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.