Ultima

[Anonymous No.1625814]

Ultima series thread

Really got into this series the last month, played through 4 and jumped straight into 5. I was really thrilled by all the little changes; Ranged weapons getting a little nerfed by having ammno and friendly fire, diagonal attacking etc. I don't really like the whole 'runic language' thing. I was amused by having to translate the first few times, but after awhile I just installed a patch to replace it with english.

After beating V I'm probbly just going to go right on to VI. How are Savage Empire and Martian Dreams, worth playing?

[Anonymous No.1625817]

Oh, and I fucked up pretty hard at the end of Ultima IV, I actually ended up ragequitting after this and just watching the ending on youtube. They're not really hard, but I'm not going through all those balrogs again.

[Anonymous No.1625862]

It's a real alphabet, isn't it? Younger Futhark I think?

[Anonymous No.1625869]

>Ranged weapons getting a little nerfed by having ammno
Except for the magic axe.

Savage Empire is a kind of Baby's first Ultima 6. It has the same gameplay without the excessive world and storyline. You may want to play Savage Empire before False Prophet to get accustomed to the system without being overwhelmed by the size of the world. Plotwise the World of Ultima games are independent.
Martian Dreams on the other hand is more an adventure with the Ultima 6 engine. The plot is fairly linear, fights are rare and there are no options for the party. It's similar to Black Gate and Serpent Isle.

[Anonymous No.1625892]

Ultima V was such a nice improvement over IV. I enjoyed the heck out of it.

Have a remix of the best tune in the game

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_975gF77g2g

[Anonymous No.1625897]

>>1625862
It's closer to Futhorc but the differences in general aren't big. You can decipher runic texts with the knowledge acquired in Ultima 5 and 7 provided you know the language.

[Anonymous No.1626059]

>>1625892
Huh, I didn't actually know it had music. The version I got from GOG doesn't have it. Oh well.

[Anonymous No.1626082]

>>1626059
Samefag here, just found this myself

http://www.pixsoriginadventures.co.uk/category/ultima-patcher/

Neat, universal patcher for all games, for Ultima V it comes with a MIDI patch and runeless-text patch.

[Don Rumata !!rYqzYYFAejo No.1626083]

>>1626059
GOG sells the DOS version of IV, but you can get Pix's Ultimate Patcher and use the GOG game with XU4 + patcher for better visuals and sound. For some reason, though, XU4 runs slower than the DOS version; I don't know if this is because of lower cycles that I could adjust or because of the engine itself, but I'm thinking about playing DOS again.

[Anonymous No.1626110]

>>1626083
I think the default cycles in gog ultima 4 are too high.
xu4 gives you plenty of variables to tweak if you feel it's too slow.
Ultima is a case where gog is selling a sub-par version with no music in 3-5 and CGA graphics in 2 and 3.

For Ultima 6 I recommend getting nuvie as they're done with False Prophet and now working on Worlds.
http://nuvie.sourceforge.net/
You can also add the speech and sound from the FM Towns port that way.

[Anonymous No.1626114]

I seem to have made a terrible mistake

[Anonymous No.1626131]

>>1626114
You can hardly lose in Ultima. V has a time limit but you normally wont come near it. The worst that normally happens is getting stuck in the final dungeon because you missed a crucial item.

[Anonymous No.1626165]

>>1626131
>V has a time limit but you normally wont come near it.

Explain further, I have never heard of this

[Anonymous No.1626175]

>>1626165
Every Ultima game needs an option to kill Lord British and in V this consists of letting him starve to death instead of rescuing him.

[Anonymous No.1626195]

>>1626131
I remember once saving inside the room where you get the sandalwood box after opening it with the harpsichord. When I loaded the save, the wall was closed again with no way to open it from the inside. Luckily, I had another save file and didn't lose too much progress.

[Anonymous No.1626397]

How are the fan remakes?
anything worth checking out

[Anonymous No.1626490]

>>1625817
Playing with my friends, we went down the Abyss, fought through everything, answered the questions, then finally faced with the final question, something about what encompasses all love, all honor, all truth, or whatever it was. We were determined to finish the game that evening, my friend even set up a video camera pointed at the screen to record the entire thing.

The day before I was poking around the disks with a sector editor and saw a text string that was something like VALOCOMPSACRHUMI ... SELF the first four letters of the virtues and other words in the game.

So back to the question, what encompasses all those attributes? ... Man? The player? The self? So I typed in SELF.

>Nope.

