This page lists tricks and information for Might & Magic VIII: Day of the Destroyer.
Alliance Skip
Forming an alliance between the various factions of Jadame is a major part of the game's plot. Normally you would form the alliance, then sink the Regna pirate fleet and then be tasked by Xanthor to find the 4 elemental hearts.
However, if you manage to obtain the 4 hearts and access the house where Xanthor hasn't arrived yet, he will magically be there and construct the conflux key so you can go through Escaton's Crystal and finish the game without forming the alliance.
Invisibility Spell Abuse
Casting invisibility can be done to bypass enemies that would normally annihilate you, such as in the elemental planes.
Cast Renegade Spells
This bug allows a character to cast spells regardless of whether they have them in their spellbooks or whether they can even learn it. The spells that can be cast are the last Master-level spells in their respective schools of magic - the 10th for each school.
The schools in order are Fire, Air, Water, Earth, Spirit, Mind, Body, Light, Dark, Dark Elf, Vampire, and Dragon.
How to do it:
- Open your spell book
- Click once on any Spell in any type of magic
- Click on the tab key for another school of magic; this school will determine which spell you get
- Click on the Set Quickspell icon
The spells that can be used this way are:
| Fire | Game crashes. No proceeding school |
| Air | Inferno |
| Water | Fly |
| Earth | Ice Blast |
| Spirit | Death Blossom |
| Mind | Shared Life |
| Body | Psychic-Shock |
| Light | Flying Fist |
| Dark | Sunray |
| Dark Elf | Armageddon |
| Vampire | Does nothing. Quick spell is set to "0" |
| Dragon | Does nothing. Quick spell is set to "0" |
Door Skip
You can skip through doors inside dungeons such as the ones in Escaton's Palace.
A long time ago, it was said you have to stand in front of a door, save & reload while holding forward. This would allow you to simply walk through the door. It works because the game loads doors last and when people still played on older computers, it took longer to load. But nowadays on more modern computers, the doors are loaded almost immediately.
It has never really been confirmed if the above story (just using one save & reload) is true. But you can still do the skip by using multiple save & reloads. You have to open the spellbook (other screens may work, too) after each reload.
You can see the skip being done in this video:
Out of Bounds Glitches
When doing the Door Skip and staying in the door, you may be considered out of bounds by the game as part of the screen might not update anymore. If there are items in the non-updated part, you can use Telekinesis to repeatedly pick up the same item.
If you try to pick up an item that has been picked up before, it will say that you picked up a "null" item. It will not allow you to have the same item in your inventory multiple times. After picking up a "null" item, hovering over it with the mouse will tell you the item's name is "0". Gold can be picked up repeatedly without these consequences, though, allowing you to receive almost infinite money.
At this time, you can - while out of bounds - use Telekinesis on items that lie around in the palace. But you cannot use it on Escaton's door. This would save a significant amount of time in a speedrun, otherwise.
This video demonstrates the aforementioned:
Item Buffer
When you are in front of an item, and load a savegame from a different map, you can click on the item (while on the loading screen) and the game will collect whichever slot the item occupied on the previous map. This only works when the newly loaded savegame is from an interior area (dungeon or cave).
You can collect the heart of Fire, Earth and Air, respectively, by following these steps:
- Go inside the Ravenshore library. Throw any item you have in front of you.
- Save the game (savegame 1).
- Go in a dungeon where there is a heart of Fire, Earth or Air.
- Save the game (savegame 2).
- Load savegame 1. Then load savegame 2, and click at where the thrown item was while on the loading screen (thus buffering the mouse click).
- When done correctly, you will collect the heart.
This bug saves about 4 minutes in any%.
Exit Buffer
Enter a dungeon, face the exit (or any other thing, like switches) and save (savegame 1).
Go do stuff, save (savegame 2).
Load savegame 1, then load savegame 2 while clicking at the exit (or thing) and you will be able to leave.
In any%, it's most useful in Escaton's Palace and in the Earth Prison.
TODO
Render Bug
This trick makes it so the game doesn't re-render the map. Save the game and when reloading it, buffer a click on the character's portrait.
When opening and closing your inventory, the items (that won't get rendered over) now represent stuff on the map and can be clicked on. What the items represent depends on the map and cannot be influenced. After every 8th item you are carrying, the stuff repeats (so you don't have access to all the things you can click on on the map).
This can be used to enter the Plane of Water right after entering Ravage Roaming, and to get the Heart of Water right after entering the Plane of Water.
It doesn't work in some places, such as Murmurwoods. It is not known why, but the game will force re-rendering in this map.
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