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

Sunday, March 25, 2007

Ultima V, Day 6

Well, most of today was spent exploring Deceit solo. I got to level 8, but I was prevented from entering the underworld by some hard-core absurdity: A room with a big wall between me and the ladder down. What!? How am I supposed to get past that!? I attacked all the walls and torches and floor tiles to no avail :-( The only possibility I can think of is that I have to wait for a daemon to appear on the other side of the wall and attack something on that end...But that seems pretty nutty. It stinks to be this close and then have to turn back.

On the plus side, exploring solo is far easier. I used my invisibility ring to avoid monsters, and by some impressive luck I managed to dig up a magic axe behind some skull-key locked doors somewhere on level 5, I think. And good grief, is the magic axe ever a powerful weapon! Everything dies fast with that thing. And as far as the invisibility rings go, well, I found a room that doesn't reset when I clear it. Or rather, it doesn't reset because I never clear it--it features wisps and rats. The wisps do not attack be because I wear Lord British's crown and they cannot appear from being invisible. I kill the rats, get the ring and gold, and then leave. Then I return and get the ring again! In this manner I can collect practically infinite invisibility rings :-)

At the present time I am trying to get the hell out of Deceit, but it's very hard. I can get up to level 1, but nowhere else. Thinking back down to level 8, I believe the best bet is to climb up the really long pit that I fell down...I have made maps on graph paper, but the way that gems work in this game makes that process too darned tedious--ladders don't seem to match up very well between floors, etc.




The reason I wish to leave is to go to the reagent store and buy some blood moss so that I can cast Blink in that weird lower room that I can't seem to get through. I'm not totally sure it will work (Can you use blink in combat...?), but I think it's worth a try. If it doesn't, then I am truly stuck in a rut.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

For what it's worth, the ladders and pits in dungeon levels do match up if you draw the maps right.
There are two ways through that room in Deceit - one is to read your spellbook and use a particular spell from the corridor outside, and the other is to Get things out of the way before Pushing on the walls.

Ultimate Carl said...

Wow, that sucks. That room does make a cool little symbol, though!