For one the skills like Sword skill Attack skill and defense skill etc.

I want to be a Warrior character so what skill would you recommend.

Also post any other tips you think I need to know?

On a metagame note...Takes notes. everywhere. Id make as many notes on your in game map as you can stand and also, grab an actual notepad or a old notebook to make your own notes. It should help you from becoming lost or confused in the future.

Personally I prefer screenshoting everything of interest. For UU2 I had 650 screenshots at the end.

There is an inventory bug that can pop up, and i think I've (just tonight!!) finally figured out why it happens and how to avoid it. This bug happens even in patched versions and the CD release.

There is a maximum number of objects that can be on a level, but the game isn't aware of it. If a level is close to that number and you leave, get more items, and come back to that level, it might put it over that number. If it goes over, your inventory glitches out and some of your containers will change their contents to random things, or disappear entirely. if it happens, DO NOT SAVE. You have to quit Ultima Underworld, restart it, and load. (The running game code can get messed up, and all saves loaded afterwards will glitch.)

To avoid it, keep the number of objects in the level down as you play. I triggered it in an area where you can push something to make a monster appear. I left 60 to 80 blood splats around, in a level where I also ended up fighting a lot of goblins who dropped lots of items I never wanted to pick up. So, you do have to be racking up a lot of dropped items, but it also does happen in the course of normal gameplay.

You don't have to obsessively clean up levels. Just maybe if you've had lots of battles on one level and there are dropped items everywhere, toss the extras into the water and blast the blood splats with fireballs until they vanish. Or stack the items, that should work too. Level 3 is a problem, so you probably do want to actively do some lake-tossing in that one.

Other tips:

The keyboard movement keys feel a bit odd to someone who's used to 'WASD'. Imagine if "WASD" was one row lower than normal it should be and they make a bit more sense. (This game is from before WASD was a thing!) If you can get used to it, using the keyboard to run around and the mouse to do things while you move is the best way to work with this game's interface.

The first mantras you'll get for skill improvement give you random skills. I personally find this annoying and bad game design, but you tend to get more points from those random mantras than if you used specific ones. Just save your game before you use them, so if you get stuff you don't want you can load and try again

Don't use the mantra for 'Practical Skills' as you'll end up with points in useless stuff that doesn't do anything. (There are four skills that are 100% useless and two more that are nearly useless, all in that set.)

You definitely want Lore early game, so you can identify potions. Otherwise they clutter your bags and take up weight because you don't know what they are and never use them.

Druid makes a good fighter class if you want to be able to cast spells too. You just need to get him a weapon skill for his first level. It'll be a difficult start, but the higher int score is rewarding later, and you can start out with some Lore.

Shepherd may sound boring but has the most evenly distributed stats and gives you the most freedom for what starting skills you want to pick.

If you haven't decided on a weapon type yet, put points into Attack. It helps you hit more often and do more damage with all weapons, it just takes more points to have the same effect as direct weapon skill.

You can't play through effectively as an archer. Ranged weapons are a useful supplement, but not a reasonable main weapon. They are low damage, ammo is very heavy, and you can't just buy more ammo so you have limited shots for the whole game.

Swords are the most plentiful weapons to find lying around. The other types aren't really that hard to come by, but you do tend to get better swords sooner. Daggers and shortswords do max damage with stab, the bigger ones do max damage with slash.

Axes do very slightly more damage than swords, but should be swung vertically from the top for max damage. If you like the idea of playing with axes, boost your Attack skill first so you can use other weapons as a stopgap. They are hard to come by until level 2, but after that they're all over the place.

Maces do very slightly more damage than axes, but are heavier to carry. They also should be swung vertically.

It can be hard to hit small ground-crawling enemies with overhead bashes, but I honestly just slash all the time and axes and maces work fine. Switch to overhead bashes for big, tall armored foes where you actually need the extra points of damage. (But don't stab with maces or axes, that actually does suck.)

Unarmed can do very good damage when trained all the way up. You can totally play as a fist fighter. It also saves you a lot of carry weight. Downside: No enchanted weapons. (Barehand combat is actually much higher damage than missiles!)

Each weapon type has different unique enchanted items hidden in the Abyss. Maces tend to be about pure damage, axes and swords tend to be about magical effects. Really they're all fun choices except for missile.

When you swing your weapon and the gem charges from yellow to green, what's happening is your weapon is charging from min damage to max damage. Really heavy weapons might take a long time to charge up, but they are charging up to more damage than the lighter ones can do. If you swing while the gem is only at 60%, you do just as much damage as the faster / lighter version. The heavier weapon actually is not at a big disadvantage for speed, because you don't need to charge it all the way up. The extra damage for a fully charged swing will come in handy for heavily armored foes.

