Ultima Underworld: Problem Solving

I am developing an annoyance towards these guys

This session starts off pretty good. I fight some ghosts and get to level up. Level 13. Kind of weird that it took so little time to level up considering the last one took forever. Nothing much left in the section of the 5th floor I can access from the banquet hall, the only access to the ghouls section requires running across lava. I better go back up and get some fish then.

If only all fishing mini-games were this simple, we wouldn't feel the desire to keep adding them

After getting the fishing pole from the friendly vagabond, I fish. Its boring. Left click on the fishing rod in front of water, then you either get a fish or you don't. Repeat until you have enough fish. Fishing is supposed to be a relaxing thing while you're in-tune with nature. Here you just press a button for a while. Its not good. If it weren't for the fact that this quest is probably not optional, I wouldn't even be doing this. Get ten fish, put down two packs, go down to ghouls, get password, go back up, go to the wizard and give code. There. Now since in order to explore the rest of the floor 5 I'd have to go out of my way, I'll just go down to floor 6.

I like how I just know that its the standard of some people I may not have even met before

Feels pretty good getting this far down. As much as I'm ragging on it, it certainly has a better quality per floor than most games on I've played on this blog. I'm greeted on this level by scads of lava, lava on dirt, and flags of the seer. Clearly, we're getting into the end game here. Oh, a friendly mage, clearly he must have something important to say about my quest.

See, I don't even know what's on this floor

Oh...its something talking about a magical academy? At first I assume its another knight situation, where I get a series of quests to accomplish and a nice title, but no. All he tells me is to check the library, and to be careful since there are monsters. I decide first to check the area behind him. A lot of mage NPCs here, some offering services, others offering quests. Another tells me of a terrible demon who no mortal can kill, and must be defeated some other way. And hey, I get the fire rune for once.

There are worse ways to be immortalized

Things get weird in the southwest section. There's an upset spectre named Warren floating around, which is a reference to one of the developers. Then I walk past him, because you can't talk to him, and I try opening a door. Only for it to start talking to me. I wonder if this influenced the parts of Vampire the Masquerade - Bloodlines where you talk to inanimate objects as the Malkavian. What the door was guarding was pretty important, a freedom rune and some bottles of port. I think port was what I needed for the worm stew.

I wonder if its actually possible to be in a situation where this isn't an easy fight

More to the point, by doing some of the quests in this area, while I'm not getting them directly, I am getting directions for the items of Virtue. Now, out of game, I can be 90% certain I should be getting these items. In-game I have absolutely no reason to want any of these. Eh, maybe the sword.
The north part of the map tells me that there's danger inside. This doesn't seem true at first, just some skeletons. At this point skeletons are a piece of cake. Even a troll isn't much trouble at full health, unfortunately I'm not at full health when I find and fight a troll.

That seems like such an underwhelming thing to celebrate

With almost all the runes collected I figure now is the time to explore the ledges I can't reach on the 4th floor. First one's just a pit you can fall down, and the other is just a stairs down. Now what about fireballing that one bit of wall? Nothing. Well...drat. Back up to the fountain on second and then back down.

And yet they still buried him

I take the scenic route on the 5th, going through areas I have yet to explore. I see an obvious trap, a sign saying someone evil was buried here and those entering it join him. After killing a dire ghost, I see why, a former knight who was stripped of his title after killing an innocent. I wonder if its possible for that to happen in this game? If any game would do it, it would be this one. Anyway, while there is some useful items in the guy's tomb, there's also no way out afterwards, at least not yet. Maybe I'll come back to it. I keep saying that a lot and it never seems to be very effective. Either there's going to be some considerable backtracking action, or I'm missing something.
What I do get out of this, however, is that there's no stairs down in the southeast part of the map. That is, the section most easily connecting from the previous stairs up. I can however, go down into the other half of the 5th floor quite easily. That does leave the question of what's so special about the stairs down you have to levitate to in order to reach.

Back on the 6th floor, I do some more platforming over lava. I do feel like there's something awful about it, but I can't say I've had any problems with it for a while. But I am feeling that some of the rewards of this platforming are insufficient. Here, east of the northern path from the central area, I had to worry that some flying enemies would attack me, fight some dread spiders and a gazer, all for some random crappy book.

This is a cool-looking room

Only that's not entirely true, there's a sign saying "Domain of Vilus, visitors not welcome", aha, I think, this must be where an evil mage lives. Well, that's greatly underselling it, because this is a big section of the floor. With tons of jumping too, so my statement must have jinxed things, because naturally I miss a few jumps and fall straight into the lava. Ah, lovely. I explore this section quite a bit, and besides a fire elemental, who I can't hurt yet, and an anvil, which would be able to repair my stuff if I had any skills in that, there's nothing much but awful, awkward platforming. Serves me right for doubting the game's awfulness.

