Ultima III Day 4 - FINAL -

I managed to finish Ultima III today. I tell you I literally played ALL day. I had the day off so I just plunged.

The problem I'm having lately is that I tend to forget what I did earlier in the day. Like now I'm looking at some screenshots to try and refresh my memory. Let's see if it works.

I began the day with some typical guard basing. I guess I had decided to raise my levels a bit and that seems to be the best way to do it in this game. I had my sights well set on getting all the +4 bows for my characters and I needed a lot of money for that. However I was somewhat disappointed with the bows. Although I saw a difference between the normal and magical bow it wasn't as much as I thought it would be. At that point I had already bought two bows but I decided to focus a bit on raising my stats instead. So I gathered some gold and headed to Ambrosia. At first I focused on raising dexterity a bit and then afterwards I put everything into strength.


During that time I kept killing guards whenever I
so at one point I decided I was strong enough to take my foot off the pedal a bit and look for clues. The first place I headed to is LB's castle. I unlocked the doors of the prison and liberated some thieves. They started following me giving me my own little posse of brigands! Then I decided to check out if the monsters in the right cell had something to say, they didn't. In fact they tried to kill me so I returned the favor only I unlike them succeeded. Now for some reason the guard is pissed off at me and wants to do me in. Um, dude, they just tried to kill me I just defended myself isn't that ok? I guess he probably took offense with the fact I was the one who freed them from their cells in the first place.


So here I am making a fool out of the guards with my horse and look who's there! Lord British himself! He looks pretty darn pissed that I killed those monsters in the prison and he wants to teach me a lesson! Now there's no way I'm letting that guy get anywhere close to me he probably has a godly amount of power under his little finger. I've always wondered why he doesn't fix his own problems if he's so powerful? I guess he's too busy with h
is kingly duties.








However as powerful as he is there's no way he can catch my horse. I just galloped away and he got stuck on his own follower. hehehehe!










I left the castle and got right back in. Somehow that seems to have the effect to erase everyone's memory which is great for me. I decide to go look at some of the corridors hidden deep inside the castle and guess what I find? Freaking walls made of lava! Inside LB's castle! What the hell is he doing with lava walls? And how did it get there anyway? I decide to follow this suspicious wall of molten rock and guess where I end up? :!






At the oracle! Now that is weird. An oracle hidden deep inside a castle with lava walls. Now that would sound logical if this were Exodus' castle but this isn't it. Oh well. So I decide to repeat my little magical act of Ultima II and ask him everything he knows all while restarting the game everytime I run out of money. I learned a couple of interesting things. He tells me that I will learn to use the marks in devil guard...now I had no idea what devil guard was in fact I thought it was the town I kept looting over and over but I found out later it wasn't the case. Also I already knew how to use the marks, in fact I already had two..or maybe even three at that point. Yeah I'm pretty sure I had three, I got the fire mark and the force mark on the bottom of the Dungeon of Fire (I think) and I got the mark of king way back in the early game in the dungeon to the right of the castle. I haven't really taken a lot of pictures in dungeons, I guess they were too boring for that. Once I started using gems they were easy as hell too, I must have spent a couple thousand gold pieces in gems alone for the dungeons. Thanks to Draconius for the tip!

Now there were a couple of interesting things in the castle. At one point a guard kept following me but was not attacking which was creepy. I guess he was a fan! Too bad you can't other:autograph. Also I found a boat in the back which I kept in mind in case I lost mine. I didn't.


















At this point I decided to finish buying magical bows for my parties. I headed to..death gulch I think it's called and proceeded to loot the place. I got a little greedy and decided to loot the food joint and well, I got caught. Now at this point getting caught wasn't much of a problem for me however it was a major one for the town guards who were on the verge of getting slaughtered. I killed the two guard parties here, stole the rest of the chests here and then moved on to the armor shop.






