•UOPG Revision

Person helping me with this revision, please email me. I need to talk to you.

Hasta.

•Shard of Screams

Well, well, well, its that special time of year. Thats right all the good little boys and girls from coast to coast getting free candy to jack up their parents dental insurance policies. Gotta love it. While some of us, still do what we do best, play UO. Well OSI, being the kind good hearted folks that they are have opened up a special shard, appropriately named The Shard of Screams. Go ahead and click the link you know you want to. Well? Not gone yet? Good because if you would have left right this second you would have wasted your time. Why? Well being the good little UO player that I am, I thought WOW, a special event. Let me go see whats going on in the land of Ghouls and Goblins. So I logged in and made my character. The rules there are basically the same as the test center. You can set your own skills, so I took a mage template, got decked out in my orange and black, and selected my starting point for Skara Brae. And then the world waited. After 15 minutes of looking at the Entering Britannia screen I gave up. Mainly since I was having flashbacks of my shard LS. It's gotten to the point where I can count every pixel in those famous words. So I quit on it. So what comes next? Never fear, the shard will be around for your playing enjoyment for the next few days. Me? I will be there at 5am.

While your "Stuck at Entering Britania" you can bitch here.

Later

•Gotta love it when your own people put you on the spot.

Gargamel has been changed.

Here are samples of what "we" are thinking about for the site. Many thanks to the guys that did most of the work.
Anymore questions, comments, concerns? Go here and tell me about it.

Hasta

•I think Crescent knows what Im talking about.

The Wall.

The single most infuriating place inside the world of UO, it has to be the gathering spot for the most annoying people to ever leave Brit Bank. Every day I find myself slack jawed in amazement at the variety of morons that manage to gather in one place. I hate going there with every fiber of my being but since the Skara Brae Rangers were ruined, the wall is a mandatory stop in the creation of any character. Since I’m tired of telling people how it works, I’m reposting Angry Bob’s fantastic (if a little dated) guide to using The Wall and other guides to the most common wall destroying skills and telling them to come here. Besides, it’s my turn to update.

Since the most infuriating Wall destroyers are the wanna-be Parry people, here is a friendly guide to gaining parry as fast as possible. Please refer your friends to it and save me from punching my monitor in frustration every time some kid drags 3 bone knights away.

Another thing that’s been upsetting me is the sudden surge of Bards. I really can’t tell you how much I enjoy looting them after they fail to provoke a Poison Elemental. For some reason, a number of bards are using Bone Knights for provoke gains. If they would only go to the Terrathon Keep and provoke Avengers and Matriarchs, their skill gain would triple. The Fame/Karma and the loot would be nice bonuses as well. And they would be out of my hair. Ill post a guide to Provocation later next week.

That ends my refresher tour of Deciet’s Wall. If I forgot anything, head to the forum and tell us what.

On another note, Nieves is supposedly working on a desperately needed facelift of the site, at least when he’s not watching cartoons. Flood his email with suggestions, corrections, or complaints that you have with the site. As my AA councilor would say, “Help us help you.”

•Why can't I do Interviews like this?

Good ol' Jinxie got Moi to speak to him. Go read about it here.

I was supposed to have an interview with our Counselor Anonymous during the time that the lawsuit was big news. You know, the one where Papa Smurf tries to put the smack down on Gargamel (OSI). Yes, I am that old. And yes, I used to watch it...with my sisters. It was either that or lose out "my turn" to watch Spiderman, Iceman, & Ariel, Thundar the Barbarian and Blackstar. THOSE were cartoons dangit. Not this other crap. Well, Johnny Bravo cracks me up. And the laughter I got from Dexter's Laboratory almost broke my spleen first time I saw it.

Anyway...I seriousely digressed.

Here I am with my PvPer on Pacific. Her anatomy is finally something to respect and parry at a decent level. I get some supplies and decide to hit Moonglow for some Chaos/Order stuff. I know I am going to die so whatever. No Chaos at all. Cool. We hit Brit. I realize I still got my extra supplies and hide them behind a wall. I head out, there is a Chaos, he gets gang raped. I loot all his armor and run over to my hidden stash. Find another chaos and I get another set of armor. Awesome. I go after a Chaos, in comes all our Order peeps and I lag, and double click a guard. He didn't like that. DEATHMOAN! Know what happens? My own Order folks loot my ass. What a bunch of fuckheads. Who says there is such a thing as loyalty? I get resed, yell at the mage that was with us, and Mr. Chaos Fencer rapes my ass. I get resed again, find my stash and say fuck it and log off. Looting your own team? Lame. You guys straight up suck.

If you haven't been following them, Adam Ant has some new stories. Go into his message boards and read about his other GuL member's adventures as well. Go in with a good attitude. The group is tight and are always willing to help...although their PvP philosphies differs from ours a bit they are all in all knowledgeable and nice folks. Be nice to them or I send Adam to cut your tongue out.

Oh Shit!!! My gf was escorting a noble and this message appeared at their destination: "I fear I have lied about a reward, however, I lack any funds". Why the lieing...! ::logs on, finds the noble, entices her out of town and kills her:: DEATHMOAN! Dumb bitch. Watch ur noble killing now :) hehe.

And to all of you guys getting those high profile interviews...you suck. I won't mention any names or anything... ::KOFFGRYNNKOFFSTORMSHADOWKOFF:: Dammit! WILL SOMEONE GIVE ME AN INTERVIEW!!!! AAHHH!!!!

Hasta.

•The legal stuff

Here is what you can use to "enhance" your Ultima Online Experience:

UOASSIST, UO Auto-Map, UO Calculator, UO Curse Tool, UO Journal Convertor, UO Magic Tool, and UO Spawn Map.

You can find links to these utilities here. Personally, I use UOASSIST and UO Auto-Map. My game play experience increased 10 fold after getting those 2 utilities. Go ahead and pay the 15 bucks for UOASSIST. It's a one time fee and it's invaluable in PvP.

Alot of of you will know about all of these. There have been alot of newer players hitting our site asking for the 3rd party programs everyone talks about in our forums. So, I decided to list them. If anyone decides to link any other utility download page other than the ones listed above, the links will be deleted. Sorry but "it bees that way sometimes".

Hasta.

•Just because everyone else updated...

[Photo of good-looking guy]

Yup, there's a picture of me...it tends to not load in on...well...any browsers. :) (That's probably because there really is no picture there.)

Anyway, I've been absent for a while, this I know. My computer actually just came down with a virus recently, and it corrupted a few files important for Windows 98 to work efficiently. Anyway, I'm in the process of burning my important files onto a CD, and then I will proceed in formatting my hard drive. Lots of fun there.

Just thought I'd inform you on my current "status." (I'm figuring the majority of you don't care, but "oh well.")

Cya later. (Assuming my computer recovers.)

•I am not showing my Mug Damnt!!

