Bretaheim (alpha)

Ultima V: Warriors of Destiny rebuilt inside Valheim: Britannia as the world, its towns, castles and dungeons to walk into, its people on their daily schedules with their original conversations.

Alpha. Most of the game is in and playable from Iolo's hut to the Underworld, but expect rough edges, missing pieces and changes between versions. Play it in a new world. Bug reports are welcome on GitHub.

You need your own copy of Ultima V

No Ultima V data ships with this mod. It reads the game files (DATA.OVL, BRIT.DAT, TOWNE.DAT, ...) from your own copy, for example the GOG release, at start-up.

1. Install the mod (r2modman or manually, together with BepInExPack and Jötunn).
2. Start Valheim once, then quit. This creates BepInEx/config/tarbaby.bretaheim.cfg.
3. Set UltimaVDirectory in that file to the folder that holds DATA.OVL, for example C:\GOG Games\Ultima 5 or ~/Ultima 5.
4. Start Valheim and create a new world. New worlds are Britannia (their seed starts with "Britannia"); worlds with other seeds stay vanilla Valheim. If the folder is wrong, the BepInEx log lists the missing files and the mod stays disabled.

What is in it

• Britannia from BRIT.DAT at 32 m a tile, with the Underworld beneath it as a second continent.
• Towns, castles, keeps and dwellings built from the original maps, floor by floor, with their furniture, signs, locked doors, secret walls and the harpsichord.
• Townsfolk on their original schedules, with their conversations, shops, inns, healers, shipwrights, stables and guards (fire a town's ballista and see what happens).
• The Avatar: Hildir's gypsy questions, Ultima stats on the Tab screen, karma, food, experience and levels. Dying costs experience, not items: Lord British raises you in his throne room.
• Magic: reagents, mixing, the 48 spells, scrolls and potions (cast with Z).
• Monsters with their Ultima names and colours, random encounters by the original's rates.
• Dungeons, the moongates and moons, the Shadowlords, ships, skiffs, horses and the magic carpet, the shrines and the story's scenes up to Lord British's rescue.

Console

Press F5 and type u5 for the commands: u5 quest, u5 karma, u5 time, u5 moons, u5 intro, u5 dump <table>, and more with devcommands on.

Multiplayer

Every player and the server need the mod (the same minor version) and their own Ultima V files.

Changelog

0.3.3 (alpha)

• The introduction shows more of what its words tell: clouds over the moon, the Codex forming in the circle, the amulet falling onto the bed, the Ankh in its glass case, the amulet and Ankh glowing within the stones, a lightning strike, the Shadowlords out of swirling darkness, the black arrow formed in the air (glowing red), pulled out and hurled, the amulet's flare, the hut's warm light, Iolo's steaming mugs, and his lute heard through the door until the knock. The moongate is wholly blue.
• Each scene has its own shots, close on the moments that matter; softer light over the action, moonbeams in the woods, the hearth's glow.
• Long paragraphs read in pages that turn by themselves (Space turns one); the whole is two minutes shorter.
• Props in scenes no longer sparkle like loot on the ground.

0.3.2 (alpha)

• The introduction is played in the world: "Return to the View", the original title's demo, its four scenes (The Summoning, The Journey, The Arrival, The Welcoming) built from its own tile maps and acted by Valheim figures, the Avatar in thy likeness, with the Introduction's words as subtitles at their moments and Iolo's tale by the hearth. Space goes on, Escape skips; u5 intro replays it, u5 intro 0-3 from a scene, u5 intro 2d shows the original's pictures instead.
• Quitting during the introduction or Lord British's scene no longer saves thee in the sky (to fall to thy death when next thou camest in).

0.3.1 (alpha)

• Hildir waits in Iolo's hut on a dedicated server too (she never appeared there).
• Guards draw a new spear once their throw is over (they filled their packs trying mid-throw and fought on bare-handed, at a cost every frame of a town's fight).
• No more errors from the pouch panel after loading another world.

