Ultima IV: Final Ranking

Ultima IV's unusual and fascinating quest is introduced. (This is the original DOS version screen shot. Most of my others have been from the Xu4 upgrade.)

Again, I'm basing my final ranking on the 100-point GIMLET scale that I introduced in this posting.

1. Game world. This is one of Ultima IV's strongest points. Gameplay takes place in a fairly large world scattered with cities, towns, keeps, castles, and dungeons. The world has a rich and compelling back story, interesting characters, history, and lore. You understand immediately how the Quest of the Avatar fits into the overall context of the world. The only place it fails is in the "your decisions and actions measurably affect the game world" point. As in almost all CRPGs of the era, the world does not really respond to what you do. For instance, when you achieve Avatarhood, nobody acknowledges it. Characters continue to tell you about items that you demonstrably have. This one drawback is outweighed by the rich, interesting world. Final score: 8.

Part of the rich and fascinating History of Britannia.

2. Character creation and development. Ultima IV features a unique method of character creation, in which you determine your class by answering a series of questions about virtues. Unfortunately, nothing else about character creation and development in Ultima IV really shines. You progress through eight levels by killing monsters and solving quests, but the only thing that really happens when you increase levels is that you get more hit points. (With the Avatar, you also get the option to add one new companion for each level.) Leveling up is somewhat anticlimactic, and there's almost nothing customizable about your character except for the class. Final score: 4.

3. NPC interaction. Again, Ultima IV is utterly unique in its method of NPC interaction, in which you type in keywords. The game is full of NPCs, and you absolutely have to talk to them--practically all of them--to advance in the game and uncover the mysteries of the land. NPC interaction is also necessary to the role-playing aspects of the game, as only by answering truthfully can you advance in honesty, and only by answering humbly can you advance in humility. Sometimes the NPCs have very little to say, and there are only a few dialog "choices," and you can't really establish relationships with any of them, but NPC interaction is still one of the game's strongest points. Final score: 7.

 

4. Encounters and foes. There are quite a few monsters in the game, each with different strengths and powers, each fully described in the game manual's wonderful prose. Your encounters with them offer opportunities for role-playing--for instance, you have to let fleeing enemies escape to uphold honor, and you have to avoid attacking non-evil creatures to advance in justice. There are both scripted encounters in dungeon rooms and random encounters everywhere else. Respawning is constant. Nonetheless, battles do quickly become repetitive and tiresome. Final score: 6.

5. Magic and combat. The game has an unusual magic system involving the need to purchase and mix reagents before casting spells. Like monsters, reagents and spells are thickly and entertainingly described in the game manuals. But, in general, Ultima IV is very weak in this area. Much is made about the need to discover nightshade and mandrake in the game world, but you barely need them. I don't think I cast more than half a dozen spells that required either. Combat gets boring quickly, especially once your characters have ranged weapons. Most of the time, it's far too easy. I didn't cast a single offensive spell during my gameplay, and the 99 healing spells I mixed before entering the Abyss went entirely unused. There are some tactics involved in successfully navigating dungeon rooms, but the overall lack of danger (only one of my characters died in the game, and only once) means that you have little incentive to carefully plan battles. On the plus side, it's neat how you have to discover the reagents for certain spells by talking to NPCs. Final score: 3.

I mixed 10 fireball spells, and the only time I cast one was for this screen shot.

6. Equipment. Minimal. You have eight types of armor and eight types of weapons, and you figure out which is best by their cost. The items are not described at all. You cannot find weapons, armor, or any other items in the game world itself; you just buy them from shops. The sextant, magic gems, and keys are interesting but not enough to make up for the weaknesses. Final score: 2.

7. Economy. On the plus side, you never reach a point where you don't need money. Weapons, armor, reagents, food, gems, torches, and keys are expensive. On the negative side, the economy is a little unbalanced: you get too little gold for killing creatures and too much sitting around in dungeons. It's neat how the game works gold into the virtue development system, though: you have to avoid cheating the blind herb seller and looting treasuries in town. Final score: 6.

