This is my first post in over a week as my isp has been down for ages after a spam attack. I’ve also only had a couple of sessions on Ultima 5 in that time, I spent way longer than I expected on the HTPC as some of my hardware was faulty. Its all sorted now at least so I will have more gaming time. I’m only counting days I actually spend some time on a game hence the last week only being 2 days.

I’ve not taken notes on my way through so writing this days afterwards isn’t going to help this post any but I do have a bunch of screenshots at least. I’ll apologise in advance as this entry will be fairly incoherant but I’ll go back to writing them the day afterwards now the site is up again.  Since this games been blogged twice anyway, I’ll keep this relatively brief. When I started out again, I set out to explore all the towns, gather clues and items, etc.. This was probably the first time I’d really enjoyed playing the game so far. The characters in the towns have more to say and are fleshed out somewhat compared to U4.

I went round most of the towns, then decided to take a jaunt into the underworld and sailed through the whirpool. The underworld is vast (the same size as the main world map) and full of monsters in huge parties. Most of them are taken down pretty easily with magic axes and I manage to find the shipwreck of Captain Johne.

Apart from joining my party, Captain Johne gives me a load of backstory about how the 3 crystal shards made him kill his shipmates and in turn created the shadowlords.

Having found Johne the next thing is to get out of the underworld again. I eventually find a dungeon entrance and one of the words of power gets it open.

This is my first trip into a dungeon. The first thing that strikes me is just how much better the graphics are. These actually look pretty decent – really not far off the likes of Dungeon Master. The improvement on U4 here is huge. The dungeons have far fewer rooms to get through this time, and don’t seem to contain items like chests. I have seen fountains but if there is a key to drink from them I haven’t found it. The dungeon turns out to be pretty easy and I get out without too much trouble. I have of course lost my ship now, but nearly all the map is avialable with the magic carpet anyway.

I got a grapple in one of the towns which I now use to get to a couple of previously inaccesable towns on the map. The grapple just lets you climb small mountain squares. From stonegate (the home of the shadowlords) I picked up LB’s sceptre which will allow me to dispel magical fields. I managed to run out of skull keys after I’d gone in and couldn’t get out again due to the reloading locking all doors bug. I had to resort to killing off my party again to get out.

I decided to have another go at getting some items in the underworld. The next dungeon had significantly different graphics to the last being all brick and skeletons rather than a cave.  I used level down spells where possible to make life easier.

It took some getting to and a lot of grappling but I eventually found one of the shards.

I also found the amulet of LB along with a load of graves, after a trip through a huge number of waterfalls.

Getting back up a dungeon proved tricky, and my party died for the cause once again. I went down through other dungeons to get the other 2 shards, and also got some exotic weapons from the middle of lava pool.

Now I had all the shards I set out to the three strongholds to kill off the shadowlords. To do this you stand under the flame, shout the name of the shadowlord, wait for it to move onto the flame, then use the shard.

Once the shadowlords are all gone, I make the trip to Blackthorns castle. This is a huge 5 level building which takes some exploring.

You get to meet Blackthorn himself, although he isn’t too hospitable. At the top of the castle I find the crown of Lord British. This is the final artifact I need to complete the game.

 This is as far as I’ve got. I’ve done everything I need to do to complete the game, except my party are all still level 2-4 and nowhere near strong enough. All the dying in the underworld really hit their experience just as I was starting to get it higher. My next task will be to grind up their experience to something decent which I expect will take ages and not be all that much fun so I can’t say I’m looking forward to it that much. I think I made the right decision to cheat on this game last time as it would be more fun. I’ll persevere and see if I can’t get my party ready for the final dungeon tommorow night.

I only managed another hour this weekend so haven’t got a lot to say. I can’t see me making much progress this week in general. I’ve just added a satellite TV capture card to my HTPC so I can get HD on freesat. My old TV software of course won’t work with it, so I spent ages fiddling around with SageTV instead, getting guide listings to import,etc.. After all my efforts, I got it mostly working but my PC really isn’t fast enough to cope with HD. Its dropping about half the frames so I’m upgrading it, swapping everything except the drives, psu and case. This will make it faster than my main pc and its not even costing much. I can’t believe how cheap it is to get a decent PC these days. All the bits should arrive on Tuesday. If I’m lucky and windows still boots it might not take too long to sort out. If I have to reinstall everything it will take ages.

