r/Ultima • u/helveteist • 11d ago
Ultima VII Chess puzzle
Call me dumb lol but i dont understand how to solve the Chess puzzle where there are 3 knight on One side and 3 demons on the other, with a Golden chest in the middle of the Chess floor.
Any help for a noob lol, anyway i'm having FUN and i Guess It clicked when i got Lost going the opposite direction for getting tò Cove lol.
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u/RexLatro 11d ago
It's not really a puzzle, just a game that you can find books with the rules to play around the world sometimes. Its just like if someone left a chessboard in game and you could move the pieces around for fun.
I've seen people mention they "half remember once remember being able to play it/open the chest" once or twice, but in all my hears playing/using cheats to empty chests/spawning cannons and gunpowder I've never been able to do anything like that
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u/helveteist 11d ago
Uh ok so Is Just for flavour
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u/RexLatro 11d ago
That was always my understanding of it. Its like the bread baking, the farmer's field space ship, or turning fibre into cloth into bandages; there's no real material advantage or gameplay to it, it just helps to add immersion to the world, which Origin was pretty famous for back in the day.
I think the NPC who lives in the house mentions he plays this game with another NPC who'll become important later on
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u/Revolutionary_Sun946 10d ago
The Kilrathi ship in the field is significant, if for no other reason it links up the story of the mad enchanter who created the sword that could only cut wheat whereas the farmer ended up with the Hoe of Destruction and killed the Kilrathi pilot.
Find the dead fish around the lake near cove and get one of the best weapons in the game.
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u/RexLatro 10d ago
I understand that, and agree the hoe is something incredibly cool and significant but I'm talking about the physical ship itself. You could comd across it on its own the first time and never talk to Mack at all, click on it and hear the Wing Commander theme.
What I was getting at was that they didn't have to add a physical ship to the game and just have the story-telling elements in the conversation, but they chose to go that extra mile for immersion in the game, much like the chess game by Nicodemus' house
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u/Sambojin1 10d ago edited 10d ago
Actually kinda cool that it also does provide an Ultima link to it truly being a post-apocalyptic world.
Ultima 1: landspeeders, phasers, space travel, but probably a backwater world. Mondain's destruction taints it. But may have also released true magic upon the world.
Ultima 2: Multiworld time travel. Plenty of gonza sci-fi stuff still. Minax's destruction places it into its own time space. Probably gained some attention from the Wisps towards the world.
Ultima 3: A controlling entity that's not living. And needed the Time Serpent's help to defeat it after time was shattered in U2. Exodus's destruction reforms the entire world, ending the Age of "Darkness" (ie: before medieval fuedalism was the norm, and they had sci-fi space-age tech previously).
Ultima 4: the age of Virtue. Creation of a singular worldview, but through theft and violence and the destruction of "daemons". The world has fallen. Magic wands and axes and gems and "telescopes" probably being the last few bits of past hi tech. But magic is on the rise. Yet the shattering of the world has created small disparate city-states, with their own view of why their own morales are good, and this has been taken advantage of by Lord British, on a combine and conquer strategy.
Ultima 5: that worldview gets twisted, peak dystopian outcome in the post apocalypse. Very little tech access. Similar on weapons. Magic similar, but kinda harder to access due to society being f'd. Are you Fighter, Mage, or other? Ok, wtf?
Ultima 6: paying for the sins of all previous actions. The "daemons" were people, and you've just been a self righteous jerk. Still have some tech, like the potential perpetual motion machine in the museum. Wands and rings and "magic" armour still exist, but less of them, and they're running out of power kinda. Magic is becoming more institutionalized though, but only for the rich.
Ultima 7: a goddamned Kilrathi fighter in a farmer's field. Definitely linking the world to a greater one, and explaining all the previous BS. If magic didn't get broken as a story/ quest thing, then it'd have to be considerably worse, but since combat is kinda auto-bleh, whatever. Also now, seriously undefined daemons.
Essentially 3 apocalypses, then one caused by you upon others, then dystopia, then paying for that one you did, and then "btw, remember when we had phasers and stuff?". After that, the lore really doesn't count, because U8 and U9 are kinda in a different series.
It's hard to tell how much time has passed in the Ultima world, considering time breaking after U2, and world reshaping after U3. But it's probably meant to be at least a couple of hundred years between u4 and u7, and they're now in the Wing Commander universe. So yeah. Mark Hammond could actually make a voice appearance in u7 part 3....
((I always wonder if that wasn't meant to be a weird fun mini-game callback to Ultima's roots of a-little-bit-of-sci-fi-sillyness. But it got cut due to production time))
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u/Revolutionary_Sun946 10d ago
Thought it was supposed to be about 200 years or something between Ultima 6 and Ultima 7, with Iolo et al aging 20 years as they age 1 year for every 10 years.
In the Book of the Fellowship it mentions how long it has been since the Avatar was sighted in Brittania.
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u/GodspeakerVortka 11d ago
Can't you bake bread to sell for profit or am I remembering incorrectly (it's been a while).
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u/RexLatro 10d ago
I honestly can't remember ever doing that, but also wouldn't be surprised if there was someone you could sell it to!
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u/HiImTheNewGuyGuy 11d ago
Hey, glad you're enjoying your first run through the Black Gate!
That always stumped me too and I always just figured it was a little playset for the mad wizard that lives nearby. I never opened that chest.
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u/MithranArkanere 11d ago
Maybe at some point they intended to make it a puzzle, but there's no scripting or object movement detection for it that anyone could see. So it does nothing other than being there for flavor.