Stern's Ultima series completion thread

[Chris Stern]

Well having tried and failed many times to do a screenshot LP, mainly due to getting fustrated with taking screencaps while trying to play and then always feeling like I must try to write everything that I just got doing even the most little detail, which just sucked the fun out and also ending up just not having the time.

This is going to be different since it's not a LP thread, it's just me doing a completion thread something that I found myself doing on my Facebook anyway since I been going back and trying to finish Ultima's 1-8(I refuse to ever touch 9 ever again) the two Ultima Underworld Spin-offs and the two Worlds of Ultima spin-offs. How this is going to work is I am just going to talk about what game I am doing at the start, go over the plot and all that and then when I finish it I post about the end, what it took to get there, post some screencaps, ect.  Pretty simiple.

Now I have already finished 2 of the games already so I will cover those really quick and I ended up jumping over Ultima 2 and 3 for now.. I like 3 but I don't particularly care for 2, not as much as I detest 9 but it's still a chore to get through especially at the start of the game, I will explain when I get to that one..and am currently working through Ultima 5, not that far in yet as I'm still getting my bearings, well more like re-learning my bearings since the world the games take place in doesn't change much between 4-7 so if you say played Ultima 4 to completion you pretty much know where the towns, shrines, keeps and dungeons are but it's been awhile since I finished 4 that I only have a vague sense of direction as well as picking up clues on what needs to be done or picking up important info and all that.

So why the Ultima series? I always loved this series but until recently never finished a single one and while 1-5 are old and have archaic interfaces, old primitive tile based graphics and all that. Barring 2 I still find them fun to play and despite being archaic this series was quite groundbreaking and many of the features such as NPC schedules, day and night cycles, conversation trees, good-evil/morale choices, ect. originated from this very series. 

List:

Ultima 1 -Completed-
Ultima 2: Revenge of the Enchantress
Ultima 3: Exodus
Ultima 4: Quest of the Avatar -Completed-
Ultima 5: Warriors of Destiny -currently playing-
Ultima 6: The False Prophet
Ultima 7: The Black Gate
Ultima 7 Pt. 2: Serpent's Isle
Ultima 8: Pagan
Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss
Ultima Underworld 2: Labyrinth of Worlds
Worlds of Ultima: Savage Empire
Worlds of Ultims 2(aka Ultima Worlds of Adventure 2):Martian Dreams


-Ultima 1-

The version I played through was the 1986 re-make which was the only version that saw a widespread release on all the major home computers of that era like the Commodore 64, IBM PC/Dos based computers,the Japan only FM Towns, MSX, NEC PC-80 line and others. The original version was released way back in 1980 for the Apple 2 but that version was ported to the Atari 8-bit line of computers and truthfully while essentially the same game and the 86 version it's much slower due to the language it was coded in and had some annoying bugs in it such as stats and HP roll overs since it was coded by a 18 year old Richard Garriott.

The main premises was this, a evil wizard named Mondain through the dark arts corrupted his father's gem and turned it into a gem of immortality, he then began to flood the world of Sorsia with monsters from the depth below the world forcing the people of the lands to stay with in the confines of the various cities and towns and also keeping the 8 feudal lords who ruled over the four contents that made up the realm from being able to communicate with one another to mount a counter offensive, not that really it would do much good anyway the guy is now immortal so...

One of the lords of the land Lord British hoped for a champion that would rise up to find away to defeat this menace that plague these lands, soon his hopes were fulfilled as a stranger from a another world appeared in the lands.   

So that is more or less the back story the main point of the game is to find a way to go back into the past and  become strong enough to kill Mondain before he can use his gem to become immortal.


This is mainly done by proving yourself to the 8 feudal lords, though you can get away with only having to do tasks for four of them, and thus gaining their aid. You accomplish this by heading to one of the two castles on each of the four contents and offering service to the lord and in turn they will assign you one of two tasks either finding some special area in the game world and returning or heading to one of the dungeons(doesn't matter which) and killing a specific monster such as a Viper or a Lich and depending on what the task was you are rewarded with gold and a stat boost or one of four colored stones. You get a stat boost for the find this or that quests and a stone for the kill this thing quests. Each lord will always give you the same task, so it's best to find which ones give you the monster slaying quest since you need the four stones to finish the game.

Now the fedual lords are not the only way to get the stat boosts, the places the non-monster slaying quest giving ones have you find also give you stat increases so really all you need to do is just find these places which is really easy enough since they are often just small floating islands with a sign post on them, just go to one examine it head over to the closest other one examine that one which rests the previous one and, lather rinse and repeat till you maxed out those stats. Now there is a particular one that doesn't grant stats but nets you a weapon everytime and the weapon it gives you is always better then the previous one so if you keep resetting it and examining it doing the trick I mentioned previously then you get the best weapon in the game the Phazor..yes you read that right you get a fucking phazor. Oh it get's better trust me.

While this game does a Experiance points and Levels they don't do much as Stats are raised via quests for the lords or by finding the right signs and HP only increases by paying tribute to a lord or by grinding for it in the many dungeons, the more monsters you kill in a dungeon the more HP you get when you leave so if you grind hard enough you net a lot of HP and you will need it.

So after getting the four stones, maxing out most of my stats and raising my hp to a reasonable number and netting the best weapon in the game it was off to go find a town with a transport shop and armor shops that had what I was looking for the Reflect suit(best armor in the game), Vacuum suit and a shuttle..

Wait what? a Shuttle like a space ship? yes, you see in order to go back in time to kill mondain you find out via tavern rumours that the Princess knows how to do it and that of course you need the four stones and the only princess in the game is found in all the castles in a prison where a jester has the key, so you kill the jester which if you played Ultima 5,6, and 7 this is very cathartic since Lord British's personal court jester Chuckles in those games is a fucking annoying prick..so after freeing her and leading her out she tells you that you must become a space ace before she will give you the low down on how to go back in time to kill Mondain.

So you put on the vacuum suit to avoid instant death and head into the shuttle and blast off from their you must carefully dock the shuttle with a space station and then hijack one of the two fighters ships there and shoot down 20 tie fighters..why? it's the 80's that's why seriously in Wizardry the best weapon in the game is a weapon called the blade Cuisinart, which literally was a sword made from a food processor and don't get me started on the credit card you get in Wizardry 4, seriously why is a evil wizard(you played the villain from the first game in Wizadry 4) would have a credit card and why is a medieval society have a credit card and a food processor sword? so yeah early 80's RPG folks.

So after doing that and committing homicide again to rescue the princess she then says that the Time machine can be found in the north east, a bit of a note it only spawns when you completed the above tasks and always north east of where you rescued the princess and then mentions that you need the four stones which I already gotten.

So after some searching around I find the time machine, don my reflect suit and hop in to go kill me a wizard.

When you reach the final battle with Mondain the first thing is to destroy his Gem or else it will revive him, this is done by using the Get command and be warned this hurts like hell as destroying the gem causes 2,000 hp worth of damage to you. After that it's a cake walk as Mondain doesn't do much, sure he fires spells at you but if your stats are high enough they mainly miss just keep plugging away at him and when he reaches half hp he will turn into a bat and run like a scolded bitch so you have to chase him down benny hill style and trap him and keep hitting him till he finally falls and you win.

So yeah, I don't remember the game being this..umm..odd. Then again I never did play it to completion till a month or so ago, like alot of the other Ultimas I had it(for the c64 none the less) but since it was a pirated copy I didn't have a manual to check on what my goal was so I just wandered aimlessly killing things. But as weird as this game was it was still fun if albeit grindy but it defently was a product of it's era that's for damn sure. But like most of the later games from Ultima 3: Exodus on which thankfully while having a few funny or odd things were more grounded then this and it's inital sequel were, it was quite a ground breaking RPG. It was the first RPG to ever feature a fully graphical overworld, actual towns to move around in and non linear gameplay. Not to mention actually have a story that had more then "your going into this dungeon to find riches or this specific treasure".

[Chris Stern]

-Ultima 4: Quest of the Avatar-

Now this along with Ultima 3: Exodus is where the series started to get intresting. Exodus was when Richard Garriott started establishing the final formula of the rest of the Ultima series, Quest of the Avatar was where the world, the lore, and all that were established. Plus it was even more ground breaking then it's first three predecessors and given how all RPGs can trace their roots to the Ultima series and yes this includes Jrpgs as Dragon Quest was based on both the Ultima games and the Wizardry series.

Anyway this one is really interesting. After the defeat of the last of the "Triad of Evil" Mondain, his Apprentice and lover Minax and their "offspring" Exodus. the world of Sosaria underwent some radical changes in geography where three quarters of the world disappeared, continents rose and sank, and new cities were built to replace the ones that were lost. Eventually the world, now unified in Lord British's rule, was renamed Britannia. Lord British felt the people lacked purpose after their great struggles against the triad were over, and he was concerned with their spiritual well-being in this unfamiliar new age of relative peace, so he to help begin this new age of enlightement Lord British created a system based on 8 virtues designed to be a new vision of life, for which people might strive. As most of the evil from outside had been vanquished, Lord British wanted people to start rooting out the evil that lurks within themselves. Each of the eight main towns was dedicated to one of the Eight Virtues, and Shrines were built near each one of them. Castles and Shrines were also created to be dedicated to the Three Principles that lead to the Virtues.

