Ultima Online Chronicles, or My Adventures on Pacific in 2000 Year. Игорь Бойко

you want. It's logical to develop the abilities that you have thought of when generating your character. The more often and more successfully you will perform some operation, the faster the corresponding skill will grow. Over time the quantity will pass into quality, blacksmiths, for example, will learn to forge magical weapons and armor, whose value is comparable to the cost of real estate.

      Buying your own house is one of the player's first goals. This is a completely safe haven, and a warehouse, and, if desired, your own business. The price of the simplest house is approximately 12 thousand coins, for comparison: a simple bow carved with a dagger you can take to a store for 25–30 GP.

      It's a shame: there's an unclaimed chest right on the road, but it's locked, and you can't open it

Man to man

      In online Ultima, depending on how well the player behaves towards his neighbors, his name will be written in blue, gray or red. True, if the sneaky PK, I mean player-killer, will in between the killings of innocent travelers or workers to deal with all sorts of demons, skeletons, evil-mages, and negative NPC, then he may well return to the blue coloring. "Gray" character becomes such as a result of some initial evil deeds, for example, he might try to see what's in the neighbor's backpack, or killed a couple or three pets – cats, dogs or cows.

      If the crime is committed in the city, the victim can call on the help of the city guards, who, sometimes appearing just out of nowhere, kill the offender with a single blow.

      A "gray" or "red" character can be killed by anyone who wishes to test the sharpness of his blade on their neck, without affecting his reputation or karma. If he manage, of course.

      And here is the first quest I have to give up as I have no bolts for the crossbow

      In general, the PK'illerism is worth a special discussion. The possibility of becoming a "bad guy" is in the game itself, and at different levels. For example, you can become a thief and stealing on a grand scale. Play the role of scoundrel, which you will never be in life. Can you imagine how difficult it is to reach the top level of thievery skill in a game like this? After all, it is enough for someone in the crowd to notice that the thief is trying to examine the insides of someone else's backpack, and one can start killing him immediately.

      It seems that the most competent PKs are ours, the Russian ones. I assert this, having experienced on my own skin how they and their overseas counterparts operate. Our guys will first process you with a couple of spells, depriving you of the ability not only to cast in response, but also to move in general. Only then they kill you. Professionals at their job:). Not ours – stupidly apply brute force and attacking spells usually.

      At first, it pissed me off that some bastards, instead of going to crush the monsters, stand on the high road and bully everyone to the right and left. But as time passed, I realized I was wrong. Without PK, the game would have lost the lion's share of its appeal. After all, PK is Evil personified, and it's good that it exists, that you can fight it, serve justice, protect the weak, etc. The "good" characters have a constant opponent, and it is not dumb monsters, but often an enemy superior to you in many ways.

      These good people will soon finish killing earth elementals and bring my ghost back to life

      The most important thing here is role-playing. The game is an environment, and if players don't behave the way fantasy characters are supposed to, the integrity of the world is destroyed.

      Here's an incident that happened to me shortly after I pumped up my skills slightly and decided to go outside the city – to chop wood and make bows for sale. I was walking through the woods, along the road that leads to Minoc – you can't chop wood quickly enough near the town, you need to go a bit farther away. My attention was caught by some well-equipped characters who were running toward the town. When they stopped, they told me not to go any farther – there were PKs out there, so I could get killed. Soon it became clear that there was only one PK, but there were quite a few of us, so I had the idea of attacking the villain with the whole gang and killing him. In the end a final "GO!" appeared on the screen, and we went east to establish justice and restore the self-respect of those chars.

      As it turned out, PK by the time of our arrival also managed to get a company – next to him settled four blue players in the same, almost uniform clothes – black robes, thrown on full bone armor. My character automatically began firing arrow after arrow at the gold-clad red Herbalot, and my companions went at him with swords and axes. But the "blacks" covered the assassin with themselves, leaving only one side of him accessible. Moreover, they began to heal him with spells!

      This dungeon can be accessed without leaving the Britain

      After a few minutes, it was all over. All of "ours" went down rather quickly, and Herbalot chased me four times before my connection failed. The lag did its black work, and I continued to watch the scene in black and white as a ghost.

      And then the black-horns acted in such a way that if I had been there I would have shaken hands with them and bought them a beer. In one voice they started saying things like "Sir, you're the greatest, you are the best…" To which he replied that it was a pity he couldn't be "blue" because he liked killing so much…

      That's it – the Evil you believe in, which makes you resent, worry and enjoy the game to the fullest.

      Nevertheless, I took them all on my pencil. Perhaps we'll get some more fighting. I'll sentence them without malice, or at least I'll try.

      Some players put a sentence-command on the macro that covers all cases

Monster to monster

      As you can easily guess, game monsters are also differentiated by the color of the name or title. Even the most undeveloped character will always be able to find a creature that he can kill. You start with rabbits, small feathered creatures, and I have yet to see the limit of perfection. I watched the dragons from a distance and with due reverence. Fauna is constantly respawning, just as the flora. It's impossible to turn trees completely into usable logs, it's just that after a certain stroke they cease to give out wood. Of course, you can't make a lot of logs within the city or its nearest suburbs. However, the concept of "wilderness" in Ultima can be considered abolished. The most "wild" places are recognized by the toughness of the local monsters, but often we have to fight with the trolls and ettins in the vicinity of private property of some rich players.

      What got me absolutely thrilled was the NPC's hitmen! My first encounter with them ended sadly: the character was already exhausted and hungry, and then as if by chance there was a lag. A trio of red-named PKs rushed after me and, alas, after half a minute the screen went black and white. And then my assassin comments appear on it like, "Okay, look, what kind of armor do we have here? Bone armor?! And what's in here? Magic reagents! Wow!". Only at that moment did I realize that I was in the company of NPC, the inscriptions on the screen were changing each other too quickly, people don't print on the keyboard at that speed.

      To this lady blacksmith I promised that I would only buy armor from her

      The density of monsters per square pixel is not constant, sometimes you can stomp through the forest for a ten or twenty minutes before something worthy of wasting arrows appears. But the game seems to sense when you are low on ammo: trolls, two-headed ettins, all sorts of orcs, and snakes immediately pick up your trail. Once I saw a fighter get chased through the woods by 5 or 6 orcs supported by a troll. Lucky for him there weren't any mages among them.

      Each creature has its own intelligence, its own habits. If big "game" can be easily lured into a dead end formed by good mutual arrangement of trees, hills and other obstacles, then, for example, orc-mages or Dire Wolves will get to you in any case. And if you're not wearing any decent armor, all you can do is maneuver and shoot arrow after arrow at the pursuer (in archers' way).

      Another curious thing – monsters don't