Afterwards I headed up to the weapons shop. At this point pretty much every guard had been killed except for those two behind the gates. So I could steal in piece without getting disturbed. I headed down to show you guys the result of my destruction:







There you go. Cleaned it good uh? Nothing left! And I'd like to assure the noble citizens of Death Gulch that I put all of that money to good use by saving your land and all its people! You should thank me for the multiple massacres I did in your town! :|
The game is really evil. I totally understand when parents sent letter to Garriott claiming his games were promoting breaking the law. There's no way you can succeed without doing it :) I guess every impressionable kid who played this game came way from it thinking that If you don't break the law you won't get far.



















I finally headed to Dawn to buy my last bow. I was really happy about getting it so I went to the armor shop and proceeded to loot it clean, it and every other shop in the city. The guards were pretty mad so they chased me but they couldn't catch me. I even took the time to drop by the guild shop and buy some torches, keys and gems! At this point the guards were not only pissed but quite insulted, look for yourself:



Now the oracle told me two other things. He told me that I should look to the Montors for help from above and that I could find the lord of time in the dungeons. Now for the Montors bit I headed to Montor ...west I think, fired up a gem and understood right away what he meant: the prison. So I headed up to the prison, prepared to bribe the guard...and then thought what the hell I'm not spending another time on these guys let's just kill him. So once again I fended off another torrent of guards, quite easily.

I was really surprised when I headed to the castle for some leveling up and was answered: NO MORE! I was like WHAAAAAT! Seems the level cap is 25, holy crap I was already much higher than than and I wasn't done yet with the game, I still was lacking the mark of the snake, two of the cards and had yet to see the time lord!



Then I decided it was about time to finish the game. When you reach the level cap well, you should be thinking about finishing it up. Now at this point I had been to the bottom of four dungeons, giving me three marks. I went to the dungeon to the right of the castle because I remembered it was an easy way to get the mark of the king. I went to the bottom of dardin's pit because it was logical to do so; I was always in there for the gold anyway. I did two other dungeons randomly so I ended up with three marks out of four. I decided to try out the dungeon to the south of Death Gulch for the simple reason that I had seen a gate spawn there once and I thought "hey if there's a gate right in front of that dungeon then it might be an important one". It was. That one gave me the mark of the snake.

Now I had a problem. Where was the time lord? The oracle told me he was in the dungeons..that worried me. I had done five of them and hadn't seen anything resembling a time lord. Then I remembered someone telling me that I would learn to use the marks in Devil Guard. I had realized that DG wasn't Death Gulch but then where was it? I was stumped. So I looked at my atlas trying to think but nothing came up. So I decided to try the moongates. I hadn't even used one yet so I thought heck they might get me somewhere interesting. So after bumping from one moongate to another I ended up stuck in a narrow mountain path with no escape! I was like WHAT THE and then a gate appeared right from under me and it took me to Devil Guard. I was quite happy however they didn't teach me SQUAT. Everything they told me I already knew! I was REALLY stumped now..so I decided to get the hell out of there but I wasn't able to, I kept getting teleported to the narrow mountain patch and then back to DG! Just when I was getting desperate a gate took me right in front of a dungeon entrance, one closed off from the outside world! I knew this had to be it! Luckily I my HP was still pretty much at max, I had a enough gems for a dungeon trip and my food was high enough. So I plunged in!





The dungeon was quite easy actually. Honestly all dungeons are somewhat easy when you buy as many gems as I did. I just use like 3 per level and I'm in the clear. I got down to lvl 08 quite quickly and proceeded to the upper left corner. Guess who was there!






Here is the big man himself in all his ugly glory. He tells me the order of the cards which makes me giddy with joy. At this moment I had only two out of four cards but I knew where the other two were so it wasn't much of a problem. Yep, you heard that right, at this point in the game I had never been to the wisdom and intelligence shrines. Honestly I should have just picked four freaking warriors, the way I healed myself was to head down to the third level of Dardin's Pit, grab some chests, get healed and then come back up really quickly. No need for healing magic!



Here I am in my vessel going to Ambrosia for hopefully the last time. What's funny about this is that I can't find that darn whirlpool. I spent like 40 food just looking for it! In the pictures below you can see me leave filled with hope and then return to the same spot with despair in my heart and 30 food less per character!

















