In Ultima 4 I decided to start over, first thing I did was get money buy stealing from Lord British's Treasure room, made 9999 gold used it to buy food, reagents, and supplies, than I stole more money to used it to increase my already low virtues which are honesty, honor, and Justice.

I decided to give money to the blind merchants selling reagents and I heard that if you give more than the base price, like say pay $500 for 1 $2 Ginsing, I double my virtues.

I did that, but I still considered dishonest, I know that because I cannot get Mariah to join me.

My theory is that stole so much that I am beyond redemption and I cannot regain my honesty, honor, and justice.

But I don't know if that is true because I did this whole before in another playthrough and my Virtues did increase.

What is going on?

Paying more than you need for reagents is only rumoured to increase your virtues faster, but I haven't seen it confirmed anywhere. No matter how low you fall, you can always redeem yourself, but it takes quite a while. Also, keep in mind that it doesn't matter how generous you are, but how often you are generous. Giving a beggar 500 gold is the same a giving him 1 gold. You can use the savegame editor (see sticky thread) to see how high exactly your virtues are.

Well than the rumor is now false since I did it and no it does not double my virtues.

You stole money to increase your honesty, honour and justice?
And now you're whining about your virtues not increasing...?

Yeah I know it sounds stupid but remeber its a game.

Lets my Honesty virtue was at 0 and when I stole again its still at 0, so I was worried that its was actually -99

Either way I stole so I can give to the beggers and honestly paying the correct amount of money to blind merchants like I am Robin Hood.

you can find more than one table describing precise alterations to Virtues, either by googling or going through HiPhish's stickied post of resources. (i know you personally are finished with the game, this is for the benefit of people taking the trouble to dig through the forum before adding to the now-25 pages of posts).

just a few tidbits from those:

- as mentioned, 1 gold to a beggar is just as Compassionate as 99. (though see the Sacrifice note below)
- similarly, paying the blind herbalists 1g above the total owed is just as (iirc) Honorable and Just as paying X above.
- it is only worth fleeing from non-evil creatures (a) before you finish Valor and (b) if you want to finish Compassion and Justice earlier. otherwise it can be quite tedious putting yourself in their way, wounding them ~just enough~ and then waiting for them to flee (an annoyance with the diagonal projectile advantage)...
- the only virtuous act referenced in-game which i have not seen addressed (or debunked) in any of the aforementioned resources is the notion that giving 'your last gold piece' for charity is an act of Sacrifice. so far the best known thing for Sacrifice is just do a tour of Britannia's Healers (unless your party is as advanced as you want it to be and the journey isn't worth it, in which case do the boring leave/camp or otherwise heal/go back and donate more blood...)