Ultima I-IV Patches & Updates Recap

Aside from offering a very interesting retro interview with Richard Garriott we’ve already reported on, Ultima Aiera recently also offered a recap on the updates and patches now available for the first four Ultima titles and the two Ultima Underworld titles, especially for all of those that grabbed them now that they’re available on Good Old Games. Here’s on Ultima IV: Quest of Avatar:

There are a few different updates that can be applied to Ultima 4.

The EGA graphics patch improves the look of the game somewhat, although the more dramatic improvement comes from the Ultima 4 Upgrade package, which adds VGA graphics and the original (and better) musical score from the Apple and Commodore versions of the game.

Note: the upgrade patch requires DPMI, which is not supported natively in DOSbox (which the Good Old Games version of the game uses as a wrapper/launcher). To get DPMI working, extract this file to the root folder of the game.

Additionally, the upgrade can’t be installed under DOS, as one of its files, (avpatch.exe), is a Windows console application. A patched, DOS-friendly version is available here.

Also, it is critically important that, in Good Old Games’ version of Ultima 4, you create and save a character before applying the upgrade; failure to do so will render the game unplayable.

Patches you may want to apply include this fix for the dungeon of Hythloth, and the runic font replacement patch if you are feeling particularly brave and want all the English-language signage in the game to be presented in a runic font instead.

Finally, if you feel like cheating, there is a character editor for Ultima 4, a cheat program for Ultima 1, Ultima 3, Ultima 4, and Ultima 5, and a savegame editor for the first five Ultima titles.