In order for this new philosophy to work, Lord British created the Quest of the Avatar, to find someone that could achieve enlightenment in all Virtues. This embodiment of the Virtues, the Avatar, would then become an example for the rest of Britannia, to motivate people into improving themselves in the different Virtues.

So there is the premise for this one, you are on a quest not to slay some villain but on a quest of self-enlightenment this was unheard off for a RPG and one that to this day has yet to be copied.

So how does a RPG where there is no villian to slay in the end work exactly? what were the goals and the point? How the hell does it end? Easy but I will cover that in a bit.

First off obviously the game starts by having you roll your character but what was interesting is you don't actually do your typical Name:, Race:, Gender:, Class:, Alignment: followed by simulated "dice rolls" via a random number generator to fill out your stats. Instead your treated to a little intro where you stop and find a odd circle of stone where a blue gate appears and quickly vanishes leaving behined two books, you stop and read one of them(the one you can read) that being the History of Britannia by Kyle the younger, no really your supposed to stop when prompted and read the book which was included in the game, followed by you ending up in a ren. fair where you eventually find a gypsy who instead of telling your fortune asks you a series of morality questions with two possible choices each choice representing a aspect of one of the 8 virtues.

ORIGIN Systems - Ultima IV: Quest Of The Avatar (Intro) 

Now your meant to answer these as you personally would and each answer you give adds points to the stat governed by that virtue and what Virtue you ultimately best represent grants you your starting class and location in the game world.

So if your governing virtue/the virtue that best represents you is:
Humility - you start as a Shepard and at the ruins of Magincia
Compassion - You start as a Bard and begin at Britian
Honesty - Mage and you start at Moonglow
Honor - Paladin and you start at Trinsic
Spirituality - Ranger and you start at Skara Brae
Justice -  Druid and you start at Yew
Sacrifice - Tinker and you start at Minoc
Valor - Fighter and you start at Jhelom

I got Honor and started as a Paladin. The first task is either A. go exploring usually checking out the town you start by or B. heading towards Lord British's castle to find out what your quest is if you don't have the manuals.  I personally went for the latter and started hoofing it to Castle British which wasn't that far just a ways north and then west of Trinsic someways past Spiritwood. When you do meet the good king, he tells you basically what I just told you that you are to become a symbol of his new age of enlightenment and to do so you must master the 8 virtues and then when you are ready descend deep into the Stygian abyss and read from the Codex of Ultimate Wisdom...oh right I left that last part out.

Like all the other games in the series this is completely non-linear and open ended but it helps to get your bearings and have a idea of what your end goal is and what steeps are need to do in order to get your there. In this case your end goal as mentioned is to master the 8 virtues and decend the dreaded Stygian Abyss aka Tara Reeds Vajajay and find the codex.

So for me I tackled the game like this

1. Visit each of the 8 towns and talk to the NPCs and see what they say and write down any useful information and any keywords they may bring up so I may see if someone else somewhere has any more information on that subject. Oh right I forgot to mention this was also the first RPG that allowed you to converse with NPCs/had dialogue trees as they are now known. Nothing major just for example someone says "Mondain's evil has not yet left this world!" you can type Mondain and see if you get anymore info on that. But for the most part you have your basics: Name, Job, Rune and Mantra.

2. find the mantra for the towns virtue and the location of it's rune and make a note of who in that town I can have join my party as you need a party of 8 to enter the abyss.. yeah your going to notice this game has a obsession with 8..

3. level up my main character to level 8 which is the max level

4. Level up my standing in each virtue focusing on the hardest ones first Sacrifice, Honor, Justice. Sacrifice is raised by donating blood at the healers, giving to the poor, dying in battle(don't worry you just re spawn at Lord British's with only a penalty to your money and food), Justice which sadly can only be raised via battle with non-evil creatures like Snakes, bears, ect. and not killing them if they flee but if you enter into a fight with a evil creature such as a troll or a undead and the like try and not let them escape as that hurts your Valor and Honor, you can get clues to what the game wants and doesn't want you to do concerning each virtue by meditating at the virtue's shrine once you have the proper rune for it and it's mantra.

Honesty is pretty easy all you need to do is not rip off the blind merchant that sells reagents(spell components) and answer truthfully any and all questions NPCs ask you so if someone asks say "Are you from another world?" you are meant to answer yes but some are tricky like when someone asks you "are you prideful?" I still don't know how to answer that one..

Valor is another simple one as you must never initiate combat by attacking but never flee a fight.

Compassion is raised along with Justice and Sacrifice by staying your hand from killing non-evil creatures in battle and giving to the poor.

Spirituallity is raised by using magic, talking to the seer in lord british's castle to learn what your standing in each virtue currently is, meditating at the shrines of virtue 

Humility is raised by not lying and claiming prideful things that you aren't so say someone asks if you are the avatar you are meant to say no since you don't become the Avatar till the end of the game and not using evil artifacts for personal gain so no using the skull of mondain, destroying it nets you some good amount of humility.

Honor - again don't initate combat on the main field and completing tasks in the game raise your honor.

Once you have mastered a virtue, as stated earlier you can see Hawkwind the Seer in Lord British's castle and he will tell you where you stand in each virtue when you are ready he will instruct you to go to the virtue's shrine and meditate for 3 days there the game will grant you a vision and you gain 1/8th partial avatarhood symbolized by a anhk symbol on the game screen the more 1/8th you gain the more it fills in till you have gained full partial avatarhood.

Now the vision the game gives you is off a rune there are 8 in total, now you have to write these down put them in the proper order and translate them using the runic to english key in the game manual as they are needed to solve the final part of the game. Since the version I played was the DOS version running under the XU4 fan engine I ended up getting a nice little pic representing the virtue I had gained partial avatarhood in since XU4 allows you to change the games graphical assests to VGA, a Newer VGA graphic set, classic EGA, FM Towns or a new graphic set made by the dev. I choose the new set made by the dev since they looked really nice alot nicer then the VGA "upgrade" included in the XU4 fan engine and the Ultima 4 upgrade patch for the vanilla game plus both do come with the music missing in the PC version(there were no real soundcards for the PC in 1985).
See here:
the VGA upgrade patch/VGA mode in XU4:

and the "new" graphics mode in XU4:


and this is a example of the vision I got when playing with the "new" graphical set for Compassion

with the default original graphics you just see the Runic letter.

Now mastering Humility is a challenge you see what would be it's town Magincia was destroyed by Daemons for it's great pride and all it's inhabitants are now trapped undead save for one a young Shepard girl Katrina who is a pain to find and useless as hell since Shepherds are the worst class in the game, the gain no stats leveling up, can't cast magic, can't use anything but a sling but since you need a party of 8 you need her unless you started as a Shepard yourself and good luck if that was the case, outside of that I do find the town to be intresting as a bit of a mid 80's parable also since the town was founded initally on pride and has since learned great humility the mantra for the town was still the mantra of pride so obviously the mantra of humility would the the pride mantra backwards. Anyway in order to get to the shrine of humility you need to find a item to drive away the daemons surrounding it and no you just can't go in their and battle your way through. I tried and they just keep spawning more and more of the bastards and they are not easy, it's even worse when they bring in a Balron which is a more powerful version(think greater demon) which cast hard hitting spells and casts mass sleep.

So luckily in the town one of the ghosts tells you that the daemons hate the sound of the silver horn which used to be in the town but someone escaped with it before the town was completely doomed, I recall meeting someone elsewhere that said they escaped the doomed city so after waiting for the moons to be in the right order to head their I hopped the nearest moongate and was told, of course he lost it on a small island south of the spirit wood. So off I went to grab it, then back to the shrine which is north on the isle of the avatar. 

The only other shrine that is a pain to get too is the shrine of Spirituality which is in the etheral void and only accessible via a moongate that spawns east of Minoc when the twin moons Trammel and Felucca are both full. You see how the moongates work are Trammel(the moon on the left of the top of the screen) dictates where the moon gate appears while Felucca(the one to the right) determines where it leads so say Trammel is first quarter and Felucca is a new moon I know that there is a moongate opened at  Jhelom and will lead me to Moonglow. This is a very useful way to get around before you commander a ship from pirates who don't start spawning on the world map till your a much higher level.

5. Once I hit level 8 and had almost had partial avatarhood I start getting some party members. In the game you can recruit one person from each of the towns save for the one who is the same class as yourself so if your a bard you can not recruit Iolo from Britan. and start heading to the dungeons. There are 8 in total and all but one has a special stone inside, each dungeon is meant to be the counter opposite of one of the virtues so you will find the stone of the virtue the dungeon is the opposite off, so the dungeon Shame is the opposite of Honor. The two exceptions to this was the white stone of Spirituallity which is actually in a set of mountains which is only reachable via getting lucky with the Blink spell or using a hotair ballon which was a pain in the ass since you couldn't steer the damn thing only use the change wind spell and try to guide it to where the stone is. I found the Balloon btw outside of the second entrance to the dungeon Hythloth(where the stone was supposed to be) on the Isle of the Avatar, the other entrance is behind Lord British's throne and the Black stone of Humility since Humility had no dungeon, just as I meantioned a destroyed town and a shrine guarded by nasty Daemons(pronounced Demons).   