President Reagan once said Americans go through life wondering if they have made a difference, Marines don't have that problem. I didn't quote it because I am not sure if the wording is correct. So I am not going to stand here and give you my picture and history like my updater friends. Nooo Im gonna do what Gator always does best, pass on some news. There is a new factions website out. So far its pretty dead, there is a news section and forums for each faction. But it's still brand new and with factions STILL sitting somewhere on the horizon, I would'nt expect it to be too busy anyway. But when that holy times comes, the day factions opens full speed, look for this place to be a buzz. So keep an eye on it, if you are planning on entering that whole factions thang. Other than that, nothing much left to say. Have a good safe weekend, and hopefully on Sunday I will have a nice purty essay on Inscription for all you inspiring blank scroll buyers out there.

Later

•If Paladin can....

For those that don't believe I am really a Puerto Rican. And a quote from a good "friend" of mine:
Take care of your family and cut your fat ass out
of the chair for a change. Games aren't everything, and gaming forums
certainly are not either.
Hmm...sure, I guess I need to get out of my chair and do some exercises, eh? Not like a fat ass could do anything like this anyway. Or even win one of these (the plaque on the trophy reads: "First Place-Sparring"). Nope, not at all.

Am I high on myself? Nah, just damn proud of who I am and what I have done.

Hasta.

•Why You Can't Hit With Your Melee Weapon

This is a subject that seems to pop up on a regular occasion. I have addressed it on the message board, but I thought it would make a good regular article.

First, a little background. The combat system in UO is based on the attacker's skill in a weapon, and the defender's skill in a weapon. The formula for this is: (A+50)/(2(B+50)), where A is the attacker's skill, and B is the defender's skill. This will result in a total between .17 and 1.5 or, as a percentage, 17% to 150%. This is your chance to hit an opponent of skill B at Skill A in a single, discrete event. For this article, this equation will be represented by the symbol PH(Probability to Hit).

Many people expect that they should hit every other time they swing a weapon, at least, when they are at GM skill level, because their minimum chance to hit is 50%, which is the same as 1/2. However, this assumes that the first event is factored into the second, and subsequent events, which is not true. Those are discrete events. The first event's probability is 50%, so for a given first swing we have a 50% chance to hit or a 50% chance to miss.
Now the second event is, intuitively, equal to the probability to hit in the first(50%) and the second(50%) for a total of 100%. Unfortunately, you have to exculde the possibility of missing in both cases, which is represented as the product of the two chances to hit, for 25%. This means that the probability to hit once over two swings is .50+.50-(.50*.50) or .75. 75%.

Now, we can establish a few things from this. The first is that as the number of events gets larger, the probability of hitting goes up. Observe that for a three events, the probability of missing all 3 times is equal to .50*.50*.50, or 12.5%. This is less than the probability of missing for 2 events, which we established as .50*.50 or 25%. This leads us to a new expression, the Probability to Miss(PM) which is equal to (1-PH)^X where X is the number of events in the sample. Now, if we can find what the probability to miss over X events is, then we can find what the probability to hit is by subtracting the probability to miss from 1. This leads us to the following formula: f(X)=1-(1-PH)^x where PH is a constant representing the probability to hit on the interval [.17 to 1) (remember that the minimum chance to hit is .17 and for any value of PH where PH>=1 you will always hit) and x is the number of events.

By evaluating this expression as x approaches infinity for any value of PH we can see that the value of (1-PH)^x approaches 0 because, by definition, for any number(C) on the interval [0,1), the limit of C^x as X approaches infinity is 0). This means that the total value of the original function approaches, but does not ever equal one.
We can thus draw another conclusion, that being that the probability to hit for X swings will never be 100%.

So for a GM fighting another GM the chance of either hitting the other over 1-10 events is represented by this table:
x F(x)
1 50.000%
2 75.000%
3 87.500%
4 93.750%
5 96.875%
6 98.438%
7 99.219%
8 99.609%
9 99.805%
10 99.902%

Now that we know the chance to hit, next time we can discuss average damage over time.

•Let's get this right.

Paladin_VT:Militant Lesbian Man Hater

•Yep, the seasons must be changing.

Thats the only reason I can see that im making a update.


Well last Sunday I started a new character on Great Lakes. Why? Why not, I have good characters on every other shard. GL has a great ping for me so I thought "Hm, why not?"

I started with 50 Resist and 50 Poisoning, Some may tell you to start with 50 inscribe instead of 50 resist, but the time it takes to get to 50 resist from 0 is considerably longer than getting to 50 inscribe. (Hint: Use a book on another book to get to about 40. But you should know this.)

I bought a small boat and headed out to the sea. I found a nice spot and grabbed my Abnormal Social Pyschology book and started reading as I watched myself sail.

A few hours and chapters later, I was a GM Stoic. Alright easy enough. Not to mention I had about 78 eval.

By Tuesday of this week I was:

100/100/25

100 Med
91 Eval
68 Magery
50 Resist
50 Poison
58 Scribe
0 Wrestle

So I started Magery training yesterday and hit 80 before I went to bed. Allow me to quote ProQue
"Fizzle is your friend." At least in Powerhour that is true. For example, when I was at 45 magery I took 200 FS regs and got to 58 magery in about 35 mins. This is only in Powerhour remember, otherwise you are just wasting time and regs.

Ive come to the conclusion that no matter what shard you visit, Moonglow is the cesspool of humanity.

There are 3 types of people there.

Sitters, kewldoods, and RP'ers

Lets start with everyones favorite, the kewldoods.

Kewldoods are easily identified by their names. Example: Suppakilla, HoRsEmeaT, and my personal favorite Da pAlAdiN. I thought perhaps that was this our esteemed Paladin, but he didn't start a argument with me when I used pronouns at the wrong time. They are almost excusivly PvP'ers. The kind that tell you that you suck when their posse kills you 10vs1. Also the same one that accuses you of cheating when you beat them.

RP'ers are also easily identified. They have names such as Aragon, Biblo, and other names. These can be easily confused with people that have no imagination for naming their chars. They are found often in the many player run taverns around the world.

My least favorite, the sitters. These people are the bane of bandwidth. Nothing is worse than recalling into a laggy town to find a bunch of people sitting around on their nightmares with the lord/lady titles. Talking about all the money they have and the rares they collect. These people are a waste. They don't even play the damn game they sit around bragging about their virtual belongings.

Quite Sad.
Ah well, talk to you sometime after New Years I imagine.

•Who Am I?

ProQuo posted a VERY good (and funny) summary of who we are at UOPG. It's hilarious. You got to go read it.

I started thinking about it and while going over the continual posts of "you suck Nieves, I am better than you NUUB!" Ok, it's not all like that, but it might as well be. Do these people even KNOW who I am? Or who we at UOPG are? Do they even think about what they are going to say before they post it? Before I lower myself into a "fuck you and die" rant...let's take a different approach.

