Savage Empire, Day 3

Well, the gaming continues in Savage Empire, though my Internet has been down all day and I'm unsure when I will be able to post this! I forgot about gorillas and T-Rex's for awhile whie I went and finished two quests for two other tribes--The jukari chief wanted a hide history back, so I zipped over some lava made hard with a fire extenguisher to get it, while the Neanderthal leader needed a shield from a spider den. Dealing with spiders, of course, requires some fire to burn their webs, and making the torches required a rather tiresome process of cutting cloth, wrapping them around sticks culled from trees, putting tar in a bucket, and then using the tar on the cloth and the tarred cloth on a branch. Yowza. The spider cave additionally has an enterance to what appears to be a big series of Myrmaadex caves, which are not terribly appealing and I died very quickly, attacked by endless drones.

My next quest was the one I started the game with--rescuing Aelia, the warrior princess of the Kurak tribe whose clothing does not protect her breasts very effectively. Once I found out where she was held (The theiving tribe, the Urali, hid itself and had to be acessed through a cave--long story), it was a matter of creatively avoiding a Tyranasaurus, and then avoiding huge numbers of guys with poison blowguns. Aelia was in a cage in a cave, and as I saved her, Darden the Huge came in--but a couple of bullets to the face prevented him from doing much to prevent my rescue. Humorously, ow that Darden is dead, it seems my attacks from random villagers increased! Though I can talk to them, and they thank me for killing Darden, when I say goodbye they go back to shooting me with darts.

I decided to give them some time while I took Aelia's giant crystal across the valley, stuk it in a slot, and got an underground stairway to open. That's where I am now--Kotl city! I remember from my last experience with Savage Empire that it is big and mostly boring. I am debating whether to map it, or to simply try to rush to that power generator and shut it off, so that I can go back to the valley and solve another quest.




I spent a brief period with the Frobozz statue, which is a glowing-eyed spirit thing I am supposed to bribng out of the cave to the center of the city for the Urali tribe to talk to. However,it's unhappy without any light. Trying to move the thing directly, as well as trying to attack it and pick it up and so on, was ineffective. I might consider trying to get some sunlight to it, but the villager was pretty specific about me needing to bring it out, and I am unsure how I will do that since none of the obvious solutions (dragging it and taking it apart, piece by piece) seem to work.

Paulon gave some tips with respect to the gorilla-saving and T-Rex killing quests, but unfortunately they did nt bear fruit. I asked my party members about things including boulder, waterfall, gorilla, dinosaur, tyrannasaurus, rescue, unite, lever, push, cave, cliff, climb, rope, ladder and pole, with little succcess. Rafkin did tell me to ask Nahuatla tribesen about poles, but none of them seemed to care. I suppose I might try building my own raft to use on the river, since one tribesperson said I needed to tie together four logs--a plausible in-game action, I guess.

The game has grown on me a small amount, but I am tired of random Myrmadex attacks (these happen all the time, often with no warning) and the fact that going up in level seems to be a pretty worthless exercise.

Savage Empire, Day 1 & 2

I have played some Savage Empire on and off for the past two days. The game is not as fun as I'd hoped it might be. It's less familiar, so I will quickly describe the premise--Experimenting with some black stones on Earth gets you, a profressor, and this annoying reporter with weird mannerisms from 1935 teleported to the Valley of Eodon, where several random primitive tribes from various parts of the world are hanging out. Your job is to get back home and rescue Aiela, a warrior princess who is supposed to be attractive and would be if it were still 1990.


Anyway, there is more to the plot, but I haven'tgotten that far yet. all the tribes represent an array of cultures, from Africa, Asia, the Americas, and even some Neanderthals and intelligent lizards. The game boils down to solving quests, one per tribe or so, in order to get them to unite to fight the Borg-like Myrmidex species, overgrown ants who attack you randomly as you wander around the world. What is disappointing is that the tribes are not very impressive, and each "village" has about one or two people who are unique; the rest are generic a la Ultima II. Quite a step backwards! Wandering around the cities is amusing--for example, I recovered treasure from the Aztec-derived Nauatla treasure room simply by walkig in and picking it up.

