In Ultima I, you've defeated the evil wizard Mondain.
A great upheaval was caused by this and three of the
four continents of the world disappeared.
Only the Lands of Lord British remained
(although at least some lands didn't disappear for good, as you'll
find out in Ultima 7, part 2).
This land (Sosaria) is ruled by Lord British and there was
peace for some years.
Then a second age of darkness begins...
This is where Ultima II starts.
In Ultima II you'll have to deal with Mondain's
pupil, the evil Minax.
She is trying to revenge the death of her master Mondain and
once more Lord British has to ask for help.
Ultima II was brought out in 1982.
It is a top down RPG where you can only control
one character (the use of a party of adventurers was
only possible after Ultima II, in Ultima III).
Much of the game you'll spend on fighting enemies.
The goal of this is to obtain certain items that are necessary
for being able to do certain things in the game
(for example: board a ship, a plane or a space ship).
An important part of Ultima II are the so called "Moongates".
There are different time zones in Ultima II and by using
the moongates you can travel from one timezone to another.
There are towns in every timezone and that's where you
can buy food, armoury, weapons and spells.
You should also talk (transact) to the different townspeople
in order to find out what you have to do to
defeat Minax.
In the end of the game you'll have to travel to space.
You can also explore the dungeons and towers of Ultima II, although this
is not necessary to finish the game.
If you pay a visit to Lord British and pay him 50
gold pieces, he'll raise your hitpoints.
Of course Ultima II has graphics that may look totally
outdated today, but remember that this
game is from 1982.
I have to admit that Ultima II is definitively not my favourite
Ultima.
Apart from constantly fighting enemies there's little left to do.
I personally prefer games in which you'll have to go out on
little (or big) quests.
Anyway: it's not a big game and if you want to play all Ultima's
it's a game you can't really miss.
Some aspects of Ultima II (moongates) come back in later Ultima's.
In this part I'll assume you're playing Ultima II
from the "Encore Ultima 1-6 CDRom".
If you're trying to run Ultima II on your
computer, you'll run into some problems.
Luckily, some Ultima dragons have created fixes and patches
for these problems.
The first thing to do is again, not to
use the install program that's on the CD.
Just copy the files from your D drive to a new folder on
your hard disk.
Next you should remove the "read only" attribute
from the different files.
You can do this by opening the folder and clicking once on: select all.
Then you should click once on: file,
then on: properties.
You'll then see that the "read only" section has been marked.
Remove this mark and that's all.
This should do the trick for all the other Ultima's,
but not for Ultima II.
When you'll try to play the game right now, you'll get
an error message.
Micro dragon has created a little file to solve this problem
(see below).
Another solution is to download Mo'slo.
This will not just solve the error but will also slow down
your computer
(a necessary adjustment for most modern fast computers).
Lost Dragon has a "PC slow -down" page where you can (among others) download
Mo'slo, at: PC Slow Down Page
If you've downloaded one of these programs you should be able to play the game.
However: one more file could be necessary.
While creating the CDRom a mistake was made:
the wrong files were copied to the CDRom.
This causes all planets that you visit to look alike.
If this doesn't bother you, you
don't have to do anything.
If you however want to play the game as it was originally brought out,
you can pick up a patch file for this.
Moonstone dragon has created a patch that will solve this.
This patch file and the above mentioned fix file, can be downloaded
from Micro dragon's website.
They're all included in the zipfile he created, that also
includes the original documentation for Ultima II.
If you want to download this file, go to:
Micro dragon's Home Page
Look for his Ultima documentation page.
©Mieke Schotting
Ultima World Wide Web Archive
This is the Ultima Archive at Origin's site, made by Ultima Dragons.
Here you can find maps, a walkthrough and the Documentation for the Encore CD-Rom
The World Of Ultima This link takes you to the quick access page of "The World Of Ultima". Here you can find helpfiles, maps and other files for Ultima II.
Micro Dragon's Home Page
Here you can find the complete documentation for Ultima II. There's also
a page about how to run Ultima II on your computer, with all the
necessary helpfiles.
Ultra Mind's Dungeons and Towers of Ultima II
Ultra-Mind dragon has drawn maps for all levels of all the dungeons and towers of Ultima II.
D+S Software This is a (reliable) Dutch site where you can buy the Encore Ultima I-VI CDROM. They sell abroad. Look for:"The Ultimate Game Collection", by Encore Software.
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