You say your way is better. Fine, post it. You say ours isn't. Fine, tell us about it. But don't come to our 'house' spouting bullshit. It's not what we are here for. You got UOStratics Speils/Rants, UOProstitute and the like to do that shit at. No, I am not saying we are against free speech or don't advocate the sharing of ideas. But we look for POSITIVE ideas and exchanges of said ideas. If you want to flame one of us, send us an email. If you never hear from that person, they probably did the "delete" thing and ignored it. Don't get mad, they have the right too. But if they reply, then you have what you are looking for, an ear for your "I am right, you're wrong voice".

OH, and BEFORE you post your "best way" information, pour through the archives and different sections. You just MIGHT find your way there. Maybe...go look. Trust me, you will like what you find.

With the advent of the internet people think they can say what they want without worry of consequence of their posts. What they fail to realize is that there are appropriate ways and places to do those things.

UOPG's forums has always been about asking questions related to playing UO to it's fullest. Every once in awhile people share their game play experiences and we talk about them. That's all fine and good. I don't really mind. What I mind is blasting each other back and forth over stupid shit. And YES, I have been guilty of it. I am human, catch me on a bad day, and I turn into my mother and throw the Puerto Rican flag at you (yes, I am really hispanic; ProQuo li...erhm, he was joking; he's honest, really, he is). But that doesn't make it right. I hope you all understand what I am saying.

Constructive criticism is ok. Saying you suck, is NOT constructive criticism.

To all of you new folks visiting our site for the first time (or first few times), welcome. We aren't Nazis or Communists or even Pink Fluffy Bunnies (I still like Puffy bunnies :p). We are just a bunch of guys with too much time on our hands playing an addictive game. We have alot of information to share and are very willing to share it. Enjoy the ride. We do.

Hasta.

•"Im not dead yet..."

That's right folk's your's truly is still alive and kickin. And just what have I been up to? Well besides my secret plot to take over Lord Brit's castle, I have been doing a little bit of everything. Mainly I have been concentrating on my scribe. Hopefully by the end of the week I will be GM in less than 15 power hours from a starting skill of 32. And don't worry as soon as I finish I will be pasiing that info along to all of you. I will also include information on how many materials I used. But one thing I would like to add to the whole Scribe discusion is this. I hear it all the time on how people just can't find the blanks. Well heres some information. I found today 31 different locations to buy scrolls at. All in Trammel. And that is just places, not the amount of vendors either. Some of them places have three vendors, others just one. So what does that mean? On a rough guess I would say that there is at least 45 official sellers of blank scrolls in Trammel alone. Just something you can chew on until next time.

Later

•How not to use a Blade Spirit for Parrying.

Deathmoan times 10. That's what happened to my fencer. Her body was all over the place. Trying to do this with 2 computers and my 2 accounts was WAY hard :( (I don't think this is bannable as I was attending the whole session and was not using multi-UO--I am sure I will get an email from my OSI rep if it's iffy or a bad thing to do).

Even with near 90 healing, GM anatomy and 100 dex, my fencer's body parts were quisinart all over my front lawn :(. I got 2 friends to help me do it and he informed me that 32 resist is NO where near what she requires to do it. ::Sighs:: Oh well. I am going to get more parry for my fencer at the BK room (she's at 95) and try to finish it in one power hour (not likely). Either way, I will GM her parry and get her resist up.

Last night I took PvMer out and worked parry on Pacific (thank you Watts for the help). After notifying a GM of two offensive char names (one being Nut In Ya--lame asshoes), and after they were promptly taken care of (YOU GO GM SO-AND-SO!), I grabbed some BKs and loaded a shield up without using a weapon. Talk about a beating. BKs are damn tough when you aren't beating them back. I got to 79.0 real Parrying. That is a serious Power Hour (yes kiddies, that's just ONE power hour). If all you want is parrying, get a good healer (GM anatomy, preferably above 80 healing so he can res you :), and 100 dex or just get a good mage [Thank you WATTS! I WUV YOU!]), and use no weapon. The BK will beat your shield senseless giving you some seriousely rediculous gains. And it works better. I have tested it with my parrier above (the fencer) and with this char on Pacific. Gains are better without a weapon cause the BK isn't getting any weaker cause it's taking no damage and can knock you around with it's full fury!!! Sorry, I am a bit excited. Heheh...running from my own bladespirits isn't all that fun.

Hasta.

•Hey Nieves -

I was going to send you this as an email, but since I really don't want to end up rewriting this thing, I'm posting it as an update on UOPG.

I read your Alchemy update, then the thread in the Forum on Saturday. In the course of doing my own Alchemy update some weeks ago, I had looked at the difference in gain between making Greater Cures and Deadly Poison through the 90s, but of course I never bothered to write down any hard numbers. Luckily, I'm just about finished GMing a second Alchemist on a different shard, so last night I did two comparison Power Hours.

All values are in real skill totals and exclude stat bonuses.

The first PH, I made nothing but Greater Cures. I started at 91.6 with 2000 Garlic, and by the end of the hour my skill was 92.4. I let the macro play out for the remaining Garlic, which took about another 15 minutes, and ended up at 92.5.

After the burst clock reset, I ran a second PH, making nothing but Deadly Poison. Using 3000 Nightshade, I went from 92.5 to 94.2. Again, I let the macro play out for the remaining regs and ended up at 94.8

In roughly the same amount of time, GCs gave me .9 in gain, while DPs gave me 2.3 in gain (or .8 in a burst hour vs 1.8). I don't know about you, but I measure efficiency in UO by however much real-world time it takes to do a certain thing, whether that means reading a book and nursing a Alchemy macro or buying regs so I can run that macro. If these are the sort of gains I can expect to see up to GM, making DP is more efficient on both counts (total time and time-per-reg).

I'm going to do another 2-3 double burst sessions to see what gain is like at the mid and upper 90s, but I remember from last time this is pretty much the way of things.

•Ok, I got past a bit of the boredom...

But I think I am getting over it...one hopes anyway.

I found that powergaming characters over and over (restarting shards, deleting and recreating, etc) can be tedious AND boring. Also, the fact that it's hard for me to find consistant playmates to get on with is a pain in the ass. Yes, there are people that I can play with at night, but, by that time, I am tired of UO and either want to do something else or have other, more important things, to do. I think a bit of a break is in order. No, I am not quitting. I would regret it. I know I would.

It's been a month since I have worked and things are getting really tight. 401k can only go so far (if it ever gets here in the first place). I have bullshitted and procrastinated enough as well.

Priorities are going to start taking over. How does that affect you? I am going to get this fucking website updated, redesigned, and upgraded now. It's been past time for a make over. I added a couple of new monsters and still looking for reports from you folks about how to fight certain monsters (I.E.-Shadow Dragons, Acid Elementals, etc) so I can add it. Why don't I do it? I don't have the time and I for one, can't fight a Shadow Dragon alone. Destard is a death trap for me. Just ask the guy that got ate by the Ancient Wyrm a few weeks ago. His mom wasn't happy when I took back his arm to her for burial. Anyway...

