This page is for the original game. For the 2015 remake, see Heroes of Might and Magic III HD.
General information
- GOG.com Community Discussions for game series
- GOG.com Support Page
- HoMM III section on Age of Heroes
- Celestial Heavens forums for game series
Availability
- SafeDisc retail DRM does not work on Windows Vista and later (see above for affected versions).
- A free demo version of Restoration of Erathia is available from GameFront: English, German.
- A free demo version of the Complete Edition for Mac OS is available from Archive.org.
Mac OS and Linux
The Mac OS and Linux versions of the game are no longer sold, and existing copies of those are hard to run on modern systems. The easiest solution for running the game on Linux or OS X is buying the Windows version and running it under Wine. Further information on how to do that can be found on AppDB. Alternatively, VCMI can be used to run the game.
Monetization
Type |
Notes |
Expansion pack
| The expansion packs include a new town, new units, campaigns, maps, and artifacts. |
One-time game purchase
| The game requires an upfront purchase to access. |
DLC and expansion packs
Name |
Notes |
|
Armageddon's Blade |
On Mac OS only available in Complete Edition. |
|
The Shadow of Death |
On Mac OS only available in Complete Edition. Stand-alone release, but Conflux town is only available if Armageddon's Blade is found installed, or as part of the Complete Edition. |
|
Essential improvements
Official patches
- All official patches include balance changes and bug fixes on par with each other.
- The latest official version of Restoration of Erathia is 1.4, with mirrors available here.
- The latest official version of Armageddon's Blade is 2.2, with mirrors available here.
- The latest official version of The Shadow of Death is 3.2, with mirrors available here. This version is compatible online with the Complete Edition (v4.0), the HD mod, and other modifications.
- Unfortunately, the Polish version still uses patch 3.2, instead of 3.3 or 4.0, but there is unofficial patch, that updates it to the newest version.
Skip intro videos
- Requires Shadow of Death patched to v3.2 or the Complete Edition.
- Allows higher resolutions along with 32-bit color support, multiple renderers and upscaling methods, bug fixes, new multiplayer lobby, and other features.
- Bypasses compatibility issues faced by the unmodified game version.
- Includes Verok's GL Wrapper (archive) as one of the renderer options.
- Compatible with several mods, most notably Horn of the Abyss for which it has a special multiplayer lobby and shares some developers.
Game data
Configuration file(s) location
- It's unknown whether this game follows the XDG Base Directory Specification on Linux. Please fill in this information.
Save game data location
Video
Input
Audio
Audio feature |
State |
Notes |
Separate volume controls |
|
Music, Effects |
Surround sound |
|
|
Subtitles |
|
Cutscenes only. |
Closed captions |
|
|
Mute on focus lost |
|
|
Royalty free audio |
|
|
Localizations
Language |
UI |
Audio |
Sub |
Notes |
English |
|
|
|
|
Czech |
|
|
|
Retail only. |
French |
|
|
|
|
German |
|
|
|
Retail only. Armageddon's Blade wasn't localized. |
Polish |
|
|
|
Retail and GOG.com only. Download for other releases here. |
Russian |
|
|
|
Retail and GOG.com only. Official localization by Buka Entertainment. |
Spanish |
|
|
|
Fan translation; download. |
Network
- Unmodified, the game requires DirectPlay to be enabled for multiplayer to work. The HD mod bypasses this requirement.
Multiplayer types
Connection types
Issues fixed
Game crashes unexpectedly after some time
- This is caused by a bug in the game, experienced only on multi-core or hyper-threaded processors. Newer GOG.com versions do not have this issue.
Modify exe files[4]
|
- Download ImageCFG.
- Go into the installation folder and execute:
- imagecfg -u Heroes3.exe
- imagecfg -u Heroes3.icd
- imagecfg -a 0x1 Heroes3.exe
- imagecfg -a 0x1 Heroes3.icd
Notes
- Another means of fixing sound can be found here.
|
Turn off in-game music[citation needed]
|
Set CPU affinity[4]
|
- Open the task manager.
- Set the CPU affinity for the game process to one processor.
Notes
- This needs to be repeated every time when running the game.
|
Other information
API
Technical specs |
Supported |
Notes |
DirectDraw |
5 |
|
OpenGL |
v1, v2 or v3 |
User selectable only in the HD mod |
Executable | PPC | 16-bit |
32-bit |
64-bit | ARM |
Notes |
Windows | | |
|
| |
|
Linux | | | |
| |
64-bit and ARM require VCMI |
Mac OS (Classic) | | | |
|
|
|
Middleware
Mods
- In the Wake of Gods - an unofficial expansion pack adding new units, mechanics, resources and easier modding possibilities.
- Horn of the Abyss - popular unofficial expansion pack adding the Cove town, new neutral units, resources, campaign missions and map objects. Use this patch for compatibility with Polish version.
- VCMI - an attempt at rewriting the whole engine to make it customizable, portable and fully cross-platform.
System requirements
Windows | Mac OS (Classic) | Linux |
Windows |
|
Minimum |
Operating system (OS) |
95 |
Processor (CPU) |
Intel Pentium 133 MHz |
System memory (RAM) |
32 MB |
Hard disk drive (HDD) |
425 MB |
Video card (GPU) |
DirectX 7.0a compatible |
Mac OS |
|
Minimum |
Operating system (OS) |
8.1 |
Processor (CPU) |
PowerPC 603e 180 MHz |
System memory (RAM) |
64 MB |
Hard disk drive (HDD) |
425 MB |
Linux |
|
Minimum |
Operating system (OS) |
Kernel 2.2.x |
Processor (CPU) |
Intel Pentium |
System memory (RAM) |
32 MB |
Hard disk drive (HDD) |
425 MB |
Sound (audio device) |
OSS Compatible |
Notes
- ↑ SafeDisc retail DRM does not work on Windows 10[1] or Windows 11 and is disabled by default on Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 8.1 when the KB3086255 update is installed.[2]
- ↑ Applications writing to
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE
will be redirected to other locations based on various criterias, see the glossary page for more details.
- ↑ When running this game without elevated privileges (Run as administrator option), write operations against a location below
%PROGRAMFILES%
, %PROGRAMDATA%
, or %WINDIR%
might be redirected to %LOCALAPPDATA%\VirtualStore
on Windows Vista and later (more details).
References