Kicked back up to the surface, and on the camera recording you can hear everyone going "NOOOOOOOOOO!!!" The actual answer is INFInity. It occurred to me later that SELF is just an alternate answer for self SACRifice.

[Anonymous No.1627037]

>>1626397
The new engines are very useful since they just give you more options for the interface.
The Dungeon Siege stuff is at least not a real replacement.

[Anonymous No.1627112]

>>1626114

You're not bound by the honor virtue anymore. Generally, you can just run away, and in the case of the gargoyle, it's honestly the easiest way to deal with him.

or pack a glass sword

>>1626131
>>1626175

I forget, how long do you have? What sort of message do you get if you dawdle too long?

[Anonymous No.1627121]

ive been playing through the entire series, including spinoffs, for the first time. started last year and im at underworld 2 currently.

it's a great series. faves so far are underworld, 7 and 6. savage empire is a great light adventure with a cool pulp feel. martian dreams was one of my least favorites though. mostly because it was missing the things i like most about ultima games. exploration and rp.

i have uu2, 7-2, 8 and 9 left but so far i'd rank the series

uu>7>6>5>savage>4>1>martian>3>2

[Anonymous No.1627127]

>>1627121

It's a shame, I liked how UU2 fit in with the series, and in some ways, I think it's the best showing of the Guardian as a villain. But it's so damn exploitable, and it's rather poorly paced in a lot of ways.


As opposed to UU1, which never really felt like an Ultima, doesn't fit in with the rest of the series, and just sticks out from a lore perspective, but is one of the most well constructed, balanced, and perfectly paced games I've ever played in my life.


If only there were a way to merge the two.

[REAL ||D.II.II\/II.||D NIGGA No.1627129]

Only ever played VII, it seems quite good though

[Anonymous No.1627136]

>>1627127
i like uu2 so far and yeah i think how it's placed in between 7 and 7-2 is neat. the pacing is definitely an issue though. i just entered the 7th world and it already feels a bit too long. that magic academy was an ordeal

[Anonymous No.1627146]

Have a map I scanned.

[Anonymous No.1627154]

>>1627112
I was wondering if there was something going to bite me in the ass if I kept running away. Still, it feels like cheating because unlike most RPGs running away in U5 is just so risk-free. It just wouldn't feel right if I just made the gargoyles guarding the crown vanish for no reason. I'll save them for later.

[Anonymous No.1627183]

>>1627146
Did they convert their computer data for the cloth map?
It seems to accurate and blocky for something Mrs Garriot drew by hand.

[Anonymous No.1627231]

>>1627183
Lots of it seems to match up tile for tile. A couple of spots don't, like that small mountain range above the "Lost River" label in the upper left.

[Anonymous No.1627235]

>>1627231
The coastline, roads and rivers were computer generated while mountains, forests, buildings and other marks were hand drawn.

[Anonymous No.1627562]

>>1627136

The void isn't much better.

I kind of first consciously became aware of it because I tried to write an anti-walkthrough for the game. (Yeah, I'm a fan of Doug the Eagle. I'm sorry.)

And I had a whole lot of fun, cheap, game-breaking, stupid shit, and then once you hit the academy, there's basically nothing besides wandering around with your sword out and smacking shit. (Part of it is I went to the "sixth" world, the Pits, before the academy, since the cudgel really helps you there).


Still, I have my supersave, with all my skills up to 30 and the Castle armory with piles of gold and all the unique items and enchanted stuff all neatly arranged. Good packrat memories.

[Anonymous No.1628373]

>>1627562
That's not too different from Underworld 1. Floor 7 and 8 are just combat with occasional puzzles.
The size is a major difference. UW1 was heavily confined by the layout of most levels while UW2 is open to longer passages and uses more space in general.
You can also learn far more skills in 2 than in 1.
It's a larger, longer game but that doesn't make it automatically better or worse.

[Anonymous No.1628531]

So is U4 a good place to start? Got the GoG version for free a while back.

[Anonymous No.1628882]

>>1628531
It is.
It starts off the Age of Enlightenment trilogy making it a perfect setup for 5 and 6 while not requiring you to have played 1/2/3.

[Anonymous No.1629457]

>>1628531
Get xu4 or the fan patcher. The version as sold by gog was made for a time when IBMs didn't have sound cards so it's missing the music.

[Anonymous No.1629474]

>>1628531
Yep, make sure you download all of the documents the game has on gog, you should at least skim them a little, it's all really helpful. Check out the reference card first, it explains the controls and basics. Google "utlima patcher" for a simple program that has all the essential fan-patches and addons.

