I had forgotten how annoying sounding the fire sword in U7 was. I can't imagine why they think its a good idea to have static constantly playing when you've got that equipped. I ended up only taking it out when in combat.

Make one of you character a dual wielder and put the fire sword in his offhand.
You'll get the light effect but not the annoying noise.

Thanks, I'll do that. Right now I have sound effects turned off to avoid hearing that thing.

I got used to it, but it can be annoying. The fire staff does that too. Plus I think it can hurt your party when fired. Combat's so chaotic I rarely know what's going on.

I also got used to it, sort of. But yeah, I can't believe they didn't "fix it" - it's damn annoying.

Keep in mind that this game was released in 1992.
It was designed for slow 386/486 computers and you even had to make a special startup floppy disk in order to be able to run this game.
Back then this firesword sound would occasionally play while it might loop constantly on new computers. (Does it?) This 'problem' never got a fix since it wasn't a problem back then.

What I am saying is your experience of playing this game will be a lot different from people like me, who first played the game back in 1992, TWENTY years ago.

Gawd, I am old. :(

I haven't thought about that as the game runs with proper speed. Thanks for the info, now it's perfectly understandable.

Don't worry, I would guess most people here are quite old, haha. I somehow missed this game in 1992... hard to believe.

I still remember when Ultima II came out and I was the first on the block to have it for my Apple II. Gawd, I feel really old now. :_(

You feel old? I was managing an Egghead Software store to support a wife and two small children, selling Ultima games to "kids" like you back then!

Egghead software...I remember going to Egghead when Ultima V came out. I was just starting college and I couldn't afford to buy it. :( Eventually I did buy the game at Fedco, however, for my Apple II, but I gave it away with the computer after only 2 months. :_(

Thanks to GOG, I can finally go back and play Ultima V again!

I never, EVER used fire swords or staves. EVER. I once had a bug where the fire sound wouldn't stop even after removing said weapons - I turned sound off forever after that, and swore off fire weapons.

Ah, I remember creating special boot disks for Ultima. Damn Voodoo memory manager. I even remember my saviour of that era - Smartdisk. It let me boot the game, and save/load games literally 10x faster than without it.

Nostalgia ahoy!