Ultima V Day 3

I spent a lot of time playing Ultima V yesterday, my biggest day yet on the game. Man so much happened, my notebook is now 9 pages long, which is what my Ultima IV notebook was at when I finished it. That means that my notes for Ultima V will easily dwarf those of UIV in size, but that was to be expected.

The game is great, no two ways about it. It's harder to play than the previous games in the series due to its complexity but it also feels much more rewarding. At this point in time I have a solid understanding of what I am supposed to do.

1. I need to destroy the shadowlords. The way to do this is to call em out at the flame representing their opposite virtue and cast their respective shards in the flame. Repeat three times to get them all.
2. Find the artifacts Lord British left behind.
3. Save Lord British.

I already know the name of one shadowlord and the location of two shards. I know where the amulet, sceptre and crown are, at least approximately if not exactly. I know that Lord British is somewhere in the underworld.

There's a lot less "retro gaming moments" in Ultima V than in Ultima IV so it's a bit harder to write anything about the game. I did accidentally find the carpet in LB's quarters but at that point I was investigating every carpet I saw so it's not really a surprise. I have completed two shrine quests, a bit boring I must say.




So let's recap a bit what I did shall we? The first thing I did was go to Serpent's Hold. There I learned about the abyss, or wait, now it seems to be a generic no-name dungeon, and the shard of cowardice that lies at the bottom of it. The man said that I need a special spell to get it, what spell would that be?

I then headed up to Buccaneer's Den where I mainly learned about glass swords being lost on the serpent's spine (why does that ring any bells?BLINK ANYONE?) and about a grapple that would allow me to climb mountains. When I first learned about that I thought it sounded a bit useless, I mean, why would I want to climb mountains? Didn't make much sense. Well except that if I had a grapple in Ultima IV I would have simply climbed the spine to find the white stone instead of blinking my way on it. Hmmm.

So after that I decided to see if I could find a certain 'Sir Simon' who lives on an island west of spiritwood. And that's what I found:



.....Well I'll be damned. Where was that grapple again? Oh yeah that dude in the abbey. I have to say that I had no idea Simon was actually at the top of the mountain until someone told me in the Abbey (I think). I have to admit climbing mountains is pretty cool, even if a couple of my companions keep falling and hurting themselves.

I learned a bunch of things from Simon, such as the fact that I have to recover the artifacts and about the location of the Sceptre, INSIDE the Shadowlords earthly fortress, which I had learned of previously from a man named Sir Sean in the Lycaeum, a fortress guarded by a terrible demon named Balinor.

Lovely.

At least I know how to get there, that's a start.

Next is a little bit of cheating from my part, or at least some 'bending' of the rules so to say. I had been trying to infiltrate the mysterious organization known as the 'Oppression' for some time and I finally learned that I needed to speak to a mage in Skara Brae. Now reaching him is annoying because he's locked himself in a tower and the doors are magically locked.





See? It wouldn't be so bad if you only needed one skull key to get in, but everytime you unlock the door a bat comes out and attacks you. And of course once you defeat the bat, the door is locked again. In total it takes three skull keys to get in. I bought those keys for 100GP from the cook of the Lycaeum if I remember correctly. That's 60GP gone just to open a door. That sucks.

Once I got in he told me that to get in the Oppression I have to prove my loyalty by telling him the name of a council member SO THAT THEY CAN GO AND KILL HIM. Now wait just a minute, I am the avatar, the embodiment of all that is good in this world and I would go and do THAT? Give me a freaking break. So I gave him the name, in this case Annon, he gave me the word I needed to get my badge and then..I left the game, reloaded my game which I had conveniently saved right in front of his tower. I was then able to get my badge without giving the name of the council member, probably saving me a shitload of karma in the process. Isn't that lovely? I sure loved it.









So what else happened? Well I completed a couple of shrine quests, nothing really exciting there. It increases my stat increased but since I started out at 25 across the board I shouldn't have any problems maxing my avatar out. I also find a magic axe in a tree stump in Jhelom. How ridiclous is that? A magic axe left in a dead tree. Right. Hey I'm not complaining but it IS sort of stupid.

Now that magic axe is an absolutely ridiculous weapon, you can fire it across the screen and it always comes back! Someone at Origin around 1988 must have loooooooved magical axes because the best weapon in another Origin game released in 1988, Times of Lore, was also a magical axe that would come back to you after being thrown.

