hercufles: so its a good thing to make a lot of notes?
Necessary, in fact. My father played them before I did (that's right - I have a gaming
pedigree) and he filled a 2' three-ring binder with pages of notes from Ultima IV, and overfilled one for Ultima V. To be fair, he and his friend recorded
everything - the name, rank and serial number of every single person in every towne, village and castle - which came in handy when Jim tells you to ask John about something, because Dad knew exactly where John was.
In addition to that, unless you're bound for a walkthrough, the game doesn't give you all the necessary information - the spell mixtures for the Gate Travel, Undead and Resurrection spells, for example (although the latter two are simple enough to puzzle out when you know what the individual reagents do, and that
is in the book) - and some of the information that they do give you is incomplete or just out-and-out incorrect, although not in a game-breaking way. You'll also often be given co-ordinates to find items (especially in the open ocean), individual letters from a greater word puzzle, or spoken keys, all of which you'll need to keep tabs on so you know just what to do when.
Basically, a ream of looseleaf and some graphing paper, a three-ring binder, a few good pencils and a bunch of sticky tabs are a good investment. Failing that, a word processor that allows you to make maps is a reasonable facsimile.