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Let's Play Ultima 8: Pagan! Ultima 8 is a divisive game. Many Ultima fans believe this is where the series went wrong. Released in 1994 for DOS, Ultima 8 breaks with a lot of Ultima traditions. Gone is the party system, present since Ultima 3; the Avatar travels alone in Pagan. Gone is the need to eat food to survive, essential since Akalabeth, the predecessor to the Ultima series. Gone is any customization of the Avatar. While in Ultima 3 you could be male/female/other, the Avatar is always a male in this game. In fact, you can't even chose a portrait to represent you in Pagan; you are always the same guy. Stepping beyond appearance, the game also removes most ranged attacks, vehicles, and much of the interactivity from Ultima 7. Don't expect to bake any bread in this game. Further, NPCs lives are much more simplified. While some may move about throughout the day, most stay in place, and never go to bed. Instead of virtues and Britannia and familiar characters, what you'll experience here is a dark game about evil gods and the people terrorized by them. We'll witness dark rituals, master infernal magics, and do whatever it takes to escape the strange twilight world of Pagan. This is an action-oriented RPG. We'll be running, jumping, and bashing our way through the world. We might even have some fun along the way. Feel free to spoil or bring in outside info. I will try to work in information on the cancelled expansion as well as addressing cut content. I have a full time schedule right now, so it may be days between updates.  Helpful Resources Will Be Linked Below This Line Pagan the Beautiful -- A collection of full-color maps that will help you get your bearings. Updates Will Be Linked Below This Line Update 1: Getting Our Bearings Update 2 a: Meeting Mordea Update 2 b: Meeting Mordea Update 3: Bentic and East Tenebrae Update 4: More East Entebrae, Necromancy Update 5: The Necromancer's Apprentice Update 6: Mythran Update 7: The Judgment of Devon The Lost Vale Update 8: The Slayer Opening Cinematic    You have been a thorn in my side for far too long, Avatar.   Your two worlds will be crushed. Britannia first, then Earth. I shall parade you before their conquered peoples as the fallen idol of a pathetic ideal. I banish you to the world of Pagan. No one here knows of the Avatar!     Pagan Theme Stay tuned. TerraGoetia fucked around with this message at 01:49 on Apr 16, 2019 |
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Mar 13, 2019 06:34
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Update 1: Getting Our Bearings Let's name ourselves and get started.   Get used to seeing the Avatar on his back. We're going to get killed a lot in this LP. We rise and are greeted by our savior.   Hello There. Who are you? I am Devon, my strange friend.And I am glad to see you are feeling better, TerraGoetia. How do you know my name? I am sorry. I did not mean to pry, but when I found you, I knew not who you were. I am afraid I read through your logbook and discovered your name. Please forgive me. Where am I? Why, on the shore, friend, safe now and thankfully alive. Shore of what? Shore of what? Why the shore of Tenebrae, upon the Sea of Rains. Sea of Rains? Obviously you do not spend any time away from the city to ask such a question. Why, 'tis nothing more than the name of the sea. The story goes that the rains are quite heavy the farther you go from the shore. It is supposed to have something to do with Mordea's powers. Part of her role as ruling Tempest is to control the rain over the city, but she feels no obligation to extend that in the distant waters. Of course, I have never had an unwanted cloud while out to sea myself, so I suspect the name is more rumour than truth. Tenebrae? Aye, Tenebrae, the City of Eternal Twilight. They say you'll never find a more lovely place and I do not disagree, save for one place. But I will say this, the farther I am from the Lady, the better I feel. I can tell by your questions that you are not from this land. Come you from another island? Or perhaps some place that is an even greater distance away. I am from far away. I suspected as much, my friend, for your questions are most unusual. I must inform you that, a simple fisherman, I am a poor source of information about our local customs and such. I am sure there must be someone else who can tell you more. Why, I know just the person. When you get to town, visit Bentic in the library in east Tenebrae. My good friend knows practically all there is to know about our land and its people. Yes, he can certainly help you. What is the lovelier place? Why, the open sea, of course! I can think of nothing more reassuring than the smell of the salt and the feel of a taut net as it fills with fish. And the weather! I hear others complain it is as fickle as the Lady, but I know no such thing. I can think of no day on the sea when the sky was not clear and the waves as gentle as a baby's hand. Who is the Lady? You mean the Lady Mordea, my friend. She is Tempest and ruler of the city. Others call her a tyrant in whispered corners, though I held no opinion myself. Until recently, that is. What changed your opinion? Lately the Lady has taken to eliminating dissension by eliminating the dissenters. She has them executed, beheaded on the docks. At first no one was killed but true criminals, but soon, any who showed disagreement was put to the block. I fear for the freedom of the people. What is a Tempest? Indeed, you ask unusual questions. However, I know so little about them, myself. In town you might find others who can offer so much more assistance. What happened to me? I am unsure, my friend. All I know is that I found your water-logged body in the depths of The Lurker's domain. What happened before remains a mystery. I pulled in my nets and within one I discovered you. The Lurker's domain? Aye, 'tis what we sometimes call the sea. You were drowning in it, my friend. A fate twice bad to be certain! Twice bad? Aye! Not only would it have meant death for you, but then you would have been doomed to walk the ocean floor, unable to fulfill the pact with Lithos. Who is Lithos? We call him the Mountain King. He rules the grass, the stones, the hills -- all that we walk upon. He also rules death. Rules death? Through his Necromancers, Lithos takes the dead to serve him for the remainder of their existence. Who are the Necromancers? I am amazed at how little you know, friend. The Necromancers are the keepers of the cemetary. They have the rather distasteful duty of burying the dead, thus honoring the pact and sending the dead to Lithos. What pact? Ages ago, our people forged a covenant with Lithos. If he would still the shaking earth, we would commend to him our dead at the time of their passing. Goodbye. Farewell, friend TerraGoetia, and good luck. You are welcome to stay with me for as long as you need. My food and provisions are yours until you wish to head to the city. And be careful in your travels, for I fear you will encounter much violence.Devon turns to face West  I can already see a crowd gathering there on the docks. That can mean only trouble. Devon's given us a lot to chew on. Lady Mordea is the ruler of this land. We'll be meeting her soon enough. Devon seems unusually lucky at fishing, and never has bad weather, while others do. That small detail will become important later. He pointed us to Bentic, a man we'll definitely want to visit soon. Lithos was quaking the earth, but the pact put a stop to that. This small bit of dialog will be our first clue that the titans aren't quite beneficent. Let's explore our surroundings and try to get our bearings. Double clicking Devon's bedroll causes it to roll up. It should fit nicely in our bag now.  The bedroll allows us to rest, recovering health and passing time. This is an essential item.  Double clicking the nearby basket shows us its contents. There are a variety of mushrooms on Pagan, some helpful, some harmful. Devon's also got himself a bottle of booze.  