Talking of Times of Lore, while checking out its wikipedia entry I learned that Origin made another game similar to Times of Lore in 1990 called Bad Blood. I've never played it, which means I'm putting it down on my to play list for when I'm done with Ultima. Maybe my next blog will be called "Classic gaming with GrahfZilla"? You never know!

Okay back to Ultima. When I first visited the castle of Lord British I had seen many magical doors, and since I now had keys to open those doors I decided to check out what was behind them. To be honest I was a bit disappointed since the first two doors I unlocked had absolutely nothing behind them. What the hell?








But then I found the big daddy of them all, the door leading to LB's quarters. After evading the crazy guard who gently offered to throw me off the roof I promptly unlocked the door...and slept in the King's bed HAHAHA NICE you gotta love that!















I then checked out the room and saw the harpsichord in the corner. Now what better time to play Stones? I had learned the song at the lighthouse south of Trinsic and someone had told me to play it in LB's quarters so I did. It actually opened a passage in the wall containing a..sandalwood box. Now what the hell is a sandalwood box anyway? I can't open it but I can take it. Now what am I going to do with a box made out of sandalwood? Anyway, I then looked at the carpet, and my character remarked that it was an ODD RUG. OH OH OH, NOW WHAT DO WE HAVE HERE! I then gleefully picked it up and YES it was the famed magic carpet. I didn't even have to find that talking horse for Bandaii to get it too!

I ran outside and immediately put the carpet to the test. I was disappointed to find out it couldn't fly over mountains, but it can do pretty much everything else. I went to cove, talked to the sisters about the shard and they shared their vision, a very very long and convoluted vision might I add, and then saw that they actually sell Mandrake and Nightshade here! But it is horribly expensive, might as well go pick some up instead.

So I headed to that little spot of Mandrake in the bloody plains and waited for midnight. A good thing about Ultima V is that now you search NEXT to you and not on you so I can get mandrake without getting poisoned.






I then saved my game and called it a day. Whew what an adventure eh? Ultima V is pretty good so far! I haven't yet tried the dungeons though :D

I have to admit that I am a bit tired of the graphics engine used in Ultima 1 to 5. I'm anxious to be done with Ultima V and move on to the the 1990's where there's actually more than like 5 colors in the game (yes I'm exaggerating).

P.S: I've been thinking a lot about what I am going to play next after Ultima V. Now the logical answer to that would be Ultima VI, but I am instead thinking about playing Savage Empire and Martian Dreams first. My reasoning is that those two games are basically inferior games to Ultima VI, at least from a technical standpoint. They seem to have inferior graphics, music and depth to Ultima VI so why would I want to play the superior game before the inferior ones? Ultima VI came on eight disks while the two other games came only on two. Tell me what you think about my idea.

Ultima V Day 2

Yeah I haven't posted in a while even though tuesday. I sort of forced myself to write before forgetting what happened.

Well I did forget :D What I can say though I that I am finally getting into my groove. So far I think I've played around 6 hours and I'm just getting comfortable. This game is much much harder to play than the previous ones. The day-night cycle and the oppressive atmosphere contribute to the difficulty and in fact are probably the source of it. At one point I ran out of food and I had to go from Minoc to Paws to get some. I managed to use a moongate but it took me a couple of tries to do it without having one my character die.

But now I have a boat, gotten from some pirates and more money. I also have a lot of surplus equipment which I could sell for my monetary needs. I got a couple of quests from the shrines and learned a couple of things from the fortune teller in moonglow. I'm still not sure about the big picture, what am I supposed to accomplish in the end? I still don't really know. But as I learn more about the little pieces it should complete the puzzle.

Is it me or is the morning star absolutely awesome? I love it!

I'm just getting into my comfort zone so I expect the real fun to begin here. I'll tell you more about it in the next few days!

Ultima V Day 1

Here I go! As you can see I started Ultima V yesterday and well, it was quite interesting. Before plunging in the game I had to create my character and I noticed that I could transfer my character from Ultima IV. I didn't think I could do it since I had played Ultima IV using xu4 instead of the original DOS program, but after digging around I found my savegames and they worked with U5!






Only my stats were not maxed out in Ultima IV. I finished the game with 50 STR, 46 DEX and 46 INT. That gave me 25 STR and 24 DEX/INT in Ultima V. I thought about it for three seconds and decided it was worth it to max out my character in Ultima IV before importing him.

