Ultima IV day 3

I'm back! Although I can't say I'm back in full force, since today was kind of uneventful. Let's pick up where we left off shall we?

So the last time I played Ultima VI, I had just explored what was previously...wait...holy crap, what was it called again? *check out Ultima VI notes, can't find anything, goes back to his Ultima V notes* oh yes Stonegate (am I rusty or what?).

Last time I was ready to leave Stonegate, and I was still ready to do so. The first thing I did is head up north towards Minoc. But on the way, I remembered something I had previously read in the comments of my blog, something about liberating the shrine of compassion first since it was easier than the others. I thought I should try to do that...but I had a problem. I was stuck on the absolute northern side of the map with a skiff. Now I wasn't sure if I could get back down to britain on foot (Probably I guess), and with the skiff it would have taken forever. I didn't really want to abandon the skiff either. I remembered something about being able to use the orb of the moon to open moongates, so I tried it.






I left my skiff at the minoc harbor, I used the orb on the ground and out came a red moongate. I saved, stepped inside, and I was in LB's castle! Holy moly! That was EXACTLY what I wanted!







I immediately headed towards the shrine of compassion. Didn't take me long, and as soon as I got there I was attacked by three gargoyles: two small ones, and a big one. And guess what? I kicked their ASSES. It wasn't even fair, I just tore through them.






So next I inspected the altar. That was a bit weird. There's like a standing blue moongate that doesn't do anything, and an altar on which there is a stone. On the stone there was some kind of force field, stopping me from doing anything with it. At first I was a bit puzzled by that new development, but then I thought that I probably needed the rune and the mantra, and I didn't have the rune. So I went back to LB's castle, and asked him about shrine, and then about compassion. He told me to seek out his...chancellor, Tholden. I didn't know where to find him, so I looked around the castle and he wasn't there. To be honest I just didn't remember what a chancellor was exactly.



















However as soon as I left the castle, and noticed the...holy crap why I am forgetting all the names? I think it's the treasury. Well as soon as I saw the treasury, I knew somehow that it had to be there. And of course, he was. I asked him about the rune, and he told me the bards have it. I asked them about it, and the little girl told me to go ask her parents permission. I did so, then went back to her, and got my hands on the rune.






Obviously it didn't take me three years to head back to the Shrine, I went immediately. The gargoyles were back, but once again they were easy targets. As soon as I defeated them, I went to the altar, used the rune, spoke the mantra, and grabbed the moonstone.






Then something weird happened. I stepped into the moongate...and nothing happened. Or so I thought. I was immediately attacked by gargoyles, and I thought "Holy crap there were other gargoyles on the right side!". Now bear in mind that I had already saved after stepping on the moongate. I tried to defend myself...and I couldn't. The gargoyles kicked my ass. They were those 'invincible' gargoyles I complained about a couple months ago.







So I reload my save and try again. Nope, those gargoyles are invincible. Now I'm starting to get confused. I try to run away, I can't, the big crazy gargoyle keeps catching up to me and totally owns me with fireballs. I reload again, for like the fourth time, and suddenly I understand. When I saw the new moonstone in the middle of the altar, I thought it was a bug. But then I thought about it, and realized that it wasn't a bug, it was an ENTIRELY NEW MOONSTONE. And obviously, an entirely new shrine! I panicked a bit, and then thought, F it, I'll just teleport back to LB's castle using the orb of the moons.

At that point, I realized one thing: I hadn't gone up in levels. I remembered that you needed to use the shrines to level up, but somehow I hadn't. I thought, maybe I need to pray at the shrines again after getting the moonstone. So I headed towards the shrine of compassion, again, and as I thought, using the moonstone and saying the mantra leveled me up. I also realized that everyone were extra points in dexterity only. At first I thought it was a coincidence, but then I figured that it must have been because of the shrine itself, kind of like in Ultima IV. Love = dexterity, courage= strength and truth = intelligence. The virtues like Compassion which only contain one of the principles probably give more of one specific stat, while the virtues who contain more must give less. I saved and reloaded to see how many points exactly I was gaining, and I saw that I was getting three.

I decided to level up all of my characters there, after all dexterity is pretty useful for any class. Iolo has 29 though, so he can't get more than one point in DEX or it will be wasted. As for me, I was already maxed out at 30 everywhere so I didn't get anything except hit points.






The next thing I wanted to do is sell all of my surplus equipment. I had what seemed to be a hundred throwing axes and I wanted to get rid of them. It took me a while, but I managed to find the armorer in Britain. Unlucky for me though, he wasn't interested in buying any of the throwing axes. He did accept though the 25 or so spears I had, and most of the surplus equipment I wanted to get rid of. I ended up with around 500 gold pieces, so that was pretty good.






While I was looking for the armorer, I stumbled on a person sleeping on the floor instead of her bed. I checked her out and it was Gwenneth! What the hell is she doing!?!








So after getting ready for travel, I took a look at the map and decided to head south towards Trinsic. On my way there, I stumbled on the shipwright. He was selling a deed to a ship for only 300 gold! That was a bargain for me! I immediately agreed to the offer, and off I was with my new ship!








There's a whole lot of islands in the southern region of Britain you know? I thought there must have been something on those isles, but outside of giant freaking weird plants with vines all over I didn't find much. Those plants were the most annoying things to fight too, even if you kill the main plant the vines still attack you. I didn't even finish all of them off, I just got out of there.

I also found some peculiar things on those islands...






I then headed towards paws. I got out of the boat, ran around the town a bit and got lost. It's really hard to navigate your way around a town in Ultima VI, you just don't see much!

And that's it for my first day back. It's kind of late, and I don't have the time to post the screenshots. I'll do it tomorrow.

EDIT: There, I posted the screenshots! Hope you enjoy them!

See ya!