Ultima IV, Day 7

Have I really been playing this thing for a whole week? Yowza. It's been pretty fun. Today I finished the last few things I needed to do before tackling the Abyss...sort of. The first thing I did was swing deep into the bowles of Deceit, and enter the altar room of love, where I used my stack of sexy multicolored stones to get a third of the three part key. From Deceit, I hit Hythloth and visited the other two altar rooms to get--you guessed it--the other two parts.



Next on the agenda was becoming an 8-part Avatar, up from a 5-part Avatar. I still had compassion, justice, and honesty to go, and increasing those is annoying. After some thought, I developed a plan to get all three in minimal time. I began by noting that Moonglow has a bunch of honest mages, a beggar, and a reagent shop. So I entered into the town, went south and gave gold to the beggar. Then I entered the herb shop and talked to two mages--Shakespeare I told that yes, indeed, I do strive to be honest, and the other guy I told that I have not never lied. Then I purchased 5 ginseng, paid the correct amount owed to the clerk, and exited town. I did this about 15 times or so, interspersed with with visits to the Shrine of Honesty, where among other things I learned not to cheat the merchants and not to steal chests. Well, duh.

As a side note, the shrine advice is worded in a silly manner: "Cheat not the merchants and peddlers for tis an evil thing to do!" Is the second half really necessary? Would anyone being told not to cheat the merchants and peddlars think, "Well, such an action will meat with moral acclaim, but I should probably not do it anyway..."?

Anyway, I became a full Avatar using my strategy and then also snatched up the mystic arms and armor from Serpent's Hold and Empath Abbey, respectively. The screenshot shows where I pried up the boards in a training room to get at them. The Lycaeum doesn't get to be special, I suppose. What's next? I finally need to build my party. A much more boring hour was spent adding Jaana and Dupre to my party and getting them up to level 5. Fortunately, they can both use magic bows....and so can Julia, I have discovered, despite tinkers' supposed disdain for magic armor and weapons. I figure I will get veryone basically up to level 5, and then hit the abyss. How long will this take? I'm not sure. Probably about half an hour to raise each character, so i estimate 2.5 hours before I can tackle the abyss, and I don't know how long the dungeon itself will take. Maybe 2 hours. So I estimate Ultima IV will be finished after approximately 18 hours total.

Ultima V will take far longer, because I haven't ever played it seriously before. Actually, I did more or less cheat my way through it...when? After I got the Ultima I-VI collection I guess, which would have been about 1995. So it's been awhile :-) I barely remember anything, except that one of the towns has a sleepwalking character, and most peasants wander around in green shirts.

Ultima IV, Day 6

Time flies when you are collecting arcane objecs and killing hordes upon hordes of evil creatures. Today's wo hours were very productive. I will save some time by noting that no, I certainly did NOT get any new party members. I keep putting it off for another day, and it's hard to blame me. I handle all battles easily by myself, and only a few dungeon runes become tough with only my one guy; however, I can avoid nearly all dungeon rooms.


A case in point was in Shame, where th dungeon room quite near a down ladder was completely blocked off on three of the four sides, and I was unable to get to the door. My solution? Just cast Z-Down, obviously. I don't need no stinkin' ladders. I beat Shame and Wrong (second time was the charm), and then I tackled Hythloth. That dungeon was actually pretty fun, because I eventually found the location where the stone would have been had it been in the dungeon (the ankh on the screenshot). I appreciate the detail. Eventually, I exited the dungeon near the Stygian abyss and hopped in the nearby balloon, which I used to get the white stone. Hooray! The balloon goes pretty fast, though, so casting wind change spells in midair to target my drifting to the one little grass patch in the middle of the mountains to land was a pain in the rear.

The bottom line is that now I have all the stones, and everything else I need. I used the Blink spell to get to Cove, incidentally--for some reason, I could teleport TO the city, but not easily FROM it. I had to leap over mountains to the north, then over a river! The town featured a handful of people that I didn't know what to ask, but almost all of it was information I'd heard elsewhere. The Candle of Love was there, though, and I learned the gate travel spell. Now, other blogs I read mention how useful that spell is, but I don't understand why. I almost never come close to death, and waiting for moongates isn't that bad because the phases change pretty darned quickly. What is its value? Among the other things I accomplished were acquiring the Skull from the bottom of a volcano-surrounded sea, and accidentally finding mandrake root in the suspicious swamp tile north of Vesper. I saw it and assumed, "Oh, this is where the Nightshade is!" but it turned out to be mandrake root.. I need to actually use my sextant next time, I guess.