The developers created the following skills, but never found a way to make them useful in the game. They are useless:
* Sneak
* Traps
* Appraise
* Charm

Basically, you can't sneak while a light is on (and you can't see without it, and get no XP for sneaking past.) There aren't any dangerous traps. Appraise and charm only help you get better prices trading, and there isn't anything interesting to trade for. (If there were you'd need several levels worth of points in them to make a difference in your price, AND there's all kinds of stuff lying around you can just sell off anyway.) Maybe two or three people in the game sell something cool like a low-level magic ring, but they'll happily trade for an unwanted sling, hat and gloves you just got from a hostile goblin.

Swimming skill doesn't make you swim faster. Just makes you swim longer before drowning. (And you can cast water walk anyway.)

You can find secret doors without Search skill, but they will show more easily with a few points.

You can buy repairs if you don't get the repair skill, but it can be a hike to get to the guy who does it.

don't listen to "blogs" telling you their "opinion" on skills and being vague in descriptions. this just means they are hiding something. I can't really find any real descriptions on what some of these skills actually do. but describing a skill as "useless" or "mostly useless' sounds like an opinionated oaf. and we need to really find out how is ti used. I know Lore describe things better in inventory that is all I know. I know that the Ultima Underworld II clue book has an excellent indepth guide on both stats and skills but Underworld I is quite vague. I think casting deals in what spells you can use and the power effect of some spells(not all of them) Attack and Defense(in UW2) deals in accuracy of to hit and to dodge(respectively lined up also with your (given) weapon skill it stacks(I guess) strength is added to damage(but unlike other games it is divided so many times over it only has a small bearing-unless you roll a lucky number or use the large axes. Search and Traps is up for debate as I have found no strait answers on that, only opinions like "that's a stupid skill" I don't care. I want to know what does big or small! The strait answer to the OP is no one really knows. but if you play long enough and replay with different skills MAYBE you'll find out! The dialogue tree is messed up. so don't bother with stuff like "charm" (IMHO) it is useless unless the gog people fix the thing to work. as Origin did not. I would stick with a subject matter in diaglue and not devate most of the inconsistancies are from switching topics. not staying on topic of what the NPC started to talk about. then back out and reenter dialogue and go for another topic then. Bragit becomes annoyed and The Enclave of humans can be hostile for no reason. for instannce you say "I thank thee for thy advice" and are told to get lost and never speak to the leader again. your choice APPEARS to say "I think thee for thy adice" but really says something else(I have no earthy idea what it says). ditto with the Strength! Attack and defense. Lore is not a skill I find important. but it can be fun sometimes
you need an edged and bladed weapon. undead are taken out better with maces. but only pepper it. use your bladed as a primary weapon. whether axe or sword. in UW 2 the sword is a must! you can be trained to very advanced levels by a trainer there.. missiles are useless(IMO) most monsters will rush you melee.(that includes the antagonists of BOTH games!)

You want very high Strength because the amount of weight you can carry is directly dependent on your Strength value. Iirc, you can carry two stone of weight per point of strength. Higher Strength -> Hold more stuff. The more stuff you can hold, the less picky you have to be about what you carry around. Your max weight is set once your character is created.

Higher Vitality translates to higher hp, but you can heal lost hp, and your max hp increases as you level up.

Higher Intelligence probably increases your max mana, but max mana is rarely an issue as you raise your Mana skill. There are plenty of ways to regen mana.

I don't even know what Dexterity does, if anything. Across many runs, I've never noticed any issue regardless of whether it was high or low.


You have enough mantra points to max out about 6 skills, with maybe a little left over. Therefore the advice I would give is to spend your limited number of mantras on maxing Attack, Defense, and a weapon skill of your choice (that isn't Missile) as the most important choices. Mana and Casting are both needed if you want to cast spells. Lore is a very useful skill throughout the game.

Skill descriptions:
Attack: Increases the chance that a particular swing will deal damage to an enemy (assuming the enemy is in range).

Defense: Reduces the chance that an enemy swing will deal damage to you.

Weapon skill: Increases the chance that a particular swing will deal damage to an enemy, reduces the chance an enemy swing will deal damage to you, and reduces the chance that a given swing by you will cause the weapon itself to become more damaged. With a high weapon skill, you can reliably bash doors with your weapon without your weapon being damaged in the process. With low weapon skill, you can literally break your weapon trying to hit some of the tougher monsters (like the Gazer in the mines on level 2).
Your fists aren't subject to weapon damage, so you can always bash down a door with your fist (if the door is bashable) without any risk to your weapon.

