This post is both a warning and a spoiler. So be wary. If you don't want to be spoiled, stop reading here... but if you don't mind a little spoiler, I might be able to help you avoid a trap I fell into while playing M&M3.

I think I found an issue where the game expects you to go through the tunnels in Blistering Hights before going through the dungeon under Castle Whiteshield. When I went through the castle dungeon, I gave the resistance elixir to my paladin. It boosted all of his resistances. Afterwards, when I went through the tunnels under Blistering Heights, I touched the stones that would boost the resistance for the entire party... which worked for everyone EXCEPT my paladin. The only thing I can figure is that it didn't like that he had the resistance boosts from the Whiteshield dungeon. So... my advice... get the resistance boosts from the Blistering Heights tunnels BEFORE you do the Whiteshield dungeon.

There's many boosts in these games that will only work if the stat in question is under a certain number.

In MM5, for example, late game there's an event that gives +50 to all stats that are under 50, but also ages the character 50 years. From a game design perspective, I see this as giving players who have poorly managed their stats a chance, but if you treat it from a min max perspective, it means going through basically the entire game at low stats. (You can't access this particular location early.)

(You may have noticed that there's lots of fountains that boost stats temporarily only if they aren't already boosted, or boost HP or SP only if they're not above max; similar rules apply. Getting a small temp bonus can prevent you from getting a bigger temp bonus before the small one wears off. Also, if you ever decide to play Swords of Xeen, be aware that some boosts, whether temporary or permanent, may have bugs.)

That makes sense. I didn't think of it that way. I assumed it was a bug. The truth is, I played M&M 4 and 5 way back in the day and probably never noticed it. I played M&M4: CoX before M&M5: DoX was out. I was either finishing high school or just starting college at the time. It was my first M&M game and I LOVED it. I had already finished M&M4 before M&M5 was available. So I combined it with my existing game and started playing on the other side of the world. So I either just never noticed it, or just can't remember after so much time had passed.

I'm finally getting around to playing M&M3: IoT now. I've had it in my GOG library for a while and have been intending to play it.