Been playing Ultima 4 all week and finally got all 8 virtues high enough and meditated at each shrine. The Seer in Castle British says i am a partial-avatar in everything. So I begin gathering items, money, etc to hit the dungeons and gather the stones.

Here's my problem...

Once you have partial-avatarhood in everything, an ankh symbol appears in the upper right screen between your food and gold amounts. Well, I have gone through 3 dungeons now and noticed that my ankh symbol is missing a few pieces. I went back to the Seer and he acts like I have not meditated on 2 virtues (sacrifice and valor).

Here's my question...

Is this normal? Do I have to keep raising virtues and re-meditating them, or can I just keep on gathering stones and then head to the Abyss? If this is some game-killer, I don't want to waste another 5-10 hours if I am just going to hit a brick wall later.

You have to get them back up. Basically, some of your virtue scores declined because you did something "bad" like running away from battles or killing non-evil creatures. As long as you don't do anything that is considered "bad" your virtue scores shouldn't decrease.

So yes, you do need to raise them again. It shouldn't take that long as one of your virtue scores might now be at 99 instead of 100, instead of being all the way back down at 0. The only virtue that is impossible to raise again (and is therefore a game breaker) is your valor score if you've reached 9999XP (maximum XP) as there's a bug that prevents your valor score from increasing if you don't gain experience from enemies.

You can loose your partial avatarhood in virtues if you do negative things. Dropping Valor would probably be from running from combat. Dropping Spirituality is usually from meditating at a shrine using the wrong virtue or mantra.

Thanks for the quick replies.

I have not run from any battles, but I have fought some "non-evil" creatures like sea horses, squids, or whatever when tehy attack me on the high sea. But if I run from the battle, that might effect things too. Funny thing is, when I get to the Seer he tells me my valor is high and I should seek elevation. So maybe monsters I fought on the way back to town raised it back up. that's a crazy design element. As for my sacrifice going down, I have no idea. I just run and donate 4oo points of blood and voila! I'm ready to meditate again.

I just want to make sure this stuff doesn't prevent me from entering the abyss later.

For the valor thing, if you somehow fight non-evil creatures, what you should do is attack them until they start to run, and then let them run from the fight. That way you won't suffer the loss of valor, and gain in compassion and justice.

Yes, do note that there's no loss of Compassion for killing non-evil creatures unless you started the fight. You gain Compassion for beating them nearly to death and letting them run off (presumably to exsanguinate, but there you go). You will lose Valour and Sacrifice for leaving a fight before every enemy is killed or fled, unless you are yourself near death.
Watch for the phrase, "Thou hast lost an eighth!" when you do bad things. It's basically an indicator that you did something un-Avatar-like, and you have to go and fix the problem. And yes, that does mean atoning (somehow) for your misdeeds and then going to meditate on that virtue again for three cycles.

I found this page listing things that change virtue ratings:
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Trivia/UltimaIV

Hope this helps.