The "Adventure Quarterly, Vol. IX" mentions the Forgotten Riches of Knarl. Knarl was a great city of trade, and the source of many magic weapons and spells, which was rumoured to have been sealed by magic. Only one who is sound of heart and steady of sword will be able to find these riches.
To get to the Cheat Room, you will need to have completed the Earth section, as you will need the Key of the Scion.
Enter the Upper Catacombs, and find the building with the entrance to the Birthplace of Moriens. Go east from here through the passage to the eastern part of the Upper Catacombs. Turn south and walk past a broken stairway leading to a chest sitting on a high building, and continue south to a gate. The gate will close, but just walk away and it will lower again.
Go through the gate and turn west. Follow the path to a door with a sign reading "To Lower Catacombs"
. Unlock this door with the Key of the Scion. Saving at this point is recommended, as it is dangerous inside.
Do not stay in one place once you enter; keep running or you will be hit by a fireball spitter. Go west and pull the southernmost lever, that is not broken like the other one, and go through the southern gate. Pull the easternmost lever to open the northern gate, and go back and through the northern gate.
Walk past all the fire shooters and lava until you come to an open door with a fire shooter in front of it. The door will close, and you can get hit by the fire shooter if you try and get to it. Go in front of the door, as close as possible, but not necessarily in front of the fire shooter. Jump directly up, and you will be teleported to the cheat room. Note that if you want to make sure you won't get hit by the fire shooter, you can move one of the skeletons in front of it.
The cheat room contains every weapon in the game, whether magic or regular, except the Blade of Striking, as well as loads of explosives (I really mean loads, there's enough to blow up the palace), all the scrolls, all the shields and all the regular helmets.
Although the cheat room contains no visible exit, you can leave the cheat room by simply walking towards the southeast side of the room.
There is an invisible chest in the monastery on Argentrock Isle.
It is on the ground floor, underneath where the walkway juts out a bit.
It is right in front of the green curtains.
Reveal it either using the Reveal spell or using a Restore to Sight
scroll. It contains five orange potions and magic arm guards.
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| Altar of Focus behind the Tempest's bed | Altar of Focus before the first necromancer |
Doug the Eagle Dragon was perfectly right in his anti-walkthrough for Pagan! There is a perfect copy of the Altar of Focus behind the Tempest's bed in Central Tenebrae, as you can see from this picture! It works the same way, too. This should save you the trip back to Argentrock Isle, since you can enchant your foci in Tenebrae!
On 9th June 2014, Aka Manah reported the existence of another Altar of Focus, just before the first necromancer, and provided a screenshot showing it.
On 23rd March 2010, Jason Chapman reported the existence of a hidden room beneath Darion's house in East Tenebrae. The room is located beneath the dummies, and is empty except for some useless items.
Some objects have been hidden behind walls by the developers for unknown reasons. The known ones are listed here.
The objects behind walls can be obtained in many ways:
The Tenebrae Altar of Focus is not the only Theurgist device in Tenebrae! West Tenebrae contains another four of these!
There has been the rumour that there is silver ore in Tenebrae, and this has been mentioned on Prescient Dragon's Complete Guide to Ultima 8: Pagan. However, I was the first person to find and take screenshots of these 2 pieces of silver ore! The screenshots are shown further below.
In a particularly interesting topic that took place at the old Ultima VIII - Exile forums in mid June 2003, two more hidden things were mentioned. Sylvan mentioned having found silver ore behind a wall next to Korick's bed, and Junior found a fist focus behind a tavern wall! Kobra Kai brings to our attention that you should not place the focus on an Altar of Focus before Stellos tells you to do so, or you might have to start the game all over again. I took screenshots of all the hidden things:
This leads to the conclusion that there are 13 pieces of silver ore in Pagan - 10 in the silver mines at Argentrock and 3 in West Tenebrae.
The Theurgy devices mentioned above aren't the only things hidden behind walls in
Tenebrae. On 14th
September 2003, Tom Vorwerk told me to look behind the west wall
of the library, and I made an odd discovery thanks to him - 2 ordinary chairs were
hidden behind the walls (which I hackmoved to reveal the chairs). See the
picture for a closer look.
On 12th September 2006, Heiko Fischer sent me an email telling me about a secret key
blank which nobody seemed to have found before. This is a key hidden behind a
wall outside the palace in Tenebrae which can open many doors in Tenebrae. Along with
the information below, he also
sent me the screenshots above. I confirmed the existence of this key blank by using the
hackmover, and took the screenshot you can see on the left. Here is what he said:
It is located behind the western wall of the south-western corner of the palace. Where the chest with the Tear of the Seas is. I found it accidently while blowing up the whole palace with some oil flasks. One oil flask is enough to get it. Place it on the table as shown in the first screenshot (or a bit more to the left). Better save the game now as the key blank might end up being blown into the water. The second screenshot shows the key blank after the explosion. I couldn't make it being blown more to the left this time but you can still retrieve it with the aerial servant spell.
It opens many doors in Tenebrae. Even the locked doors in the prison. Very useful for some shoplifting. I'm not sure which other doors it opens.
Behind one of the North Pillars leading to Hydros, in the Ethereal Plane, lies a hidden book called the Cheesy Book. This book was written by Jason Ely, one of the programmers, to test the code for books (in fact "Jely" refers to him - "J. Ely"). His colleagues found it amusing and moved it into the Ethereal Plane to keep it in the game.