I have been given quests by the tribes, and when I solve them, they agree to unite against the Myrmidex. So far I've put a bell around the neck of a Tyanosaurus for some Three Stooges lookalikes, and stolen a boatload of swords. My current task, which is proving troublesome, is trying to rescue a kid from a mean gorilla on a ledge I cannot get up to. I have attempted to use a vine to climb up, but no luck. There is also a cave door behind a waterfall but again, I can't seem to step into it--even though there is clearly space to walk there. I figured I needed to sail a raft there, but the only rafts seem to be in rather useless locations.


In desperation, I sought another quest, this time from some lizard people. They demanded that I rescue their grove of green fruits from a Tyransaurous who is blocking access and eating everyone who comes near. I found the grove by accident a few minutes earlier, when i explored away from a teleport pad that helps me get around the valley. He is standing on a cliff, directly under a really big boulder. He doesn't move at all, and sure enough, I can go around and climb up to the ledge, and push the boulder off. or in theory. In reality, I don't know how to cause a boulder to fall off the cliff. i tried using the use and move commands, and then tried using a stick to pry it up over the edge a rope to tie around it, all to no avail. Undoubtably this is a puzzle where I'm supposed to have som particular item (rock hammer, maybe?) but I have no idea what it might be.

Thus far the game has not been too inspiring. I have dealt with three of the eleven tribes, and if I can get this rock moving and figure out how to get to the gorilla, that will be five. But I'm not too hopeful. One of the things that stinks about having only one save-game slot is that I can't reload at a point before I came all the way to this boulder, and now I have to walk back. Bah.

FYI

No blogging tonight. My profile says I'm in Blacksburg, VA, where 32 people were murdered Monday, but as a reminder I am actually in Birmingham at present, though since names hae't been released yet I don't know if my friends or any of my students were hurt. I actually also got a job offer today, so the bizarre mix of really bad and really good news has me discombobulated, but I'll work on Savage Empire sometime this week.

-Zac

Ultima VI, Day 12

Well, Ultima VI is finished. The final esctions of the game are some of my favorites in any of the Ultimas, really--You visit the catacombs and are a bit shocked to have some chats with Mondain, Minax and Exodus! I especially enjoyed the references to the details of the earlier games, especially how the intro to Minax mentions that you "destroyed her castle and all her works," which mirrors the endgame text from Ultima II. I also appreciate how the three dungeons for the Gargoyle virtues of Control, Passion and Diligence relate to their theme. Control is all about pulling levers to open eight gates and two force fields (!!), but many of the levers do the same thing. Diligence was the one that gave me the most trouble when I played the game back in grade school--4th grade, to be exact. It's one big grid of dungeon rooms with monsters hanging out, and it took ages for me to find the secret door that leads up to Exodus. Of course, this means that puzzle has no replay value! In any case, it was cool to see high-res portraits of my enemies from the first few games, since the original artwork, shall we say, left a bit to be desired (In the original game, Minax was exactly the same as mondain but with two fewer pixels on her hips...)

There's not much else to say about the game I guess--finishing it is very straightforward, involving going to the Codex and doing what it says. This leads me back to one of the first posts, where a comment mentioned how it was possible to beat the game while killing only three things. I propose that the game can be defeated without killing anything. Here is my brief hypothetical walkthrough--the only question is where to get a few invisibility rings to avoid the few combat areas, and where to get some fast gold. I am not sure if certain things trigger game flags or not, so I wrote this under the assumption that no conversations trigger game flags at all. If they do, then you have to talk to more people...But here it is anyway:

-Talk to LB, learn tu use the orb, get spellbook/gold/reagents, have Sherry joing you, then go get rune of Compassion and a cauldron
-Teleport to Yew, get rune of Justice, a log, and buy Unlock Magic, Dispel Field, and Telekenesis from Nicodemus [unless he doesn't have them, I don't remember], and buy 40 spider silk
-Take the road East of Yew, take the skiff to Stonegate and get the Vortex Cube, have Dupre carry the skiff
-Teleport to Jhelom, get the rune of Valor, have Sherry leave
-Teleport to Gargoye Land near Hythloth, talk to Captain John, get the vocab, and have Beh Lem join.
-Surrendur, get the broken lens, have it repaired
-Teleport to Moonglow, get the key and the rune of Honesty and get the Britannian lens
-Teleport to New Magincia and get the rune of Humility.
-Sail south to Sutek's castle and get the balloon plans
-Teleport to Minoc, make a board, get the panpipes, get the rune of Sacrifice, have a basket made
-Teleport to Trinsic, get the rune of Honor and walk to Paws, get the silk thread made.
-Teleport to New Magincia, get the bag made.
-Teleport to gargoyle land, near shrine; visit shrine, talk to it twice and say the mantra to get a sacred quest.
-Teleport to all the shrines in turn and liberate them, gathering the moonstone
-Teleport to the Codex and end the game.

I think this should do it. The only monster of note is the hydra in Sutek's castle, but you can justwalk around it to the secret door. I believe you can win without killing a thing!

Speaking of Sutek, Paulon makes an argument for the logic of the Pushme Pullyu, and I think he is right--as long as you know that the opposite head is talking, it doesn't really matter which is qhich. The problem I saw was that the heads themselves introduce the puzzle, and I can get boh sides to make the claim that "Pullu always lies," and they can't both say that without breaking the game I think it would be better if the claim about who lies and who tells the truth were made elsewhere.

I also must correct my "most useless spell" claim, since evidently you can make spikes vanish with vanish. I think I will give the award to...Eclipse! I can't think of how an eclipse does you much good, besides looking cool. Which reminds me, I didn't see any eclipses this game, but I saw them sometimes when I played my first time...

Some final thoughts on Ultima VI...It was less fun than I expected, but that's only because I played it through last year, and most of the puzzles were still fresh in my mind. Given other couple of years, I'm sure I will forget a lot and it will be enjoyable again! One of the disadvantages of playing the game with foreknowledge is that I didn't make any of the random discoveries I did in Ultima V, such as finding the mystic armor in the middle of nowhere without even knowing it was in the game! Equivalent events in Ultima VI the first time I played included finding lots of map pieces by accident, and...Actually. I guess it was mostly limited to finding random map pieces! I also failed to experiment with the enchant spell, which can be used to enhant magic staves. I can't remember how that works--I think the staff can be used to cast another spell of your choosing? overall, though, I think I squeezed out mostof what the game has to offer. I even sold some grain to the miller in Paws!

One og the mos important additions Ultima VI had was the character portraits. it's hard to overestimate how much value this adds to the game, simply because it's far easier for me to associate people's faces with their names. In Ultima V I had to remember "the guy that hangs around the orchard is Terence," whereas in Ultima VI I can simply recall the face and look around. Also, seeing the face allows my imagination to picture this specific person talking, and it also serves as a visual clue to previous conversations. One of the unhappy parts of Ultima VII was the way in which these portraits are dramatically smaller! The new, more colorful tileset brings the world to life in a way that was not the case with the previous games--as did the presence of lots of random creatures, like rabbits bouncing around, birds surrounding you in the moongate locations, and deer dashing through the woods. There was a much stronger sense of the world's continuity, overall--The "set piece" battles on the road were particularly fun, like meeting (and killing) another party of dventurers (and a party of headlesses and trolls) on the way to Skara Brae; the fact that you meet the same thing in the same place later only detracts a little bit from the suspension of disbelief.

I had more fun playing it than Ultima V, but the familiarty was a bit of a downer. I'm glad it's been years since I played Ultima VII and the rest of the games (Except Serpent Isle and Underworld 2)! Even Ultima IX, I have not played since 2000, and am likely to find it to be a new experience. As for Savage Empire, well, well that will be almost an entirely new experience!

Speaking of Savage Empire--when I hit journey onward I am dumped back to a DOS prompt. I have to use game.exe to play. Anyone else have this issue?

