Loose ends, comments, and so on!

A few loose ends from Savage Empire--I spent a little time wandering around places I had never visited, but without much to show for it onight. I then perused a walkthrough, and found that I missed a huge number of characters--most notably the Dupre clone Dokray, who is supposed to be wandering around the Jukaritribe , but I never found him in the game, even tonight when I went a-huntin'. The same applies to a handful of other unique characters in villages--the game trained me in the first two or three places I went that most of the NPC's are cardboard clones, and so I quit investigating them--I just looked for the one with different clothes, who was probably a chief or a shaman.

The other big thing I missed was the "secret area" near where Fritz' cave is (for the record, I did find Fritz earlier-- was directed to him by the Pindiro). You had to knock down a tree, and supposedly Segallion lives there--but again, I never found him, even tonight when I went specifically looking :-/ I was somewhat discouraged from exploring by the mass of Myrmidex hanging around that area, though.

Is this the first instance of significant plot-unrelated stuff in an Ultima game? There are a few similar quests in Ultima VI, I think, and there were some odd locations in Ultima V, but most of those were told to you. In this case, Segallion and other characters would need to be found simply through random exploring--Ultima VII and the Underworlds are full of these sorts of things, and it raises my opinion of Savage Empire! I think I'll have to be more thorough in my Martian Dreams exploring ;-)

I got lots of recommendations to talk to my party members, which I did, but they never told me much without prompting unrelated to the difficulty--Rafkin tells me how to make stuff, but he doesn't do so in response to queries about the specific quest.

Going back in time, someone mentioned that the fear spell in Ultima V reduces enemy hit points--I noticed this was also true for invisibility. When I put a ring on, I could kill every monster in only one hit.

By the way--where the heck was the hidden magic axe in Utlima V? I thought there was one hidden in a tree somewhere, but I thought I searched every tree in the game!

Back to Savage Empire--Yes, had I read the SE manual more closely I would have probably asked about bombs, since it's mentioned in a letter (I mostly read the magic and tribes sections and not so much of the rest). I still think it's weird that a bomb that barely hurts me when it blows up in my backpack can move a huge boulder, though...