Using Fedora 18 x64 and KDE (unless I'm in multi-user mode, of course).
Could not find a similar thread less than 5 years old so here goes. In a console mode only - multi-user or run level 3 - when I run midnight commader with "mc" I get garbled fonts. Some examples of how the garbled fonts look.

ÇâöÇâöÇ 6040M/13G (46%) âöÇâöÿâööâöÇâöÇâöÇâöÇâöÇâöÇâöÇâöÇâöÇâöÇâöÇâöÇâöÇâöÇâöÇâöÇâöÇâ

Oddly if I use ctl-alt-F3 or similar "F" key to go into console mode from the GUI (KDE) and start mc it behaves. I think it's a console font issue, and if that sounds reasonable would someone please be so kind as to inform me what package(s) I need to install for this? Thanks ahead of time.
UPDATE: Running
fixes it. From the manual the "-a" switch is used to "Disable usage of graphic characters for line drawing." ??

MC by default uses unicode glyphs for drawing lines and other UI elements.

Your terminal lacks proper unicode support or your system is misconfigured in that aspect.

works because instead of unicode it uses other simpler glyphs for rendering.

You should search in your distro's documentation about how to set the locale to a UTF-8 one, so that the font will display correctly.

1 members found this post helpful.

@ Drakevr: Thank you, I will check into that.

Okay for Fedora 18 what I did to fix these problems was run
Then decided to change console font
which I'll try for a while. Good to know multi-user mode is still usable after all. I should mention here elinks text web browser was exhibiting some of the same behaviour, which this also fixed.