Heroes of Might and Magic III: The Restoration of Erathia

Heroes of Might and Magic III: The Restoration of Erathia
Developer: New World Computing Publisher: 3DO Company Platform: Windows Released internationally: February 28, 1999 This game has unused animations. This game has hidden developer credits. This game has unused graphics. This game has unused cinematics. This game has unused items. This game has unused abilities. This game has unused sounds. This game has unused text. This game has revisional differences. This game has a development article This game has a prerelease article

Heroes of Might and Magic III: The Restoration of Erathia is a turn-based strategy game with RPG elements released for Microsoft Windows in 1999. Despite its age, it still has a cult following and a huge playerbase, especially in Slavic countries.

Sub-Pages

Development Info

Prerelease Info

Unused Graphics & Animations Watch out for shooting Centaurs!

Fear Spell

In the game's files, one can find a description for an unused 4th level spell, Fear:

It shares animation with Gorgons' Death Stare ability.

Strikes an enemy unit with such fear that it becomes unable to attack and nearly unable to move.
Cost: 16 mana points
Movement penalty: 25%

{Basic Fear}
Strikes an enemy unit with such fear that it becomes unable to attack and nearly unable to move.
Spell Point cost is half that of Normal Fear.

{Advanced Fear}
Strikes an enemy unit with such fear that it becomes unable to attack and nearly unable to move.
Penalty to movement is twice that of Basic Fear.

{Expert Fear}
Strikes an enemy unit with such fear that it becomes unable to attack and nearly unable to move.
Penalty to movement is three times that of Basic Fear. 

It's impossible to receive this spell by any means, although in unpatched versions of the game it could be randomly found in Pyramids. It's fully coded and works as intended. According to Greg Fulton, one of the devs:

"The Fear spell was ‘cut’ because it was little more than ‘bad morale’ in another form.  Later, I thought it was better to convert the mechanic into the Fear ability for the Azure Dragon."

The name would later be reused for an ability of the Azure Dragon creature added in the Armageddon's Blade expansion, though that version of the ability has a different animation and effect (it makes the enemy randomly skip their turn).

Badge of Courage gives an interesting bonus, that is not present in its description. According to Gus Smedstad:

The Badge of Courage has an interesting history;
originally it made you immune to the Fear spell. The Fear spell, as you
may know, got dropped as being unbalancing. The Badge of Courage then
got changed to "+1 Morale and immunity to all Mind spells". Berserk is
a mind spell. Unfortunately, the help text wasn't updated.

- Gus

Unused Sounds

Unused Creature Sounds

	War Unicorn's spellcasting sound
	Minotaur King's spellcasting sound
	Manticore's spellcasting sound
	Scorpicore's spellcasting sound
	Harpy Hag's spellcasting sound
	Dragon Fly spellcasting sound
	Alternative Evil Eye's and Beholder's death sound
	Efreet Sultan's spellcasting sound
	Devil's and Archdevil's moving sound
	Unused sound of Magog's Fireball
	Centaur's unused shooting sound (HoMM2 placeholder)
	Alternative Lich's melee attack sound (HoMM2 placeholder)
	Shooting turret sound from HoMM2

HoMM2 Spellcasting Sounds Leftovers

There are many sounds that were imported straight from the previous game, Heroes of Might and Magic II, only to be replaced with new sounds anyway. Perhaps they were used as placeholders during development?

	Armageddon sound
	Cold Ray sound
	Cold Ring sound
	Dragon Slayer sound
	Fireball sound
	Death Ripple sound
	Magic Arrow sound
	Mirror Image sound
	Elemental Storm sound
	Haste sound
	Unused also in HoMM2
	Leftover sound of an end of creature teleportation from HoMM1, also present in HoMM2 but unused

Unused "Bad Luck" Sound

In the unpatched versions of the game, there were a lot of references to negative luck, even though in the final release having negative luck does nothing. However, there is still a sound file related to negative luck.

Alternative Fire Shield Sound

Alternative	In-Game

Placeholder Sound

For whatever reason, the "Uh-oh!" notification sound from earlier versions of ICQ, an Internet chat client from 1996, can be found in the game's sound files. It plays when a sound event fired, but the requested sound file is missing.