After my trip to Ambrosia I decided to try my hand at Exodus. Now I was a bit worried because none of my characters were closed to being maxed out. One character had 60 strength, another had 60 dexterity, and all of the others had a mix of those. My three other characters had 30 dexterity and something like 45 strength. My intelligence and wisdom scores were pretty miserable and useless. So I wasn't sure how well I would fare but I decided to try anyway.



















Here I am, my heart filled with rage and my fingers twitching with anticipation. I'm thinking "That thing is right up from here so that's where I'm headed, UP!". So here you can even see me going through the fire since that would have allowed me to state that I went through the fires of hell to reach my target. However my fairy tale wasn't meant to be because I came to face with the..







Phantom guards of Austin, Texas! Those sons of bitches were hard as hell when hitting me but everyone of my arrows just passed right through em! MAN I was thinking YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME. Was my dexterity not high enough? I said nah, that's impossible, I would at least hit them once every..ten times or something! So I settled on the idea that they were guards imbued with powers of an alien nature, somewhat like the Silver Surfer. Yes, they were all Silver Surfers disguised as guards.




So I rebooted my game, entered the castle and instead of going up decided to use the side door. I was promptly attacked by dragons but I thought "hey, no problem I've killed those things before!". Well the ones I killed weren't the Ghastly Dragons of Belzebub like these ones were. I was shooting my arrows like if they were rockets and the dragons just ate them or looked at them funny while gently avoiding them to the right or to the left. Something wasn't right and then it flashed, I remembered that bastard in Grey or some other hellspawned city telling me "Only exotics will protect you from great evil". CRAP.




I restart my game once again and equip the exotics. I go to the side and get attacked by wyverns this time, much better than dragons. I actually miss on the first couple of shots making me extremely nervous BUT THEN I START TO CONNECT! ALLELUYAH GIRLS AND BOYS I'M SAVED! However those monsters are TOUGH, they hit hard and I can't heal myself so I feel a bit nervous. When my two front line fighters start to weaken a bit I shift them back and replace them with my barbarian and lark.




So I finally reach the lair of the foul...machine, and WHAT'S THAT? I'm getting attacked! But I can't see my enemy! Is there even one? I look at the bottom right and it says I'm being attacked by the FLOOR, and I can't see it. ARGH. That was awful!


















On top of that I was poisoned so it was a pain to go through all those freaking mutant floor tiles. When I was done with them my lark had only 4 HP left! But I finally reached Exodus and proceeded to insert the four cards in the order the lord of time told me. Voila! Game done!


















FINAL NOTES


So what did I think of the game? I was disappointed. This isn't the game I remembered as a kid. At that age I preferred III over IV because it was simpler but now I think the roles are going to be reversed. In the end Ultima III is really similar to Ultima I and II except you have a party which both makes the game better but slower. But playing it through it again really devalued it in my eyes, it will never be again the same game for me, sort of like seeing that movie you were crazy about as a kid and thinking "Holy crap this ain't that good". Oh well. It's still good, it just isn't what I thought it to be. There is still no storyline in the game, the hackneyed dialogue from II is back in full force, the game isn't well balanced (those +4 bows are overrated I would have been better served spending that 26000gp I spent on the bows on stats instead, especially since I can't use the bows in the last castle). I'm happy to finally leave the first trilogy behind and enter in the realm of the true Ultimas, the second trilogy 'The age of Enlightenment' . Now I expect Ultima IV will take me forever to finish due to my inexperience with it. I know where a couple of the runes are although I don't remember the mantras. I also know how to play the game with the praying and all I need to do but really I never got further than a couple of runes and some characters in my team. It will be my first true test (although Ultima II was pretty harsh early on too).

I expect most of the problems of Ultima III to be fixed in Ultima IV. My characters should eat less food and everything should feel more polished. And hopefully the dungeons are better although I've never been in an Ultima IV dungeon before so I have no idea what to expect.

Anyway, see you in Ultima IV!