6. Time to start collecting the items for the Abyss. Again since this is a non-linear game you can do everything in any order though obviously you should start out visiting the towns for information and take loads of notes. I am just covering the way I went about it. First thing I did was while collecting the 8th stone was to head down to the lowest level of the dungeon for at the bottom was a altar decicated to one of the three principles, you see you learn that the 8 virtues(though technically 7 of them) form or are attached to 3 basic principles Truth, Love and Courage so when you ask about virtues or a specific virtue and a NPC tells you oh say "the virtue of sacrifice comes from Love and Courage" it's a hint as to which altar or altars you must use said virtue stone in so sacrifice is used in both the altar of truth and the altar of courage. There is another reason for the hint so hopefully if you play this you been taking good notes as there is a test at the end..I am not kidding.

Now there are two ways of doing this either A. find the dungeon of that is the opposite of the Virtue that belongs to the Principle's altar your looking for and head down or B. Just head down to the bottom of Hythloth and be able to access all 3 since Hythloth is the opposite spirituality and thus is connected to all 3 principles so you can access all three altars from it's lowest point.

Place the proper stones in each altar grants you one part of the three part key required to enter the room of the codex. Once I gotten the three part key and of course picked up the stones before leaving(seriously make sure you have those before leaving this part of the dungeons) it was off to follow up on a promise I made to some poor soul who told me that Mondain's(yes the evil wizard I killed way back in Ultima 1) influence still layed in this world and that some great artifact of his is at buccaneers den and I should ask the tavern owner about it,  it turns out it was no longer there and that it was tossed out to sea and then was given a series of nautical numbers, so it was off to buy a sextant while I was here and then off to find it, luckily it was a easy find as it was out at sea dead center of three volcanos. Now you learn that the skull still has some of Mondain's evil in it which means should you use it it instantly kills everything on the screen, fun but it does drop your points in the virtues to low levels and if your already a full-partial avatar you now have to go back and re-raise all your virtues again. Now the skull can only be destroyed by tossing it into the heart of a volcano which is on the isle of the avatar but you must also cleanse it by performing a ritual to cleanse the evil from it so in order to do so I found after checking my notes that you need the Book of Truth, the Candle of Love and the Bell of courage. 

Since I had asked Lord British about Truth, Love and Courage way back at the start of the game I was able to work out the best places to find out the possible whereabouts of these items was to check the keeps of Empath Abby, Lycaeum and Serpent's Hold. Plus I needed to head there anyway since I had recall someone telling me that the three heads of the keeps each knew part of a special word of passage that I may need for the Abyss. So first stop was the Lycaeum I learned that the book of truth was somewhere in the Library, easily enough it was on the shelf marked 'T', there I asked Lord Robert about the word of passage and he told me "Ver" which is Latin for the world Truth.   Then it was off to Empath Abby where I learned that sadly the candle was in cove but the other Lord Robert, yes it seems two of the keeps are headed by a lord named Robert anyway when asked he told me the next part of the word of passage "amo" which you guessed latin for love. So it's was off to Cove to find the candle which was in the in the temple of virtues hidden in a secret passage luckily the secret passages are pretty easy to spot at least in the towns anyway, dungeons not so much.

Last but not least it was off to Serpent's hold the keep of courage and once again the item I was looking for is somewhere else..sigh but I did get the last part and yup it was the latin word for courage "Cor" so the word of power is Veramocor" I wonder if this is going to have any use in any later Ultima games?(Dun..dun..duunnn!!!) oh and no the lord of this keep wasn't named Robert, I don't remember what it was but it wasn't Robert that much I am sure off. Now I forgot what clue lead me to find the bell since that part of my notes is gone but it was found between Buccanears den and the isle of deeds.

So with that all was left was to acquire the Exotic armor and weapons..oh wait that's Ultima 3: Exodus, I meant the Magic Armor and Weapons oh wait that's 6 and 7.. oh right the Mystic Armor and Weapons. Early on I learned that a blacksmith in Minoc named Zircon was capable of making the Mystic armor the only armor that can withstand the heat of the Abyss. Sadly he gave them to Sir Simon and Lady Teressa, Sir Simon and Lady Teressa were found in the town of Paws in the armory, Sir Simon tells you where to find the Mystic Armor which he hid under a tree in the grove in Empath Abby..why? God to bad rage killing isn't a virtue and his Lady tells you the location of the Exotic weapons which she hid in the training room at Serpent's hold. It was by this point I had wished I tried to get these earlier and save myself having to go all the way back to these places.

All that was left was to stock up the the reagents and mix up as many spells as I can. Right forgot to mention how magic works in Ultima 4. In order to cast a spell you need to be of the appropriate level to cast said spell i.e. to cast a 8th circle spell you need to be level 8. and had mixed up the proper reagents so for example if you want to use a cure posion spell you need to have mixed up 1 garlic with 1 ginseng root for each casting, you can get from the reagents from the blind reagent shop keep in Yew and Moonglow or you can search the land for the reagents yourself if you want to save the money but the more expensive reagents are a pain to get this way. I mixed 99 of the following spells Dispel barrier, awaken as there are alot of high level monsters that cast mass sleep like it's going out of style, cure posion, and tremor which a area of effect spell and some fireball spells too.

So now armed with the weapons, armor, spells, the items needed to brave the abyss and a ship and sailed to the Isle of the Avatar there hoofed it over to a area surronded by lava and dropped in the skull of mondain(make sure you use it in the right spot or else!), lit the candles, read the book and rang the bell to open the path to the abyss. From there it was working my way through a vast maze often times you end up in rooms meant to trick you or are filled with monsters I learned quickly that you had to check each wall in these rooms carefully and walk carefully as well to make sure there are no hidden switches, traps or hidden passages I had one room where as soon as one of my party got to the middle a wall went up trapping the others as lava slowly covered the floor and so you had to find a switch to deactivate the trap before your party burns to death. Hey no one said it was easy.

(see that lava in the middle? one wrong step and the walls drop and it comes pouring out)

Your main goal is to find the altar on each floor, this is made easier if you bought alot of seer gems from Buccaneer's bay  as they let you see the entire dungeon floor. I forgot to mention those.
Anyway when you reach the altar it will talk to you asking you a question on a virtue like "what virtue stems from Love?" the anwser of course is compassion then you have to use the proper coloured stone for that virtue and a ladder appears to take you down and the lower you go the more tricker it gets. Around the 7th floor or so you actually have to battle your own party, well dopplegangers of them anyway, I thought that was pretty neat.

So finally once after reaching the door of the codex all goes black and you are left alone and you automatically use the three part key followed by a voice asking you for the word of passage which we know is Veramocor and you better get it right or else it kicks you out and you have to go through the abyss all over again.

The door opens and I was greated by a black screen and a series of questions. Remember how I said there will be a test on this at the end and I wasn't kidding..I told you I wasn't kidding.

Each question is based on a Virtue like "What does thou must possess if all may rely on your every word?" and again you need to anwser these right and after the questions on the virtues it asks you three questions on the three principles. As you anwser each question a shape appears on the screen, eventually forming the symbol of the codex and once it's filled in the game then asks one last question

"What is the one thing that encompasses and is the whole undeniable truth, unending love and unyeilding courage?" the answer you need as I pointed out earlier is what you got when you placed the 8 runic letter you saw in your shrine visions in order and then translated into english via the runic to english key in the manual.

Infinity

with that the boundless secrets of the codex are given to me and the game ends with a return to earth and a slight reflection on the journey.



Now I didn't take too many screen caps of this final part of the game so here it is in it's full glory now this isn't my video and the guy uses a cheat in the XU4 fan made engine to bypass all the rooms in the abyss, plus I don't know why he is using such a annnoying scaler to smooth out the old EGA graphics it just make it looks worse.

Ultima IV (4) PC -- Styigian Abyss and Ending

So with that I transfer my charecter from Ultima 4 to Ultima 5 which makes the early part of the game a bit easier since you start at level 5 instead of 3 and your stats are around 25 to 21 depending on what they were at the end of Ultima 4.







   

[Chris Stern]

-Ultima 5: Warrior's of Destiny-

Sometime after your completion of the quest of the avatar in part 4 and helping usher a new age of enlightenment in Britannia, Lord British takes the time to make some changes to the kingdom. First he sets about creating the great council a parliamentary body made up of elected officials each one representing one of the towns of the realm, they are to meet once a year at castle british to discuss the issues in the land and work with the king to to solve them. So British is no longer the sole lawmaker in the land but still has final say over the decisions of the council. During the formation of the first great council Lord British laid down to edicts the first was to raise the Codex from the abyss and second was to seal up the 8 dungeons and forever lock away the horrors that dwell within them.

