I don't remember bears being in the game. We have non-evil creatures like bats, insects, pythons , rats (That look like cats, IMHO -> the irony!), seahorses and spiders.

But yes, it's best to drive those creatures off.

If they attack you, then you're within your rights to defend yourself, but you need to yield as soon as they start fleeing. Under no circumstances should you initiate combat with non-evil monsters.

We had moved onto a PC by the time Ultima VI came out. Hard Drive space was still a premium though, so we tried played U6 off the disks. That swapping was impossible! We finally whined enough and our dad gave in and allowed us to install it on the hard drive. Much more enjoyable!

lol but that was my question. "How does one close the DOS box window?" The game is in full screen.

Oh, in that case: alt+enter to get out of full-screen mode.

ctrl-F9 works. Or is it alt-F9? It's Something-F9, anyway.
There's a beautiful trick - totally and completely immoral - involving the blind herbalists. It goes as follows:
1) Go to a herbalist
2) buy 99 of a reagent;
3) give 1 gp, incurring a penalty to honesty and honour
4) repeat for all six reagents
5) mix your spells
6) buy one unit of the cheapest reagent (usually ash)
7) pay the cost plus one gp, getting a bonus in compassion and honour
8) REPEAT UNTIL YOU'VE CHEATED YOUR WAY TO HIGH VIRTUES

Other things to note:
- Be careful how you answer any questions regarding humility. Think very, very carefully before giving an answer.
- Killing non-evil creatures in self-defence doesn't penalize your virtues, but letting them run away gives you a bonus to Compassion, among other things
- No, seriously, read The History of Britannia
- Take care on a boat; any overworld attacks that damage the party also damage the boat. If the boat sinks, the party is instantly wiped out. Of note, be careful of Sea Serpents, Pirate ships, Squid, Whirlwinds, Dragons and Devils.
- Persistence really pays off; if you work diligently towards the goals of the game, you cannot actually lose. If the party is wiped out, Lord British will rescue you and all your equipped stuff.

I've got a question: Yes, you have to let non-evil creatures run. But what happens if an evil creature runs away? My character's a Fighter, and so most of the time my party tries to chase the evil creature down and kill him, but it's not often we can get to him before he flees. Does that penalize me in any way?

I personally can never be bothered to do that, just seems cheap plus I am usually rolling in gold when I get around to raiding the dungeons for the stones of virtue and leveling up my companions to level 8 for the trip to the abyss, so having max reagents at the start is just pointless of course save for cure, heal, and dispell I rarely use magic early on since I'm normally just focusing on getting partial avatarhood in the virtues, getting clues, and searching out the four items to open the abyss.

As for humility a easy trick to grind it out is in the prision of castle British there is a lone guard who when asked about Guard or Guarding will ask about Valor and if your Valiant, just keep getting him to ask and say no and before you know it you maxed out your humility, came in handy for me when I was stranded in Britian and I was close to maxing out Justice, Honor and Humility due to a whirlpool that spawned and took my ship seconds after landing to get leveled up and nab some supplies.

Just noticing questions about the virtues. Here's a table I find handy that sums it up. I didn't create it.

http://martin.brenner.de/ultima/virtuechanges.html

I forgot what the peak value of a virtue is, but I'm guessing 100. You can get a general idea from this, at least. Like you would have to be honest to the herb woman 5 times to make up for being dishonest to her once.
I should mention that there's no in-game way to look at these numbers. Hawkwind's suggestions will drop a hint, though. Back in the 80s, I did see my friends cheat and get a numeric readout of the virtues, but I don't know how.
Note that "Fleeing from enemy" is listed twice with different values. I can't guess why that is.
Also, I don't know if "Fleeing from non-evil enemy" combines with "Fleeing from enemy", since a non-evil enemy could qualify for both cases. In other words, getting both positive and negative values for the same act.
Have fun!

It depends on whether you have allies in the fight or not; fleeing when uninjured affects valour, leaving your allies behind affects both valour and sacrifice.

Fleeing is fleeing; running away from an animal still gives your valour a shot in the kneecaps.

One thing that needs to be noted about that chart; "attacking a non-evil creature" should read something more like "starting a fight with a non-evil creature." Attacking once you're in combat is fine, but actually initiating combat with non-aggressive creatures isn't good. Attacking townsfolk, specifically. Bad. Do not do.

Only in that you get no experience for the kill.
If you have long-range weapons, you can avoid this problem - or even if you carry a sling, bow or crossbow as a backup to a melee weapon. It only takes a turn to switch over, and trying to run down an enemy is impossible as everything moves the same speed in combat (i.e. one action per turn, one turn per round). The downside is that you can't run down fleeing enemies; the upside is that enemies can't run down a fleeing would-be avatar.

I haven't seen it mentioned yet, and I'm not 100% certain this will work, but it was mentioned in passing in one of the walkthroughs on GameFAQs:

You don't go up in level until you talk to Lord British.

I've been running around with only Iolo (every other joinable NPC says "Though have not enough experience for me to join thee") trying to find the required XP to go up from level 2 to level 3.

When I passed 1000XP and still level 2 I stopped and looked here. Hopefully this works...

Yes; in Ultimas III, IV, and V, you have to talk to Lord British (or, in V, the mysterious crowned figure that appears in your campfire) to gain levels, and in Ultima IV, the party size is limited to match the prospective Avatar's level.
In Ultima IV and V, experience needed doubles with each level:

level 1: <100
level 2: 100 - 200
level 3: 200 - 400
level 4: 400 - 800
level 5: 800 - 1,600
level 6: 1,600 - 3,200
level 7: 3,200 - 6,400
level 8: 6,400+

Other than the increased party size, a level also grants you 100 hp in Ultima IV. And nothing else, apparently.
(in Ultima V, it's 30 hp, a point to one of your stats, and a new level of spells)

(a) for a fleeing avatar/companion, all bets are off in rough terrain, in combat or out (i.e. never ever fight in the hills if you can help it)
(b) you actually have a decent chance (especially in not-rough terrain) of running down any enemy with a ranged attack, especially if someone else who would have to move too far to line up to attack the foe stays within a 'tempting' few degrees of a diagonal shot - the sad, ancient AI will even fire when there is a wall or other obstruction intervening.
also, each time British 'promotes' a character they get a random bump to stats (haven't tested the range but for Fighters and Shepherds it does seem to be weighted away from INT, which holds no significance for them) - and allegedly, if a character gains more than one level in a single promotion, they only get one bump (but since the scale of the 'basic bump' hasn't been quantified, this hasn't actually been confirmed; it's only clearly different from u5 because the latter is always an increase of one point in one stat, which is not known to ever be even an extremely unlucky case in u4) - they only ask when you can afford it - iirc whenever you have 400 or higher HP.
- saying no always penalizes you - iirc to the tune of twice as many points as you would have gained by saying yes

one question i have regarding an in-game 'tactic' which i have never tested (mostly because i have never had a version which allowed me to check the raw virtue scores in-game) is whether giving 'your last gold piece' to a beggar gives Sacrifice points. according to one of the meditation results from that Shrine, it should; however, i have seen what appear to be quite comprehensive lists of +s and -s and that has never been on it - though neither has it been expressly debunked by the same resource.