Dino's Guide to Ultima VI - The False Prophet

Contents

The Spam Cheat

The "spam" cheat is the most known Ultima 6 cheat around. Just talk to Iolo, tell him spam 3 times, and then say humbug. You'll get a cheat menu that allows you to get items, view NPCs, modify game flags and more.

This cheat is most widely known for the objects you can get. By typing the correct object number, you can get any object you want, including world tiles such as walls. Item lists can be found:

Another cool feature with getting objects this way is that you can create special items. You can make objects that look like one thing and behave like another. To do this:

  1. Take the number of any object from one of the object lists, for example, a halberd is #47;
  2. Add 1024 to it to make it look like the object after it - in this case, #48 is a glass sword so the object will behave like a halberd but look like a glass sword;
  3. Adding 1024 a number of times will make the object's appearance shift object that many times - for example, if you add 2048 to the halberd, it will look like a boomerang (#49).

More information about this, and 6 interesting examples of special objects to make, are at the Cool Tricks page of IT-HE Software.

The Alt Cheat

Pressing alt and three particular numbers on the keypad will produce some interesting effects. These are apparently debugging tools that were left in the game. To make them take effect, hold down Alt, press the numbers on the keypad and let go of Alt. The effects will happen when you let go of Alt.

Alt+213 will give you a bird's eye view of your current location just as a gem would, and it will show a long number. For example, during a visit to Empath Abbey, I pressed Alt+213 and got the number 74171407B0C30. This number is actually 5 numbers stuck together:

  1. The first 2 numbers (74 in this example) are your karma
  2. The next 4 numbers (1714 in this example) are the time of day
  3. The next 3 numbers (07B in this example) are your first coordinate
  4. The next 3 numbers (0C3 in this example) are your second coordinate
  5. The last number (0 in this example) is the plane you are currently in

Here is a screenshot to show you the effects of Alt+213:

The effects of Alt+213
The effects of Alt+213: bird's eye view and long number

Alt+214 will request 3 numbers from you and teleport you there. The numbers requested are the same as the last 3 groups of numbers when you press Alt+213 - the first number is the first coordinate, the second is the second coordinate, and the last is the plane. You can find a list of useful coordinates:

Finally, Alt+215 will make an hour pass - this can be useful when you're waiting for someone to open his shop.

Fun with Lord British

It's little known that in Ultima 6 you can both murder and rob Lord British. To kill him, you need a glass sword. The power of the glass sword is not enough to kill the powerful monarch when he is awake, so wait until he sleeps, equip the glass sword and kill him. He will stand up, but don't worry, he's dead.

Killing Lord British
Lord British dies under the might of a glass sword

There are three ways to steal Lord British's stuff. He's got leather boots, a protection ring, a regeneration ring and a unique Snake Amulet that can be quite handy. Here's how you can do it:

  1. Kill him (following the procedure above) and search his body.
  2. Cast a Pickpocket spell (level 5 spell, obtainable from Rudyom in Cove) on him and move his stuff to one of your party members, as Natreg reminds me.
  3. Use a little trick that I discovered. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to duplicate this trick lately, but I know it had worked a number of times when I first discovered it. Follow these steps to carry it out:
    • Find Sherry the mouse in Castle British and make her join by offering her some cheese;
    • Go to the throne room, walk up to the wall behind the throne and go back a little so that Sherry is near Lord British and the Avatar is further away;
    • Make sure she is the last party member on your party roster, then open her inventory and keep it open;
    • Go into solo mode by pressing her relative number (example: if she is the 5th party member, press 5), and make her attack Lord British;
    • When Lord British kills her, his inventory should replace hers. The name of the character whose inventory you will be seeing will appear as "Zeta", but the character icon next to it is that of Lord British;
    • Move all his stuff to your party before he kills you;
    • You can either die or escape via the Orb of the Moons with half your party decimated. If you escape, Lord British will try to kill you next time he sees you. When he kills you, he will resurrect you and you will still have his stuff;
    • You can also switch from his inventory to his portrait and see his attributes (Str: 30; Dex: 30; Int: 30; Magic: 0; Health: 255/240; Lev: 8; Exp: 9999).

Bag Tricks

There are at least 3 tricks you can do with bags, because the way you handle items in the game works a little different when you have a bag open in your inventory.

The first trick you can do with bags is to steal objects in front of people without being arrested. Just drop a bag, move the item you want to steal into the bag and take the bag with you. That's not considered stealing and no one will run after you for theft.