Sadly the raising of the Codex had a unforeseen after effect as it created a giant cavernous underworld deep under the realm with each of the dungeons connected to at their lowest levels and giving rise to even worse horror then before. When the good King learned about this he quickly formed a expedition to explore this new underworld sadly in a few short days his expedition was nearly wiped out and the king was injured and captured by three mysterious beings and is presumed dead. During this time his advisor Blackthorn assumed stewardship of the land and everyone was fine with this until Blackthorn's reign as stewart soon turned into one of a maniacal tyrant. He soon twists and corrupts the 8 virtues which till this point were simple guidelines into 8 tyrannical laws and proceeds to disband the great council and brand them heretics and tratiors forcing them to go into hiding and replaces them with his own governing body called "The Oppression"(yeah I know, real creative name it's a game from 1988) which enforce the 8 new laws with brutality and cruelty. And to make matters worse there are three wraith like beings roaming the land called "Shadowlords" each one being a manifestation of a counter priniciple to the three principles of Truth, Love and Courage(so in other words Falsehood, Hatred and Cowardice) and where ever these creatures go they bring with them a vile corrupting aura that can turn even the most virtous into a lying, malice filled coward. Again if the shadowlord of Hatred is around those in the vicinity of it's presence turn into aggressive hate filled beasts, if the Shadowlord of falsehood is around then they become lying thieving bastards, ect.   

Your companions from the last game are now outlaws and also had gone into hiding some of which have aided a resistance group to try and over throw Blackthorn and his new regime. Others still hold out hope that Lord British still lives and so with no other choice a few of your friends take the risk and try to summon you back to Britannia. Knowing full well the risks as any use of magic will attract the attention of both Blackthorn and  his regime as well as the Shadowlords. But what other hope is there? if you can not answer the call and help topple Blackthorn and the Shadowlords then what hope is there? Also what of Lord British? Does he still live and if so where is he and how to find him and bring him back?

the in game intro/backstory
ORIGIN Systems - Ultima V: Warriors of Destiny (Intro)

Ultima 5 like Ultima 4 and 7 as well as to some 6 is a popular title in the series and considered one of the highlights of the series. The land you learned and explored in 4 has become a dark and sinister place, the good people are paranoid and the vile ones have free reign. You have to tread carefully and build up trust if you actually want to get anywhere in this game as the helpful NPCs are rightfully paranoid and untrusting and won't give up nesscarry information easily out of fear that you may be a spy or agent of Blackthorn and the Oppression.  This set the tone for the series going forward where in every installment up to 9 Richard Garriott found new ways to toy with the concepts he created in 4. In this one he shows how easy it is to take concepts originally made with good intentions and were meant to help guide and enlighten people can easily become warped and twisted by those who seek to enforce their own twisted views.   

I hadn't made it too far into this one yet, just found a few of the old companions from the last game such as Iolo the bard, Shamino the ranger, and Janna the druid and touched base with members of the underground resistance which was trickier then I had hoped since they are quite suspicious of outsiders so it took awhile to find someone who could give me a in as it were and earn his trust enough to get him to start pointing me in the right direction on who I needed to talk to learn the password which then makes getting the resistance guys to open up a bit easier with clues. Harder still is tracking down the members of the great council to learn the words of power to unseal the dungeons so far I only found four out of eight. But so far the resitance has told me that Blackthorn has one of Lord British's items which being his Crown hidden at the very top of his keep which is on the island of Terrifan which rests on the place where I found the Skull of Mondain back in Ultima 4. 

This obviously is a necessary item but the idea of storming his keep gives me a bad feeling since I am sure it's crawling with monsters and guards and Blackthorn himself. Now I did get a bit of info from a Blackthorn Loyalist in one of the towns and after some coaxing he recommended I talk to the corrupt Judge and oppression member Judge Dryden in Yew, who in turn suggested I go seek out fellow oppression member Falin at his tower in Skara Brae as he would help me join the oppression if I could show that I am loyal to the cause. So hopefully if I go along with this quest thread I will be able to enter Blackthorn's keep without any trouble but I am sure I am going to have to do something to prove my "loyality" to Blacktorn and his corrupt regime to Falin first which I am not too thrilled with since I am sure my virtue/Karma is going to take a big hit for it. But it beats risking a stealth infilration into Blackthorn's keep and risk getting caught as from what I recall hearing if your caught sneaking in, you and your party and put into chains and Blackthorn appears and has one of your party dragged to a swinging bladed pendulum and then after buttering you up, asks for you to reveal the mantra for one of the virtues and if you refuse he will eventually drop the blade on your party member permanently killing them and if you do give him the mantra he will destroy the shrine associated with that mantra..   

So yeah not a pleasent thought, but then again knowing that doing this oppression quest line puts me off even more since it's a very real possibility that what I am asked to do to show my loyalty to the oppression will also have some serious consequences. I mean what if he asks me to name a member of the resistance and then next thing I know that guy dissapears or is killed?

Truth be told, I like that possibility too often in games now, especially RPGs there are no real consequences for your actions so to play a RPG with actual consequences where you find yourself questioning your next move is actually kinda nice. 

I should also note this was the first RPG to feature a day/night cycle and NPC's that had schedules each NPC will be at a certain place at a certain time, store owners will be at their shops around 8 am and leave for lunch at noon. Suspicious characters can often be found in various places in the dead of night when everyone else is a sleep some maybe innocent people in hiding from the guards and the rest of Blackthorn's regime, some maybe members of the resistance like how I found a small band of them in North Brittany who meet by a well at the edge of the village at midnight and once I was able to prove that I was on their side I was able to learn a bit more about the shadowlords and the location of someone who can tell me how they maybe destroyed. So it pays to check places out at all times of the day but roaming around at night has it's downsides as towns will lock their gates keeping you there till they open at dawn, monsters appear roaming the countryside at night making travel a bit more trickier as though travling in the dark isn't hard enough since your view is more limited. 

[Chris Stern]

Just feel like doing a quick progress update.
[spoiler]
So far I managed to track down four out of the eight council members, Annon was first. Found him by pure accident in the city of Britian standing on the balcony of a pub at night as I was leaving the city. After some work and luckily my Karma which is this games equivalent of your virtue points which were what your standing was in the virtues in Ultima 4, was a high enough level(it was 78) I managed to get him to not only give me the word of power for opening the dungeon of despise which was VILIS but also a clue on how to find another council member. He mentioned that one of the council has a daughter who works on making sails. Recalling in my travels seeing a quiet young girl working in the back of a ship merchant in the city of Minoc ended up heading back there but first I decided to head into castle british and see if there was anything interesting, there wasn't really much. Well there is if you want to be a thief and raid the storerooms but I am trying to be virtuous so I didn't but I did sneak into Lord British's bedroom at the top of the castle, you really need to watch the guards up here for if they spot you they will warn you to leave, the catch you a second time they will arrest you for tresspassing.

So you either got to watch the guards and sneak past them when they are out of vision range or sneak around at night and not use a torch or a magical light spell. Since it was night at that time I held off till the changing of the guard around 11 or midnight and sure enough the Lord's bedroom was locked by a magical lock and not having any skull keys which are used to open magical locks or any dispel magic spells prepared I improvised and did what I would of done in Ultima 6 or 7 and grabbed the nearest cannon pushed it in firing range of the door and blew it open, admittedly I was quite impressed that I was able to do that given that this is a game for 1988. Just goes to show just how ahead of the curve Richard was with this series. Anyhow as I approached the room I saw a someone who the game described as a typical villager and had the villager icon, thinking it strange that someone other then me was up here trespassing at night I stopped and talked to him. He said his name was Saduj and that he was the gardener and was tending to the garden..which for the record was on the first floor of the castle.. so I tried pressing him for info but he started giving me the no response treatment and eventually broke the conversation off after three tries of getting something out of him. Thinking this even more odd I talked to him again, this time he gave me a kinda gruff greeting and on a hunch I mentioned Blackthorn and what do you know, he mentioned he was looking for a item of Lord British, a sandalwood box. I asked about the box and he said that without it he can't return...

Intresting..  after that he asked to join, not trusting the guy since obviously A. he's working for Blackthorn and the oppression and his main task is counter to my own and B. his name is Judas backwards S a d u j = J u d a s lead me to think that if I found this item he would steal it at the chance he got. So I told him to fuck off basically and entered the room, there wasn't much just a fireplace, a plant, a clock(which gives you the current in game time),  a bed, a carpet and a harpsicord which you could play. So I took the carpet and left for now, why did I take the carpet? easy it was a magical flying carpet duh. It made traviling easier till I could commander a pirate ship or had enough gold to buy a ship of my own.

Speaking of which, so I  head to minoc and to the ship merchants and spoke with the little girl working on the sails in the back of the shop. She didn't say much till I ask about her mother and she was skeptical at first but I won her over by putting in the right words and responding to her questions the right way and she caughed up that her mother Fiona was in hiding working as the woman running the poor house in town. So off I went and per usual she was skeptical but after she figured out who I was after I told her Annon told me to speak with her, she split the beans and gave me the word of power for the Dungeon of Covetous which was Avidus, next up was Yew as I had learned one of the council Felespar was captured by Blackthorn and sent to the prison in Yew to be interrogated by Judge Dryden. So picking the lock to his cell and proving that I was with the resistance he told me that the word of power for the dungeon Wrong which was Malum and gave me a warning to guard it carefully.
I found Sidar of the Great council also purely by accident you see it turns out he put himself into a magical sleep and would end up sleepwalking at night and after hearing rumours of a mysterious sleep walker, I waited for him to do his sleep walk bit and talked to him and got him to fess up the word of power for Shame which was Infama, I had no idea till I spoke with him that this sleepwalker was a member of the great council so I lucked out on him.
[/spoiler]

[spoiler]
Then I decided to head off to Skara Brie via magic carpet to try and fake join the oppression so I can recover Lord British's crown from Blackthron's castle on the isle of Terrifan. But just my luck I ended up going there when one of the Shadowlords was there, this one being the shadowlord of cowardice which makes doing anything hard as hell since it makes everyone in town scared of you. But on my way out I saw a little boy who was fleeing, catching up to him I got him to open up and tell me his name was Froed. What luck, you see when I was in the prision at Yew trying to get the word of power from the imprisoned Council member I found a adventurer named Greymarch who was captured by members of the oppression trying to escape with his son Froed who he feared may have been killed by the oppression as he wasn't in prison with him and has no word of him in sometime. Well turns out I could know go back to Yew and tell him the good news, that his son lives and is in hiding in Skara Brae not really a smart hiding spot since a key member of the oppression is there but eh.

