Our first impression wasn't as overwhelming we had expected, looking at our characters that we had created in the new 3Dawn game engine. Although, we were very happy about being invited to this betatest and excited about the opportunity to explore Ultima Online: The Third Dawn and the new landmass of Ilshenar. We had heard rumours about alot of bugs in this expansion, but that's the nature of betatesting and we were used to it from other betas. What we was going to do, was to test the playability in the new lands and explore how fresh the game was going to be with the new look of the inhabitants in Sosaria, citizens as well as creatures. We had decided to start in my old hometown Trinsic, and after I had pushed the wrong button during the end of the character creating and ended up in Moonglow, we finally met up at one of the Trinsic banks. We started out in a Test Center manner to set skills and making armor and provisions. My task was making armour and cook some fish steaks as Nyte prepared potions. The 3Dawn client kept crashing while crafting, so we decided to log in our characters with the regular game client to speed things up a little. We really didn't want to spend the entire evening in Trinsic. As many orther testers seemed to start out in Britannia, we were going to head straight to Ilshenar. We geared up, stocked on potions and some provisions, and were finally ready to go. Of course we had also got horses. Nyte was planning to tame her a nightmare and possibly also a dragon in Ilshenar, and for this she needed meat. I couldn't for my life find the butcher in Trinsic, so we decided to stop by Britain as Nyte used to stop by the butcher there. As she had got the meat  we headed to one of the Inns to relog our characters and start the 3Dawn client again.

I was wearing a robe over my my full plate armour. I was going to take the robe off after relogging and I was very curious about how the full plate armour would look in 3Dawn. Nyte logged in right after me, but I couldn't see her. "I am down here!" she yelled. "What is wrong with my horse?" I had to zoom in to spot her. I couldn't but laugh when I saw a miniature version of Nyte on a miniature horse. Naturally, she wasn't too happy with it. After relogging once or twice with no result, we figured out that if she dismounted her horse both her and the horse changed back to normal size again. However, this bug seemed to occur every time she mounted the horse. I didn't seem to shrink when I mounted my horse, but while mounted the horse seemed to be in a everlasting gallop. We decided to leave the horses and travel through the moongate to Ilshenar on foot. I took another picture on our 3Dawn chracters at Trinsic Bank before we walked to the moongate. We were going to take down notes of the bugs we encountered, and well, that is also what this diary is for.

We headed down to the moongate outside Trinsic and made ourselves ready to teleport to the new lands of Ilshenar. I recognized the the graphics of the armor from Ultima 9 - Ascension. My armour had turned black for some reason, but I wasn't too sad about that since I happen to like black. I took another picture on us as we was geared up, and we had improved our looks some. Nyte summoned a Daemon to bring with us, and we experienced another bug. On my screen, the daemon appeared as a white shaped creature. The daemon turned into his normal (and new) shape after we had teleported ourselves thru the moongate to the Shrine of Spirituality in Ilshenar. We were going to start here in the southerm parts and explore as we headed northeast towards some camps that we had heard about. Another reason for starting at this spot was the forest here. Rumours had it that Unicorns were dwelling here, and of course Nyte was dying to try to tame herself one.

I walked a bit north into the woods as I was waiting for Nyte to arrange up her spells, and I almost immediately spotted a Unicorn. It was just strolling around peacefully as I walked up to it. I almost ran back to Nyte to tell her about a little fairy like creature. I took it that it was a Pixie. I also saw a couple of regular horses, so I tamed one for myself and rode back and told Nyte about my discoveries. Nyte was very excited about the Unicorn, but as we came back up, it started to attack Nyte, and so did the Pixie! We ran out of the woods, trying to figure out why Nyte was attacked and not me. Could it be that the creatures was attacking females? I didn't make any sense, as we had heard that only females could ride it. Maybe it had to do something with karma? After a few client crashes as Nyte was trying to tame herself a horse she decided to call it a night.

I hadn't really fought anything after the arrival to Ilshenar, but after scouting along the mountainside further west I was suddenly attacked by Brigands outside a house. They were quite easy to defeat, and the battle didn't last for very long. Further west I spotted the first Ratmen. It was at a small ruin and as I was fighting a few of them on my way, I realized that this must be the actual camp. The Ratmen weren't harder to fight than usual, but a bit northwest I came to a cave entrance. The entrance seemed to be guarded by Ratmen Mages, and these were quite a fight when they come together with groups of mobs, like for instance the Orcs. I defeated them and entered the cave.

The cave was more like a dungeon. I was attacked by the two different classes of Ratmen that I had fought on the outside in the camp. There also seemed to be some kind of moving boulders coming towards me. I was standing there wondering what those could be, as one of them suddenly attacked me! It turned out to be an Earth Elemental.. in a new shape. Maybe all of the elementals had changed shape.

As I went further in the dungeon, I had me quite a fight. The surroundings reminded a mine with different levels which could be reached by rope ladders. Watching myself fighting was a whole new experience. When I zoomed in the fights the game really felt different. I didn't seem to crash while fighting as long as I didn't move things around in my backpack too fast. I was doing quite well. As the fight moved to the southwest part of the dungeon I became aware of that this really was a mine.