Use this

[Anonymous No.1629974]

>>1628882
>>1629457
>>1629474
Alright, thank you.

[Anonymous No.1630268]

Stay FAR FAR FAR FAR FAR AWAY from Ultima IX.

[Anonymous No.1630289]

>>1630268
No. Give Ultima IX a chance.

[Anonymous No.1630297]

>>1630289

I agree. Ultima 9 is a great comedy game if you've played the rest of the series.

I think my favorite moment is going into the museum and seeing the glass on the floor.

from a robbery that happened 20 years ago. Nobody could be bothered to clean it up for 2 decades

[Anonymous No.1630342]

>>1630268
>>1630297
>every ultima thread
>guys I watched Spoony so I'm totally an expert on the series

[Anonymous No.1630358]

>>1630342
Never watched Spoony.

[Anonymous No.1630398]

>>1630342

I was one of the Ultima dragons, anon. Spoony is a pretentious douche, and my grievences with UIX are real and legitimate.

If the Guardian was cast off from the evil of the Avatar, then why was he fighting contemporaries of Mondain? (UW2's Praecor Loth guys) Time might flow at different rates, but it doesn't flow backwards.

Why has the purified Blackthorn (who was explicitly said only to be evil because of the Shadowlords) suddenly a card carrying villain? Hell, I don't know if you'd consider it canon, but a cut content from one of Mortegro's seances would have listed him as dead.

And let's not forget the tasteless rehash of the False Prophet scenario, despite the fact that you did perform the sacrifice and averted the danger, which was the whole fucking point of the game.

Or Pyros. Summoning Pyros to get into the Abyss? Really? Nevermind that that was never needed before, but Pyros is dead, or at least lost his power. Why are you summoning him? Oh, I know, they had to find a use for the video from the Bob White plot or else it would waste the money spent producing it.


UIX is a gigantic fucking mess. You don't need some Youtube idiot to see it.


Parting thought of the day: Stealing is wrong!

[Anonymous No.1630403]

>>1630342

you don't have to defend -every- bad game you played as a kid

[Anonymous No.1630807]

>>1630342
What's a Paladin?

[Anonymous No.1631248]

>>1630807

Your daily reminder that EA tried to suppress the fan-made patch that eliminated such stupidity.

[Anonymous No.1631259]

>>1630398
Why were there no friendly orcs even though the manual for 2 said there would be friendly orcs?

[Anonymous No.1631296]

>>1631259

If you accept that Goblins=orcs (Which is never explicitly stated, but if it's drawing from LOTR, I think it's a safe assumption), you have the goblin groups in both underworlds, and hell, Simon wasn't half bad of a fellow.......

Plus, they're probably hiding. Look how long you had to search before you found a handful of friendly cyclopses. Staying away from groups of heavily armed and dangerous looking humans is probably par for the course for friendlier orcs.


And IIRC, the manual for 2 only said that Orcs were pests, and created by the foolish melding of people and boars.

[Anonymous No.1631321]

>>1631296
>But so it did. First there was the single lost orc a farmer stumbled upon. What was it? Whence came it? Scientists knew in their secret hearts that the orc was the work of a sorcerer, and had that sorcerer been a benevolent one who had created the orc by accident, he would have come forward. But they didn’t want to know it, so they put it aside. >The orc was too sick and hurt to fight when it was first found. When it was sufficiently recovered and it had begun to assert its learned wrathful ways, it discovered a conundrum in its weak little head. These creatures had saved its life—it grasped that much—and it didn’t want to hurt them. >Because the little lone orc had never been missed, it was not controlled by magical influences. It persisted with a pleasant benevolence.
>All the good orcs we see in towns and villages today have descended from this one unusual orc. But the good people of Earth should have realized its import those years ago.

[Anonymous No.1631325]

>>1631248
there was a patch?

[Anonymous No.1631327]

>>1631248
At this very moment, Britannia burns.

[Anonymous No.1631340]

>>1631327
That's from Ultima 8.

[Anonymous No.1631345]

>>1631248
How is it idiocy? Not everyone knows about the special role of Paladins in Britannia.
Pagan allowed you to ask what a cutpurse is even though they had no special role in Pagan.

[Anonymous No.1631401]

>>1631321

Oh, you're right, that's from the Minax storyline part, not the bestiary.

I dunno. Ultima 2 never made a tremendous amount of sense, and didn't the manual (or something, my memories of 1-3 are pretty fragmentary) in III say that with Minax's death, the time gates shut, and pretty much handwaved it all away?

