Ultima Underworld II: Labyrinth of Worlds

• There's no hand-holding. No quest journal, no arrows pointing the way. If you're not playing with a hint book by your side, you'll need to really think, or to make notes and listen to what people are saying.

• It's pretty hard. Easy difficulty is for the average guy, normal is for grognards.

• There's no level scaling. You will bump into monsters you can't beat at that time. For example, right inside the entrance to the sewers is a headless. it will murderize you at normal difficulty, and is very tough even at easy. Avoid it and come back later. There are more monsters deeper in the sewers that you won't be able to beat for a dozen more levels.

• It's best to be a swordsman. The sword trainer (Lobar in Killorn Keep) is twice as effective as the other trainers. Also, strength determines how much you can carry, which is very important.

• Most locked doors need to be bashed open. Carry a few bad weapons for this.

• Use the look command on everything. EVERYTHING.

• When you look at a monster, if it is not hostile, do not attack.

• Non-hostile creatures, they can often be aggroed by events, conversation choices, or taking their belongings ("you see a day-old piece of cheese belonging to a rat"). Look before you grab.

• After you clear the prison world, you have a choice of Killorn Keep or an ice world. Choose the former first.

• Regarding Strength and other stats: IIRC there are few or no ways to improve them during the game; if you roll bad stats, just create a new character instead of pushing through (for Strength, 25+ is ok)

• Don't use the clunky command bar. Click & drag RMB is a far easier and more versatile option for interacting, LMB for looking around (1/2/3 for looking up/down). After some trial and error you might even get some early/clunky WAXD+mouselook.

• Shift-J is a standing long jump. The manual probably mentions it, but it's a lifesaver.

• Different types of weapons have different optimal attacks; e.g. for swords it's the bottom stabbing one.

• At some point (late-ish) during the game you'll get an Enchant Item spell. It's extremely powerful and stacks about a dozen times (upgrading the item all the way to Unsurpassed). If you cast it on a magical item, it'll upgrade the existing enchantment (damage, accuracy, etc.); if you cast on a mundane item, you'll get Toughness, which makes it lose durability more slowly. It's sometimes worth hoarding minor magical items to upgrade later.

• At some point during the game the castle servants will go on strike. Do try to appease them, otherwise you risk breaking an essential step of the main quest.