As in the last session, I started this one with a moongate trip to Verity Isle. I spent all my Spider Silk crafting spells, but there's also a quest item to get.
At Moonglow, I give to the beggar, fill up on Ash and Spider Silk, and craft some new spells - Gate and Negate - both possible with Ash and the exotic Mandrake. I also max myself out on Sleep, Heal, and Magic Missile spells.
Gate is a pretty convenient spell! Casting it lets you instantly warp to any moongate location of your choice - no waiting for the moon phases required. I go to Skara Brae for its blood moss, which I am out of.
Now, for the first time, I have some of every reagent.
There is one spell I haven't discovered how to craft yet - (Turn) Undead. The manual says two ingredients are involved but not which. There's only 28 possible combinations of two - reasonable enough to guess brute force which may well be the intention. I very quickly discover that the combination is Ash and Garlic. I guess that makes sense.
Tremor requires Moss and Mandrake - I craft some of these too, and donate $99 to the beggar, leaving me with $1985.
To complete my rounds I go to Paws, which is more quickly reached by Blink than by Gate, and take the opportunity to try out Tremor on a group of Zorn along the way - it dispatches more than half of them at once, which is awesome. Negate, as promised in the manual, prevents further magic from working for several turns, and that goes for you as well.
At Paws, I buy more garlic and black pearls, and craft a couple of resurrects - my last uncrafted spell. This one's complicated, requiring one of every ingredient except black pearls and nightshade.
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| Look at all that magic! So worth it. |
At the moment, I don't have any immediately achievable goals independent of exploration, so I explore, starting with the remainder of The Deep Forest and Lost River around Yew & Empath Abbey. This is a pretty tedious process, as the thick of the woods restricts your vision radius to a single tile.
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| I saw this a lot for a few hours. |
I work my way southward, and when I hit the Serpent's Spine mountains, I use peering gems to scout out an opening.
Isaac's ghost had alluded that I would need flight to reach this spot and find the stone, but he was wrong - by approaching from the east I could Blink right in and get it.
I went back to Britain and did my usual donation, heal, and checkin. Iolo and Julia gained levels, but something else, something much more significant happened too.
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| Oh, FINALLY. |
The shrine of compassion is a bit of a walk east from Britain.
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| I NEVER HAVE TO TALK TO BEGGARS AGAIN |
There's one more land-based adventure for me in this nonant of the world - a dungeon entrance in Serpent's Spine.
I expect anything I want here is on the bottom floor, which I could reach with multiple Zdown casts or even just by going straight to the bottom of Lord British's dungeon and using the altar room of love to reach Despise, but nah - I'm going to explore all of it. What if there's cool stuff I miss?
Level 1
The "T" turns out to be a windy section that blows out my torch. "F" represents fountains.
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| One fountain heals. The other poisons. |
The central room holds skeletons telling ghost stories around a campfire.
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| Some |
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| The stairs to level 2! |
Level 2
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| A split in the road ahead |
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| The split |
I go north, but it turns out it probably doesn't matter.
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| I bet this pattern just repeats forever |
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| The merge on the west end |
Level 3
A small one! But there's three ways down. I try the left one first.
Level 4a
Left and right from level 3 both go here. The ladder down goes more or less directly to level 7.
Level 7a
Level 7 is just a long, zig-zagging passageway that wraps around on the X-axis, and a ladder goes down at the end of it.
Level 8a
Oh dear - this is confusing! But I think what's going on is that the level really looks like this:
..and wraps around left-to-right, in a somewhat non-Euclidean manner.
Every black room on this floor contains a unique combat challenge, but they aren't really challenges, or all that interesting to note. There are encounters with phantoms, liches, will o' wisps, and dragons, and one somewhat clever room features a booby-trapped chest in the middle which floods the room with lava when you touch it - which isn't that deadly and it can be cleared with dispel magic.
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| Multiple magic fields line a passage to the north of the start |
A magic ball gives a permanent +5 dexterity bonus, and does 200 points of damage. Two more of these balls are found while exploring, and their combined bonuses are enough to max out Ahab and Iolo's dexterities.
Every time you re-enter a black room, though, you have to repeat the fight - the monsters, traps, and treasures reset each time, making for a very slow floor to traverse.
The altar of love is found here, too, and after returning from it, all of the balls on the floor respawn! With enough patience and healing/curing/dispelling magic, I could max everyone's dexterity, but for now I return to level 3 to try the central staircase down.
Level 4b
A central gremlin-filled passage connecting the north and south rooms opens up on the left and right to the rest of this level. On the left, a stash of cash and two fountains that don't seem to do anything. On the right, a dexterity-boosting orb and a ladder going both up and down. I pick up first.
Level 3b
Not much here. Just some loose money. And spiders.
Going down,
Level 5b
Another infinitely repeating pattern. The initial passage leading north is full of windy tiles. And despite what the manual says, wind can blow out magic light! Past this are an array of magic energy fields, and unavoidable falling rock traps.
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| A fountain of serpents. Finding the secret levers opens a passage to the north... |
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| ... to the yellow stone's alcove! |
One more subfloor to check out.
Level 6b
Just a bunch of cash and an HP-restoring fountain. Nothing special - British's bottom floor pays dividends much quicker. A lot of gremlins lurk here too.
I head home - in addition to the stone, the dexterity, and roughly $3,500 I made down here (seriously, go rob the balrons if you want cash quickly), there was enough experience to level up Shamino, Katrina, and Jaana. Shamino is level 5, and everyone else is 6 or 7.
Ultima IV's dungeons are by far the most interesting, most cleverly designed in the series yet. Nearly every room has something interesting or distinguishing about it. In a way, it reminds me of the later Temple of Apshai games, which managed some interesting set pieces in its dungeons with a very limited toolset.
Unfortunately, every combat encounter brings the game flow to a screeching halt, and for the most part are all stupidly easy. And there's a combat encounter every single time you enter one of these rooms - even rooms you've just conquered! Far too often, I'd enter a junction, fight a minutes-long combat, and tediously move everyone out, step-by-step, as the engine insists on cycling through your entire party one step at a time even when there's nothing left to do but leave, only to enter an alcove and immediately turn around and fight back through the junction again. It's making me dread the next six dungeons rather than look forward to them.
I did something a bit different with my world map - the bright regions are where I explored during this session.
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