The outdoor map first encountered in Ultima I would continue to grow in each successive game and become a staple of the long running series.
I beat Ultima I last night and as I did so I punched a fist into the air as if my team had just scored a touchdown. I will write a final review of my experience but before I do I wanted to present my findings and data collection from roaming all over Sosaria.
There exists in the world of Sosaria 4 continents. Each continent has 2 castles, 8 towns, 9 dungeons, and 2 sign posts. I was surprised about two things: 1) that there were actually four large continents to explore; and 2) that there were an equal number of castles, towns, and dungeons on each continent. Ultima I took me 24 hours to complete and much of that time was spent thoroughly exploring and mapping out each of the four continents. In doing so it gave me a deeper appreciation of the game and a specific lens into the creative genius ofRichard Garriott a.k.a. Lord British.
I learned through reading that many of the towns are named after close friends, fellow programmers working on the game, family members, and past girlfriends. Richard Garriott would continue to do this throughout the entire series. The City of Helen for example is named after his mother and the City of Linda is named after one of his girlfriends.
The Key above matches the map that I made as I was traversing the continent. I have all four continents mapped out like this and as soon as I finish them I will post the final drafts for you.
I love some of the dungeon names that you find in each of the four continents. The Unholy Hole and Mondain’s Gate To Hell are two of my favorite names from the Lands of Lord British.
One of the biggest obstacles that stopped me from playing and experiencing any of the Ultima series when I was younger was feeling intimidated by the large outdoor maps. I wanted to turn my weakness and fear into my greatest strength and that is why I decided to map the four continents in Ultima I like I did.
The creation of these outdoor maps and the discovery of each location on the four continents was a painstaking process however it heightened my overall enjoyment of the game. Furthermore I found that as I progressed to later stages of the game that it made backtracking and moving about the four continents extremely easy and saved me a lot of time in the late stages.
I found that the dungeons in Ultima I share some interesting characteristics. Every single dungeon in the game has 10 levels. Each level is contained in a 9 x 9 grid. Every ladder down and every ladder up will always be found in the same two locations on the grid on each level. Each dungeon seems to be randomly generated for each new character and campaign that you begin and then that configuration remains the same. There is nothing unique about any of the 27 dungeons found in the game. So when it comes time to complete your quests, it is best to pick just one dungeon to map and stick to. I chose the Mines of Mt. Drash to complete my quests. I did map out the first two levels so that I could accrue experience and hit points easily but then I merely used Ladder Down and Ladder Up spells to get to the lower levels quickly and then escape them quickly too. Knowing that ladders going up and down are fixed, you can travel to one of those locations and only use half of the spells that you need.
So this is the data collected of my travels in the four continents of Sosaria. It involved a lot of time and patience and this travelin’ man wanted to share it with you. They say the journey itself is half the fun and I’m inclined to agree. Spending so much time with the journey heightened my own journey metaphorically and I’m more than happy to bring you along as well.
My next blog post will have my final review and thoughts on Ultima I.
I’m puzzled on one thing — the original game came with maps — were you not looking at those at all? I seem to remember finding most of what I needed on there without extensive notes, although I do find your hand-drawn map highly appealing.
btw, I have the Addams book on my shelf, but it’s first edition — pretty sure it was written before VII.
Hello Jason,
Well the long answer is I purchased Ultima I from GOG. It did come with a manual but I saw no map. I did see how a collection sold later looked like it came with a color picture of the four continents – though I can’t speak to the details of that map. I talked about immersion and reciprocity in my last blog post. I had always been intimidated by the large outdoor maps in Ultima and I’ve never played. I went in completely blind. I turned my greatest fear into a strength and decided to map by hand the entire outdoor area. Doing so gave me a sense of immersion much like – and this is a stretch but I think you’ll understand – the poem did Empire of the Overmind. They are two completely different things but each in it’s own way helped me to connect to the game in question. While I was carefully crafting the outdoor Ultima I map I actually found that by the end of the game I had missed nothing. I had uncovered every single piece of information I was supposed to obtain; this degree of thoroughness ( though I get I went a bit overboard ) really served to give me a greater appreciation of the game. Could I have avoided the extra work? Probably, but I’m glad I chose to go this route as it heightened my overall experience. Thank you for stopping by. I always enjoy reading each of your own posts.
It came out a little before my time, but I snagged the Collections I-III and IV-VI and they had cloth maps for everything.
I would say use the Ultima II map at least when you get to that — I think parsing what’s going on with that thing (which isn’t as clear-cut as with Ultima I) is part of the experience.
Thanks Jason. I would love to have the cloth maps for each of the games. Probably about the only thing (possibly other than the box) that I would like to collect. I appreciate the advice on the Ultima II map and will use it