I've got HOW MANY Ring 4's!?

Ultima VI (SNES version): In which I didn't plan my trip to Destard very well.

So it came to pass that I needed to give that nice ex-pirate cook in Trinsic a dragon's egg so I could get info on pieces of that damned map. Of course I didn't have to do this, I could have merrily skipped that part, but I wanted to play through the game properly. Off I went to Destard to rob a dragon cradle.

When Shamino had the nerve to up and die on the first level, I should have taken that as a sign of things to come. But I was determined to press onward.

By the time I reached the dragon's nest, the whole expedition had just gone, to put it bluntly, to shit. Out of the whole party, only Leodon and the Avatar were left alive. To make things worse, there were dragons and drakes everywhere. When Leodon kicked the bucket, I decided it was time to go Ninja on some dragon ass. I peeked into my inventory. One Ring 4. Swell. On it went. Now I was surrounded by five million dragons and drakes who just knew I was there but couldn't do anything about it other than crowd around me and wait for my ring to die; this slowed my movement down to a crawl. I had reagents a-plenty in my own inventory, and had designated Shamino and Beh Lem (yes, I got him rather early in the game; All Praise the Moon Orb) as pack mules to carry more, but I wanted to save them to waste the dragons with should the need arise. I grabbed a dragon's egg and looked around...there was quite a bit of really nice stuff lying around in there. Not wanting to have to go back later, I elbowed my way through the five million dragons and drakes and started looting. First stop: another Ring 4 in the corner. Good thing too, because just as I picked that one up, the one I was wearing died. I checked inventory again.

Oh shit.

I had the Ring 4 I'd just picked up, and one extra on Shamino's poor dead body. No black potions.

I really did not want to cast Help and have to make this whole trip over again.

So I did the only sensible thing...put on the new Ring 4, fragged as many dragons as possible with Disable and one good sword hit, did likewise on the five million drakes until I ran out of reagents, and then just beat the hell out of the rest. Halfway through the melee, the Avatar blinked back into visibility. Oh shit!! Put on the last Ring 4 and resumed the slaughter of poor little cute baby dragons who no doubt wanted to eat my liver and play Hot Potato with my skull.

When the army of dragons and drakes was at last vanquished, I happily resumed looting, then got the happy hell out of Destard via Help.

It should also be noted here that I ran across two very odd glitches in U6-SNES.

The first was quite amusing, and I've procured the ROM of the game in hopes of seeing it again and this time grabbing screenshots. From time to time, when characters were put to sleep in battle, they would automagically transform into swords, "zzz"'s, or other odd things. Once they woke up, they were themselves again.

The second was not only amusing, but quite useful. Sometimes when I cast Mass Invisibility on the party, one member (usually Beh Lem, but it happened to the Avatar once as well) stayed invisible for ridiculous lengths of time if I cast Help while they were still invisible. They stayed invisible until the next time I camped out in whatever dungeon I happened to be crawling through when the need arose. As Beh Lem was a decent fighter but usually the first to croak, I took full and unfair advantage of the glitch to make him nearly invincible.

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