0.3.0 (alpha)

• Dying is the original's: nothing is lost (no tombstone, no corpse run, no "No skill drain"), but Lord British's raising costs experience by thy karma (and the level it no longer earns); he raises thee in his throne room with full hit points and mana, karma at least 75, at six in the morning, with 63 rations if thou hadst none, after his scene from the original, played in the world: thou liest in a black void, seen from above, two guardians appear (the Valkyrie who brings thee to Valheim and a Fallen Valkyrie), thunder, and his glowing apparition speaks.
• Every new Avatar wears the Ankh again, and the Ankh worn counts as 10 more karma (not lost when taken off: the karma itself is unchanged).
• A grave's risen dead is a Draugr (with the skeleton's numbers), not a skeleton.
• No dotted area circles round the settlements' crafting stations and other pieces.
• Iolo's hut has no workbench any more.
• Wild thistles give Blood Moss and mushrooms Spider Silk; a wild mushroom looks like bones lying there, and a thistle's green glow is dark red.
• A new character's Tab screen shows the Ultima stats (it was empty until a Valheim skill was learnt).
• Monsters show their Ultima names (Giant Spider, Giant Rat …), not their Valheim bodies' names, and are coloured as the original draws them (red trolls, brown orcs, white skeletons, grey spiders …), bodies too.
• Guards you refused to go quietly with no longer take you to Yew after a minute's fight: they fight you until you leave the town (as before, leaving the town or dying ends the crime).
• Random encounters come with every tile thou walkest (as the original's turns), and the creatures now hunt thee down instead of wandering where they appeared; more come by night, from dusk to five.
• Searching as in the original: beds (not thine), barrels, stumps, wardrobes, chests, pots, hearths and braziers are searched with E ("Under the bed thou dost find …"); some of the hidden treasures are in beds. Town furniture no longer stores, brews, burns fuel or crafts. No Wet, Cold, Freezing, Shelter or Fire effects. The pouch takes the crafting panel's place. A new Avatar arrives straight from baseball practice: in a tunic of Hildir's (Cloth Armour) with a club.
• No Valheim skills in Britannia: they no longer level up, give no bonus there, and are not lost by dying there (thy Valheim worlds keep them). No Rested bonus either.
• The mod is now Bretaheim (was U5InValheim). Its plugin folder is BepInEx/plugins/Bretaheim and its settings BepInEx/config/tarbaby.bretaheim.cfg: remove the old U5InValheim plugin folder and copy your old tarbaby.u5invalheim.cfg over if you changed any settings. Worlds and characters carry over.
• The inventory overhaul: every Ultima item stacks to 99 (torches are now our own and burn out one at a time); in Britannia the pack has 8 × 14 slots, shown six rows at a time and scrolled with the mouse wheel, and nothing is lost going back to a Valheim world. Reagents and mixed spells live in a pouch of their own: a panel beside the inventory shows them, a click readies a spell for the cast key. Older characters' reagents and spells move into the pouch by themselves.
• A new Avatar starts as the original's: Chain Coif, Chain Mail, Long Sword and the Ankh worn, with the party's spells, scrolls, potions, reagents, keys and torches. Items that do not fit in the pack now drop at thy feet (they used to vanish).
• Whirlpools are the edge of the world in one place: the sea sinks into a funnel, ships are drawn in and fall through to the Underworld. The Amulet of Lord British shines. Dungeons are entered only on foot. Britannia's deserts are sand again, not lava. u5 quest shows where the three flames are.
• The story's end: caught in Blackthorn's palace thou art dragged before Blackthorn, who demands the mantra of a shrine (give it and the shrine is ruined; refuse and a companion pays), all played in the original's own map window and words. In Doom's last room the mirror takes thee to Lord British's prison: bring the Sandalwood Box and he leads thee home through the Orb's moongate, to the original's ending screens and certificate. u5 quest shows how the quest stands.
• The towns' one-off furnishings work as the original's Look does: look through a telescope at the night sky (not at the sun!), drop a coin down a wishing well and make a wish (a horse, in Paws or Empath Abbey), read the time off a grandfather clock, gaze into a crystal sphere, read a grave's eulogy and dig the earth before it, see thyself in a mirror (and break it), and klimb over fences. Signs spell out the runic letters (TH, NG, EA, ST, EE). The pools of Blackthorn's palace, Buccaneer's Den and Serpent's Hold are flower beds.
• Real stairs: where the towns' maps draw stairs, a spiral stair now climbs round a newel post to the floor above (walk up it, or press E on it); the ladders stay where the maps draw ladders.
• The rivers run under wooden bridges (plank decks with rails, log piers and ramps) where the map has bridges, and the land stands as a cliff behind each waterfall, the river cutting a gorge.
• The Underworld: UNDER.DAT is a second continent 9.6 km east of Britannia (the world's edge is pushed out for it in Britannia worlds), always dark, with black rock between its passages, its rivers, lakes and burning lava, Ararat, Doom's entrance, the Amulet and the shards, its own encounters and earthquakes. The way down: a dungeon's bottom ladder, the falls (sail over them), or a whirlpool on the deep sea that drags your ship down and spits it out below; the way up: the dungeons' entrances down there. u5 under tells where you are (devcommands: u5 under <x> <y>, falls, whirlpool, doom, ararat). Add 25 to BuildSettlements in an older config for Ararat.
