14 DAY TRIAL // Ubisoft launched Shades of Darkness, the next installment in the Heroes of Might & Magic franchise, yesterday, along with Might & Magic Heroes VI: Complete Edition collection.
Unfortunately, those who have purchased the so-called standalone expansion Shades of Darkness have been unable to play the game until earlier today. Moreover, lots of players report that their game now doesn’t have music or dialog sound.
The issue seems to affect customers who have purchased Shades of Darkness via Steam, but some that got the game directly from uPlay or third-party retailers have experienced similar issues.
First of all, Ubisoft thought it would be wise to release a huge patch for the original Might & Magic Heroes VI game at the same time with Shades of Darkness.
At first glance, this shouldn’t have mattered as Shades of Darkness has been advertised as a “standalone expansion,” so it shouldn’t require players to purchase the original Might & Magic Heroes VI game.
Anyway, Ubisoft has confirmed that it won’t be able to offer an autopatch method for this particular update due to its size. By the way, patch 2.1 has no less than 2.3GB and addresses a lot of issues, but the most important is the fix for the Nvidia crash when entering Town Screen.
This problem should not affect those who have purchased Shades of Darkness via Steam, so if you already have the original Might & Magic Heroes VI, you’ll be receiving patch 2.1 automatically.
Otherwise, you will have to manually download it via Ubisoft’s servers. You can find both mirrors (retail and digital versions) here.
Make sure you have Might & Magic Heroes VI installed on your PC and that it’s already up to date, meaning you run version 1.8. Download patch 2.1 from the links we have provided earlier and run the .exe file to update the original Might & Magic Heroes VI game.You may be wondering why I’m talking about the original Might & Magic Heroes VI when this tutorial is about Shades of Darkness. Well, it’s pretty simple, the patch seems to contain the so-called “standalone expansion” as well.
If you have previously purchased Shades of Darkness through other channels than Steam, then here is what you need to do in order to activate the expansion.
Open the original Might & Magic Heroes VI game after patch 2.1 is successfully applied. In the Main menu choose Unlock content and from the next window that opens up select Shades of Darkness.
A small field where you can insert your Shades of Darkness game key will appear, so make sure you already have received it before attempting to unlock the expansion.
Once Shades of Darkness is unlocked, you’ll be able to choose to play a new campaign featuring a new race, Dark Elves. Simply go to Main menu and choose Campaign. Just select the second campaign from the right to start playing Shades of Darkness.
Until now, I have not experienced any issues with sound after applying patch 2.1 and unlocking Shades of Darkness. I have also tested the original game after the update and have not found any issues, but there might be bugs after a longer run.The bad news is that once you apply patch 2.1, you won’t be able to play some Skirmish and Scenario maps. They are grayed out now, so you cannot select them.
Sadly, I’m not sure how you can redeem your Shades of Darkness key if you don’t have the original Might & Magic Heroes VI game installed on your PC.
According to Ubisoft, “if you don’t have Heroes 6 game installed on your PC: please connect to Uplay or Steam (depending on the chosen store) and redeem your key.”
Steam allows you to redeem your key easily, but Uplay does not have this feature, so the only way seems to be within the original Might & Magic Heroes VI game. Stay tuned for more updates on the matter.