To get back on topic, I set out to complete the last 3 shrine quests. I also explored a few places I came across while I was sailing around. There are numerous little buildings other than the towns. There isn’t much in them but they make the landscape less barren and reward exploration. There are 4 lighthouses, these are little use when you are in your boat – I assume they were added as a nice effect you could do with the engine to show the beam rotating. I got a sextant from one of the lighthouses. Elsewhere, I met a demon who has now taken up farming after being shown the way by LB in the underworld. This guy was full of useful information including the name of the shadowlord of hatred and the location of his shard in the underworld.

The last shrine quest involved going through a moongate at midnight to find the shrine of spirtuality. When I get to the codex it gives me a long piece of text (in runes), basically giving me the password for the final dungeon.  I went back to the shrine, got my stats boost and thats as far as I got. I’ll gather a few more companions next and explore some of the towns.

I got my first real session in on U5 last night – around 3-4 hours. I stuck to the plan and flew the magic carpet up to Minoc. I don’t know if its just me but the magic carpet seems completely out of place in a fantasy game. Anyway, at Minoc the beggar gave me the hint for the skull keys (which I already know are hidden in a tree at the top left).

Every day one of the shopkeepers hides 5 of them up there, so I just borrowed a bed in one of the shops, slept for a day got some more and repeated until I had 55. I figured this was enough.

Back at Castle Britannia, the treasury is in the basement at the bottom. It only has the three chests in but they are all packed full of stuff every time. What I get out of them is random, but they refill every time you climb out of the level and go back down. I repeated this 50 times – by this point I had about 5000 gold and about 10-20 of every piece of equipment in the game. This has got to be enough to get me through to the end of the game I hope – if I sell all the spare equipment off there must be 1000’s worth of stuff.

I armed all my party with magical axes and the best armor. You can use much more equipment in this game. I can equip rings, helmets, amulets, etc.. There are spiked helmets, shields and collars all of which give you an extra strike but this just slows down the battles as I’m trying to kill foes off at a distance.

With all this gear the combat has certainly gotten easier anyway. I still wouldn’t say easy, and my parties stats aren’t going to change much in this game. This is about as easy as it will get, although I’ve not got round to looking into spells and reagents yet which should help.

My karma was of course right down to 0 at this point. The penalties for this aren’t as severe as I expected. Lord British still appeared after we camped out for a night and raised my parties levels. He did mention my lack of virtue.

I’ve found a few ways of restoring karma. The shrine quests give me a bit each time + they raise my stats.  For this reason I decided to get all 8 of these out of the way before I go any further. If I try to explore more towns, certain people may not talk to me until I’ve reformed my character.

I bought a ship and a skiff in East Brittany. Skiffs are little rowboats new to Ultima 5 which you can use to sail up rivers. They can be stored on your frigate, so they basically mean you can land anywhere using a combination of the two. Every time I get to the codex on one of my quests, I get a trite little phrase about the merits of a virtue, then have to sail back to the shrine to get my stats bonus. This isn’t the most fun of quests but its easy enough and I got 5 done last night. Once the shrine is restored, I can also go back into it pray again and donate gold. Every 100, I donate raises my karma by 1 (starting karma is 75). I don’t think I need to donate too much so I only did this a couple of times. My karma is now back in the high 30’s and should be about 50 after the 3 shrine quests. (Ctrl-K shows your karma on PC version).

I still wouldn’t say that I’m especially enjoying the game. Its got better since I got the equipment, but I still think its far too difficult. Its an improvement on Ultima 4 in almost every aspect but its just less fun to play so far which is the only thing that really matters in a game.

