Ophidian Dragon blogs his way through the entire Ultima series, from beginning to end.

Wednesday, March 28, 2007

Comments

Well, now I think I will respond to a handful of comments I have received. it's easier to do them all here rather than with each post! I'm glad I appear to be encouraging some of my readers to play the games again themselves.

On Ultima IV--Someone says the ship's wheel works any time, but my experience was just "No effect" when I used it (on ship, obviously) save for the final battle before the Abyss. And yes, Yelling is needed to get horses to move quickly--very silly, in my opinion. It took forever for me to realize the same was true for boats in Ultima V!

On Ultima V--Paulon gave some useful hints, and noted that my location for Bordermarch was wrong--it is west of Spiritwood, although pretty far west. It's another, less friendly castle that is south of the Isle of the Avatar. Additionally, he clued me in that I can take the torches in dungeons, which is useful knowledge. Amusingly, the game says "BORROWED!" when I do so. Voyager mentions meeting Captain Johne and feeling the need to add him to his party, but I already ditched Iolo, Shamino and Dupre, and as far as I am concerned party members cost far more than they provide--a full party requires 6x the food, 6x the cure spells, 6x the heals, 6x the invisibility rings, etc.

Finally, I had a challenge to complete Ultima VI whith only killing three things. I'm surprised you have to kill three, actually. However, I am not likely to try, at least until I get through it again once.

Thanks for the feedback!

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I could have it wrong with three, as I am recalling from memory. The only actual creature you have to kill, that I recall, is the Hydra guarding the one dungeon -- pretty much every other encounter can be avoided.

That said, it's usually the case that you will end up killing one of the Gargoyles at the beginning of the game, and...something or someone else. Maybe.

All I remember for certain is that I pretty much went through the whole game without a weapon in hand, which was staggeringly difficult because it relies instead on copious amounts of invisibility rings and invisibility spell reagents.

Mind you, if you know the game pretty well, it's possible to pass Ultima 6 almost completely backwards. Something seems to break -- slightly, not in a plot-stopping way -- with the Gargoyles if you visit them too early, though.

Anonymous said...

It's actually funny, I'd been planning todo the same thing (minus the blog) during the holidays but World of Warcraft has kept me busy till I recently got bored with it.

Currently I've just started Akalabeth and I'm on my first quest.

It's great to see others who appreciate this series so well.

Ultimate Carl said...

I like minimal kill challenges. Besides, he's the Avatar, right? He's supposed to embody virtue? How virtuous is a mass murderer?

Leprechaun Sniffer, Esquire. said...

I realized that the Mystic Weapon and armor were never further explained to you: the information on it is available in Cove from a wounder fighter who only is awake for an hour during nightfall.