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Apologies if this has been asked and answered already - I'm new here (although a long-time veteran of the Microprose version in general, I bought it + SoTA when they were new, still have them).

I have recently finished my first Manalink 3.0 Sealed tournament. I asked for 4th (or was it 5th?) edition + boosters from The Dark and Legends - got lots of various modern cards instead (or in addition). It was the craziest Sealed deck tournament I've ever seen!

I understand that I have to click World -> Magic Limited to play Sealed in a sensible way. I did that. Sealed Deck makes a lot more sense now.

Too much in fact.
I liked the crazy Sealed Deck tournament I first had...and I can't seem to switch back to the original setting anymore! It was actually fun to play with those surprising modern cards!

Which leads to my questions...

1) Quite simply, after having switched Limited, how do unswitch? (I.e., switch the behavior back to what it was like before clicking World -> Magic Limited?)

2) How do I use Magic Custom? Is there any way to select which sets I have in play? Are there any premade Custom sets that will work with Manalink 3.0?

Is there any documentation somewhere that would explain this? Any help greatly appreciated!

Well, I cannot talk in detail about Sealed mode because I don't often use it but...to resume Manalink history the game was originally limited to 2000 cards so when the devs reached this cap they created the Limited and Custom mode (Limited was a selection of the "best" coded cards and Custom was supposed to hold any cards within the limit depending on player taste). This is the Manalink 2.0 step.

Once this limit was broken in Manalink 3.0, the devs decided to merge all mode together since you could add any number of cards.
Unfortunately, the sealed mode got broken and is still in development.

The switch mode to limited or Custom is still present but you were not supposed to use them in Manalink 3.0 since it will use a copy of Magic.exe that is older than the current Magic.exe (though it's strange you could use Limited mode since CirothUngol version is supposed to be a clean version of ML without all unused files).

To be simple, you might have broke the game and need to install again the file replaced by the switch.

There is a wiki for Manalink 2.0 and Manalink 3.0 but they are missing quite a few things, skimming through this forum would be more efficient to grasp the whole game development but it's quite a long task...

I've posted what little I know about this over here.

stassy wrote:...though it's strange you could use Limited mode since CirothUngol version is supposed to be a clean version of ML without all unused files.

Yup! In fact, clicking the Limited and Custom buttons should do nothing 'cause the files MagicLimited.exe and MagicCustom.exe have been removed. If you play Sealed Deck with Unlimited it should still be correct because those CardIDs haven't changed. I would think that 4th Edition would mostly work as well.

RumbleBBU wrote:How do I use Magic Custom? Is there any way to select which sets I have in play? Are there any premade Custom sets that will work with Manalink 3.0? Is there any documentation somewhere that would explain this?

You can't, it's a hold-over from Manalink 2.0
Nope.
Nope.
Nope.
...I hate to sound so negative, but them's the facts. Again, please see my previous response about the current GUI.

Right now, Manalink is in a state of great flux, currently only Duel and Gauntlet are officially "working", and there's still a great deal that needs to be updated (GUI, Wiki, "How To"s, ReadMe, etc.)...

Thank you very much for your all replies - they clarify the matter a lot!

So it seems that the first time I played, I just happened to pick sets that happened to have lots of incorrect cards. The second time, I happened to pick Unlimited, Arabian and Legends, and got more or less the kinds of cards I expected. I (incorrectly) believed that was because I had clicked "Magic Limited" in between. But the real reason was, after all, that some sets simply had more incorrect cards than the others. Makes sense.

So, based on my observations, I would say that at least Legends, Arabian Nights and Unlimited have mostly correct cards. And possibly The Dark too. But 4th Ed and Chronicles seem to give you totally crazy cards, while Antiquities and Revised give you some correct cards and some surprising cards.

Dunno...that ain't too bad once you are aware of it. At least it doesn't IMO make Sealed totally unplayable. It just makes the Sealed mode a bit more surprising. For me, personally, this is actually great.

But as for future versions, once they are developed, it would be even greater if I could choose which real sets I get in Sealed deck mode. That would, in fact, be my #1 wish for future development.