Ultima IV Day 1

I finally managed to play Ultima IV. As I said in the previous post I was forced to use xu4 to play Ultima IV but at this point I sure don't regret it. I'm extremely impressed with the program, it doesn't only play Ultima IV but also improves it on many fronts. The only problem I've seen with it so far is that the sound effects are too subdued compared to the music but that's relatively minor. I took screenshots of the configuration screens to show you the amount of configuration options they've added to Ultima IV.
















































I pretty much enabled everything in the end. Automatic actions is pretty cool and text colorization makes everything easier to read. For example when I'm fighting and the enemy start to flee I see the text in yellow to the right so I don't even have to look I can see it from the corner of my eye. For the graphical options at first I used the 2xSai filter but I found it too soft quite quickly. I really miss the HQXX filter, that one is truly the best one I've seen. 2xBi and 2xSai are too soft while Point and 2xScale are quite sharp. I ended up settling on 2xScale at 4x magnification.


So what about the game you ask? I am absolutely impressed. Now I don't know how much xu4 is affecting my gameplay experience but the game just feels better than the previous games in the series. Seems like every problem I had with Ultima III was fixed here: The food consumption has been greatly lowered, the battles are much faster paced, the dialogue is much tighter (there's actual dialogue now) etc. Everything is better. I'm baffled at how I could once have thought UIII to be better than this, there's no way. The music is much better too, in Ultima III the base melody is good but it doesn't last long enough so you get stuck with the same song repeating over and over quite rapidly which becomes annoying in no time.




I ended up being a fighter like I always am. As a kid compassion was my leading virtue followed closely by honesty. It annoyed me because I can't say I particularly like mages or bards. But as I grew older valor came at the forefront and now everytime I take the Ultima test I end up as a fighter. However compassion is always up at the end against valor however this time it was honesty as it sometimes is. So you could say that I haven't changed much since being a kid.




I started out by learning everything I could at this point from the town of Jhelom. If I remember the rune here is in a jail cell however with no keys I can't get it. No problem I'll come back later. I learned many things here such as the mantra of valor, the location of the red stone and the connections between the dungeons destard, covetous, shame and hythloth. Afterwards I checked out the weapons and armors shops but everything was too expensive for me so I headed out.





I entered the gate that appeared next to Jhelom and appeared outside Skara Brae. I promply proceeded to once again loot the place of its information, at least of what I could get at this particular point in time. I learned of the location of the shrine of spirituality, I heard of Zair the wise in Paws who knows something about the word of passage necessary in the abyss, Nightshade in Vesper etc. I won't relate everything I learn in every city because that would be interminable but I learned a lot here. Most importantly I was told the location of the rune and what the mantra was.



I took another gate and arrived at New Magincia. I entered it but quickly realized I had no business here yet and should come back at a later date. So after entering a couple of gates I arrived south of Trinsic and decided to skip it to head directly to Lord British's castle.


















I thought his speech was funny, it seemed to directly criticize his previous game since those games were all about killing stuff and getting gold. I asked him to heal me and then headed off to grab the rune of spirituality. I have one! This is actually the only rune of which I remembered the location. I visited the seer to ask a couple of questions then took a walk around the castle to pick up a couple more conversations before heading out to Britain.



There I managed to both get the rune of compassion, its mantra and learned the location of the shrine! I asked Iolo to join me and then I headed off to the shrine however we came to a stop in front of a massive swamp. At first I tried to cross it but quickly realized that I couldn't do it without getting poisoned. I thought maybe I should go to Yew and ask for Jaana's (I think) services but then realized that there was no need since Iolo as a bard can cast spells! So all I would need are the reagents for a few cure spells and I could go meditate at the shrine!




But I was already planning on stopping for the night so I didn't have time to go hunt for reagents. I decided to stop by Britain and equip myself with some new equipment. I was disappointed to see that the shops in Britain truly pale in comparison to the ones in Jhelom, at least the weaponry and armour shops do! I still decided to pick up a nice sword, much better than the Axe I had previously. Next thing in line is try to get a bow or even better a crossbow for Iolo and some reagents, all the while stopping by towns to plunder them of their knowledge.