Tomorrow I'll hit the bottom of some dungeons and get the "three part key" needed to finish the game. Will I build up my party then? I guess I will need to. I also have to become an Avatar in Compassion and Honesty, but I am not 100% sure how to go about doing this. I will close with the weirdest screenshot I have, which appears to show me in a back alley with a thief. It happened while I was in an inn, and the game claimed "while out for a stroll." A stroll where!? Weird. What am i doing out so late? I need my rest (never mind that the game lacks day/night cycles).

Ultima IV, Day 5

I have some links to various Ultima-themed sites on the web. In theory a blog should point out useful resources, rather than just be me talking.

Well, according to my calculator, ERROR percent of my zero replies so far to my last post would prefer that I actually go to the trouble of exploring Hythloth before exiting and taking the balloon. As a result, I decided to skip that for now. Instead, I went up to the top of Britannia, where I entered a dungeon, specifically, Dungeon Wrong. I found the stone somewhere around level 7 as I recall, but to my dismay the access is blocked by a big room full of slimes and a zorn. They are easy enough, but the passageway to the stone is blocked by a brick wall. To open the wall, I imagine that I need to cast dispel on some of the energy fields around the dungeon room, but sadly I had only one black pearl, a necessary ingredient of the spell. Boo hoo hoo.

At the bottom of each dungeon is an altar room where I will need to use the stones I am collecting, and conveniently they all connect to one another! So in lieu of getting the green stone from Wrong, I took a brief detour to Covetous and snatched up, without any difficulty, the orange stone representing Sacrifice. Ha ha! This was not without some trouble--One room in the dungeon featured a huge mass of sleep fields and some reapers, who could cast sleep. Fortunately, they barely ever hit my character, but getting through was very boring since much of the time was sitting there waiting for Zacharay to awaken. Then I went back to Wrong and cast X-it to get me back out of the dungeon. Just before I entered Wrong, a convenient pirate ship dropped by and I killed its occupants. Finally, a ride! I ditched my useless horse immediately.

Using the ship, I went to the otherwise inacessible towns of Buccaneer's Den and Serpent's Hold. The stupid horsehoe shape of shoals in the middle of nowhere that I mentioned a few days ago actually contained the Bell, which is one of the book (movie?) inspired artifacts needed to get into the Abyss. I also picked up the wheel to the HMS Cape by, apparently, diving solo into deep waters, and the silver horn from a random island. The horn was useful in order to visit the shrine of humility and become a partial Avatar in that virtue. The wheel was useful in learning that the wheel doesn't do crap until the end of the game. I thought it repaired my ship quickly, but using it just got me killed by cannonballs from a competeing ship. Drat. Serpent's Hold was a bit peculiar, because for some reason the guards have the same conversation as the Baron himself. Huh?

I also became a partial Avatar in Valor, and I picked up the blue stone from a dungeon near Moonglow, the city of honesty. I meditated for three cycles, the maximum allowed, at the shrine of Honesty on the hunch that maybe I would become an Avatar in that virtue too (I have been paying the blind herbalists exactly what they are owed!) but all I got was a message explaining how to enter the abyss. Thus I need to head back to all the other shrines and meditate for three cycles and gt the full list of requirements. Hmm.

I have not built up a party to any degree, but I did buy myself a sweet magic bow with which I am rapidly killing enemies. There are orbs in the dungeons to raise my stats, but so far I am not finding their use to be important. I may need higher stats for the abyss, but if I am loaded with heal spells and reagents I think my party will survive to the end.

Except the shepherd, maybe.

Ultima IV, Day 4

Well, let it never be said that the dungeons in Ultima IV are overwhelmingly hard. I tackled my first two today, after buying a huge mass of viewing gems with which I could get maps of each level. My strategy in the dungeon is this: Look at the gem. Find the ladder down. Is it hard to get to? If not, go down it. If so, cast Z-Down. For example, in dungeon Despise, I encountered a huge room full of gremlins who stole all of my food before I could kill them. That's the kind of room I am apt to skip over! Using this method I picked up the red and yellow stones.


