Ultima VI: Won!

Ultima VI ended up consisting of three major "acts":

1. Visiting each town, getting the runes, and liberating the shrines

2. Collecting the pieces of the treasure map to find the silver tablet and translate the Book of Prophecies

3. Going to the gargoyle world, learning about them, and finding a way to "sacrifice" the Codex back to the void

The game, however, is far from linear. You could do the pieces of #1 at any point, and as we've seen, #2 is almost entirely optional.

You do have to hit the gargoyle world in the right order, though. If you just blunder into it (such as with the Orb of Moons), you just get into fights where you end up killing important NPCs. You have to learn Gargish, have a garogyle in your party, and agree to wear the Amulet of Submission (in that order) to survive.

I'm afraid this is going to be a bit long.

Stranger in a Strange Land

The gargoyle world is accessed through the dungeon Hythloth on the Isle of the Avatar. Like most other dungeons, it's four levels, reasonably hard, with a dragon or two before the exit. There were also several areas where the entire party was forced to walk across lava.

I never said it would be easy, men.

At the bottom level, I ran into Captain John, who the gypsies had told me about. He's been living there for a while, studying the gargoyles and befriending a young gargoyle named Beh Lem. He was distressed that the silver tablet had reached Mariah via a round-about route, but he was happy that I had come. He related that the gargoyle world has been slowly disintegrating and only one city (conveniently containing all of the shrines) remains.

It would be nice if people would stop blaming me for everything.

John gave me a scroll that "contains a basic vocabulary of the Gargoyle language." All I had to do was (U)se it, and suddenly I was fluent in Gargish.

I wish Italian was this easy.

Hythloth exited near John's house, and right outside, I encountered his friend Beh Lem, a winged gargoyle who hadn't developed his wings yet. Without him in my party, the gargoyles in the city would turn hostile and attack, so using my new Gargish vocabulary, I added him to the group. Oddly, when I returned to Britannia, no one--not even Lord British--cared to comment on my new party member.

I hope Captain America never finds this place.

There are about a dozen gargoyles to talk with in the city, and only a couple of them are key. Early on, Beh Lem's father, Valkadesh, suggested that I visit the gargoyle king, Draxinusom, to surrender myself.

Draxinusom made me wear an Amulet of Submission to prove I was willing to sacrifice myself to save the gargoyles. He assured me he wouldn't call me back for the sacrificial ritual for several months. I wonder if anything happens if you "wait out" this time period. It's quite difficult to make time pass in this game, so I declined to try.

With the Amulet on, all the gargoyles became particularly friendly, flattered that I'd give up my life to save them. But the gargoyle scholar, Naxatilor, didn't seem to think that was necessary. He indicated that "sacrifice" isn't exactly clear in Gargish, and it could easily mean that I needed to sacrifice something of value or sacrifice another person. He wasn't happy when I explored that second option.

How many times do I have to say it? It wasn't my "misdeed."

What we settled on was that I would have to sacrifice the Codex back to the void (the gargoyles had originally taken it from the void before the Great Council took it from the gargoyles). Naxitilor had this plan by which with a couple of specially-crafted lenses, creatures on both sides of the world would be able to see the Codex in the void. He had me take a broken one in the gargoyle Hall of Knowledge for repair and then get a Britannian glassmaker to craft a concave one. I knew from my notes that Ephemerides, north of Moonglow, was the man to ask.

He required a glass sword. Fortunately, I had several.

The "repair the broken lens" quest seems so unnecessary that you wonder why the creators had the lens broken in the first place. Later, I realized that if the lens had been intact, the Avatar wouldn't need to speak to any gargoyle to win the game. Making him take the lens lensmaker requires him to first learn Gargish, get Beh Lem in the party, submit to the Amulet, and so forth.

Speaking of sacrifice: you know that slab where they tried to plunge a dagger in my heart at the beginning of the game? Well, it's in a pretty prominent place, surrounded by a circle of stones. It looks like a permanent fixture. It makes you wonder what they're using it for when they're not trying to avert prophecies by sacrificing Avatars. This suggests a dark side to gargoyle society, which we need to explore a little further.

The Peculiar Institution

Gargoyle society is odd. On one hand, it seems socialistic, with its lack of money and shops. Craftsmen make goods, weapons, and armor, and then just leave them in their businesses for anyone to come and take as they need them. Only a few gargoyles--even winged ones--get actual names; the rest are just named after their professions, like "farmer" or "lensmaker." On the other hand, their version of the virtues is extremely goal-driven and individualistic, as if the model had been created by Tony Robbins.

"Control, Passion, Diligence: Towards a New Singularity in Personal Achievement"--on sale at booksellers everywhere.

This particular virtue set isn't very well thought-out (how is "singularity" a virtue? And why does "order" exist outside of the three principles?) but it doesn't need to be, as it doesn't have much impact on gameplay. It would have been fun--if a longer game--if the Avatar had been forced to live for a while in the gargoyle world, performing acts and deeds that exemplified their virtues, becoming their Avatar of Virtue, before proceeding. As we'll see, the game doesn't ignore the virtues, but it doesn't do anything quite that clever, either.