• Ships and horses: the shipwrights of Jhelom, Minoc, East Britanny and Buccaneer's Den sell frigates (longships, with two skiffs aboard) and skiffs (karves) at the original's prices, delivered to the town's dock; Shift+E at a frigate's rudder lowers a skiff, and its crew take to one when it sinks. Carry the HMS Cape plans aboard and she sails twice as hard. The stables of Trinsic, North Britanny, Paws and the Lycaeum sell a horse (a saddled Lox for now) that goes twice a walker's pace and will not enter swamp; merchants shout riders out. Taverns serve meals (a barley ration), rounds of drink (the wine list where they have one; too many and thou art drunk) and, once thou hast bought something, rumours of who to seek and where. At sea, pirate ships (crewed by Fulings for now) sail at thee; kill the crew and the ship is thine. u5 vessel frigate|skiff|pirates|horse.
• Britannia keeps the original's calendar (one Valheim day is one Ultima day, starting 4-5-139) and its moons: by night a moongate rises at every buried moonstone and carries you to the site the moons' phases choose. Moonstones can be dug up (the gate is gone) and buried again (use one). The three Shadowlords travel between the eight towns every midnight; where one is, Falsehood cheats you, Hatred turns the townsfolk on you, Cowardice sends them into hiding. Call one to its flame by yelling its name and cast its shard in to destroy it. u5 time, u5 moons, u5 dusk.
• A new Britannia world opens with the original's introduction (its 21 pictures and words, read from your Ultima V files; Space goes on, Escape skips), then thou standest in Iolo's hut. Hildir waits beside thee and the door is locked until thou hast answered the gypsy's seven virtue questions, which make thy strength, dexterity, intelligence and mana as the original did (0 until then).
• Karma (shown on the Tab screen): striking townsfolk, murder, opening chests in towns and picking others' crops cost karma; charity to beggars and the conversations' own deeds earn it.
• The shrines of virtue and the Shrine of the Codex stand on the map, built from the original's plans. Kneel at the altar (E), name the virtue and chant its mantra three times: the Altar ordains a quest to the Codex, rewards a quest done (karma and a stat) or takes an offering of gold.
• Food: rations are barley (crops and taverns give it; a new Avatar brings 63); one is eaten at six, noon and six, and with none every hour is "Starving!" (1-8 hit points). Valheim's food is not eaten in Britannia.
• Restrictions: no felling trees, breaking rocks, reshaping the ground, crafting, brewing, cooking or building crafting tables; only garlic and ginseng are planted. The hammer, hoe and cultivator of Iolo's hut stay at the hut.
• Every Ultima item is an item of its own, with its Ultima name and numbers: the 48 arms and armour, mixed spells, scrolls, potions, reagents, moonstones, keys and the quest items; recoloured ones (gold regalia, the purple gem, potions, shards) have their own colours and icons. Shops sell them.
• Loot as in the original: slain monsters and townsfolk may leave chests (some trapped: acid, poison, bomb, gas) holding the original's rolls; Lord British's cellar chests, the magic carpet, the sandalwood box, the crown and sceptre lie where they did; the 113 hidden items are found by searching their tile (E), also through the wardrobe, barrel or tree they are hidden in; moonstones and the reagent patches out in the land; conversation gifts. Keys stack; quest items weigh next to nothing.
• The harpsichord can be played (E, then the notes 1 to 9). In Lord British's castle the right melody opens the way to the Sandalwood Box, as in the original.
• No more terrain freezes when arriving in new land: a zone's terrain the game is waiting for is built first, and finished terrain is no longer thrown away when moving quickly (Valheim kept only 16).
• Load profiler (Development/LogHitches): frames over 150 ms are logged with what ran in them.
• Using items (right-click in the inventory): the gem shows the map (and is spent; the map key no longer opens it in Britannia), the sextant gives thy position at night, the pocket watch the time, the spyglass the night sky with the eight town-stars and the Shadowlords, the magic carpet is laid down and ridden over land and sea, the sceptre dissolves fields; the grapple lets thee klimb steep slopes.
• Rings and amulets do what they did: invisibility hides thee from monsters, regeneration heals, both may vanish as a fight begins; the Crown of Lord British shields all near thee from magic, his Amulet gives them +50 armour. The Black Badge and the password get thee past Blackthorn's guards.
• Locked doors can be jimmied with a key (it may break); skull keys open magically sealed doors.
• Magic: mana (thy intelligence, filled by six hours' sleep) on the magic bar; M by a burning fire mixes spells from the original's recipes (a wrong mixture blows up); a mixed spell is readied like arrows (right-click) and cast with Z, with the original's circles, mana, level and places; the 48 spells as real-time effects (bolts, fields, winds, the earthquake, sleep, fear, charm, summons, light, protection, blink …). Scrolls are read and potions drunk with a right-click.
• Dungeons: the seven dungeons on Britannia have stone doors in the mountainside, sealed until their word of power is said in chat beside them (say it again to seal it). Inside, every level is built from the original's maps: hallways, ladders and grates between the levels, rooms with their monsters, treasure and traps (tiles that change when stepped on), fountains to drink from, hidden pits, bomb traps, sleep/poison/fire/electric fields, heavy doors, secret doors found with a blow, chests of the dungeon's own loot. Dark inside: bring a torch. Rooms stay cleared, except the few that always fill again. Doom (in the Underworld) waits for the Underworld.

