Linguistic Dragon has been having a grand old time with Ultima 3:

Well, this session covers a good deal of time, although not all that much of particular interest actually happened throughout, so we’ll see what I’ve got in store as far as content. But I’m thoroughly hooked on the game now – I think I’ve broken past that initial “compare everything to how Ultima IV did it” barrier and I’m now able to look at the game for its own merit.

When last we heard from him, Linguistic was at the point where he needed to voyage to Ambrosia. He opted to take a…somewhat unorthodox approach to amassing the necessary funds to do so:

So… I went the unvirtuous route. I went on a rampage in Yew, rotating my party around to help balance out levels (I noticed my front-line fighters were getting a lot of action and Aric was lagging behind a lot) as I cut down cleric after cleric after cleric, all in the name of money and experience, cringing a little every time I left the town and re-entered to start the process all over again. I bought Ivan and Olivia +2 Bows with the first wave of funds (they were still using slings and desparately needed an upgrade), loaded up on food, and then amassed cash for a trip to Ambrosia.

Uhm…and then again:

I went on my murderous rampage of Yew a couple times to garner the cash to restock supplies, and since I didn’t have any keys left and very few torches, I wandered over to Dawn to stock up in the guild. A series of bungled commands left me in a fight with a thief, and soon after a whole slew of guards. This was particularly tense for me, I wasn’t sure my party was in any shape to handle fights like these just yet! But when I managed to come out on top in one fight, then a second, I thought maybe I could pull it off. And sure enough, some clever maneuvering and taking advantage of how my enemies seemed to choose their targets meant I could spread the damage around decently enough, and my party limped their way out of Dawn battered and beaten but alive after striking down six groups of guards – forty-eight guards in total. Man did that boost levels quick!

But at least after all the carnage, some progress was made:

Anyway, once I’d gathered another good-sized chunk of change I went back into Ambrosia, this time with keys, to find the last two shrines. I had enough to max out Aric’s wisdom and almost max Trevor’s intelligence, so my main spellcasters would have a full pool of spells and deep MP reserves to work with. I snagged the last two cards as well, letting Aric hang on to them for the time being – sure he’s the hardest to bring up to speed with the rest of the party, but it’s because of him everybody’s kept in good health, and besides, he’s set to become the Avatar proper, so he might as well keep the heroic duties.

At least the people of Yew didn’t suffer in vain!