So on my way back I happened to had stopped into a nearby Lighthouse which housed a young couple, their son and two others one a former adventurer and the other the personal court composer for Lord British. So I talked to all of them for a while, the wife of the lighthouse caretaker turned out to be a loyal supporter of Blackthorn's twisted regime and was imposing those values on her son.  The father was a former salty sea dog who happened to have had a useful item, a sextant so after buttering him up about how smart he was he gave me it. This could come in handy. The court composer ended up teaching me how to play the song stones. Good lord was this trying so first this he does is ask you to find the musical sheet for the song which is in the book of lore(which came with the game) and looks like this:

he then goes on and explains how the sheet is read and how the C on the second staff represents the tempo or something like that and some other stuff and then goes on to explain that the first 3 notes are ABC and then asks "if the the three notes are ABC, then what are the next three notes?" this took forever it and many, many guesses but I got it and responded "DCB" then he counties and says how on some instruments such as the harpisord you can find numbers representing each letter of the notes so in this case the first 3 notes in the numerical value are 678 then what are the next three? this was easy since it was 987 since if A=6,B=7, and C=8 and the next three letters of the notes were DCB then D=9 and so you get 987 or DCB. Having finally figured this out he then tells me the full numbers for the song Stones which was 678 987 876753. Why is this important? well remember that harpiscord in lord british's room? when you use it it asks you to use keys 0-9 to play the notes. So why is this important? I am getting to that..

So I headed to Yew which is slightly north and east of Empathy abby which was to the North west of Castle Britannia. Arriving at Yew I found that another Shadowlord was there this one being the Lord of Hatred which turns everyone aggressive so not wanting needless fights I headed out and rested for 9 hours, went back and guess what he was still there, so I rested again for 9 hours and he was gone but another shadowlord was there this time the Shadowlord of Falsehood which means everyone will lie and steal from you.. So I said fuck it and headed to the Abby. There I talked to the Lord and found out he was big into mountain climbing and had a item called a Grapple which allows you to pass over mountains, when I asked for it he happily gave it to me. 

He also mentioned that the Shadowlords fear the three keeps of the principles and the lord of Hatred especially would never come to the abby, given how I noticed these are the only places outside of Lord British's castle they never appear at I thought it was interesting enough to make a note off. Especially since each of the shadowlords are the opposite of the principles of the abbys with the shadowlord of faleshood- Lycium being the keep of Truth, the shadow lord of cowardice and serpent's hold being the keep of courage and the shadowlord of hatred and empath abby being the keep of love.  So I asked about the Shadowlord of Hatred and he pointed me to the eastern desert where a Daemon lives who once served the Shadowlord of hatred and can probably give me alot of info on him.

I also spoke to a young seer woman who gave me a possible hint on Lord British's wereabouts. She said that in a vision she saw the Lord in a distant place and it appeared as though she was seeing him though a looking glass as she saw but a mere reflection.


So after doing some exploring I found at the battlements a young bard named Tim, who eventually told me about the court composer Sir Kenneth who I already met and how after Lord British dissapeared he went around britannia performing concerts and was last seen heading south from Trinsic. Not useful since I already met the guy but he did also give me a useful clue about how Stones was the Lord's favorite song(which is also mentioned in the book of lore) and something interesting is said to happen when played on a fine instrument.






I hope you managed to piece this together as I had.. if not really? Well I am not going to spell it out for you, you just have to wait.


Anyway I tried heading back to Yew and guess what the third Shadowlord was there now..fuck my luck.

[/spoiler]

[spoiler]
Now I could do some dungeon diving since I have some of the 8 words of power to open them but dungeons are dangerous and I need some better gear first and even if I do survive the main reason to enter the dungeons is to reach a certain region of the underworld and I don't have much need to do that yet. Unless it was to find Lord british's lost scepter but you don't kneed to enter the underworld through the dungeons to do that, for according the Journal of Lord British's failed expedition to the underworld which also came with the game, his group went through a entrance in Spiritwood so that would be the path I would logically take to find that since I would follow the steps they wrote in the journal but I would need a skiff first.

Right now I may head back to castle british and then either head to the eastern desert or try and get some money for a ship since it maybe a while before I see a pirate who's ship I can liberate.
[/spoiler]

[Chris Stern]

Another progress update. Since the Ultima series get's increasingly longer and more complex from Exodus on I decided that it maybe a good idea to just do updates for 5 on since it would be hard to cram every bit of the game in a quick summary at the end plus it also comes in handy for those times when I don't have much free time to sit down and play and I can just pop in here and see where I was last time I played and where I was planning on doing next instead of just thumbing through my notes and try to piece it together that way.  When I get around to finishing 2 and 3 I will just do a summary for those since they are pretty short and really you only have to do a few things to really finish the game, well outside of the usual grind to X level. Like in Ultima 2 all you really need to finish the game is to speak with Father Antos, then go find the old man under a tree(forgot where you find him) and get the ring which will help you get passed the barriers in Minax's fortress and then get the Quicksword and then head to the end of time and kill Minax and in Ultima 3 you just need to get your party branded with the four marks, get the exotic armor and weapons, head to Ambrosia and find the four mystical cards, then head to the time dungeon and speak with the Time lord to get the order the cards are to be used and then off to the Isle of Fire to storm castle Death and use the cards in order on Exodus.

Does anyone actual read this? and if so does anyone care?

Anyhow..
[spoiler]
So I finally managed to get into Yew to speak with Greymarch in the prision, granted it took a few in game days since the shadowlords are really making themselves a nuisance by contently spawning there.  I swear it's like the game knew I wanted to do something there and just spawned shadowlords every damn day just to troll me.

So I gave him the low down on his kid and that he was alive and in Skara Brae and so while he didn't give me any monitary rewards he did give me a bit of info. He told me that Lord British's Scepter was in fact left behind when he started for his expedition of the underworld, seems I was mistaken on which of his items was left in the underworld. My bad. He then goes on to tell me how it had great power against evil and that I should seek Sir Simon who was holding himself up on a remote mountainous island west of spiritwood, well good thing I got that grapple item from Empath Abby seems I was going to need it sooner then I had thought. Plus this wasn't the first time someone has told me to meet with Sir Simon, Landon who was the leader of the resistance also mentioned that I should seek him out after telling me the where abouts of British's crown which if you recall was in Blackthorn's keep on the Isle of Terrafin, so more then likely he has some info on just what these items may be used for that or maybe point me in the direction of where the staff was since I know where to find the necklace, the crown and the sandalwood box.

But sadly the island which is called "Bordermarch" btw, was passed some rough waters and so I couldn't just use the magic carpet to reach it since I would probably be dead by time I got close since if you tried to travel over rough waters in anything other then a frigate you will take X points of damage each tile and since I am reaching the point where I need to reach some of the remote islands in this world since on top of Sir Simon over on Bordermarch, I was told to speak to Sutek who lived on a island in the south sea who knew how to possibly dispose of the shadowlords and plus since I was planning on doing the whole fake joining the oppression thing I would need to mediate at the shrines of virtue to rebuild my Karma since it was probably going to take a nasty hit for that plus the shrines also are how you raise your main characters stats in Ultima 5 as well as Ultima 6, you just meditate at the shrine of the virtue that is tied to the stat or stats you wish to raise. So I had no other choice but to get a ship. Sadly unlike in Ultima 3 or 4, it's much harder to just commidare one as in those you could just wait till you were a certain level and pirate ships would start spawning and you could bait them to the coast and once you beaten the pirate crew you can take control of the ship. Now pirates are rarer and a pain to bait to land on the shore so I had to grind out some gold usually just by waiting on bridges for trolls and kill them for their loot as well as selling off some of the useless items I got from random encounters like spears, clubs, extra bows, shields I didn't need, ect. and then headed to Minoc which was the closer area I was currently at and good lord was it pricey 1280 gold..


But I got my ship so traveling should be easier now and while there I stopped over in the village of East Brittany where a man named Hawkwind worked, seems he was from a long line of ship builders and his family had built the HMS Cape which I forgot to mention in my recap of Ultima 4 was a ship that was enchanted with magic to make it faster and stronger and you learned went down and all that was left was it's wheel which you could use to strengthen the hull of your ship, which you needed to get passed the ghost pirates guarding the path to the abyss on the island of the avatar. Anyway it seems he had lost the plans to that ship, after some searching it turns out they were in his room on a shelf along with some spell scrolls. So armed with this item my ship moves much faster, quite useful for avoiding sea battles. 