Hidden Map Content

Myth and Legend

Although three players (red, blue and brown) can't be controlled by human by default, blue and brown have in their starting towns a few background events, pointing that there were plans to give these players a broader plot and make them playable.

These are blue player events as seen in map editor:

Day 1 - An Intro
You are Hera, the Queen of the Gods.  The only reason you decided to join in this little party was to keep your husband, Zeus under some relative control.  The little pervert loves the ladies, and this is just another excuse to go carousing.  Maybe you'll do a little of your own.

Day 1 - Heroes
You were able to easily recruit Hephaestus, your son and his friend, Prometheus.  Unlike Zeus you understand the meaning of fidelity and don't have gads of offspring running around Mt. Olympus.

Day 2 - Leda
Zeus is up to his old tricks again.  He turns himself into a swan so he can go visit some pretty peasant girl.  Enraged you decide to get him good.  Since he used the swan form you decide it's fitting that she lays eggs.  Giggling, you enjoy the look on his face when he figures it out.

Day 3 - The Eggs
You ensure that the rumor mill knows that Leda gave birth to eggs and it's probably Zeus's fault.  The entire circle is buzzing about the news.  How extremely strange, and what will Hera do?  You figure this could be good to get something out of the cheating Hubby of yours.

Day 5 - Hatched
Leda's eggs hatched.  Two boys and a girl.  You smile secretively and go visit the girl.  You place a special little curse on her and sneak off again.  She'll be nothing but trouble for the mortal society.  Eventually women will reject Zeus because it'll be too much trouble.

Day 6 - Trouble!
You storm over to Zeus's castle and publicly humiliate him.  He doesn't dare do anything because he fears that you'll do something nasty to the kids.  You carry on for a while until he bribes you with some crystal.  Since you have that castle to build you accept his bribe.

Day 8 - Theseus
It seems that Theseus is wandering about doing good stuff again.  You hate it when he does that.  He keeps mucking about in your plans to make some mortals life more interesting.  Today he spoiled a perfect plan for vengeance on that mouthy peasant in the village. 

Day 10 - Vengeance
Deciding that it would be better if he was more occupied with something else you send a horde of barbarians his way.  He spends the entire day fighting them off.  He does succeed, but won't be bothering you for a while.  His town got burned and he's going to spend his time and resources rebuilding.

Brown player events:

Day 1 - An Intro
Is it not obvious that you are Hades?  You are the God of the Underworld, and have a distinct advantage over the rest of the Gods.  You're better than they are.  Not to mention so distracted by the constant squabbling that occurs.  More than likely they'll quarrel while you look for the Cuirass.

Day 1 - Heroes
You take a quick stock your loyal followers.  First, there is Erebus, the God of Darkness.  He is always willing to have some fun.  And then there is Rhadamanthus, a judge within your realm.  Since you gave him the post he's willing to take time out of his busy schedule to search for you.

There is also an empty island with an empty event at 121:141:0.

Races

Executable provides information about race of every hero. This unused trait was ditched in AB where every Planeswalker and campaign hero have assigned a placeholder "human" race, only Gelu is described as "Elf" for some reason. The collection of races was:

Human Dwarf Elf Genie Efreet Demon Vampire Lich Troglodite Minotaur Goblin Ogre Gnoll Lizardman

Leftovers from Previous Games

Stat Modifiers Titles

"ArrayTxt.txt" that has the following morale and luck titles that were present in HoMM2, but for some reason can't be found in HoMM3:

Luck:

-3 = Cursed

-2 = Awful

-1 = Bad

0 = Normal

+1 = Good

+2 = Great

+3 = Irish

Morale:

-3 = Treason

-2 = Awful

-1 = Poor

0 = Normal

+1 = Good

+2 = Great

+3 = Blood!

Command Line Commands

Running the game with the "/nwcgrail" parameter enables debugging "cheat menu" if the game is run in windowed mode. It works for RoE as well as for both of the expansions.

In AB and SoD there is an option of giving a selected hero new, neutral creatures, however new artifacts weren't added to this menu.

For some reason an option "view enemy towns" doesn't work.

