organmike: That starts in Ultima VI, I think. Until then, you take your lives into your hands walking into the swamps.

organmike: One more little tidbit for beginners - and for more advanced players:
Lord British can analyze the state of your game and tell you what needs to be done. Simply go to him at any time and ask him for HELP. He will give you a reasonably detailed description of what you have to do to continue on the Way of the Avatar, or at least a good starting point for the same.
Way back when I was playing this thing on the Commodore 64, it was held on four diskettes (that's five-and-a-quarter-inch floppies, thank you): a Boot disk, an interior map ("Townes") disk, an Overworld ("Britannia") disk, and a dungeon ("Underworld") disk. The only diskette not write-protected was the Britannia disk; thus, you were only allowed to save on the overworld map. This disk also held all the information about what quests you had or had not completed; some of the information (for example, your standing in the Virtues) was transferred to resident memory, and some was not. Therefore, in order to actually speak to Lord British, you were required to change disks for that one conversation, swapping from Towne to Britannia disk when you started, specifically so the game could check for the "already spoken to British" flag (he has special dialogue the first time you meet him) and so that you had access to the HELP dialogue, and then swapping back because all the information regarding Castle Britannia was on the Towne disk. Origin Systems went to some trouble to make sure that British could provide decent advice; I would suggest that you honour their commitment and take advantage of it.

Ultima V maintained some of this usage, but expanded on it. Of course, it was on four double-sided floppies (!) but it allowed saving anywhere (you just had to swap disks to the Britannia disk, still the only non-write-protected disk) and stored more information in resident memory - or at least knew what information had to be transferred to the resident memory for any given sub-map - allowing for more in-depth interrogation and character action within the sub-maps.

RetroGamer: I didn't see it mentioned, but I believe that allowing creatures to flee from battle helps you raise Compassion.

SirChaos: You know what really sucked? Ultima VI on the C64. You had to swap disks, twice, for every single conversation in the game, because conversation data was kepts on three separate disk sides - the game had a boot disk, surface world disk, underworld disk, and three "populace" disks with conversations.

organmike: Only if they're not evil by nature - snakes, spiders, rats and the like.

organmike: Zoiks. Well, we were sort of used to that sort of thing back then - you could have acquired a second disk drive as well to cut down on the swapping. We got U6 for the Amiga - only four disks, and you had to switch from "Player" to "Populace" for conversations, if I recall; however, there was enough information stored in resident memory to continue playing for a while on the Populace disk even if you were wandering about. It was only once you got too far from town, or if you started a fight, that you had to swap back to the Player disk. Or if you tried to save (again, only one disk not write-protected).
Again, if my hazy memory serves, the other two disks were "Program" (for booting) and ... it was another "P" word, but I don't remember what, and it was for the dungeons and the Underworld or what have you.

organmike: But, Sir C, we were glad to do it. It beat the heck out of running around outside with... uh... whaddya call 'em... friends, that's it. All that sunshine and fresh air and cameraderie ... eugh. No thank you. I'll take the disk-swapping any day.

TheKid965: Q - Quit and save (note: does not exit game program)

valkin15: so how does one correctly exit the program?

organmike: In the C64 version, being poisoned prevented being slept, and vice versa, as the game couldn't overwrite one status with another - which became interesting when you camped, because anyone who was poisoned wouldn't lie down. They'd just stand there.
Also made life easier (as much as that was possible, anyway) fighting Balrons, with their sleep spell. Ugh.

timotaka: Doesn't the graphics upgrade patch add a function to exit the game? Ctrl-Q or ctrl-X, I think.