Ultima VII Gimmicks by Gudy

My List of Fun Things to Do in Ultima 7 The Black Gate.

The items are not sorted, but appear losely grouped by the towns/dungeons near which they can be found. The info in this file comes mainly from posts in the Comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.rpg newsgroup. Where I still know the original poster of the article that gave the hint to the gimmick, due credit is given. Where no credit is given I either found this out myself or don't know who gave the hint.

A bunch of thanks to Kerry Jane (Kerry@alaska.net) for html'izing this list!

WARNING! WARNING! WARNING!

This file contains spoilers for the game! Don't read it if you want to get through the game on your own. Most of the things here can be done after finishing the game. (And probably you will have done some of them already)

DISCLAIMER

The information herein is provided as is. No warranty of any kind is given. This may or may not work with your copy of Ultima 7. Moreover I don't claim that this list is anywhere near complete. Any and all additions are welcome.

ALTHOUGH THIS DOCUMENT CONTAINS INFORMATION THAT CAN BE USED TO CIRCUMVENT THE COPY PROTECTION SCHEMES IN THE GAME, I DO NOT ENCOURAGE USING ILLEGAL COPIES OF THE GAME, IN FACT I STRONGLY DISCOURAGE SUCH ILLEGALITIES. ANY INQUIRIES ON HOW EXACTLY TO DO THIS ARE IGNORED, SO FORGET IT.

Please send any additions/comments/whatever to gudlat@informatik.hu-berlin.de. Throughout this text, LB is used for Lord British, and U7 for Ultima 7. This had to be said, but now for something completely different :-)

Before we start...

It is a more or less well known fact that waiting through the credits at the beginning of the game (or anytime by clicking on the CREDITS item in the menu) will give you a new QUOTES menu item with funny quotes of the makers of U7. Similarly, beating the game gives you the VIEW ENDGAME item that lets you do just that.

Trinsic

This town holds the most powerful in-game cheat of U7: The Trinsic Cheat Room. Gather 15 crates and build a stair beside the door of the blacksmithy. Walk up to the roof and behind the chimney. The Place you get teleported to has lots of magic armor, money, spell reagents, story important items and teleporters to almost every important place in the game. Nice thing :-)

There is another neat and funny thing in Trinsic: When you whack Spark's parrot with the gavel, he'll tell you the coordinates of a treasure island. There is some neat stuff to be found there! BTW, this works with virtually EVERY parrot in the whole game. Kind of makes you wonder why every parrot knows about it, but nobody has looted the cave. Seems they have a very active campaign against cruelty against parrots... (Stephen Thomas Brindle (sbrindle@netcom.com))

Well, this is not strictly Trinsic specific, but anyway, here goes: Never let it be said again that your companions don't offer useful advice; when you start the game with no mouse/mouse driver enabled, Iolo tells you "Thou shouldst really buy thyself a mouse." (Or does this imply we can bribe Sherry the mouse into joining us? ;-) (Schrompf Dragon (Matthias "Schrompf" Darkow - Schrompf@orplid.shnet.org or 4darkow@rzdspc124.informatik.uni-hamburg.de)

In the same vein, when you visit the Avatar Museum in Britain when it is open, Iolo will give you a very useful and unvirtous hint. The way he did this almost made me choke for laughing too hard.

Paws

This town is completely boring. The only interesting thing found here is a key under a bucket full of blood in the butchers shop. It opens the locked door in the same shop. (NINJA-X's (ninjax@norfolk.infi.net) Ultima 7 Compendium)

Britain

You can go to the theater here and ask for a rehearsal for the new piece. Get an avatar's costume from the tailor to do this, but oddly enough you are not offered an engagement :-(

When you cast armageddon, the only ones alive are you, Batlin, and LB. When you talk to Batlin, he'll tell you about the Tortured One in Skara Brae, and that there are no answers to the question of life and death. (But you aren't able to tell Alagner any more, are you?) (NINJA-X's (ninjax@norfolk.infi.net) Ultima 7 Compendium)

