Economy and Monster Patch for Ultima IX

The Economy and Monster Patch for Ultima IX was created by Novum Dragon. He discovered quite easily, that the lists holding the items for sale at the various merchants and the prices for their wares were saved as simple text files by the game, thus making editing them easy. The same went for the hitpoints of the monsters in the game.

The patch nowadays is often combined with Grandor Dragon's dialogue patch into one bundle.

Effects of the Patch
The patch fixes the economy of the game in that the highly unrealistic prices (common goods are too expensive, more valuable goods are too cheap) and the restricted item lists of the vendors (most stuff is only is for sale when you already found it or even better stuff) are all altered. With the patch vendors in general now have more reasonable prices for common goods and higher prices for good weapons and armor. The vendors also all now have a greater selection available. Also, selling items now actually gives a reasonable profit. Before, the resale prices were stuck at around 5% of the buying price. Now items can be sold at 15 - 45% of the buying price.

While the AI of the monsters (as rudimentary as it is) can't be changed without dissecting the program, the HP of the monsters are simple to change, and thus all monsters got more HP in order to make fights more of a challenge.

External Lings

 * The patch at the Ultima Codex
 * The patch at Ultima-Ascension.de