So now with my new and improved ship it was off to the Bordermarch to meet with Sir Simon, then probley see a man named Sutek who I was told may know something about defeating the Shadowlords who is in the south sea and then Skara Brae to hopefully fake-join the oppression so I can get the crown from Blackthorn without having to sneak around and getting paranoid of being caught.


But first I head to the city of Jhelom, why? well it was getting dark and I got lost and ended up there but good thing too since I found one of the great council there and while screwing around I found a secret passage in the city's wall which lead outside and to a stump where after searching I found a magic axe, a wondrous weapon which does decent damage and can be used as a long range attack like a throwing axe but unlike the throwing axes it comes back to you. Neat, especially these things cost something like 1050 gold a piece.

While there I met a minstrel named Trian who told me that I should speak with a fighter named Thorne for he knew about the shrines of virtue, curious as to what this info may have been I found the man in the tavern and ask him, he just gave me the mantra for Valor which I already knew since they haven't changed since Ultima 4 but he then asked me if I planned to explore the forbidden dungeons..taking a risk I said that I was and he gave me some useful tips about finding secret passages in the dungeon and that in order to open these passages you have to find a certain tile on the floor while some are certain wall panels that had to be pushed while in some rooms you need to shoot them those triggers can be a button or even a torch.  Now why no one gave this tip in Ultima 4 is beyond me, it could of save me alot of headaches going around in circles in the dungeons had one of the NPCs told me this. He then told me to speak to the bard about the word of power for the dungeon Destard.

So I did and the bard then told me basically what I already knew that there was a member of the great council hiding here and that he is searching for something that is not there, but I did get a useful tip from him as he told me that this particular council member has gone a bit..mad as it were and has trouble remembering things so it helps to say things backwards.


He wasn't kidding, when I first heard this hint I thought he was just going to give me the word of power backwards but no, you have to talk to him backwards too..Dyslexia don't fail me now!

Right so after a bit of trial and error, not much just trying rewop fo drow(word of power) and the like but not getting far as he kept giving me the same response after the first attempt which was "now what word is that?" I figured that I should try the name of the dungeon backwards so Dratsed and lo and behold it worked so I got the word of power for destard which is..INOPIA I think.. that's 5 out of 7 words of power. I am on a roll.
[/spoiler]

[spoiler]
So it was back to finding the island of Bordermarch which lucky for me was just a ways north of Jhelom, upon arriving it was a matter of finding which mountaious range the keep was as there were at least two on this island and then using the hook to move across till I found it buried deep within the range.

While there the first person I met was a mystic named Lady Tessa who told me that what I pretty much knew already that Lord British's necklace/amulet could be found in the underworld where the graves of those who fell during his failed expedition to the underworld were laid to rest. Again you know this by reading the included journal of the expedition which came with the game, unless you got it from GOG for whatever reason they didn't include a scan of this so I got it from Replacement docs.

Anyhow she does give a bit more info but it's a bit cryptic, saying that only with the amulet can I find my path in the unholy darkness which she says she has foreseen blocking my way and that it will be beyond such a place that I will have to search if I am to mend the injustice caused by Blackthorn and the Shadowlords.

While I was there I found that they had a blacksmith and a shop and it sold some nice gear magic shields, regeneration rings, magic axes, two handed swords and the like but man those prices were killer, maybe once I get some more cash I will head back here and buy some needed better gear before I go dungeon delving and explore the underworld which is going to be rough since all I kept hearing was how powerful the monsters were down there. So I headed to the battlements and found Sir Simon and he procceds top tell me that I must recover the crown, staff and amulet of Lord British and asked about the crown, he said Lord British himself had once told him about what it's power was and gave me the low down on what it did. It seems that when worn it negates all magical attacks, I have to admit that is useful since wisps and daemons have a habit of using a attack called possession which works like Charm does in AD&D or if you prefer Final Fantasy where it will turn the affected party member hostile and you will be forced to kill them or hope you have some casting of negate magic handy.

I then asked about the scepter and he told me that it negates all magical barriers even ones in the etheral planes, so basically it was a multi-use dispel barrier spell, good hate stocking up and using good reagents on mixing up castings for that spell.

Bad news is he then tells me that it's being held by the Shadowlords in their fortress.. god damn it. So not only do I have to storm Blackthorn's keep to get the damned crown but also find and storm the Shadowlords keep for the scepter? and I have this feeling that getting the black badge of the oppression isn't going to help in the shadowlords keep like it should for Blackthorn's. Man they don't want to make this easy. Sadly he couldn't tell me where it was that this keep is. Well maybe that daemon in the desert to the west can tell me where that is but first I may want to find and talk to Sutek since I seem to be getting a idea what I need to do to finish the game here and since he knows about how to destroy the shadowlords I may as well find out how since like all RPGs I am sure it's not going to be a easy task, I mean sure it's Ultima so the actual act will be easy but getting what you need to do it is the hard part.

So on my way out I found my old buddy Dupre and had him join, since I like Dupre and honestly I want to spend as much time with him as I can in this series..why? no reason, I just feel like I owe it to him that's all. Not like anything terrible is going to happen to him later in this series.. 

So after a few false starts I kept getting sucked into a whirlpool which sends you to the underworld which I can say is just too dangerous right now for me to deal with and I hate to admit it, but rather then work to buy another damn ship I just restarted the game up since if I died in the underworld, while me and the party would respawn at castle british the ship would still be in the underworld. Hey couldn't be helped.Don't you judge me Anyway I managed to find the island which is just west of the Isle of the Avatar where the Codex now is. But my ship was blown up by pirates so I was left in a lifeboat but luckily enough I was able to row the lifeboat over to them and wipe them out and take their ship, vengance the forgotten 9th virtue!

So after landing I used the magic carpet since there seems to be some slight swampy areas and swamps in britannia are toxic one step and your poisoned and I am really running out of castings of cure posion/An Nox and don't have any more ginseng root to mix anymore, I still got 8 or so garlic bulbs though. I guess I have to go shopping at Skara Brae for more reagents. What kills me it's not till Ultima 6 or 7 that Swamp boots are invented.. to put this into perspective Swamps in Britannia have always been toxic and poisonous so for roughly 1,000 or more years it took them to figure out to make a special boot that prevents this from happening.. 

Anyway so I find the man and the first thing he asks is my name which I tell him and then asks if I am the Avatar of legend and then tells me he has been doing research into the three shards and that they were formed in the time of the first dark lord, being Mondain the wizard I killed in Ultima 1. It seems that when I shattered Mondain's Gem of immortality tm the fractured remnants still held parts of his evil and that they had been resting deep within the abyss(how they got there is beyond me) festering till the creation of the great underworld when British and the council raised the Codex and.. you get where this is going right? Three shards of Mondain's shattered Gem of immortality ended up in the abyss and when the underworld was created they somehow formed the shadowlords.   

He then goes on to tell me that the shards must be destroyed in order to destroy the shadowlords this is can be done by finding each of the three shards from their resting places in the underworld and then taking them to the keep of the principles that they oppose and before the flame of that principle summon the respective shadowlord by calling it's true name and then as they hover above the flame toss their shard into the flames.

Easy enough.. just got to now learn where in the vast underworld each shard is and what is the true name of each shadowlord.. well the Shadowlord of hatred should be easy enough since again there is that daemon that we were told used to work for him..her..it.. whatever the other two are going to be trickier..
I had a feeling that there was going to be something involving the three keeps of the principles since as I pointed out that last time those where the only three places they never show up at and they are representive of the opposite aspects of the three principles.

But so there we have it, seems I finally have my tasks laid out.

1. Find the true names of each of the shadowlords and where to find their shards in the underworld and then use them to destroy um..them

2. Find the four objects of lord british the scepter, the crown, the sandalwood box and the amulet which I know know the locations off so I may do that first well three out of the four since the amulet is also in the underworld

3. Find out how to rescue lord british, Well maybe the Codex will help since it does know everything.. but you can only visit the codex when you have been ordained to do so by the shrines of virtue as to keep scum like Blackthorn from being able to enter the room of the codex.. Well since I will probably have to re-raise my karma/virtue and raise some stats in the process this part is a give in.

4. Find the remaining members of the Great Council and get the words of power from them so I may enter the dungeons. 

But I will get started on all that later.
[/spoiler]


 
   

[Stoner]

Can I request spoiler tags to separate every few paragraphs?  I only ask because it makes it difficult to read when first loading into the thread because the screen ends up jumping around as images load.

[Chris Stern]

Can I request spoiler tags to separate every few paragraphs?  I only ask because it makes it difficult to read when first loading into the thread because the screen ends up jumping around as images load.

No prob. that or I may just put the images behined spoiler tags if that would help.

[Chris Stern]

Alright as per Stoney's request, I started putting stuff behind spoiler tags so is this helping or do I also need to put the older posts under spoiler tags as well?

[Stoner]

It should be enough to do just newer posts I think.  As the new images load like I said it pops around the screen and makes it harder to read unless I wait for my slow ass internet to catch up.

[Chris Stern]

It should be enough to do just newer posts I think.  As the new images load like I said it pops around the screen and makes it harder to read unless I wait for my slow ass internet to catch up.