So I fired up U4, got the heck out of the abyss using x-it, grabbed my boat, sailed to Britain, ran all the way up to wrong (the Truth + Love dungeon) and looked for an orb. Didn't take me long to find one, saved my game and headed back into Ultima V. Look at the results!




















From what I can see this gives me a HUGE, and I mean a HUGE boost early on! Everytime I tried to play Ultima V (which consisted of running around to fight monsters basically) before I thought the battles seemed quite hard even that early in the game. This should even the odds a bit. I know I can do the same for Ultima VI so this fills my heart with thoughts of glory and success! And also of Love, Truth and Courage of course. My capacity for good is INFINITE after all! At least I think it is. Oh no, wait, it isn't according to the rest of this post!

What do I mean? I'll get to it don't worry. Before starting the game I read through the manual, which is HUGE btw, far bigger than any of the previous ones, and found it quite interesting. I also read the player reference card, the spell book etc. What's fun about Ultima V is that I still have the original map! Lookie!





Yep, one of the few things left over from the games I had on the commodore 64 as a kid. The other things I have left are of course the Ultima IV guide I talked about earlier in a previous post, and two of the coins that came with some of the games. Having the map will keep me from having to use that black and white atlas that came with the Ultima Collection.

After importing my character I read the in game introduction, and I have to say that I was quite happy to hear stones. I finally feel like I'm really getting into Ultima now. Then the game started.

Oh boy. OH FREAKING BOY. Already in that hut I was OVERWHELMED with the possibilities offered to me! I was testing out the controls and I realized I could look everywhere, search everywhere, get the torches on the walls, push stuff. Can you imagine? Of course you guys can but for me it's day and night between this and Ultima IV. The complexity of this game, even that early on, seemed to be on a totally different level than Ultima IV. Oh and did I mention the equipment? So many more choices! And my characters actually started out pretty well equipped which is...actually I'm not too sure what I think of it since I like the concept of starting out in my trousers and then getting to buy some cool new stuff as time goes on. I guess I'll take every advantage they're going to give me, it's not like I have a choice though.





































After this little period of discovery my first thought was "Holy hell I'm in deep trouble". You know when I started this blog the title of it was "Follow Rotting Dragon as he TRIES to finish every Ultima". I wasn't sure I could do it and games like Ultima V shows me why. At this point though I'm sure I'll end up finishing all of them so I changed the title. It's not going to be easy though that's for sure.

Did I mention that I love the graphics? In fact I don't ever remember commenting on how ugly the overworld graphics are. The reason for that is that I DON'T find them ugly. I was raised with these graphics and I love them. Now I won't say they're good looking but they don't disturb me one bit. The dungeon graphics however that's another story entirely. It's just that I feel that a first person game relies almost entirely on the graphics to convey information to you, so if the graphics suck then it's basically like you're walking around blindfolded. That was certainly the case in Ultima III and it was also the case in Ultima IV. I don't know about you guys but I like to see where I'm walking. That's really my main problem with the dungeons. In a way their problem is that they're too ambitious for the technology that was available at the time.

I also like the music. Now I was slightly disappointed with the music of both U3 and U4 but the reason for it was because of the repetitiveness of it. As good as the music is, when you've been hearing it over and over and over again for 25 hours, you'll get tired of it guaranteed. One way to solve that is to make each particular tune longer, so you don't notice it as much when it loops because the track lasts 2 to 3 minutes. The other solution is the one they started to use in Ultima VI (if I remember correctly) which is to use more than one track for any given situation, totally solving the problem. I think, I'll know better after playing Ultima VI. But for the moment the music in Ultima V definitely sounds better than the two previous games. One reason for that is that I am finally hearing some classic Ultima tunes, such as the aforementioned 'Stones', which feels great.

I'm getting distracted a lot today aren't I? I decided to write in a more natural manner lately and rely less on screenshots. Anyway on to the game.

I headed in a straight line for the castle of Lord British. I found it quite quickly and entered it's surrounding suburbs (which is a nice touch). My first interaction with the population of this Britannia was,well,non-existent because it was nightime! And in Ultima V people SLEEP during the night! Holy cow that makes my job of gathering information THAT much more complicated! So I walked around trying to find something of interest and I found what seemed to be an empty bed at the healer. So I slept. After waking up the healer kept blocking the way to the door so I had to step on the bed of one of the patients to reach it. Oops!






















