Compassion

Compassion is a Virtue, one of the eight in the world of Ultima. There are a number of shrines devoted to it, one northwest of Cove in both Trammel and Felucca as well as one in Ilshenar which has a moongate.

Escorting NPCs or Prisoners to their requested destination either via Gate Travel or walking will reward you with 500 gold and progress towards Compassion. Rescuing Prisoners from NPC brigand camps, orcs, lizardmen, etc. will reward you with more progress(roughly double) than NPC's escorted from towns.

As you make progress, the dots at the top of the Virtue of Compassion status gump will begin to fill after each completed escort or rescue. When all ten dots are completed per level, you achieve a level in Compassion and the Virtue icon will fill-in with a darker color and the title will change to indicate your current level of achievement when you mouse-over the Virtue icon from the main Virtue menu. Your main Virtue menu and level of achievement is publicly viewable by other players when they open your paperdoll.

Higher levels of Compassion confer increasingly higher benefits(discussed below). You can only gain from five NPCs per 24 hours so rescuing prisoners will speed your progress versus doing just town escorts. Additionaly, after you have completed five in a 24 hour window, there will be a system messaging indicating you must wait a day until you will gain again(although you can still continue doing more that day, but will only receive the gold reward). As of January 24, 2000 you can also only escort or rescue one NPC at a time.

Research shows that you will escort roughly

• 1 NPC per dot working towards Seeker of Compassion(Level 1)
• 2 NPC per dot working towards Follower of Compassion(Level 2)
• 3 NPC per dot working towards Knight of Compassion(Level 3)

At each level of Compassion, people resurrected by you will return to life with additional hit points(without Compassion, they resurrect with just one hit point). Resurrections by either the Magery spell of Resurrection or from bandages with the Healing skill will add the additional hit points. At this time, resurrections via the Chivalry spell of Noble Sacrifice do not confer the hit point bonuses of Compassion.

Additional hit point bonuses after resurrections from a player with Compassion

• Seeker of Compassion(Level 1): 20% of their hit points restored
• Follower of Compassion(Level 2): 40% of their hit points restored
• Knight of Compassion(Level 3): 80% of their hit points restored

Having the benefits of Compassion in battle are well worth it as it helps prevent rez-killings from both players and monsters as well as gets the rezzed person back into the action faster and saves mana/bandages healing them back up. At only 25-30 minutes a day for a few weeks working on raising Compassion, its not really that much of an effort. Additionally, at 500 gold per escort, doing escorts is a safe, easy and profitable way for new players to make gold.

As a sidenote, there are often several NPC brigand camps(many with Prisoners to rescue) on the little island just outside of Trinsic to the east. There is also a jail cell which always spawns a prisoner in the Orc Cave to the northwest of Britain.

As a minor note, there is a five minute time limit(lowered from 15 minutes on June 29, 2000) between escort quests but prisoners can always be rescued immediately(but still only one at a time).