Settlements (built from TOWNE/DWELLING/CASTLE/KEEP.DAT, setting BuildSettlements; tried in-game on Britain, Lord British's castle and Iolo's hut):

• 2 m × 2 m tiles, 4 m storeys. Walls are solid brick courses (or a cobblestone frame for cottages), wood floors upstairs, hip roofs of thatch, shingle or grausten over buildings only (bounded rooms entered by a door, archway or ladder), none under parapets except where the map draws roof tiles.
• Upper floors hold only what their ladders and stairs reach.
• Wall-walks and tower tops with parapets are open to the sky (no roof over them).
• Walled enclosures with no floor (a well in its ring of wall) have no roof and half-height walls.
• Doors are 3 m tall; double doors are two frameless leaves that open from the middle.
• Lit wall torches, braziers (raised clear of the floor) and lantern poles that never burn out; white marble drinking fountains; candles on candelabra tables; tables of any length laid end to end.
• Shop signs: each guild icon is read from the player's TILES.16 and printed on a banner hung from its signpost (or on the shop wall indoors).
• Smithies: bellows facing the forge brazier, anvils, quenching buckets standing in the troughs the map draws as river water indoors.
• Armourers show what they sell on the wall behind the counter (Iolo's Bows: a wall of bows), staggered so long items don't overlap.
• Britain's plaza water is a flower bed of bushes, flowers and thistles.
• West, North and East Britanny are built too, moved apart from the castle so each has room for its slopes. North Britanny's stream runs in a ditch into its pond.
• Drawbridges: bridge planks with water at both ends are wooden decks over the river that swing up at night and down in the morning.
• Stone walls are laid in big slabs, a whole wall thick, their joints staggered: a quarter of the pieces, for quicker loading.
• Floors are laid in 4x4 m pieces where they can be: under half the floor pieces.
• Cobblestone cottage walls are laid in pieces twice the size every way: a seventh of the pieces.
• Leftover single bricks are gathered into bigger blocks where they touch.
• Cobblestone cottages are framed in oak: 4 m posts and logs, far fewer pieces.
• Ladders are one piece each instead of a piece per rail and rung, and no longer poke through the floor or ceiling they meet.
• Lord British's throne room has his throne, and the dead come back there (not at a bed).
• Inns: pay the innkeeper for a night's rest (the original's price and words) and sleep in one of the inn's beds until morning. Everyone must be in bed for the night to pass.
• Camping: H pitches a lean-to and a campfire out in the wild; the lean-to asks "For how many hours? (1-9)" and that many hours pass, by day or night (an inn sleeps until morning). A sleeping camp may be ambushed.
• Barrels are big brewing barrels (they block a passage); a floor a ladder climbs through is semi-transparent; secret walls show their rune only up close.
• Lighthouse lights burn in iron braziers on stacks of marble rounds; stone columns reach the ceiling.
• Magic portcullises: under each gate arch (tile 135) two stacked iron grates appear at dusk and slide down to bar the gate; in the morning they slide up and vanish. Nobody can open them.
• Basements: Lord British's castle (and Blackthorn's palace, Yew, Serpent's Hold) have their cellars dug a full storey down under the stone ground floor, reached by the ladders in the corner towers.
• Townsfolk: the people of the built towns live their day from the original schedules, dressed by their kind (guards in iron with spears, mages in robes, villagers and merchants in Hildir's clothes); hover over them for their name.
• Town alarm: a villager who sees a monster runs for a guard, the rest hide at home behind locked doors; guards fetch more guards for big monsters, and reinforcements come if the fight drags on. The Britannys run to Lord British's castle for its guards.
• Ultima's numbers for every fight: creatures and townsfolk fight on their type's stats, the Avatar on Ultima hit points (30 a level), weapon attack values and armour defence; kills earn experience and Lord British's apparition raises the level when you wake. Tab shows the Ultima stats. On the Britannia surface the original's random encounters replace Valheim's monsters (u5 encounter with devcommands brings one); any other Valheim monster there is the Ultima creature of its body. No stamina in Britannia. The townsfolk's beds cannot be claimed. Hit points and damage numbers are shown as Ultima counts them (30 at level 1).