Afterwards I gathered a lot of info, learned the word of power Vilis, heard something about a secret quest given by the shrines, glass swords etc. I learned a good bit of info. The NPC's sure have a lot to say compared to Ultima IV, that's for sure! It makes it harder to detect the good stuff from the bullshit but I'll manage.

Something funny happened during my discovery of the game. I stumbling around at night and found a stable. Strangely the doors were unlocked so...I stole a horse. Now I don't know wether upholding the virtues is important in this game but I have a hunch it is and I still took the horse. The funny part is that I had no idea how to kept him from moving. The manual says really clearly that I have to leave my horse next to a hitching post if I want him to stay still and not run away. WELL IT DOESN'T WORK! I tried and tried and tried. I tried to leave him north of the post, south of the post, west of it and east, NADA. If I sleep or go up stairs that son of a mare leaves! After 20 minutes of this circus I realized that I just leave him outside like in Ultima IV he just stays put. Are those manuals supposed to help me or hinder me? I wonder :)

The rest of my time was spent gathering more information. I messed around with an harpsichord in LB's castle which was interesting and fired a cannon which seems to have made the guard pissed off at me. I didn't way to see what they were going to do to me I just restarded but it could have been interesting to see what happens when I get thrown in the dungeons.


I ended up going over to Paws and ended my session there. Total play time at this time stands at around 3 hours. My impression of the game so far are great but really intimidating. Ultima V is much much more complex than Ultima IV is. As long as I keep taking good notes I'll be fine!

Some thoughts!

In the comments section of my last post my ideas were criticized by Calibrator and it made me think a lot. I'd like to make a few things clear.

First off you guys need to realize what kind of person is writing this blog. Even though I've always loved the Ultimas I was never able to finish them. Why is that? Obviously because I wasn't able to handle them. I was raised with them up to the age of 7 but then my attention turned to the NES and I became a hardcore console players from that point onward. In 1997 we bought our first PC and that's when I had my first contact with Ultima 6,7, UW etc. I tried my hand at those games but I just couldn't play them. Even as a kid I didn't understand the concept of having to take notes in video games, I thought that was just stupid, that you shouldn't have to 'work' while playing a game. In a way I'm still like that, I think games are about sitting down and unwinding. I'm also quite the lazy person, both mentally and physically, so that obviously factors into the equation. I usually do things because I have to, not because I want to. For example I train at the gym because I need to, to be healthy and not die from an heart attack at age 29. I go to college because I need to, I want to have a job I like and not be stuck doing boring work for my entire life. I'd honestly rather not do anything but play videogames all day but I can't so I don't. With videogames though you often have a choice, if a videogame asks too much of you then just don't play it and that's what I've always done with the Ultimas even though I've always desperately wanted to finish them.

In a way that makes my blog even more interesting because it's about someone who's not an Ultima style player trying his hand at finishing all of them. Will I prefer the autonomous party members of Ultima VII? Most likely. Will I like the Nintendoish Ultima 8? I know I already do because of all the 'modern' Ultimas it's the one I played the most. By now you probably don't have to ask yourself why. Now the question is, will I like Ultima 8 MORE than the 'real' Ultimas or less? I might like it less you never know. But I might also like it more I won't rule that out :)

And Ultima 9? Action adventure games are not my cup of tea and that's why I never played it. The reason why I'm not a big fan of action adventure games is the mix, I don't like the mix of genres. To me, action and adventure games should be separate not together. I dislike being in a big action packed battle and then when you're done everything slows down and you have to figure out how to get to the next door or whatever. The mix of style doesn't suit me, give me either an adventure game or an action game, not both in the same package. I like the Zelda games but I don't love them for exactly that reason.

Aside from that I disagree that today's games are shallower than they were before. If you compare them to Ultima then yes obviously they are more shallow but then what isn't? There's nothing quite like Ultima out there and from what I know there was nothing quite like Ultima even when Ultima was the big thing! Oblivion isn't more shallow than something like the Bard's tale or Wizardy. Bioware is putting out some great rpgs still and they must be respected. The first person shooters of the 21st century are better than those of the 90's, adventure games might not be better than they were in the 90's but I'd argue that they are deeper storyline wise, Japanese RPGs are in a rut right now I'll admit but that's more due to the somewhat collapsing japanese gaming industry rather than due to mainstream taste.