Don't use choose missile weapons because you can't fire a missile weapon when a monster is right in your face. Monsters are either trying to get in that range, or else YOU want to get in that range because they have dangerous ranged attacks (ex. Fire Elementals and Gazers), so don't pick Missile. If you want to use a ranged attack, there are several wands with a lot of Magic Arrow charges, as well as scrolls and wands of various other attack spells. Also, ammo is an issue for missile weapons, as noted earlier in this thread.

Every weapon skill (except Missile) is perfectly feasible for a full run; you find an early example of each class (dagger/short sword, hand axe, cudgel) in the first rooms you can explore. You never need to use a weapon outside your chosen weapon type.

Mana: More points in this directly increases the amount of mana you have available.

Casting: More points in this allows you to cast higher circle spells, and it reduces the chance that a given casting attempt will fail or backfire (backfires deal a little damage to you). Some spells, like Magic Arrow, can be cast with very little casting skill. Some spells, like Tremor, require a lot more casting skill.

Lore: Increases the chance that you can identify what effect a magical item has, or even whether it is magical at all. The first time you right click on an item, the RNG determines whether you identify the item as magical and whether you identify the specific magic of the item. High Lore increases the success chance of each of these occurances. If you don't have any points in Lore, then you'll have to be very lucky to determine whether that sword you just found is magical. High Lore gives you a decent chance to identify whether that red potion restores life, restores mana, causes hallucinations, or poisons you. The Name Enchantment spell, the wand of Name Enchantment, and the mage guy that charges to id items all have a 100% success rate.

Swimming: Lets you be swimming in the water longer before you start taking drowning damage. You mostly don't have to swim, so this skill isn't useful. You can use the arrows on the compass to advances by whole tiles, so this skill is completely unneeded; you can skip ahead fast enough that you'll only take drowning damage if you are trying to drown.

Appraise: this is an assumption on my part based on the in-game text provided alongside the mantra. This skill increases your success rate in identifying the quality of a deal when you are trading items with an NPC. What isn't an assumption on my part: You can afford to take a terrible deal every time by simply trading large stacks of free fish for whatever it is you want. This skill is therefore useless.

Charm: this is an assumption on my part based on the in-game text provided alongside the mantra. This skill increases the chance that an NPC will accept a deal that isn't favorable to them in terms of item value. What isn't an assumption on my part: You can afford to take a terrible deal every time by simply trading large stacks of free fish for whatever it is you want. This skill is therefore useless. This skill does not affect conversation trees to progress through the game.

Search: I think this skill is supposed to help you locate secret doors. You can find all the secret doors just fine without any points in the skill. Therefore this skill is useless.

Track: I'm assuming this helps identify what monsters are nearby when you use the F9 (or whichever key it is) that tries to locate nearby monsters. Instead of using that key, you could just go look. This skill is useless.

Sneak: I'm assuming this helps you move around monsters without being detected. It might not work if you have a light (since a light in the dark is a beacon), so unless you want to sneak in the dark, this skill is useless. You never need to sneak by anything, and light is too convenient.

Traps: I'm assuming this increases the chance of successfully spotting and removing traps on treasure. There are so few traps that finding one is noteworthy, and none of them are on treasure you need, so this skill is useless.

Lockpick: Increases the chance of successfully picking a lock. This skill can be useful, but not every lock can be picked.

Repair: Allows you to repair (most of) your weapons and armor yourself. You can't repair jeweled gear, but you can repair Badly Worn gear. Shak can repair jeweled gear, he won't repair Badly Worn gear, and he is still needed for the special repair job.

Acrobat: Reduces the amount of damage you take when you fall from heights or slam into walls. However, it only reduces wall damage if you hit the wall straight on; personal experience shows it doesn't help if you hit the wall at an angle. A few points can be useful, but you don't ever have to fall from great heights and you can heal damage, so you don't need many (or any) points here.

I suggest using sword as weapon skill, since you'll be carrying a sword as a quest item anyway. It's unbreakable too, so... yay. And there is an open spell. There is also a walk on water spell, that makes swimming redundant. Some skills can be substituted by magic.

All skills concerning bartering are useless, because aside from a magical ring and a candle, NPCs have no items that you could reasonably want.

Attack, Defense and a weapon skill are needed to survive long enough to get through the game. Mana, Casting and Lore are convenience skills that make playing the game a smoother, more enjoyable experience.