I sort of went ahead with my original line-up. First up, I built my fighter. This screenshot is before I named him, but his name is Rexbasior. The name comes from my website, which is named after some semi-flirty first semester Latin I picked up at college. I'm thinking this will be my go-to guy. I've always been way more of a fan of fighters in these kind of games. Magic always seems to take too much cost and patience to be consistently effective. Fighters always have the consistency. They're not limited by magic. It's like I've always said... hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a crossbow at your side.
I'm wondering if there's any advantage to having female party members. From what I can tell, there isn't, but whenever I play video games I love playing as a woman, so I didn't want to pass this opportunity up. Yeah, I know that sounds weird, and it's not like I want to be a woman or anything, it's just that role-playing games are a wonderful opportunity to... you know, play a different role. Anyway, I named my magic-user Silver the Enchantress. Ever since high school I've always told people that I'm going to name my first daughter Silver the Enchantress. Notice I accidentally gave her the portrait body of a thief. Whoops. That's fine, though. I love that teasy sort of pose.
I'm using my only non-human character as a combination fighter and thief dwarf. I named him after the first set of syllables that went through my head. Here's hoping that his freaky "infravision" will come in handy as well as his freakish old age. I'm wondering now if the fighter/thief combination was a good idea. I might should have done a combination of magic user and fighter. Something polarizing like that anyway.
Even though she's a cleric, I just had to give Chlorine the cleavagy portrait. How could I not. I figured that she's officially evil, so perhaps an evil priestess really would wear something slutty like that. Here's hoping having an evil cleric will be useful. Something tells me that a good one is more practical, but the thought of the undead joining the party rather than merely fleeing from it seems like a much cooler gig. You're probably laughing at some of the stats I wound up with. I really only looked at strength for my fighter, intelligence for my magic-user, dexterity for my figher/thief and wisdom for my cleric.
So after doing the creation thing, I sort of just wandered for a bit. Unfortunately, one of the first places I went to was the figher training area. I picked a fight in there before bothering to go to the armoury and the guy clubbed Rexbasior senseless. Suddenly my go-to man was put to wussy unconscious shame.
After a little more aimlessness, I got out the old graph paper to get some usable maps going. I'm a total girl when it comes to direction. I get really lost in 3-D games, so this'll be rough. Not to talk about Ultima all the time, but I'm really used to the top-view towns from those games. I must admit, however, I was pretty bummed when Ultima VI discontinued the first-person dungeon viewmode. It really took me out of the experience. So, although I am timid and I know I'll get all confused and lost, I'm really looking forward to absorbing the first-person experience.
I bought arms in the first arms shop I came to. I don't know there were other arms shops in town, so I may have been ripped off. Probably makes very little difference when we have so little gold anyway. It was hard to tell which weapons were all that great too. The damage chart in the manual kind of indicates that there isn't too much of a difference in any of the weapons. I went ahead and got a bastard sword for Rexbasior. The sword name is awesome and I needed something to change Rex's pretty-boy image. I loaded up Silver with a couple of quarterstaffs, some daggers and a quiver of darts. Can you throw the daggers? If not, I wasted a bunch of money and carrying space. Derfindor got a bunch of stuff: another bastard (actually Rexbasior's other bastard after I realized it was a two-handed weapon), a battle axe, a halberd, a sling, etc. He'll probably be pulling a lot of weight. Since Chlorine is limited by her clericalness, I at least splurged on some scale mail for her. I also provided a flail, some javelins, a mace and a shield for her. At least early in the game she'll be able to avoid getting hit too much. I can't say the same about Silver and her stupid magic-user non armor wearing ways.
So yeah, after finding the shops and going to my fifth one, I thought it might be a good idea to actually write down what was being offered in each shop. After only bothering to write down the compliment of one silver shop I gave up, realizing that I could just use my iMac's screen capture ability and put a folder on my desktop with pictures showing what each shop has. Pretty smart huh? Knowing me, though I'll be too lazy to check and compare prices (and knowing how little I know about the game, the prices probably fluctuate anyway).
Hitting up the temples is still on the agenda. I only entered one, but they told me the bishop isn't receiving visitors. Strangely, I was given the option to force my way into the temple. I didn't take that option since it's still so early in the game, but I'll bet it's something I'll eventually have to do. It's not like it gives me the option to force my way into the inn. Plus, look at this kid guarding the temple. With a face like that, he's just asking to get jacked up hard.
Speaking of inn, one of the very last things I did during this session was attempt to camp out in the middle of town in an effort to bring Rexbasior back into consciousness. Apparently, I'm not
allowed to be a vagrant since the town watch rousted me in the middle of the night and told me to move along. This time, I actually did decide to fight. Shortest fight of my life too. This seven nation army is the freaking town watch? You'd think if the place had a town watch this strong, they wouldn't need to worry about needing to hire adventurers to clean up the town. Heck, they could send the town watch over the entire Moonsea region and have the entire land in order within a week! Yeah, the picture I have posted to the right shows just how big this town watch army was. I didn't even get a turn in battle before they kicked me off to the DOS prompt.The last thing I did was check out the pub. I overheard one intriguing and possible plot-developing piece of rumor:
This is getting good.
1 comment:
There's sort of a cheat you can do to buff you characters' stats. After you create the characters and add them to the party, there is a menu option to modify your character. I believe this option is also available when training, but must be done before you advance your character's level for the first time. I always modify my characters' STR, DEX, CON and HP to the maximum (also INT for magic-users and WIS for clerics).
I know someone else has mentioned pooling money in order to convert everything to Platinum, but it's also a good idea to pool money when buying your initial equipment. This allows you to buy good armor for your fighters (I recommend banded mail). You magic-users don't need anything, as they should be staying out of combat except for spellcasting. Your fighters only need one melee weapon. Buying them two is a waste of money. A bow is also good, but not necessary for the frontliners.
Don't worry about tracking shop inventory. All shops of the same type carry the same items at the same prices, and they do not change. Ever.
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