There is a weird vibe going on in the gargoyle world when it comes to wingless gargoyles. Sin'Vraal had already told me that only the winged ones are intelligent, can cast spells, can speak, and are fit for leadership. John confirmed this, but read his specific words:

At first, it seemed as if the wingless ones were slaves. But now I know that the wingless ones are beloved and valued family members. They must be told what to do, because they are not truly intelligent.

Already, that ought to be ringing some alarm bells. Later, we encounter a friendly gargoyle farmer named Nash, who says that he is "far kinder to the wingless ones than most of my kind" and indicates that he feels that "the wingless ones should not be enslaved simply because they lack our intelligence." Wait a second--I thought they weren't slaves? But it gets even better when he talks about his neighbor, Farmer Krill: "To be ashamed that Farmer Krill treats his workers so harshly. To be appalled by his lack of concern for their thoughts and feelings."

Krill, meanwhile, justifies his treatment of his "workers": "To be forced by necessity to give the wingless ones no room for choice or freedom. To acknowledge that it may seem harsh, but to assure you that there is no other way to treat the wingless ones. To receive good harvests only through firm control and clear direction."

Thus, we have a society of happy little plantation gargoyles, "beloved" by their masters, who nonetheless insist on "firm control and clear direction" because the wingless ones are too dumb to make decisions on their own.

What really puts the nail in the coffin is that we encounter plenty of wingless gargoyles in Ultima VII who are fully capable of speech and even spellcasting ability. Maybe the intervening 200 years saw a lot of miscegenation.

Downloading the Proper Codex

The exact nature of the Codex has always been a bit of a mystery, and it changes from game to game. Obviously, finding my way to it was my main quest in Ultima IV, and in Ultima V, I had to visit it frequently to read about the virtues. But suddenly in Ultima VI, you're unable to pass through its guardians unless you're on a "sacred quest." You'd think this would severely limit its utility to the Britannians--particularly since, according to this game, the only way to get a "sacred quest" is to visit the Temple of Singularity on the gargoyle side of the world. This is another area where the developers really didn't think things through.

Trying to save the world isn't enough?

In the gargoyle Hall of Knowledge, we learn that the Codex originally floated in the void, but Lord Draxinusom got the lensmaker to create a "vortex lens" by which he could see the tome. He then created the "vortex cube, to focus the power of the moonstones and draw the [Codex] down to the world." The gargoyles enshrined the Codex in the Temple of Singularity and began a "great time of prosperity." It's left a mystery where the Codex came from in the first place, and how it came to be floating in space.

Part of Draxinusom's account.

The Codex's abilities are not insignificant. When you open it, it will automatically take you to a page that has the answer to whatever question is on your mind at the time, which sounds awesome in 1990, but today can be accomplished with a combination of eHow and Wikipedia. It amuses me to think that the Codex is basically an iPad with the Safari homepage set to Google.

To make all of this fit with Ultima IV, you have to assume that the Stygian Abyss somehow connected to the gargoyle's Temple of Singularity. When my Avatar reached the bottom and found the Codex chamber, he didn't realize he was in a temple on the other side of the world. Maybe he didn't see the doors. Similarly, in "raising" the Codex, the Great Council somehow overlooked all the gargoyles, or perhaps thought they were daemons and just slaughtered them. Either way, it wasn't me.

It. Wasn't. Me.

The goal now was to "sacrifice" the Codex back to the void and let both races benefit from its knowledge, although I'm not entirely sure why we couldn't have just built a chamber halfway through Hythloth instead. Or just kept it on the Britannian side of the world, since all the gargoyles would be moving there soon anyway.

No one knew exactly how to send the Codex back whence it came, but as Naxatilor pointed out, the Codex itself would know. I just needed to get a "sacred quest" and ask it. This required visiting the Temple of Singularity, which was just over the mountains from the gargoyle city--not a problem for any of them, because they can all fly. Or, at least, the Special Ones can.

Up, Up, and Away

The quest to make the balloon was long and not very interesting. The hardest part was getting the plans for the balloon, which you ultimately have to (U)se to craft it. I asked the NPCs at Minoc about it, and Selganor told me that the balloon's inventor had flown it to Sutek's castle.

Sutek had appeared in Ultima V as a "young, solemn mage" who imparted the key information about where the Shadowlords' shards had come from and how to destroy them. Sometime between that game and this one, he re-located to Blackthorn's former fortress (couldn't Lord British think of anything useful to do with that?), went mad, and started creating abominations like hostile rabbits and two-headed cows. The guy keeps a meat cleaver in a magically-locked chest next to his bed.

Getting into Sutek's fortress involved blowing up the main door, then using "Telekinesis" on the winch to lower the drawbridge. Note the two-headed cow off to the side.

I had to solve some lever puzzles, find some secret doors, dispel some fields, and whatnot before descending into the catacombs. An NPC named Gorn had been a prisoner in Blackthorn's dungeon in Ultima V, and I guess he didn't go far after that game, because he was still milling about the catacombs. Like Seggallion, Gorn had accidentally been transplanted to Britannia when he stumbled through a moongate on his home world of Balema. (Both the character and the land appear in The Quest and Ring Quest, adventure games from Origin.) He offered to join my party, but I was already full.

The plans were on the poor balloonist's body, near a dead-end in the dungeon.