There was a guy that was helping redrum and I with the redesign. If he would email me so we can continue that would be great.

Please realize that the information we post here is from our experience. If you don't accept it as truth or agree with it, do one of two things. Talk to us in our forums or email about why you think the information is wrong, flawed, or why you don't agree with it. Or go to stratics. I am sure they have all the most up to date information you need.

What we do here at UOPowergamers is given to you at NO cost. We don't get paid for this. We are VOLUNTEERING our time and effort. This collaboration of Ultima Online guides, strategies, and tips is something that is 3 years in the making. Thank goodness redrum did this. Otherwise I would be in the dark about alot of things in our game world. Please appreciate that effort. It's the least you could do. If you want to send money, let me know and I can give you a P.O. Box. Otherwise, a simple thank you is sufficient.

Flames in the forum about how the information sucked or is invalid will be met with serious ridicule and without the necessary respect required of a, possibly, valid arguement. And besides, Paladin is always looking for a fight. He's always right and will show you why you're wrong and personally flawed. I would avoid that type of experience if I were you. Anyway, I digress. Speak intelligently and avoid the insults. Yes, sometimes I get caught up in that mess and I just got to watch it. Shit is stressfull enough as it is without getting into a kid's debate.

Hammer stories are forthcoming. I played with a bit more than usual. Had some good times and a couple of bad times (Sir Bart, your dragons suck).

I got to spend some time with Watts on Pacific last night with his bard. In his own words: "Bards OWN!". Yep. For player versus monster in high traffic monster areas, they freaking rock. And with the magery to back it up, they can be unstoppable forces even in one on one scenarios versus monsters :). If you have a spot, make one for your mass monster hunting (Dungeons, Papua deserts, Yew Forest, etc).

Well, that is enough blabbering for now.

Hasta.

•I can't believe I am saying this...

I logged onto Ultima Online tonight and I was...bored.

Hasta.

•Juust no lika my talking eh!? Pues, mira, juus know que?

Lots to talk about...

How I GMed Alchemy in two weeks
Well, more like a year. I made this alchemist back in fall of last year but never sat down and worked him much. I decided to go ahead and finish him.

From 65-GM this is what I did.

I got regs for Greater Explosions, Greater Cures, Greater Heals and the Highest Poison I could make. I ran through the four of them using 4 different thingamajigs and empty kegs to put the made potions in them. When I reached 85ish, I stuck to Greater Cures and Greater Poisons. Once I got to 91.0 I started Deadly Poison and continued with Greater Cures until 95.0. From 95.0 I rode Deadly Poison on up to GM. It was a LONG, expensive process. Well, I mean long cause it was boring as hell (did I tell you I hate making merchant characters?). I spent over 100k in regs mainly because I kept getting to the NPC vendors late. You sure you don't play Great Lakes ProQuo? I managed to find plenty of nightshade when it mattered most.

I wound up with 5 Greater Poison Kegs, 3 Greater Heals, 5 Greater Cures, 1 Greater Explosion and 2 Deadly Poison Kegs. All those Cure and Poison kegs will come in handy when I make my run at GM Poisoning (ugh).

Some tips: Do this only during Power Hour. Some of my colleagues suggested doing it outside of PH just to finish but I didn't agree with the reg expenditure. In all, it took me roughly 10-12 Power Hours. Also, never, EVER double click on a Deadly Poison potion when you only have 31 strength (no, I haven't stat capped him yet; doing alchemy & poisoning first, then Magery/Eval/Med, and finally Inscription). Thank goodness my greater cures were of sufficient strength to cure me of the ailment. Damn lag...yeah, that's the ticket.

So, ProQuo doesn't like my "eloquent" use of the Spanglish language eh? Pues, sabes que mijito? At least I don't get my lady's pets killed :p Neh.

Hasta.

Note: ProQuo and I love each other very much. All this is meant in jest so quit sending me the "ProQuo sucks, You rock" emails. We all know it's true but I, nor ProQuo needs to hear it anymore often than we already do. ::super grin::

•Boy, your'n a heap a trouble now. Oh yeah, Vet rewards too!

According to the banner above, this still is a powergaming site. With that in mind, I give you this tidbit. To GM meditation in one day, use the stat trick commonly referred to as the “ping pong method” to get intelligence to 100. The next step is to find a place where your boat can sail ahead without hitting land. There is a spot just East of Ice Isle that lets you do just that. Head out to sea and tell your annoying tillerman to go “slow forward”. Now cast whatever you can to keep your Mana supply low. After a few hours, you should hit GM meditation. If you don’t, you suck. Don’t blame me, blame your parents.

On a side note, If I ever write a post like the one below, feel free to flame me. Much love to Nieves and all that but please stop with the Puerto Rican speak. I don’t go writin’ in no country boy talk cuz I be knowin’ it bothers some folks, and that ain’t right.

And finally, NEW Veteran Rewards are listed here. Go drool.

•No juust no say dat chit to me!???

This is tonight's experience at the Keep Merchant Vendor next to the new Treasure Hut (I believe near Minoc) on Great Lakes, Trammel: "got any shade"? "yeah, these vendors". "um, I checked those, they are empty". "oh well" "Oh well?" "nope" "you call that customer service? you suck" "Fuck you..." remove thyself...ejected

I for one will never shop there again. What the fuck is up with those people? They obviousely have no freaking idea what customer service is. "Sorry sir, we are out, please check back another time". Or even a simple: "sorry, we are out". Not, "oh FUCKING well"!?

Oh, and what the fuck is up with people selling surp accurate katana's of ruin for 25,000??? Since when is a katana of ruin worth 25k? Massive Acc Spear of Power 45,000? Maybe. Sup Acc durable kryss of Ruin 25,000? Hardly. Massive Silver Katana 12,000? Fuck no. Substantial accurate katana of silver and weakness 25,000? Oh my fucking gosh are you nuts? A 250-350gp GM Katana is better than that surp acc katana of ruin. I am kind of appalled at the people selling at those prices, but the real idiots are those buying the shit. Oh wait, I forgot about the durable acc viking silver sword for 6,000. Oh yeah, that's a fucking steal :( Since when!??? Anyway...you keep buying those things at those prices one and all. I will keep selling and giving shit to my friends at PreUO:R prices. Greed...in a game? ::sighs:: Sooner or later, the humanity comes out.

Update: Went back to the keep to let them know I will let all my friends know how they treat folks and shit. They told me to quit bitching and just do it. Allrighty then. That's when I decided to let you folks know about it.

Hasta.

•Thank you WATTS for this morning's laughter!

GO HERE NOW! Don't ask no questions. Just GO HERE now. It's one of the most hilarious things I have EVER seen.

Hasta.

•Patches patches patches

Let's see, today we got a patch that makes the windows easier to use for newer players (no, I didn't say newbies, so hush).