Double clicking ourselves (or pressing the Z key) will open our stats pane. Let's go over our stats: Str is our strength. It effects our damage dealt and also our carrying capacity. Our hit points are 2 * str. We raise str by hitting things. Int is our intelligence. Our available mana is 2 * int. Int will also influence how many charges we get out of Sorcery focuses later. We raise int by casting spells and reading books. Dex is our dexterity. It determines if we hit in melee (and if we are hit as well). We raise our dex by hitting things. Armor is our level of damage absorption our equipment provides. Hits is our current hit points. When these reach 0, we die. This will happen often. Mana is our current magic points. Mana is expended when casting spells from the different schools of magic. Mana is not used when casting scrolls. wght is the weight of our current load. This is the weight of out backpack plus the weight of items we are wearing.  Clicking this icon with the blue and red bars will cause our health and mana to be displayed in the lower right corner of the screen. I have no idea why it's not just there by default. Since Devon wanted us to go to the left (SW), let's go to the right (NE). Exploration is important to RPGs, and the plot will certainly wait for us.  Consuming certain mushrooms on the ground cause the Avatar to trip out. Stealing and drug use within our first few minutes of gameplay? That's Ultima 8! (Please excuse the video playback bar at the bottom, sloppy screenshotting on my part)  Hostile wildlife approaches! The Avatar is prepared for deadly combat!  We... stepped on it. It's dead. That was a bit anticlimactic. The monster is called a skellot. While they may be hostile to us, it's almost impossible to get killed by one.  Double clicking a corpse will pull up its loot window. Most wildlife has no loot, and skellots are no exception. Let's go over our combat abilities. Pressing C will enter combat mode. From there...  Double left clicking will swing our current weapon (none in this case).  Holding the left mouse button will cause us to block attacks.  Double right clicking will deliver a mighty kick! Ultima 8 gives us more options to move around as well. We can move normally by holding the right mouse button. In addition to our normal movement...  Placing the mouse close to our character while walking causes us to tiptoe.  Placing the mouse far from our character while walking causes us to run. Be careful running in this game! Because the character is such a large portion of the screen, it's very easy to run into things you do not intend to. Like the sea. Or exploding mushrooms.  By pressing the left and right mouse buttons at the same time, we can leap through the sky! Platforming will be a 'feature' of this adventure.  If we press the left and right mouse buttons at a vertical surface, we can climb up. This is most useful.  Following the shore to the right, we discover some bones. On them, a fire gem. Curious, we double click the fire gem to see what it does.  Note the boom. Many things will explode on this adventure. Including us.  Following the wall from those bones, we find a box behind a tree. Hidden objects will be very common on our quest, so get used to this.  We take the box. Inside are some potions and a key. The box will help us organize our inventory, which will become very cluttered as we play.  Heading to the left, we climb a ledge and come upon this. Torax are the livestock of Pagan. This one spawned inside a tree, and is stuck there forever. Such is the fickle will of the titans.  These yellow and green mushrooms heal us when eaten.  Continuing our exploration on the ledge, we find this ruined building. A treasure chest awaits us. I hope the key we found fits.  The chest opens with a boom. I would have screenshot this, but the open chest's inventory covered up the explosion. Exploding chests will be very common on Pagan. The skull on the left looks curious.  Moving it, we find a helmet underneath! Let this be our lesson: move everything. We happily equip the helmet. Investigating the bones...  We find death disks. What do death disks do, you ask? We double click one to find out.  Using our recticle, we aim far away from the Avatar, and click. I hope that mushroom isn't in the way of my...   gently caress. Reloading our most recent save, we keep the fire gem we found on the bones by the shore. We follow our steps just as before, but we keep the death disks instead of blowing ourselves up with them.  From Devon, we head to the West. These must be the docks he was talking about. There are two barrels at the foot of the stairs to the docks. Let's see what's inside.  A keyring and a dagger are in a box in the first chest. The keyring will hold any key we use on it. This is an amazing item. When I first played this game as a child, I did not find a keyring. I had a bag full of keys. I tried each key on each locked door. It was insane. I was insane. Don't be like me. Get this keyring. We equip the dagger as well.  The second barrel has this scroll inside. It's signed Lieutenant Vittek. Curious. We head up the stairs and follow the dock towards the sea. The Beheading             What a brutal way to start the plot. Next time, we'll make nice with the guards, steal a few things, and get to know Lady Mordea. TerraGoetia fucked around with this message at 07:31 on Mar 14, 2019 |
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Mar 13, 2019 08:23
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I'm interested to see where this goes. I got Ultima Ascension as a teen, and honestly the part I enjoyed the most was the tarot cards of the Virtues that came with it. Anyway, one thing I'd like to ask is that you don't put all the screens in timg tags, having to click on each of them is quite annoying personally. Actually, I'm generally surprised at how many SSLP threads I've seen start out with timging all the screenshots, considering I've never seen it get a positive response. Are there threads I've missed where it actually worked out?
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Mar 13, 2019 15:23
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This is a game that upset me greatly in how much it missed the mark. I played the hell out of it, but there was so much stuff in it that was buggy, broken, and/or unfinished. The magic system is the most severe example. It's highly creative and involved, but so many spells are utterly broken, either making them downright useless or total gamebreakers. I don't know if you've played this before or not, but I'd be happy to rant all about its terrible bugs/design choices when you get to the relevant parts.
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Mar 13, 2019 20:55
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Zanzibar Ham posted:Anyway, one thing I'd like to ask is that you don't put all the screens in timg tags, having to click on each of them is quite annoying personally. This is a good point. Next update will use normal images and I will edit previous posts at that time.
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Mar 14, 2019 01:53
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TerraGoetia posted:This is a good point. Next update will use normal images and I will edit previous posts at that time. Thank you, this is very much appreciated!
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Mar 14, 2019 01:58
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I actually.. really liked this game. I think it helped that I ran into it before the earlier ultimas, because I can see how going from 6/7/7ii would have been really annoying. When I got around to playing earlier titles, I enjoyed them but one problem was when they'd rely heavily on stuff from like 1-5, which I'd never been able to really get into. Compared to series like quest for glory or king's quest, where the previous games might have some cameo or connecting appearances, but the games themselves felt that they didn't rely on a bunch of previous knowledge. It has a lot of design choices that are fairly staple in the era it was released, but despite issues I enjoyed exploring the world and figuring stuff out. Jumping puzzles in this game are awful, but sort of awesome in a really janky way.
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Mar 14, 2019 03:01
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Okay... so I've written up the second update, and noticed that I am having an issue with smileys. Basically, if I use too many in a post, they stop working. Since I'm using smileys to show who is talking, this causes problems in updates that include much dialog. In order to get around this, I'm going to be splitting updates into multiple posts if this issues props up. I'm sorry if that causes anyone any issues.
