My 6 year old son finished Ultima IV on the weekend. I was really amazed at how quickly he pulled it off. With no help from me. He had memorized all the spells, mantras, and locations, something I never managed to do when I was 12 and finished the original Apple II version.
My shock came when he came to the Abyss. I had warned him how difficult it was. How I had needed to mix 99 tremor spells, and 99 of a dozen other critical spells, and had had to collect 99 of every reagent, all before even daring to enter the abyss.
He ignored my advice and went in with a completely depleted party. No gems, almost out of garlic, ginsing, and mandrake. Very few spells, less than 5 of approximagely 10 different spells. He didn’t even have the hull.
Nevertheless, he rolled into the Abyss. Determined to finish the quest.
I tried to soften the blow, letting him know that after he failed, he could try again. He could just consider this a ‘dry’ run. A scouting mission.
However, he quite easily, powered through, in three multi-hour sessions. Got to the codex room, answered all the questions correct on the first time. And he completed the quesst of the avatar!
This shows the final screen of Ultima IV...so...only look if you finished Ultima IV!
I was amazed and impressed. But a little shocked too. My memory of the Abyss was much, much harsher. A brutal, day long grind through waves of creatures who needed all my spells to be dealt with.
So I wondered…was the Dos version, which my son played, easier?
I did some quick tests:
I faced off against Ettins in both the Apple II version and the Dos version. I let them hit me 20 times, then calculated the damage dished out. Characters were wearing no armor, and stats were fairly close, so I assumed that I would just be measuring damage delivered by the NPC’s (Ettins).
Testing the mettle of Ettins in Green land...
And in 16 color land...
The results, after two quick trials, were pretty clear. The Ettins in the Dos version were doing around 2 times less damage than the Apple II version. The average in the Apple II was 15.7hp, whereas the Dos was around 8.9 for my tests, and elsewhere on the net claims of 8-12 damage range can be found.
Although I didn’t yet test, I have a sneaking suspicion that the DOS monsters hit the players less than the Apple II versions.
Having grown up on the Apple II version, and it being the original, I find this discrepency shocking! Why, I already had a snooty, looking down the end of my nose attitude about anyone who didn’t finish Ultima IV, and now, to think, that a vast number of people who did, did it at a much easier setting than me! Simply shocking! Outrageous.
Maybe I should ramp up all the settings in ‘Advent of the Trinity’ back up to Apple II levels. Yeeaahh…maaaaybeee…
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