Revisional Differences

Debug Cheat Codes

RoE	AB	SoD	Effect
nwctrojanrabbit		nwcredpill	Win scenario, player receives a "Cheater!!!" title in the "High Scores" menu.
nwcsirrobin		nwcbluepill	Lose scenario.
nwcphisherprice		nwcphisherprice	Brightens colors. When typed second time does nothing, but works on 3rd, 5th, 7th time.
ping	ping	ping	Used in multiplayer to determine latency of other human players.
		nwcignoranceisbliss	Hide discovered world map under the shroud of darkness.
		gosolo	AI takes control of current player. Can be cancelled by pressing ESC during the brief popup at the end of each day.

"Matt Ferrari's" RoE 1.0 Private Build

According to Greg Fulton, Matt (or Nick according to Greg) Ferrari was a nick of 14 year old boy, who passed as a reviewer of a gaming magazine. Becuase he secretely leaked a few preview versions of the games to the internet before, game devs from the other studios became suspicious, and NWC was asked to sent to all of the reviewers copies of HoMM3 RoE signed with reviewers names. The boy eventually quickly released his copy and that's how he was found in a flash, but because he was a teenager, he suffered no real penalty for a piracy.

This build differs from vanilla release only in two points: first, .exe file is dated 18th of February instead of 16th and contains additional info:

PrivateBuild Matt Ferrari

and secondly, H3BITMAP.LOD file was also changed on 18th of February - inside it an "advevent.txt" file's unused lines were changed accordingly:

Matt Ferrari's build	Retail RoE 1.0
(line 89) Matt Ferrari	(line 89-91) "{Dragon Utopia} This text is no longer used. If you see it, it is a bug."

Dropped Features

Artifacts Events

In RoE 1.0 player could quite often run into one of four events randomly assigned to an artifacts with unedited properties:

Buy an Artifact from Leprechaun

• 

  The price of stronger artifacts could be also 2500 gold and 3 resources or 3000 gold and 5 resources.

• 

  Refusal.

• 

  You have not enough gold!

Defeat Guards

• 

  Encountering a random pack of guards.

• 
• 

Learn Right Skill

• 

  Learn Basic Leadership.

• 

  Learn Basic Wisdom.

Cerberi Atack

There is also one more completely unused event that could bring immediate attack of Cerberi; it's probably leftover from HoMM2, where there is risk of being attacked by Rogues when lifting artifact off. In RoE 1.0 there were no Rogues, thus it was dead and buried:

HoMM2	HoMM3
You come upon an ancient artifact. As you reach for it, a pack of Rogues leap out of the brush to guard their stolen loot.	You come upon an ancient artifact. As you reach for it, a pack of Cerberi leap out of the brush to attack, not willing to give up their treasure without a fight.

Gremlin Rush and Instant Army Tactics

In RoE 1.0 and 1.1 hireable heroes in Tavern always had full set of starting units, not only the first two available in the beginning of the week. Moreover retreating hero was returning to Tavern with new units and restored movement points. It lead to abuses, most notable example was when Tower player after spending not that big amount of money could hire 1-2 Wizards/Alchemists and after stacking and upgrading their Gremlins, send them to fight with only one unit. After retreating, they could be rehired with more Gremlins, easily letting the player to build armies of 300-400 Master Gremlins on the first day.

The second strategy allowed on middle stages of the game to hire a heroes, stack their troops in a castle, dismiss them and hire more of them in a never-ending loop, limited only by amount of possessed Gold. It was easy method to prevent weak and moderate enemy heroes from taking over castles.

These tactics were cut back in 1.2 patch thanks to these changes:

• only the first two heroes per week come with a full set of monsters, consecutives have only one unit
• retreating heroes don't restore their movement points and have only one unit after rehiring

Heroes

In RoE Queen Catherine's and General Kendall's portraits record numbers were respectively "128QC" and "129MK" - they were last two portraits in a map editor. However, in AB there were added Planeswalkers and Elementalists portraits with completely new system of running numbers right after Witches portraits, virtually jumping in place of mentioned Catherine's and Kendall's campaign portraits, causing a graphical glitch: when RoE maps with portraits of Catherine and Kendall are set off on AB expansion, these portraits are swapped with Pasis' and Thunar's portraits respectively (but in "choose scenario" menu they are displayed properly).

