Origin historian Pix has continued his playthrough of the Sega Master System port of Ultima 4, and has for the most part been raiding dungeons since the last time he gave us a progress report:

I stuck with [the] plan using level 8 of Hythloth as a hub to go between all the dungeons retrieving stones. With a good stock of magic things went much more smoothly this time around.

And at first he made good progress, collecting all the stones he had not grabbed at the end of his previous play session. But then things took a turn for the worse:

Once in the Abyss, I immediately realise that I had forgotten how ferociously hard it is. The rooms on the first level are nightmarish with lava bubbling up through the floor all over the place dealing loads of unavoidable damage to my entire party. Shamino and Katrina don’t even make it to the end of level 1 but the rest of my party is still in reasonable shape so I push on resting frequently.

After level 1 it does get considerably easier and I start to get comfortable making steady progress down through the levels…All goes well until one particular room on level 5…

Click on through and read the whole thing.