As someone who have no experience with later MM games I wanted to start with World of Xeen which looks like a first MaM game acceptable.forplayers familier with second half of 90s RPGs, but not earlier.

I prepared well, read whole manual, but sadly manual is missing some very basic informations i need to know. At this moment im still unable to play.

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The most important thing, is inventory management really so horrible? It looks unfriendly even for 90s standards.

After hour in game i still have no clue how on earth get damned items stolen by my thief give to another member of team. So, my Knight can still equipe only his basic sword and most of weapons is hold by my thief which of course cant use them. I found exchange function which only swith position of my heroes i have no idea what is good for, another mystery) and complete discard of item which is not what i need now.

How get ANY kind information about basic items of yours like armor, weapons, rings? How can i know what is better weapon / armor? I have no idea how to check stats of items and how to check if they do something extra (like rings). Or is this another lame try and guess what that thing doing system just like was in few other old dungeons?

Theres similar problem with spells,I found no description at all, but i can at least check spell description in manual, but i cant do the same with weapons and other equipement like armor / jewels / rings. Is there any hidden ingame info or we have to guess which sucks badly?

I saw well in starting town which lead me to question. Do we need dring? Or all we need are food packages for sleeping? And if not what is water drinking good for?

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Combat
number positions of your heroes - is that important? should i put sorcerers back etc just like in for example Wizardry 8? I found no extra info in manual.

Block. Is there some hidden mechanic behind block or is this only another button which making your guy's defence rise for one round just like in other games?

Am I missing something or are fights really so primitive, just about pressing S and A and C and sometimes healing? No another tactical options like changing of heroes positions? I dont know whys this series such legend bombat is only about this.

Are arrows oddly magicaly unlimiter thingy? I found none in my bag, but my bow is keep shooting something.

I believe that, to trade an item, you just press the number (or is it letter? i forgot) of the item and then the function key (F1-F6) of the character you want to trade it to, in, I believe, either order.

To get basic information about items, I believe you can go into a shop and have them identified. (I recommend saving first, so that you can then reload and avoid the passing of a day that happens every time you shop. That is, unless you intentionally want to pass a day. (Shops restock at the start of every 10-day week.)

I seem to remember a way to check spell descriptions in-game. One thing that's missing is the aging effects of certain spells, like Raise Dead, Resurrection (also lowers target's Endurance by 1 permanently), and Divine Intervention (ages caster 5 years, though there's a couple ways to fix magical aging).

Number positions of heroes don't really matter. Some enemies specifically target certain races or classes, but otherwise enemy targeting is random. In particular, there's no way for high HP characters to protect low HP characters. (This is unlike the first 2 games, where lower-numbered characters are more likely to be in melee range when combat starts.)

Fights really are primitive in these games, but luckily they're also fast. If you want a more in-depth combat system, try one of the first two games.

Arrows aren't a think in this game; there are none, and bows don't require them. (I actually prefer it this way; it means less inventory management than in games that track them.) On the other hand, arrows don't scale well (I believe you don't get extra attacks with them as you level up), so on the Darkside, they're not as useful.

Finally, let me mention a standard piece of advice: If you want to enjoy Clouds of Xeen at the intended difficulty, don't use any pyramids until you defeat Lord Xeen. The pyramids will take you to the Darkside, and early game the Darkside gives you XP rewards that will break the difficulty of Clouds. (When MM4 was originally released, the pyramids would not work at all; the game would say something about things not being aligned. It's not until MM5's release (and installation on the same machine) that you could use the pyramids to go to the other game, but MM5 was also playable standalone, so the large XP rewards were an attempt to balance that.)

dtgreene is correct.

There was a "quick reference" card included with the Xeen games that had a snippet about moving items between characters. GOG has this as a download under "extras."

If you don't want to use a shop to identify items/weapons, you can look them up in the Cluebook (also available as a download).

The positions of the characters don't matter for combat, but I can think of one specific thing that does requires a certain character class to be in spot 1..... I don't think this is explained anywhere in-game....