I was wondering around a bit. I really should have been heading into A2. There were however thick trees I could not get past since I lacked the skill to do so. Instead, I found myself in B2 also known as Valley Of The Trolls. I thought why not since I'm already there to just explore around a bit.

On one side of me was the ocean which I could not cross. On the other side were mountains that I also could not cross for the time being. So, I just kept going south along the shoreline.

I then ended up finding a cavern called Cyclops. Which to my total shock was filled with cyclopes. Along with a bunch of other nasty things like fungus. I never thought I'd say fungus kicked me up and down the wall caves. It however happened.

At least before deciding this should be a cave that I return to later. Once I get some further levels and better gear. I ended up finding a decent pile of gold. It’s not like I felt like I was super poor up to this point. I however won't turn down 50k gold.

The gold would end up coming quite in handy when a couple of my group ended up getting killed. Turns out that paying to get someone resurrected from the dead is not cheap. Even more so when it happened a couple of times. Mostly from me wandering into areas like Cyclops Cavern where I did not belong just yet.

All of this gold also went to buying some rather important skills. I was no longer going to be limited by not being able to go through thick forest tiles. I ended up going on quite the extensive exploration of A2 and A3. Only mountains and some water areas kept me from fully exploring all of the tiles.

Both of these zones ended up having a couple of lairs I could destroy. While that would stop yet again any creatures from respawning in them. Since I did not have any idea what killing anything in these lower zones even rewarded anyway. I was more than happy to take 10k experience here or 5k experience there from clearing out more of these lairs.

I had quite a lot of fun just running up and down treating each zone like a grid pattern. This would end up being my ideal way to explore most new areas once I had uncovered important areas like roads and towns.

The biggest reason for exploring like this is to find hidden stuff. Once in a while, I'd just be running up and down a Medow for instance. I’d then find something that was buried. Most of the time the items I'd find were not that great in these lower-level zones. They would at least get me a couple if not fifty gold in some cases.

Sometimes I'd end up resting to recover my mana and life. Other times I'd have to return to one of the two towns I was aware of. I would restock on supplies. I’d also head up to the temples and get any poison or disease I had cured. This would keep cutting into my pile of gold.

I am somewhat shocked at how long it ended up taking to get cure spells. At best my cleric could cast suppression spells. It would keep things like poison from killing a party member. Assuming I had not forgotten to cast it on them. It was kind of hard to tell if I had or not.

There were also several little wagons scattered around. One of them had someone inside that claimed for a small price of 1k gold I could have some crazy ring. The ring itself ended up being total garbage. Being scammed out of 1k gold rather sucked.

I ended up heading down so far south that I came across some nasty-looking spiders. I was also not able to get over this tiny river. As that would require each member of my party to have swimming skills.

While I could not cross the river. I could shoot at the spiders. They would take quite some time to die. Only one of my characters had a bow. While two of my casters can’t use ranged weapons. I’d later buy the rest crossbows to help with ranged combat when I was trying to save on using mana.

At one point I ended up storing a large chunk of my gold at the bank in Fountain Head. At least what was left of it. This was the only town as far as I could tell that even had a bank. What I was not expecting was just how easy I'd take myself into withdrawing just another 5k or 10k gold at a time.

As you might be able to tell the idea ended up not working out so great. Often, I'd run out of money. This meant quite a few trips out to the second town of Baywatch would then require me to run over to Fountain Head for lacking enough funds. It’s not that I was wasting gold. I’d just come into a situation of a party member getting killed yet again or finding a skill I needed to spend gold on.

In search of treasure, I did end up returning to the Ancient Temple of Moo. I even managed to make it into what I could only call a treasure room. There was maybe just 10k worth of gold in there. While that would last me a little while. It’s not like I did not find yet another reason to spend it almost as quickly as I looted it.

It also did not take long before my recently found fortune dwindled back into nothing yet again. At one point I ended up stopping at the second city of Baywatch yet again. This time I ended up finding out where I could buy membership to the Albatross’s Guild.

Each of my magic casters in all the cities would end up having to acquire either from buying or some other means of membership to the five different magic guilds. While some of them would provide all the lower-tier spells and anything up to that town. Certain spells could only be bought from a certain magic guild.

Buying spells as it turns out ends up being quite expensive. Between all the spell buying, memberships, skills, and quite a few levels of training. I found myself not even with two gold coins to rub together. I was yet again broken.

Final Thoughts

I would not realize it at the time but being out of gold would end up putting me in quite a bad situation. I’d learn that no matter what you should always keep a couple thousand gold for an emergency. You never know when the next change to get yourself a decent chunk of gold again might be or how challenging it could end up being.

Information

Screenshots were taken and content was written by @Enjar about Might And Magic III.