Dino's Ultima Page - Ultima IV (Quest of the Avatar) (2024)

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Ultima IV - Quest of the Avatar

About Ultima IV - Quest of the Avatar

Ultima IV - Quest of the Avatar (1985) is the fourth game in the iconic Ultima series.As the first game in the Age of Enlightenment trilogy, it marks a radical departure from thekill-the-villain formula and the Tolkien/AD&D influence of its predecessors.

Since Ultima III, the world previously known as Sosaria has undergone massive geographical changes andis now united under the leadership of Lord British and the name of Britannia. There is no singlegreat evil threatening the world, but the people of Britannia need an example of morality to follow intheir day-to-day lives. Ultima IV introduces ethics to RPGs in the form of a system of virtues. The playermust master the eight virtues through righteous behaviour and ultimately become the Avatar.

Bestiary

My Ultima IV Monsters show the EGA monsters, together with their special abilities and the experience you get upon killing them.

Bugs and Mistakes

Ultima 4 inaccuracies [English | German] can be found at Hacki's Ultima Page [English | German].

Marc Winterrowd's Ultima Tech Info and Patches has a list of Ultima 4 bugs.

Concentrations

Ultima 4 sections can be found:

Here on the Other Codex with virtue information, spells and Related Links (Internet Archive).
Here on the Ultima Web Archive, including maps of Britannia and the dungeons as well as the Great Stygian Abyss; and also a walkthrough by Fallible Dragon with vital virtue information, music files, and Encore Documentation.
Here at the Codex of Ultima Wisdom.

Dialogue

See the dedicated dialogue page.

Documentation

The Encore CD-ROM game manual is on the Ultima Web Archive.

The Ultima 4 manual [TXT], originally from Quill Dragon's Lair, is now being hosted here at Dino's Ultima Page.

Downloads

Music can be downloaded from The Bard's Library in Mysterious Sosaria, or else some music can be found in the Ultima Web Archive's Music page.

Obtaining Ultima 4

Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar can be downloaded for free from GOG.com.

The game is also freely available for download at select Ultima Dragon websites:

Download Ultima 4 at The Lair of Contrapuntal
Download [ZIP] at Auric's Ultima Moongates
Download [ZIP] at Gargish Dragon's Ultima Page

The Tale of the Kicked Ass at The Lair of Contrapuntal explains how Origin gave its backing for this, reportedly making it legal. The Usenet thread that is mentioned in that story, "Ultima IV, downloading and the law.." from 1997 seems to be preserved at Google Groups. Email correspondence between Contrapuntal Dragon, Fortran Dragon and Mike "Boomer" McCoy confirming Origin's "OK" to release Ultima 4 survives at the following locations:

Here [TXT] at Contrapuntal's Conservatory
Here [TXT] at Gargish Dragon's Ultima Page
Here [TXT] at Dino's Ultima Page (mirrored from Contrapuntal's Conservatory)

File Format Information

At an archived version of Xenerkes Dragon's Ultima homepage, you can find descriptions about the tileset, world map, town, dungeon and combat map file formats.

There used to be lots of technical information about the Ultima 4 file formats at the Moongates Ultima IV Annex, but alas, it is currently out of service.

Marc Winterrowd's Ultima tech info and patches has a description of the Atari file formats [TXT].

xu4's source tree contains a file about Ultima 4 File Structures [TXT].

The Ultima Codex has a page about Ultima IV internal formats.

The C64 tileset of Ultima 4 was extracted byMinstrel Dragon, who kindly agreed to have it hosted here at Dino's Ultima Page.

Fun

The Ultima 4 Amiga page at The Cutting Room Floor describes an easter egg referring to "Banjo" Bob Hardy.

Items

There's a page about the Skull of Mondain at The Codex of Ultima Wisdom.

Maps

The Ultima IV cloth map can be found:

At the High Resolution Ultima Map Project (HRUMP) in four different sizes
At the Ultima IV maps page of the Ultima Web Archive in two versions - old and new

Computer-generated Ultima IV maps can be found as follows:

At the Ultima IV maps page on the Ultima Web Archive in large and small versions
At the Moongates Ultima IV Annex's Ultima 4 maps page, featuring a dynamic world map (you can zoom into it) and a complete list of town maps
At the Ultima IV/V Map Explorer, an interactive map viewer
At this labelled Ultima 4 map (4096x4096px). Use Ctrl+F for quick search, hover over locations for brief details, and click to visit the relevant page at The Codex of Ultima Wisdom.
Ultima 4 world map (by Andrew Schultz) at GameFAQs
Detailed Ultima 4 map [ZIP, 29MB] by Ynnad Dragon, hosted here with his permission.