I mean honestly, aside from the incredible depth of the Ultima series there was nothing before that was really deeper than what we have out now. The market is dominated by first person shooters and sports game but if you want a deep game you can find it, you just can't get an Ultima style game. Does the lack of Ultima automatically make the market shallower than it used to be? Well I think THAT'S a shallow thought. If you're not able to enjoy yourself except by playing the deepest of games then I guess that's your problem, not mine :)

I'll admit that I'm not the deepest person on the planet but I think there's place for everybody. You also have to keep in mind that I am NOT a native english speaker which explains my inability to write correctly sometimes. Just keep in mind that I'm a lazy SOB when reading my writings and you'll be fine! Oh and keep the comments coming, I like even the negative ones! I sincerily hope that Calibrator will keep reading my blog and will keep commenting, and I'm not freaking joking. Of course Natreg too and that anonymous guy (or maybe guys, that would be weird since I always see anonymous as being the same person over and over), whoever he is.

On another note I've started Ultima V and O M G is it a step up from Ultima IV, and I mean in difficulty! I told my friends on MSN that I was finally starting the Ultimas I've always feared. There's five freaking levels to LB's castle! Holy moly.

I'll tell you more about it tomorrow!

P.S: I usually answer comments directly in the comments section, so if you left a comment at one time chances are I answered it there!

Ultima IV Day 7 - FINAL -

So I finally managed to finish Ultima IV. The last few days were AWFUL. Once again the dungeons really really suck in Ultima IV. They probably were state of the art in 1985 but today they just don't hold up. The rest of the game still feels somewhat unique since there aren't any games like Ultima out there today, but dungeons? Dungeons are in every modern RPG thus they make those in Ultima IV feel so old, slow and boring. Crap I almost wanted to kill myself at some points.

I was hoping the abyss would be better but obviously it was much worse. The whole room system is awful, it's slow as hell and you need to steer your characters to the exit yourself which is awkward. Dungeons have just been done so much better afterwards, that's the main problem. Oh well.

Overall though the game is much better than the first three, but it's not quite 'there' yet. I don,t have much to say because what is there to say? I spent the last two gaming days going in the dungeons, grabbing the stones and then when I was done I went in the abyss, used the stones on the altars, answered the question and that was it. It was boring, that's all there is to it :D

I blinked my way to the entrance of Shame which is pretty nifty but since I had already done the trick for the white stone it's not quite as impressive. I used to think that Blink was an awful and useless spell but now I think otherwise, I friggin love it!

I'll be honest I'm anxious to put Ultima IV behind me and move on to Ultima V, a game I have pretty much never played. In a way I have now completed the first step of my journey: I have completed every Ultima game I had played as a child. Now I am getting into the obscure (to me) Ultimas, the one I completely missed at their date of release. Well Ultima 5 isn't exactly like that, we did own it on the Commodore 64 but I wasn't allowed to play it and when I finally did it felt clunky, buggy and it didn't have music. The game kept crashing too so I'm thinking our discs were going bad.

What do I expect of Ultima V? I expect it to be a substantial leap over Ultima IV, a more dynamic game with a much improved story. I'll probably start it tomorrow so stay tuned!

Ultima IV Day 5 & 6

Sorry guys I have been busy the last few days!

Also I'm at what seems to be an extremely boring bit of Ultima IV: the endgame. My guy is now level 8 so I recruited Mariah, giving me all companions. I found the mystic weapons and armors, found out you could sell em, sold a bunch of em giving me limitless funds, bought a bunch of reagents, created a bunch of spells etc.

I readied myself for the dungeons, and guess what? The dungeons SUCK, once again! I can't believe how bad and boring they are! Now I hope the abyss is better than the other dungeons because good lord this is not fun. I expect it to be since, you know, it's the endgame so it'll probably be pretty exciting :)

I won't say more than that tonight but you can expect a post from me in the next couple of days when I finish the game!

I'll post a couple of screenshots for you lonely sods :)

Ultima IV Day 4

...Honestly I did so much yesterday I have no idea where to begin, again. Generally, I found all of the runes, became a partial avatar in five of the eight virtues, learned a bunch of stuff about the Skull, the Wheel, the bell...well about everything I would say. I know exactly what stones should be placed on what altar, mostly by deduction. I even know the word that encompasses the three principles of virtue. I would go as far as to say that I know pretty much everything there is to know at this point. I have the three words that make up the word of passage too. Really the only thing I don't know about at this point are where the mystic weapons and armors are since I need to be an 8 part avatar for that. So for this post let's focus on the strange happenings once again, rather than just sort of being a parrot and repeating everything I did.