On 23rd March 2010, Jason Chapman reported having found a second ceremonial dagger while he was casting explosives at the troll at Treasure Cove, better known for being the location of the Slayer subplot. The dagger is located behind a wall near the southwest corner of the first room you drop into, as shown in the screenshot above. What makes it particularly difficult to find is that it is in a void area (where the graphics start to smudge) and thus even with the hackmover, it is not immediately visible. You have to actually hackmove the walls and then walk over it for it to become visible.
A nice little trick I discovered on Thursday 23rd January 2003 when writing my walkthrough for the plateau allowed me to enter into a wall and gain access to the void connecting the various areas.
For this cheat, you do not need to hack any game data or download any file. What you need is the patch, as I really doubt it would work without it.
To reach the entrance, get to the cave that leads to the Plateau from the Herdsman's valley and go to where you have to jump on the stepping stones. Now, go on the southernmost stepping stone until you see the south shore (as seen in the picture left). From here, jump all the way to the edge of the southern shore. The patch will allow you to do this, while without it, you will probably land in water.
The cheat entrance, as shown in the picture, lies in the southern rock jutting out to the water. If you jumped to the south shore, it will be directly south of there. Now, just walk straight into the wall, and turn a little west to get into it, but continue south.
You should now be under the ground, and the Avatar will not show any more. Go south and a little west until the large stalagmite with brown mushrooms around it appears on the centre of the screen, and go south. You will see the screen jerk slightly as when the Avatar jumps off a ledge. Now, you are free to run around the place.
Go straight south through the wall until you come to the end of the cave which will be a little to the west. The Avatar and the cave will smudge a bit as you get out of the area boundaries as shown in the picture, but don't worry about it. If you want to skip the cave and be teleported to the Plateau and resume the game as normal, just run back from the end of the cave, at the passage you can see, and you will still go through the teleporter.
However, you can have more fun by just exploring the void. You can see the other areas from the outside (i.e. outside their boundary walls), and you can do things like walk on the Ethereal Void outside Mythran's inner abode.
If you go west from the cave exit and follow the invisible wall west, then turn north with the turn of the invisible wall, you will come to the second floor of Mythran's home, and you can walk in the Ethereal Void, just like in the picture. I have also reached the Bonecrusher Cave and the Plateau using this cheat, and there is access also to the other areas connected to the plateau. However, I think it is impossible to visit other areas because the invisible wall seals the plateau areas together.
On 16th May 2003 I managed to get beyond the boundaries of the Zealan Shrine. This led to a totally new place.
Go to the temple where the Zealan gods are, and put two scrolls on the small table in the northwest corner of the room. Climb onto the scrolls on the table, and jump onto the wall. You are now over the wall between the Zealan gods' temple and Khumash Gor's tomb (you could use it to get into the tomb if you lost Mythran's scroll, but you won't be able to get out other than by recalling out). Jump over, beyond the wall, and you've escaped the area's boundaries.
Now, go around southwards until you come near the entrance to the Zealan Shrine. From there, proceed southeast and you'll come to a new little area.
This place is a little barren, as well as weird. It had two sets of walls - one was a circular wall with a column in its empty centre. The second wall also had an empty centre, and had the shape of a spiral. I managed to get a clearer picture of the spiral with Pentagram.
On the same day (16th May 2003), I also found a broken wall in the Upper Catacombs which you can climb into, and it leads into the void as well.
In his 18-minute video "Ultima VIII - Outborders" (2018), Fernando Akin uses a huge pile of wood to climb onto the outer wall of Tenebrae and thereafter drop into the void. He spends the rest of the video fooling around in the void, demonstrating the ghosting effect (previously drawn frames stick around), playing with various items, and fishing at the edge of the world.
There's a cave behind a waterfall in the northern part of Fisherman's Reef, which is where you find the blue vial. However, on 8th August 2020, I discovered that you can avoid the cave entrance behind the waterfall, and break out of the game's boundaries behind the waterfall, a few steps away from the cave.
To do this, start on the east side of the waterfall, and walk around the pool behind it. Once you are at the far end, keep walking west and you will fall down and out of the world. You can visit some of the caves in the area, but there does not seem to be much else of interest.
On 16th May 2003, the day I discovered the second and third passages into the void, I also checked the areas with the Divination (sextant) focus to see if any of the new areas was Programmer's Playland or any of the lost lands. Using the Divination focus at the new area accessed from the Zealan Shrine, the description of the place was still "Shrine of the Ancient Ones". Breaking out of the Plateau, all the areas you could reach are still labelled as "the Plateau".
This has led to a conclusion about the structure of the game areas. This is not a theory - it's been tried and tested. The world is made up of large areas, which I'm going to call 'mother areas', which are mostly empty but each contain some of the game areas. Wherever you are in a mother area (whether you are in one area or another, or even if you are in the void), the description of the place given by the Divination focus is still the same.
The mother areas are separated by invisible walls within the void that don't allow you to reach any other mother area. You can run around the void and go to any area within that mother area, but you can't leave the mother area. This means that since Programmer's Playland has its own description, it must be located in its own mother area - which means that there's no way to reach it on foot in the game unless you can find a way to teleport to specific places in the world (which, as far as I know, is impossible).