Cheating in Ultima Underworld
Ultima Underworld has no build-in cheat system, however, weakness in the game engine can still be exploited.
General Cheats[edit]
Infinite Potions and Scrolls[edit]
When an item is broken it becomes a pile of debris. When a magical item is broken it also becomes a pile of debris. However that pile of debris has the same magic enchantment as the item it came from, but with infinite usages - it never runs out of charges! This is useful with healing and mana potions, or any potion or scroll you'd like to use repeatedly throughout the abyss. Be careful though! A pile of debris can be dropped gently on the ground. But if it is thrown it will most likely disappear.
The simplest way to exploit this is to put the magic item(s) on the ground in front of you and cast fireball at them until they're reduced to debris. If they're just "a pile of debris" then you can use Name Enchantment on them or take them to Dominus, just like identifying the old magic items.
Randomize Barterable Goods[edit]
When a game is loaded, the goods NPCs offer to barter are randomized. Iterations of this process may lead to better goods the NPCs will offer (either new items, same items with different quality, or different quantity). However, this does not affect items that the player has bartered off; they retain all their properties and will remain available for barter in the NPC's inventory regardless.
Also, there are other items that are designed to remain available (like the ring one bandit on level three has) and are not affected by this tactic.
Exploiting the Silver Sapling[edit]
When activated the Silver Sapling will resurrect, teleport, and experience-drain the player. These behaviors can be exploited for the player's benefit.
Breaking Skill Point Cap[edit]
Once the player’s experience reaches its maximum, skill training points will also be frozen. Death, however, (when followed by resurrection) costs experience, which then allows the player to earn it back, along with the training points. By planting the Silver Sapling, the player can repeatedly die, as necessary, suffer a reduction in experience and return to reaping training points.
Note that this has to be done before reaching the cap, since once reaching it, the game will lock down training points, a flag that will stay even after getting a point reduction.
Maximum level is 15 and the maximum experience points differ from one playthrough to the next. The exact formula is not known but the cap has been observed in the range of about 9,600 to 10,200. When you're on the 7th and 8th levels, watch your XP. When it gets up over 9,000 it's time to die a little bit inside. And the monsters on those levels give lots of XP, so you'll be back at the cap quickly. Keep an eye on it.
Warp Through Doors and Walls with a Silver Seed[edit]
Using a silver seed in inventory will attempt to plant it just more than eight feet in front of the player and will succeed as long as there is an unobstructed open space with a dirt floor that is not inclined and not triangle shaped. It will succeed even if there is a wall or door between the player and that target space. So this can be used to teleport through doors and walls (much like the portal spell in UW2) and all you have to do is die.
Quick Death Kit[edit]
To effectively use the Silver Sapling exploits you need a way to die quickly. A nice quick way is that if you are near lava just stand on it without any boots on. But there's an even quicker easier way to die, once you have set it up. You'll need to do this before you get the broken blade on the third level.
You'll need:
- the Moonstone. You're going to lose this.
- a way to cast Gate Travel. Could be a scroll or a spell. I'd recommend an infinite-use-exploited scroll to make it easier.
- a silver seed (or an already planted Silver Sapling)
- The dam on the third level not raised yet
And for the setup:
- Go to the third level, go the big dam in the East.
- Drop the moonstone on the little dirt ramp that raises up to be part of the dam.
- Throw the switch to raise the dam. This will crush the moonstone against the ceiling.
Moonstone on the dam, ready to be crushed.
And the activation:
- If you cast Gate Travel now you will die instantly. Make sure your Silver Sapling is planted first.
Find Hidden Doors[edit]
Using the get action on walls instead of the look action allows for quick discovery of hidden doors, regardless of search skill. If it says "Nothing to get." then there is nothing there. If it says "You cannot pick that up." then there may be a secret door there, continue with the look action or a reveal spell.
For a detailed technical explaination of this, see Ultima Underworld Engine Quirks.
Hidden doors can also be detected by moving along walls and noticing invisible movement collision zones, something that prevents movement along the wall when nothing is visually indicated to do so. For an example of this, move along the north wall of the corridor between the gray goblin camp and the spider caves, you will collide with the secret door if it is closed.
For a detailed technical explaination of this, see Ultima Underworld Engine Quirks.
Prevent Enemy Magic[edit]
If you've ever tried playing as a ranger or a mage, you've noticed that you can't fire missile weapons or cast projectile spells at point blank range. However, this engine limitation means your enemies can't, either. If you encounter an enemy with a devastating magic attack (imps, gazers, mages, fire elementals, etc) then charge them, get right up in their face, and don't let them get any space between you. They'll be forced to use their weaker melee attacks, making the game a lot easlier.
A technique can be used to avoid all attacks from a mixed attack monster. Stand just far enough away so that the monster can use it's ranged or magic attack. Charge your own attack here. When the monster starts it's ranged or magic attack animation, charge to close the space and the monster will have to cancel it's attack. Release your charged attack and then step back into ranged distance and repeat. Soon the monster will be dead and you will have taken little if any damage.
Use Easy Move like a Fast Forward[edit]
Not really a cheat, a feature built-in to the game, but some players don't realize it's there. To do an easy move, click the little gray up arrow under the compass, or press shift-W or shift-S. This will throw your character four feet forward provided there is nothing to collide with. Shift-X will throw your character two feet backwards. This movement is very jerky but is very handy at times when normal movement speed is restricted, such as when swimming, levitating, or walking on lava.
If you have the John Glassmyer patch (AKA the mouselook patch) applied, the easy move feature key mapping has been moved to Control-Up and -Down Arrow Keys. Also in this patch, descend has been mapped to the Control key, so if you use easy move while levitating/flying you will also be descending, so that's a minor annoyance. Use the arrow key below the compass to avoid that.
Ultima Underworld II: Labyrinth of Worlds Doesn't have the easy move buttons under the compass, but the keyboard keys work the same as described above.
File Manipulation[edit]
Permanent Light[edit]
The way the game manages light has a weakness. To eliminate all darkness, just remove the file SHADES.DAT from the data directory, making light sources obsolete.
If you find this extreme change excessive, there is a togglable light increase patch included in the Ultima Underworld portable kit.
Standard lighting
Gigaquad patch lighting
Deleted shades.dat lighting
Item Duplication[edit]
Items can be duplicated by the following these steps:
- Save a game with the item in inventory.
- Put the items to be duplicated on the ground.
- Save the game again, in a different save slot.
- Copy the PLAYER.DAT file from the first save into the save directory of the second save.
- Upon loading the second save, the items should be both on the ground and in inventory.
This works because items in the inventory, unlike the rest of the game world, are saved in the PLAYER.DAT file, meaning that transplanting a player is trivial.
Hex-Editing for Stats[edit]
The PLAYER.DAT of each save game can be manipulated in order to ramp up the stats significantly. Bytes 10 to 3F have to be set to FF and the bytes 40 to 4F to 64 in order to get a significant boost for the player stats and abilities. The game will detect this, however, and make mention of it at the end.