The plans required me to get a huge wicker basket, a cauldron, a silk bag, and an anchor. Actually, I think the anchor was optional, since the thing never used it. Obtaining these things mostly just meant showing the plans to the right craftsmen. There was an annoying part where I had to go to Paws to get the silk thread, then to New Magincia to have Charlotte make the cloth, then back to Paws to have the cloth made into a bag, but for the most part, obtaining the items was easy. Once I had them, I used the plans and the various parts automatically assembled into a balloon.

The rest of the enterprise was pretty pathetic. The balloon is needed to cross exactly three squares of mountain, so all you have to do is cast "Wind Change" to get the wind coming from the south, or use the magic fan, or just wait for it to blow from the south--and in a few moments, you're across.

I was looking forward to drifting all over Britannia with it, but it turns out it won't go over buildings or the tops of high mountains, so that's pretty useless. I did use it for one other fun thing that I'll talk about next time.

Axis of Evil

The Temple of Singularity featured an intelligent altar that asked me for whom I sought the Codex. After trying LORD BRITISH, DRAXINUSOM, OBAMA, and YOUR MOM and getting nowhere, I thought to say "EVERYONE," which the altar liked.

"Thy twenty-fifth answer is wise."

But it went on to suggest that I needed to really understand the gargoyles if I was going to condescend to help them, and it told me to visit the shrines of Control, Passion, and Diligence on the island. "In each," it said, "wilt thou find the final resting place of the being who most exemplifies that principle."

Now, at this point, the altar is just looking for the mantra of Singularity, which is composed of the mantras of Control, Passion, and Diligence: UNORUS. A player with this knowledge could avoid the shrine quests. But they're really the last challenges in the game, so it makes sense to get through them.

The Shrine of Control was a brief dungeon with no combats and an uncomplicated lever puzzle. Different levers in the opening room controlled different gates along the way, and I had to keep switching between my Avatar and another character to pull the levers and view the results. It wasn't very hard. Within a few minutes, the Avatar was standing in front of the shrine and the being that "most exemplifies" Control, and of course it was . . . Mondain!

Ultima VI was the first game to retcon Ultimas I-III so that the Avatar was the hero of those games. It's stupid for a lot of reasons (you could be of non-human races in those games, you had four heroes in the third game, etc.) and I've always preferred to ignore it or treat it as manual errata, but I had forgotten that when you encounter Mondain in the shrine, the game makes it clear that you remember defeating him.

It wasn't "Britannia!"

The game also makes it clear that it's really Mondain's spirit in the statue, and not just something that's supposed to represent him. One wonders how the gargoyles managed to capture it, or why they don't really know what "humans" are when they have statues of them embodying their most sacred virtues, or how old their virtue system really is. Anyway, Mondain relates that he's harmless, and his time in the statue has caused him to re-think his life a bit. He muses that "desire for  more control overcame me" and "I forsook my self-control in  my hunger for conquest." He realizes now that "the strong must lead--but to be strong one must control oneself first." He admires the gargoyle view: "their society is based on the strong guiding the weak." Yet another red flag, in my opinion.

Mondain had me recite the mantra of Control with him (UN) and sent me off, saying that "I admire thy deeds and they control."

The Shrine of Passion was very easy except that I had to walk through fire and lava at a number of places. I just left my party behind and had Gideon do it. The shrine was occupied by the spirit of Minax--probably the most poorly-defined character in the original trilogy--and she also had come to an epiphany about how unrestrained passion had been bad for her.

Here we have to note that the gargoyle principles of virtue are a little bit different than the Britannian ones. Theirs seem to suggest that Control, Passion, and Diligence work to check and balance each other; that too much of one is a bad thing. You don't find the same philosophy in Britannia. Sure, if you balance Love and Courage, you get Sacrifice, but no one argues that you have to do this. There are professions and individuals that exist entirely (and happily) within a single principle of virtue.

The Shrine of Diligence was the toughest. First, I had to navigate a maze of rooms to find a barely-visible secret door in one of the many walls. Diligence, indeed.

It's just to my south.

The shrine itself was in a room full of daemons, making it one of the most difficult combat areas of the game. Since there's very little afterwards (unless you deliberately go looking for it), this serves as the "final battle" of the game.

My Avatar nearly exhausted himself casting "Reveal," "Dispel Magic," and "Great Heal" to deal with their invisibility, charms, and powerful attacks, respectively. Ultimately, I either killed them or caused them to flee, and I was able to approach the shrine. Hard as it was, it wasn't anything that I particularly needed to grind for. An Avatar in solo mode could probably have slipped by them with a Ring of Invisibility or otherwise just run up to the shrine, gotten the mantra, and gated out.

Diligence was, of course, exemplified by Exodus, presented as a sort-of demonic figure, although the game does call him an "accursed machine." Like the others, he provides the mantra and sends you on your way with good wishes.

Is the game honestly suggesting that Exodus's original goals were benevolent?

Endgame

With the three-part mantra, the Shrine of Singularity was happy to give me the "holy quest" to seek out the Codex:

The Codex's instructions required the two lenses, the vortex cube, and all of the moonstones I'd collected from freeing the shrines--better not plant any of them in the ground! I had the lenses already. Of the vortex cube, the caretaker of the Hall of Knowledge said: "To regret that that item is lost, stolen by human thieves years ago. To have heard the humans mention the name Stonegate as they fled. To have heard them say they would sail through Lost Hope Bay."