...Need I say more? I was looking for some mandrake in the bloody plains and I came upon this little spot of swamp. Now the dude who told me about mandrake specified about a place where the ground is always damp. I realized right away he meant that little wimpy spot. However I couldn't seem to be able to find any, but then I thought "Hey it seems most things can only be gotten when both moons are dark in this game so this might not be any different" and tadaa, mandrake root. Sort of lame if you ask me but hey, this was made in 1985 so no complaining.





Eventually the seer told me that I was a subject for elevation in the virtue of humility. Now that meant that I had to go to that crazy island in the southeast...an island with volcanoes, monsters and like a thousand pirate ships. I was also told that I needed a silver horn to scare away the demons guarding the shrine and that it was located somewhere "Some say the horn is buried on a small isle off the tip of spiritwood!". I'm sure someone could have given me the EXACT location with lat and long but I still didn't have a sextant so I wouldn't have been able to use it. I'm actually always very poor in this game somehow. So I checked out the map, saw spiritwood and noticed the islands. Away I went!



















I finally found it after searching like a madman. And this wasn't the worst of it, you should have seen me look for the Wheel today, pure craziness. Although that will be for day 5's post :)






Next I headed for that island in the southeast. At this point I'm not sure I had went yet, someone told me to check out the place "In the southeast!" so that's where I went. Oh boy I wasn't ready for this. I stumbled right into a lair of nasty pirates and after downing a couple found out the hard way that I wasn't ready. I guess that's the reason why the wheel is needed uh?





I headed up instead and eventually reached a spot that seemed to be the entrance to the shrine. It was sort of mazelike and confusing but I eventually ended up where I wanted to. I blew the horn, not once but twice and became a partial avatar in humility. Weeee!





After that I decided to learn how to use the moongates. Was quite easy, I just wrote down where each moongate would take me and now I can travel easily that way. I found out that I couldn't reach cove via the moongates though so I entered a whirlpool with my boat, who miraculously survived, and headed for cove. There I learned a bunch of neat stuff and I got the candle. I also learned about that crazy word there even though I had already sort of figured it out by that point.


Then I felt like exploring that island in the southeast. I had seen the lair of the pirates and the shrine but there seemed to be so much more! So I navigated there by way of Skara Brae and sailed around the place. I found a place that seemed like a volcano I could walk in. Now someone had told me that I should only use the skull of mondain at the mouth of the abyss to destroy it. I thought this was it, this was the place. So like an idiot I park my boat next to the swamp, cross it, enter the volcano, go smack in that spot that looks like a waterfall and used the skull. It sure as hell didn't work because it rid me of all my virtues. I rebooted the game and went to the same spot, but this time I pressed on every key on the keyboard to see if there was an 'other' option like in Ultima III. By mistake I pressed on Q and saved my game. LUCKILY I hadn't used the skull this time but two of my characters were dead and it was generally a pain in the ass since no one has enough MP to Resurrect yet so that was 600 gp to pay at the healer. I'm already poor darnit!



















Next is something absolutely crazy. The ghost told me that the white stone was on top of the serpent's spine and that I need to fly to get there or something like that. I was roaming around the spine and just couldn't think how to get there. I thought "Hey, there's probably a passage up there in the mountain to which I need to get." So I looked at the book of spells and saw the 'Blink' spell. It's sort of like a short range teleportation spell. I said to myself that if I timed the range right I could teleport myself right in the mountain and hopefully I would lend in the passage.




















As you can see I missed it the first time. So I backed up a bit and tried again. The results? See for yourself :





UNBELIEVABLE! There's no way in HELL that I could have, in my second try, teleported myself right in that small itty bitty spot! The only logical explanation I have for this is that the game is rigged in such as way that the moment you teleport anywhere on the mountain it immediately takes you to that spot. Because anything else would be insane, just insane. When I blinked out though it seemed like I went back to the same spot I started from so..who knows. Still can't believe it.

Next I tried to find the black stone. That was easier since all I had to do was search on a gate spot when both moons were dark. I wasn't having much success with the first few gates I tried so I tried Moonglow since its gate goes up at the dark moon and my guess was good, there was the black stone at the moment the gate went up.





So that's it for yesterday's news! I played the game for about 2 hours today and will probably play again before the day is over. You'll hear about it tomorrow!

P.S: Oh and a funny screenshot for you guys. My character died at one point and I got him ressed by LB. And guess what? When I got in battles afterwards my character icon was still the dead one, even though I was fighting and moving! Luckily a restart fixed all that.

