Ultima VI day 2

I'm back! Yeah, I've been gone a while but what can I say, college is hard! But now I sort of have gotten a hang of it so I'm expecting to be able to play at least once a week.

Let's get to it!

After roaming around in Britain during my last game I decided to head to yew. Now the funny thing is that I don't remember why I wanted to go to Yew, but I think I wanted to ask Jaana to join me. I also thought that liberating the shrine of justice first would be a good idea.

So I headed off towards Yew like the good traveler I am, but when I reached the western crossroads I took a quick look at my map and saw that Skara Brae was really really close by. I didn't think I would be able to go there on foot of course, but I still wanted to check it out.

To my surprise, you can now effectively walk to Skara Brae! So there I went and I promptly started my information gathering.









The whole town of Skara Brae is up in arms over the murder of a man. The rumors seem to pinpoint the murder on gargoyles, but it really looks much more complicated than that. After a lot of talking and prodding I learned that the murdered man's daughter has the rune of spirituality, so I went and talked to her. She talked about an amulet she got from her father and whatnot, so I figured that her possessions must have been in the chest right next to her. I opened the chest and low and behold, the rune of spirituality!





I wanted to solve the murder but at this point it doesn't seem I can. I tracked down the ghost of the murdered man but I couldn't talk to him. I then checked out the spell book that comes with the game and noticed a spell to talk to the dead. At first I thought: "This is it!" but I quickly found out that in Ultima VI you can't just cast any spell for which you have the necessary level and reagents, you also need to have the spell in your spellbook. Unfortunately I did not have that spell, but I had heard of an hermit that specialized in magical stuff who lived just north of Skara Brae. I took a skiff from the harbor and went to the hermit's island. The hermit did sell spells, but he wasn't selling the one I wanted. I had to resign myself to come back later to solve the mystery :(


















In the picture of the spellbook you can see that firefox is opened to a page called "How to rest". I couldn't seem to figure out how to sleep in beds so I googled it and I never found anything. It clearly seems that you cannot sleep in beds in Ultima VI which is quite retarded! My back is aching for my characters!

Now everything I just wrote happened when I played a bit about 3 weeks ago, or maybe it was two? Time goes by very slowly these days :) What I am about to write happened today.

So after Skara Brae I decided to head up to Yew like I wanted to. I took the road and headed north, all the way to Empath Abbey. Not much was happening in the abbey, it seems to have transformed itself into a winery. I honestly did not see much of importance, but I surely missed something. One thing about Ultima VI is that I am a lot less thorough in my investigations. In the previous Ultimas, I would literally plunder the towns of their information on my first visit there. But in Ultima VI the towns are large and kind of hard to visit so I'm not as thorough in my gathering. I'm expecting to have to visit each town more than once that's for sure.

Oh I didn't mention my encounter with Smith the talking horse. Quite a funny one :D Didn't seem to have anything interesting to say though.










So after talking to a few people in the Abbey I headed east to Yew. I encountered a couple reapers, who summoned what seemed like a million insects. The reapers were sort of easy, and didn't give much treasure which is an unfortunate change from the previous games :) Not a lot of battles in Ultima VI so far, the focus has clearly changed from fighting to adventuring that's for sure.






Didn't take me long to reach Yew. Once again I did a quick talkthrough and it quickly led me to the thief in the prison. I needed the key to talk to him so I went and asked the mayor or whoever she is to give me permission for it and she agreed.

The man told me that he stole from the grave of the previous mayor to feed his kids and all sort of sad things. He told me that If I could get him out of there that he would tell me where the rune is. So I went back to the mayor and asked her if she could release him and she said "NEVER!". I then asked her about his kids and she told me he was lying, that he didn't have any kids! So I went back to him and he admitted to his lies. He then asked me to take the rune from the city if he told me where it was, and to that I obviously agreed since that is what I was going to do with it anyway! That's when I learned that he hid the rune under a plant in 'the Slaughtered Lamb inn'.

I looked for the Inn and quickly found it, and guess who was sitting there? Jaana! And she looked like she had just turned 95! She honestly seems to be falling at the seems, she looked so bad that I hesitated to ask her to join me. I sure as hell ain't keeping her in my party, she's distracting me with her granny looks! Afterwards I grabbed the rune, under the watchful eyes of granny here.










I then thought I was done with the city for now and decided to go liberate my first shrine! As quick as the wind I headed up the path to the shrine and got the living hell beat out of me! Not once but twice! Those gargoyles are TOUGH! Not only tough but the big ones with wings seem to be invincible, I couldn't even touch them once. I'm guessing I need magical weapons for them. Oh well. I don't have much of a choice but to come back later.






I ran for my life to the east and stumbled upon a pair of skiffs. I quickly embarked on one, looked at the map and headed for Minoc. Before going there I thought that it would be interesting to see if I could reach Stonegate without any sort of crazy rappel shenanigans. To my surprise I stumbled on a kid who told me he was the adopted son of...cyclops?!? Holy crap!




















He also told me that there is a bunch of stuff laying around Stonegate, so I went and talked to his 'mother' and she told me that everything down there is locked and that I need the key. The 'father' was obviously holding the key so I went and talked to him and he told me that he would trade the key for a fish. I like that trade!







I grabbed a fishing pole and quickly got me a fish. I gave it to him and I got the key! YES! But what the heck was I supposed to do with it I asked myself. The key wasn't working in the portcullis on the lower level. At first I turned off every brazier but that didn't seem to be working. I then searched every wall but couldn't find a thing. I then went upstairs and started to search the walls there and I found a secret door! I went down the stairs I found there but couldn't see anything except a weird blue square. Couldn't seem to do anything with the square so I searched all the walls, nothing either. I was becoming a bit irritated so I headed back up and..what? When my teammates disappeared I saw that there were switches below them! I quickly headed back down and flipped all of them on. They opened the portcullis below!




















That didn't help me much though. After roaming for a while I had to come to the conclusion that I need to be able to open magical doors to get anywhere. At one point I found a secret door BEYOND a magical door which was quite annoying. Disappointed, I headed back outside, saved, and decided to call it a day.







So far I've realized one thing: I need more stuff! I need magical weapons and more spells! That will be my quest from now on. Expect to hear more from me in a week!