The creators aren't even trying at this point. Stonegate was the Shadowlords' fortress in Britannia, but why would "human thieves" steal the cube and bring it there? While "fleeing," why would they offer detailed instructions about where they were going and how to get there? For that matter, gargoyles don't speak English or know that humans are called "humans."

I remembered where Stonegate was, and I found it occupied by two friendly cyclopes and their adopted human child.

The male cyclops was happy to give me the key to the dungeon beneath the fortress in exchange for a fish, which I caught quickly using his convenient fishing rod. I'm sure I could have also pickpocketed or killed him for the key, or for that matter just blown up the door in the basement.

But I did it the Avatar Way.

The cube was surrounded by force fields, and I had to dispel one to get to it. Otherwise, not a very difficult quest.

I made one last visit to Lord British before visiting the Codex, to see if he cared at all about DRAXINUSOM, VORTEX, CODEX, CUBE, BEH LEM, or any of the other things that had transpired lately, but he didn't have any dialogue about them, so I headed for the Isle of the Avatar and proceeded to the Codex.

Following the instructions, I put one lens on one side, one on the other, moved all of the moonstones into the vortex cube, put the cube on the ground in front of the codex, and (U)sed it. The Codex promptly vanished.

This cued the endgame text, which read as follows:

A glowing portal springs from the floor!

From its crimson depths, Lord British emerges, trailed by the mage Nystul. Anguish and disbelief prevail on the royal seer's face, but Lord British directs his stony gaze at you and speaks as if to a wayward child.

"Thou didst have just cause to burgle our Codex, I trust," His Majesty says. "But for Virtue's sake . . . WHAT HAST THOU DONE WITH IT?"

Perhaps Lord British's least regal moment in the entire series.

You pick up the concave lens and pass it to the King. "Was the book ever truly ours, Your Majesty? Was it written for Britannia alone? Thou dost no longer hold the Codex, but is its wisdom indeed lost? Look into the Vortex, and let the Codex answer for itself!"

As Lord British holds the glass before the wall, the Codex of Ultimate Wisdom wavers into view against a myriad of swimming stars!

Yet the book remains closed.

And waves of heat shimmer in the air, heralding the birth of another red gate!

King Draxinusom of the Gargoyles strides forward, flanked by a small army of wingless attendants. Like Lord British, he seems to suppress his rage only through a heroic effort of will. His scaly hand grasps your shoulder, and your Amulet of Submission grows very warm.

"Thy time hath come, Thief," he says.

Quickly, you reach down to seize the convex lens and you press it into the hand of the towering Gargoyle king, meeting his sunken eyes. "Join my Lord in his search for peace. I beg thee."

At your urging, King Draxinusom reluctantly raises his lens to catch the light. As Lord British holds up his own lens, every eye in the room, human and Gargoyle alike, fixes upon the image of the Codex which shines upon the wall.

The ancient book opens. Both kings gaze upon its pages in spellbound silence, as the eloquence of Ultimate Wisdom is revealed in the tongues of each lord's domain. You, too, can read the answers the Codex gives. And when wisdom is gleaned, when Lord British and King Draxinusom turn to each other as friends, hating no longer, fearing no more, you know that your mission in Brtannia has ended at last.

Boom. End of game. No word about me returning to Earth or any celebrations or whatnot. Based on his past behavior, I'm sure Lord British turned around, hucked his Orb of Moons on the ground, pointed to the gate, and said, "See you next time." But it's rather nice to assume he didn't.

A couple of notes on the endgame:

1. It's kind of silly that you can't warn Lord British what you're about to do before you go do it.

2. Lord British's orb can take him directly to this room? Do you know how much time he could have saved me?

3. Lord British again shows that he's not exactly King Solomon. If I were Richard Garriott, I'd like that line about as much as I'd like "But I was going into Tosche Station to pick up some power converters!" if I was Mark Hamill. The difference being Mark Hamill wasn't the director of the film.

4. I believe this is the first time in the series that the game puts specific words in the Avatar's mouth

5. All of the "thous" and "thees" just sound moronic. We're both from Earth, Lord British. Drop the act.

6. Similarly, I'm not crazy about calling him "My Lord." Note, too, the capital "L" when I'm referring to him in generic terms to the gargoyle king. God complex much?

7. Speaking of gods, we had a brief discussion about the Ultima series' treatment (or non-treatment) of them in some recent comments. Note that even at the height of emotion, Lord British says, "For Virtue's sake" (with a capital "V," no less). I think that demonstrates what side of "theism" his "a" is on.

8. I do like the final message here, though: that wisdom and truth can instantly change one's thinking to the extent that mortal enemies become friends. If I wasn't an atheist, this is what I'd like to think the afterlife is like: two people who hate each other meeting and saying, "Oh! That's why you felt the way you did and acted as you did!" and the other saying, "And that's why you felt the way you did!" and everyone just, at last, understanding. Wisdom conquers all. That kind of thing.