What a charming fellow

I also find the poison version of the ghouls hanging out around here, called dark ghouls. This puts my exploration of this floor away and forces me to return to the 2nd. Getting more and more annoying. As I'm going back up I decide to give that weird vine wall a second glance. Maybe I missed it the first time, after all hit detection is wonky in this game.

Yeah, this wasn't obnoxious to uncover or anything

No, I was doing it wrong. What I was supposed to do was look at the wall in the right way. This reveals a secret door, and inside a switch, lowering the water in a nearby section. This is where the fountain on this floor is, in addition to a sword blade, undoubtedly the blade of the sword of virtue.
Incidentally, when I finally return to the troll who injured me a while ago, I find that he can't even get out of the room he's in. How the hell did he enter it to begin with then?

Does heaven or hell count?

Continuing my exploration of the 6th floor, I'm finding a lot of areas with lava gaps I don't feel comfortable jumping and my mana is nowhere near high enough for me to want to cast levitation all willy nilly. I do find a library, which seems useless for now. It has among other things, a skill increasing mantra, some in-jokes for the franchise and some things I suspect are hints for later parts of the game.

The second options feels like a very *not* sneaky way of saying I'm a coward

Now that I've cleared up most of the map, I now have to figure out what to do with the rest of it. Because while there's always little bits of the map I'm never quite sure how to deal with. Its especially bad in lavaland because travelling over lava is dangerous. Even jumping over a slightly larger than normal gap is dangerous. Such a jump leads me to the stone golem I've been told about, who offers me the Shield of Valor. This fight is a joke, at this point he's hardly a threat to me.
At this point I decide its a good idea to find most of the items of virtue I can reach as of yet and put them all in a relatively safe place that's not my inventory. And to find all the ingredients for that stew. Its actually really hard to find everything once you've been through the map all the way, because everything is now empty.

Something tells me this particular shrine may be important later

Also, finally found out how to open that one door. Turns out there was a hidden switch, which you naturally have to platform to. This doesn't really seem to get me anything, but the messages on the wall are probably some kind of hint. Anyway, I get the ingredients for the stew, while also collecting the magic candle on the way up from the crazy guy Zak. I get a raw deal in the process, but frankly I don't really care, I just know that I need this stuff.

Oh, I get it now, I was just desperate to put in my inventory

The stew gets me dragon scales, which cause me to hit my weight limit AGAIN. What this game needs is a way to increase strength after the fact. For completionist sake I decide to look through the rest of the knight quarters. Mostly just getting info for areas I've already cleared out, but interestingly I get the location of one of the items by giving the Dwarven gemcutter to a knight worker.

This is more impressive than I give them credit for, it would be years before anyone else would try this kind of thing

So that puzzle in the north east. Well, turns out its much easier than I gave it credit for. See, I've been thinking that the buttons are states, where its either on or off. Because that's how buttons that press or depress work. No, it turns out what it does is increase or lower the height of a block decided by the position of the levers. The top raises, the bottom lowers. Once you figure out that things are indeed moving, the puzzle is child's play.

Yeah, the dialog implies I need to pay now, but it isn't that important

Inside is a graveyard, or at least something like a graveyard in this game. Ghosts, skeletons, and a lot of graves that seem like they might be related to puzzles. Inside, I find a hilt, which I suspect is the one to the sword of virtue. Aha, I must use this, then go back to that mountainman smith and repair it. He can do it, for 20 gold pieces. I haven't had a gold piece in my inventory for practically the entire runtime of the game at this point. Reload, gather gold on the way up, pay him, and I have to pay him an hour rather than on the moment. An actual in-game hour.

This just makes me wish that Origin did an adventure game

Now I've got to figure out what other problems I can currently solve. Hey, I needed to grab a book from the domain of Vilus for one of the mages. I get a nice magic power increase, but nothing necessary. And I guess since one mage was going on about incense I should use it? All this does is show me three nicely drawn images of a cup. Each has two letters written on it. Oh, I get it, its a mantra. Hnsain. I think I need more than that in order to get the cup though.

Not suspicious at all

I guess now all I can do is go downstairs. Literally outside the stairs down is a man who seems to have some kind of plague. He's here to free his brother from a prison. A prison inside a prison? Weird, but whatever. He also wants some port, because what better way to cure the plague than satisfying one's raging alcoholism? Well, after explaining the level, including the knowledge that this level has THE evil wizard I'm trying to find and that I need to find a medallion to get past the guards, he returns to I guess the 1st level. What's interesting is that you can't cast spells on this level. Meaning the spellcasting mechanics, already of somewhat questionable non-utility use, is getting dangerously close to being actually useless.