• Townsfolk are real creatures: monsters hunt them, guards fight with their weapons (and throw their spears), the fallen are back the next morning.
• New Avatars arrive in Britannia with 150 gold.
• Cannons are ballistas with an open firing port in the parapet. One that sees a monster is manned by a guard who appears behind it and fires explosive bolts until it is dead.
• Firing a ballista yourself (E) is a crime ("BOOOM!"): the guards come to arrest you. Come quietly and you wake in the jail of Yew at 8 o'clock; refuse and they fight you (and you may fight back). Leaving the settlement ends it.
• Sin'Vraal the daemon, Grendel the giant rat and Stonegate's Balinor talk (E), peaceful.
• The original's creatures live in their settlements: rats (Iolo's hut, Yew's cellars, Windemere), bats (Skara Brae, Stonegate), Blackthorn's daemons and gargoyles, Stonegate's shadow lords. As their original AI says, some stand fixed, some go for you when you come close, some hunt you; they leave the townsfolk alone and raise no alarm.
• Every settlement of the Britannia surface is built: the eight towns, the dwellings and huts, Blackthorn's palace, Paws, Cove and Buccaneer's Den, and the keeps (Ararat, in the Underworld, waits). Empath Abbey's gargoyles are evil statues perched on the parapets; Moonglow's and Skara Brae's telescopes stand on tripods; piles of rocks and mountains in the maps are boulders. Its jail: the prisoners in the cells are in rags (no guards in the cells), the cell doors are locked, a secret door hides behind the cell, and trapdoors drop into the basement.
• Locked doors stay shut for players ("Locked! No keys!"; magically locked ones glow a breathing cyan: "Magically sealed."); townsfolk have the keys.
• Secret doors: a wall with rune-marked (blue-grey) bricks; hit it and the bricks vanish, showing the door behind ("a hidden door!").
• Trapdoors are stone floors you fall through; floor grates are the top of a ladder down (an iron grate, no stone under it, a ladder back up below); shackles hang slender chains from an iron-wood beam; torture tables are blood-stained, with an axe and a knife lying flat under a hanging chain; the Gypsy's sphere is a round table with a Moder tear on it.
• Prisoners never open locked doors or leave their cells. Yew's Landon spends his evening in the basement, out of the way of the secret door.
• Guards fight you on your storey (they climb to you rather than swinging from below); after a minute's fight a guard appears beside you and you wake in the jail of Yew.
• Ballista firing ports are three tiles wide.
• Cell doors (single doors with a viewport) are a 2 m door under a metre of iron grate: you can talk through a locked one to whoever is behind it. Townsfolk in plain view answer from 9 m.
• The Ettin is its own creature (spawn ettin): a red troll with two heads, one on each shoulder; the second head looks about on its own and watches what the ettin is after. Its corpse is red and two-headed too.
• Prisoners never leave their cells, whatever their schedule's wandering.
• Attacking townsfolk is a crime: the guards come to arrest you. A villager you strike cries "Guards! Guards!" and runs home, back to their day after 45 s.
• Shops: shopkeepers keep their hours, greet as in the original and sell their original stock at the original prices in Valheim's trade window; armourers buy your arms; healers heal and cure. Guards run down and kill monsters that come into town.
• Talk to townsfolk (E): their original conversations, typed keywords and Name/Job/Bye, with their words over their heads, the talk reading down from the top with your answers after the colon. They walk at their own pace, sit on chairs, sleep in beds and keep to one tile each.
• Ladders look like ladders (rails and rungs) and, as in Ultima, you walk through them; use any part to climb.
• Beds put their headboards against the nearest wall; footlockers face away from the bed.
• Shop fronts up to three tiles wide count as doorways, so those shops get their roofs.
• Window arches are full arches; tables of any length; the SpawnLocation setting starts you in Iolo's hut (default) or just outside another built settlement.
• Iolo's hut is the spawn point, with its tool chest, workbench and barley plot.
• Building shells can be merged into one object per zone (CombinedShells) to cut piece counts.