Finally, it's worth noting that while sending the Codex to the void may have satisfied another definition of "sacrifice," I didn't exactly avert the prophecy. The gargoyle world finishes collapsing, and the remnants of the dying civilization have to move to Britannia for Ultima VII. Maybe they really did need to sacrifice me on the slab.

I don't know. I'm not quite ready for the end just yet. Are you? Let's have one more post of messing around a bit before the final rating. What do you do just to have fun in Ultima VI that I haven't already covered?

Ultima VI: Combat, Equipment, and Magic

Strolling through a dungeon, picking up gold nuggets, encountering a reaper.

After the last post, I pressed forward and won Ultima VI in about six more hours. I haven't composed my final thoughts or rated it yet, but I feel reasonably confident that if Ultima VI doesn't end up as my top-rated game, it will at least land very close to Ultima V (which currently holds the top spot). I like combat a bit less, and I wish that more stuff fit into the interface window, but in terms of almost everything else, VI is the best in the series so far.

We needn't rush to conclude, though. In this post, I want to spend some time talking about the game's approach to several key elements of RPGs, because I'm not sure that this kind of detail has fully come through in my other postings.

Dungeons

Seven of the eight original Ultima IV dungeons are here: Deceit, Despise, Destard, Wrong, Covetous, Shame, and Hythloth. Unlike the previous games, these aren't the only dungeons: we also have the ant mound, Hawkins's treasure dungeon, a place near Shame called "Heroes' Hole," the Moonglow catacombs, Sutek's catacombs, and the caves that connect the Britannian sewers to Buccaneer's Den. I might have missed a few others.

Entering the dungeon Despise, just for fun.

 
Like almost everything else in the series, the game has trouble keeping its dungeon canon straight. The Stygian Abyss is gone, even though it reappears for Ultima Underworld. The dungeon beneath Lord British's castle no longer connects to Hythloth. Wrong and Covetous are presented not as separate dungeons (as in both previous games) but two entrances to the same dungeon. Deceit was a man-made dungeon in Ultima V and a cave in this game. The dungeons only have four levels instead of eight. Perhaps this is explained by the collapse of the Gargoyle world having sheared off half of them. It's disconcerting to think that while exploring Level 4 of a dungeon, you're really only a few inches of dirt away from the Void.

Even more notable, many of the dungeons are optional. Technically, I suppose, they're all optional (save a single room in Hythloth) if you use the Orb to move around and don't care to go through the rigmarole of the pirate treasure quest. But even if you do all of the steps on the main quest, you'll never have a reason to visit Deceit, Despise, or "Heroes' Hole" except for grinding and treasure. Deceit is particularly mystifying because it has virtually no enemies or treasure, just a bunch of bear traps and caltrops. I can't for the life of me figure out why anyone would go in it.

The Wrong/Covetous dungeon is the only one with clearly manmade walls, and just as in Ultima V, it's presented as a sort-of "jail," probably for those convicted at the court in Yew, although many of the cells hold monsters, so you have to wonder what those trials looked like.

Checking out a lever puzzle in Wrong.

 
The rest of the dungeons have a uniform "reddish-brown cave" appearance, although that doesn't mean that there aren't some interesting features and geography. In general, I'm happy with the transition between Ultima IV and V's approaches to dungeon (first-person corridors with iconographic, third-person "rooms") and these. Some of the rooms in the previous games were interesting, but they always seemed disjointed and artificial. The dungeons of Ultima VI feel slightly more realistic and natural. As you walk along, you encounter exploding lava vents, swamps, spider webs, stalagmites, underground rivers and lakes, and other neat features.

Gingerly walking towards a ladder surrounded by volcanic vents. Any of them could create an explosion at any time.

Treasure doesn't exist in conveniently-placed chests but in sensible places like waste heaps, scavengers' dens, and the bodies of dead adventurers who preceded you. You also find contextual "natural" treasures like gold nuggets, spider silk, and nightshade mushrooms.

With a few exceptions, enemies are sensibly placed. You might have some cyclopes and trolls hanging around a fire pit in a large cavern near the entrance. Snakes and rats scurry through the corridors. You get green slimes near swamps, spiders in caves surrounded by webs, and the occasional fire drake or dragon in rooms of lava. They aren't always coordinated, and in fact they will occasionally attack each other.

Small geysers spurt from glistening rocks near stalagmites. A sea serpent patrols an underground river.

Monsters in dungeons respawn, but you have to walk reasonably far away for that to happen, and they might respawn in slightly different numbers and types when you return. I seem to recall that in Ultima VII, they would respawn almost instantly when you left a screen, which made it nearly impossible to ever "clear" areas. That's not an issue here. There's just enough respawning to facilitate grinding, but not enough to drive you crazy. Items, I should add, don't respawn.
 
(I'm actually a bit mystified about how the game treats dropped and placed items. In general, things seem to be permanent. The Royal Mint never re-stocked its chests--or even replaced its door--after my burglary, and some stuff I dumped in Lord British's throne room early in the game was still there at the end. On the other hand, I left some gold nuggets in my room in the castle that disappeared almost immediately.)
 
The dungeons also deliver fun "scenes," such as a manmade structure that clearly once housed miners but is now occupied by their animated skeletons, or the body of an adventurer in a dead-end corridor, his pick-axe still close at hand. This is not the kind of thing that any other RPG was doing at the time.