8. Quests. The main quest of Ultima IV is something really never seen before or since in any CRPG, and no one that plays the game ever forgets it. It is, to my mind, the only CRPG quest that's directly applicable to the real world, and it's possible that completing the main quest of Ultima IV makes you a better person. There is, unfortunately, only one way to complete it, and there are no side-quests in the game. Final score: 8.

 

9. Graphics, sound, inputs. I played a more recent upgrade, but even in the original the graphics aren't horrible, except perhaps in the dungeons where the multi-colored walls look a bit silly. Monsters are well-distinguished by their animated icons. I played most of the game with the sound off because there are no separate controls for regular sound and music. The music is memorable but gets on your nerves. Sound effects consist mostly of boops and (like all games of this era) have no realism. The controls, though, are easy to learn, intuitive, and responsive. Final score: 4.

10. Gameplay. Gameplay in Ultima IV is completely alinear until the end. You can wander in any direction and explore the towns and dungeons in any order. Since the game map constitutes a complete world, there is very little sense of constraint at any point. There is, however, essentially no replayability to Ultima IV; even playing different classes offers up the exact same experience. The overall pacing is good--the only reason it took me two months to finish is because I was traveling (in real life) almost nonstop during the period. Ultimately, however, it's a little too easy. Final score: 5.

Total score: 53. This correctly gives the game the highest ranking of games I've played so far, although I'm surprised how close it is to Ultima III which I liked but didn't love. Frankly, I think I ranked Ultima III a little too high (rather than ranking Ultima IV too low). Ultima IV's story and quest are unparalleled even today, but judging strictly in gameplay terms, it isn't a "great" CRPG, so this score feels about right.

On to Wizard's Crown!

Ultima IV: Won!

Alas, I cannot seem to find Origin Systems' web site.

Well, that was distressingly quick and easy. All that stuff I had written about last time be damned, I decided it was time. Dupre, Shamino, Mariah, and Iolo had achieved level 7, Jaana and Julia level 6, and Katrina level 5. I had decent enough equipment. Time to go forward. I made one last stop at the Bloody Plains to restock on mandrake, figuring on the need for a lot of resurrect spells, then headed for the Island of the Abyss.

In a comment on my last posting, Lord Quipworthy noted that I had forgotten about the mystic weapons and armor. I had, but I also remember from past games that you don't really need the mystics in the Abyss. Although it's true that non-magical weapons don't work, magic wands, bows, swords, and so on work fine. Since the mystics are not ranged weapons, there didn't seem to me to be any reason to pick them up.

Okay, let's take it step by step. To get to this final dungeon, you'll recall, I had to:

• Achieve avatarhood in each of the eight virtues by conducting myself in an exemplary manner. This included not cheating blind peddlers, not fleeing from battle, allowing wounded enemies to flee, allowing non-evil creatures to escape battle, answering truthfully when people asked questions, displaying humility when people asked if I was best or greatest at something, giving to beggars, donating hit points at a blood bank, and talking to Hawkwind the Seer frequently to check my progress. I then had to find the runes and learn the mantras for each of the virtues and meditate at their associated shrines.
• Obtain the bell of courage, book of truth, and candle of love, each hidden at a different location, by getting clues through conversations.
• Explore the dungeons and find each of the eight stones of virtue, using them in the dungeon altar rooms to obtain the three-part key.
• Obtain the word of passage of three parts from the lords of the three keeps dedicated to truth, love, and courage.
• Build up my experience and gold through copious combat; buy decent weapons, armor, and reagents. Mix spells.
• Learn about the relationships between the virtues and the three principles of virtue.

Once I reached the Island of the Abyss, the magic wheel I found on the ruins of the H.M.S. Cape proved fairly useful, increasing my hull strength from 50 to 99. The cove leading into the island, you see, is crawling with pirates.

 
Fortunately, I defeated them all and lined up their ships into a bridge in case I had to return. As it turns out, I didn't.

The next stage involved walking through poison and then healing my characters at the end. Amateur stuff.

Ultimately, I came to a large patch of lava and had to wade my way in to the center. I used the bell, book, and candle (oddly enough, in that order--you would have thought that it would have gone book, candle, bell--in the order of truth, love, and courage) and the lava parted to reveal the entrance to a dungeon.