Ultima VI, Day 11

Well, today I accomplished many important things--the most important, by far, was crashing the game! I have already experienced a game freeze when I die in solo mode as one of my party members, but this one was more inventive. I killed Blaine, then cast seance to talk to him. He seemed normal. He said he'd like to join me, and I said yes...except it came out as Ylem instead of yes. Uh-oh. Eventually I got a blank cursor and had to restart. Why doesn't DOSBox have a reset key that keeps all your settings the same? This prompted me to mess around with some other spells. I discovered to my annoyance that I was unable to use the replicate spell on gold coins or nuggets, but I did find an alternative solution in casting animate and then clone on a magic bow and selling them for 150 gold over and over again--I had been trying to use Nim to get gold, but Dr. Cat cheats. I remember once when i first played the game trying to cast ressurect on the ancient bones of Zog in the Britannian museum, but I don't remember if it worked. Sadly, I am not 8th level so I cannot try (and I doubt I will ever get to 8th level now). It's hard to decide what the least useful spell in the game is. I think two that qualify are trap and reveal. Trap spells can be used to trap a door or chests or such things, but NPCs have no trouble opening doors in spite of the trap, and only you can open chests. So besides suicide, what's the point? Similarly, the reveal spell reveals objects hidden by the vanish spell. What, am I supposed to literally cast reveal on every tile in the whole world, hoping someone hid an object there?

Besides messing around with spells, I found some balloon plans and built a balloon today. Finding the plans was pretty silly. I dropped by Blackthorn's old castle, which has now shrunk rather drastically, and descended to the basement where I found a two-headed horse named Pushme-Pullyu. They had what appears to be an insoluble riddle. I understand the concept--One head always tells the truth and the other always lies, etc. The problem is that each head tells you this! That is, both heads state that the Pullyu speaks the truth and that the Pushme always lies, which is highly problematic. In short, I couldn't keep track of which head was saying which statement--the character portrait would reverse itself, but often both the regular portrait and the reverse would say the same thing! I gave up and figured it out myself.

Turns out, one of the two ladders you can choose leads to a burning pit of fire in the depths of another dungeon, whereas the other leads to a safe set of catacombs with the balloon plans nearby and a helpful tough man named Gorn who joined my party. Yay! To my annoyance, building the balloon involved bouncing around Paws, New Magincia, and Minoc, though for some reason the silk bag cost only 125 total whereas the basket cost 300! From there I used a magic fan, found in the treasure trove with the silver tablet, to wave my balloon over the so-called mountains to the Shrine of Singularity. How come my balloon can fly over mountains, but not human-built structures!? Anyway, the shrine kicked me off to the other gargoyle shrines after quizzing me on my motives--A nice touch, forcing me to think about why i was doing what I was doing, besides "cause the plot told me to."

That's one of the huge advanages from the keyboard-entry conversation system that was lacking from the trees used in later games, incidentally-being able to answer off-the-cuff questions based on your own knowledge, not some game flag set somewhere. The drawback, of course, is absurd conversations in which, for example, Lord British insists he knows nothing about his own jester.

Now to address some comments: First, I am surprised at how short Savage Empire might be, but the last time I played it I was about 12 years old, so perhaps by problem-solving skills have improved since then ;-) I do recall Martian Dreams being a bit tough, since monsters killed me an awful lot and there is a bit of uncertainty wabout what you're supposed to be doing at times. The game I am most looking forward to is Ultima Underworld, which I have played several times but still seems fun. It was shocking to play when it first came out, maybe more so than any of the other Ultima games, because all the other first person RPGs suddenly seemed like garbage by comparison. It's also the most fun game to try and fit into the main Ultima storyline, since pretty much everyone forgot or never knew about the whole affair ;-)

I glanced at Raph's blog--Hey, I remember that guy! I emailed him a few times back in the early days of Ultima Online--and saw it linked to that article about how the classical violinist playing in the streets and no one cared. I saw it earlier this week (though I have still failed to read the whole thing, since it zips off on very boring tangents), and the first thing that ocurred to me is that a huge percentage of people wouldn't have recognized the violinist's name if you told them, and the vast majority would not bother listening to classical violin music evn if they were NOT in a rush to get something done. I'm listening to that Bach Chaconne right now, and find it relatively boring, for example, because my ability to appreciate the style is low. All the article suggests is that to most people don't notice music that bores them, which one could gather just by glancing at CD sales figures.

