So I started off with a series of save files I had timestamped from sometime of May 2012. These were right at the very end of the game. I'd beaten Ultima 4 then, but the end sequence froze and crashed on me and never got to the "Tell Lord British of your deeds!" text. I presumed this crash was why Ultima 5 gave me an error when trying to import my Ultima 4 save a while back.

So now I decided to revisit Ultima 4 and hopefully get a proper save with the "game has been beaten" data in it... I started from that save file again, beat it, this time got to the very end, with the "You had yada-yada steps, etc, Tell Lord British at Origin Systems" text.

Yet I still don't think it's actually saving. The program doesn't respond to any key presses at this point, and in Windows Explorer it seems all .sav files still have the timestamp from last year.

I thought maybe it's expecting a floppy disk... so I beat it a second time this afternoon, and that time I tried mounting a fake floppy drive to what it should see as A:, but there are no new files there.

What exactly is supposed to happen?

If you use Windows Vista or newer the savegames for Ultima 4 might be stored in
\Users\<USERNAME>\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files (x86)\GOG.com\Ultima 4

(the "\GOG.com\Ultima 4" part may vary, depending on your game's installation path)

To mount a virtual floppy drive is a good way to import the files to Ultima 5. Just copy PARTY.SAV there or alternatively in the directory of Ultima 5. In either case, your user needs write access to the directory, which can be a problem, if you installed the game somewhere into \Program Files\.

I actually have all my DOS game folders in a centralized folder I made, C:\apps\dosbox\c. so that all my DOS games are accessible from one single DosBox instance; it isn't anywhere in the Program Files folders and thus isn't affected by Microsoft's tomfoolery with UAC or whatever it's called.

Anyway, I'm still not sure why the .SAV files don't seem to get updated when Ultima 4's endgame concludes, but I found a DOS utility called fixparty.exe at http://www.ultimaaiera.com/ultima5/ultima-5-character-transfer-patch which worked well enough as far as inserting all the right values into the file is concerned to make it import-friendly.

Yes, I know fixparty.exe, but often it works without it, so I thought it would be better to try with your savegame, before recommending 3rd party stuff with all its risks.

Have you looked in the directory mentioned in my previous post? Ultima 4 often saves at this location instead of its game folder. But as you installed all games under one custom DOSbox instance, which is a good way imo, it might act normal (or just not, as your save apparently doesn't update).

Are you sure it's even supposed to save? I remember completing this game on the C64 and at the end it just sat there with that message and some music and you'd have to reset the computer to do anything else, and reloading your save game would start you where you last saved before entering the Abyss.

And if it did save, where would that leave you if you reloaded that save? Remember where you are at the end of the game.