Perhaps there's a reason the developers tried to avoid adding more combat

Just in the normal course of exploring the level I end up encountering the guards pretty quickly. Gray goblins. I don't really get the option to say I don't have the medallion yet, so they attack me. This turns out incredibly badly...for them. I get more trouble from the collision system running away than I do fighting them. Then another group, even with trolls, aren't too much trouble. My only real concern here is that this is going to screw me out of some important part of the game. I don't mind killing what seems to be a hundred goblins and trolls.

4/10, doesn't hurt you when its dead

I do actually get hurt enough to have to retreat...by a lurker of all things. Not because its actually deadly, but because its poisonous. Nevertheless, this gets me to level 15 and I manage to retreat to a fountain just in time. Then its back to business as usual. I find the medallion in a maze in the southeast, fighting off some gazers and whatever Ultima calls its evil sentient trees. The curious thing is that its impossible to get here WITHOUT killing some of the guards. Clearly they weren't important then.
Interestingly, this floor is very specifically designed so you always have to hit those rivers with lurkers in them. Its strange. Meanwhile, with the medallion, the goblins let me through, but only let me take one path. Curious, and then I walk into a trap set by some wolf spiders. I feel like I've been had. Its just a maze, one that leads to the stairs down. That was fast.

That's how you ask why I'm in this maze?

But further in I find standing alone, a mage, named Naruto...well, that aged like milk left in a trunk in the Sahara desert. He tells me there's a key held by someone deeper in the maze, and that key allows one to enter a "secret place". And he tells me a orb is doing all the magic draining. Hey, wait a minute, this whole level must be a setup from the evil mage then! I think I was had! And oh, look continuing to follow the path leads me into a trap I can't escape from. I can't even turn back. Guess I better reload and take that path down. For some reason my spells are going out at a faster rate, so I frequently run out of light by the time I've killed all the enemies.

Is this better or worse than Dungeon Master?

After clearing up some vermin in the dark, I realize I'm no longer under the effects of the mana drain. I can see. I'm in a lava cave, I probably should be able to see without a light spell, but whatever. I'm in a very tricky spot so I'm not entirely as focused as I should be. But on the bright side, after cautiously dealing with a golem, I'm level 16. Guess there must not be much of the game left. It doesn't even look like you can advance from this area, at least in the brief exploring I could do.
So I return to an earlier save, one back on the 3rd floor, since I didn't feel the need to save much outside of the maze. Well, I guess I deserve that. On my way back down I meet the ghouls again, and one says he's a tailor. He won't fix my leather leggings, but wait, he says to get him animal skin...could the dragon scales...? Yes, I can get boots out of the deal. Not sure what advantage there is to it, but hey, dragonskin boots. For the Jerseyan adventurer. He wants food and it'll take him a half hour.

If this was a modern game I can just feel this would be a metaphor for radiation

I do need to kill some time, so I figure I should clear out the abandoned mine in the southwest. I put in the code in the code machine and I'm teleported into a special maze. I wander around for a bit, killing some ghosts. I figure since I'm already here, even though I didn't tell the outcast mage I would, I'll get all those magic stones for him. Once one is in my inventory the rest collect automatically, and there are these weird teleports in some eastern and western corridors...Wait...
WTF, this is Pac-Man in first-person. In case you don't get why I hate this, its because if you look through early first-person action titles there are an absolute deluge of first-person versions of Pac-Man for some reason. Its been driving me bonkers. Curse you Warren Spector, I swear vengeance.
Anyway, after getting all the metal, I return to the wizard. It turns out he tried, got driven away by Inky, Binky and co, so I have to get them. He offers me a huge gold nugget the likes of which I've never seen before, as if that's going to be useful to me here in this dungeon. Slowly going down, because I have a lot of floor 6 left and I'm sure I missed something. Speaking of floors, I am incredibly annoyed that the game refers to the floors as levels in addition to the usual RPG levels. "I reach level 6" could mean a number of things, even if in context I'm at level 16 and I only know of eight floors.

Hmm, didn't seem to do him any good

Turns out I was right to look around. I notice on my map that there's floor where I can only see a wall. This leads to a teleporter, with emeralds inside. I've been trying to find those! Two buttons, but wait, this is a cross shaped hallway with an area I can jump to above...and again. This leads to four funny looking things in corner spaces. Is this where I was supposed to put the emeralds too? Yes, this gets me another rune. Now I'm only missing one, the "death" rune. It doesn't really seem like great shakes, but whatever.
I finish off this session with a couple of small victories. I can take out fire elementals now, and I finally have the sword. That means the only items of virtue I'm missing are the cup, the book and the ring. The question remains, where are they and how do they relate to the kidnapping of the baron's daughter? So much of this game remains an enigma, and yet, there's no way we're not incredibly close to the end. I sort of got that this place failed in its noble intentions back when I started it, but I really had it hammered home by floor 2. Could we get something of substance on the actual plot, eh, game?

This Session: 3 hours 00 minutes

Total Time: 11 hours 15 minutes