ProQuo is telling me the Nerfed Tamer's...err, Stabling patch is coming in tomorrow. I told him to rant about it, but he told me it's old hat and just to put it up. Ok...there you have it. Go get ur patches today and wait 20 minutes to get logged into UO. My current wait time to get into the game after the Newb...err, Windows Patch.

Also from my friends over at stratics: Electronic Arts is working on an Ultima Online-derivative title for PS2. Since the game'll be ready before the broadband strategy for PS2 is in place, it'll come with a 56k USB modem in the box...Hmmm, the PS2 is becoming quite the home for online RPG's. Everquest, the other major online RPG, is definitely PS2 bound...

::groans loudly:: Just what I need..more 8 year olds playing the game.

I just thought of something...how are you going to play UO on a PS2 with just a joystick?

Ok, I have been mean enough for today.

Hasta.

•Yo Quiero Taco Bell

Give me some meximelts and I am happy as a button. Anyway...

So my daughter gets hit in the face by a swing at school Friday. She has a serious 2 inch cut on her face. About 1 centimeter deep. Bleeding all over the freaking place. Ok, now that you are all disgusted by that...

I get to the emergency room and I have to sign in. Not tell a receptionist "hey, my kid has a really bad cut, can you look at it". Nothing. Just sit there for 1/2 hour. Hmm...there are 2 other people in front of me and I am waiting for 1/2 a fucking hour? When we get called back there is a docter and two nurses shooting the shit at a stattion. Um...wtf? You ain't got anything better to do? Someone tell me why the fuck we have to wait so long in every emergency room in america? Ok, only the ones in Ohio, Texas, Georgia, and Alabama. I have been in emergency rooms in each of those states and they all suck ass with waiting times. I don't know about you, but if I am coming to you in the emergency room, I am there for a fucking reason and need some fucking help a.s.a.p. Oh, and someone tell me why they have 20 people working during the day and only 8 at night? That's like ignorant...

Girlfriend just made a comment to me about it. "It's like waiting for a GM to respond to a call". Well, I think going to the emergency for help is a step above calling a GM cause a vendor disappeared in our tower (yes, it has happened since the last vendor patch; be aware).

So Dr. Tweedle-Dum comes in and asks us what's wrong. My daughter tells him and he pokes at her. She winces and he tells her to not be a wimp. I glare at the fucker and start wondering where he learned his bedside manner. He pokes her again, and again she winces. Again he says don't be a wimp. I start thinking how a deadly poisoned katana would look in his ass. They numb her face and put in this new fangled glue that chemically shuts the wound. :/ Again, while the doctor has my daughter's face in his hands, I start wondering what he would look like with that katana in his colon. ::sighs:: I hate being so fucking patient with folks. But he's got my daughter's face in his hands. Do I be a dick or just go home? I tell him he sucks and we go home. She's going to have a scar, I know it :( My perfect baby's face. What does this have to do with UO? Absofuckingloutely nothing.

I get a call from watts the other night. He tells me about his neighbors killing his red char. Allrighty then. I put a call out via ICQ and Suev meets me at his house. After some "blocked rune" problems we get to the twinky house. HIm and 2 of his friends had done killed them 2-3 times. So, I get ready for some action. His 2 friends leave and it's just us 3 versus the 4 twinkies. We kill a couple while they do the house fight dance (lame). After a bit Watts disappears and they kill us off and we have to go get resed. Don't blame Watts. Just that I wish he told us what he was doing. We get to Watts house, reequip and I get a bright idea. I grab all of Watts Greater Explosion potions, a exceptional Heavy Xbow and tell them to keep me healed. We run to the house and they start coming out. I start throwing pots as they run and drop one of them. I lag out, drop a potion on myself, and then hit Suev AND Watts with Potions. They died soon after. :/ Lame. I killed my partners with out own pots. :/ I was trying to fight off the Lumberjacker but the Pot that went off on me dropped me low in life, and he hit me twice and I took a dirtnap. I kissed my partner's ass and apologized profusively and they said it was cool.

We got requipped hooked up with another of Watt's buds and ran back to their house. Plan this time was straight archery on their asses. Well, we got their, charged into their house and, 2 minutes later, were looting 4 corpses :). Not bad eh?

Well, that's enough for the day...remind me to tell you how Elyssa and Loren killed a grey today...

Hasta.

•"git up there and piss in the radiator!"

Everyone remember the movie "Red Dawn"? It was basically a story of the Russians taking over the whole great US of A for the folks out there who do not know. Well now there is a new Dawn in town, and no its not the "Red" kind either. How about UO:Third Dawn? Sound good? I like it. Our dear friend Lum broke out with this exciting story today. And it looks like things are getting even better on the horizion. This whole new development is considered to be the famously rumored 3D client that alot of people have been waiting for. Now what kind of 3D client? I am not sure. I am praying that it is something along the lines of Baldour's Gate. And I mean the whole deal. When casting spells, mages go into a entire bablling fit with bolts of power flying around. Thats what I am talking about. But it looks as if we will have to see. But the rumor-mill is churning more than ever. I believe that OSI will have to ship a new disk for this type of project. With new art and everything else, they would just have to. A patch would be to HUGE, and with the way Patch servers work, I would be here till about 2007 trying to get it to fully load. Even with a cable modem. But hey campers, this is GREAT News for everyone. Now I will have my fix around for a whole lot longer than I planned. So "git up there and piss in the radiator!" We got a new UO coming to us sooner than we though, April 2001 is what is posted, we shall see.

Comments and thoughts? Piss Here.

Later

•Well I tried...

I screwed up...really really bad.

If you have been paying attention in the last 1/2 hour you would've noticed some really freaky things happening to the site. I was trying to add a new PvM page and when I uploaded the template to my editor, I hit "Auto-Correct" and it pretty much fucked some of the links and pages. Redrum, where are you when I need you!??

Anyway, I will muck around with fixing it and hopefully get it right.

UPDATE: Ok, it's fixed and working now. Thanks to Redrum's ghost for coming to me and threatening to cut it off if I didn't get it fixed soon.

Hasta.

•I think I am quitting.

Well...it is 2:40 am and I am drunk as fuck. Coming home from a very fun frat party I decided to play my stat loss red that was somewhere around 40 short terms. And guess what? Some newbie killed him bc I am so disoriented right now to drink a pot or cast In Mani. WTF am I doing playing drunk? WHY! WHY!...Well with all that I dunno what I am gonna do...that was the only char I played...maybe take stat loss? ewh that would suck...god damn! WHY! WHY!...

Lates.

•New Item Is Found!!

Well it seems as if there is a new armor to be found in the lands. So quickly rush on out and kill some Efreets and get your very own set of Deamon Bone Armor!!! That's right no need to walk around in a sissy set of regular Bone Armor, get your Deamon Set and amaze all your friends. I would like to personally thank all of our friends at Blackdagger for coming out with this news. Now it's time to ask a request from you, our beloved readers. If you see or hear about anything new that comes out in the game, Please Drop Us An Email At The Very Least. We would very much appreicate it. Other than that, it's your standard Friday here at Powergamer Central. Either everyone is playing or out pimpin. Quiet I guess, to say the least.

