Forum:Ultima IX - About Smith and other hilarious glitches

Oh hi there, I'm new here… and so on. ;)

I've recently bought Ultima IX (german edition, with cloth map, tarot cards etc.) and like everyone else (I think) I encountered dozens of bugs. Most of them are well known like crashes, NPCs on chairs and tables. Fences, rocks and trees floating a little bit over the ground and so on. But some glitches are really rememberable. This is my personal Top 5:

5th place: Moonglow. Yeah, Moonglow also known as "glitch town". You remember the shop were you can make an elevator appear in order to get into a secret room but when you use the elevator a second time you won't get out there anymore? Well, this is already a glitch, but it can even get worse. Get stuck in that area by just… walking through Moonglow. Yeah, I was walking through the town doing my own business, I wasn't even in any house, and then I just got teleportet.

4th place: Zero-G-Molly. Do you remember Molly, the only survivor in the destroyed town of Dawn, always lying in a beed in one of the burned huts? Well I've talked to here, then I climbed some hills and killed some ghost. But when I turned around and looked back I saw Molly walking through the cracks in the roof directly into the air. Since then she was never seen again in the hut. Instead I found her walking through the clouds in the sky… well and then she was completely gone.

3rd place: Hidden places. Did your Avatar ever fell through the ground? Maybe while walking over a wooden bridge. You remember the goblin camp behind the caves on the way from Britain to Yew? Well, there is a cementry. Well, once I jumped to the cementry from a high place and the result? I fell through the ground and landed… WTF, on the roof of a secret dungeon? At the end of the dungeon was a room with four skulls (one on every wall) and a chest in the center. Unfortunately the chest was empty. ;_; (Oh, everyone can visit this dungeon using the "fly cheat" pretty easily. Of course you have to know that there IS a dungeon.)

2nd place: The Avatar's doppelganger. Do you remember the lich in Skara Brae? Well, I was fighting him when suddenly… *whooosh* a second Avatar appeared with a fade-in effect (the same effect the lich uses in order to become visible and invisible). The second Avatar was slightly bigger than the original one (about the lich's size) and was just standing on the place doing nothing special. Only when I tried to attack him my Avatar wasn't attacking, instead of it the doppelganger attacked. Yeah, my character couldn't attack anymore. Every attack was done by his new found "big brother". But it seemed big bro' didn't like being left alone. When I went too far away from him the game crashed.

1st place: Smith the horse. Well, this is a glitch I am really, really, really proud of. Not that I have done everything special to earn this. ;) After I rescued Raven in Wrong and was ready to leave this prison I saw that there was some sort of "door" I've still missed. I killed the guard with lots of fireballs (damn! these guys are tough, and when they touch the Avatar he will put into a prison cell). Behind the door is the room with the cell where Cleo the "horse-killer(?)" is imprisoned. Usually she begs the Avatar to be set free. But in my case (the first two times of my first playthroug… yeah, I reloaded the game in order to make sure that I wasn't in dilirium) instead of begging me to let her go she… … … she said something similar like THIS: "Thank you! Oh and you should know that Smith told me that the four titans of Pagan are only a scheme plotted by the Guardian." Well, first I thought: "Thank you for what?" I though not too intense about this, when I later heard that this clue should never be given because the whole mini-quest is broken. And yes, this clue cannot only be read. You can even hear it with her voice. Unfortunately it seems that I cannot trigger the glitch in my second playthrough. Maybe I am not playing it "wrong enough" anymore (whatever this means).

(Note: I've added the results of the glitch to the wiki. - Edit: Oh, Sega381 was a little bit faster transfering it from the old wikia. ^^)

Nice find about the Cleo thing.... do you have a saved game right before that? It would be nice to find out what "mistake" triggers the clue-response from Cleo...--Sega381 19:17, 20 November 2010 (PST)

I fear that there is no save game left. They are all overwritten. I think I remember something more: Cleo thanked me for being freed from the prison, while she was in prison. But I have an idea. I'm not sure if I can find it, but maybe I can give you at least some proof that the text itself exists.

(…)

Okay, this is nice. The text files in the game are not compressed. They can all be read in the… well, in the german version it's the file Text-de.flx. In the english version it's probably Text-en.flx or just Text.flx. Open this file with a hex editor and look for the phrase "54006900740061006E" that stands for "T.i.t.a.n". If nothing can be found then try "74006900740061006E" that stands for "t.i.t.a.n". Here are some screenshots from the german version of the game, a summary of the text and a rough translation.

http://www.rpg-atelier.net/temp/Cleo-Hex_1.png http://www.rpg-atelier.net/temp/Cleo-Hex_2.png

The german text (with the old german spelling rules… well, this game isn't the newest anymore ^^):

Cleo: Oh, wie schön, da seid Ihr wieder! Smith, da ist der nette Mann, der mich aus dem Gefängnis gelassen hat. Sagte ich nicht, daß er nett war? Smith sagt, er mag eure Kleider. Ja, er hat sehr schöne Augen. -- Avatar: Das ist also Smith? -- Cleo: Ja, er sagt Guardian hat sich die Elemental-Titanen in Pagan nur ausgedacht, was immer das auch heißen mag. Smith ist manchmal etwas merkwürdig, aber er ist mein bester Freund!

Rough translation (NOT the original english text!):

Cleo: Oh, how nice, you are back! Smith, there is the nice man, who let me go off the prison. Didn't I say, that he was nice? Smith says, he likes your clothings. Yes, he has very beautiful eyes. -- Avatar: So this is Smith? -- Cleo: Yes, he says the Guardian just came up with the elemental titans in Pagan, whatever this means. Smith is sometimes a little bit strange but he is my best friend!