Ultima V, Day 5

I have played a few more hours this week, but I have to confess, Ultima V does not inspire me to do lots of playing the way Ultima IV and III did, even though V is superior in many ways. I think it's because progress is *so* slow in Ultima V, in terms of levelling up and combat and so on. It's also a bit unclear what I'm supposed to be doing at this point. I have visited all the towns, and I extracted clues from pretty much everybody. However, my single, brief sojourn into dungeon Deceit was a complete failure. I went down one ladder, entered a room, and got killed by four daemons extremely quickly. Geez. My karma is very low, since I discovered too late that picking crops was immoral, and British does not seem keen on raising my levels. Even when he does, I only gain like 30 HP each time anyway. I have finished all the shrine quests, and the shrines now make me angry by demanding PAYMENT for improved stats. Come on, that is so lame. As a result I have a lot of trouble killing monsters, especially sea monsters.

Maybe the best idea for this blog is to lay out everything I know, and see if I can decide how to piece it all together.

First of all, the Shadowlords--I know their names, Fauleini, Astaroth, and Nosferatu or something like that (I am too lazy to pull up my notes, lol). I know in order to defeat them, I will need some shards--though I have no idea how to use them--and I know the shards are located in the Underworld. I've been given directions to reach them.

Second, I have been told to get the assorted crown jewels--the crown, sceptre, and amulet. The crown I have acquired already, and the sceptre I know is in the castle with the Shadowlords, but I can't seem to quite get there. I think I have to wait for them to leave or something--they attack towns at night, but they seem to be in Shadowgate as well. Frustrating. You know, it's not called Shadowgate is it? Shadowguard was Minax's castle, and Shadowgate is a Nintendo game. Well, no one mentioned the name of the place or even where it is located. I remembered the vague location from later games and used a gem to find it. Stonegate? Maybe that is it. The Amulet is with some graves in the Underworld.

Third, I've been told to fetch a few other items. One is the sextant, which is supposedly held by a pirate who runs a lighthouse, but I have not found him. I do know a particularly mean lighthouse owner near Moonglow, but he does not seem to give a crap about sextants. There are also other tiems I have vague memories of from walkthroughs I read many years ago--black badge, spyglass--but no one's even mentioned those (except how to us the telescope).

So the bottom line is that I'm in a bit of a rut. I think my underworld strategy is going to be to ditch my party members, get down the dungeons, use the invisibility rings to survive, fetch the shards ASAP, and then use a moonstone to escape through a moongate.

It occurs to me that it was the Resistance that tasked me with finding the damned crown, and now that I have, maybe they will give me something new to do...

For the curious, the screenshots are petty random--Dungeon Deceit, bats outside Stonegate, a demon in Stonegate, and earlier, me about to buy food because I am freaking starving. Food is expensive! Also, since combat is long and boring, and fleeing doesn't hurt your karma, I am awfully tempted to ditch my part and go solo.

Finally, in 20 minutes of playng after I wrote my original blog for today, I bumped into the mage Sutek on a wacky swamp island, and he told me exactly how to use the shards to kill the Shadowlords. Woo hoo! However, the guy who tasked me with fetching the crown doesn't seem to care that i retrieved it.