Ultima II: The Revenge of the Enchantress/Character creation

The Male Elf Thief is a character very often found in guides, forums and playthroughs around the internet. In this page, he's described in the Hard game section.

Character attributes

The character creation screen (C64 version).

At the beginning of a new game, you are asked to create a character.

First, you have to distribute 90 points between 6 different attributes, then you have to choose gender, race and class of your character.

Actually, it would be better to do the opposite: take a notepad, first decide what are the attributes you wish, then subtract the gender-race-class bonuses to determine the starting values of the attributes.

Overview

Each character is characterized by six different attributes.

• Strength:
  1. During combat, after Agility determined whether you hit the enemy or not, Strength determines how much damage is dealt to the enemy.
  2. Strength determines the heaviest armor that you can wear; either one of the two heaviest armors is required to complete the game.
  3. In the original Apple II version, Strength cannot be raised; therefore, it's necessary to start the game with Strength equal to 29 or 31, so to wear the strongest armors later.
• Agility:
  1. During combat, it determines whether you hit the enemy or not.
  2. Agility determines the strongest weapon that you can wield.
• Stamina:
  1. During combat, after the armor determined whether the enemy hits you or not, Stamina determines how much damage you suffer.
• Charisma:
  1. It adds up with Intelligence to determine discounts in shops; unlike Ultima 1 (and any other Ultima game), nothing can be sold in Ultima 2.
• Wisdom:
  1. It determines the success chance of casting a spell.
  2. Magic spells can only be used by a Wizard or a Cleric, only after they got a staff or a wand, and only inside a tower or dungeon; these areas are optional.
• Intelligence:
  1. It adds up with Charisma to determine discounts in shops;
  2. For a Wizard, it determines the damage dealt by the "Magic Missile" spell.

Bonuses from gender, race and class

Each gender, race and class give an additional bonus to the starting attributes.

From the table below, it is apparent that a female character is more powerful than a male. Therefore, in this guide, the player character will be always referred to as female.

	Attribute	Gender	Race	Class
Combat attributes	Agility	-	Elf (+5)	Thief (+10)
	Strength	Male (+5)	Dwarf (+5)	Fighter (+15)
	Stamina	-	-	-
Money-saving attributes	Charisma	Female (+10)	-	-
	Intelligence	-	Human (+5)	Wizard (+10)
Magic attribute	Wisdom	-	Hobbit (+10)	Cleric (+10)

The difference between character classes can be summarized in a triangle diagram. Note that Ultima 2 and Ultima 3 are the only games in the series where there is distinction between "prayer" magic and "sorcery" magic.

Character Class Triangle:
- Top: characters with no magic abilities;
- Bottom: characters with great magic abilities;
- Left: character with holy spells;
- Right: character with death spells.

Default name

The character from Ultima 1 to Ultima 4 is simply known as the "Stranger from another world", or simply the Stranger for short.

Other statistics

All characters start with 400 HP, 400 portions of food, 400 gold and zero experience. The maximum value for all these attributes is 9999.

• Health points, or HP, are lost in battle; if the Stranger's health gets down to zero, she dies.
• Food is depleted as the Stranger walks; if the Stranger remains without food, she will immediately die by starvation; different means of transportation can either increase or reduce food consumption.
• Gold is essential to buy equipment and food, to raise HP and attributes, and to learn important hints.
• Experience represents the player's score; it has no effect at all on the game; every 1000 experience points earned, the Stranger gains a level, that has no effect on the game, either.

Raising the attibutes

Unlike later role-playing games, attributes don't grow automatically with experience. The Stranger has to find out how to raise her attributes (see: 1990 A.D.).

The 99-rollover mechanic, or when to stop grinding

The maximum value for all these attributes is 99. You are not supposed to raise your attributes to 99. If you try to, your greed will be punished (even if Humility is officially introduced in Ultima 4): any attribute that gets past 99 is reset to zero. You should simply raise your attributes until one gets to 96, then stop: all your attributes will be anyway between 70 and 96. These values are lower than in Ultima 1, indeed, but definitely higher than in Ultima 3.

The prices in shops are affected by the value of the sum of Charisma and Intelligence. The algorithm considers their values as hexadecimal, therefore the discount process is not completely straightforward.

From the graph below:

• At the beginning of the game you can get a 38% discount if C+I equals 10+30 or 20+20 or 30+10.
• When the sum C+I reaches the value 86, you get a 62% discount in all shops.
• If the sum C+I reaches the value 160, prices will skyrocket suddenly to about 4 times their base value!

Let us see how to cope with the 99-rollover mechanic, case by case. It is quite easy, after all.

• Attributes at 99: when upgrading the Stranger, one random attribute is raised by 4. When one attribute reaches 96 or more, stop upgrading your character. According to the mathematical laws of statistics, the other attributes should be between 75 and 96 anyway (better than in Ultima 3!). Accept the fact that randomness is an intrinsic part of Ultima 2.
• Prices rollover at 160: when the sum of Charisma and Intelligence reaches 156 or more, stop upgrading the character. It means that many attributes are almost 80 anyway.
• 99 copies of one item: most items are obtained randomly after fighting a thief. Therefore, when the amount of one useful item reaches about 90, run from thieves instead of fighting them. Tools and torches are more common: use up some by exploring a dungeon.

For the remaining statistics it is even more easy to avoid the problem:

• 9999 health points: just stop paying tributes to the king when your Health Points get near the maximum.
• 9999 portions of food: just stop buying food when the amount gets near the maximum.
• 9999 gold coins: very, very unlikely, because of the high need for gold in this game; in the unlikely case you get there, then you did not need gold anymore in the first place.
• 9999 experience points: experience and level have no effect on the game.

