I just downloaded Ultima IV for the first time a few days ago and am trying to install the upgrade patch. This has been a very confusing endeavor, as there seem to be several different patches running around.

I tried getting Pix' Ultima Patcher, but it won't open after I download it. I give it authorization to make changes to my computer, and then it just gets listed a second time in the download list, without ever opening anything. What do I do?

UPDATE: I've unzipped the download file, but everyone seems to be talking about an easy-to-use interface so you don't have to download everything manually, and I can't find a general run file, or even instructions for the Ultima Patcher. What am I missing?

(The forum won't let me post proper links so you'll have to copy & paste them, sorry about that.)

Using xu4 is the easiest way to play Ultima 4 these days. You just drop a copy of the DOS game into a subfolder and you're set. It's a windows program so no DOSBox is even required:

xu4.sourceforge.net

It includes a bunch of fixes as well as some quality of life improvements (which are all optional, I think).

If you want to go the original DOS route instead, I found that most of the patchers did not work in Windows, and I had to use the DOS versions instead, running them from within DOSBox. With the U4 patch there's the added problem that the avpatch.exe it uses will not work in DOSBox, and you'll need to replace it with a DOS-compatible version, which is linked here:

ultima.wikia.com/wiki/Ultima_IV_Upgrade_Patch

At the time of writing, the zip that links to isn't on the server and apparently hasn't been for a few years, but you can get it via Archive.org if you jump back to 2016. I can't paste a direct link as Gog's forum won't allow me to, but if you go to

web.archive.org

then paste this in:

nodling.nullneuron.net/ultima/code/ultima4/avpatch.zip

then drop it back to 2016 or so, it'll work.

With that, I was able to run the U4 patcher under DOSBox. But in the end I decided xu4 seemed slghtly better, as I think it has some additional bug fixes. My only question is whether the monster AI and damage etc. are authentic or slightly different, but I couldn't find an answer to that either way.

When I tried using xu4, I noticed that enemies weren't doing much damage to me; in the DOS and SMS versions, I would take decent amounts of damage, but in xu4 enemies would deal very little damage to me, making the game less interesting.

Increasing the difficulty did not help; in fact, it made the game harder in the worst possible way, making my attacks significantly less accurate. Having my attacks miss constantly is extremely frustrating, when it feels like I take extra damage through no fault of my own, and it makes battles drag on longer than they should.

(Note that I am not including the NES version in this comparison, as that version's combat mechanics are completely different.)