Stuck at final dungeon

[Rob Volat]

I have almost finished U7 BG but I can't make any progress in the final doungen. I have seen someone mention that there is a bug that occurs in the original program that when you fly the carpet over the Isle of the Avatar, a door becomes locked and cannot be opened.

This sounds like a dumb catostrophic plot failure. I remember Lord British giving me a crystal and saying it willl vibrate when I get near the island, or something like that, but I do not remember him ever saying not to fly over the island.

Anyway, here is where I am at:

Skara Brae done
Penumbra awake, etc.
Got etheral ring, enchanted.
Got hourglass, enchanted.
3 generators destroyed, never had the Candellite helmets made - didn't need them(?)
Followed Abraham and Elizabeth to Buc Den
People at Buc Den says they may have left for Isle of the Avatar (not super clear if they are still on the island or not)
Found Hook's empty hideout (and altar?)
Found Gate key
Entered dungeon on Avatar isle
Pulled switch behind curtain
I see the three rooms

Now, The room on the left has the dead woman who supposidly has a key to continue but I can only walk halfway into the wall. To the north, I can only go through one of the metal doors, the second I can't open. And to the west is the locked bar door (need the woman's key?).

1> Can anyone tell me if the bug I mentioned earlier is a fact (how can I tell if the game is locked up without the ability to continue because I flew the carpet over the island).

2> Is the game corrupt because I didn't talk to the right people or something to get the helmets made but I was able to destroy all the generators anyway?

3> Is there just something I am missing in the final dungeon?

4> I would prefer not to cheat although I can't seem to run the program using the Ultima7 ABCD (alt 255) anyway because nothing happens when I type alt 255. (I use a win98 boot disk to start the computer which may not support the invisible character of alt 255.)

Any help is appreciated as I have spent many hours playing the game without cheating. (although I have only learned of these abilities recently)

[Mighty Dog]

You should have been able to go straight through the set of double sliding doors, the first should be down when you got there and when you stepped through the first goes up and the second goes down, letting you into the north chamber but blocking you from going back.

If that second door isnt going down for you then something is bugged, and you will have to cheat to get pass the door. Although in this case i wouldnt call it cheating, just dealing with a game bug.

[Tristan de Inés]

Don't know how to help you with your problem, but:

The gem LB gave you, that he mentions will shatter if you get too close, is related to Fire Island (where you take the tests of virtue), not the Isle of the Avatar.

If you use Exult, you don't need the ALT 255 Keys, you can simply use the internal "cheat" system.

[Rob Volat]

>>You should have been able to go straight through the set of double sliding doors, the first should be down when you got there and when you stepped through the first goes up and the second goes down, letting you into the north chamber but blocking you from going back.

If that second door isnt going down for you then something is bugged, and you will have to cheat to get pass the door. Although in this case i wouldnt call it cheating, just dealing with a game bug.<<

Thanks for the responses. The first door may have already been open as you mentioned but the second won't open regardless of where I go.
I am using the original program and not the Exult so I haven't figured out how to cheat yet. The alt 255 doesn't work for me. In other words, I'm still stuck. Maybe I'll go back and try to make the Callendite helmets even though I alrady defeated the generator, maybe that will get the plot back in synch and allow me to get past the second steel door. Any other suggestions?

[Mighty Dog]

I doubt the cadelite helmets will work, cause i went an tested the doors by cheating. I jsut started a new game and went straight to the entrance to that whole mess and worked to your point (not far in, granted).

I'd have to say to get the cheats to work, edit your boot disks, autoexec.bat and config.sys files. remove any lines that contain u7.exe or u7.bat. this should cause the disk to only boot up to the command line thus allowing you to execute the game manually and thus allowing you to add the cheats.

[Steven-J-S]

I have read several times about the bug with flying over the Isle of the Avatar on the carpet before doing the final dungeon, so it definitely is a bug in the original Ultima VII. Only way I know of getting around it is to cheat.

Regarding the cheats, it sounds suspiciously like you are using the following command, when launching Ultima 7, to get the cheats:

ultima7 alt 255

This is not the correct way to do it. You type in

ultima7 ABCD

and then *before you hit enter* you need to hold down the 'alt' key (should be to the left of the space-bar) and hit 2, then 5, and then 5 again.. and only then let go of the alt key. *Then* you can hit enter. (Also, I think the number keys you hit have to be the ones on the keypad on the right side of the keyboard, *not* the ones along the row above QWERTY.....)

I think if you don't have the isle of fire expansion then you don't type the ABCD part.. but it sounds like you do have it so leave it in. Remember it has to be in all captial letters.

Once you have the cheats working you should be able to bring up a menu by hitting the F2 key. Turn on the Hack-Mover and you can move the avatar past the door that wont open.. then you can turn it off again and continue on your way.

Hope that helps.

[Rob Volat]

OK, I was able to get into cheat mode! The problem was related to the use of the KEYPAD and the use of moslo. I am playing the game on a laptop which does not have a seperate keypad. Originally I had tried the upper row of numbers but obviously that didn't work. I then turned on the NumLock to turn the "J", "K", "L" etc lettered keys into a keypad. Again this didn't work. Apparently the laptop letter keys do not exactly duplicate the internal funtions of an actual keypad. I connected up an external keyboard with a dedicated keypad and Voila! It worked!

So here is what I had to do:
Normally I use MoSlo to control the playing speed because my characters die of hunger after taking three steps if I do not use the moslo. But I was not able to run the cheat mode with moslo. I had to run the program with moslo, get myself to the door I needed to move in the final dungeon, save the game, then exit and reload into cheat mode without moslo. When the game loaded up I had to immediately Hack move the door out of the way and then resave before eveyone died of hunger. I exited and reloaded the game using moslo and I am now continuing in the Final Dungeon.
Wish me luck!

P.S. If anyone knows how to run cheat mode and moslo, please let me know.
The command (something like) "Moslo 30/ ultima7 ABCD(alt-255)" gave me a "bad command" error and nothing ran.

Thanks again for all your help.

[Rob Volat]

I am at the black gate. I used the cube and other shapes to diasble the force field. The guardian gives me the option to either return home or destroy the gate and be stuck here. If I return home, I get the short message about "feeling guilty". If I destroy the gate with the wand, the program exits back to DOS with this error message:

"Sound hardware for static\sbdig.adv not found"
"Program halted by code."

Any suggestions? I am using a Pentium 133 laptop (Micron Millenia Transport). When I boot to windows, my system device properties shows a "Sound blaster 16 or AWE32 or compatible sound device". While running ultima from DOS, speech has never worked for me (the program would lock up during the opening credits), I usually have sound effects on (which works) but I keep the music off, as well as the speech - (obviously). I tried turning off all sounds and I got the same error message.

Any help is appreciated. Thanks.

[MV]

Try running setup (install.exe), outside of the game and disabling the sound hardware just to finish the game with.

[Rob Volat]

That worked. I was worried that it would overwrite my characters when I ran the install program again so I renamed the directory, ran the reinstall, then copied back the save games.

The ending was OK. I still miss the endings that give you totals on stuff. I think it was UltimaIII that told you exactly how many orcs you killed throughout the game etc.

Thanks.