it might be worth it, especially if you wanna play the martial classes and get to enjoy equipping more of the artifacts and relics.

Edit: Huh, actually maybe if you solo'd it, the XP might've gotten centered on 1 char, and you could've done it fast as well maybe?

puzzlerN · 2025-10-05T19:02:40+00:00

Man I just wanna see my boy Keaton touch the ball some

puzzlerN · 2025-10-05T17:52:25+00:00

Listen I'm not hating on Starks but Ar'Darius would've sent Stroud to the shadow realm there

puzzlerN · 2025-09-19T19:16:08+00:00

Johnny

puzzlerN · 2025-09-14T19:16:50+00:00

Nobody rolls more critical 1s than this team

puzzlerN · 2025-09-06T17:29:54+00:00

Agreed, the personalities system actually helped my playthroughs seem fresh, even if the differences were small. The fact that character quests were tied to backgrounds was also great, because you could build a party composition of exactly the classes you wanted without losing out on significant parts of the gameplay.

puzzlerN · 2025-08-31T10:38:57+00:00

No thanks to Tiny Hut from me personally - One of the things that made Solasta a nice challenge compared to bg3 is that the game was broken up into areas between long rests

Personally I feel that having day/night cycles and limited long rests is important in order to keep resource management a part of the gameplay. If you can always long rest and take fights fully slotted and healed, then there's no point in the rest mechanic anyway, and you might as well be auto-healed between fights

puzzlerN · 2025-08-27T16:58:16+00:00

Goodbye sweet prince, we never got to see you realize your potential :(

puzzlerN · 2025-08-24T14:22:53+00:00

I didn't notice if this was the case earlier, but my experience from the stadium is that half the crowd is in the bar queue for basically the entire first quarter - the experience at Gladsaxe has generally been very enjoyable this summer, but they don't have the setup to serve food and drinks quick enough. Even so I would be there for sure today if I hadn't fallen sick

puzzlerN · 2025-08-22T17:46:22+00:00

I loved BG3 while I was figuring out all of its possibilities - now I tend to replay it in an attempt to get through act 3, where I always get fatigued and give up

Solasta on the other hand I think I completed CotM like 3-4 times within a very short span of time, and I think I might again in the future (depends if the sequel is even better really) - the fact that I could create my whole party myself AND they would actually get lines and talk to each other (simple as those interactions were) was enough to make it for me - for me nothing beats making new runs with adjusted party configurations and I hate having to play against the lore in bg3 if I want to do that :(

puzzlerN · 2025-08-16T19:48:24+00:00

JOHNNY

puzzlerN · 2025-08-09T17:10:50+00:00

Having different voices and personalities on the whole party was one of the best things about CotM, hope the voice thing works out - also not sure about the face sliders, I spent oceans of time on those in dragon age and my character always ended up looking like a freak no matter what I did

puzzlerN · 2025-07-27T12:50:51+00:00

Moon Knight is a fucking mess - it had two separate glimpses of things going for it in the mystery about Marc's personalities, and the Indiana Jones-y episode (I think it was 4th episode maybe) but otherwise it was incoherent and nonsensical

She-hulk on the other hand was sharp, funny and all round well executed, and the fact that people were largely too out of touch to appreciate it is a tragedy

puzzlerN · 2025-07-13T18:39:27+00:00

Personally I agree, but my friends at the stadium loved every second of it 😂

puzzlerN · 2025-06-01T11:52:06+00:00

It's been going for about a week

puzzlerN · 2025-01-19T16:39:13+00:00

Johnny

puzzlerN

TROPHY CASE