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Ultima seriesUltima 3: where are all the boats?(34 posts)solved(34 posts)solved
(34 posts)solved
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This is my favourite topic
Posted July 24, 2012
I'm starting to feel like an idiot in some sort of mental test. I need a boat to get to Ambrosia and the small islands, but there are no boats to be found. From what I gathered I am supposed to hope for a pirate ship to appear, take the crew out and board the ship. I've walked the coasts of Sosaria several times and haven't seen a single boat. Come to think of it, even the serpents and squids have stopped spawning. Am I missing something? Do I need a certain level? I wouldn't even mind hacking my game files if I knew what to do.

This walking back and forth is really boring, ther eis no challenge in it, I'm not even doing anything aside from fighting some trivial critters. Of course all that nonesense ends up wasting my food, so I need to spend more gold on food, but I cannot buy stat boost without gold, so I need to grind even more! Did they even playtest this thing properly? I mean let a person who doesn't know anything about the game play from begging to end? Or am I stuck in some sort of bizzare bug? So far the first trilogy has been an unbalaced mess not worth the time.
This question / problem has been solved by mcmagiimage
Posted July 24, 2012
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HiPhish: ...
I've walked the coasts of Sosaria several times and haven't seen a single boat. Come to think of it, even the serpents and squids have stopped spawning.
...
That's... weird, even for Ultima III. Can you post your savegame? I'll take a look at the game myself and see if I run into a similar issue.
Post edited July 24, 2012 by VisElEchNon
Posted July 24, 2012
Which file would that be?
Posted July 24, 2012
weird Pirate ships should show up at some point..
Posted July 24, 2012
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HiPhish: Which file would that be?
The PARTY.ULT file for sure... I'm not sure if there are others to indicate where you are in the game but I don't think so.
Posted July 25, 2012
Here it is
[dead link]

I can open it in a Hex editor but I don't know what to change. I wouldn't mind cheating to get around this.
Post edited July 27, 2012 by HiPhish
Posted July 25, 2012
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HiPhish: Here it is
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/22321777/random%20stuff%20to%20share/PARTY.ULT

I can open it in a Hex editor but I don't know what to change. I wouldn't mind cheating to get around this.
I assume you're using the upgrade patch? If so, this may be a bug in the patch. I tried the game with it installed and ran into the same issues (no ships, no serpents, not even the whirlpool.) I then tried it without the patch and the first thing I noticed was that the whirlpool was zipping around the water again. I had to stand in one place long enough to starve half to death but a ship did eventually appear as well.

If this is a patch bug, I don't think cheating will help because it appears the whirlpool is gone as well. I'll look at the upgrade page and see if I can report this as a possible bug.

::EDIT::
Hm. Maybe not a bug...
I tried to replicate the results a few times and I did get the whirlpool to appear with the patch installed on my third try (but still no ship.)
I also got the exact same result on my second try, without the patch installed, as I did the first time I tried it with the patch installed. On the third try I got this:

Exodus Swarm

Yeah, nine enemies swarmed me before I could even move away from Britain... XD
But again, no ship showed up.

So now I'm thinking it's the piss-poor random encounter generator in the game rather than the patch.
Post edited July 25, 2012 by VisElEchNon
Posted July 25, 2012
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HiPhish: I'm starting to feel like an idiot in some sort of mental test. I need a boat to get to Ambrosia and the small islands, but there are no boats to be found. From what I gathered I am supposed to hope for a pirate ship to appear, take the crew out and board the ship. I've walked the coasts of Sosaria several times and haven't seen a single boat. Come to think of it, even the serpents and squids have stopped spawning. Am I missing something? Do I need a certain level? I wouldn't even mind hacking my game files if I knew what to do.

This walking back and forth is really boring, ther eis no challenge in it, I'm not even doing anything aside from fighting some trivial critters. Of course all that nonesense ends up wasting my food, so I need to spend more gold on food, but I cannot buy stat boost without gold, so I need to grind even more! Did they even playtest this thing properly? I mean let a person who doesn't know anything about the game play from begging to end? Or am I stuck in some sort of bizzare bug? So far the first trilogy has been an unbalaced mess not worth the time.
Well, it could be one of two things. First, the monster generation rate in U3 is very low. There is a 5% chance a monster will appear with every step you take. I have often wandered the map two-three times before finding a single monster. This does not seem to happen when I play the Apple or Commodore 64 versions where the monsters seem to appear much more rapidly.

The other thing is that to make sure you check every nook and cranny for monsters and defeat them when they appear. There is a set limit (32 I think) to how many monsters can be on the map at one time. So you might have monsters hiding out by Devil Guard for example or on the isle with the Dungeon of the Snake. Defeat them so the game will allow new monsters to appear.

Based on my experiences in a recent play-through of U3, I've actually coded a "balance fix" that will effectively double the monster generation rate while halving food consumption. It will be released with v3.1 which should hopefully come out within a month.
Posted July 25, 2012
That would be so great! I think Ultima 3 is so far the only RPG where i whish for more monsters to spawn. Really, this whole issue could have been avoided by having a sperate ship count, like between two and five ships always to roam the sea independelty from the other monsters. I read that leaving the chests after monsters die reduces the amount of potential spawn ponts, so it makes it more likely for a monster to spawn in water, but again, I've been roaming Sosaria back and forth fighting the same stupid orcs over and over again. I think I'll just skip Ultima 3 and come back to it when your new patch is released. Also, the whirlpool was there all the time, so that's no issue.
Post edited July 25, 2012 by HiPhish
Posted January 25, 2013
I'm having this same problem where no boats are appearing. I'm fairly far along in the game, and need a boat in order to get into one last dungeon. However, after spending nearly an hour walking around Sosaria, not a single boat has appeared! The whirlpool is still milling about, but that's about it. I'm not seeing any sea monsters at all either.

Ideas? Kind of frustrating as I can't really continue with the game!

I'm running the patched version of the game.

Thanks,

..Al
Posted January 26, 2013
This won't help, but I just gave up on the game. I could have started over again, but the tedium of grinding monye just for food because of the high consuption rate and the low spawn rate really turned me off. I mean Ultima III is a nice simple C-RPG and it has a surprising amount of content going for it, but the beginning is so boring. Sadly Voyager Dragon hasn't come out with a balance fix yet, so I decided to just skip this game until he does.
Posted January 28, 2013
I can't get boats to appear either. I just donloaded the game a few days ago and I went through 1000 food and no boats. I've had squid and serpents appear, no boats. Please help. I've spent quite a bit of time to have it wasted like this.
I don't know why this forum topic is labeled solved, it isn't.
Posted January 29, 2013
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TheDogg2012: I can't get boats to appear either. I just donloaded the game a few days ago and I went through 1000 food and no boats. I've had squid and serpents appear, no boats. Please help. I've spent quite a bit of time to have it wasted like this.
I don't know why this forum topic is labeled solved, it isn't.
The reason it's labeled as solved is that the reason for such a low spawn rate have been given. This is something in the original game and not something that GOG will be fixing.
Posted January 29, 2013
Yes, I marked it as solved because that's as close to a solution as we will get. Sucks, but that's what happened.
Posted January 30, 2013
Maybe i was very lucky but i didn't have any problem with ships during my playthrough (last community patch installed). Just roam the eastern shore and kill everything you see and pirates will eventually attack you. It took me about 10 minutes of grinding to get the ship.
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Ultima seriesUltima 3: where are all the boats?(34 posts)solved(34 posts)solved
(34 posts)solved