Dark Messiah of Might and Magic Troubleshooting

Static sound

First off, quit the game, go to your Steam games and right-click on Dark Messiah of Might and Magic. Select Properties -> Local Files -> Verify Integrity of Game Cache. This will effectively check the game for incomplete or corrupt files and will take a while, up to one hour, depending on your internet connection. The game will download any missing files and fix the rest. Note that several other issues can be solved by verifying game integrity.


Broken Ladder

Go to advanced keyboard options and check the only dialogue box there. Press the ~ button and a console should appear. Type sv_cheats 1. Type noclip. Simply fly to the top of the ladder and turn the fly mode off by typing noclip again in the console.


Cinematic issues

You need to create a shortcut for the Dark Messiah of Might and Magic executable file which runs the game if you don't already have one. Right click the game shortcut (by default placed on your desktop) and go to the shortcut tab. Type -dxlevel 90c at the end of the Target Box text, which should now read similar to "C:Documents and SettingsOwnerApplication DataUbisoftDark Messiah of Might and Magicmm.exe" -dxlevel 90c. Hit apply, then ok, and run the game.
Alternatively, you can use RegEdit, if your problem hasn't been solved yet. Go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/Valve/Steam and modify the language key to "English". This is a workaround for those who get the crash after the videos are played.


GeForce 6800GT issues

There is a documented issue with the GeForce 6800GT video cards. Eventually, the game will crash and you won't be able to pass certain points in the game. What you need to do is lower the texture level to Medium, even if the game recommended better for your system. Apparently, the 84.21 (84.xx) Nvidia drivers seem to solve the problem, dealing with the memory leaks or fps slowdown, so be sure to install these too.


Stuttering problem

The game has its video textures mostly preloaded, hence using 600 MB of video memory is currently way more than even the newest video cards can support. This results in RAM usage and hard drive swapping for video memory. Anyone who would like to try to get it to reasonable levels can check usage by loading chapter one, opening the console and typing "memory" without the quotes. It will list all the video memory usage and the heap size usage. The Windows Page File is set by default to a value of 1.5 times the amount of RAM in your PC. You'll need to increase the page file as much as possible, up to 8 GB. It is highly irregular, but it will keep your game working a lot longer. Reboot and defrag once you set your new paging file size.


Steam installation issues

It sometime happens that you get an error while the loading bar gets to 75%, stating there is a problem with the mm.exe file. The program then terminates execution. Go to System Properties -> Advanced Tab -> Performance -> Settings -> Data Execution Prevention -> Select Turn on DEP for All programs. Click the Add button and browse to your Dark Messiah of Might and Magic directory and select MM.exe.


Multiplayer random freezes

Some of you may be experiencing multiplayer loading freeze randomly. First off, reduce the video settings to minimize loading times. Defragment your DM MP Steam cache by right-clicking on DMMP in the steam browser, then Properties, then Local Files. Navigate to Program FilesSteamSteamApps[SteamUserName]Dark messiah might and magic multiplayercfg. Create a file called autoexec.cfg, a text file that can be edited with notepad, but with its name changed from .txt to .cfg. Type into cl_timeout 500, since the command will be executed each time you run the game. If you can't see the file extensions, you may need to go to Tools -> Folder Options -> View -> and then uncheck the box that says "hide extensions for known file types".