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.

Two Books on CRPG Histories

About a month and a half ago, in response to my posting on Ultima IV and virtue, a reader recommended that I try the book Dungeons & Dreamers (2003) by Brad King and John Borland. While I was ordering it from Amazon, I also purchased Dungeons & Desktops (2008) by Matt Barton, a prolific writer on old games who also maintains a blog. During my month of traveling, I had a lot of plane trips on which to read these books, consider them, and take notes.

Barton's book is a methodical and chronological history of CRPGs from their precursors through a few years ago. He divides his history into six "ages," which are quite sensible and useful:

• The "Dark Age" from 1974-1979 when dozens of programmers were writing mini CRPGs for university computer systems.
• The "Bronze Age" from 1979-1983 when commercial CRPGs were getting their legs and figuring themselves out. Akalabeth and Temple of Apshai are exemplars of this era.
• The "Silver Age" from 1983-1985, when the first landmark CRPGs--Wizardry and Ultima among them--appeared.
• The "Golden Age" from 1985-1993, when the number and variety of CRPGs exploded, including The Bard's Tale, Ultima IV, and the D&D "gold box" games.
• The "Platinum Age" from 1996-2001, which saw what Barton believes (and I agree) to be the best CRPGs yet designed, including the two Baldur's Gate games and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic.
• The "Modern Age," with an emphasis on high-resolution graphics and a shift to more online multiplayer games.

Barton is occasionally dry in his methodical progression through the chronology of games. He describes them fully but rarely stops to consider broader themes and tropes. Except for some skimming and selective jumping around to my favorite games, I decided to stop reading once I caught up to the games I've played so far as part of this blog. I'll probably refer to Barton's book occasionally in future postings as I read his comments on those games.

King and Borland's book is in some ways more interesting to read but extremely selective in its material. It's basically a biography of Richard Garriott (the real-life "Lord British") with a few stories from other games thrown in. If someone knew nothing about computer gaming and simply read this book, he would think that the history of computer gaming progressed from nothing to the Ultima series to Doom to Quake and then the world was awash in multi-player games. The beginning of the book talks about the development of the paper Dungeons & Dragons RPG but says nothing about CRPGs based directly on D&D. Hundreds of games vital to the development of the genre (Wizardry, Baldur's Gate, the Elder Scrolls series, Fallout), not to mention hundreds of non-CRPGs (the book presumes to cover every type of game, really) are not mentioned at all. What they do cover, however, is meticulously researched, specific, and valuable.

While neither of my brief reviews is exactly a ringing endorsement, I am grateful to both of these books for filling a lot of holes regarding the games I'm playing. Here are some nuggets from them that explain some mysteries of CRPGs I've already reviewed:

• Barton makes a useful distinction about the difference between CRPGs and regular RPGs: "It is easy to get carried away and assume that CRPGs are little more than computerized adaptations of D&D. This claim disregards one of the most critical aspects of conventional D&D--namely, the playacting...though it's certainly possible for a CRPG fan to pretend to be his character, even going so far as to dress the part, it is doubtful indeed whether his computer is capable of appreciating these antics" (p. 23).
• Given the amount of material he gave to King and Borland, Richard Garriott seems like an honestly cool guy. He comes across that way in his biography, too. This is a man who combined his love for programming and RPGs into a fantastic series of games and got rich enough doing so that he could afford to visit the International Space Station as a tourist. It's too bad his latest endeavors haven't turned out so well.

Garriott in his flight suit [source].