I entered and immediately tried a spell. In retrospect, I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised that it didn't work.

Finding your way through the Abyss is a sometimes difficult process that involves wandering through a variety of rooms until you reach each level's altar. The rooms have a lot of lava and nasty critters. Here, for example, is one of the early ones, full of fire and fire-breathing lizards.

Magical mapping gems help a lot. Without this gem on Level 4, I would have wasted a lot of time entering dead-end rooms instead of going through the secret doors.

As I said, each level has an altar at which you demonstrate your knowledge of the virtues by answering a fairly simple question, then choosing the correct color stone.

This Level 4 room was a bit eerie:

This Level 5 room was the most annoying location in the game, full of reapers that cast the "sleep" spell over and over and over again. It took about 45 minutes to get through it one slow move at a time. The "awake" spell barely helps because they put you to sleep again almost as fast.

Level 6 had a series of rooms arranged in a block that formed something of a maze. It took me a while to get through it. Here is one of the rooms--note that nothing connects the east and west sides. Also note that for some strange reason, I'm fighting tornadoes.

On Level 7, the rooms got tricky with the secret doors. It took a while to figure out how to open up the walls and get through this room. It didn't help that the balron in the center kept putting me to sleep.

Finally, I reached Level 8. In a memorable penultimate room, I found myself face to face with my own party. It was pathetic how quickly the doppelgangers died.

At last I reached the final altar and found myself in the Chamber of the Codex, where my three-part key and the password VERAMOCOR gave me access (the image, I emphasize, comes from the XU4 remake, not the original game):

A mysterious voice (discussion question: who is the mysterious voice? God? The Codex itself?) began to ask me again of the virtues. Each correct answer filled in part of a symbol.

Then suddenly the Xu4 remake failed me. I couldn't get past "justice" without it crashing. Fortunately, the save game was transferable to the original. The rest of the screenshots are from the original DOS Ultima IV. To see the difference, here is a shot of one of the dungeon rooms and the altar.

I finished answering the questions about the eight virtues. They weren't very difficult because they proceeded in the usual order: honesty, compassion, valor, justice, sacrifice, honor, spirituality, humility. It would be better if the game tricked you a little by asking them out of order.

Then there were three questions about the principles of virtue, again presented in the usual order: truth, love, and courage.

Finally, the last question. I remember that this caught me off guard when I played Ultima IV as a kid. You find the answer by writing down the letters you see in visions as you achieve your avatarhood in each virtue. I didn't write them down. I also didn't want to go back and do it all again, and there was no Internet at the time, so I called Origin systems and got the answer from a helpful woman on the phone.

 
I still don't fully understand what "infinity" has to do with it, but there it is. Having given this final answer....

I've always been a little confused about what the Codex actually is. Who created it? Who put it at the bottom of this dungeon? If my quest was to find it, does anyone get to read it afterwards? What does it say? I'm not sure that later Ultimas help much with these questions.

The game at this point tells me:

The boundless knowledge of the Codex of Ultimate Wisdom is revealed unto thee. The voice says: 'Thou has proven thyself to be truly good in nature. Thou must know that the quest to become an Avatar is the endless quest of a lifetime. Avatarhood is a living gift. It must always and forever be nurtured to flourish. For if thou dost stray from the paths of virtue, thy way may be lost forever. Return now unto thine own world. Live there as an example to thy people, as our memory of thy gallant deeds serves us.

Don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out, right? I mean, it would have been nice to get some congratulations from Lord British or something. Oh, well. The game continues:

As the sound of the voice trails off, darkness seems to rise around you. There is a moment of intense, wrenching vertigo. You open your eyes to a familiar circle of stones. You wonder of your recent adventures. It seems a time and place very distant. You wonder if it really happened. Then you realize that in your hand you hold The Ankh. You walk away from the circle, knowing that you can always return from whence you came, since you now know the secret of the gates. [This is an odd line, given that in all subsequent games the Avatar is explicitly summoned to Britannia, with no evidence that he ever used the gates at-will.]

And then it's over. It only took me 82,395 turns and practically two months. Going into it, I thought it might take as little as one long weekend.

