In this thread, we will discuss the currently active virtues. Everything from gaining in the virtue to using it's benefits. The first one is by Ally, Honor.

This is the information currently in the UO website. Text in blue are information that I've added in. Please note that this is a work in progress.

The Virtue of Honor

Honor is the courage to defend and uphlold the truth, and derives from Truth and Courage. The mantra associated with Honor is Summ.

Virtuous Ability: Embrace Honor

The reward for following the path of Honor is the ability to move peacefully among aggressive monsters, as well as a damage bonus to melee combat.

You can activate Embrace Honor by double-clicking the Honor icon on the Virtue gump and then targetting yourself. Activating this ability will cause all monsters to ignore you for a limited amount of time. The duration you embrace your Honor increases as you achieve higher levels on the path of Honor.

(Knight of Honor is 5 minutes, Seeker is 1 minute)

If you are in combat when you embrace your Honor, any opponents already aggressive towards you will not be affected.

You can also activate Honor by making a macro in the in-game macro system.
Click on Options in your paperdoll, go to the arrow icon. Under Actions, look for InvokeVirtue, on the tab next to it, pick Honor. Then assign a macro key.



Gaining Honor:

You can gain Honor by engaging in honorable combat with monsters or NPCs. You can do this by double-clicking the Honor icon on the Virtue gump abd targetting an appropriate opponent. You will face your opponent, bow to them, and speak the words , "I honor you".

You don't need to go through this steps if you set a macro to Invoke virtue. Just click on your macro key and target your opponent.


You then must defeat your opponent in an honorable fashion.

Honorable combat is defined as:

• Allowing your opponent to damage you first. (Even if you do the first damage you still gain honor)
• Engaging in one-on-one combat
• Not using ranged weapons, unless you stay in the same spot where you honored your opponent, or you only damage your opponent while adjacent to them. (This is not the case anymore. Archers can gain honor even if they don't stay in the same spot)
• Not allowing your pets or summoned creatures to help you during the battle. (Again, this is not the case anymore. Pets and summons can help you gain honor. Tamers DO take a penalty on honor. At level 2, we can only gain from balrons, swoops, ancient wyrm, etc. Basically, monsters with fame in excess of 15000, according to uo.com and uo.stratics.com bestiary guides. Can still get to knight, just takes ALOT longer.)
• Avoiding the use of poison.

To engage an opponent in honorable combat, your opponent:

• Must be the one that you can perform negative acts upon.
• Must be at full health. (You must be careful and fast, especially when fighting magic casting monsters. If they bless themselves they will not be at full health, you cannot honor them anymore)
• Must be close to you, in your line-of-sight, and have a clear path to you. (Be mindful of any messages that pop on your bottom left screen. Also, be careful with monsters in flight, it will look like you honored it, but you might not have a clear path. Another way to make sure that you've succesfully honored your opponent is when you automatically turn to face them. If you didn't turn, you may be too far or you failed to find the path)

The amount of Honor you gain from defeating your opponent is determined by how closely you followed the above guidelines, as well as your opponent's level of fame.

Virtuous Titles: Each virtue has three steps to the path of enlightenment, each more difficult to attain than the last. Upon reaching each step, you will be given a new Virtue title, which is displayed when you mouse over the Virtue's associated symbol (in this case, the Chalice of Honor) in the Virtue Gump.



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Honor and Bushido

If you successfully Honor your opponent and attack with lightning strike, you have a chance to land a critical hit. The higher your Bushido the greater chance you get.

Lightning Strike
Mana Cost: 5
Minimum Skill Needed: 50
The Samurai attacks with great speed and ferocity, granting a significant bonus to hit. Highly skilled Samurai have a small chance to land a critical strike when using Lightning Strike.



Notes:

• You cannot honor other players.
• From Pub 40 notes: Damage bonus from Perfection and Honor will no longer affect players

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From the Knowledge Base:

What is Perfection?

A Samurai who has 50.0 or more Bushido skill can gain Perfection in Honorable combat. Perfection affects the damage you will do during battle.

To be eligible for Perfection, you must first honor your opponent by using the virtue gump and choosing Honor, or by defining a macro, and target your opponent. Once you have honored your target, each subsequent hit or miss will affect how Perfection is accumulated. Successful hits will increase your Perfection while misses will decrease it.

The higher your Bushido skill, the more Perfection you will gain with each hit, but each miss will always decrease your perfection score the same amount. As your Perfection increases, you will notice your hits do more damage. When Perfection is achieved, your hits will do 100% more damage for the duration of the fight.