• Lord British got his nickname at computer camp when some boys knocked on his door and he greeted them with a formal "hello" instead of a less formal "hi." Coincidentally, he was born in England but had lived in the U.S. since he was a baby (King & Borland, 12).
• Great quote about the development of an early game called Spacewar! at MIT: "Tens of millions of dollars in U.S. Department of Defense funding poured into computer research labs at MIT, Carnegie Mellon, and Stanford, earmarked for serious research, while recipients of the funding spend hundreds of hours figuring out better ways to model space battles" (King & Borland, 26).
• There was a game called Avatar kicking about university PLATO systems in the 1970s (King & Borland, 29). While the authors don't say this game directly influenced Garriott, it's hard to see how it didn't.
• An enigmatic character named "Dr. Cat" who makes an appearance in a couple of Ultima games is based on a real programmer--just as enigmatic--named David Shapiro (King & Borland, p. 28). Similarly, Dupre, your erstwhile paladin companion from Ultima IV onward, is the Society for Creative Anachronisms nickname for one of Garriott's friends, Greg Dykes (p. 49); Chuckles the jester is based on Origin Systems programmer Chuck Bueche (p. 68).
• Ultima was originally titled Ultimatum but was changed because a board game carried the same title (King & Borland, p. 47). The first Ultima, published by California Pacific Computing, was barely released before the company went bankrupt (p. 50).
• Garriott had difficulty finding a publisher for Ultima II because he insisted that the game be sold with a cloth map similar to the one that appeared in the film Time Bandits (Barton, p. 66).
• Garriott was influenced by the success of Wizardry in making sure that Ultima III was a multi-character game. Barton calls Ultima III "one of the most important CRPGs ever made and the pinnacle of the Silver Age" (p. 68).
• The Bard's Tale was the first game series to generate a series of fantasy novels (Barton, p. 93). [Edit from 03/05/2012: I was wrong about this. Barton mentions a successful series of eight novels but does not say that BT was "the first".]
• Garriott conceived Ultima IV after getting a lot of angry letters from Christian groups and concerned parents saying his games were corrupting America's youth. While he didn't really take these seriously, it did get him thinking about adding morality to games, as in previous Ultimas, "players came into the world, killed virtually everything they saw, stole money from anyone or anything that had it, and walked off with smiles on their faces. Who was really the evil one, after all?" (King & Borland, p. 73). The principles of virtue--truth, love, and courage--are based on the characters from The Wizard of Oz.
• The subgenre of "Rogue-like" computer games split off from regular CRPGs early, when efforts to sell the game commercially failed due to widespread piracy. To this day, most "Roguelike" games are noncommercial (Barton, p. 35).

The books have a curious view of the utility and pervasiveness of CRPGs. Consider this quote from Barton:

"CRPGs are not only the most fun and addictive type of computer game, but possibly the best learning tool ever designed. They are truly grand adventures with real rewards for dedicated players" (p. 3).

Despite Barton's attempt to back up this bold statement with quotes from other authors and psychologists, I don't buy it. "Fun and addictive," sure, but not the rest. Look, as I've said before, I'm investing hundreds of hours into this blog and this project, and I more than anyone have a vested interest in believing that what I'm doing isn't just a grand waste of time. But aside from the interesting virtue system of Ultima IV, I can't honestly say that I've "learned" much from my time spent in CRPGs--however, this is a topic that I will explore in some detail (and solicit your comments on) later. [Ed. I did!] Similarly, after I finish a marathon night of CRPG gaming, all I have to show for it is bleary eyes and eight undone tasks that I could have done in that time frame. If there are "real rewards," they've yet to show up at my door.

King and Borland don't have any quotes quite as provocative, but the subtitle of their book is interesting: "the rise of computer game culture from geek to chic." Again, as much as I'd like to believe that all this gaming is making me hip and stylish, I really don't see this "rise." Speaking about RPGs, King and Borland note that among a culture at computer camp, "They shared an implicit understanding that computers, programming, technology, fantasy, and role-playing games were okay. They weren't nerdy, dorky, or strange" (p. 14). That's great for this subculture, but I think for 75% of the world, gaming--and especially CRPGs--are still nerdy, dorky, and strange.

It is partly due to this fact that I have kept myself anonymous on this blog. It's not so much that I care that you know who I am (frankly, I've said enough about my life that a dedicated sleuth could figure it out from my postings) as that I don't want people from my profession stumbling upon this blog and asking how I could possibly have time to play all these games, and write about them, when I'm three months behind on half a dozen projects. If, in contrast, I announced to my boss that I planned to spend all weekend watching sports, or kayaking, or attending a rock concert, I would not get the same comment because these activities are "normal." First-person shooters and console games are slightly more respectable in the real world than CRPGs, but not a lot.

I'm not trying to dis CRPGs. I'm addicted to them, I play them a lot, and I love writing about them, but I just can't agree with these authors' contentions that they are teaching me anything, providing any real rewards, or socially acceptable. If I could force myself to give them up and spend as much time practicing the piano, I would.

Well...if I could force myself to give up half the time, maybe.

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!