Later

•"Well let me beat the dead horse a little..."

Well, looks like the nerf wagon maybe coming to an advanced shard near you. If you can't think of which one, I will make it easy for you. Siege Perilous. The true home of every "old school" UO veteran that couldn't stand UO:R life. This place is not, nor has it ever been a place for the weak. Right as you log in to the shard it informs you that if you weren't l33T on a regular shard, then do not even bother. And the people that live there love it. Want Big Guilds? They Are There. Siege players have no problems, they don't experience nearly as many twinks as a normal shard does. Twinks fear Siege. Why? Easy. ROT. The only way to gain skill. Well most of them anyways. You aren't guarenteed a 5x GM in two weeks on Siege, but you could get one in 2 months. And everyone loves it. Hell, there is even no stat loss on Siege. Want to be Red? Have at it. Just enjoy the ROT. I personnaly love ROT, and it isnt hard. It just takes time. Thats what makes Siege special. You cant log in and be a bad ass in two days. You have to, hold your breath, WORK to be someone on Siege. Thus no twinks. Which is good, because Siege is just about the Who's Who of PvP. You go there to PvP you have to be serious, and be good. Trust me, if you suck at PvP why spend two months of your life to make a Siege char just to get your ass kicked. Thus Siege is the advanced shard. Some thoughts on OSI's ideas:

The Rate over Time (RoT) system will be removed from the shard entirely. Skill gains will function as on regular shards.

This right here is the official slap in the face. If this goes through. Good bye Vets, hello Twinkville U.S.A. Ever played on test before with Twinks running everywhere causing just plain anarchy. Welcome to the future of Siege with no ROT. Remember no Stat Loss, a twinks wet dream. Siege will no longer be hard. Siege will become a joke. Once the total anarchy of twinks sets in, guess what nobody will want to play there. So therefore you are back to square one. Nobody playing Siege(personally I like it this way.) with twinks leaving because there will be nobody to twink.

Shopkeepers will no longer charge three times the regular shard price for reagents.

This change however rocks. Since the spawn changes, Moonglow is no longer the Reg heaven that it used to be as far as picking them off the ground. This will help out greatly. As we all know, Reg Shopping is a pain in the ass. Now try to imagine doing it with Regs costing 3x as much. Viola!! That's present day Siege.

Upon release of the faction system, guards will cease to exist in non-faction towns.

I like this as well. Red vs. Blue battles are great, and now that Reds can run into town and take care of business it should make things alot more interesting. Great idea here also.

I didnt hit on all of them. Just the three, I liked and absolutly hated. So what can we do. Not sure if there is much that can be done. But look for alot of senior players heading out the door whenever this comes out. I guess the thing that pisses me off the most is that SP players do not complain about the shard at all. In fact they love it. The economy there alone rocks. People are great. Hell I was playing there with my newb the other day. I got jumped by like 10 players at the crossroads. Well needless to say I died. But they ressed me, I grabbed what I had left and went about my way. It rocked!! The only thing I can recommend is to go here and let them know how you feel. Then you can always drop by here and rant with us as well. Thanks to Dregoth Do'Kaal for kicking this thread off. Read on down to Paladin's update as well. It's a great one. And hopefully not his last.

And on one other note. This kinda hits close to home for Gator. Say some prayers.

Later

•An Open Letter to OSI

I have played this game since February of 1998(According to the account services page, I actually started in September of 1998, but what's 3 months here or there?). I got the internet specifically to play UO. I had heard about it from a friend, and since I had played all the Ultima games(Ultima 1,2,3,4,5,6,7a,7b,8, Worlds of Ultima 1-2,Ultima Underworld 1-2) I thought it would be incredible. And it was.

For the first time, I was playing a game where the interactions were real. Somewhere, someone else was playing the same game and seeing the same thing with me and we were interacting with it. The first thing I noticed was that the game did not live up to the Ultima series' treatment of virtue. The shrines of virtue were irrelevant, and many people played with malice in their hearts, and mischeif on their minds. Right away I wanted to fight these people, to defend the eight virtues against assault. So I created Tynian Granger, who still exists on the Catskills shard today. I joined a guild of 8 people called "Marked of Brotherhood" MOB. Some of those guys I still talk to today, almost 3 years later.

After a year or so on Cats, with all my friends gone, and me beta testing EQ, I quit UO for 3 months or so. Then I came back and went to the Atlantic shard. This was the hotbed of pking and I wanted to come back with a vengeance. There I met Serathnal. This guy is now one of my best friends, period, in game or out. Any time I need help, I know I can count on him, and he on me. I also met Loves Arrow, the Guildmaster of VoV, who is one of the nicest people ever born, bar none. And so I kept playing, and I had fun. Then came statloss.

Statloss wasn't that big a deal then, because the majority of people that were red really were guys who went around killing newbies and miners, and I thought that was really stupid. It had a negative affect on the people that just liked fighting, but the number of pk's didn't really reduce, but the group ganking method sure did increase. I still think Gonz Gon Goobler is a loser, and so were the other 5 guys that went with him. Never saw them alone, except as a corpse, but no one survives 5 e-bolts, twice. It's just not done.


So now, I became a pvper. I fought and learned with the new weapon abilities (maces doing STA damage), I learned about EXP/FS/Hally. I learned about trapped pouches, and I learned about fighting as a team.(In the old days, you just slapped on a heavy crossbow, and then shot people up and fired off e-bolts) Somewere along the line we fixed weapons, which was a good thing, bows had been too good, and melee sucked. But, when melee became good, a new character was born, the Dex monkey. As a mage, these guys really bothered me right at first, but I adapted. With the hally rush, you could still wreck one of these guy's days, but if you screwed the pooch, you were going to die.

Slowly they took away some of these tactics, and, with the combat patch, severely took mages down the crapper. Someone on high corrected and mages got a new toy, Mindblast. Now poison was a useful combat spell, and so was mindblast, but the addition of abilities for warriors, that they hadn't had before gave them a new edge. I adapted, I kept playing, I had friends, I gm'd smithing finally.

Then came Instant characters and UO:R and UO as I knew it was ruined. In this new Candyland, people could do what they wanted to, bother you, annoy you, screw around and piss you off, and there was NOTHING you could do about it. The economy went straight down, because money was so easy to get now, it was scary. It was never hard, but now, with no threat of any pker, you could loot as much as you wanted and there was no threat to you. I started to hate the game, but Serathnal invited me to SP, and I started playing there and had fun. No twinks or idiots, because SP was hard, and they didn't like hard. I moved on and adapted.