When engaged in honorable combat and building Perfection, you can expect to see any of these messages:

"You gain in Perfection as you precisely strike your opponent."
Your normal weapon attack hits and your perfection increases.
"You have achieved Perfection in inflicting damage to this opponent!"
Your normal weapon attack hits, your Perfection increases and reaches its maximum value.
"You have lost some Perfection in fighting this opponent."
Your normal weapon attack misses and your Perfection is decreased.
"You have lost all Perfection in fighting this opponent."
Your normal weapon attack didn't hit and as a result, you have lost any Perfection accumulated.

If you have achieved Perfection at the time of your opponent's death, a portion of your Hit Points, Stamina, and Mana will be restored.

Note: Perfection does not apply to Player vs. Player combat.

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UPDATE: From Five on Friday: August 17, 2007:

Perfection and luck, redux:

So, back in February we said that the code for Perfection affecting your luck stat wasn't actually working. Turns out we were wrong - we missed the relevant bit that actually used that code. Sorry for the confusion! Here's the real scoop:

Perfection is added to your luck stat for the purposes of determining the loot of the monster that you achieved perfection on. (It's not a time-based buff or anything, it's just a one-shot.) The actual amount of luck is the perfection bonus sqared, divided by ten - so, if you have achieved max perfection, you'll get a bonus of 1000 luck added to your base luck for the loot rolls on that critter.

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From Five on Friday: January 26, 2007:

"The main thing i want to know is about the luck, does it act just like luck you would find on armor? More importantly, does it stack with the luck on your armor?"
OK, in this case our KB is correct. Short answer - perfection does not affect luck at all.

Leurocian checked the code on this - he was actually looking up the "does it stack" question, and when he got there, he saw that there was luck code, but it had been disabled - apparently, long and long ago. So I went looking, assuming this was a documentation issue - and I couldn't find any reference to perfection affecting luck at all.

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From UO Stratics Bushido FAQ

Lightning Strike ~ 5 Mana ~ 50 Bushido ~ (Attack)
(An attack with a large bonus to your hit chance.)
What it Does – This increases your hit chance by a large percent, and in effect, acts like hit chance increase jewelry.

Hit Chance Increase : 50% Hit Chance Increase (caps apply)

Lightning Strike also has another function outside of the normal one provided above. It gives a chance at a critical strike, which is a direct damage attack that bypasses armor, delivering the full damage you are capable of to your opponent.

Critical Strike Chance : (Bushido * Bushido) / 72,000
The damage from this critical strike is capped at 35 in player versus player situations.

Honor and Perfection
Honor, one of the prevalent 8 virtues, and the predominant virtue of the city of Trinsic. It’s a belief value and one of the many guiding principles of the Britannian way of life. However, to a samurai, honor is much more than this.

Honor is the life blood of a samurai, so much that it can help dictate how a fight turns out, it can even dictate his health, mana, and stamina after prolonged fights as well. This determination is known as the perfection for samurais, as they strive to perfect their techniques and adherence to Bushido as they continue about their daily lives.

Honor, at it’s most basic, offers a user the ability to increase their potential damage output by up to 25%, just by simply honoring yourself. However, for those who are following the path of Bushido (those with a skill of 50 or greater) they gain a new advantage. The opponent they have honored, they start to improve in their perfection. This perfection makes a samurai even more deadly to his opponents.

Perfection has a rating from 0 to 10. This is also referred to as steps. 0 perfection means you haven’t gained any ground in your steps towards perfection, while 10 perfection you will receive a message that states you have achieved perfection. Each step provides the samurai with a 10% increase in damage, thus if a samurai achieves perfection on an opponent, he is in fact getting 100% increase the damage he delivers. Finally, perfection has one more effect that benefits the samurai. Each step of perfection gives the samurai a percentage of his health, mana, and stamina back upon the defeat of his opponent. You get approximately 5 to 10 points of each stat back for each step of perfection you have, thus a samurai who has achieved perfection and defeats his opponent will get a large amount of health,s tamina and mana back. These benefits from perfection only apply from the current perfection level you have achieved at the moment of the target’s death, not from any point during the fight (thus even if you achieved perfection during a fight, if you were knocked down to step 4 perfection due to misses, you would only get the rewards of step 4 perfection not step 10).

However, perfection isn’t easy to attain, or maintain. To gain perfection one must strike his opponent. To keep perfection, one must not miss. Basically this is how it works. Each time you strike your foe, you gain a step of perfection, just one step. On the other time, for any miss, whether it’s natural miss or parried attack, you will lose three steps of perfection. This means that if you struck your opponent 5 times, but missed once, you would be back on step 2 of perfection. If you miss again, you will be back at step 0, and a message will state you have lost all perfection.