Overworld:

• Calmer mountains; gentle planted river banks with water lilies; soft, irregular biome borders.
• Sand beaches 0–20 m wide on Plains, Meadows and Ashlands coasts, with dunes and a seabed deep enough for waves; bushes, rocks and trees along coasts, rivers and paths.
• Roads are rustic 4 m dirt tracks that wander a little, level the ground across and clear their way.
• Overland signposts are glowing rune stones in a clearing.

Tools: u5 dump/U5Dump town <loc> floors|probe|json, preview, slopes, dressing, banners.

0.2.0

• Phase 1: new worlds are Britannia. A world is Britannia when its seed starts with "Britannia"; new worlds get such a seed (setting NewWorldsAreBritannia), other seeds stay vanilla.
• Terrain and biomes from BRIT.DAT at 32 m per tile (TileMetres): grasslands → Plains, forest → Black Forest, brush → Meadows, swamp, mountains, peaks → Mistlands, desert → Ashlands, carved rivers, crisp coasts.
• Vanilla places (altars, crypts, traders) are not generated; you start at Iolo's hut.
• A sign and a map pin at each of the 56 places (towns, castles, keeps, dungeons, shrines, moongates).
• World-wrap prototype: sailing off an edge brings you back on the other side (untested in-game).
• Requires Jötunn 2.30.2.

0.1.0

• Phase 0 (foundation): BepInEx/Jötunn plugin skeleton with the UltimaVDirectory and TileMetres settings.
• Readers for the player's own Ultima V files: LZW, DATA.OVL tables, BRIT.DAT/UNDER.DAT, settlement maps with floors, .NPC schedules, .TLK conversations, DUNGEON.DAT, .CBT combat maps, LOOK2.DAT, SIGNS.DAT and INIT.GAM.
• u5 dump <table> console command (F5) prints any of those tables in-game.
• Mapping tables (terrain, monsters, items, NPC looks, status effects) in mappings/.
• No gameplay changes yet: the world is still Valheim's.