Queen Catherine Facelift

Queen Catherine's portrait underwent a slight lifting between RoE and AB:

AB	RoE

Bios:

AB	RoE
As the reigning queen of Erathia, Catherine continues to wage war to secure her homeland's borders and reestablished the peace built by her father. However, support for her position is faltering as the country grows weary of war.	Queen Catharine Ironfist of Enroth is the eldest and only surviving daughter of the late King Gryphonheart. She returned to Erathia upon learning of her father's death, discovering only then that the nation of her birth was being torn apart by its enemies.

Heroes of Might and Magic III: Armageddon's Blade

The first expansion to base HoMM3. It included six new campaigns, added a new alignment, Conflux (which was originally meant for Shadow of Death, but was added instead of the Forge alignment due to negative reactions towards it from fans), and introduced new creatures, artifacts, and map objects.

Unused Sounds

Unused Rogue Sounds

Two neutral creatures introduced in Armageddon's Blade use the same soundbanks as existing creatures: the Rogues sound like Gremlins, and Sharpshooters sound like Archers. Strangely, the Rogues do have their own soundbank in the files, but it goes unused. The Sharpshooters have nothing, however.

Unused Faerie Dragon spellcasting sound

The reason why it wasn't used is unknown.

Hidden Developers Credits

In "Hurry Up and Wait" scenario, the last scenario of hidden AB campaign, on the day 120 (day of fulfilment of victory conditions) player receives this timed event:

Day 120 - 120B Gilligan's Island Spoof

Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale,
a tale of a sci-fi trip,

that started in Agoura Hills,

aboard the New World ship.

Big Mike was a mighty tired dad,

and Ryan made us stuffed.

Five others worked upon the game

for five long months. (for five long months.)

Thunder Clap!!!!

The fans they started getting rough,

the Forge Town it was tossed,

if not for the courage of the design crew

the Expansion would be lost. (the Expansion would be lost)

The expansion got setup to ship

in August summer time,

with Ryan Den,

and Michael too,

the miser Dave,

and old Walt.

The designer, Greg,

Marcus and,

Jen's tough hand,

It's Armageddon's Blade!

Cast:

Professor..................................Greg Fulton

Mr. Howell................................David Botan

Mrs. Howell (a.k.a. Lovey)........Walter Johnson

Ginger.......................................Marcus Pregent

Mary Ann..................................Jennifer Bullard

Skipper.....................................Michael Wolf

Gilligan......................................Ryan Den

Placeholders

Creature Portrait Placeholder

Town Miniature for Adventure Map List Placeholders

Unused for AB	Unused and with broken palette for RoE

Heroes of Might and Magic III: The Shadow of Death

H3Shad.ifr file with some interesting prerelease names of combat spells.

"Slow" spell effect

The second, standalone expansion to HoMM3. It added seven new campaigns, new terrain types, and combination artifacts.

Force-Feedback Mouse Support (Sic!)

Finally, Shadow of Death includes force-feedback mouse support
for certain magic spell effects, a rather silly and wholly extraneous feature
that adds nothing at all to the game.

This feature is actually fully functional, but because the idea of force-feedback mouse was quickly dropped and no mouse other than 1999 Wingman Logitech support it, it can be safely considered unused. It was utilizing a specific vibrations for the most of the combat spells. As an example, Slow spell has an effect of slowly sliding into the water. All of the effects are stored in H3SHAD.IFR file.

(Source: void_17 (Discovery of force-feedback mouse support))

Unused Artifacts

There are three unused combination artifacts: Diplomat's Suit (worn as a cloak), Ironfist of the Ogre (worn in the right hand), and Mired in Neutrality (worn on the torso). They all have placeholder icons and overworld sprites, and a description of "This is a kick-ass artifact". Wearing them does nothing.

• 

  Placeholders for an adventure map

• 

  Placeholders for hero's equipment

• 

  Placeholders for campaign bonuses

Favorable Winds battlefield

Developers were planning to add a special sea battlefield for a favorable winds, just like it would be a new terrain. It uses Magical Plains graphic as a background.