I finally got around to a bit more Ultima 5 last night. I started again from Empath Abbey and headed for castle Britannia. I continued my policy of nicking a torch every time I go past, this has no effect on my karma. There aren’t a huge number of people to talk to here – I do remember how to get the magic carpet and sandlewood box though from LB’s room at the top of the castle. I headed up there, waited for the guard to leave, pushed a cannon to the door and blasted it open. The magic carpet is just lying on the floor, I’ve not had any hints but I remember its magic from playing the game last time.

I can get the sandlewood box while I’m here. I have actually already received hints on this one in Empath Abbey. I have to play stones on the harpsichord (the score is in the manual) and a secret door pops open and I get the box. I went up the ladder here to the roof, when I get back down the door has reappeared and I’m stuck in. I ended up burning myself to death in the fire as my only route out.

Next I headed for Britain. I bought slings for the whole party and found Gwenno in Yew. A farmer called Terrance gave me the info on the Resistance and sent me off to Yew to find its leader. Once I get to Yew I talk to the guy in the smithy and he tells me the password and location for the resistance (through his fireplace). Once I get downstairs, I find Jaana again and she joins up + talk to the leader of the resistance Landon. From elsewhere in the town, I get the password for my first dungeon. I also visit the shrine while I’m here and get a shrine quest. This involves going to a shrine, meditating then going off to codex at the abyss entrance then coming all the way back again. You can only do one quest at a time also.

My plan now is to head of to Minoc, I remember that I can get skull keys (5 at a time) from one of the trees there which you can use to open certain locked doors. The idea is to get a load of these, then head back for Castle Britannia and steal over and over again from the treasury. This will ruin my karma but it should also set me up with decent equipment and my karma will recover over time.

The combat in the game so far is really unforgiving. I’ve died a few times already and this knocks experience off your characters. I’ve now got half the experience I started with and am back to Level 4. As opposed to the 100 hp’s per level in Ultima 4, this time you get 30. This is near enough useless, I really need decent equipment if I’m going to survive so I think the stealing approach is the best bet. If I can get everyone decked out it decent armour with magic axes and all the reagents I need I may have a chance of actually getting somewhere. I just need to make it to Minoc and back alive first which isn’t proving easy so far. I remember now why I cheated last time – I wish I was playing Lazarus here if I’m honest but it wasn’t made by Origin so I’ve got to stick with this.

I got about 30 minutes in last night. I really didn’t manage too much. I watched the intro, this is entirely unanimated but the text is nicely written. It tells of you being called back to Britannia by Shamino. This immediately gets the attention of the shadowlords who shoot him with a magic arrow. You ward them off with your ankh and then carry Shamino back to Iolo’s hut nearby. Iolo tells you of Lord British’s disappearance and how Blackthorn has made all your old companions outlaws so you have to set out to try to restore LB to the throne.

The game itself looks a little nicer than Ultima 4 but really not that much different. There are a lot more tile graphics but they don’t look much better. There are more sound effects but they are also of similar quality so far.

I’ve only got into one fight with some rats. The most obvious different is that I can finally attack diagonally. When you attack there is a little cursor to move round to choose where to attack. Presumably this means that range weapons can now be fired anywhere as opposed to having to line up with the foe but I can’t honestly remember its been that long since I played this.

I wandered over to Empath abbey near by and talked to everyone there. The conversations are massively more detailed and much better written. Its a huge improvement. People also have schedules and walk around. I don’t know if I like this or not, its more realistic certainly but makes exploring harder and its easier to miss clues. I don’t think its a big problem and I probably talked to everyone. There weren’t any major clues to be gained other than a hint to ask a demon in the desert about one of the shadowlords.

I’ve been pinching things at every possible opportunity. You can steal all the torches off the walls, which should save me a bit of cash later on. I’ve also found food and such in barrels. I’ve always had to push the barrels around to get to the one in a corner to actually get the food. This is new to Ultima 5 but I could push things around in 2400 AD also.

Julia joined my party at Empath abbey making 4 of us. The party size is down to 6 which is an improvment in my opinion. 8 was just too many people to control at the same time.

Thats as far as I’ve got so far. The changes do make the world come alive more than Ultima 4. I’m far more optimistic that I’m going to enjoy this now that I’ve started it but its a bit early to say.