This was published in 1990 by Origin and is available to download from http://www.replacementdocs.com. The nice colour front cover from U5’s cluebook is gone and this has a far less attractive purple monochrome drawing. It’s the worst looking of the cluebooks so far, as the first two at least had textured paper for their covers giving them a fake olde-worlde look.

The book is supposedly written by the bard Mandrake who offers an irreverent guide to the realm, with additional notes from Taynith who has glimpsed the future and offers very specific hints in a different font. This structure works very well and allows you to skip her clues if you don’t want to know what is coming.

We start as ever with a guide to all the towns and locations in Britannia. Once again, the format used for the maps changes and it uses a drawn overhead view with lines pointing to locations of interest. There is a lot more text to go along with the more complex and characterful towns of U6. This is written in an entertaining style with Mandrake’s fondness for taverns featuring prominently.

After some details on weapons, shop prices, and details on how to teleport around with the moonstone, the book goes over to the prophecies of Taynith. This is where the real spoilers are and gives outright answers as to what you need to do and where items you need are located. It is basically a complete walkthrough of the game and the first of the Ultima cluebooks to include this. The last section of the book is a Gargish dictionary if you fancy doing some translating which is an interesting addition. There is actually a passage in Gargish on the first page of the book although I’ve not attempted to translate it myself.

Ultima 6 marked a significant shift in the series as it moved over to the PC, dropped the 3D dungeons and started to leave behind its RPG routes in favour of exploring and interaction over combat. The cluebook has also shifted its design somewhat and is starting to look more like the guides that came later in the 90’s. There are tables of data here and a full walkthrough for the first time. The mock guide to Britannia style of presentation was carried through though making this a half decent read while it gets its information across.

This was published in 1988 by Origin. I seem to remember there being two versions with only the first edition having the colour front cover. Once again this is available to download from http://www.replacementdocs.com. It is about twice the size of the Ultima 4 cluebook, although the same could be said of the game so this is no surprise.

The book starts with the familiar towns and locations section which takes up two thirds of the pages. It’s back to overhead views for the maps which this time using the actual graphics from the game. This is more useful for finding your way around, if less atmospheric. This guide also adds the co-ordinates of the town + the shop prices. After this section, there are some new parts offering the sort of detail that was missing in the U4 cluebook. This includes a list of all the unique items and roughly where to find them.

The dungeon maps are next, followed by an extremely useful map of the underworld complete with highlighted locations of interest. This really would save a lot of trial and error searching around the most dangerous part of the game. Finding the three shards without this will take a lot more effort.

The book ends with a brief passage on how Lord Shalineth (the supposed author of this book) attained some of the knowledge within from a mysterious child who appeared in his keep one morning.

Paths Of Destiny addresses the problems I had with the U4 guide and contains the extra bit of information that could help you to get through the game. It does this while still maintaining the pretense of being a guidebook prepared to help the Avatar and has a little more (although not much) background detail to boot. There wasn’t a whole lot of extra content for the Ultima fans here though.

I’ve got a bit of time on my hands today but no access to my collection since I’m not at home, so I thought I’d go through a few of the Ultima cluebooks I scanned in several years back. All of these are downloadable from http://www.replacementdocs.com. I won’t go into too much detail since they are available for anyone to read themselves, and will just do a few short(ish) posts. I’ll start off with the Ultima 4 cluebook which was published in 1986 by Origin.

Something I have noticed is that the newer these books get, the larger they get. Ultima 4 being one of the oldest is therefore particularly short. It’s a similar format to the Ultima 3 one with the obvious difference being that the ASCII maps of the towns are now replaced with an isometric drawing instead. This definitely helps to give the book the impression of being a guide to Britannia which is how it is presented.

The book is spilt into town and dungeon sections. Starting with the towns, along with the drawing there is a little text that goes along with each. This usually mentions a few people you need to talk to but doesn’t contain anything in the way of backstory. Since you always need to talk to more or less everyone in Ultima games, this isn’t especially helpful.

It’s a similar structure with the dungeons, although the text here is more useful telling you where to find altar rooms and the coloured stones. Rather than drawings, the maps here are more conventional overhead views of each level of a dungeon. If you want help beating the game, this is the truly useful bit and will save a lot of mapping.

The book ends with a single page about using the shrines. Even more so than Ultima 3, I think it’s striking just how much is left out of this cluebook. It mentions needing the bell, book and candle but gives you no idea where to get them. It doesn’t even say how to achieve the fundamental requirements of your quest or what actions affect your virtues. This is definitely no walkthrough and even with this guide you will still have to play the game properly finding clues for yourself if you are going to finish it. I quite like this aspect of it and how the book never comes out of character as such but if I’m honest there probably should have been more content here. This book is helpful but doesn’t hand the answers to you on a plate and you certainly wouldn’t see a game guide like this by the early 90’s.