I did not save after winning. I got the "let Lord British know you won" screen with my total number of turns, etc. but that's it. Hitting Q does nothing. in fact I couldn't do anything on that screen. No key commands did anything. I had to just close dosbox to exit. I tried saving right before answering the final questions and tried again but that final screen is all I get with no keystrokes working. Unless there's a trick to it I am unaware of, which is highly possible.

To my (somewhat dated) recollection, you need to save basically at the point where you're about to enter the Abyss - or at least ready to go. Perhaps the game adds a note to the save file when you actually beat the game, although the last room is on the (write-protected) Underworld diskette (we're talking the Commodore 64 version here) and not on the Britannia diskette, where you save your game. I don't believe that you had to actually beat the game to transfer your characters; in fact, I'm reasonably certain that my father, who did not beat the game (but came ever so close), was able to transfer his near-Avatar to Ultima V.

Could you give this a try?

Download the 'fixparty.exe' utility from here: http://www.ultimaaiera.com/ultima5/ultima-5-character-transfer-patch/

and put it in your U4TRANS folder, then modify the [autoexec] section of 'C:\Program Files\GOG.com\Ultima Second Trilogy\ULTIMA5\dosboxULTIMA5.conf' to be as follows:

[autoexec]
# Lines in this section will be run at startup.
@ECHO OFF
mount C "."
mount A "..\U4TRANS"
mount B "..\ULTIMA4"
copy b:\party.sav a:\
mount -u B
a:
FIXPARTY.EXE
c:
ULTIMA.EXE
exit

Then when you start the game, it should ask you for a drive letter. Hit 'A', and it should launch. *If* that works I would be very interested in seeing your save PARTY.SAV file from your ULTIMA4 folder, as I'm trying to figure out what exactly FIXPARTY does, but my save file doesn't seem to need it.

you can remove the FIXPARTY.EXE line from your [autoexec] once you've done the transfer so it doesn't run every time.

I have tried this, but I get the same probelm that Misterjams was-it only finds a 2nd level version of Mariah, who wasn't even 2nd level at the end. Any idea on getting around this?

Thanks.

Only the Avatar is transferred. No other character. Mariah is supposed to start at that level.

I know that is how it should work, but when I choose import in the U5 menu, Mariah at 2nd level is the only one who comes up. The Avatar, who was 8th level, max xp, does not. I'm an Ultima player from way back (I used my original map when replaying), so I do know what should happen. But importing only brings Mariah. I had saved the game in the Abyss-could that be the reason?

Thanks,
Lawrence

You shouldn't be able to save in the Abyss in U4 - it was save on the overworld only.
Unless that was changed for the DOS version. In any event, maybe that's your trouble.

This is caused by UAC in Vista/Windows 7. Your savegame isn't actually stored in the same folder as the game but will be stored in something like:-

C:\Users\YOUR USERNAME\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files (x86)\GOG.com\Ultima 4

This directory will vary depending on where you have Ultima 4 installed.

Ultima 4 ships with a default savegame with an Avatar called Mariah which is the one you are picking up when you try to do the import. You should be able to fix it by copying the file party.sav from the virtualstore directory into your Ultima 4 directory over the top of it. Make sure to back the file up first if you try this.

Alternatively, the Ultima patcher at http://www.pix.oneuk.com/UltimaPatcher.rar will map the savegame directory to a virtual floppy drive for you with a button click, if you look on the Ultima 5 patches section.

Thanks Pix!!! That did it. Great.

Lawrence

I googled and found this forum. Th patch listed is not available. So I dug around a bit and found in my Ultima 4 files a file that was party.sav. I copied and pasted that file into the Ultima 5 files and tried again and it found my character to transfer.