I believe that the game's exhortations to "return now unto thine own world" and "live there as an example to thy people" are an honest attempt on the creators' parts (primarily Richard Garriott's part) to instill a codified sense of morality in the players of the game. So I'll tell you what. Here's what I'm going to do tomorrow:

• Confess to my wife that my PhD program is actually costing 50% more than I originally told her.
• Call up a friend who's going through a tough time and spend as long on the phone as she wants to talk about it.
• Give my umbrella to the first person I see walking in the rain without one.
• Lend some more money through Kiva.

That covers honesty, compassion, valor, and sacrifice. Any ideas for honor, justice, spirituality, and humility?

Let's do a final ranking for Ultima IV and then, regrettably, move on.

Ultima IV: Getting Ready for the End

See that full ankh cross between my food and gold? Guess what that means! Boo-yah!

I had hoped to brave the Stygian Abyss by now, especially since I completed my avatarhood in honesty last night. It took forever. No matter how many times I was honest with the blind herb seller, I couldn't get Hawkwind to give me the thumbs-up. Finally, made a premature trip to the Island of the Abyss so I could cast Mondain's skull into the lava. I remembered from previous games that this ups all of your virtues, and sure enough, when I got back to Lord British's castle, Hawkwind green-lighted my ascension. I am now a full avatar. I have all the other things I need to enter the Abyss: the three-part key, a magic wheel that strengthens my ship's hull, all eight companions, all the stones of virtue, the candle of love, the book of truth, the bell of courage, and the "word of power" (forgot to mention this earlier, but at some place you need a password and each of the lords of the three keeps dedicated to truth, love, and courage had part of this password. It's VERAMOCOR). What I lack are:

• Adequate levels. Katrina is still Level 4. Some of my other characters are 5 and 6. I need to boost their experience before I take on the Abyss.
• Good weapons and armor. The magic wand, which three of my characters can wield, costs 5000 GP. Magic plate costs 7000. I want the best equipment before I face daemons and dragons.
• Enough spells and reagents. You can pre-mix up to 99 of each spell and store up to 99 of each reagent. Before I hit the Abyss, I want 99 cure poison spells, 99 heal spells, and 99 dispel field spells, among others, and I want a full complement of reagents. This means not only buying them but hanging out a few months in the middle of a poison swamp and a dark forest so I can pick enough mandrake and nightshade.
• Enough food. I remember getting stuck on certain levels of the Abyss for hours. My goal is to have at least 2000 meals before I head in.
• Adequate stats. I want to use the glowing balls to boost my character's stats to as close to the maximum (50) as possible. This means getting them to higher levels first; otherwise, the glowing balls will kill them.

To get all of these things, I've been engaging in a prolonged amount of dungeon-crawling, looking for treasure levels and rooms and welcoming combat with everything that moves. During combat, I try to let my less experienced characters make the kill. I forgot to mention this before, I think: in Ultima IV, experience is awarded to individual party members based on who actually strikes the killing blow. This means that Katrina, who only has a paltry sling, hardly ever gets any experience unless I make a special effort by having my other characters withhold attacks.

Katrina finishes off a rogue.

     

During all of this, I've been taking a look at some things written about Ultima IV on other parts of the web. A few items of note:

• Ophidian Dragon, the author of Blogging Ultima played through Ultima IV in 2007. For some reason, he waited ages to get party members and seems to have played most of the game with a single character. He shares my frustration with Katrina: "I know you need all eight party members to get into the Abyss, but I am tempted to just let Katrina the Shepherd die and forget about her, because she's not worth the effort of directing her worthless icon." Ouch. He also noted the same thing I did about the location of the Skull of Mondain: "Who among us ever played Ultima IV and found that extremely suspicious little horseshoe of shoals in the middle of the ocean, and did not sail immediately therein and search?" As I do, though, he praises Ultima IV for its nonlinearity, and like me he couldn't get anything useful out of Smith the Horse. His blog is full of screen shots from the original DOS version of the game (not XU4, like I'm playing), including one of the after-meditation visions. Check it out here.
• There's a large community of fans writing mods, updates, and remakes to all of the Ultima games at Ultima: the Reconstruction. Except the last update was more than three years ago, so maybe it's not that active any more.
• The Literal Ultima has transcripts of what every character says in every Ultima game. Jesus. I went through and scanned them for Ultimas I-III to see what I missed. Apparently I should have bribed the tavern keepers more in Ultima I, because one tells you the entire main quest of the game! I missed Dupre's appearance in Ultima II (he's a "swashbuckler" here, not yet a paladin, apparently) on Jupiter. Anyway, I couldn't resist and looked at Joshua's transcript from Ultima IV to see if there was an answer to my question posed here; there wasn't. It also appears that Smith has absolutely nothing useful to say. Why put a talking horse in the game and give it nothing useful to say?
• There's a nice retrospective on Ultima IV at a blog called the Black Gate, which is nominally about fantasy literature. The author, Ryan Harvey, notes the influence of BADD ("Bothered about Dungeons & Dragons"; this is an article worth reading) on the creation of Ultima IV, and what made the game so different. "Back in 1985, it was a revelation, a game that asked players to live up to a chivalric code--and considering the other games we had played, that was the most intriguing challenge of all."

I'm predicting a "won!" post by tomorrow.

Ultima IV: Dungeons

Fighting thieves in the narrow corridors of a dungeon.

Dungeons, I have to say, are pretty cool starting in Ultima IV. The game continues the tradition, going back to Akalabeth, of contrasting top-down surface exploration with first-person dungeon exploration. You see doors, chests, and monsters from your characters' eyes.

In Ultima I and Ultima II, you engaged in combat from this perspective, too, but starting in Ultima III, when you encounter a monster in a dungeon, you transition to a top-down tactical combat screen. Ultima IV expands upon this by including dungeon "rooms" that switch you to third person. The rooms include a lot of varieties of textures, monsters, and items, and many have secret doors. If you want to escape the room to the east, you may have to wander around until you trip the floor plate that opens the eastern wall. (Ultima V will notch up the complexity by having secret doors triggered by attacking walls or objects in the room.) Here are some examples of the various dungeon rooms you find:

Monsters around a campfire.

Two of my characters had to stand in secret doors to open the passage north.

The rat-covered corpse of an unfortunate adventurer.

Reapers, which put most of your party to sleep almost every round, are easily the most annoying creatures in the game.

In Ultima IV, you must brave the dungeons in order to find six stones associated with each virtue. Eight stones must be used at the end of the game. Six are in the dungeons, but I had to get the white stone of spirituality from a little nook atop a mountain range by flying there on a balloon while judiciously using the "wind change" spell, and the black stone of humility was found at the location of a moongate when both moons were dark.

Once I had the stones, I had to use them in correct sequence in the altar rooms of truth, love, and courage to get a "three part key" I need to enter the Abyss and win the game. This was fairly easy, as each altar room is accessible from the bottom level of the dungeon associated with its virtues. Since spirituality is associated with all three principles of virtue, you can access all three altar rooms from the bottom of the dungeon Hythloth, the antithesis of spirituality.

The three-part key is one of several things I need in the Stygian Abyss.

Dungeons are also a good place to find treasure. Most of the dungeons have at least one level in which multiple treasure chests are found in the corridors. Dungeons re-set when you exit and return, so a good (if lame) way to quickly build up your finances is to find an easily accessible "treasure level," take all the chests, cast the "x-it" spell to leave the dungeon, re-enter (perhaps using the "z-down" spell to get back to the level), and repeat. Another strategy is to find a room with lots of chests, and repeatedly exit and re-enter the room. I also found that Xu4 has a bit of a bug: if you take all the chests on a level, save the game, quit the game, and re-load, the chests reappear. This strikes me as cheating, though, so I left that alone.

One step closer to a suit of magic plate.

Other various points about Ultima IV dungeons:

• Gremlins are back. These are little food-stealing bastards who can leave you starving. But at least you can face and kill them here, unlike in Ultima III, where you just got a message saying they'd stolen your food and you had no recourse.

Revenge for Ultima III!