Alright, cool. I was going to try and do something about that anyway since when I was trying to write out and preview yesterday's update it was doing the same crap for me jumping to a few posts back and then jumping to the preview and then jumping back to a few posts ago and then back to the preview and my internet while not the fastest isn't too bad since it was only doing that when previewing the newest post and not when I just check the thread overall.

If there is anything else yourself or anyone else wants to add to make this series better just let me know since this is probably going to be a long one since as I said past 4 the series gets more longer and more complex, Ultima 7 part 1: The Black Gate is going to take at least around 80 or so hours to finish and that is just doing the main storyline quests if you already know were to go and not sequence break since this is one of the first open ended non linear RPG series you could always do that and that is also not counting doing the Isle of Fire test that came with the Forge of Virtue expansion pack which nets you the sweet and highly OP Black sword which kills basically any thing in one or two hits save for say Lord British but you can always use the swords instant death ability on him, nor is it counting all the stuff in the second part of Ultima 7: Serpents isle and it's expansion the Silver Seed. Plus I still got what? 9 games to complete.

I was also considering recording video of the final parts of each game which is easy to do since most of these games are old Dos games and Dosbox has it's own video recording feature in it so I can do it for 2,3,5,6,8, the two Underworld spin-offs and the two Ultima Worlds of Adventure spin offs but 7 and 7 part 2 I will be using the fan made Exult engine so I may have some trouble recording that I am going with Exult and not dosbox because Ultima 7's engine while playable in Dosbox does encounter weird frame rate issues, I used a similar fan engine called Xu4 for Ultima 4: Quest of the Avatar since it allowed me to not only pick between various graphical sets but also included the music missing from the PC version of the game while still being able to play the game at it's original speed. There was a fan patch for Ultima 4 that allowed you to play with the missing music but it also required you to replace the old primitive EGA graphics with a ugly VGA one(well in my opinion it was ugly) there is a similar patch for Ultima 3 and 5 which adds the music for those in and in Ultima 3's case you can choose what graphic set you want so you could play with the orginal CGA, the intended composite CGA(the game was made to be played on a composite video monitor which would overlap and artifact the 4 colors on the screen and make them 16), a Ultima 4 and the PC version of Ultima 1 ega graphics set and a VGA one, 5's just adds the music missing from the PC version. 

I also ended up using the Runic to English patch on 5 only because I just didn't feel like translating every damn sign, every damn scroll and such from the original Runic letters to English and then taking the time to write out what it says when I post screen shots for the thread. But I will probably have to get used to it since I will have to do that for 6 and 7, 6 is even worse since not only do you have Britannian runes but the Gragish ones as well and there is no translation patch for that or 7.
 
Oh and if anyone wants to try Ultima 4 I recommend using a Sega Master system or a Genesis/Megadrive emulator with Master System support since there was a excellent port of Ultima 4 made for the Master System that thanks to Nintendo's licensing policies at the time was released only in Europe and is probably the best port of the game featuring nice graphics, music and the only real change to the game outside of a more simpler menu based interface ala Phantasy Star and Dragon Quest was that they changed the dungeon view from a first person one to a overhead one. Outside of that it's the most acurate and faithful port of the game released on the consoles unlike the NES version of Quest of the Avatar which was highly butchered, not saying it's a bad game just not a faithful port as many things were cut such as there is no longer the virtue test at the end of the game, a different ending, you can not converse with NPC's in the NES version instead they just spout off one line dialogue and so on.   

Also avoid the NES port of Ultima 5: Warriors of Destiny it's horrid.. the SNES port of Ultima 6 is good though but the SNES port of 7: Black Gate is the single worst thing ever made. 

[Chris Stern]

Right after a bit of a break, it's time to get back to saving Britannia. Right were did I leave off.. oh right.


Now there are a few things I forgot to explain or even touch upon, nothing major just little things.

For example on all 8 major cities of Virtue you can find a sign explaining one of the 8 laws set by Blackthorn and the Oppression, the law posted will be tied to the virtue of the city. It's not a important thing to know but it adds to the game I think.

If your interested the 8 Laws are as follows:

Honesty    Thou shalt not lie, or thou shalt lose thy tongue.
Compassion    Thou shalt help those in need, or thou shalt suffer the same need.
Valor    Thou shalt fight to the death if challenged, or thou shalt be banished as a coward.
Justice    Thou shalt confess to thy crime and suffer its just punishment, or thou shalt be put to death.
Sacrifice    Thou shalt donate half of thy income to charity, or thou shalt have no income.
Honor    If thou dost lose thine own honor, thou shalt take thine own life.
Spirituality    Thou shalt enforce the laws of virtue, or thou shalt die as a heretic.
Humility    Thou shalt humble thyself to thy superiors, or thou shalt suffer their wrath.

Another thing I wanted to touch upon was how leveling worked in Ultima 5. Now in Ultima 3 and 4 you would speak to Lord British to raise your level but since he is missing in Ultima 5 instead you get visits from a apparition and when it appears if any characters in the party have enough XP he will level them up and will raise one of their base stats but these visits seem to be somewhat random events that happen when you have your party camp. Sadly I don't know of a surefire way to get the apparition to appear but I do know that if your Karma reaches a really low level it will no longer show up and will not appear to resurrect you and your party should you fall in battle. Oh yeah I forgot to mention that if your party is wiped out you will re-spawn at Castle British with only a few food and a bit less gold as well as a slight XP deduction, how much XP you lose to resurrection is based on Karma, I would tell you the karma to XP loss ratio but I can't find that info.



I would also like to point out that Ultima 5 was the first game in the series to completely use the Runic characters in game while Ultima 2, 3 and 4 used runic on the included world maps. 5 actually implemented them in game, now I have used a rune to english translation patch since my skills with Britannian runes is rusty and I rather not have to go and look at the translation key and translate every scroll name,word of power, password, sign, ect. in the game.



Now sadly I will have to do this for Ultima's 6 and 7..there is just no avoiding it and top it off in 6 and 7 part 2 Serpent's isle there is another seperate written language that you have to translate in 6 it's Gragish and in 7 part 2 it's Ophidian.

Got all that? Right now on with the adventure!

[spoiler]   

So picking up where I left off, we set sail from the island where Sutek was and head over to Skara Brie the town of Spirituality that rests on a good sized island to the west of Britian and Castle British. Here we are going to finally speak to Archmage Falin of the Oppression about joining up and to see if we can't find the last word of power, since each dungeon is a named after a counter principle of one of seven of the virtues I say 7 because Humility never had a dungeon since in Ultima 4 where all this stuff was introduced instead it's town Magincia counted as it's dungeon since as I may have mentioned in Ultima 4 Magincia was based on Pride which was the opposite of Humility so it basically served as a pseudo dungeon, but from 5 on that has been replaced with a proper town New Magincia but still no dungeon. At least it saves me the trouble of learning a 8th word of power. Anyway since Skara brie is the town of Spirituality it stands to reason(and also based on experience) that I probably can find the last council member somewhere in the town. 

It's kinda weird when I think about it, If I was a member of a parliamentary body forced into hinding by a oppressive and corrupt stewartship the last places I would be hiding is in the city I represented and was tied to the word of power I knew for the counter virtue of said towns virtue. Guess Blackthorn isn't that smart or stopped his search since I showed up.

Moving on, now I manged to figure out where Falin was in the town since thanks to my years of RPG experience it was easy to work out that since the guy was a Wizard he would probably be in the tower in the center of town since Wizards and Towers go together like peanut butter and chocolate or BD and women.

Now the doors to the place are magically locked and since there is no cannon handy I can't grab one and just blow open the door and gun powder kegs won't be around till Ultima 6 and since I didn't mix up any castings of the fifth circle spell Unlock Magic/In Ex Por(requires ash and blood moss) but I did have some skull keys which do the same, there is a town where one of the merchants will wonder off at a certain time and hide something by a tree which if you follow him you find are 3 skull keys and you can find a set of 3 there at the same time everyday.

Now much to my displeasure it seems this guy has bats in his tower and as soon as you open the door one or more will come flying out, now this isn't too bad since bats are weak so they aren't much of a threat as say a pack of Headless but they can cause the door to re-lock after you exit the battle screen, meaning you have to unlock the door again and you guessed it another bat will appear.. I got lucky as I managed to lure the first one away and headed back and managed to open the still unlocked door and get into the tower before I entered into a battle but it's still a bit annoying.

Heading up to the top I found Falin hanging out by his telescope, keeping a eye on the goings on in the town below. So I ask him about the oppression and told him Dryden sent me. He then proceeds to test me in order to prove that I am on there side and of course he asks for the name of one of council so they may "dispose" of the traitor, I of course politely refused.

I can't in good consciousness give up a name since knowing how things are in this game they probably will kill said character and plus hey I am supposed to be a good guy here. Sigh if they asked for a simple word of power I would of done it, so much for the black badge and making my life easier getting into blackthorn's keep.     

I should note that as a bit of a experiment I decided to see what would happen if I attacked him, despite his arrogance he went down in one shot and I only lost 5 points of Karma for it.. now that compared to close to half your current Karma for giving up the name of a council member.. I just find that intresting, anyway I reloaded after killing the clown since again I am the good guy here and while Justice is a virtue, Killing someone like that isn't Justice.. he will get his in the end though just got to bring down blackthorn.   

