Hello All,

I'm playing Ultima IV exactly as installed from the GOG Ultima 4+5+6 download (no patches). I've run into trouble accessing the Codex. After providing the correct word of passage, I get a message like "thou hast not shown leadership in all of the eight virtues", then I get kicked back up to the lava entrance to the Abyss.

Now let me rewind and tell you that the *first* time I made my way down the Abyss, I did in fact lose an eighth. I fled from some Gremlins in the hallway because my food supplies were dangerously low resulting in loss of Valor. I knew that would be a problem but played on to the Codex anyway. I got the above rejection, which made total sense. So then I quit the game (without saving) and re-started at the save point I had made before entering the Abyss for the first time. I made my *second* slog through the Abyss to the Codex with full Avatar-hood intact, but shockingly got rejected in the same way.

So I'm wondering if somehow the game state was saved with me as only 7-parts Avatar. But when I restarted, the Ankh symbol was full (no missing piece to indicate loss of an eighth). Even if there is a fix for this, I don't know if I want to go through the Abyss a 3rd time. I may just declare victory and move on to Ultima V. :)

Lord British, once you've progressed far enough and you ask him for 'help,' should inform you only to venture into the Abyss with a party of eight. That 'leadership in the virtues' message is also something of a hint - you need one of each class in your party, yourself included, and as each class is representative of a virtue, it's a hint toward you needing to lead one of each class.

Kinda vague, yeah.

I see. I don't think I ever asked Lord British for 'help' at any point (only to 'heal' me, or level me which is automatic). What a crazy coincidence that I lost an eighth in the Abyss on my first attempt. That was the only time in the whole game I lost an eighth! So then I assumed that messed up my second try with some kind of save-game bug. If not for that, I might have figured out eventually that it was the lack of companions. Thanks.

This is a shame! Origin went to great lengths to assure that Lord British was kept informed of your progress through the game. He even says in his opening spiel that you should ask him for help if you get stuck!

They went so far, in the C64 version, to force you to change from the "Towne" diskette to the "Britannia" diskette (the only one not write-protected, so it's where all your saved-game info is) every time you talked to British, specifically so that the "help" function would work.

Anyway. Sorry for the digression!

I think being short Companions is the only way that you can get TO the Codex chamber without being able to get IN to the Codex chamber. I can't think of anything else - except not knowing the answers to the last questions the game asks you.

Yep, "Thou hast not proved proved thy leadership in all eight virtues" is the message that you get when you're lacking party members.

Here the stranger tried to get through the abyss without the help of the companions: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9KGQSXC-64

And although navigating in a dungeon without a party actually is much easier, the game prevents you from finishing it.

It's another example of early RPG game design versus more modern entries in the genre. The players back then were required to think more, and to put on their riddle-solving hats, in order to beat the games. Clues like this one may be considered "vague" in today's world of didactic hand-holding game design, but they were just par for the course in 1986. In those pre-Internet, pre-GameFAQs days, taking down your own notes as you played and learning to read between the lines of the in-game clues was an all but essential skill for any RPG, and few more so than Ultima IV.

You may be right, but the Abyss is such a tedious dungeon, even with a walkthrough, that being kicked out of it feels like running a marathon only to have some asshole make you trip over right before the finish line. There is a fine line between making the player think and just being mean. in fact, most (all?) of the dungeons in Ultima IV are tedious and often times you will be required to do random things to progress. i remember in one dungeo (forgot which one) there ws a room with eight force fields and one of them had to be dispelled in order to progress. How bored out of your mind would you have to be to start randomly casting dispelling spells, which are in limited quantity by the way, in order to progress? Not to mention the rooms respawn once you leave them. I know people complain about having to burn a bush in Zelda to enter the 7th dungeon, but at least there is only one bush that sticks out like that in the entire game, but those force fields all look the same and are arranged in a symmetrical manner.

No "may be" about it.

