Note: visuals from frame 45670 (10:52) on have very intense red flashing. The provided encode manually removes these and slows down footage when needed to prevent seizures.

Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss is a 1992 3D first person dungeon crawler developed by Blue Sky Productions (later known as Looking Glass Studios). It was one of the first fully 3D games, and its combination of simulation aspects alongside RPG mechanics ended up influence a wide variety of games ranging from ‘’Deus Ex’’ to ‘’Half-Life 2’’.

As was common for the time, ‘’Ultima Underworld’’ technically uses tank controls with WAXD. While there are strafing controls with Z and C, they’re deliberately made slower for balancing purposes.

That said, in addition to controlling most interactions in the environment the mouse can be used to turn the Avatar faster than A/D, which is very useful for tighter corridors. There is also an ‘easy move’ key with Shift, which snaps the Avatar’s movements to a grid. This notably lets the Avatar turn even faster than mouse controls, and even provides a speed boost with flying, swimming, and normal running. It also reduces cooldown after casting a magic spell. For the sake of visual clarity though, excessive uses of ‘easy move’ were reduced.

The silver seed item can be planted in any patches of soil in the Abyss, and respawn the Avatar there upon death. Using this alongside warps with the moonstone heavily reduce instances of backtracking.

Any magical objects which have been burnt and turned into debris retain their useful properties and can be used infinitely from then on as opposed to having charges or being single use. This is heavily exploited in order to get around any use of runes.

Melee weapons have a charge up time before you can do maximum damage, represented by the gem in the lower left of the window. The delay between swings can be slightly shortened during combat by clicking melee off and on after a hit. Only one weapon, the jeweled sword, is used in the run in order to kill Tyball who is immune to magic and to break down a door.

To beat the game, the 8 talismans of Sir Cabirus need to be collected, with his broken sword repaired. The three pieces of the “Key of Infinity” must also be assembled to open the final door, and Garamon’s bones need to be brought to his grave. Rescuing the Baron’s Daughter is not technically required, although killing her kidnapper Tyball is necessary. The Stygian Abyss is divided into 8 large levels, and while there are some barriers preventing early item acquisitions for the most part things can be done nonlinearly if you know the puzzle solutions.

Starting off, the silver seed is grabbed for deathtraps, and I start taking deliberate damage for an upcoming deathwarp. I immediately head to Level 3, plant the sapling near the entrance to Level 4, and deathwarp right after picking up the first half of Sir Cabirus’s sword.

I then pick up a flute and ‘Scroll of Fireball’ in a secret room in Level 4, and a ‘Ring of Leap’ nearby to increase my jump height. I then plant the silver seed nearby Rodrick to more efficiently kill him later (it’s required to do so in order to get one of the talismans).

In the Bullfrog Puzzle room, there’s another secret room with a ‘Wand of Fireball’, which I use in order to turn my ‘Scroll of Fireball’ into infinite use debris. I then proceed to level 5, grab a ‘Potion of Greater Heal’ along with the second half of the sword, and deathwarp back.

Rodrick is killed upon respawning, and I take his sword and gold for later. I take a different entrance to Level 5, grabbing the ‘Ring of Humility’ (1/8) along the way and using a deathwarp to save on backtrack. I then get a ‘Scroll of Gate Travel’, which brings me to the moonstone on Level 2 for another method of warping. Since you can throw the moonstone while running, small amounts of time can be saved in a TAS by warping to it as it travels through the air.

Ironwit is killed for his ‘Potion of Fly’, which is burnt along with the second ‘Scroll of Gate Travel’ for infinite use. I then bring the sword pieces to Shak who repairs them (2/8), after which I continue to Level 3.

Down here, I fly to an alcove and play a very short song on the flute for the “Cup of Wonder” (3/8), and barter my remaining fish to Zak for the “Taper of Sacrifice” (4/8). I then warp to the moonstone and head to Level 4. After grabbing the “Standard of Honor” (5/8) as a reward for killing Rodrick, I deathwarp back to Level 5 and head to Level 6.

I fly over to the Golem and fight him for his “Shield of Valor” (6/8). I then raise my stats at a nearby altar and chant ‘fanlo’ to get the first part of the “Key of Infinity” (1/3). Nearby, I grab the “Book of Honesty” (7/8), and burn a ’Scroll of Reveal’ which I then use to uncover the way to the ‘Wine of Compassion’ (8/8), after which I warp with the moonstone and go to Level 7.

Down here I kill Tyball for his keys, taking advantage of a burnt ‘Scroll of Freeze Time’ from a secret passage to render him unable to move. The maze afterwards has a lot of instant death tiles, requiring the use of the ‘Potion of Greater Heal’ I picked up earlier. Once past this I talk to some people for a picture and head down for the second part of the ‘Key of Infinity’ (2/3). After this I warp with the moonstone and head to Level 8.

The moonstone is precisely tossed so I can warp to the final chamber later. I collect his bones and then deathwarp and give Judy the picture for the last part of the ‘Key of Infinity’ (3/3). After speaking with Garamon, I warp with the moonstone one last time and destroy all of the talismans. This warps you to the Ethereal Void (home of very strong red flashing >_>). A shortcut is taking through here due to a lack of walls, letting me reach the moon gate and finish the game.

The most obvious improvement would be more uses of ‘easy-move’ in places where I refrained from doing so. As I stated before, excessive uses of it were reduced for the sake of visual clarity. Beyond this, any other improvements would come down to different routing for the talismans, or the usage of new glitches to bypass requirements entirely.

Thank you to Gammadragon, Lag.com, Nin, and inlustria for their work in devising a speedrun route for this game. A particular shoutout to Nin’s pastebin route for its readability. (Found here: https://pastebin.com/gnTScSQ8 )

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