There is only a limited number of possibilities to kill LB. One is with the Black Sword from the Forge of Virtue add-on. The other is somewhat more interesting: Every day at noon, LB stands in his court yard under the plaque that says "Lord British's Throne Room" or something similar. Read it while he stands under it, and it will fall and crush his head. (Henryk Bochmann, F-15 Dragon (bochmann@urz.tu-dresden.de) Doc Shadow (dshadow@lounge.ultranet.com) wrote that this actually happened - Richard Garriot was hit in the head by a metal plate falling off the Origin building. Get LB's last will from the corpse and it'll say that our noble Lord British is the father of Nell's child. Now this would explain her strange behaviour when you ask her about her child, wouldn't it. Both ways to dispose of LB are hinted at in Mordra's book about things with destructive powers. It can be found in Mordra's house in Skara Brae and in Erethian's study in the Forge of Virtue add-on. (David Bruce (hansolo@earth.execpc.com))

Some people you meet in Britain will tell you about the crazy Mack. If you meet him (he lives in a house on a farm south of the road from Britain to Cove), he'll tell you about lights in the sky at night and about a strange encounter with a tigerlion that said "kill Wrathy". Two questions remain:

• 1. Doesn't that remind us of something?
• 2. Who is that Wrathy fellow anyway? :-)

There is a strong hint for 1. in the field north of Mack's house: a space ship from a rather well known "Space Combat Simulator". You can even play the Wing Commander music by klicking on the ship. (Michael V. Pisarczyk (mvpisarc@engprn.mobil.com))

Mack will also tell you about his Hoe of Destruction, closed off in his shack. To get it (it's a nice weapon) you can either follow his hints and look for a dead fish (marked "corpse", not "sprout") on the western shores of Lock Lake that contains a key. There are several such fishes. The one with the key is half hidden under a plant. Alternatively, you can get yourself some powder kegs and just blow the door to the shack. (Michael V. Pisarczyk (mvpisarc@engprn.mobil.com))

When you play The Game with the jester in LB's castle, he'll give you a hint on a very annoying scroll... Oh, and if you are a really, really bad guy, kill the clerk in the Royal Mint, get the key and raid the Mint. Then take the dead clerk to LB so he can resurrect her, and you will be able to exchange nuggets and gold bars in the future without anyone being the wiser. It is strange that you can upset the whole financial system of Britannia without anybody noticing...

Cove

This is a nice place. No fellowship and all happiness, well, almost all. Talk to all the people in the town and ask about Nastassia, then go talk to her near the shrine of compassion. If you do it right (and you are a male avatar) she will fall in love with you.

When you follow the plot line of the game, you'll eventually talk to the mage Rudyom. He'll tell you about the magic carpet, the fastest and most convenient means of transport in U7. It can be found next to the western entrance to dungeon Despise. Follow the north shore of the river that you cross on your way from Britain to Yew, and there it is. Be warned however! There is a nasty bug in the game that can close a door in the dungeons of the Isle of the Avatar when you fly over it. This can get you really stumped in the endgame, so DON'T fly over this island.

BTW, the magic carpet in conjunction with the Trinsic cheat room can be used to totally circumvent the two copy protection schemes in the game! Seems Origin's programmers have been a little hasty in putting the carpet into the game :-) (figured out by Steffen Boerm (stu30110@mail.uni-kiel.d400.de) and me during an e-mail chat)

Vesper/The Great Desert

There is an odd "X marks the spot" (literally!) in a little forest northeast of the desert. There is a lot of junk there as well as some glass swords. Also, the Guardian says something when you get near, but sadly enough he speaks backwards, so I don't know what he says, but Doc Shadow (dshadow@lounge.ultranet.com) told me that he says '"I am the Pagan Lord" in reverse. [He] ... went through the code of the game and ripped out the sound file, reversed it, and that's what it says. Sort of a prelude to the upcoming game.'

Yew/Deep Forest

You can meet a certain Tseramed here, and have him join your party. Now I just wonder where they might have gotten this name from... :-) Oddly enough there is one Ken Demarest mentioned in the credits. According to Doc Shadow (dshadow@lounge.ultranet.com), almost every Ultima character is based on a real-life person, either at Origin or a friend of an Origin person. (Now, who was the basis for the naked hermits? :-)

When you visit the bee cave you can meet two hermits in the cave. They are somewhat insufficiently clothed and seem a little loony as well, but you are able to look behind their masks if you don't have Tseramed with you.

