increased through repetition. For example, attacking in combat repeatedly will eventually cause Strength and Dexterity to increase, and reading books or casting spells repeatedly will do the same for Intelligence. Horses, carts, and ships are all unavailable. The only methods of transportation are by foot, or by using the Recall Pads. Small skiffs are in the game, but they are not usable. Interacting with the world has been reduced. In Ultima VII, the player could do things like bake bread, forge swords, pick berries from bushes and sit in chairs. None of these can be done in Ultima VIII. Character portraits have been completely removed. They had been introduced in Ultima VI. The combat system does not involve any tactical planning or ability for automatic commands. Instead, combat is reduced to three moves - swing the Avatar's weapon (or fists), block, or kick. Searching through the inventory or casting spells does not pause the game, allowing enemies to attack while the player searches for items or casts spells. Food is no longer needed to survive. Instead, eating food slightly heals the Avatar. The game is more linear, requiring the player to progress through the story to gain access to other parts of Pagan. Previous Ultimas were largely sandbox games. Spellbooks were removed, as Pagan's magic system is completely different. Casting spells requires keeping several different items in the Avatar's backpack, and the preparation and casting of spells is much more time-consuming than in the other games. Release Pagan was released on March 15, 1994. It was localized and sold in English, German, French, Spanish and Japanese variants. Speech Pack A Speech Pack add-on was released concurrently with the game. This pack adds spoken lines for certain key characters, such as the Guardian, the Titans and Khumash-Gor. The Speech Pack did not sell very well as a separate add-on, mostly because the CD-ROM Gold version of Ultima VIII, which was released shortly afterward, also includes the speech files. The speech files are also included in the later budget releases and the Ultima Collection release. The speech pack was available in English, German and French. The Lost Vale The Lost Vale expansion to Ultima VIII was planned from the outset, and was highly anticipated. The expansion would have begun upon entering a set of double doors that are present in the finished game but inaccessible. Despite being all but finished and ready