Well with that I head down and search the town to see if we can't find the last council member but after much searching I came up empty handed but I did pick up some reagents from a shop in town not much just some Blood moss, Ginseng and Garlic since we are still pretty poor, the ship cost us alot of gold remember.

So with that it was time to plot the next course, I decided to finally stop dodging the inveitable and storm Blackthorn's keep..well not storm as much go Solid snake and sneak in and try to get the crown and escape. Blackthorn's keep is on the Isle of Terrafin which formed for the three volcanos where Mondain's skull was found in Ultima 4 which from Skara Brae you must sail due south past bordermarch, past Jhelom and the Dungeon Shame and then swing around the bottom part of main content of Britannia and then you will reach Terrafin.

Here is a map with all key locations already marked on it:


After a bit of sailing and getting lost during the night do to the small FOV that happens when it get's dark. I finally landed on Terrafin and worked up the courage to enter the castle of the enemy.


Now it seems I stumbled on a little trick as you can get passed the monsters and guards if you use the magic carpet, lucky me. While there I freed two poor souls chained in Blackthron's main chamber, I couldn't leave the poor souls to their fate..not sure how they plan on escaping given how this place is swarming with Daemons, guards and the occasional shadowlord plus it's on a island far from the main land and I have the only ship around, well they could try to filch one of the pirates ships but really by time that could happen they would be recaptured and possibly executed.


Past Blackthorn's throne room we find his personal chambers and the stairs leading to the top of the castle where behind a magically sealed door is the crown. Luckily I still am using the magic carpet as there are four areas littered with trap floors that will drop you down to the dungeons, using the last Skull key in our possession we enter and grab the crown and put it on just in case the Daemon's get fresh, they can posses any party members but the crown negates that ability for the whole party.   



I figure while I am here and seemingly immune to getting caught by Blackthorn and his cronies I do a little exploring and notice towards the lower levels possibly the dungeon area there is a room with lava, seems the castle is built on top of one of the three volcanoes that formed the island.

After making my way through a series of locked doors, you won't believe how many.. I think I lost count after 6.
I find Blackthorn's dungeon. A Gruesome place with a table and a swinging blade over top of it that is covered in blood and a weird hourglass..


Now I already know what that hourglass and table are for, you see if you are ever caught with in the castle without the black badge you are sent to the dungeon and there you will awake and be eventually taken to this room where Blackthorn himself will appear and start buttering you up at first and then ask nicely for one of the mantras so he can enter one of the 8 shrines, do this and he will defile the shrine and you have to restore it and you also lose Karma till you restore it. 

Refuse and he will get testy and decide to show you that he is not to be taken lightly and will have the guards grab one of your companions and place them on the table and turn the hourglass over and you have till the sand runs out to tell him the mantra he asks for if not then he drops the blade on your companion and they die..permanently. Oh that's right you can not resurrect them for you see in Britannia resurrection spells only work if the person has recently died and the body is in tact but that blade Blackthorn drops splits them in two and thus they are beyond resurrection. 

In the cell to the left there is a warrior who offers to help you escape, useful if your caught he gives a full set of directions on how to flee this maze filled death trap. But since I don't need to escape yet.. Over to the right cells I found a old blind wizard named Hassad. He says that he was taken prisoner from his home in New Magincia when the Shadowlords found him and that he was taken because he knows something that Blackthorn is interested in..but when pressed about it he would just only say "that's for me to know" going on a hunch I asked about the Council and Words of Power and he responds that he does know of the Great Council but makes me ask him about that?" I coyly respond with the Resistance password Dawn and he loosens up and coughs up the final word of power Ignavus which unseals Hythloth.


Well got me the first of the four items of the King and the last word of Power. So with that I make my escape from this hellish place and start heading back to Castle British over on the main land to get the Sandalwood box from there. 

So in Castle British, I head up to the top and enter his room using the key(read nearby cannon) and after a few failed attempts at playing stones on the harpsichord a passage opens and there is the sandalwood box. 2 of the four items are now ours.


and having gone over my notes again seems I forgot about a little bit of info, seems I forgot to head to the Lyceum and speak with Sir Sean as he had info on the scepter.. *facepalm* Sigh.. right off we go to the Lyceum.

The Lyceum is one of the three keeps dedicated to the three principles of Truth, Love and Courage and where we need to return to once we get the shards of Mondain's gem of immortality in order to destroy them. Now the Lyceum is on a island far to the east of the main continent. So it's a bit of a trip but we get there and find Sir Sean and after much searching I finally found him as he sat to have his breakfast.

Turns out he knows where the keep of the Shadowlords is, the place is called Stonekeep and lies south of Lost hope bay(where ever that is) and from there I have to take a skiff down till I reach a series of mountains and that I will need to get a special item to help me get over the mountains. Since we already have that were good.  Then using the item head through the mountains south there will lay Stonekeep which is guarded by a Daemon named Bailnor.. Joy a Daemon guards this place well luckily I got the crown so if it comes to a fight I don't have to worry about him or his buddies possessing any of my characters.   

Now while my main charecter is pretty good to go, the rest of my party are under equipped for this one so I am probley going to get some coin to buy some better gear since we are rapidly nearing the end game with all seven of the words of power to reopen the seven dungeons so we may enter the underworld at set areas, two and soon three of Lord British's items in our possesion and once we get the Scepter we will have to start delving into the underworld to get the necklace and eventually the three shards of Mondain's gem and as I mentioned a few times previously the underworld is a nasty place and plus I am sure that the three shards are not far from some of the dungeons, which ones I don't have a clue yet but the Daemon who lives in the desert should have a idea of where the one for the Shadowlord of Hatred is.

So to recap all that is left are:

British's Scepter - Stonekeep
British's Necklace - Underworld via the Spiritwood entrance
The three Shards of Mondain's Gem
The names of the Shadowlords in order to summon them to appear at the three keeps where we can destroy them

Do the sacred quests for the 8 Shrines of Virtue
and then find and rescue Lord British.

Seems I can wrap this up in another post or three. Well it's off go grind, be back when I make some more "story" progress after that I will probley quickly do Ultima 2 and then Ultima 3: Exodus to get those out of the way, while Ultima 2 doesn't have much to do with the later games outside of a certain part in Ultima 6, Ultima 3: Exodus on the other hand does play a bit in 6 and is tied to the Forge of Virtue expansion quest line which is set in the returning Isle of Fire and Castle Exodus(also known as Castle Death) as well as the nature of Exodus itself. So If figure I may as well knock those two out before heading in to 6 and 7. 



 



 

[Stoner]

Damn dude.  Burning through this game.

[Chris Stern]

Damn dude.  Burning through this game.

Yeah I kinda am. Then again while longer then say Ultima's 1-3 and Ultima 4. if you already know what you need, where to get it you can finish it in around 7 to 10 hours, in my case I say it's going to take around another 8 to 12 to finish where the part that is going to take me the longest time to get through is the dungeon delving and underworld exploration. I admit I did luck out and was able to skip some areas like Buccaneers den, the town of New Magincia and the Keep of Serpent's hold since I was able to work some of the things on my own based on what clues I managed to get.

Now Ultima 6 and 7 is where the games get really long especially 7 just doing the main quest line which is broken into three parts that converge at the end will take you around 30 to 40 hours to finish unless of course you use the hidden developers room which can be found in the first city and the Forge of Virtue add on content is hard as nails but soo worth it since in the end you forge this deadly black sword which is embedded with a vengeful spirit of a powerful daemon and can instant kill any NPC in the game save for one and it's not Lord British.  But man are the trials of Truth, Love and Courage are rough..

As for Ultima 2, I can wipe that out in three hours and most of those three hours will be grinding for certain items and gold outside of that you only need to do three or four things to reach the end. Exodus will take a bit longer but still will be short, I had been doing the grinding stuff in Exodus and Ultima 2 during my downtime from  Ultima 5 which is why I saved those for after 5 as I figured it will be more interesting to read my progress in 5 while on the side I get the grind done in the other 2.

Then after them I will do 6 followed by the two worlds of Ultima spin offs Savage Empire and Martian Dreams since they are set after False Prophet, then I'll do 7 though technically Ultima Underworld 1 would come before it but eh who's counting, though I have to do Underworld 2 before 7 part 2: Serpent's Isle since Underworld 2 is set between 7: The Black Gate and 7 Part 2: Serpents Isle and there is some foreshadowing to the events of Seprents isle in Underworld 2 as well as in Exodus. Well to be more correct there are a few things in Exodus which come into play in 6, 7 and 7 part 2: Serpent's Isle.

That or I may do Underworld 1 after Savage Empire just to give myself a bit of a break since Martain Dreams uses the same engine as both Ultima 6 and Savage empire, though I love Martian Dreams the setting is so amazing as it takes place in a alternate Steampunk victorian era where a space "bullet" was accidently shot early and a bunch of well known people from the victorian era were shot into space and ended up on Mars, so it's up to the Avatar along with his doctor friend, Journalist Nellie Bly(yes she was a real person) with help from Niccola Tesla, Sigmund Freud and other well known names from that era to head to mars and rescue the stranded people and find out what happened.

Ah well, I guess I will do 6 then Savage Empire, then Underworld 1 then Martian Dreams.