Of course, before you venture into Shame and Doom, be sure you've done the following:
- Vanquished all three Shadowlords
- Gotten the Words of Power for Doom and Shame
- Collected all three Crown Jewels (Crown, Scepter and Amulet) and the Sandalwood Box
- Have everyone equipped with Mystic Armor, Mystic Weapons or Magic Axes, Iron Helms, Magic Shields, Rings of Protection and Spike Collars/Amulets of Turning
- Having the entire party at a high level is also a good idea. Be sure to get the Avatar to level 7 at the very least. (Ideally you'd have the entire party at max level, but it takes a lot of grinding to amass 6400 experience on six different characters.)
- Have plenty of the following spells: Vas Mani (Great Heal) and In Quas Corp (Fear). These will both be extremely useful. A few In Mani Corp (Resurrect) spells and scrolls wouldn't be a bad idea either.
Port information
The various computer ports of Ultima 5 are largely the same, though again, the IBM version sorely lacks music (when unpatched). The Apple and Commodore versions all play various songs in different situations while the Amiga version just has one that loops...
The NES port of Ultima 5 is a strange case. The story is the same but the gameplay is reworked a bit to more closely resemble Ultima 6. However, it's also very slow paced and unappealing on an aesthetic level, with drab graphics and one grating, repetitive tune that plays throughout the game. The game has also been scaled down considerably, with a much smaller world to explore, much less dialog, a smaller party size (a maximum of 4) and a clunky interface. All in all, a rather badly butchered version of the game, which is rather baffling as Origin themselves were responsible for porting it!