Of course there are rules when it governs the use of honor and perfection. First rule, you must be able to have a clear line of sight, and thus your opponent must have a clear line of sight as well, to honor them (flying mobs must be grounded before they can be honored). Second, Your opponent can not have been wounded in any way, whether this is from natural damage, or from health boosting spells or abilities. They must be in top shape before they can be honored. Finally, only one person can honor an opponent at a time, so if someone else already has the honor, no one else can honor that same target. You can not honor other players for the purpose of player versus player anymore. This ability has been removed.

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We will update this thread as we find more information regarding Honor and Bushido.

Information currently on the UO website. Yellow text is information that I've added in.
Disclaimer: This is a work in progress.

The Virtue of Compassion has been described thusly: “Compassion is nonjudgmental empathy for one's fellow creatures.”

The Virtue of Compassion

Compassion is the nonjudgmental empathy for one’s fellow creatures. You gain in Compassion by escorting NPCs and prisoners safely to their destinations. You can also gain in Compassion by escorting Bravehorn to his water hole providing you have the Mondain's Legacy expansion pack.


Paperdoll interface:
Pressing the “Virtue button” on any character's paperdoll will open their respective Virtue gump-window.


Players will be able to see how far they have advanced in the Virtues by double-clicking the “Virtue button.” The gump-window that appears will have eight sections, one for each Virtue. Each section will have a “status” button (see “Status Button Interface”) and “cancel” button on this menu.

Gaining Compassion:

To gain compassion, you need to first find either an NPC that is seeking an escort, or an NPC prisoner that needs to be rescued from the clutches of foul creatures, and then complete the task of accompanying them to their desired destination.

Characters will be able to gain points in Compassion in one of two ways:
o Successfully completing an NPC escort quest.
o Successfully completing a NPC prisoner quest.
§ The amount of points gained for completing a prisoner quest will be more than those gained for completing an escort quest.
Points in Compassion may be earned up to five times in a given day.
· Players that are [young] will not be able to earn Compassion points. The amount of points gained for completing a prisoner quest will be more than those gained for completing an escort quest.

NOBLES & SEEKERS OF ADVENTURE

Some NPCs, called Nobles, or Seekers of Adventure, are in need of escorting to a town or dungeon. They will pay handsomely for your services and aid in helping them to reach their desired destination. Other NPC types that can be escorted include brides, grooms, and prisoners. It appears that most, if not all, NPC’s are now going to towns (Trammel and Felucca).

PRISONERS

Prisoners are NPCs that can be found at monster spawn locations. Prisoners will call out for help to passing players. To release a prisoner from his/her chains, simply double-click them. Releasing a prisoner will cause them to follow you for a short length of time. You can then escort them to any town and they will reward you for your assistance.

ESCORTING

Townspeople requesting escort will not travel with someone who is already escorting another; you may only have one escort at a time. You must also wait 5 minutes between each escort. You can also gain in Compassion by escorting Bravehorn to his water hole providing you have Mondain’s Legacy.


It has been said that "destination" to an NPC wishing to be escorted will result in them telling you where they would like to go, and saying "I will take thee" to an NPC wishing to be escorted will cause them to follow you. Simply saying “destination” and “I will take thee” no longer seem to work. Double clicking the NPC and accept the escort via the pop up menu.

Upon reaching their desired destination, the NPC will thank you and pay you for your service. Escorting can be completed by walking or passing through a gate. Should you accidentally recall away from your NPC escort, return to the nearest location of your recall point, they have more than likely walked away in desperate search of you.


Virtuous Ability:

The reward for following the path of this Virtue is the ability to increase the amount of health another player receives upon their resurrection, as long as you are the one that resurrects them through the use of magic or bandages. Under normal circumstances, players only have one point of health when they are resurrected. With this ability, you can increase that amount up to 80% of their maximum hit points based on the level, or step, of Compassion you have attained.

· First step: Resurrected character returns to life with 20% of their maximum Hits.
· Second step: Resurrected character returns to life with 40% of their maximum Hits.
· Third step: Resurrected character returns to life with 80% of their maximum Hits.

This ability may be used as often as the player wishes.
· For characters who have not yet achieved the first level of a given Virtue, the respective engraving is empty. Hovering the cursor over a symbol will display the name of that respective Virtue in the center.
· The eight Virtues and their symbols are listed below. Not all Virtues have entered the game at this time, but those that do include a link to their full descriptions. Compassion: a heart
· When characters have achieved the first rank of a given Virtue, the engraved symbol will fill a light gray version of the appropriate Virtue symbol.
· When characters have achieved the second level of a given Virtue, the engraved symbol will fill with light tint of that Virtue’s respective color. Compassion: a tint of yellow (“pale yellow”)


NPC escorts must arrive at their requested location in a timely manner, or they may disappear.