This adventurer was sleeping on his raft when a giant spider covered him in a web. His corpse yielded 36 arrows, a bow, a gem, 3 torches, 35 gold coins, a mug, a loaf of bread, and a powder keg.

 
Creatures

One of the more interesting additions to this game: a hydra.

 
The game has added only a few entries to its gallery of creatures since the previous title, including drakes, hydras, giant ants, giant scorpions, alligators, acid slugs, and silver serpents. The bestiary lists a total of 42 creatures, but 7 are just helpless animals, and one is the non-hostile wisp, so that leaves 34 that you'll ever have to fight. I never encountered a lot of them, including corpsers, mimics, and rotworms.

A group of deer gamboling about Britannia. I could kill them for their meat, but the game doesn't really require food, so that seems kind of mean.

 
Orcs are notably absent, and come to think of it, I'm not sure we see them in Ultima VII, either. Has the entire race been wiped out? Ettins are also gone. The "beast-like humanoid" role is limited to trolls, headless, and cyclopes.

I like slimes. They're an experience point bonanza because they frequently divide when you hit them, and you get experience points for each one you kill. Arming your characters with fists and sending them wading through slimes will keep them occupied for almost an hour and rack up a thousand XP. I also like how the individual slimes "pool" together in this game. It's very well-done graphically.

Gideon grinds his experience points, hoping to achieve Level 8 (6400) before the game is over.

I named reapers to my "most annoying RPG enemies" list for Ultima IV for their habit of putting the entire party to sleep every round. In this game, they don't have that ability, but they can summon hordes of insects, which might be an even more annoying feature. Insects hardly do any damage, but they get about 20 attacks per round and they're damn near impossible to hit. A swarm of them produces a very long, unrewarding combat. Reapers can also move in this game.

This is what happens if they cast before you can kill them.

 
In a notable departure from IV and V, you hardly ever find enemies on the surface. I've encountered a few trolls here and there, a rat or two in the forest, a hydra on one of the islands, and the occasional sea serpent that I can just ignore, but you could easily walk from Minoc to Trinsic without fighting a single battle. It does make sense in a narrative sense that an evolving society would have eliminated most of the surface threats.

Combats with other humans are also quite rare, which makes it startling when they occasionally occur. You might run into a random fighter or two, accompanied by a mage, deep in the bowels of the Earth. You'll instinctively try to (T)alk with them, but they'll just start attacking for no reason.

A couple of ill-fated "swashbucklers" appear in a mountain pass.

Combat

For all its quality and innovations in gameplay, the Ultima series has never done a great job with combat. There have never been quite enough tactics, special attacks, or difficulty to create great CRPG battles. The series started weak in this area, with just a lot of button-mashing in Akalabeth, Ultima, and Ultima II. Ultima III introduced a tactical combat screen that greatly improved on what came before, and its development clearly culminated in Ultima V. This game takes a step backwards, and it all goes downhill in Ultima VII.

Starting in this game, combat occurs on the regular screen, just in a separate "combat mode"--and if you only want the Avatar to fight, you don't even need to enter that. In combat mode, you can choose to directly control your other party members ("command") or let them fight on their own. Neither is entirely satisfying. Manual control of every PC is tedious (and you can't set an "active character" while in combat mode), while computer control suffers from absolutely abysmal AI. The game theoretically lets you select six different "stances" for your characters--front, rear, flank, berserk, retreat, and assault--but I don't notice a whit of difference between what my characters actually do and what position I select, with the sole exception of "retreat."

The party faces acid slugs. Note that I have Dupre's action set to "Assault."

Half the time, no matter what I select, my characters just don't engage. Either their primitive pathfinding abilities can't figure out how to reach an enemy or they're just lazy, but my characters often just dither around in the background while my Avatar slugs it out with enemies. Even worse, they won't do anything when I specifically equip them with missile weapons. Thus, "command" is the only way to go when I want to make sure that everyone fights.

The bad combat AI for your party members is balanced by the relative simplicity of combat. Except for dragons and daemons, I don't find enemies challenging at all, and I could have made it just fine with only my Avatar with perhaps the exception of the dungeon Destard and all its dragon battles. (And it strikes me that intelligent use of invisibility rings and potions might have made that dungeon a snap: run in, grab the eggs, gate out.) The experience may be different for someone who creates a new character--my imported Avatar had near-max stats from the outset--but overall, the ease of combat means that many of the other elements of the game--economy, equipment, magic--are diminished in importance.

Many of the details of combat are unchanged from the previous two entries. It's still turn-based, though some actions take more turns than others. Health still progresses from "barely wounded" to "critical" before the enemy dies. Enemies flee when they hit "critical." Attacks can still go astray and wound party members. You can dual-wield weapons, and spiked helms and shields serve both offense and defense, so a character outfitted with a long sword, a main gauche, a spiked helm, and a spiked shield gets four attacks per round. Terrain still plays a big role--a narrow corridor can be a godsend or a hindrance depending on the specific enemy and what you want your party members to do.

My party does okay against a group of alligators.

 
Enemies still drop a variety of loot when they die--meat for animals and weapons, armor, and treasure for humans. The equipment drops make more sense than in some of the previous games; you no longer find treasure chests on bats or rats, for instance.