Let's backtrack. First of all--spells. I decided it was about time to grab the Valor rune in Jhelom, so I whipped out the manual and read about all the spells and made a pretty little list of their reagnents and effects. Then I went and bought some big piles of reagents--travelling with only one fellow in your party means you spend zilch on food or much of anything else--and went to Jhelom. I encountered an unfortunate fellow, Nostro or Norsto or something, who had been walled up inside behind force fields. He demanded that I show him the way out, and I did, but the bastard wouldn't go away! i had to ditch him in the forest and then have door close between us in order to keep the nutball from following me back where he came from.


Shortly thereafter I became a partial Avatar in honor, which is evidently raised by finding random quest objects. Once you've found them all, you better not lose honor I guess! meditating at the honor shrine also apparently booted me up to partial Avatarhood in Spirituality. So I'm really raking in the partials, in other words. Some of the virtues are pretty hard to raise. Justice is a prime example. As far as I know, justice just means not stealing gold. but does the game keep track of every time I fail to steal when I could have? Probably not.


I also purchased a horse, and it was a complete waste of money. The monsters have absolutely no trouble keeping up with me, and I don't go through plains or woods faster. What was the point? On the plus side, buyin a horse meant I got to briefly talk to Smith the Horse in Paws, the recurring character who usually tells you clues a game too late. However, I couldn't figure out what he had to say to me, if anything. Maybe someone else in Britannia will direct me to him.

Now I will institute a poll. The dungeon Hythloth can be entered through Lord British's castle, and it exits on the Isle of the Avata with an important item--the balloon--outside it. My strategy for tackling this dungeon is as follows:

1) Enter the dungeon
2) Cast X-It to get out and get the balloon

Kinda loser-like, I'd say. So the poll is, should I follow this strategy, or actually spend some time exploring? I have no need for the balloon yet, so it will be a day or two. After 2.5 hours today, I figure I will spend tomorrow building up a small party of adventurers.

Ultima IV, Day 2, 3

I spent maybe three and a half hours playing Quest of the Avatar this weekend, without too much progress. Well, I travelled to all the towns which are reachable via moongates and land, because no ships have shown up yet I recently made it to level 6, so perhaps they will arrive soon. I've collected all the runes save for valor, which is hidden behind some force fields that I may not have sufficient magic points to eliminate (as a bard).

I've also become a candidate for "elevation" in the virtues of valor and humility, which seem to be the two easiest to raise. Valor is raised simply by fighting, and humility seems primarily based on whether or not you answer random "are you the best..." questions posed by townsfolk. Unfortunately, valor and humility are the hardest partial Avatar bits to acquire, since Jhelom's rune of valor is a pain to get, and getting to the shrine of humility requires a boat, as well as a silver horn to ward off an infinite mass of daemons.

My notetaking strategy for the game has been pretty straightforward--I have each town with some hints, which I review periodically. I also created a moongate guide and a list of "objects" that I need to get. I remember most of this game, but I am playing it as if I don't recall, for example, the mantras and the rune locations. The result is that I know I have to go find a ship's wheel somewhere, but I have not been told about it yet, so it is not even on my list thus far. Tomorrow I may start building up my party, adding probably the paladin and the druid, all of whom can used ranged weapons. Or so I recall. I also need to hit the magic book, which I haven't read yet, and make a convenient spell/reagent list, unless of course it's already in the reference card. Obviously, I did not do as thorough a survey of the documentation before I began playing this game ;-)

The world in Ultima IV is much larger than the world of Ultima III. Perhaps a power of two larger? I'm uncertain. This gives the game a certain epic feel that its predecessor lacked.
However, I think this epic feel is very shallow, once you wander over the bunches of penninsulas and forests that serve no purpose. There's just nothing there but some tiles and the same enemies you face elsewhere. I remember an argument on the Ultima Dragons newsgroup, where someone complained that the dual-scale form of Ultimas 4 and 5 made the world huge, whereas I believed it was an illusion. i guess it's the clasic breadth versus depth argument. In my opinion, for immersive gaming, depth wins every time. I recall playing Daggerfall when it first came out. THAT game had some atmosphere, with hundreds of towns and dungeons and so on. It was incredible!....Well, briefly. Eventually I got sick of randomly-generated tavern names and pointless, incoherent dungeons that were obviously just hodgepodges of several basic designs stapled together without rhyme or reason. The vastness of Ultima IV is worse,in a way, because it's just empty space. There is nothing to see or do, anywhere, besides the towns (like Vesper on the left), dungeons, and a few searchable locations. I don't understand why some harken back to this strategy as incredibly immersive.