• Traps, including pit traps and falling rocks, are rife on some levels. If there's one thing I can't stand in CRPGs, it's unavoidable traps. Ultima IV doesn't give you any way to get past them. you just have to take the damage.
• Ladders can be tricky. Certain parts of a level may not be accessible from other parts, and you may have to go up and down several ladders before you reach where you're trying to go. Fortunately, peering at gems gives you a map of the level. I don't think it's cheating to take a screen shot of this map and keep it open as I explore, is it?

A gem map of Level 8 of the Dungeon Destard.

• Some of the things that look like chests are actually mimics that start attacking you when you get close.
• Each dungeon has at least one glowing ball that, when you touch it, ups your statistics. This is based on the usual symmetry we've come to expect in Ultima IV. Truth is associated with intelligence, courage with strength, and love (for reasons that make little sense to me) with dexterity. So the balls in the dungeon Deceit (the opposite of honesty, or pure truth) will up your intelligence by 5, while the balls in the dungeon Shame (the opposite of honor, truth combined with courage) will up both your intelligence and strength by 5. Like treasure chests, they reappear if you exit the dungeon and return. But they take a heavy toll: 200 hit points for every stat they increase. If you're not careful, you can kill your characters.

The glowing ball of intelligence. If Katrina touches it, she will die.

My note on strength, dexterity, and intelligence reminds me of something. I hardly ever think about my characters' attributes because combat is frankly quite easy. In my entire time playing Ultima IV, only one of my characters has died, and that was from a succession of traps. Even high-level monsters are dispatched quite quickly, and there are any number of ways (holing up and camping, spells, Lord British, fountains) to restore hit points. I could spend a lot of time exiting and re-entering dungeons to use the balls and build up my stats, but it hardly seems worth it where combat means so little. Combat in general, especially from my ship, is getting rather annoying and repetitive. It is not one of Ultima IV's strong suits.

I spent most of today exploring dungeons, finding stones, using them, and getting the three-part key. In other news, I picked up my last companion, Katrina the Shepherd, in Magincia. She's about as useless a character as I can imagine: she starts at Level 1, she can't use most weapons or armor, and can't cast spells. But she's here to remind me of humility. When I played the game as a youth, I pretended that my main character was in love with Katrina, mostly (I think) because I liked the name.

I also managed to get partial avatarhood in justice, so I just need honesty. I bought some good weapons and armor for several of my characters--magic wands, magic chain, and such--although it took almost all my gold. I'm pretty sure I just need to get that last bit of avatarhood, to stock up on reagents and guild items, and to fight a bunch of combats to jack up my characters' levels, and then I'm ready for the journey to the Abyss. Look for my next entry to be the "won!" posting.

Ultima IV: Shrines, Meditation, and Avatarhood

"I don't know, guys...do you think something might be hidden in that dark square amidst three volcanoes?"

The key to the main quest of Ultima IV is becoming an Avatar of Virtue: a living embodiment of the eight virtues in the game's philosophical system. These, again, are honesty, compassion, valor, justice, honor, sacrifice, spirituality, and humility. Under the hood somewhere, the game keeps tally of how well you're doing in each of these virtues. You can't see the actual score, but you can visit the Seer Hawkwind in Lord British's castle and ask. His responses seem to run the gamut of saying that you're horrible to saying you're ready for advancement.

Not quite ready for advancement in honesty.

Your virtue points depend on how you interact with the world. The game provides a few options to excel, or not, in each virtue. For instance, to prove your honesty, the game has its various characters ask you questions ("are you the Avatar?") and provides you with the ability, should you desire, to cheat the blind herb sellers. There are real temptations to be unvirtuous. You have to force yourself to let fleeing orcs leave the battlefield, for instance, instead of trying to squeeze every last experience point out of them. You have to ignore piles and piles of treasure chests. You have to pay full price for expensive reagents. You have to avoid using a powerful magic item that instantly slaughters your enemies. You have to resist killing Chuckles.