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Mar 14, 2019 07:23
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Update 2a: Meeting Mordea When we last left off, we saw a gruesome beheading. The audience heads back to town, and Tarna approaches us.  Halt! I have never seen you before, stranger. Identify yourself and your business in Tenebrae. What just happened here? The execution is none of your business. Just be glad that a treasonous, despicable criminal has been properly punished.Tarna levels her halberd at the Avatar Now answer the question! I go by TerraGoetia. Well met, TerraGoetia. And where do you hail from? Another world. I may appear to be just a simple guard to you, but I outgrew such fairytales years ago. I suggest you change your tone with me or I will see your worthless hide resting on the inside of a jail! Now, if you would, tell me your business in the city. To leave this place. Then what in the Lady's name are you doing wandering around here? I suggest you quickly find your way. You may go about your business. Please move along and do not disturb the widow until after I have escorted her from the docks.We head North, away from the docks, towards the city.   The gate guard approaches us: I have seen many strange things in my time, but I've never seen the likes of ya. What be yer name, stranger? I am TerraGoetia. All right, TerraGoetia. now I know ya. Now get lost! I don't need Lady Mordea catching me chatting with some pauper. She's not in a right good mood today. What is this city? What do ya mean, 'What is this city?' Do ya have brain fever, lad? It's only tha largest pile of bricks in the known world! Tenebrae it is! And don't ya go now forgettin' it! Bye. Yeah, yeah...As we enter the city, the Guardian's voice booms. Yes, Avatar, seek a way home!.  We approach a nearby guard. He informs us that we are in Central Tenebrae. The palace is to the North; the poor section of town is West, and the rich section is East. He advises we avoid the palace. We'll ignore him and head North.  On the way we bump into these archways. We can enter this one. There is a key on the table. We add it to our keyring and use it to open the nearby chest. The chest contains some clothes. Unfortunately, clothing can't be worn over armor, so we won't be wearing the iconic red cape from Ultima 7 in this game.  Upstairs we find a scroll of trap detection and a scroll of trap destruction. This archway serves as a mini tutorial in their use.   Across the way, we find a suit of leather armor, which we equip. Also, a guard's log. This clues us in to the six hours that make up a Pagan "day": Bloodwatch, Firstebb, Daytide, Threemoons, Lastebb, and Eventide.  On the lower level of the archway is a barrel and a chest. The barrel only has some food in it. The chest, as you can probably guess, has a trap on it.  Reading a scroll shows you the contents, and also casts the spell contained inside.  The sparkling on the chest indicates that yes, it is trapped.  Reading the scroll of trap destruction...  Boom.  Inside the chest, we find three potions, a dagger, a chain mail helm, and a bag. The bag contains 19 obsidian coins, the currency on Pagan.   Heading towards the center of the palace...  We discover Lady Mordea on her throne, flanked by two people. We introduce ourselves. Greetings Are you speaking to me? Yes, I am. Who are you that you dare address the Tempest? Tell me more of the Tempestry. Know you not of the Tempestry and its great power? Perhaps, then you should like a taste of it. -When I feed you to the Lurker!- Talking to Mordea causes her to rise from the throne and start ranting. She'll scream about raising taxes, executing people, and how ugly the painting on the wall is. What a lovely person.  One thing you may notice in this screenshot is that there is a woman laying in the bed in the next room. This woman is Mordea. However, Mordea is also in the throne room ranting about raising the taxes. How can this be? Well, this is one of the many bugs in Ultima 8. Mordea is supposed to alternate her schedule between being in the throne room, being at the dining table, and sleeping. I think she's also supposed to sit in the counsel room as well, but I haven't been able to get her to leave the throne room so far. Sometimes, she bilocates like this. Her being in the throne room and the bedroom at the same time could cause us serious problems later, and make it impossible to finish the game. Fortunately, I'm pretty sure leaving the map and coming back can reset her.  We talk to the woman standing by the throne: I am sorry, but I can not talk to you now. I must attend to her ladyship. Find me later at my house in east Tenebrae, I will be there at bloodwatch.She seems to have something on her mind. We'll have to stop by her home later on. Let's now turn our attention to the man by the throne:
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Mar 14, 2019 07:25
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Update 2b: Meeting Mordea Now we direct our attention to the man beside the throne:  Greetings, stranger. May I ask your name? Certainly, I am Salkind. And who might we be? I am TerraGoetia. And what can I help you with today, hmmmm? What do you do? What do I do? My, we are a nosy little thing, aren't we? Well, if you must know, I am the Seneschal to Lady Mordea. What is a seneschal? Oh my, we aren't too up on titles are we? Yes, I am the seneschal. It is my duty to take care of running the day to day affairs of the city so that our Tempest, the Lady Mordea, can concentrate on more important things. What more important things? Well, if it were to be common knowledge what the Tempest does then there would be no mystery...no majestic mystique, hmmm? Tell me about Lady Mordea. She is a wise ruler and a fierce leader, most worthy of the title, 'Tempest'. So many times people say 'This thing or that thing cannot be done,' and yet she does it. Do we not have much lower crime than under the previous Tempest? There is your proof! Tell me about the title 'Tempest'. My, my, my. We really are a bit simple, aren't we? Perhaps we've been drinking a bit too much of Orlok's ale? hmmmm? Well, just to humor you, I'll refresh your memory. The title of Tempest is given to the leader of the city of Tenebrae. To become the Tempest, one must have been born of the royal family. It is only through heredity one may sit upon the throne. Why is the Tempestry hereditary? Because the powers that are necessary to bear the title are only transferred from parent to child. Lady Mordea received the power from her father. Does that make things a little clearer for you? Who was Lady Mordea's father? Didn't you learn anything as a child? Lord Keldan was Lady Mordea's father! And might I add that Lady Mordea is twice the Tempest Lord Keldan ever was. Why, if it weren't for his wife's encouragement, he would never have admitted his powers and assumed the title of Tempest, and then where would we be? What is a Tempest? Surely you have heard of the Tempest? Oh, I see, we are just a visitor to this city, eh? Well, the Tempest is the handmaiden to the Great Titan of Water Hydros. Who is Hydros? Ah, the great Water Titan, the Lurker. What ever title she goes by, she is the most powerful of the Titans. The Lady Mordea can use a bit of Hydro's power to con the weather and wall things of water. What are the Tempest's duties? How is it we don't know about the Tempest? Are we a very busy person or perhaps a little simple-minded? Well, no matter. The Tempest has the ability to touch a portion of the power of Hydros. Bye. Good day to you, stranger.God I hate Salkind. So now we know about Hydros, another of the elemental Titans. Since there are five points on the Pagan pentagram, we can assume there are five Titans and five types of magic. We can't learn Tempestry, since the magic is hereditary. So that leaves us with four possible schools of magic to learn; one we know to be Necromancy. Let's explore the palace a bit.  I'm sure Mordea won't mind if we take this clock.  Moving the pillow reveals a key, and pisses Mordea off. However, she will not notice if we use the key on our keyring. Yoink.  The armory doors are locked. I can't seem to find the key. Don't worry. It won't be long before we're better armed than the guards.  The other entrance to the armory has a locked chest. I trash the room but am unable to locate the key.  Across from the armory is a barracks. It has stairs leading down.  Most of what's down here is food storage. However, we do find an interesting looking room with no obvious entrance.  There's a switch on the wall that opens the door to this room. When we enter, the Guardian taunts us: There is no escape from this prison!  Past the cells is some kind of torture device. The cells are all empty; Mordea does not seem the sort to keep prisoners for long.  Opening this barrel reveals a smiley face. Leaving the basement, we head up to the roof of the palace. In the NW corner, we find a hidden book:   Ear of Arricorn is a reference to the 1970's book Eye of Argon, reputed to be the worst fantasy novel ever written. An excerpt from Eye of Argon would appear later in Deus Ex.  In the NE corner, we find two black candles. Later on, we'll be using black candles to fuel Sorcery rituals. We won't need them for a long while, and there will be plenty more to find. Let's leave these here.  Near the center of the palace roof is a strange pad on the floor. Moving towards it causes it to pulse with mystical energy. We'll be using this extensively in the future.  The SE corner has some potions. We take them.  The SW corner has some barrels with baskets in them. Nothing worth writing home about.  We on the southern side of the palace is a training area. One of the drinks nearby is poisoned (was someone trying to murder a guard?). Don't worry, it won't kill us.  Leaving the palace through the north exit, we find a second archway. Unfortunately, the doors on the ground level are locked.  The doors on the upper level are not, however, and the Avatar puts his climbing skills to good use.  There's not much to write home about on the left side. But there is a bag full of cash, which we will gladly take.  The right-hand side of the archway is definitely worth looting. Without having a destroy trap scroll, we open the chest and take the boom to the face. Inside is some arm armor and a sword. We arm ourselves...  And are ready to take on the challenges of this land! Well, kinda. Our stats still suck, and we don't have leg armor yet. But by this point I was wanting to test our new gear. We've done enough talking and exploring. Let's hit something!  We take the North exit from town. We're not intending to fully explore this area--that will come later. For now, let's find a foe!  Hey torax! Let's dance!  We land 0 successful hits, and the torax chew through our health. We'll need to move on and try another target.  A toy? Out in the wilderness? We'd better follow it and see if some child is in danger! Maybe we can even strike down a villain.  It's a group of children, out here without adult supervision! We try to talk to them.  The children surround the Avatar and start hitting him! Being hit staggers you, meaning a large number of fairly weak enemies can stunlock you.  Which is what happens.  We reload our game. This time there's only three children, and we know what they're up to. We run in and give them the business.  Oh, god. What have we done? Let's... head back to town and think about what we did. Note that the cluster of children is a set encounter, though as you've seen the number of kids is variable. There's no dialogue referring to this. There is no quest. There is no loot. There's no consequences. The Guardian doesn't even comment on it. The Avatar just straight up kills kids. Next time, we'll talk to Bentic, rob some rich people, and maybe even meet the Necromancers.
