My party seems to die much quicker wearing mystic armor than wearing plate mail. Is this accurate or did I just get a series of bad rolls? (It probably doesn't help that these observations have been made in Dungeon Doom fighting dragons that hit like trucks anyway.)

Additionally, I do not like you, Dungeon Doom.

i haven't done a comparison of, say, Mystic Robe vs. Magic Plate in 4, but the thing there is that 5 deliberately nerfs player hit points and doesn't correspondingly nerf damage inflicted by enemies - melee damage especially.

in 5, i don't recall Mystic armor being disadvantageous, but indeed, Doom or no, the point of spells and Magic Axes is, well, not to let dragons (or anything else, really) get anywhere near you. ;)

Shortly after making this post, I managed to push forward in my quest. Primarily, I was stuck on the awful, awful "sandtrap room."

I do thank you for the reply, though. Ultima V definitely makes you feel weak, which then makes Ultima VI, where in all the times I've played it I never really felt in danger, seem so easy.

The easiest way to beat that room with the sandtraps and dragons is to just cast "cause fear" or whatever it's called in U5. Putting monsters in flee mode makes them one-shot kills, two at the most. Plus they don't attack you. Not all of them anyway. If any didn't get hexed, cast it again. Easy as pie. I think you can also curse them all so they kill each other.

I made a lot of headway by relying on the many An Tym scrolls I had accumulated, as well as charming dragons and daemons and using them as cannon fodder and bruisers.

The final battles--especially the absolute last one--were not very difficult at all since the Crown turned the daemons into easy targets with choke points, and provided the mongbats didn't touch one of the pressure points that floods the room with lava, it was simply a grudge match.