You can also meet Smith the talking horse in a hut in the forest. I gather he has been around the Ultima's for quite some time but I don't know anything more about him. He is somewhat annoying and the advice he gives is more or less useless. Trevor Barrie (tbarrie@cycor.ca) then told me that "Smith is a running joke. He's in Ultimas V, VI, and VII, and in each one he gives you some crucial advice on how to win the _previous_ Ultima. (He's in U4, too, but as I recall he doesn't have much of anything to say there.)"

There is also a magicians house (Selwyn's tower) in those forests. It can be reached via mirrors in dungeon Despise. To get there find a bunch of magically locked doors. Go through them and fight the mages and paladins. This room is quite interesting (invisible stairs and some useful transporters). The other way to get inside Selwyn's tower is to walk along its outside wall until you can look into the mirror on the second floor, then cast telekinesis on the lever.

Moonglow

The town itself is not interesting, but the library of the lycaeum holds some very interesting books, e.g.:

• Margareta Michellino: Gone with the Wisp
• Gilberto: Struck Commander (don't these two remind us of something?)
• Larry Niven: Ringworld
• Robert Heinlein: Stranger in a Strange Land
• Laurence Olivier: On Acting (seems LB has brought some of them over...)

You can meet Mick the fox in front of the lycaeum. Talk to him! I would rank him as the secondmost annoying character in the game (nobody beats Kissme the faerie on the island of Ambrosia at that) and certainly as the most insulting one.

Skara Brae

This is the town of the dead, but there are some interesting things to be found here. I already mentioned Mordra's book, but there is more: There is a hommage to J.R.R. Tolkien on the cemetary: the plaque beneath the statue near the crypt reads: "JRRT - a great man - a great writer". Also, did you always wonder why everybody kept on talking about little Marney and her sad fate, and all you could find was that useless crypt? It's not that useless. There is a lever behind Tolkien's statue that opens another part of the crypt with a night stand in it. This contains a full suit of magical armor as well as some cheating items for the Skara Brae subplot. (Jeremy A. Gaudet (Shrapnel Dragon - gaudj@Direct.Ca))

Spektran

The local Sultan is certainly one of the more entertaining personalities in the game (and he is stark raving mad too). You'll meet him eventually in the game, but I included him anyway.

Meditation Retreat

Here, you can meet Gorn the fighter. Although Michael Gentner (gentner@elsar1.physik.uni-bonn.de) once wrote that Gorns home world "was the gaming world in another old Origin game ('Legends of Valour' or something like that)" and that he also was in U5, U6 and Savage Empire, I cannot help but be reminded of Arnold Schwarzenegger/Conan the Barbarian (due to the way he speaks and his strong "German" accent). Can anybody fill me in on that one?

Serpent Hold

This is an interesting place for a Trekkie (Trekker?) like me, as the crew of the Hold mirrors the crew of the ST-TNG NCC 1701-D: John-Paul, Richter, Denton, Horffe, Jordan and Tory. If you don't see the parallelities yet, talk to all of them, and a lot of similarities turn up. BTW, has anybody found a transporter in Serpents Hold? :-) (J.Walker (d9456182@ccub.wlv.ac.uk))

If you search through the trouts in the Hold's kitchen, you'll find one that is marked "corpse", not "trout". And yes, there is also a key in it, as you would perhaps have suspected. This key opens a chest in the caves on Serpents Hold (can only be reached from the water), which has a key to the armory. There is a second key to the armory among Richters clothes in his room. (Michael V. Pisarczyk (mvpisarc@engprn.mobil.com) and NINJA-X's (ninjax@norfolk.infi.net) Ultima 7 Compendium)

Buccaneer's Den

This is an interesting place, but the caves in the mountains of Buc's Den are even more interesting. You can find Hook's hideout here. When you get there, you'll find a dead crocodile in one of his rooms. I haven't found a legal way into this room (i.e. not by hackmoving/cheating), but if you get there, you'll find that the crocodile has swallowed a clock. (I suppose you have read your dose of Peter Pan as a child, haven't you. :-) And while you are in those caves you'll perhaps want to find the secret entrance into the Bath's, so you can have all the fun but do not need to pay for it :-)

If you already visited Jhelom, you'll probably know about Sullivan the trickster and the stolen Banner of Honour. You can meet Sullivan in the Fellowship prison area of the Buc's Den caves, but sadly enough he has got nothing more with him than an avatar's costume, and you can't talk with him about the stolen banner.