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Mar 14, 2019 07:26
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Jumping to climb up to other areas is a great feature of the engine. I'm also really impressed by the avatar's arm strength. Also thoraxes are pretty tough in general, I vaguely recall them loving you up for a long time. story stuff inside spoiler Isn't the medea in the throne room an imposter, and the real one dead on the bed? I could be totally mis-remembering it, but I'm like 90% sure the entire plotline of tenebrae revolves around this, and how the fake medea can't use water magic cuz it is hereditary
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Mar 14, 2019 12:56
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The smiley thing is an anti-spam thing to stop people from well, making posts that are just 20 lines of smilies etc'. IIRC the smiley limit is 20 per post?
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Mar 14, 2019 14:37
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PLEASE tell me we get to shove a sword through Salkind's guts sometime before the endgame. I've only ever played Ultima IV-VI and the two Worlds of Ultima games, so this... ...Pagan looks interesting to me. What did Ultima fans think of it when it first came out?
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Mar 14, 2019 17:15
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for the smilie thing, here's what i recommend you do instead of breaking up your posts: 1) upload each smilie you need to imgur or lpix. doesn't matter which. 2) write your post using the smilie code as normal (or use abbreviations if you please, such as :a: instead of for the Avatar)3) when your post is ready to go up, do a find/replace for ":a:" to be replaced with the [img] tag relating to your upload 4) hit post this will save you keystrokes when writing your post and also preclude the need for you to split updates.
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Mar 14, 2019 19:03
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ZypherIM posted:Also thoraxes are pretty tough in general, I vaguely recall them loving you up for a long time. I actually wanted to show off the kith enemy instead of the torax (I usually have one spawn on this map), but I was having bad luck. Some enemy spawns are fixed, and others are not. ZypherIM posted:story stuff inside spoiler Don't worry about spoilers. I'm sure people have a lot to say about this game, and I want to encourage discussion. As far as Lady Mordea goes, there should only be one of her on the map. There IS drama involving her that we'll uncover soon, but we need to progress the story a bit before we can experience it. Zanzibar Ham posted:The smiley thing is an anti-spam thing to stop people from well, making posts that are just 20 lines of smilies etc'. IIRC the smiley limit is 20 per post? Coolguye posted:for the smilie thing, here's what i recommend you do instead of breaking up your posts: Thanks you two! I'm not a Big Time Poster, so these tricks are new to me. Snorb posted:PLEASE tell me we get to shove a sword through Salkind's guts sometime before the endgame. Let me reassure you of one thing: Salkind. Will. Bleed. The game was a hard sell to a lot of Ultima fans; reviewers derisively called the game "Super Avatar Bros" due to all the platforming. One reviewer at the time said "Pagan is a disaster, and an embarrassment to Origin, Lord British, and Ultima fans everywhere." I actually love this game, and have completed it several times in the past. I don't know 'everything' about it, and if I miss things I hope people will fill in.
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Mar 14, 2019 21:02
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Greetings, pagans! Have you heard the Eight Virtues have a wonderful plan for your life?
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Mar 14, 2019 21:03
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Expect the third update sometime this weekend. I have already recorded the gameplay that I want to extract screenshots from, but there is going to be a lot of text.
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Mar 15, 2019 01:17
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You should put a clip up that shows how fast you can accidently just run into something like water. Maybe as a highlight when you run into a platforming segment that requires you to be running full tilt to long-jump over instant death pits. I also have some memories of hauling piles of poo poo around (wood in particular) to stack up in order to climb up to poo poo that you weren't supposed to get at that way.
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Mar 15, 2019 04:41
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Im another one who really likes this game despite it having so many flaws. I got it with my first PC and have fond memories of spending tons of time just loving around in Tenebrae having no clue where to go or advance the plot. I still play through it once in a while. You should show off some of the cool poo poo you can do with the cheat mode / hackmover. When I was little me and my brother used it to build our own houses and stuff on unoccupied sections of the map by cannibalizing walls and furniture from other houses.
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Mar 15, 2019 20:45
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dsf posted:Im another one who really likes this game despite it having so many flaws. I got it with my first PC and have fond memories of spending tons of time just loving around in Tenebrae having no clue where to go or advance the plot. I still play through it once in a while. I'm really glad to see more fans of this game showing up. It has a special place in my heart and I hope this LP will do it justice. I definitely will be showing off hackmover in the future. I absolutely love it. In fact, we will need to cheat in order to experience some of the cut content that was left in the game's data. ZypherIM posted:You should put a clip up that shows how fast you can accidently just run into something like water. Maybe as a highlight when you run into a platforming segment that requires you to be running full tilt to long-jump over instant death pits. One thing to bear in mind is that the platforming in this game can all be done from a stand-still. We'll never have to run and jump together like in a true platforming adventure. Platforming is also not as brutal as it was in the unpatched version of the game. The key differences here are that floating platforms no longer move, our jumping is targeted by the mouse cursor (instead of just jumping in our faced direction a set distance), and we can jump farther. yes, the unpatched jumping in Ultima 8 is godawful and no one should be subjected to it. I'm kinda bad at video editing, but I'd like to put together a blooper reel of the Avatar running into things, drowning, and exploding set to Kenny Loggin's Danger Zone. The Lost Vale cut content drop will likely be posted in two weeks. There is a lot of ground to cover with with it, and we'll need to combine some outside-the-game sources to get the full story.
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Mar 15, 2019 21:49
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TerraGoetia posted:I'm really glad to see more fans of this game showing up. U8 it's actually the one i recommend to people who are interested in the series but are too put off by U4's stone-age semantics to get into it. U8 at least requires no prior knowledge of anything ultima because you're not in brittania and nobody gives a poo poo about the Avatar. Coolguye fucked around with this message at 22:06 on Mar 15, 2019 |
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Mar 15, 2019 22:00
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TerraGoetia posted:One thing to bear in mind is that the platforming in this game can all be done from a stand-still. We'll never have to run and jump together like in a true platforming adventure. Platforming is also not as brutal as it was in the unpatched version of the game. The key differences here are that floating platforms no longer move, our jumping is targeted by the mouse cursor (instead of just jumping in our faced direction a set distance), and we can jump farther. yes, the unpatched jumping in Ultima 8 is godawful and no one should be subjected to it. Oh jesus christ, that sounds amazing. I don't think I ever got to play the patched version of 8, because all I remember is set jump distances and taking small steps to correctly position and leap. Moving platforms with water below them were pretty brutal.