Ultima IV Day 3

Holy cow this game is crazy. I took like 60 screenshots yesterday alone. I'm not sure where to start but I guess i'll take it from the beginning. I think from now on I will use a new way to write the blogs, as in I will write first and then afterwards post the fitting screenies. Before I would look at the screenshots first and then write something about each one but that takes forever and isn't really interesting, at least for me.



The last time I had stopped in front of the Lycaeum..no wait, that was Empath Abbey, I made a mistake there. My goal was to sail around the map remember? I gathered as much info as I could from the abbey, including stuff about the candle of love and some bard and whatnot. Afterwards I found Yew and collected the rune and the mantra. I also asked Jaana to join me since I wanted a pure magic user in the party to cast spells. I know it would make even more mobs appear but I don't really care, I'm used to random battles in JRPG's so this isn't much different. A thing I found funny is that the whole Antos family is well and alive in Ultima IV and the father came down from his crazy planet it seems. I met the brother, the sister and the father. And they all have crucial information about the candle, book and bell.

















In my travels I ended up going pretty much everywhere on the map. I'm not sure I want to get into the details of what I found out in every city and whatnot, it's a LOT of information and it would make for one long ass post, and I don't feel like writing that long. I will focus instead on the interesting stuff.

Once I had seen all three castles and almost all of the cities (at that time I hadn't yet been to Buccaneer's Den, Cove and Vesper) I realized that some of the stuff on the map was missing. Where was Magincia, where I had already been? Where was the den? I took a quick look at the Ultima V and VI maps and there were certainly more islands on there than on the UIV one. So I decided to check out if those islands were indeed in Ultima IV.



I sailed east from Serpent's Hold and ended up at a trio of Volcanoes. I thought it looked pretty cool and decided to take a screenshot for you guys. So I navigate in the middle of the volcanoes and then I realized something: That was the only way of entry and everywhere else there was shallow waters. In fact you can't even get close to the volcanoes because of that. Everything looked weird...and suspicious. Usually in an Ultima when you see something like there's something really important close by. Without even thinking I went south a bit to reach the corner, since everything in Ultima IV always seems to be in a corner, and pressed S. I didn't even think about it, it just came to me naturally and my finger went automatically on the S.

Holy crap the skull of mondain was there! Hahahah! That is so cool. In most modern games you can't get plot sensitive items unless you've gotten the quest or heard about them beforehand but in Ultima IV there's none of that. Sort of like the ghost episode in my last post luck and instinct allowed me to take a shortcut here! Now I just have to learn what I am supposed to do with that skull, someone told me that if I use it I lose all of my virtues. I won't use it :|




Afterwards I sailed upward to check out some of the other islands and I found Magincia and eventually, the den. I was happy to finally get my hands on a sextant but..wait..I don't have enough money! BUMMER! Man those FREAKING sea monsters don't give any money and that's all I've been fighting. I can't wait to get back on solid ground.






Also is it me or do NPC's sometime give out false information? Calumny told me that I can find Mandrake Root at the fens of the dead and on the bloody plains. So here I am at the freaking fens looking for Mandrake and I never found any. I searched every square there and I found NOTHING. What the hell did he lie to me? I'll have to check out the plains next and they better be there because if they aren't, I'll be pissed.





At this point I know all of the mantras and I have six of the runes. I know where the last two are but I wanted to be able to dispel fields before getting the one in Trinsic and to get a little stronger before getting the one in the forges of Minoc. Afterwards I'll focus on becoming a partial avatar in all virtues since it seems I need to do that to get my hands on some mystic weapons and armors. I already am a partial avatar in valor, my only one at this point in time! They gave me a vision when I became a partial avatar in valor and it's a weird one. It's a picture of someone fighting skeletons with the rune for F on it. What the hell?





Next I'll get the last two runes I need, get my points in each virtue high enough to become a partial avatar in them, get some mystic weapons and armors and well, plunge into the dungeons for the first time. I'm still really confused about this whole stone business. I know that each altar needs four stones..and the way I understand it there's an altar in every dungeon. Each dungeon is supposed to contain a stone although Hythloth lost his. So I need to know what stones go on which altar in what dungeon before going there. Oh boy, this is going to be something. I'm scared that I missed out on some information along the way, that's going to be painful. I also need to find Cove and Vesper and I think I know how to get there. That's it for today!