Equipment

Ultima VI features one of the most complex inventories of any game to date. The paperdoll inventory supports armor, weapons, shields, helms, amulets, rings, and boots. Your two hands can grip a single weapon, two weapons, a sword and shield, a weapon and a spellbook, torches, oil flasks, and wands. There are dozens of other special items activated with the (U)se command, including food, potions, lockpicks, sextants, musical instruments, and tools like shovels and pick-axes. Add to this a score of quest items, and your inventories are bursting at the seams fairly quickly. Fortunately, you also have bags, chests, and backpacks to help you organize everything. I keep the runes in one bag, the moonstones in another, and all my reagents in a third.

There are a variety of items that you can only effectively (U)se when they're on the ground, but the game lets you heft and tote them for the right occasion. I love that you can carry a skiff around on your back. The balloon (which you'll learn about soon) works the same way. Powder kegs are a fun addition to the game, useful for both blowing open doors and the occasional combat scenario.

The world is also full of things that you can pick up for no reason, like kitchen utensils, mugs, wine bottles, laboratory equipment, and clothes. More than a decade before The Elder Scrolls games started seeding its worlds with random calipers and embalming tools, it's fun to see a bunch of random items strewn about just to make the world feel more like a real place.

Encumbrance is limited by strength, but with enough party members, I haven't had any major problems. I try to organize by category. Dupre handles the gold nuggets and other stuff we're going to sell. Shamino is the torch-bearer and the rest of his inventory space goes to porting the skiff on his back. Iolo keeps the potions, Jaana the rings and other magic items. Sentri packs the food, and Seggallion hauls nothing but powder kegs. I never found an inventory use for Beh-Lem.

For the first time, you can (L)ook at weapons and armor to see how much damage they do and how much protection they provide. The best armor pieces are the magic helms, magic armor, and magic shields that you occasionally find or can buy at Trinsic. Yes, there are ways to clone magic armor and ways to buy it for everyone by exploiting the wisps, but I've been trying to play without those exploits and acquire it slowly (again, the relative ease of combat makes it not a big deal anyway). So far, I have four sets. I thought "magic boots" existed in this game, but I never found any, and in any event I wouldn't trade my swamp boots for anything.

Shamino's inventory consists of a skiff and its deed, a bunch of torches, and a backpack full of keys. He's wearing a magic helm, magic armor, a spiked collar, swamp boots, and a protection ring. He carries a sword and a torch.

I've been surprised at how few weapon upgrades I've found. My Avatar ended the game still wielding the same sword that he started with--I've yet to find a better one-handed melee weapon. As far as I can tell, there are no magic swords or magic axes in this game. There are magic bows, but they still consume arrows and I'm always running out. 

The best weapons seem to be wands of fire and lightning, which you find rather plentifully and last a long time. I tend to give these to the characters with the lowest experience totals so they can build them up faster. (Experience goes to the character who strikes the killing blow.) My strategy would work better if the characters would actually use the wands more consistently in combat.

Iolo fires his wand at a giant scorpion.

Economy

You rarely have to buy things in Ultima VI, and even when you can--like the magic armor in Trinsic--I find it so much more fun to find good items in dungeons that I rarely take advantage of it. Most of my money has gone towards spells and reagents. Spells are expensive enough, especially at high levels, that you're unlikely to end the game with all of them.

Unlike the previous two Ultima games, I rarely find myself "saving up" for anything here. Except at the very beginning, I haven't bothered to sell excess equipment at stores.

I decline to break the economy.

 
As commenters have spoiled, if you bring a copy of The Lost Book of Mantras to the wisps, you can get a reward consisting of as many gold nuggets your party members can carry. Unless you're way overloaded when you get them, you can generally go and sell these for a few thousand gold pieces at the Royal Mint.  However, that's only one option, and the wisps consider it the baser one. The buyers of the book--someone from the Rklbwm dimension--also offer to trade information instead. To avoid breaking the game, I went with the information:

If a substance with a partially reflective surface is positioned so that its third index of refraction matches the wavelength coefficient of the output of a polarized light source, and the resulting beam is focused on an ionized crystal suspended in a unipolar magnetic field, matter can be converted into useful electromagnetic radiation at an efficiency rate of 96 to 98 percent, depending on the desired output frequency.

I'm curious if this paragraph actually makes any sense whatsoever. I don't have the science background to interpret it.

Magic

Like the previous games, spells exist as combinations of syllables ("IN ZU GRAV" for "Sleep"; "VAS POR FLAM" for "Explosion") and require a combination of reagents to cast. Unlike the previous games, you don't ever have to use the syllables or mix the reagents; they just get deducted from your inventory when you cast. You also have to buy spells ahead of time from one of four sellers. They exist in eight circles, and your level has to be equal to the circle you're trying to cast. When you cast, you lose a number spell points equal to that circle. Spell points regenerate slowly in between castings.

Checking out my regent stash before I buy more from Horance.

 
Spells and reagents are expensive enough that it really only makes sense to invest in magic for the Avatar. His spell points are double his intelligence, maxing out at 60. The few other characters who can use magic only get spell points equal to half their intelligence, meaning they max out at 15. I suppose it might be useful to have at least one other party member with "Dispel Magic," in case the Avatar gets slept or charmed, but I've managed to limp along without it.