Now, OSI, you want to take SP away from me. Not this day. Not this time. This time I draw the line. You want to turn SP into instant characters, with impunity everywhere, without statloss, so all the twinks everywhere can come to SP. No, sir, not today. Taking away RoT is the worst thing that you could possibly do. The population of SP is small for a reason. We like it that way. Everyone knows everyone else. We know who can be trusted and who can't. The shard is hard, and the small population keeps lag down. This is the best place to play UO, and you want to take it away. I'll quit first. I will turn in my account, I will tell you to shove it. I, and many others on Siege, will turn my back on a game I have played so long, rather than see you destroy the last good place to play. I will flame you, I will rant, I will rave until you do this. And, rest assured, I know you will do this, because, in the past, you have ignored the veteran players in favor of the new players, and so many have fallen by the wayside. You have sown the seeds of destruction, and now you will reap the rewards of attrition. It saddens me, but again, I will adapt, and I will move on.

•In the words of a Gator...

Siege is getting nerfed.

Do I need to say anything? ::sighs::

I see another exodus coming...

Hasta.

•Yes, I am still alive

Well, today seems to be a GOOD connection day. The cable guy is in and running a new line. The main office is kissing my ass apologizing for the shitty service. Which they should. I am paying for this shit. Well, they are crediting me for the time I have been down so I should be happy.

I am still job less and trying to get through the unemployment blues. My 401k isn't going to be disbursed for another 4 weeks so I am hurting there. I am starting to teach more karate classes and their might be an opportunity to earn some real money doing it (1400 in bonuses each month can't be too bad can it?). Oh, and someone told me today that making 16,000 / year is poverty level. Um...fuck you too. I used to live very well with that kind of money up north. Granted, I would love to continue making 43k a year as I did last year, but how much money does anyone person need? I just want to pay bills, buy kid's clothes, take em out every now and then and stay healthy. Everything else is candy. Know what I mean? Doesn't mean I won't strive for more, just that "driving a Porche" isn't as important as just being able to drive in some cases.

I am going to make some changes to the PvM pages soon (cable connection is down as we speak) and update it with one of the new monsters I have been up close and personal with. I will also continue from where Redrum left off in redesigning the site. Him and a currently unnamed person have done a GREAT job with their ideas. I love it. Hopefully they will both be implemented very very soon.

I did do a Treasure Map today with my Hunter, Clyde. Here is what he got: 1 chest: silver hvy xbow of ruin, 2 mace of force, 1 shield of fortification, 1 small xbow of vanq, 1 mace of vanq. Oh, and 7k+ gold. I think Hammer will love the maces. ::Grins::

My jacker has been spending alot of time in Deceit lately. Liches are everywhere after the 2nd level. It's nuts. Heck, I spent more time getting resurrected then I did actually playing. To the guy that looted my scimitar of power, I hope you got looted today (I saw him dead) and don't get resed for hours.

Um...I got a question for people. Why is it that I walk up to someone selling their wares they decide to ask someone else for an opinion on the sale?

Here I am banking, ingotseller comes up and says: "ingots for sale, 7gp minimum bid". Hmm..."how much for iron you say?" "7gp". "Well, good luck selling em." Ingotseller walks off and says: "ingots for sale 5gp minimum bid". "Hold up...5gp now?" "yeah..." "Ok, how many iron you got?" "248" "5gp per ingot ok?" "Hmm..how do you call a GM?" "Why do you need a GM?" "I want to see if that is a fair price". "Um, LOL. GMs don't answer those kinds of questions". "Hold on..." "Wtf?" "I am asking a friend GM smith if that's a fair price". Whatever...

"GM friend says don't sell for less than 6gp Each". "Fine, 1500 for all 248 ingots sound, ok?" "um..someone offered me 10GP per ingot" :| Kal Ort Por.

If you are selling something, research and set a price. Get a minimum and maximum you are willing to deal then keep that in mind when you are going to hit banks selling things. I don't have the time or patience for people that work that way. That's just ignorant and will get more Kal Ort Pors from me than I can shake a stick at.

Hasta.

•Reason for the delay? Well, you could have probably guess that.

Posted by Calandryll on the UO Boards:


Let me try to make something really clear. The fact is, many players expressed dissapointment with the rewards. If most players liked the rewards, if the system was welcomed with open arms, we would be publishing it very soon, possibly even this week. But again, there was enough dissapointment from the community and we decided it was best to add a few more items to the list, items that were not given out in the past.

We have no plans to remove any of the current rewards from the list. I know there has been some debate about some of the rewards (like bless deeds), we have read both sides of the debate and feel we should leave them in the list.

We'll be working to get the new rewards designed and announced as soon as possible...nobody here wants to delay this anymore than we have to...but when enough players expressed dissapointment in a system that is supposed to be a reward system, we have to take action. This was not a decision we made lightly, we talked about it for quite some time before making the final call.

I don't expect that everyone will like every reward we come up with, even the new ones. With so many people in the community, it is impossible to please everyone. But we do feel we can come up with a few more rewards that should make people feel better about the system.

While I know there are those who will say we have no plans to implement this system (citing necromancy and alchemy as examples) and unfortunately, I can't stop that, but I can say that rewards is going to be published. Of course, that's just words, so I'll leave it at simply stating wait for the announcement and then we shall take it from there.


That's the news, folks. Oh, and you can go back and post about this issue here.

•Those Darn Vet Rewards...

The following was posted to FYI today:


Update: UO Veteran Rewards
Over the past several weeks, we have been paying close attention to player feedback regarding the UO Veteran Rewards. While we are pleased that everyone has shown such enthusiasm over the rewards program, we have also noted many concerns regarding the uniqueness of the rewards for each level of game time. In light of these concerns, we have decided to return the Veteran Rewards program to development status while we determine, and add, additional rewards to the program.

All of the current reward options listed in In Development (http://update.uo.com/indev.html) will remain as options, but we will be added a minimum of one new item to each reward level.

While these new items are being designed and tested, we will be focusing our testing efforts toward bringing the Faction System online.

We apologize for delaying the UO Veteran Rewards program at this late date. However, as the program was designed specifically to reward our long-term players, we feel that it would be unacceptable to offer rewards that aren’t pleasing to our players. We will update you with additional information regarding the UO Veteran Rewards program in the future.

-----
This was a comment on the UO boards from Calandryll:


I don't have an ETA on this yet folks and I do want to say that while we have been listening to all of your feedback, I cannot say right now what or how many additional rewards there will be. We have no plans to remove any of the rewards though at this time. We'll keep you updated as much as we can. Thank you to all of you who posted comments about this.


Uh oh...Now what? Click here and post your thoughts.

•I am the man.

Bleh bah boo, yeah, I'm supposed to be gone. I just came in to get some shit. Anyway, I got the job (woot!), and should be starting early next week, so I should be back online in a few weeks.

One quick note: DON'T e-mail me anymore, because I'm disconnecting from my ISP right after this post. If you e-mail me at my current address, I will never receive it. I put up a shitty hotmail account for the time being, so e-mail me there. The address is bleh44@hotmail.com.