Of course, I'm not arguing that Ultima IV is a bad game--its limitations are technological, yet it has an epic scope and looks and sounds good even on a system which is so silly that pixls can't be placed beside each other without changing color (hence the reason why characters are pretty much pure white in this and even, as I recall, in Ultima V for the Apple II). There are still a fair number of silly things about the game, though. For example, the skull of Mondain. Actually, its location. Who among us ever played Ultima IV and found that *extremely suspicious* little horsehoe of shoals in the middle of the ocean, and did not sail immediately therein and search? Actually, maybe the wheel is there, or the bell. I don't remember if it was the skull or not (maybe that was between some volcanos?). But geez, something was there, and it did not require a genius to find it. The same goes for that single little dot of swamp out near Minoc. Gee, you suppose something might be there? No way.

One thing to praise about Ultima IV is its ridiculous level of nonlinearity. You don't have to do anything in *any* order, except insofar as it all has to be done before you hit the abyss. this is a goal to strive for in all RPGs, and the quality of a game can often be judged by the absurd constraints placed on the player. Ultima IX is the prime example of this, as are certain points of Serpent isle (doors randomly unlock and chests appear out of nowhere with important items, when the plot dictates that they should).

This entry is too long, consider how little I have accomplished in the game, lol. I'm not sure where to put the screenshot of Magincia, so I'll stick it here.

Ultima IV, Day 1

A word about spoilers, perhaps a little too late: This blog is one colossal spoiler. I'm not describing how to beat the games, but I mention the solutions and screenshots often show locations of items, etc.

Well, I have a handful of comments now, which is nice to see. One mentioned the proliferation of exclamation points in Ultima III. I might have mentioned this too--When I was taking notes on the townfolks' hints, I had to strip out the exclamation points: "SEARCH FOR EXOTICS ON ISLANDS!" Still, nothing in Ultima III compares to the experience of playing one of the early Might and Magic (I think) games, where I faced "99 beggars, 99 beggars, 99 beggars, and 99 beggars" after I refused to give a handout. I first played Ultima on the NES around 1987-88, or at least I watched my older brothers play Exodus.

Now I've begun Ultima IV, which brings back a lot of memories--I also played it on the NES, but never got into it (one brother hogged it for himself, until another brother sold it to a friend...). When I got the Ultima I - VI CD-ROM by Encore back in 1995, this and Ultima V were the games was looking forward to. I recall playing the "fun part" of Ultima IV all the way through--that is, the part that involves exploring the world, finding the runes, and interacting with people. The "boring part" consisted of delving into dungeons with very little to offer in terms of reward. I re-played the game about 18 months ago, but never completed it--that time I got near the end, but I got sick of trying to raise my sacrifice--I gave many gallons of blood but it never quite made a difference.

This time I have ditched the Apple II for good, because the graphics are crap compared to the DOS version of Ultima IV. I am using DOSBox to play it, with music provided by an old patch (minus the upgraded graphics that the newer upgrade patch includes). Beyond the graphics, there seems to be a distinct shift in style--Ultima IV is simply more demanding of the player: you are expected to slolve a whole lot of puzzles and quests, whereas Ultima III was primarily about gathering enough gold to cure that annoying poison that bridles and snatches and so on gave you, and then gathering enough gold to raise your stats, etc.

I should also mention one of the "leap forwards" of this game: Typed conversations. Townsfolk still have very little to say, but they must be prompted, which is far more immersive than just spouting out pat responses. I also think there's a bit of Ultima II in the character names (A "spicy woman" in Britain is named "Pepper"), but the conversations themselves are not jokey. In fact, Ultima IV with its focus on morality and the eight virtues might, were it more recent, come perilously close to preacy annoyingness. However, most of the "preachiness" occurs in very limited conversations, and the result is more compelling due to its brevity.

