The Let's Play Archive

Ultima 9

by Null Pointer

Part 4: Chapter 2, Part 1

CHAPTER TWO: What the hell? Are all of the dungeons like this? That's it, I quit

You awaken in a dimly lit stone room.

> Look.

You see an exit to the south and a treasure chest to the east.



> E

A disembodied voice fills your mind with a dire warning.





Damn it. Hawkwind may have taken my equipment and my dignity, but he left me the poisonous bread. I think he's trying to tell me something.




Let's take a quick inventory of the starting loot a Druid gets:



Not a bad haul by any means. Every single Britannian mountain climber needs two things: A crooked staff and a bag of potion bottles. Now we're set. All we need is the Gust spell, a sack of bread and we can go anywhere in the game.
In addition to what we got in the chest, there is a Cure potion sitting on a table nearby and a short sword sitting in the first hallway.

That was the good news. The bad news? We're a Druid. We have the lowest possible strength so we can't really kill anything. We have 30 HP, and pretty much anything in the game will be able to rape us in a single hit.




The next item we're given is the Spellbook.




Each circle has 4 spells. You can cast a spell from a scroll at any time, although doing this consumes the scroll. Later on we'll be able to bind scrolls to our Spellbook so we have them forever. In the meantime, there are only four spells that we need to concern ourselves with.




The Linear Spells. These spells require no mana (unless you're wearing equipment that reduces casting costs. because of a bug). For the most part we'll be using these spells to solve quest puzzles. Otherwise they aren't too useful.




Right next to the bookcase is a burnt-out torch and a magical barrier. The solution is obvious. In Flam.




With our miserable 30 HP, this large rat could very easily kill us. You'll find that spamming Stone is something I'll be doing a lot of for a while. Stone has zero mana cost, zero casting time and does quite a respectable amount of damage when you stack it up against our Avatar's feeble, anemic flailing.




Pull the switch behind the rat and the door opens.




Now there's a jar behind a gate, sitting on a narrow shelf above a pressure plate. The answer? Gust.

Gust generates a small vortex of air that can be used to move small objects. Depending on placement and angle of the spell you can get some pretty good distance. Exploiting aside, however, there are probably only one or two other places where you're forced to use the spell.










And now for the final puzzle:




Fire prevents you from reaching the exit.




Douse the flames on the floor so you can move forward.




Douse the braziers and the fire goes out.




And that's the end of the Stonegate mini-dungeon. We're finally on the surface of Britannia, way out in the middle of nowhere with nobody to help us or save us from being one-shotted by wolves and giant rats.




As you progress in the game, those glyphs being held by the statues change back into the symbols of the virtues. Originally Stonegate was supposed to be an important part of the game. In the final release you'd never need to come back here.




The Guardian likes to talk to you over long distances. The asshole makes collect calls too. You're not my Aunt Sophia, Guardian! Stop tricking me into accepting the charges!

There's a Wyrmguard standing in that cave. If you get close enough he gives you lots of about how Blackthorn is back and the Wrymguard are his personal army, how they all follow the Guardian and how he's going to because Blackthorn ordered him to do it. You know, new stuff we didn't just see in a cutscene. I'd love to get some screenshots of him talking but unfortunately his threat isn't a hollow one. Druids suck and we will die.




The prudent course of action is to use our Fireball scroll on him at range. He drops a Scimitar, which is the starting weapon we would have gotten had we chosen Valor.




Step onto the teleporter and we're off to see the wizard.


I tried to include a little more detail for Stonegate so the people who haven't played Ultima 9 can see what the dungeon gameplay is like. I'm not sure if I would call it Zelda-like, but it's definitely trying to do something similar. Zelda puzzles always struck me as more movement puzzles - that is, moving yourself using powerups to reach new areas. Ultima 9 puzzles are often more about dealing with magical mechanisms. You'll see what I mean later on.

Let me know if you guys would like in-depth visual walkthroughs for the rest of the dungeons as well. I'm not opposed to it, but it would make the thread absolutely massive (they're HUGE dungeons) and they'd probably have to be split up into many parts.


Next time: Looting and pillaging Britain.