Not to sound rude, but you went in unprepared. Back then, if you acted without being ready, you were punished for it. That was the expectation, and it's an aspect of gaming that is often forgotten these days. Just be happy it wasn't Ultima V, which doesn't let you leave the Abyss without a whole party wipe-out, and takes some experience away when you get killed.
This is the last dungeon in a long puzzle game. You should have made sure that you were adequately prepared. To carry your metaphor, you wouldn't try to run a marathon without making sure you and all your necessities were fully ready, would you?
Or for a better metaphor, Ultima IV is a big puzzle. You were missing some of the pieces. What's more, the game, if you had asked it, would have told you so. There might be, but Ultima IV comes nowhere near it. Every piece of information you need to progress is in the game and readily available to you.
Some initiative needs to be taken, and you have to have some inquisitiveness. If you see a locked door, you're probably going to have to at least look to the other side of it. There are also ways around every obstacle in the dungeons; Up and Down spells, rooms that connect one dungeon to another, alternate floors. There is no dungeon room puzzle that you must solve (other than the altars) until you get to the Abyss itself. If you spend the time gathering all the necessary knowledge, you only ever need to make two trips in to the dungeons to get everything you need to complete the game, and a third to go in to the Abyss. First of all - you see a forcefield, you have a spell specifically to deal with forcefields, and it's NOT the first solution to leap to mind? Why?
Secondly, yes, spells are in limited quantity. A preliminary maneuvre into the dungeons will easily show how common fields are and will train you to prepare yourself with lots of Dispells and lots of reagents to make more. Or are you wandering in to the extremely dangerous depths of the earth, The Places From Which Monsters Emerge, unprepared?
Again, initiative and inquisitiveness are the order of the day. My first dungeoneering experience in this game (many, many moons ago) involved my getting stuck and unable to progress on the first floor of a dungeon for a couple hours until I found a square in a room that opened a wall when I stepped on it. In order to get that to happen, though, I had to walk over just about every square in every room before I found the one spot that got me through the puzzle. And then I learned that such hidden switches existed and where I might find them, and it never took me nearly so long to get through another because now I knew that I would have to be looking.

The game isn't unfair, but it's no cakewalk. There are ways around everything, though. And what's more, Lord British provides the ultimate safety net and will rescue you if you're killed off. If you persevere, there's no actual way to lose this game. You'll win eventually. But you do have to pay attention and work towards it.

Well, back in the day they still made money selling clue books. ;-)

Heh... there is that too, yes. ^^;

In some ways I really do miss this sort of gameplay, but in others I'm glad we don't necessarily have to deal with games that have these sorts of hidden "gotchas" in them anymore. At least Ultima always played fair with you in that every clue you needed to beat the game was available to you in the game -- just not necessarily in plain sight. But then, as you say, Origin also had hint books to sell... ;^)

Thinking about it now - couldn't Garriot have just given us a block at the entrance of the Abyss? "No party of less than eight shall pass!" Or before reaching the first stone puzzle, perhaps a dungeon room that required eight panels to be stepped on simultaneously (although I don't think that there's a flag for "someone is standing on this square right now," just for "this square was activated") or some similar puzzle.

But yes, I'm fond of Origin's game design and their methods. I love that while there's only one solution to many of the problems, there are many, many ways to get to that solution - multiple dungeon entrances, many different ways to obtain money and food, lots of means for improving your standing in the virtues. I like that, when all else fails, brute force works (ask positively everyone about rune/mantra/stone/dungeon/virtue/shrine/Britannia/key/Abyss/etc...) without any real consequences other than lost time. I like that if something goes wrong and you make a mistake, it's not permanently fatal - murdered townsfolk reappear, lost money can be regained, lost standing in the virtues can be made up, even getting to the final puzzle without the solution is nonfatal. If you work at the game, you will eventually win. Which is, to my mind, beautiful - and dead on-message for the game, too.