Show enough dedication to a specific virtue, and Hawkwind eventually tells you to go meditate at the shrine of that virtue for three cycles, at which point you obtain an "eighth"; that is, you become an Avatar of that virtue, and a little piece of the ankh cross shows up in the game window. When you have attained all of the eighths, you are a full Avatar. However, you can "lose an eighth" by acting unvirtuously, forcing you to start over. Using the skull of Mondain to slaughter your enemies, incidentally, causes you to lose all of your eighths. Frankly, I was hard-pressed to see how using the skull is a sin against honesty, but then I remembered that in order to get the coordinates for the skull, you had to promise never to use it except to cast it into the fires of the Abyss.

And it didn't even kill Lord British. Lord British is invulnerable in this game, it seems. (I quit without saving and re-loading after trying. You have to try at least once.)

Let's get back to the shrines. There are eight of them, of course, usually located near the towns that exemplify their virtues. The "odd one out" is the shrine of humility, which is surrounded by daemons and requires you to use a special silver horn if you don't want to fight waves and waves of them. The shrine of spirituality isn't located on Britannia but is accessed by entering a moongate when both moons are full. These are clues I picked up from NPCs in towns, of course.

There are good reasons to visit the shrines and meditate even if you're not ready for avatarhood. I'm pretty sure doing so increases your spirituality, and you get clues as to what types of things to do and not do to achieve that virtue. In order to meditate a shrine, though, you need to have picked up the rune for that shrine as well as the virtue's mantra.

Thanks for the tip.

When you meditate, a progress bar slowly slides across the screen. This theoretically gives you time, although not much, to meditate for real on the associated virtue. I was thinking about honesty the other day, for instance. What does it mean to truly be "honest?" I think most people define it as simply the avoidance of literal lies. For instance, a few weeks ago I engaged in an all-night poker game. The next morning, my wife asked how I did. I told her, "After about three hours of playing, I was up about $250, so I quit the game to just socialize with other people" (there were other people at this party not playing poker). While this is literally true, what is also true is that after about an hour of socializing, I rejoined the game, now significantly more intoxicated, and proceeded to lose everything I'd won plus about $150 more. I was congratulating myself for not having told a "lie" because, after all, it isn't lying to simply exclude part of the story. But of course it is. It's as dishonest to let someone believe something untrue through evasion as it is to tell a bald-faced lie. I don't know that this would have occurred to me in such stark terms if I hadn't been thinking about honesty in general. To be fair, this didn't all occur during the time it took the progress bar to reach the other end of the screen, but still.

 

Assuming you're ready for advancement, meditating three times will gain you partial avatarhood in that virtue and grants you a vision. This is one of the areas in which the makers of XU4 really shine. I'm pretty sure the original version just has you seeing a single letter of Britannia's runic alphabet (something I'll try to remember to cover in a future posting), and you have to piece these together in the right order to get a word that wins the game. But the XU4 team replaced this simple screen with a more artistic image of the avatar doing something that exemplifies the virtue. Here, for instance, are compassion, spirituality, and humility:

In today's playing, I finished gathering some special items, including a magic ship's wheel that strengthens the hull of my frigate and makes it more resistant to other ships' cannonades. I was assured by someone in...Buccaneer's Den, I think...that I would need this to get to the Abyss. I also picked up the silver horn to get to the shrine of humility.

My main character has achieved Level 8, which means I can go pick up my last companion: Katrina the Shepherd.

I've achieved avatarhood in six of the eight virtues, but I'm having trouble with justice and honesty. Justice is a tough one, because it involves letting non-evil creatures escape without killing them, which means carefully monitoring their health. Honesty I can't figure out: I've talked to pretty much everyone in the game and always answered straight. Maybe I need to spend more time with the blind reagent seller...

One final note: In a stop at Paws to find food, I realized there was a person in the middle of a horse stall I hadn't spoken to before. I jimmied my way through some doors to get to her and had to fight a bull. Anyway, she suggested that one of the horses could talk, and sure enough there is a talking horse named Smith in the middle of the field. I think he appears in later Ultimas as well. Problem is, I can't get him to tell me anything. I assume if you put a talking horse in a game like this, he has something to offer, but no terms seem to prompt anything. Give me a clue if you have one.

Why is he here?

My next posting will be about dungeons. After I've finished them, assuming I can get partial avatarhood in the last two virtues, it's off to the Abyss and the end of the game!