Another trick, which you can also find at the Cool Tricks page at IT-HE Software, will allow you to bypass the game's weight limitation. In other words, you can carry items even if they are too heavy. To do this, open a bag in your inventory and while it's open, get the object you want to take. The object will be added to your inventory whether it's too heavy or not. There are a couple of limitations mentioned on IT-HE Software, including:

Finally, there is a trick I discovered which allows you to duplicate items. I only know this trick to work on reagents. First, move a reagent into a bag. It's not enough to have a reagent in a bag when you load a game, you have to actually move it into the bag yourself there and then. You can move any quantity of the reagent into the bag. Then, drop just 1 portion of the reagent anywhere on the ground. 1 portion of the reagent will be on the ground, but you will still have the same amount of that reagent as before you dropped the reagent, i.e. you created 1 more portion.

Resurrecting the Dead

Trying to resurrect a skeleton can create an interesting character. This trick was first discovered by Doug the Eagle Dragon, and you can find it on his Cool Tricks page at his IT-HE Software website. It was later pointed out and described in more detail by Runenklinge who posted a topic asking about it at the Wayward Avatar.

The best place to do this is Empath Abbey. There is everything you need there, including a graveyard, a healer and a raft. You can get to Empath Abbey by going south of Castle British to the sundial, go west then south to two signs and follow the west road.

In at least one of the graves at Empath Abbey there is a skeleton. Pick it up, and if it is too heavy, you can use the second bag trick above to carry it anyway. Talk to the healer, and she will offer to resurrect the skeleton for about 350 gold. Make sure you don't have a full party of 8 before you resurrect it. Then, accept the healer's offer and she will bring the skeleton to life. It will be automatically added to your party (as long as you didn't have 8 party members before the resurrection), but it will be invisible. Doug the Eagle Dragon named this character 'Swift', so I'll use this name as well.

If you look at Swift's portrait, you'll see the portrait of Pushme-Pullyu, Sutek's abominated horse (which, by coincidence, is also the portrait you see if you try to rob Lord British using my trick - apparently Pushme-Pullyu is the default portrait for characters that don't exist). His strength, dexterity and intelligence are the same as those of the Avatar, but the rest changes whenever you board and leave a vehicle or vessel. For example, if you board a ship, his hitpoints will become 100. Whenever you leave a vehicle or vessel, Swift will look like a pile of gold coins. You can try this by boarding the raft just north of Empath Abbey. This is no coindicence; Swift really becomes the vehicle you board. If you open his inventory while you're on board a vehicle or vessel, you'll see your party there.

If you try to walk into him, however, he won't get out of the way as your party would - instead, he tells you "Thou art not on a Sacred Quest! Passage denied!", which is the same thing that the Codex Guardians tell you.

If you go into combat mode, you'll notice that Swift will also play the role of the Avatar, because you can control both the Avatar and Swift (notice the view centered on Swift in screenshot #5 below).

I've taken screenshots to show you everything Swift can do. Enjoy them below.

The Invisible Swift denies passage Swift's Attributes The Avatar's Attributes Swift as a pile of gold
First from left: Swift is invisible in both the game area and the party roster, and denies passage when you bump into him
Second from left: Swift's attributes and portrait
Third from left: The Avatar's attributes, compare with Swift's
Last from left: Swift turns into a pile of gold
Swift in Combat Swift the Vehicle Swift the ship
Left: Swift in combat, with a centered view since you control him
Middle: Swift as a vehicle - when the party is on this raft, they pass into his inventory
Right: Swift's attributes change when you board a ship

Abusing Magic

There are some spells that you can use to do weird things.

Obtain a pickpocket spell (level 5 spell, obtainable from Rudyom in Cove), and cast it on an animal. You can use this to steal meat from a deer or any animal that has meat in it - you can hunt without bloodshed. Not all animals have meat in them, so you can't steal meat from any animal.

With Clone and Animate spells (obtainable from Xiao north of the Lycaeum, level 6 and 4 respectively), you can get rich. You can animate any object, clone it and then kill it to duplicate any object. This is most commonly done with magic armours which sell for lots of gold in Trinsic. See IT-HE Software's Cool Tricks page for a screenshot.

A powder keg is not the only way to get beyond a locked door. Obtain the Magic Lock and Unlock Magic spells (you can get them both from Nicodemus near Yew or separately from other mages) first. Cast magic lock on the locked door, and it now passes from the state of "locked" to that of "magically locked". Now, magically unlock it and it's unlocked.

More Tricks

IT-HE Software has a page called Things your mother never told you about Ultima 6, which has interesting things to do, Ultima 6 tools and addon worlds and savegames.

The Cool Tricks page at IT-HE Software contains many of the tricks above and more. Some of the tricks that I haven't mentioned that are on this site include:

© by Daniel D'Agostino 2002-2007
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