As for online games, I think people do not stop to smell the roses, so to speak, in large part because the roses don't smell very good. In a game like Ultima VII, exploring unecessarily is a lot of fun, because you will find either cool items that are directly useful (magic swords, etc.) or locations that are simply intriguing (like a hidden cave with a dead pirate and some really old ship deeds). None of this translates well to mutiplayer games, because no matter where you go or what you do, chances are someone else has already done it. There is no thrill to exploring land that has already been explored, and with thousands of users it won't take long at all for all the "planned" secrets to be found.

It's also important to note that people who value "smelling the roses" are uncommon, generally, and I believe having other players who don't care about such things detracts from the enjoyment of those who do. Thus, part of the problem is simply that the game requires mass appeal. Most people want instant satisfaction, especially from their entertainment, and I think attempting to design a game that forces people to appreciate things in a different way is effectively trying to change contemporary cuture in a radical way, a tall order for a video game. The only "smell the roses" game that could succeed, I think, is one intended and designed for the niche market. There's lots of examples of sucessful creations that do not have mass appeal in film and music, so why not in games?

Wow, that was more longwinded than usual.

Ultima VI, Day 10

Well, I had finished the last two games by this point! Today was mostly another boring dungeon adventure. This time I headed through Hythlot to the other side of the world, where I encountered the famous Captain John and Beh Lem, though Captain John's home seems to have shunk a bit since I last met him. The Cap'n gave me a very useful Gargish Vocabulary which allowed me to instantly learn to speak and read the Gargoyle language! Boy, I m *SO* glad I went to the trouble of finding that silver tablet, aren't I? Oh yes. ANyway, Hythloth was the most annoying dungeon so far. Destard was a pain in the ass, but at least at the end of it there was a pile of treasur an magic items. But in Hythloth? Nothing at all. Just big rooms, lots of lava, some dragons, and lots of easy ways to die. Of course, i could have skipped it and just use the Orb of the Moons to jump to Gargoyle Land, but I thought going through Hythloth could be more fun.

As I recall, the rest of the game is fairly painless and doesn't require much combat expertise. I was led to talk to Draxinosum, who asked me "Why?" when I said I was willing to be sacrificed. I remember that one alwas stumped me previous times I played the game, but typing "sacrifice" again seemed to appease him, though I don't understand why. Saying you wanted to talk to Naxalator, the wise Gargoyle with the crystal ball, also seems to work. Speaking of which...i spoke to Naxalator, the wise gargoyle with the crystal ball, who sent me off to fix a lens.

Let's take a side trip back to 1992, fourth grade, the first time I ever played Ultima VI from the beginning...I had the broken lens but for the life of me could not figure out how to fix it. I would go to the lensmaker in Moonglow but could never find the right keyword, and the guy who tells you to have the gargoyle lensmaker fix it does not repeat that dialogue! This time it was a piece of cake to figure out because, paying close attention, the gargoyle told me exactly where to go.

I have the lens now, and I also wandered off to get the vortex cube from a family of cyclops in a Stonegate that looks absolutely nothing like Ultima V's Stonegate. I almost did not get it due to being low on reagents and not being able to case unlock magic more than a few times. Fortunately, after I ran out I realized I only needed to cast it once! That and dispel field got me the cube. I've also decided to go ahead and fill up my spellbook, one of the prime entertainments of any Ultima game from here on out, because they are brimming with amusing spells. I remember "Animate" and "Clone" being particularly entertaining..

Next on the agenda is to figure out how to fly to the shrine. I know I build a balloon and I even remember where to get the balloon plans, but what I have forgot is who tells you to go in the first place! I am trying to squeeze all the plot and fun out of this game, so finding the actual clues before I do things is important (as is trying to walk to the shrines instead of just using the orb of the moons constantly).

Oh yeah--a gargoyle says he is a thousand yeas old. Good googly moogly.

I predict that I will finish by Monday night, if not earlier. After that, it's on to Savage Empire, which will take longer to complete sans walkthrough because I have not played the game in more than ten years and back then I even used a walkthrough! Going without will make things more challenging indeed. Amusingly, if I run into trouble, very few have played that installment and I will be getting less assistance than with the mainstream games ;-)

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!