Armageddon's Blade Features in The Shadow of Death

The Shadow of Death was meant to require installation of Armageddon's Blade to play the first expansion's content. It was discovered, however, that AB's new features are actually present in SoD files out of the box but are designed to remain hidden, and that they can be enabled by creating a few dummy files in the correct folders. In the game's main directory:

h3blade.exe

in DATA directory:

h3ab_bmp.lod
h3ab_spr.lod
h3ab_ahd.snd
h3ab_ahd.vid

Blocked slot

When playing the game with installed SoD, but with AB CD-ROM, the game can use features from SoD such like combining artifacts, but blocked slot icon appears as a placeholder:

Placeholder for AB	Icon used in SoD

Heroes Chronicles

Eight campaigns sold as eight standalone games with slightly different main menus and loading screens, and a new hero - Tarnum.

Hero Placeholder

Tarnum occurs in six variants: Barbarian, Knight, Beastmaster, Ranger, Wizard and Overlord. However, there is also a placeholder graphic, suggesting that there were plans for a seventh class.

Unused Cinematic

Similar scene can be seen in Warlords of the Wastelands intro, but the Ancients faces are very blurred there and scene is fading really quickly. Also a spaceship is a bit different. Exactly the same, but empty spaceship can be seen in the Fiery Moon cinematic.

Hidden Map Text

AI Events

For some reason events in towns and timed events that are meant to give bonuses only to AI players have warnings "DO NOT TRANSLATE", even if translating them does no effect and human player will never see it.

Map	Text	More info
WotW	Events titles only: 3. map: "Supplies 1-4" 5. map: "take resources", "take again", "Portal of Glory" 6. map: "give gold" 7. map: "behemoths"	Unlike the other campaigns, WotW AI events have no descriptions to save translators from temptaion of translating and are placed only in towns.
CotU 8. map	This is for the locked in computer player.	Town event at 8:5:1. In CotU pattern started to change, there are town events with a titles only (Cotu 1. map "Gold" event title), but in the last map started appearing short descriptions.
CotU 8. map	daily resources	Town event at 4:41:0 titled "resouces" (lacking the "r" letter)
TFM 3. map (timed event), MotE 2. map (adv. map events), CotD 7. map (adv map event 5:3:0), CotD 8. map: (timed event)	Computer Stuff - DO NOT TRANSLATE
MotE 7. map: "Birds of Fire"	This will give the computer money.	Event in a town titled "Give money to computer":
MotE 8. map: "Masters of the Elements"	DO NOT TRANSLATE - COMP STUFF	events in towns of red, teal and brown player, green player also has this event, but without text
The Sword of Frost 2. map: "The Land of the Vori"	Computer resources - DO NOT TRANSLATE	event in a town
SoF 7.map (timed event) and RotB 2. map (event in town)	For Computer - DO NOT TRANSLATE
CotD 4. map: "Dragons of Rust"	Stuff for enemy	Timed event titled "Stuff for enemy..."
CotD 5. map: "Distrust"	Resources for computer - NO NEED TO TRANSLATE	Adv map event at 44:69. The first map that aknowledges, that translating is not forbidden, but only unnecesary, even if anyone who is seriously envolved in translation could translate it in a blink of an eye.
CotD 5. map: "Distrust"	AMBUSH FOR COMPUTER - DO NOT TRANSLATE	Adv map event at 28:68
CotD 6. map: "Dragons of Gossamer Wings"	Computer supplies - DO NOT TRANSLATE	Adv. map event at 2:10:1
CotD 6. map: "Dragons of Gossamer Wings"	Resources for Computer - DO NOT TRANSLATE	Timed event titled "Comp stuff"
CotD 7. map: "Dragons of Deepest Blue"	Stuff for computer - DO NOT TRANSLATE	Timed event

Quest Guards Lines for AI player

Map	Text	More info
SoF 4. map: "A New Ally"	"Go away, you fool! We'll only let someone who flies the Teal flag through!"	For some reason a generic message from upper left corner quest guard to AI player, telling that he cannot pass, because he is not an orange player, was modified (probably an author didn't realize that noone will read it). It can't be read by a player, beacuse he can play only as a teal player.
RotB 5. map: "The Ransom"	Only one of Tarnum's armies can pass.	The quest guard in underworld has the message for the player, who doesn't fulfil requirement of being an orange player - it obviously can't be read under normal circumstances, because the orange player is the only playable player on the map.
CotD 4. map: "Dragons of Rust"	The guards here will only let those who fly the Green flag pass.	The message from a quest guard, that actually could be read only by an AI player.