In IV and V, I complained a bit that spells were mostly unnecessary, save "Cure Poison" (which oddly doesn't exist here; "Dispel Magic" handles that) and "Heal." This game takes a turn by making some spells absolutely necessary. You simply can't get through the game without "Unlock Magic," "Dispel Field," and "Telekinesis," at least, because so many of the essential dungeons are unpassable otherwise.

Gideon chooses from among various sixth-level spells.

I find myself using these and a lot of other "utility" spells quite often. These include "Create Food," "Detect Trap," "Untrap," "Dispel Magic," "Pickpocket," "Heal," and "Great Heal." A few utility spells have analogues in items of equipment--there's no need to cast "Light" as long as you have torches, "Peer" as long as you have gems, or "Locate" as long as you have a sextant.

I use offensive spells very rarely, mostly (again) because the combats are pretty easy without them and I'd rather not waste the reagents. "Paralysis" turned out to be very helpful against dragons, as did "Kill" when I got it late in the game. I might fire an occasional "Lightning" or "Fireball" spell at a fleeing enemy when my other party members don't seem to be in any hurry to use their missile weapons, and "Explosion" works well to clear out groups of low-level monsters (it basically replicates powder kegs).

Taking out a couple of reapers and an insect with "Mass Kill." 'Cause why not.

"Reveal" is a key spell that makes invisible enemies visible. It's the only way to get your party members to target an invisible enemy.

Gideon reveals a ghost.

 
There are a number of clever spells that, like most of the offensive spells, would be more useful if combats were harder and you needed more tactics to prevail. You can buy magic staves from Nicodemus and use the "Enchant" spell to imbue them with a number of charges of some other spell, like "Great Heal" or "Kill," give your characters unprecedented power in combat. "Summon" allows you to bring your own daemons into the battle, and "Energy Field" will create walls that help you reshape the combat landscape. There are spells of enormous power at the seventh and eight levels--"Energy Wind," "Wing Strike," "Mass Kill," "Mass Charm"--which would be awesome except that by the time you reach that level (if you ever do), you really have no major combats left to fight, and the spells are barely necessary even if you do.

There are a host of spells in the game that are simply mystifying--of no use except to screw around (though perhaps my readers can see uses for them that I can't). "Douse" extinguishes flames and "Ignite" takes care of a "lifeless torch, fireplace, or brazier." Why? "Infravision" detects warm-blooded beings in the dark, but if you're using that instead of "Light," I don't know why. "Trap" allows you to put a trap on a chest or door, but I can't really think of many cases in which an enemy chases you through a closed door. "Vanish" allows you to make small objects disappear and "Reappear" brings them back again. I can't think of a single use for either except to compete against Chuckles as Lord British's entertainer.

Ta-da!

Oh, there's tons more: "Magic Lock" magically locks chests and doors. Yes, I know about the exploit using this spell, but I don't think that was the spell's intention. On the other hand, it really has no other valid use. "Animate" causes inanimate objects to "come to life and wander about, though not under the caster's control." Again, why? (Yes, there's another exploit that allows you to then "Clone" these objects, then "kill" them, and now you have two of them. Again, that doesn't really seem to be the original intent.)

Gideon animates, then clones, magic armor.

"Clone" itself is a bit silly. It makes a copy of any character or NPC, but they just stand around and do nothing. They won't talk; they won't join the party. They seem to have the powers of the original character, but not the items, so it's not like you can clone your Avatar and then kill him for duplicate equipment or gold.

"Replicate" should theoretically do what the "Animate"/"Clone"/kill combination does, but it only works on "simple objects," which means literally nothing that you would find useful, including armor, reagents, torches, arrows, and lockpicks. 

Gideon replicates a bottle of mead. I'm not saying the spell wouldn't have real-life uses.

"Seance" is a mystery. It's supposed to let you speak to the dead, but it hasn't worked once any time I've tried it. I had this idea that it was useful in case you accidentally killed a key NPC, but it never works when I cast it on NPC bodies. It didn't work on Quenton's ghost, either. "Gate Travel" is a waste of time when you have the Orb of Moons. "X-Ray" saves you from, I don't know, having to open a door.

But the grandfather of all unnecessary, mystifying spells has to be the eighth-level "Eclipse," which expends 8 spell points and mandrake, sulfurous ash, nightshade, garlic, and blood moss to temporarily blot the sun and plunge the world into darkness--a condition that does absolutely nothing for you except require you to stumble around in the dark. Britannians don't even comment on it.

"I am Gideon of Earth! Behold my awesome power! Uh...Shamino, light a torch, would you?"

Finally, I should note the existence of a first-level spell called "Help," which requires no reagents. It sends you crying like a baby to Lord British's throne room and immediately restores all hit points. Not only would casting this spell be the most pathetic thing ever, but it's completely redundant since a) your Orb of Moons takes you to Lord British's throne room in only one extra step, and b) if things go so badly for you in combat that you die, you find yourself resurrected in the throne room anyway.

"You're so lame you cast 'Help' in Ultima VI" ought to be an insult among CRPG players.

Next up: how I won the game!