Character creation strategy

Notes about attributes

*GOLD* is overwhelmingly important in Ultima 2: (1) to buy initial equipment, (2) to keep buying food, (3) to keep restoring Health Points, (4) to keep increasing your attributes, (5) to obtain plot items. Therefore, it would be best to create a character that optimizes gold usage.

• If the sum of starting Charisma and Intelligence is 40 or more, the Stranger gets 38% discount in any shop since the beginning of the game.
• The only way to earn gold is to defeat enemies in physical combat. Fighting prowess is ruled by Agility and Strength, with agility being slightly more important.
• Surplus items cannot be sold to raise more money.
• Wisdom is used by Wizard and Cleric only. Since raising attributes involves a random process that costs lots of gold, a Fighter and a Thief would waste about 4000 GC because of their upgraded but unused wisdom.

Therefore, the following two lists rank the importance of each attribute.

• Apple II original:
  1. Strength = 31 (it cannot be raised)
  2. Charisma + Intelligence = 40
  3. Agility
  4. Stamina = 10
  5. Wisdom = 10 (or as low as possible)

• Remakes:
  1. Charisma + Intelligence = 40
  2. Agility + Strength (as high as possible)
  3. Stamina = 10
  4. Wisdom = 10 (or as low as possible)

As a thumb rule, avoid creating a character whose race and class give a bonus to the same attribute. In particular, in the Apple II version, you would create an unbalanced character who either (1) has no discount at game start (thus making the game longer and more tedious) or (2) cannot wear the heaviest armors (thus making game completion impossible).

The most powerful character (wizard)

Female elf wizard	(APL)	(remakes)
Strength	31	25
Agility	24 = 19 +5 (elf)	30 = 25 +5 (elf)
Stamina	10
Charisma	20 = 10 +10 (female)
Wisdom	10
Intelligence	20 = 10 +10 (wizard)
TOTAL	115
Weapon	4- Bow (52G)	5- Sword (84 G)
Armor	3- Chain (136 G)
Food	500 meals (5 x 32 G = 160G)

Let's consider the most powerful character.

• GENDER:
  • Both genders give a bonus to one of the most important attributes.
  • Female gender gives a bonus that is twice the bonus for a male.
• CLASS:
  • Wizard and Fighter are the most powerful classes (the Fighter has a starting bonus 5 points larger than any other class; the Wizard has a starting bonus to intelligence/discounts and can use magic in dungeons).
  • The Cleric is an intermediate class.
  • The Thief is the less powerful class (it's just "a Fighter with less strength" or "a wizard without magic").
• RACE:
  • Human and Dwarf give a starting bonus to the most useful attributes.
  • Elf is an intermediate race.
  • Hobbit gives a big starting bonus to the less useful attribute.

From these and the above observations, the most powerful character would be a Female dwarf/elf wizard.

The best dungeon explorer (cleric)

Female dwarf cleric	(APL)	(remakes)
Strength	31 = 26 +5 (dwarf)	22 = 17 +5 (dwarf)
Agility	14	23
Stamina	10
Charisma	20 = 10 +10 (female)
Wisdom	20 = 10 +10 (cleric)
Intelligence	20
TOTAL	115
Weapon	2- Mace (20G)	4- Bow (52G)
Armor	3- Chain (136 G)
Food	600 meals (6 x 32 G = 192G)

The Cleric can cast three spells unique to her class. Two such spells are extremely useful to explore dungeons: Pass-wall and Surface.

The races that fit best a cleric are Dwarf and Human. In fact, an elf would have no discount at game start, while a hobbit would double the starting bonus to wisdom, but that attribute is useless at game start.

Speed run character (fighter)

Female human fighter	(APL & remakes)	(C64)
Strength	31 = 16 +15 (fighter)	26 = 16 +10 (fighter)
Agility	29
Stamina	10
Charisma	20 = 10 +10 (female)
Wisdom (unused)	(10)
Intelligence	20 = 15 +5 (human)
TOTAL	110	105
Weapon	5- Sword (84G)
Armor	3- Chain (136G)
Food	500 meals (5 x 32 G = 160G)

A speed run is a game where all optional areas and all optional elements of the game are skipped, and every possible advantage is exploited. If you were told that Ultima 2 is the worst Ultima game, but you still want to give it a quick look, you might choose this option.

The Fighter has no access to magic, but his starting bonus is +15 (instead of +10 for the other three classes). Magic is useless in a speed run, because it can only be used in optional areas (i.e. dungeons and towers).

Note that in the C64 version, the Fighter's starting bonus is +10, the same as the other three classes.

Hard game challenge (thief)

Male elf thief	(APL)	(remakes)
Strength	31 = 26 +5 (male)	25 = 20 +5 (male)
Agility	25 = 10 +15 (elf thief)
Stamina	10
Charisma	20
Wisdom (unused)	(10)
Intelligence	14	20
TOTAL	100
Weapon	4- Bow (84G)	4- Bow (52G)
Armor	2- Leather (84G)	3- Chain (136G)
Food	400 meals (208G)	600 meals (192G)

Let's go against all the strategies explained so far, and let's consider the character that makes Ultima 2 as hard and tedious as possible: the Male Elf Thief.

Strange enough, this character is extremely popular in forums, guides and playthroughs around the web; at the same time, Ultima 2 is often reviewed as the lowest point in the series. Coincidence?

Let's see how this character is the worst:

• Gender: male gender gives a bonus that is half the bonus of a female.
• Class: a thief is equivalent to "a fighter with less strength" or to a "wizard without magic".
• Race: it was noted above that matching race and class to the same attribute is a bad strategy; let's do it now, and choose an elf.

In the Apple II original, a Male Elf Thief cannot get any discount at the beginning of the game; therefore, he'll start with a lighter armor and less food than the other classes.