I mean hell, Ultima 2 happens not on Britannia/Sosaria, but on freaking EARTH. When was the last time you saw an orc wandering about town?

>>1631325
The dialog patch.

>>1631345
There isn't really a specially designated role of paladins in Britannia, you know. I mean, your paladin companion sits around in taverns all day if given the chance.

Regardless, previous ultimas handled it a lot more gracefully than the endless barrage of idiot questions the Avatar has in 9.


>I’m sorry, but what... I mean, who are the Gargoyles?

[Anonymous No.1631470]

>>1625814
I have a question about 7; the isometric angle looks weird as fuck
do the graphics scale accurate if changed to the standard type of isometric view?

[Anonymous No.1631485]

>>1631401
You just don't see how retarded his questions are because you only get keywords.

Ultima generally took many liberties with the predecessors. False Prophet was the worst offender because it rewrote nearly everything to form a continuous storyline and blame things on you you didn't actually do.

[Anonymous No.1631492]

>>1631470
Ultima 6 and 7 are not true isometric projeciton, only Ultima 8 is.
There is a mod for Exult that rotates the view.
http://exult.sourceforge.net/forum/read.php?f=1&i=373069&t=373069

[Anonymous No.1631495]

>>1631492
ok
I picked up ultima 7 a while back for dirt cheap. i've also never really played any old school rpgs but I want to play it someday. is there anything I should do to make playing it more enjoyable other than reading the manual?

[Anonymous No.1631505]

>>1631495
Playing the predecessors.

[Anonymous No.1631507]

>>1631505
would those not be even harder to play or no?

[Anonymous No.1631515]

>>1631507
Ultima is not a hard series. The main difficulty comes from finding out what you have to do and keeping track of your progress.

Ultima 7 made some attempts to simplify the gameplay even further but it can be harder to control.

[Anonymous No.1631540]

>>1631485

I was always of two minds of the Gargoyles blaming a whole lot of shit that LB and the Council did on you.


I mean, on one hand, it's factually wrong, and its annoying that you can't say "But I didn't do any of that".

On the other hand, just look at real life societies that hate each other. There's an enormous desire to simplify, almost caricaturize your enemies. For a game that's ultimately about cultures clashing, I'm not exactly surprised that the Gargoyles have a huge number of misapprehensions about humans: after all, the humans have a whole bunch about the gargoyles.


Still, the flat Britannia was annoying.

[Anonymous No.1632664]

DRAGONS SUMMONING DEMONS SUMMONING DEMONS SUMMONING DEMONS SUMMONING DEMONS

Why do Dragons, of all creatures, summon demons? Guess its time to stock up on negate magic again.

[Anonymous No.1632691]

>>1632664

Wear the crown, Luke!

[Anonymous No.1632712]

>>1632664
It wouldn't be so bad if Demons didn't charm your party and turned invisible.

[Anonymous No.1632734]

I am really intrigued by this series.

I tried playing U4, U5, and U6 and couldn't get into any of them. I played each of them for a couple hours, taking pen and paper notes really trying to immerse myself but I was turned off by the controls and learning curve before I moved on to the next game.

U7 has captured me for 30 hours or so now, and I feel like I'm about halfway through the game, but I suddenly have very little motivation to finish it. I've been chasing Elizabeth and Abraham around town to town and I just hit Moonglow. The dialogue isn't really doing it for me anymore and it's getting harder to care about sidequests. Should I stick with it anons? Or should I moved on to UUW?

[Anonymous No.1632968]

>>1632664
Should've put on your Storm Cloak.

[Anonymous No.1632971]

>>1632734
You don't sound intrigued by this series at all.

Figure out Ultima IV or move on entirely.

[Anonymous No.1633080]

>>1632971
I'm more or less intrigued by Richard Garriott. The games I'm not sure about, but I can appreciate the legacy.

It doesn't seem very complicated to figure out. Talk to everybody in town about mantra, rune, and shrine. You're told to talk to somebody in another town about it. You lawnmower general vicinity to find rune. Someone tells you relatively where the shrine is. I can understand the appeal in 1985, but with the weak dialogue why not just skip to 5/6/7?

[Anonymous No.1633810]

>>1633080
Getting the runes, mantras and shrines aren't enough to become the avatar. You have to excel in all of the 8 virtues. It's still easily exploitable but you could at least try to put some effort into it.
What's so terrible about the controls or the learning curve?

The later games build upon being the avatar and if you never learned the virtues you just aren't the avatar. Meeting old friends and revisiting familiar places in a new light is also a key aspect you lose out by skipping parts.
Clearing the Abyss isn't important but getting 50 in all stats is a good advantage for 5.
5-7 are all more advanced versions of the same system so if you have problems with the system in 4 you wouldn't really benefit from jumping to the sequels.

