Origin historian Pix evidently hasn’t had a lot of time to continue his playthrough of the Super Famicom port of Ultima 6 of late, but he has managed to post a third entry in the ongoing story of his attempt thereat. The changes made to the game fit it onto the Super Famicom have become a bit more apparent:

…This was always one of those ambiguous moral decisions you had to make in the original version. Killing them reduced Karma but worked otherwise. The pickpocket spell could be used either or finally there was a trick where moving a man-trap onto them which killed them off without any loss of Karma to the Avatar.

The man-trap is still in this version but there doesn’t appear to be any way to move it so I’m stuck getting my party over it the painful way. There is no pickpocket spell either as it is one of a large number of spells cut for the SNES. You would think this only left assassination but to keep the port family friendly all I have to do is ask them to retire and they hand over the guild belt with no questions asked.

He has also been having some trouble with the quest to collect the eight map pieces, specifically with Destard:

…it’s full of dragons and I’ve so far not even managed to make it to the dungeon entrance without my whole party being wiped out. This has called for something of a rethink of strategy.

I’m led to believe that mass invisibility is the best spell to use as I’m allegedly left able to attack at leisure while invisible. This meant finding the sole mage who would sell me the spell, Nicodemus. He is hidden away in the middle of nowhere and I couldn’t remember exactly where for the life of me. Much wandering around later, I’ve now bought the spell but I’m still one level too low to cast it so I’ll have to raid a dungeon or two for experience. I am moving forward but the end of the game could be some weeks off at the speed I’m going.

Hopefully he can overcome this hurdle much sooner than that and get on with the rest of the playthrough. Failing that, I observe that the map subplot in Ultima 6 is basically just a glorified side quest, one which can easily be skipped entirely by a seasoned player. I can only assume that the same is true for the Super Famicom port of the game.