I finished my playthrough of Ultima I yesterday, and it was just as fun as I remember from when I was a kid. Today I loaded up Ultima II. WTF, man? This game is AWFUL. If this isn't somehow broken, then I don't understand how the series survived. The main problem I'm seeing is that my food meter falls so fast the digits practically blur. I spent all my time trying to find a place to buy more food, and when I finally did I spent all my gold on food, and watched that spin down before I could even figure out how to get more gold. In addition, every fight I was in was endless. The enemies NEVER DIED, no matter how much I hit them. I'm seriously considering skipping this pile of trash and going straight to Ultima III, which I also had when I was a kid. Any advice to make II playable?

At least part of that problem sounds like the difference between a modern computer and computer of the time, your description of how fast food goes down, though GOGs DOSbox settings should prevent it from going as fast as it might otherwise.

The best thing you can do for long term survivability early on is get a boat (no food used while on the boat), but that unfortunately requires some luck. Most people do rank it near the bottom of Ultima games for a reason, though I liked it more once I got past the initial struggle to survive.

The worst part is I remember playing it when I had it on 5 and /14 inch disk and I do not remember food levels falling very fast. I never got to finish it way back when and when I tried it again I could not get past that part. It kind of sucks but I know that by adjusting the cycles in dosbox you can slow how quickly the food falls.

Even running at proper speed, the food -> gold -> food grinding cycle is horrible at the start. Best way to begin is to steal all the food you'll need for the rest of the game, which is clearly not meant to be as easy as it is.

But skipping the game is fine, cause it really never gets much better.

Well, it looks like I've bid a fond F-You to Ultima III as well, for more or less the same problem. Watch the food meter spin down. Go grind for gold against non-existent monsters, buy more food. Seriously, monsters are so scare that I'm wondering why this land needs heroes. All I could do was wonder around and watch that food meter drop. Is every character secretly a damn hobbit? Is that why THEY NEVER STOP EATING?!!

That wasn't even what finally broke me. I kept trying to steal chests from a store. I'd be able to get one or two, then exit the town to save the game. Losing food all the way, of course. The final straw was when I got caught, and ended up in a fight with guards. Instead of just closing the game and reopening like I had been doing, I played the fight just to see. After my first character died, I closed it. When I opened the game again, there my party was outside the town...WITH ALL THE DAMAGE FROM THAT FIGHT. Yep, that guy was dead. It saved my damage from the middle of a fight, and applied it to a previous save game. Uninstall was immediate.

Please tell me when these games start getting good again.

In the DOS version of Ultima 3, the solution to food issues is to go into a dungeon early on; food drops significantly slower, and the enemies on the 1sf floor are still weak. Plus, Perennian Depths (often the first dungeon a new player will find) has a healing fountain.

Another strategy is to go to Yew and kill the townspeople there. Everyone will drop a chest when slain, and there are no guards. When done, just leave town and re-enter, and the townspeople you killed will be back. (Note that this is not a good idea in later Ultima games; there's Virtue/Karma issues starting in Ultima 4, and in Ultima 6 townspeople stay dead and often don't leave treasure.

Also, characters will stop eating at 0 food, and will instead take something like 5 damage every 10 overworld steps (or 40 town/dungeon steps); this damage is slow enough that you can stay alive by using healing magic. It's not like Ultima 1/2 where running out of food would be instant death.

The autosave on character death is annoying to many players (to the point where the Upgrade patch has an option to disable it), but it's also exploitable; for example, you can reliably get a ship that way. (One common complaint, perhaps related to the lack of overworld enemies, is that ships are rare; this exploit lets you get around that issue, at the expense of a party member's life.)

Many players find that Ultima 4 is when the series gets good, though it's not without its annoyances. (My main complaint with Ultima 4 is the need to use reagents to cast even the simplest of spells.)

Thanks for that. I doubt' I'll be going back to III anytime soon, but I'll try to remember if I ever do. Oddly, I did manage to get a ship on my limited playthrough. It was my very first fight. I faced two whole pirates and killed them easily, then was surprised that they left their ship behind. That was when I learned about the games god awful wind mechanic.

I went into a dungeon once. Just once. I never figured out where to buy torches, so I had my cleric cast the light spell. It went out after FOUR STEPS. And of course he didn't have enough spell points to cast it again. I got lost in the dark, and when his spell points regenerated enough to cast light again, I couldn't find the ladder out. And naturally it was more than I could see in four steps.

It's like thedevelopers actually tried to make the game as unenjoyable as possible! No wonder people look for ways to kill Lord British.

Fortunately, that mechanic has been toned down later in the series:
* You can move even f the wind is against you, and I believe even when the wind is calm (though I could be wrong here), but it will be slow.
* Ultima 4 has a spell that changes the wind direction (though it does require reagents, like every other spell in the game).

One suggestion I would make for newbies to the game is take in the knowledge that your intelligence and charisma stats determine how low of a piece for items you can pay. And as luck has it, the price of food is tied to both stats.

Thanks for the continued advice. Right now I don't foresee ever returing to II or III. I'm currently enjoying IV immensely. This is the proper successor to Ultima I. The stupid ravenous characters have learned how to not be overeating pigs. The wind mechanic is still an unnecessary pile of baggage, but is a bit better. Not too thrilled about any terrain other than clear slowing me down, but I guess it does add a bit of realism. The only thing that's making me pull my hair out is the idiotic mechanic of getting poisoned just for stepping in a swamp. That's just plain stupid and annoying. Most importantly, the story on Ultima IV is much better. I love open world exploration, so being able to go anywhere and talk to all the citizens is great fun. This game feels like it has a puzzle for me to unravel, and isn't just endless grinding. I'm very pleased with IV.

You will have to live with the swamp for now, Ultima 5 and later give you ways to prevent/avoid swamp poison, but the best you can do with 4 is kill a monster standing over the swamp and leave the chest, though that isn’t really practical to do except with a few one tile swamps that you might want to step on.