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Mar 15, 2019 22:07
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TerraGoetia posted:One thing to bear in mind is that the platforming in this game can all be done from a stand-still. We'll never have to run and jump together like in a true platforming adventure. Platforming is also not as brutal as it was in the unpatched version of the game. The key differences here are that floating platforms no longer move, our jumping is targeted by the mouse cursor (instead of just jumping in our faced direction a set distance), and we can jump farther. yes, the unpatched jumping in Ultima 8 is godawful and no one should be subjected to it.
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Mar 15, 2019 23:07
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Hi friends! Weird things are happening to my computer tonight. My explorer.exe file seems to be corrupted or infected, so I am fixing my computer tonight. Not to worry! Our game and LP files shouldn't be at risk. Work on the next update will continue as soon as I'm confident the computer is stable. Luckily, I have a laptop and mobile phone that aren't effected by this technical problem, so I can post some commentary here while I'm waiting around for virus scans and System File Checker to do their thing.
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Mar 16, 2019 01:55
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Oh man, this game. When my family got our first computer in 1995, this game was on a disk (or a CD? I don't remember) that came with it, along with Syndicate, Wing Commander II (I think?), and one other game I don't remember. I spent hours messing around in town and being too scared to journey into the wilderness. I think there's a graveyard north of town that was the only other safe place in the game that I knew about and I would just loving sprint down the road between Tenebrae and there, terrified of running into monsters. Somehow I managed to advance a few plot things, like the change of leadership, but mostly I just ran around town and talked to people before finding an amusing way to kill myself, like lighting a bunch of bombs in my backpack and showering the horrified tavern patrons in my limbs.
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Mar 16, 2019 03:25
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Ooof this game. The Avatar's sprite looks so smudgey and awful.
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Mar 16, 2019 07:56
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There were four viruses on my computer, and some damage to Windows files. Such is the price for trawling weird corners of the Internet for Ultima factoids. Update 3 will be posted momentarily, I am uploading the screenshots now.
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Mar 16, 2019 09:01
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Update 3: Bentic and East Tenebrae When we last left off, we were testing our new gear by killing children. While we have been able to face off with skellots, actual monsters have been a challenge for us. This update, we’ll finally build up some combat muscle. But first, let’s head to the library to meet Bentic, Devon’s friend.  On the way, we run into a guard questioning a peasant. This is a random encounter that can occur in any of the Tenebrae maps. Neither the guard nor the peasant want to talk to us, but we can stick around and watch them. Their conversation will loop forever, so once you see repeating lines you can move on.  Exiting to the East from the northern end of Central Tenebrae will drop us next to the library. There is a beggar outside. Beggar placement is also random. Beggars will happily take donations from us. There’s no game mechanic reason to donate; we don’t gain Compassion points, and the beggars have nothing interesting to say.  There are quite a few books in the library, as you might expect. The patrons have nothing interesting to say. I don’t want to screenshot all of the books; that would bog us down quite a bit. Instead, I’ll give some notes from some of the books here. Eye of the Boulder, The Runes of Myth Drainer is a reference to the third Eye of the Beholder Game. The final lines of the book, “I sought nothing less than the Ultimate, but instead received only a pale reflection, a hint of what could have been” are probably meant as criticism of that game. The Final Sunlight gives an account of the disappearing sun. We get some background into a war between the Pagans and the Zealeans. A Destroyer wrecked havoc on Pagan, until the four Titans rose to face him. The Titans are named: Lithos, The Mountain King Stratos, The Mystic Voice Hydros, The Lurker Pyros, Lord of Flame. The war between The Destroyer and the elemental Titans destroyed most of the world of Pagan. The sun disappeared as a result of this battle. Note that the game will go on about there being four elemental Titans. I still assert that there are five Titans overall, though the reason why may not be clear yet. Gold: Valuable Commodity or Worthless Trash? falsely claims that gold is the basis of the land’s monetary system. We know it is actually obsidian coins. Does this refer to ancient history? Or maybe an error on the part of the game writers? Journal of Veras the Healer recounts how a troll attack was defeated by a miracle of Stratos; a knitting needle turned into a silver sword, which a woman used to protect her family. The sword, called Protector, was taken to Argentrock Isle. The Saga of Bone Crusher gives the history of the magical hammer Bone Crusher. Lithos’s armies of undead terrorized the people, for they would not worship him instead of Hydros. A supplicant went to Hydros, begging for help. Hydros gave them Bone Crusher, a weapon whose purpose is to smash undead. The bearer slew a great many undead in battle, but died himself. The weapon is still out there, somewhere. The Beauty of Rhian is Toran’s love letter to his wife. Toran, you may recall, is the guy who got executed at the beginning of the game. Rhian’s life is pretty crappy in Ultima 8, and we haven’t seen the end of it. The Big Book of Adventure gives us some general hints: switch puzzles are easy, treasure chests can be trapped, the Trixter’s books explode, mazes are hard, and reading scrolls casts them. Untitled Book puts for the argument that the four elemental Titans are the only sources of magic. It attempts to debunk the ghost story of a fisherwoman named Kilandra. The second are the “mysterious Lights of the Plateau.” These are CUT CONTENT and don’t actually exist in the game. The third is the Deceiver axe in Stone Cove, a place we will be visiting later. The Mythology of the Zealean Deities is full of information for us. The Zealeans were the original natives of the land. They worshipped six deities, based on the emotions: Amoras, goddess of Love Odion, god of Hate Apathas, god of Indifference Felicitar, god of Joy Doloras, god of Grief Timyra, god of Fear. To speak to the Zealean gods, one must navigate a deadly labyrinth, and then present a seal—a shield with some symbols on it. Khumash-Gor was a legendary Zealean who united the tribes of his people. This book is particularly important for later. However, Felicitar, Doloras, and Timyra represent CUT CONTENT from the expansion, The Lost Vale. We will talk about them when we discuss the expansion in more detail. Adventure Quarterly IX gives some hints as to the location of the “Lost Riches of Knarl,” the location of which matches up with the in-game location of the Ultima 8 Cheat Room. We’ll find that later. Aside from some fiction, there is also a book recounting the tale of a troll mystic. We’ll refer to it in a future update.  Heading upstairs, we locate the librarian, Bentic.  Greetings Greetings, stranger. What is your name? My name is Bentic. It is a word of Pagan derivation. I think it originally mean ‘he who toils hard’, but that is not for certain. I have found a number of references to ‘Ventac’ in several older texts and feel that this may be the root of the name ‘Bentic.’ And what is your name, friend? My name is TerraGoetia. Well met, TerraGoetia. I am pleased to meet you. What is ‘Pagan’? Pagan? Why, that is the name of this place. I thought this place was called ‘Tenebrae’. No, no. That is the name of this city. ‘Pagan’ is the name of this land, this all encompassing world upon which we all live out our meager lives. Your meager lives? When you take into consideration the scope of this world and its history, anything we do or accomplish becomes virtually meaningless. We are but a fraction of the blink of an eye in the history of Pagan. What do you do? By trade, I am the librarian of this city, however, I prefer to think of myself as a student of life. One who spends his time observing all facets of life. I am a great studier of people. You would be amazed at the things you may learn by simply observing your neighbors in their everyday life. Tell me of the library. The library is my joy. It is where I spend all my time, studying the words left by our predecessors. You can not believe what is in these books. They contain the wisdom of many ages in them. Too many people overlook the knowledge of our past generations, because of this, we are doomed to repeat the same mistakes over and over again. Tell me of the people. Ah, are you a student of life as well? I do so enjoy finding someone who shares the same passions as I do. The people here in Tenebrae are a varied and fascinating lot. They go about their daily toils, laboring under the yoke of a somewhat ... restrictive government and yet still find the time to enjoy themselves occasionally. A restrictive government? Hmm, it is not quite the safe thing to discuss here. Even my interest in knowledge and books can not protect me from Lady Mordea. You might say she has a rather...short temper. Why, just recently her guards confiscated my personal diary, though I don’t have any idea why. Tell me of your neighbors. I think the one I like to spend the most time with is Devon. He is such a sharp fellow. I think he has far more potential than even he realizes. Devon has potential? Yes, I can’t put my finger on it, but there is something there. Call it a hunch, if you will. I just seem to feel that there is something about him that suggests great things. He does love to read. Maybe he is destined to be a great scholar. I’ve met Devon. Have you? He is such a nice fellow. We’ve spent hours in conversation here. He is really quite sharp. Loves books almost as much as I do. In some ways he knows more about Pagan than I. Tell me of the books. My library is full of many books. Are you a scholar as well? Oh, I am so happy to have met you. Please feel free to make use of my library and books. We shall have many interesting discussions, I am sure. Does [Devon] know how I may leave Pagan? Leave Pagan? My goodness, I don’t think I’ve ever had anyone ask for that, but then again, you don’t act, talk, or dress like anyone I’ve ever seen before. Let’s see, I can only suggest you speak to someone with more magic abilities than I. Mythran could help you or, though I dread to suggest it, perhaps the Necromancer could help you. Who is Mythran? Mythran lives in a small house on the Plateau. He has been known to dabble in the various magical arts and is a scholar. He often makes magical scrolls and things and sells them. Mythran practices magical arts? Yes, though I’m not sure what school he follows. Mythran is a scholar? Well, of sorts. He enjoys studying and reading books as I do, but he will form an opinion and tout it as perfect. He will even cite his own writings as examples of perfect creative thinking. This makes talking to him a bit...tedious. But he is a good source of information. Where is the Plateau? From the palace in the center of Tenebrae, head north out of the city. Follow the path through the Valley to a cave entrance. Go through the cave. It opens on the other side of the mountain on the Plateau. What schools? Why the four elemental schools, of course. There are those who follow Lithos and practice his magic. These spells are mostly earth-based spells. They require long hours of study and practice to cast correctly, or so I’ve read. The Tempestual magics of Hydros are only available through heredity and so are unavailable to the majority. Now the magics of Pyros, the fire elemental are quite spectacular to watch, but very dangerous to the caster. Stratos, on the other hand provides healing magics, although she requires strict obedience to her tenets. Bye. Come back anytime, TerraGoetia. I so love a good conversation!Bentic may be a nice guy, but he’s certainly long-winded. In summary, Bentic’s probably on a Terrorist Watch List, he loves Devon, and he has pointed us towards Mythran and the Necromancer. The Necromancer is closer, so we’ll head there next. But first... let’s explore the homes of the rich section of town. Maybe we can find some good loot. Do you recall Devon talking about how he never experiences bad weather at sea? Now we have Bentic seeing ‘potential’ in him. This is our second hint that Devon is more than he seems.  On the road, a child asks us some questions. In town, children will generally avoid strangers, but some kids are curious.  You might recall this fellow from the execution sequence in update 1. This is Darion, the game’s weapons trainer and a member of the Royal Guard. His training is a beginner’s trap; we can raise all our stats simply by playing the game, making his services worthless. Hello there. Hail! Good day to you, Sir. And good day to you. May I know your name? I am Darion, the Arms Master and Captain of the Palace Guard here in Tenebrae. And you? I am TerraGoetia. Well met, TerraGoetia. Who are the Palace Guards? The finest fighting regiment in the land. But there is not much call for defense anymore. We mostly spend our time in preserving the peace. That’s not to say we wouldn’t be ready if needed, though. Ready for what? Of course, you never know what those Necromancers are up to. And we do have our fine Tempest to defend. You defend her? Of course, our Tempest is more than capable of defending herself. She has a portion of Hydros’ power. Who are the Necromancers? Filthy things, they live in the cemetery and much about with dead bodies. They serve the Titan Lithos. ‘Tis no wonder there are so few Necromancers left. Only those who grub for a paltry living from the mud and dirt have anything to do with Lithos and the Necromancers. Phew! Only a few Necromancers. I do not know exactly how many there are, but even one is one too many for my liking. Tell me about the cemetery. That’s where those filthy creatures keep their home. They like to be as near the dead as they can. If you ask me, I think they wait until late in the night and then dig up the bodies so they can do all manner of grotesque things to them. It churns my belly to think of it. Who is the Tempest? Why, she is the representative of that mightiest of Titans, Hydros. Hydros’ visage is much too fearsome and powerful for the likes of you and I, so Lady Mordea serves as her representative. In exchange, Lady Mordea is able to wield some of the power from Hydros. What power? Why do you think we have fair weather all day? With her share of Hydros’ power, Lady Mordea is able to control the weather. ‘Tis a blessing, it is. Who is Hydros? Keep a respectful tongue in your head when you speak that name, my friend. The Lurker is a force to be reckoned with. She is the power of all the waters. She can be as gentle as a spring rain or as powerful and terrible as a thundering waterfall. She is the mightiest of all the Titans. Well worth your respect and worship. Bye. Farewell.Darion’s not a bad guy. He’s just loyal to a horrible ruler. That pond looks interesting.  There’s a gem up there. I hope nobody minds if we take it.  Uhh... the Avatar is not climbing. He’s just jumping at the ledge like a fool.  We botch the jump and fall in. Note the ripples on the water.  We have better luck from the other side.  What.  What a goddamn tease. If we want this chaos gem (and we don’t particularly need it), we’ll need to reach it with a spell later.  We move on to the nearest building.  This is Rhian, Toran’s wife. You may remember her from the execution scene. Or, maybe you remember her from the library book earlier. Excuse me. Yes? What is your name? My name is Rhian, and yours? I am TerraGoetia. Hello, TerraGoetia, -sob- I am afraid I am not good company at this terrible time. Why do you cry? I’m sorry if my tears upset you, but -sob- it is so sad. I was once the wife of Toran. But now he is gone and my son is gone...whatever shall I do? Toran was your husband? Yes and he was executed by the Tempest, Lady Mordea -sob-. Why was he executed? I tried to warn him about speaking his mind so openly, but he would laugh and say that no man need fear the truth. In the end ‘twas Mordea’s wrath that he should have feared. He was an outspoken man? Toran feared no one, not even the Tempest. Of late, he had begun to question the need for these executions. He was in the tavern when the guards game for him... oh, i tried to warn him, -sob- Now I have no one, not even my son. -sob-. Feared Mordea’s wrath? She does not take kindly to things said about her. It will cost you your life, as it did my poor Toran, -sob- but I should not burden you with my troubles. Where is your son? My son, Torwin, left home to becomes a Theurgist. What is a Theurgist? A Theurgist is a healer. Oh, please do not misunderstand me, friend TerraGoetia, I think it is grand that my son should want to be a healer. Why I’m thrilled, but I am concerned by the suddenness of his decision. You question his decision? I’m sorry if I appear to be a terrible mother by questioning his decision, but he never showed any sign of wanting to be a healer when he was growing up. He just wanted to be a gemcutter like his father. -sob- And now that he is gone, I am left alone with no one to support me. But, at least I know he is alive and well. -sniffle- I can always hope he will return to his poor widowed mother. I hope he returns to you. That would be wonderful. Oh, how I’d love to see him again. Even...even if just for a short visit. -sob-, Oh, to see his face again! What do you do? I’m a weaver. I make clothing. And...and because of, I, oh I can not say it without crying...