Ultima 3: Exodus for NES— Downloads
Download the Ultima 3 NES— A New Exodus mod
- Ultima 3 NES— A New Exodus mod, version 1.0 (5.96 KB) — Released January 17, 2012. Downloaded 1649 times
Purposes and Aims
Though not strictly an "Easy type" mod, I have endeavored to blunt several annoying aspects of gameplay, and accentuate Ultima 3's strengths. There's a difference between giving the player legitimate challenges, and annoying the crap out of the player for the sake of annoying them. For me personally, Ultima 3 crossed that line. For example, why would raising a character's level actually serve to penalize the party's chance of survival? Raising a level did not meaningfully add power to the character, but it did ensure that you would be facing much more difficult enemies.
This said, I obviously feel that the game's good qualities could be made to overshadow those difficulties. As with many of my other mods, I have attempted to give the player as many party customization choices as possible given the confines of what the Ultima 3 devs gave me, and I hope I have dramatically improved the gameplay of this early gem of an RPG, and ultimately made it more accessible to players. Enjoy!
Version 1.0 changelog
- Painstakingly balanced the 11 Classes and 5 Races, per the charts in the next section. Here's a summary of what's changed:
- More characters can use mid-range weapons, and many can use better armor.
- Alchemists, Illusionists, and especially Druids are much better casters. You're not effectively limited to using a Cleric and a Wizard now!
- Thieves are great combatants defensively, due to much better armor (they are upgraded to a Rogue-type, fighting-wise). Barbarians are beasts offensively. Fighters are well-rounded combatants, albeit with no thieving capabilities.
- The races have slightly different maximums now. Humans, notably, have a maximum of 80 in all statistics, as a bonus for being well-rounded.
- Characters increase stats based on their Race and Class at level up (but never increase a stat beyond their racial maximum).
- HP varies between the Classes now.
- Characters may allocate 48 points when Hand Making them, 1 point at a time. 30 points may be pumped into one stat.
- Spells cost Mana at a rate of 3 Mana for every successive spell. The most expensive spells cost 45 Mana (down from 75).
- The Wizard and Cleric spell sets have been markedly changed. It should make for more interesting tactical choices for spellcasters.
- The effectiveness of attack spells have changed. Base damage for the Wizard's attack spells are as follows: Missile is 25 (unchanged), Flame is INT * 2, Crush is 125, Psi is 50 to all, PsiKill is INT * 2 to all(unchanged). The Cleric's new attack spells: Hurt is 50, and Purify is WIS * 2 to all.
- The effectiveness of the Cleric's healing spells has likewise changed. Heal improves HP by 25 to 60, and Renew improves HP by 200 to 250.
- You can reach Level 8 before taking the Mark of Kings.
- The monsters you fight in more dangerous locales (like dungeons, Ambrosia, and Exodus Castle) have always done more damage, but now they give you a bonus to EXP received. However, characters receive less EXP per kill the more EXP they gain (this is because if it were based on character level, this would be an incentive to not level up!) The penalty is 1 starting at 128 EXP, and increases by 1 for every 256 EXP after that.
- Armor reduces all battle damage (even ranged attacks and magical strikes) now, as well as its usual effect of making physical attacks slightly less likely to hit.
- Monsters are rebalanced. No monsters steal stuff. A few monsters have different special abilities than before. And monsters are renamed (the pluralization of all the monster names bothered me).
- Pirates now appear when a party member reaches level 3. Fewer Demonic-type creatures appear when a party member reaches level 5, but Insect-category monsters appear then instead. There are a few other changes to monster appearances as well.
- One monster happened to be dummied out in the code, and it can be encountered now.
- Higher level characters receive more gold from treasure chests.
- Food is consumed more slowly.
- Food is available in higher quantities at the grocery store.
- Characters regenerate HP a little bit faster.
- As well as some spells, weapons and armor are also renamed. Many armors cost a bit less than before; weapons cost a bit more.
Class-based and Race-based capabilities
| Class/Race | HP Base | HP/lvl | SP | STR/lvl | STR max | DEX/lvl | DEX max | INT/lvl | INT max | WIS/lvl | WIS max | Best Weapon | Best Armor |
| Fighter | 225 | 75 | None | 2 | 2 | 0 | 0 | (14) Rune Axe | (6) Dragon Armor | ||||
| Cleric | 100 | 60 | WIS | 1 | 0 | 0 | 3 | (04) Mace | (4) Cuirass | ||||
| Wizard | 0 | 50 | INT | 0 | 1 | 3 | 0 | (02) Staff | (1) Robe | ||||
| Thief | 125 | 55 | None | 1 | 3 | 0 | 0 | (08) Stiletto | (4) Cuirass | ||||
| Paladin | 100 | 70 | WIS * 1/2 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 1 | (12) Sun Sword | (6) Dragon Armor | ||||
| Barbarian | 250 | 90 | None | 3 | 1 | 0 | 0 | (14) Rune Axe | (2) Leather | ||||
| Lark | 75 | 65 | INT * 1/2 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 0 | (13) Elven Bow | (3) Chainmail | ||||
| Illusionist | 25 | 55 | WIS * 3/4 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 2 | (09) Longbow | (3) Chainmail | ||||
| Druid | 50 | 50 | (INT+WIS) * 1/2 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 2 | (05) Shortbow | (1) Robe | ||||
| Alchemist | 100 | 50 | INT * 3/4 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 1 | (07) Spear | (2) Leather | ||||
| Ranger | 125 | 75 | (INT+WIS) * 1/4 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | (11) Battleaxe | (5) Full Plate | ||||
| Human | 1 | 80 | 1 | 80 | 1 | 80 | 1 | 80 | |||||
| Elf | 1 | 75 | 1 | 99 | 1 | 85 | 0 | 40 | |||||
| Dwarf | 1 | 99 | 1 | 80 | 0 | 45 | 1 | 75 | |||||
| Gnome | 1 | 70 | 0 | 50 | 1 | 80 | 1 | 99 | |||||
| Pixie | 0 | 30 | 1 | 70 | 1 | 99 | 1 | 99 |
Screenshots
Installation instructions
The following applies this and all future releases of the A New Exodus mod.
- First of all, you will need to obtain a clean NES ROM of Ultima 3: Exodus. You are on your own for this step, as it is illegal to provide ROMs of copyrighted material. There are sites that do provide this ROM though, and you should be able to obtain it.
- When you get it, make a backup of it if you would want to play the stock version, play another mod, or, in case I post an updated version of the mod here... I am not going to make version 1.0 to "version whatever" patches for my mods, for instance.
- Download Ludmeister's A New Exodus mod.
- Use the IPS patching program of your choice to apply the .ips patch to the correct ROM. As I use IPS XP to create my patches, I recommend using this program to patch your ROM.
- I hope you enjoy it!
Praise and Feedback for Ultima 3: A New Exodus
I don't have time to digest all the changes of your mod and how they'd effect the game, but they all seem well-thought-out. Basically I wanted to write to say, "cool that people are still thinking about this oddly broken game"…
— carlmarksguy
Copyright notice
The content in this portion of the website pertains to "software" known as "Ultima 3: Exodus", which was created by Richard Garriott (aka Lord British), and published by Origin Systems, FCI, and Pony Canyon. The mod is completely unofficial, and was an amateur fan-made undertaking. I respect the intellectual property of Richard Garriott and Origin Systems/FCI/Pony Canyon, and under no circumstances will I distribute the ROMs for the NES versions of Ultima 3. The patch available for download is a derivative work and is completely my own. It is offered totally free of charge.