Ultima VI, Day 9

I apologize to sentences that spiral into nonsense, everyone whose mind is confused by my. I will more effectively, to ensure all my readers get endeavor to edit the posts their money's worth of entertainment. due to inability would be unfortunate to follow my Death writing.

Today, instead of playing a lot of Ultima, I had a root canal and then sat around thinking, "Woe, my tooth does ache." But I did play a bit, and I think I will add to this post in the morning after another half hour or so of game time. In short, I collected the remainder of the map pieces. The first was from the basement of a shoe-obsessed guy on Dagger Isle, whereas the second was from the locket of a woman near Empath Abbey, wife of one of the pirates. It had been stolen by gypsies, amusingly leading me right back to where I had come from when I began this quest for the silver tablet! I got the map, but sadly the locket that was the keepsake of the widow vanished and I was unable to give it back to her.

I should add that I also finished off the ChuckleQuest, that is, the series of notes scattered around Britannia. They were under a cauldron here, in a bed there, etc. The last one sends me to Lord British's castle--again, back where I started--and if my memory serves it sends me to, shall we say, a less than useful piece of information from a fairly unreliable source...

Now I'm in the treasure dungeon, staring at Captain Hawkins' tombstone. Apparently a mutiny went down, though it's not clear to me what the motive was, or why they buried the not-so-good captain with a pile of useful potions etc. Unfortunately, Homer in Buccaneer's Den wants the cool storm cloak, which I think is the only one in the game, though I may be wrong about that. Tomorrow I'll add a paragraph or two concerning the quest in the dungeon, which I recall was not too miserable but stuffed to the brim with traps.

Continuing from yesterday...

As expected, the treasure dungeon was a bit tedious. Since i brought my skiff, I was able to avoid a maze wherein ladder led to islands on level two, and choosing the correct ladder is required to get to the lone island with a bridge. After this was the dubiously titled "maze of death" which would only be deadly for the suicide-prone. After that was another maze, this time with lava-filled holes. I neglected to explore this maze thoroughly (or at least I neglected to explore the lava areas much), since shortly thereafter I found a way to get to the big treasure trove. Overall, the trove wasn't that great. There was a fair amount of gold plus the storm cloak and other magic items, but no armor or anything else really cool. Part of the reason is the general lack of cool stuff in Ultima VI! Ultima VII went over the top with the cool magic items, but Ultima VI is lacking. In any case, I got the tablet, showed it to Mariah, and was sent to Sin'Vraal, who told me to go through Hythloth to the other side of the world and talk to a gargoyle scholar.

Bottom line: The entire treasure map quest is irrelevent to the plot, because Sin'Vraal, the gargoyle in the desert, could have translated everything for me! I can see why it's so easy to complete this game with shocking speed.

As suggested, I did wander around the Shrine of Justice and Yew, looking for a storm cloak, but i never found it. Nicodemus had 160(!!) gold nuggets, but no cloak, and the secret door in the courtroom in Yew had an empty table, but that was it. Probably it is somewhere I have not yet been. I did find cool magic stuff in Spider Cave, but I don't remember a storm cloak. Hmm.

Oh, also I killed Shamino while a torch was still lit, and due to an odd bug I now have infinite torches. Woo hoo!