-sniff- my husband’s -sob- execution -sob sob-, I have taken over the running of my husband’s gem shop. Farewell. Perhaps we shall speak later.Rhian is a very sympathetic character, but there’s nothing we can do to help her. Maybe we’ll bump into her son later and convince him to come home? Rhian is one of the few merchants in the game that will actually buy things from us, but she only buys gems. We let her search our pack, and she tells us that there’s nothing in there she wants to buy. It turns out explosive gems, like chaos gems and fire gems, do not have a market here on Pagan.  Walking South from the pond, we come across this castle-looking home.  The front door is locked, but so checkout the roof. The Guardian laughs heartily as we do so.  Bingo.  Inside we find a locked bedroom, some food storage, and..  This living room with two boxes, some books, and some potions. There is also a mace on the floor between the chair and the railing. You should be able to just see the handle.  One of the boxes contains a scroll explaining the uses of the various potions we’ve come across. Is the owner of this castle an alchemist?  The other box is full of what we now know to be mana potions. They are not useful right now, as we know zero spells. But we will learn magic soon enough, and we’ll want them then. Let’s take them. It’s around this time that we start hitting our carry limit, which is 4 * str. We decide that poison potions and knockout potions are not useful to us, and so we discard them.  The front of the home is the dining area. We’re left to wonder where the key to the bedroom is. I’ll be honest with you: I trashed the entire castle and couldn’t find the key. This will go on the list of places to revisit.  Heading SE to the street and following it, we pass the passage to the southern end of Central Tenebrae. We bump into another home. This is Darion’s house. We can tell because it’s connected to his training building. I bet he has some good gear for us to steal.  We take Darion’s drugs and wander downstairs. There is an section of the wall that should obviously come down.  This switch on the fireplace should do the trick.  Moving the clothes in his dresser, we find his cash stash.  Moving the clock from the nightstand, we find the key to Darion’s chest. You may also notice a bag to the left of the bed. It has two of the purple invulnerability potions in it. We clearly want those.  The chest explodes, as expected. But scrolls of trap destruction are hard to come by at the start of the game, so we take the hit and go through the loot. The main item we want here is the metal leg armor. The backpack has a healing potion, a restore potion, a mana potion, and an invulnerability potion.. Do not put a backpack in your backpack. It will make the game count your base backpack as “full” and unable to carry more stuff. If you find a backpack, just loot the contents and leave the pack itself alone.  We’ve hit the carry limit for our str again. But this time there’s nothing we particularly want to drop. We’ve simply looted so much; we’ve become victims of our success. The only recourse now is to increase our str. If you recall from update 1, str is raised by hitting enemies.  We’ll have to continue  There is a guard tower near the entrance. We skip it for now; we can’t hold any more loot, so there’s no point to exploring it.  A spider is our first foe. The can be stepped on, like skellots, but we should swing our sword at it if we want to gain stats.  Next we find a hostile torax. Most torax are neutral and wander randomly. Hostile ones will move straight at you. We flee from it.  Heading North along the road, we encounter a skeleton. Skeletons in Ultima 8 are not basic enemies. We should keep moving until we find a fair fight.  Ghouls are exactly what we’re looking for. We drink a restoration potion and move to engage. Ghouls can do decent damage to an early-game Avatar, but their stats are about as low as ours. It’s up to the roll of the dice if we win or lose.  Kicks are supposed to stun ghouls. However, we seem to have the same chance of scoring a hit as we do with our sword, and our melee hits do stagger them a bit anyway, so we just swing like a madman.  Ghouls drop no loot, but they do provide experience towards gaining both str and dex.  In the upper right corner of this map is a ruined house. It serves no purpose yet, but let’s note the location for now.  Ghouls have the ability to rise out of the ground. It’s a slow animation, so you have plenty of time to prepare for a fight. I love little things like this.  If you follow the map to the East, you’ll find a coastline. Following that coastline leads to a few interesting encounters. Here is a hostile guard inhabiting a ruined home. We cannot defeat a guard in combat yet (but it won’t take long to get to their level). We make a note of this location and move on.  Another ruined house somewhat near the coastline. As we approach, the Guardian warns us: Do NOT go near that, Avatar! And we won’t, for now. This location is VERY IMPORTANT, but we’re not strong enough to deal with it yet.  I’m seein’ double here! FOUR Avatars? These are changelings, a little grey monster that can take our form, or also take the form of various scenery pieces. Changelings are actually easier than ghouls. This pit on the northeastern side of the map houses several changelings, and is a location we need to know about. Changeling loot includes obsidian coins and various explosives.  Two things to note in this picture. The first is the native shape of the changeling we are battling. The second is the strange black mushrooms growing on the platform in the middle of the pit. Those are called executioner’s hoods. The Ultima series calls spell components “reagents,” and executioner’s hoods are a reagent for necromantic magic. We need to get our stats up, so I am going to farm this map a little. If we leave and re-enter the map, the ghouls and changelings we’ve been fighting will respawn. There isn’t much grinding needed in Ultima 8, but a little bit up front goes a long way.  While doing so, we encounter a new enemy type: mandrils. They are fairly fast, and can be dangerous at low levels. However, they have low health and are easy to take down.  As part of our training, we take on a skeleton.  We have but a sliver of health when he goes down. Well fought, worthy fo—  loving Hell! Skeletons get back up each time you knock them down. Interestingly, they generate new loot each time you do knock them down, so if you are quick, you can repeatedly loot the same monster over and over. There is one way to permanently kill a skeleton, but we have not uncovered it yet.  We gained two points in str and two in dex. This raises our carry limit up to 68. That’s a bit better. There are three more homes in East Tenebrae we want to visit. Actually, there are four, but I forgot to actually visit the boathouse. We’ll hit up the boathouse some other time!  This home is locked unless the hour is bloodwatch. I bet you can guess who lives here.  It’s Mordea’s serving girl. Content warning: Sexual abuse. How may I serve you, stranger? By what are you called? My name is Aramina. What do you do here? I am herely a servant here. Tell me about the palace. This is the home of our Tempest, the Lady Mordea. Tell me of Lady Mordea. Well, it is not good for me to speak of my employer behind her back, but I will tell you she is a hard woman. Why do you say she is hard? She will stop at nothing to preserve her power here. Nothing, not even murder. She hardly notices my existence. At least she does not take pleasure in tormenting me like her seneschal does. She wishes to preserve power? The power of the Tempestry, milord. The power to control the weather. This is, indeed, great power. Murder? Murder? Did I say murder? Oh no, I meant nothing like that. I meant mother, that’s it, mother. She is like a mother to her people. Tell me of the Tempestry. Tempestry, milord? Surely you have heard of it. It is the power that is transferred through the bloodline of the Tempests. What power is transferred? As I said, milord, the power to control the weather. While at times, a good thing, it can be a powerful weapon to hold over the people’s heads. She holds it over her people’s heads? I mean...I mean it is a powerful tool to help the people’s herds....of torax, that is. Please, ask me no more. I am afraid Salkind will punish me. Salkind punishes you? Punished? No, no, not punished...er, pampered, yes that’s it. pampered by...Salkind. Please, friend, I do not wish to speak of it. What do you mean by ‘bloodline?’ It is inherited, father to son, mother to daughter.