Play Ultima Underworld in any case. The game was only shoehorned into the Ultima setting during the development and has no relation to the story and none of the other characters appear.

[Anonymous No.1634438]

>>1633810
The most frustrating part was mixing/casting spells. I think if I had a physical copy of the manual I'd be having a better time. Exploring, getting poisoned and dying with no clue about the reagent system is rough.

I'll try to finish 7, then UUW2, then 7-2. Then I may try my luck at 4-6 again.

[Anonymous No.1634463]

>>1634438
In xu4 or the SMS port you can mix more than one spell at a time.
What I did was play the game windowed to keep an eye on the map and manual. You could also print out the important parts or simply note down the spell components.
And at least the shortcuts for the spells are intuitive. C for Cure, H for Heal etc. In 5 you have to deal with formula so you need to remember not only that cure needs ginseng and garlic but also that the words are An Nox.

[Anonymous No.1634585]

>>1634438
7-2 will make less sense than it should without playing the middle trilogy.

[Anonymous No.1634604]

>>1634585
I don't think that. It continues part of the story from Black Gate and reuses a few names from 1 and 3 but there's no connection to 4-6 aside from the companions.

[Anonymous No.1634718]

I just started into Ultima with IV. been nabbing runes, mantras, spells, etc. How the hell do I donate blood?

[Anonymous No.1634730]

>>1634718
You go to a healer.

[Anonymous No.1634814]

>>1634730
When i do if I say no to needing treatment it boots me out of conversation if i say yes it only gives treatment options. playing GOG version if it matters.

[Anonymous No.1634837]

>>1634814
You need 400 or more HP. Then you should get a second prompt asking you to donate after saying you don't need help.

[Anonymous No.1634862]

>>1634814
>>1634837

The easiest way is to get up to level 5-6 or so, and then run constantly between LB (who heals you for free) and the healer on the first floor of his castle.

[Anonymous No.1634904]

>>1634862
>>1634837
thanks! it was the hp as mine is max 200 currently. do you level up by talking to British?

[Anonymous No.1634915]

>>1634904
Yes. He can also heal you if you tell him you're in poor health.

[Anonymous No.1634916]

>>1634904

Yes, but you have to have enough XP, which you get from killing stuff and doing general questing (Finding runes and visiting shrines etc). Leveling up the Avatar is fairly simple, getting your companions up is a bit tougher. You'll want to get your main guy up to level 8 fairly quickly, so you can recruit a full party.

[Anonymous No.1634926]

>>1634916
I would advise against expanding your party too quickly. Too many characters will just get in your way and use up all your resources. Katrina in particular is practically dead weight.

[Anonymous No.1634976]

>>1634916
Yeah was playing a fair bit last night almiost have 2000 xp

[Anonymous No.1634993]

>>1634976

That should be enough for level 5 or so.

>>1634926

lol, I had forgotten how bad Katrina is. But still, I like having at least 4-6 people, even early game, with slings, it expands your power considerably.

[Anonymous No.1635034]

>>1634976

That should be enough for level 5 or so.

>>1634926

Even Katrina isn't that bad, early game. Shepherds mostly suck because they can't use good weapons or armor (until Mystics). But at least when I played, for a good chunk of the game, especially early when you're weak, it was everyone armed with slings and in leather or cloth armor.

Katrina isn't really any worse than anyone lse with that loadout.

[Anonymous No.1635056]

>>1635034
>Katrina isn't really any worse than anyone lse with that loadout.
She can't cast spells and she'll never be able to use better equipment. I wouldn't be surprised if her stats were the lowest.
You can afford bows and even crossbows early on and even magic weapons can be more of a question of finding the shop.

[Anonymous No.1635962]

>>1635034
>>1635056
I made it a point to have my character come out as a shepherd when I played, just to see how it would come out. Don't recall much problem, given I did finish the game.

[Anonymous No.1636049]

>>1635962
The game isn't that hard that starting as a shepherd would make it impossible. You still get the companions and you can leave Magincia quickly enough.

[James No.1636049,1]

Can someone help me find a full sized 4096x4096 map of Ultima 5 plus if possible the Underworld as well?

[Abe No.1636049,2]

@James full size tileset maps are here:

https://drrak.github.io/ultima5/
https://drrak.github.io/ultima5/u

I found the links here:
http://gigi.nullneuron.net/ultima/u5/