Origin historian Pix had to move his website between hosts recently, and while he hasn’t completely restored all of the media content to his site as yet (one sympathizes), he has managed to restore all of the posts, and has even found time to continue his playthrough of the Super Famicom port of Ultima 6.

Destard proved to be a rather significant hurdle for him, albeit one he was ultimately able to best:

The invisibility spell did indeed stop all enemies from attacking my party while leaving me free to attack them back and as such did provide the means to tackle Destard. It wasn’t perfect though as it tended to wear off on my party members quicker than myself. Also all the enemies still followed me around even though they didn’t attack so I was soon surrounded by swarms of drakes and dragons. With no way to exit combat and run away the combination soon led to all of my party being killed off and the Avatar having to tackle Destard single-handed.

Thankfully, the Avatar is by far my most potent attacking force so this wasn’t all that much of a handicap. There was some reloading required when invisibility ran out at inopportune times but I managed to make it to the bottom level and purloin the eggs. A quick suicide later and my party were all resurrected and ready to search for more map pieces.

I…don’t recall Destard being that difficult in the PC version of the game. But then, I usually sidestep the map quest entirely, removing any need to venture into said dungeon’s depths.

He then skipped things ahead a bit:

Once I had the 8 pieces, I headed back to Buccaneer’s Den. I was outright told where to look for the island with the buried treasure which isn’t the way I recall it going on the PC as it completely removed the necessity to build the map at all. At any rate, I followed the directions and grabbed the other half of the tablet. Something I didn’t do in hindsight is pick up a fan from the same room to control the balloon later in the game. I don’t recall seeing this so maybe it’s not in the port but I expect I’ll be making another trip back down through this particular dungeon to retrieve it later.

I didn’t fancy dealing with more dragons so I skipped Hythloth and moon orbed my way to the gargoyle realm after speaking to Mariah. I’d got as far as recruiting Beh Lem into the party after eventually figuring out how to dismiss a party member to make room for him (this isn’t where you would expect in the conversation tree), and had submitted to wearing the amulet of submission.

This is my typical tactic as well. Using the Orb of the Moons to travel to the Shrine of…Passion, I think…puts you quite close to the mouth of Hythloth (which is also where you’ll find Beh Lem). Dipping into Hythloth quickly to learn Gargish from Captain Johne is easy enough, and avoids all of the nastiness of the dungeon.

Anyhow, I expect that Pix will have wrapped up Ultima 6 by the fifth entry in this playthrough series, but I suppose we’ll have to wait and see.