Hi,

I bought a copy of Ultima 7 and have run into a bit of trouble. How do you open Spark's Dad's chest in the second floor of his house? Thanks.

Welcome to the site.

You can find the chest's key in the stables, beside the victim's body. Talk about it with Finnigan, who tell you to speak with Spark. Talk to Spark about the key you've found. Open the chest using it.

How do I bash open the chest just SW of trinsic? I have the two handed hammer in my hand, but I cannot seem to do anything with it. Do I need a different weapon? I guess what I am asking is which weapon to use and how to use or activate it? Thanks in advance.

Switch to combat mode with C, then click on the chest. This also works with doors.

You can't break into chests/doors that are "magically locked" (the lock is visibly glowing and the tooltip text is different when you click on it).

Thank you so very much! I opened the chest and armed myself and my companions, distributed the gold. I am totally new to Ultima, so did not realize how to enter into combat mode. Thanks again for taking the time to help me! Your information was sincerely appreciated!

The key from the dead body in the stable.

You can also use lockpicks to open most doors and chests that aren't magically locked. You may go through several lockpicks before getting a success, and there are a few special ones that can't be picked (though this comes up more in The Serpent Isle), but it's usually faster than smashing them.

You can't pick anything with an associated key. You often can't smash them either, but there are exceptions. There's also a single chest in the Black Gate that never opens because they forgot to place its key in the world, but supposedly it only contains some potions.

Not even with the skeleton key?
I can't recall any chest that I could not open. Do you remember where the chest is?

The skeleton key opens any chest that doesn't have a key of its own. Essentially it's a lockpick that never fails. The chest in question has a key in the game data, but the key object doesn't exist anywhere in the game world. I believe it was somewhere in dungeon Despise - the real Despise, not the mislabeled Shame.

Ah yes, I recall the chest you're talking about. :)
I always wondered what was in it every time I passed through that area. Potions you say? No big loss there I guess.

Yeah, I dragged it out of the dungeon with me and tried everything to open it (even fired cannons at the dang thing), then found a post on the exult forums claiming it contained potions. In theory you could spawn in the key if you knew the right item code, but the lists floating around don't seem to include keys.

One last thing about lockpicking in general: If it fails and a party member says, "Strange that did not work..." then you're wasting your time and there is a key to be found somewhere.