(To get the full story, we have to talk to her again. Ultima 8 has a ‘progressive’ conversation system, where topics not only get revealed, but also go away as the conversation moves forward. Sometimes what you see here as one transcript is actually multiple conversations weaved together.) Have you met Devon? Devon? Well, I know him but I’ve never actually met him. But I think I’d like to. You’d like to meet him? Once, when I was sent to the store to purchase something for Lady Mordea, he was there. I thought he had the nicest smile. You know of him? I’ve seen him and I know his name. I rarely get to meet anyone outside. I know Devon. You do? Oh, is he as nice as he looks? He has such a nice smile. And his eyes, they’re blue aren’t they? I really think he’s handsome. Do you think that you might mention me to him next time you see him? Of course I will. That is very thoughtful of you. Now, I must get back to work. Tell me of the seneschal. Salkind is her seneschal. Tell me of Salkind. He sets me to difficult tasks, then delights in tormenting me until I am barely able to complete them. What difficult tasks does he give you? No, no, certainly not difficult, rather, challenging. That’s it, he gives me challenging tasks. For instance he will give me a very small brush and tell me to clean the floor of his room. Then he will arrive, his boots muddy from his walks along the shore, and track mud all over the floor I just cleaned. He then points the dirt out to me and chastises me for poor work, claling me a no good slackard. How does he torment you? Perhaps ‘torment’ is too strong a word. Actually, he is quite the joker. For instance, just today he was walking down the hall toward me when he suddenly cornered me and began to pinch and grab my body. Don’t you think that is funny? No. No? Really? Truly, I didn’t find it very humorous either. But he finds it hilarious. So, I smile and try my best to stay out of his way. There is precious little I can do. Slap him! No, my friend. I have no desire to lose my job nor my head, for to strike the seneschal would be considered treason. I would be beheaded before the next morning. Well, I must get back to work now.In case you skipped that conversation (and I understand if you did), Mordea and Salkind are horrible people, and Aramina is in the Devon Fan Club. We’ll be visiting her again soon. I wanted to push on, but this update is already rather long. Next time, we will raid Salkind’s house, meet Beren, and finally introduce ourselves to the Necromancers. TerraGoetia fucked around with this message at 21:21 on Mar 16, 2019 |
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Mar 16, 2019 09:32
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Looks like I tagged the conversations backwards in update 3. I will fix this tomorrow. Edit: Conversations fixed, and some grammar cleaned up on my part. TerraGoetia fucked around with this message at 21:22 on Mar 16, 2019 |
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Mar 16, 2019 09:46
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I remember enjoying Ultima 8 when I played it, but not as much as 7 and 7 part 2. But I have a feeling people would remember 8 more fondly if the series didn't end with the godawful 9 as a sequel to it. It's too bad the source port for this isn't as active as Exult is for Ultima 7. It looks like they made a new version recently, but no one has updated what changed since 2011.
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Mar 16, 2019 16:36
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Ah, at last! Now the only Ultimas that won't have LPs are 2 and 3!
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Mar 17, 2019 00:44
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TerraGoetia posted:I’m seein’ double here! FOUR Avatars? These are changelings, a little grey monster that can take our form, or also take the form of various scenery pieces. Changelings are actually easier than ghouls. This pit on the northeastern side of the map houses several changelings, and is a location we need to know about. ...except if you kill them in their 'Avatar' form. Then you get nothing from them. So there's no point engaging them when they look like you. They also leave no corpse when killed in their normal form, only loot lying on the ground. They DO leave an (avatar-shaped) corpse in Avatar form, but that corpse carries nothing. TerraGoetia posted:As part of our training, we take on a skeleton. There are several ways actually, one of which you have access to from the very start of the game: Although they can get back up, Skeleton corpses take a little while to reanimate. Until they do, they are like any other corpse and can be moved around... so just drop them into a deep body of water or into some deep lava and they won't be coming back. Unfortunately though that only works when you're near a deep body of water/lava, and a lot of maps don't have any (or at least, not nearby). There's some stuff around permanently killing skeletons I'd like to discuss later, but I'll leave it for now as some things you are likely to do later might relate to it more than this first encounter.
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Mar 17, 2019 03:30
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Soul Reaver posted:...except if you kill them in their 'Avatar' form. Then you get nothing from them. So there's no point engaging them when they look like you. Can't you like.. shove them into containers or something? I should go see if I can find my copy of the game and mess around with it, it has been long enough since I played that my memories are rather hazy.
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Mar 17, 2019 04:42
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Soul Reaver posted:...except if you kill them in their 'Avatar' form. Then you get nothing from them. So there's no point engaging them when they look like you. All the changelings I've killed for this LP and my exploratory run died in their native form, so I haven't been able to verify this. Once we have reliable ways to hit harder, we should be able to get some Avatar corpses on the ground and check this out! Soul Reaver posted:There's some stuff around permanently killing skeletons I'd like to discuss later, but I'll leave it for now as some things you are likely to do later might relate to it more than this first encounter. Yeah, this initial fight was more about how skeletons are no joke to an early game Avatar. We'll definitely want to revisit them when we have more tools at our disposal. ZypherIM posted:Can't you like.. shove them into containers or something? I should go see if I can find my copy of the game and mess around with it, it has been long enough since I played that my memories are rather hazy. I... have actually not tried this before. I am now insanely curious.
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Mar 17, 2019 05:52
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Mar 17, 2019 08:49
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The child killing is something Richard Garriot likes to put into his game for the sake of sparking controversy. I think this "feature" is in every ultima starting with V. Edit: Or for another sake. I've seen him state different reasons for that decision. Anyway, is there a brake to stat training, like is it harder to train from 20 to 21 than from 15 to 16? Crystalgate fucked around with this message at 15:32 on Mar 17, 2019 |
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Mar 17, 2019 15:27
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Sounds like someone tried to stuff a skeleton into a backpack and something went terribly, terribly wrong...
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Mar 17, 2019 15:32
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I sunk so many hours into this as a kid, I'm ecstatic to see it's getting a LP. The world building just felt so much greater than other games at the time, you could spend days exploring the city and just keep discovering new things. Every area just bled personality. I started the Ultima series with 7 pt. 2 so I came in without all the philosophical baggage of the previous games, and judged on its own, except for the platforming, I think it's an excellent game. I wonder if it would have been judged much more fairly if Ultima 9 built on it in a positive way, instead of being a legendarily bad game. Chuu fucked around with this message at 18:35 on Mar 17, 2019 |
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Mar 17, 2019 18:18
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There's going to be a delay before Update 4 hits. Whatever has infected my computer is some pretty Strong Stuff, and it's even blocked me from opening Dos Box. That is definitely a line in the sand for me, so I'm going to have to nuke this computer and start over. Our savegames, screenshots, writeups, and videos for the LP are on my Google Drive and we should be fine to pick up where we left off. I will need a day or so to reinstall an operating system and the software I need. I have already recorded gameplay including meeting Vividos, Mythran, and the drama with Mordea, so once we get everything re-installed we should be able to post a steady stream of content. If I get some time to actually play the game, I'm trying decide between doing the Slayer Dungeon or the Lost Vale Cut Content stuff next. Thank you for your patience!
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Mar 18, 2019 06:26
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This was actually my first Ultima game. I still really love it, even if it's a tad shallower than the previous titles. I like the way it looks and honestly never found the platforming too problematic. Sure it's monocramatic at times and you can basically run through the entire game without fighting almost anything, and it's much smaller in scope but it's still kinda neat. I always liked the look of Tenebrae at least and the spell stuff is neat too.
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Mar 18, 2019 09:32
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