The latest update to Ultima Forever: Quest for the Avatar hit iTunes this evening. Following the last update, I argued that the freemium pricing could use an adjustment; that adjustment was actually made back on July 3, so it isn’t included in these patch notes.

Of particular note is that the price for healing potions has decreased, and that healing potions in general will drop more often. The potions are still listed as Uncommon, so how their drop adjustments are made is unknown at this time. Repair prices are more readily available, and repairs can now be made in a single click. This will save some time in the game. Also, oddly, the icon for Ultima Forever has been updated.

Ultima Forever 1.3.20 Update

Here’s the official description of changes that was posted to the App Store:

Hail Avatar! The latest updates to Ultima Forever: Quest for the Avatar include improved client performance and new features, highlights include:

• Insta-buy health potions are now cheaper. We’ve also increased the number of health potions that drop from chests.
• Repair system interface improvements: it’s now easier to keep track of your equipment status and see how much each item costs to repair and quickly fix your favorite items
• Made adjustments and optimizations resulting in a smaller game size.

We’ve also made a number of improvements to server and game stability, memory issues, client performance, and load times.

Thank you for playing Ultima Forever: Quest for the Avatar!

Interested in reading the full list of Patch Notes? Please visit: http://www.ultimaforever.com/whatsnew (Note: Available in English and French!)

The What’s New link forwards users to the Mythic Forums, where the complete patch notes are available:

Features

• Get in quicker! – We’ve changed the login page so that if you are returning to the game via Facebook, it will display account information and last character played.
• File size reduced – We’ve combed over the files and tweaked how we store some of them to make it so the game is smaller to download and takes less room when installed.
• Did you know? – The gold key option in chests guarantees you get two items, one of which is at least Rare or better. We didn’t really call that out, so now we have.
• Does not compute – Along with fixing a good number of issues that could lead to errors, we’ve also made the error messages more informative and human sounding. This way, if something does happen it can lead you to finding out how to fix it. I’ll give you a hint; most things can be fixed with a good old-fashioned retry.
• Learn at your own pace – We’ve added a new save point into the tutorial progress when you enter the ruins off the initial clearing. We’re continuing to look at how to make saving here better while ensuring that if you come back, you haven’t missed or forgotten any important information.
• What’s my name? – Want us to pick your name for you? Get ideas for a good name from our random name generator. Remember all characters on the account will take this name and it’s permanent, so be sure you like it!
• Repair interface improvement –It’s now easier to see what repair costs are at any given time and easier to just repair a single item if you prefer.
• Healing potion improvements – Lowered the cost of healing potions. We’ve also upped the number of potions that drop from chests.

Bug Fixes

• We’ve fixed a bug that was preventing stats from updating properly when leveling. All characters will be updated when they login to reflect the proper values.
• Made some fixes and tweaks to pathing to make movement through doors or tight corridors feel more natural.
• The whole screen no longer goes red when you are hit and the proper edge texture is displayed.
• Made additional fixes to the client to reduce memory usage and prevent crashes.
• We’ve updated the free keys offer section in the store to check for earned keys more often as some offers can take a while to process and reward the keys.
• Added a message to the airship sequence calling out that you can skip that cinematic if you chose to by clicking anywhere during the flight.
• Patched Retina graphics and data are flagged to not backup, preventing them from being sent to iCloud.
• Fixed a few NPC’s conversation portraits to match their in game appearance.
• The chat box no longer allows chat to be entered past the limit for the box.
• Fixed an issue where the group member tracking arrows would be frozen if group members zoned.
• Open item windows are now closed automatically when the application goes AFK and logs out while in the background state, preventing an issue where those windows became stuck for a time.
• Postmaster Darren no longer attempts to give a quest that doesn’t exist.
• Fixed an extremely rare issue where zoning in a certain sequence could crash the client.
• The repair icon on the character portrait will no longer blink if items in vanity slots are broken since they don’t affect stats. Also, Vanity items will no longer appear broken if slotted in vanity slots.
• Patching music will now play only if the game needs to patch something.
• Fixed a crash that could occur when the application went to the background.
• Fixed a conversation blocker in the Mantra of Compassion which is part of the Quest for the Avatar.
• Fixed an issue with Necromancer Roric in the Barrowgrove boss encounter.
• Fixed a rare case where the tentacles in the first part of the Britain Sewers would sometimes not clear and blocked progress.
• Changed the lightboxing for the damaged item and repair portion of the tutorial to make it easier to note input is required.
• Female mages now animate properly when praying at a shrine or pushing items around on the map.
• The graphics for the ‘Five Candles Thwarted’ tarot card will now display properly if received as part of daily login.
• We’ve adjusted the key drop rates from chests so that you receive as least as much as spent on the chest if keys are chosen as a reward.

The App Size decreased from around 975 MB to 910 MB. Still a large app, but that is a fair amount of trimming.

At present, Ultima Forever is still available only in Canada, although getting the game on a non-Canadian iOS device isn’t exactly hard. If you’re curious to give it a try, hit up the Apple website to find an iTunes link for it.