Is the rest of the Age of Englightenment less grindy?

[deuxhero]

I stoped playing 4 because while the virtues were neat in theory, you mostly wound up grinding endlessly for them, instead of coming naturally (also: No one commented on the Let's Play).


Is this a problem with Ultima 5 and 6? 7 and 7?

 

[made]

Nah, nothing of the sort. U5 still has plenty of combat to grind through; 6&7 not even that.

In fact, can you totally avoid combat in U6 and 7? Not sure about liberating the shrines in U6, but apart from that I'm pretty sure you can just skip it all with invis rings/running away.

 

[deuxhero]

Is the combat something I have to seek out on my own in order to get past strong mandatory encounters, or number of mandatory encounters?

 

[MMXI]

You don't have to grind in Ultima IV. You should reach level 8 and become a partial avatar in all the virtues by playing normally. It's a similar story for the rest of the trilogy but with more options to avoid encounters or to make them piss easy (invisibility rings).

 

[BLOBERT]

BRO I FOUND COMBAT LESS REPTITIVE AND ANNOYING AS THE SERIES WENT ON

I THINK YIU SEE PLENTY OF COMBAT THROUGH THE MAIN COURSE OF THE ADVENTURE

 

[Bobtheblob]

You can totally cheese combat in 5 by having invis rings and magic axes for everyone in the party.

These items can be acquired en mass from a couple of chests in LB's castle that are magically locked. Skeleton keys for these chests can be found by following the shady guy in .. Minoc I think. Follow him to a tree stump and get a load of skeleton keys, rise and repeat to get all the gear you want, combat free.

For U6 there is far less combat and you can just run past a ton of it.

 

[Jaesun]

You can totally cheese combat in 5 by having invis rings and magic axes for everyone in the party.

Care to share a vid of using just magic axes and invis rings getting through this?

I'll be waiting...

 

[octavius]

In U5 no grinding is needed since you don't need to be lvl 8 to complete the game.
The combat system iand the encounter design better than in U4, so it never feels like a chore.

You don't have to grind in Ultima IV. You should reach level 8 and become a partial avatar in all the virtues by playing normally.

Depends on your class. As a Bard my Avatar didn't get enough kills to reach lvl 8 through normal play. Dupre was by far the most effective killing machine in my party, so unless you make sure your Avatar gets as many kills as possible a Paladin is the most powerful class in U4.

 

[Bobtheblob]

Man so much extra baggage in that screenshot Jaesun ... and no, going through doom twice was quite enough for one lifetime; I'll skip going though a third time for a movie when I can just link to someone else that used the exact same cheese:

Quote Ophidian Dragon

On the plus side, exploring solo is far easier. I used my invisibility ring to avoid monsters, and by some impressive luck I managed to dig up a magic axe behind some skull-key locked doors somewhere... And good grief, is the magic axe ever a powerful weapon! Everything dies fast with that thing.

Source: Ophidian Dragon - Blogging Ultima (Ultima 5 Day 6)

A bit more detail - In U5 if everyone in the party is invis the critters run away in most fights AND they have almost no health so you can zap them as they run. Easy looting and laughing all the way to the end game.*

*Shadow Lords and Evil Despot Kings void all guarantees

EDIT: Typos, always with the typos

 

[MMXI]

Depends on your class. As a Bard my Avatar didn't get enough kills to reach lvl 8 through normal play. Dupre was by far the most effective killing machine in my party, so unless you make sure your Avatar gets as many kills as possible a Paladin is the most powerful class in U4.

You get something like 5600 experience from getting all the required items in the game. Reaching 6400 isn't hard, even if you're a Bard.