You can save the game in dungeon corridors in the DOS version. This works in all dungeons, including the Abyss. One should be careful so as not to save in a tricky situation, and not just because of the missing exit bug. Things can get hairy pretty quickly in the lower levels, for various reasons. It's best to always have a ready Xit spell and a party member with enough mp to cast it when saving in dungeons.

If you're touching orbs, especially in Hythloth, you may find this spell to come in handy even if you're good at healing.

In most places, Sulfurus Ash is cheaper than a torch.

On the other hand, you can buy multiple torches at a time, whereas you can only mix one use of the Light spell at a time.

Oh, do the stat increases stay with the character even after death? I didn't realize that. In that case, yeah, Resurrect is very useful for Hythloth orbs.


The version 2.0 patch from Pix's Ultima Patcher allows you to mix bundles of spells. I've attached a screenshot for reference.

Yes, they stay. They even stay if touching the orb results in a party wipe; you go back to Lord British with the penalties I mentioned, but you still keep the stat boost.

So does the Sega Master System version.

(The NES version handles reagents like Ultima 6; you need them to cast spells, but you don't need to mix the spells in advance.)

Now at collecting the stones, first I was in Wrong.

Does the "Down" spell fail sometimes? It seemed so, without explanation (not because of too low MP). The "Exit" spell worked immediately.

And Reapers and Gazers put my people to sleep although "Negate" was active. Does this mean they don't have to cast but they have sleep as a kind of non-magic ability?

Controls are a bit annoying when one wants to steer just one person for looking for secret exits but have to push space seven times in between...

"Down" will fail if you're on level 8 of the dungeon, as there's nowhere lower for you to go.

Gazers can put you to sleep with their regular attack; negate will not help there. Better armor will help you avoid the attack (armor increases evasion; it doesn't reduce damage), while being poisoned will make it impossible for an enemy to put you to sleep.

As for the control issue, in this game (assuming non-NES), I like to go as follows:
* Choose a Mage for the starting character for more MP. It's not hard enough to get enough gold for the Magic Wand.
* Play through most of the game solo.
* For the final dungeon, keep the majority of the party dead. It does help to have more than one character, but not everyone is equally useful; in particular, the wand users are the best, and the 0 MP characters are both useless.

Edit: Worth noting that Ultima 5 fixes that last character. Type the number of a character, and only that character will get turns until you type another number or type 0 to go back to normal. This also works in Ultima 6.

It was on level 4, when "down" did not work.

Also, one time Iolo could not cast "Awaken", and also not because of low MP, just with a basaic "failed" info (although I am not sure whether I typed wrong and told him for a non-sleeping character).

Yes, I remember, Ultima V brought many UI improvements

Did you try asking about it in the actual town of Humility, Magincia?

Hint: In town, even if there's a monster that attacks you, it might still be possible to initiate dialog before combat starts.

No, because I thought Magincia is the town of pride, the very cause it is destroyed.

Even more info I missed, that it became the town of humility somewhere down the line.

But again, own fault otherwise: I already talked to the snake but wrote no note.

Thanks!

As for why Magincia is the town of Humility rather than Pride:
* There are no towns for anti-virtue. If you notice, the anti-virtues correspond to dungeons, not towns. (But there's no dungeon of Pride, unless you look at the Runes of Virtue games.)
* The towns of the other virtues correspond to moongate locations, and Magincia is right by the remaining moongate location.
* There's a companion that you can recruit in the town. (Of course, she's the worst of the companions, but that's beside the point.)
* If, in the intro, you take the Humility option every time it's offered, you will start out by Magincia. Note that I do not recommend doing this unless you've played the game before and are intentionally handicapping yourself, as Magincia is not a good starting location, and you will have the worst class, and will start at level 1, meaning you can't recruit someone better until you gain a level.

And yes, the game does try to pull a fast one on you by having an NPC with dialog initiate combat when it reaches you.

(At least the destroyed town isn't Skara Brae, which gets destroyed in multiple other games, one of which isn't even an Ultima game.)

I believe Magincia is the city of Pride. But because it was destroyed as a direct result of its excessive Pride, you learn a lot about the virtue of Humility from its ghostly, dead inhabitants (and from other Magincia townspeople that fled the city during its destruction).

NEW Magincia, which isn't created until later, becomes the city of Humility. Humility eventually rises from the ashes of a crushed Pride.

Alkerion in Minoc will tell you about the stone of Sacrifice. This is at the end of a series of hints that starts out when you first talk to Gimble and ask him about his health after he tells you he will die soon. This will give you a hint about what to ask Azure, who gives you a hint of what to ask Mischief, who will ultimately give you a hint on what to ask Alkerion.

Despise is near the city of its opposite namesake...Compassion. Shame is rather far from the city of its namesake...Honor. But remember what the injured fighter at the Lycaeum tells you about the altar rooms, and what Bengrod in Jhelom tells you about the altar rooms, and if you follow the hints that Zajac, the jester in the Lycaeum tells you, then you'll eventually come across a third character who tells you something about the altar rooms. When you learn this about the altar rooms, you'll learn that you can actually gain access to some of the other Dungeons in a way that is different than by stumbling upon its entrance by diligently searching the mountains.

This you're supposed to eventually piece together by talking to various characters in the land. I think the most straightforward explanation is by the bard (Benjamin), the druid (Deirdre), the ranger (Lastro), and the tinker (Thomas) when you speak to them in the Empath Abbey Grove. After learning these combinations from them, it's pretty easy to piece together the rest.

When combined with the X-it spell, this can even be used, in conjunction with that one spot in the back of Castle Britannia (requires key), as a shortcut to various places on the overworld.

Then again, with the Blink and Gate spells, I haven't found the need to do so.

Also, this unfortunately can't be used to reach the one dungeon that doesn't have any altar room.

By the way, have you found the altar that's supposed to have the white stone? (It's one detail that you're likely to miss if you're just following a guide.)

Yes, I got the info about the white stone.

How do you get the NPCs to talk - in my game, in the Lycaeum neither the injured fighters nor the jester know about "stone" or "altar". Will travel to Jhelom to find Bengrod and have to find Merlin somewhere for info about the black stone.

Yes, I knew the hints from the people in the grove. So I really have to figure out the rest about how the virtues relate to the principles. I guess the relation of altars and stone colors can help with that (although I still don't know fully which ones are used in Love and Truth. Maybe according to the virtues' relations? Oh wait, this is what I wanted to figure out in the first place...)

I did not mean Magincia as the "official" town of pride, just a pride one that eventually became the town of humility in its new form as New Magincia. Or maybe it was the town of humility all along and basically still ist, although it was not up to the task and got destroyed, but that did not change the status.

Again, not complaining, just a bit of irony. I love Ultima, although I might not repeat IV (the same for VII, but V and VI very likely).

It's definitely different how V treats the virtues; it's definitely a stark contrast to their presentation in IV.

As an alternative to repeating IV, you could, perhaps, try the NES version on an emulator at some point; it's very different from the PC version. (This is unlike, say, the SMS version, which is still reasonably faithful to the PC version, albeit with a few differences.)