The Ultima II Survival Kit

by Christoph Brincken

I played Ultima II on the Commodore 64 and later - around 1985 - it was one of the first games for the Atari ST. My teachers said that I had to "set priorities", so I did, I played and solved Ultima II and repeated the year in school.

When I played Diablo II recenty, it reminded me a lot of Ultima. Of course, the graphics are much better but in the end it's all about improving your skills, getting better weapons, finding out about hidden secrets, dungeons....

Ultima II looks quite simple today, but without help you will need a month up to a year to solve it - when you catalogue the dungeons it might even take longer. And it's still much fun.

This is not a walk-through, but gives you an idea how to start the quest without being frustrated by an early death when you begin.

Get the game
The first thing is to get the game. It runs not only with PowerST or Nostalgia, but in low or high ST resolution with MagiC Mac (maybe with MagiC PC, too), but has to be played from disk drive A:

Start new player
If there is already an old player you can create a new one with the Abandon option. Then you should choose a name and give the character points to your player.

Spells work only in the dungeons and to solve the game they are not so important, which means it's not useful to choose a wizard or cleric...

The most points are needed for agility - which class of weapons you can use, strength - for shields, intelligence - for wizard spells, wisdom - for cleric spells, dexterity - your resistance against hits and charisma - how expensive or cheap you can buy goods.

If you are neither a wizard or a cleric you don't need intelligence or wisdom at all(!). The races: human adds points to strength, elf to agilty, fuzzy to wisdom.

In the game
Create a new player - abandon the old one.

Enter a name and points. Armour is much more expensive than weapons, so I recommend to create a character with 50 agility, and the rest like shown. Choosing the type Elf gives you additional 5 agility.

The first thing is to go from North America - where you find yourself at first - to Canada, over the land-bridge to Russia and from there to Europe.

In Italy there is a town (Rome?) where you can buy a weapon and armour.

Armour is much more expensive than weapons, so I recommend to create a character with 50 agility and buy a Great sword and as armour just cloth. Near Britain (in Germany?) there are two timegates. The left leads to England, but in another time.

In this other time, you find the king's castles (London?).

When you offer money to the king, he raises your hit power (HP).

In the village in the north of Britain you can get food. When your food has gone, you die at once. If you're unlucky and your food has ended and reverting doesn't bring you back to a place from where you can reach the village you have to start all over! Food is important!

So first thing in the game is to run around and slay monsters. You gain gold by beating up monsters and gain items when you slay a thief. When you get the item "Blue tassle" then go to the town in the north of Britain

In the village of Britain is a harbour. Slay a guard to get a key and leave the town at once. That's a hard thing and you need more than 1,000 HP to do that. Then with another 1,000 HP and maybe with Magic Coin - to negate time - enter the harbour, slay the guard and board the ship.

When the ship attacks you, don't attack back, just move on and enter. In the time when you enter the timegate to Britain, there is a town in California in which you can get your status improved, to be able to carry better weapons and arms.

In the hotel in California you have to bribe someone. If he says "Thank you" your money is lost (Just revert to the last saved status).

If he says "Alkazam" your status is improved.

In the first time, it makes sense to collect money and improve the status of agility and strength as high as possible. Stamina is also important and impoving charisma will make things you buy cheaper.

With this you should be prepared to find out the waiting secrets yourself! Have fun.

Ultima II runs from disk A: on MagiC Mac, but the colours change - the blue sea becomes yellow, as seen above.

MyAtari magazine - Feature #7, January 2003