ix195@sdcc6.UUCP ({) (03/20/85)
I have several Ulitma III questions. First what does a thief do with powders (are they used to stop time?). Second what is the purpose of good fountains are you supposed to do something other then drink from them? I have found the Mark of Kings and what it allows you to increase in other words do I need to do something else before fountains can affect me? Thirdly I notice you can walk into lava at the cost of some hp is there ever a good (but not obvious!) time to do this? Fourth the trusty book of play mentions taming wild horses. In my one encounter they fought and killed me! What does one do? Lastly (I should find this out on my own but....) if one alerts the guard a. if one manages to kill the guards in the ?first? conflict are there more to face later on? and b. if not does this mean the town is now open to all the evil beasties and may become useless? Many Thanks Tom Schmidhauser
jagardner@watmath.UUCP (jagardner) (03/23/85)
[...] SPOILER WARNING: Answers to some Ultima III Questions: Powders are used to stop time. Issue the N command. There are four different types of fountains. You can't tell which is which until you drink from them. After you drink, see what reaction the machine has: Yuck, horrible! -- you are now poisoned. Ugh, Awful! -- you've lost some hit points. Ah, that's nice -- if you were poisoned, you are now cured. How Wonderful! -- puts you up to full hit points. It is useful to walk into lava in several instances: to talk to the Jester who is in the middle of the lava in the castle of Lord British; to talk to the demon who is in the middle of the lava in Death Gulch; and when you are finally ready to take on Exodus in his castle (position a boat between the right hand shore and the lava; this lets you walk to the castle from the shore, and you can get to this shore via moon gate). HOWEVER, you do not have to take hit points. If you get the Mark of Fire, you can walk on lava without hurting. To get the Mark of Fire, just wander around in enough dungeons. Sorry, I don't know how to tame horses either. As soon as you fight anyone in a town, the guards come after you. Every guard you see on the normal screen turns into a squad of guards in melee and the suckers are tough! HOWEVER, you don't have to fight the guards! BRIBE them! Costs 100 GP to bribe a guard and that guard just disappears. If you kill or bribe all the guards in a town, you can then kill all the citizens at your leisure and recoup your losses. Don't worry about losing the town to posterity -- if you leave the town then come back, it will be back to normal. The obvious thing is therefore to pillage the town with the fewest guards every time you're in need of gold. By the way, a good strategy is to fill your pockets with as many gems as possible before going down into a dungeon. PEER into a gem on each floor. You get a map of the dungeon, including ? characters to show where there's something interesting: gold, a fountain, a brand to give you a mark, etc. If you draw a map of the floor, you can whip through the dungeon with ease and make a killing in gold. Jim Gardner