If you need maps of the dungeons, you can find:

Maps of 7 dungeons (the missing one is the Great Stygian Abyss, shown on another page) at the Ultima Web Archive
A map of the Great Stygian Abyss with information on how to get past its most difficult puzzles at the Ultima Web Archive

The Moongates Ultima IV Annex has an interesting Moongate Map showing the destinations of the moongates when you move your cursor over one of the moon phases. It requires the Flash plugin though.

Bryan Carter wrote several text files containing annotated maps of Britannia as well as the various castles, towns and villages. You can reach them from either Bryan's projects page or his list of text files.

Music

Sheet music for Ultima 4 has been transcribed by Yofa Dragon. A video of the music (with sheet music download links) is available on YouTube. Copies of the sheet music are available here at Dino's Ultima Page with permission (NTSC tuning [PDF] and PAL tuning [PDF]).

Pictures

The Let's Play Ultima IV-VI is a visual walkthrough full of screenshots (pointed out by WyrdWeb).

Remakes

Ultima IV: The Dawn of Virtue was a remake of Ultima IV led by Jaakko Peltonen, using a completely new engine. See its WebDB2 entry for more information.

xu4 is an attempt to allow Ultima 4 to operate in a modern machine environment, in a similar way to Exult.

Virtue of Humility was a completed attempt to recreate Ultima 4 in Dark Basic - not intended to be entirely faithful to the original, since an additional adventure was planned.

Avatarship was a complete remake of Ultima 4 for Neverwinter Nights.

Classic Ultima Online (formerly Ultima 4 Multiplayer) is "a completely free, online, modern remake of Ultima I-IV using the RUM Construction Kit. The remake attempts to adhere closely to the original experience of each Ultima, with a few tweaks for online play and to modernize the game somewhat." (from the About page)

Ultima IV Part II: Dude, Where's My Avatar is a parody taking place between Ultima 4 and 5.

Ultima IV Remastered is a remastered port for the C64, published by MagerValp in 2015.

Ultima IV Rebirth

Ultima IV Rebirth is a mod for Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Editionby Melavir Sauin Dragon. It builds on earlier mods and creates "an alternatereality of Britannia, set during the events chronicled in Ultima IV Quest of the Avatar inthe prime universe".

Check out:

Ultima IV Rebirth (NWN:EE Only) at The Neverwinter Vault for a description, screenshots and downloads
A video tutorial showing the first steps in the game
The Ultima Codex's announcement of this project which includes the history from earlier mods
The Ultima Codex's project entry which has a description, screenshot, and downloads

Reviews

Ultima 4 ranks (Wayback Machine) as #21 on 1UP's Essential 50 (most important games ever made).

Read about Ultima 4 at "CRPG History Abridged - 21 RPGs that brought something new to the table", by Felipe Pepe for Gamasutra (25th June 2015).

"An Unexpected Lesson in Humility, OR, Fuck You Katrina: My Journey Through Ultima" describes Isaac Jourden's experience with Ultima 4.

The CRPG Book contains a two-page review of Ultima 4 by Scorpia.

"The Computer Game that Led to Enlightenment" discusses the events that led to the creation of Ultima 4 and its virtue system.

"My Ultima IV experience: from a modern gamer’s view" (28th September 2020) by Yulo Tomorrow on Reddit discusses Ultima 4 from the perspective of a new-generation gamer. Yulo praises the game for its depth, but criticises the combat and confusing systems.

The MS-DOS Project has a 20-minute video review of Ultima 4.

"Review: Ultima IV – Quest of the Avatar" (26th June 2022) at Old Game Hermit gives Ultima 4 a perfect 100/100 rating.

Tools

Vectorpoem's Ultima IV map viewer displays the world map with animated tiles.

Andrew Schultz's RPG Mapping Tools include an Ultima IV Dungeon Surfer that can be used to explore the dungeons.

Walkthroughs

The Ultima IV Walkthrough by Fallible Dragon contains vital information on Ultima IV.

An Ultima IV walkthrough by Stephen Lee is on Psycho_ultima (still available only thanks to the Internet Archive).

The Let's Play Ultima IV-VI, part of the Let's Play Archive, is a humorous visual walkthrough for Ultimas 4 to 6 (thanks to WyrdWeb for finding this).

The UltimaIV walkthrough at The Codex of Ultima Wisdom is more of a collection of essential information needed to beat the game than a step-by-step walkthrough.