The other big improvement is the gameplay, which is clearner and easier now, with one allotment of food and gold for the whole party. I forgot to mention the line-of-sight of Ultima III, too, so you don't see things beyond obstacles. Ultima IV has this too, but I think the NES version lacked it. Anyway, I am going to be a lone adventurer for quite awhile. As usual, I ended up a bard after the novel gypsy-questioning that began the game--I always either get that or a tinker. Anything but a shepherd is good news, I say. I know you need all eight party members to get in the abyss, but I am tempted to just let Katrina the Shepherd die and forget about her, because she is not worth the effort of directing her worthless icon, lol.

Ultima III, Day 5

Well, I finished up the game today. Actually, I finished it up twice! The first hour was spent with the classic Death Gulch to Ambrosia trip, in which I maxed out the dexterity and strength of my wizard and druid. Afterwards, I hit the dungeon of time to meet the Time Lord, and killed guards to raise my level to 25 for all characters. In the midst of the last part, though, I encountered a very frustrating bug: Basically, when I attacked an enemy, the main world map would be used instead of the combat map. The more I played, the worse it got, so i went ahead and finished the game (barely) "just in case" I were unable to ever finish it the normal way.

The dungeon of Time was challenging, but being able to cast spells to take me up and down dungeon levels made it much simpler--I just zipped down to the 8th level and met the guy, who has a moongate on his belly, and zipped back up. I guess the image of the Time Lord is some kind of proto cutscene, except the image is made up of graphics from inside the game! It's sort of like Ultima IX in that respect; i think a lot of the cutscenes there involved the same engine.

Exodus Castle when you are too weak to tackle it is EXTREMELY difficult--It's hard to regain hit points, because inside the castle random explosions blast you while you are passing your turn as magic points replinish in order to cast a heal spell. I gave up on that and simply used the wizard's mass-kill spell and lots of AppleWin save states to get me through. Later on, the bug I experienced seemed to spontaneously fix itself, and I was able to play the game normally. I raised my druid and wizard up to 25000 hit points (they were half that previously) and I was able to tackle Exodus' castle without much difficulty. The same strategy persisted, but I no longer needed save states. I would cast mass kill, then my paladin and ranger would simply march up and destroy the enemies with their exotic weapons. The most absurd part of the game comes towards the end, when the floor tiles in front of the Exodus computer terminals attack you. It was entertaining but not that hard, because one hit kills them. I simply got my chaaracters into a line and had no trouble finishing them off.


This brings me to the antagonist of the game--Exodus! First of all, ths is a stupid name for a demonic computer--exodus is a noun that describes a journey. Did Garriott choose this name just because it sounded cool? Second, it's not clear what he does or what he is--he's got terminals obviosuly, but is there some kind of intelligence here? I know he had a dark core and a psyche from Ultima VII, and in statues he is always presented as a demon. So the way I think of Exodus is as some very powerful demon trapped by Mondain and Minax within the computer that presumably they built using futuristic technology of the earlier games. Why a particular seires of cards destroys him, I do not know!

In the final analysis, Ultima III was a vastly superior game to its predecessors. The world itself is much more interesting, with unique towns, all of which have unique features or clues. Still, it suffers from a lot game balance issues. For example, I could spend 3500 gold on a +2 bow. But why would I ever do that? The regular bow kills things quickly once you have increased your strength and dexterity. The dungeons are also extremely difficult for their contents. That is, there's no point in doing anything but zapping down to the bottom, getting your mark or whatever, and zapping back up to the enterance of the dungeon, because there are so many random traps and monsters, and nowhere near enough treasure to justify sticking around. Ultima VII improves this a bit, with lots of unique details worth seeing. I believe the same problem is a part of Ultima IV and to a lesser extent Ultima V.

I also approve of the fact that Ultima III has no meta junk in its game, no characters say (as one did in Ultima II) "Isn't this game great?" Lord British is still a bastard, of course, but at least the game sticks to its genre. The combat was also not anything close to as tedious as I originally anticipated--Once I had a boat, the cannons killed the land monsters, saving me a lot of hassle. In all, I finished Ultima III in about 14-15 hours, I suppose. Sadly, AppleWin's sound emulation is awful and the copies of the disks that feature music barely work, so I played without music. In the case of Ultima IV, however, I will be using the DOS version plus upgrades, so I shall have plenty of music to go with it. It may take some effort to get it working precisely the way I want it to, however--I need DOSbox or another tool to allow screenshots, for example, but getting the music to work inDOSbox may be tough.