Cya in a few weeks.

•"What the Hell are you still doing here?!"

I guess I wasn't leaving last night. It's this morning instead. Anyway, I got in one last update. That is, the parrying page. Oh my fucking god... I have never, ever, ever, ever been so confused in my life. It took me 3 hours until I finally got it all sorted and figured out, actually. I hope it's right. If not, tell me before 11am CST and I'll fix it. Otherwise, tell Nieves and he will not fix it. Har har, I kill myself.

Update: The archery page has also been updated with the information that Lawyer posted on the boards recently.

•"Where the Hell have you been!?"

Living baby, living. That's where I've been. For those of you who are new to the site and have no idea who I am I'll give you a little history. I used to update this site infrequently...very infrequently. And when I would update it was only to shed some much needed light on whatever particular problem was plauging UO at the time. I felt it my duty to attack everything from the abhorent patches to the mass ignorant UO populace whose intelligence I could generally equate with that kid with the funny limp who always got to leave school early and ride home on the short bus. If that hits close to home and you're offended. Good. Moving on, I've been away now for several months and to be honest, I've missed it some. I got on the other night jumping on to one of my good friends accounts.(He has 4, 2 of which are formerly mine.) I quickly tried to set up my macro's and remember everything I would need. They were talking about this "new dungeon" everyone hangs at so I went with them to check it out. Well we get there and My boy Bugs dies doing something stupid. Keep in mind, I'm a pvper. Old school, and I'm not used to losing. "Pain" starts to loot my boy so my instincts kick in and I attack him. Let me add before I go on that before I left I didn't have the chance to really familiarize myself with the new style of pvp, not to mention the fact I had not so much as logged into UO in 4 months, plus I was playing on an aol connection with the minimum download so I was running my disk. Anyway, with those excuses preloaded, I attack "Pain" and proceeded to have my ass handed to me. What macro did I forget to put on of all things? That would be cure. Point is I had fun just hanging out with the old boys causing mischief so I think I will be making my return as soon as I get a new system. (anyone selling a good system for around 500 needs to email me.) Anyway, before I left those that followed me know I was cast as a featured extra in the new movie "Pearl Harbor" coming out in May. I will be including full commentary and pictures of my week long endevour in the next update. It was hard work sitting under a tarpon eating fresh fruit and shooting the shit with Ben Affleck, Alec Baldwin, as well as the original Doolittle pilots that actually bombed Tokyo. Anyway, that's a little teaser. I will fully break my confidentiallity agreement with the next update.
Flashicl711@aol.com

•Going away.

Well, for anyone who checked my pointless section a while back, I said I'm going to move in with my brother and work where he does, which is a good 45 miles away. Since then, laziness has taken over and I enjoyed it, so I decided to wait a few weeks (months) before I actually decided to call the place. To make a long story longer, I called them up and they called me back a day later, which is today, and they set up an interview for tomorrow. Obviously, this means that I'm leaving tonight.

Now, my brother sucks and doesn't have the internet (he's not a loser like yours truly) or even a phone jack (we just give his celular number out to everybody - he likes it), so that means that once I get paid, which is 2 weeks from after I start working, I have to buy them to get back online. Lame.

Anyway, I'll be gone for awhile. You will miss me.

•Siege guide up.

You can find it over on the menu, under "Strategy". Gaining skills and finishing up is basically copy and paste, but I added some other tidbits of information and explained stuff better for a change on the rest. This common sense tip needs to be mentioned, as I forgot to mention it earlier:

The only skill that you want to GM is archery, unless you're planning on using the other skills in the long-run (remember, this is just our starting mule). If you're making a mage, you won't need 100 lumberjacking, for example. Only use lumberjacking to get logs when you need them. The same goes for everything else. You will waste a lot of time and work if you try to GM skills that you won't use later.

•The last step.

Once you get 60+ strength, 90-100 archery, 60+ healing, 50+ anatomy and tactics, some hiding and a handful of gold, it's time to actually spend some money. First buy magery and resist skill from an NPC mage. Then buy a cure scroll, some cure reagents if you didn't pick any up like you should have and a cheap silver bow from SP Tradespot or a vendor in the old lands. Once you have all of that stuff, go to the city of the dead and kill liches. Now, don't sit there and fight one toe-to-toe. Instead, bring one outside where it's safe, then stand just where you can see it and it can see you and fire. If you get knocked down to half life (one spell should do it), run and heal. Since you should be standing a distance away, you will be able to run without him hitting you again, and can therefore heal. Hide after you start applying the bandages if you need to (if you do it before, you will become unhidden). You probably will need to because low stamina + life taken away = fatigued in seconds. If you get poisoned, cast cure on yourself. If you die, suck it up and go at it again. I only died a couple times, but I killed them a lot in return.

Since you're using silver and have decent skills, you will be making good money at a fast rate now. Each lich gives about 300 gold, 2 scrolls (fill up that spellbook), a wand or staff (possible ID wand), a chance of magic items and 3 random reagents of one kind. This is all useful to you. Also, you will be gaining resist, anatomy, healing and tactics. Make sure that you keep on raising strength and dexterity during "stat time" as necessary.

Once you start making the cash, you can slowly switch your character into something that you like. The key word here is slowly. If you're going to make a mage, for example, don't drop everything you have because you'll probably run out of gold with low magery and nothing to make more money with. Instead, keep everything and work magery FIRST. This way, you can still use your other skills to make money and work up magery at the same time. Meanwhile, since you're probably not even near skill capped, meditation and evaluate intelligence will go up passively by itself. Feel free to drop swordsmanship about now since you don't need it. In the midst of all this, slowly work up intelligence as well. When you have decent magery and int, you can use the healing spell to heal and no longer need the healing skill. Drop healing to free skill points so you can work magery, evaluate intelligence and meditation even more. With eval int, magery and meditation and decent int, you can kill shit and make money without the help of your "mule" skills. See the pattern? Now you can drop everything you had and do whatever you want with your character. This is the safest and best route to take.

Your newbie stage is now officially over and everyone rejoiced. I'll probably throw this all on an SP section for future reference later.

•Sunday's goodies, brought fresh to you.

Could it be? ME posting daily updates? Nah.
Anyway, here are today's goodies, for your enjoyment only:

For those of you who haven't read it yet, Lawyer gave us his guide to GM archery on the forums today. I suggest you check it out if you're someone who hasn't had much luck at the wall.

Searching through my UO websites, I came across this funny comic. Credit for this goes out to the folks at Britanian Graffiti.

And last of all for today's UO links, is this UO beta picture site. I know that they have no importance at all, but I always find it neat to see pictures from the very old days of Ultima Online.

And if you're STILL bored after these links, you can use your singing talent here.

Have a good day.

•Time to gain skill and make money.

This is for SP, of course. Gaining skills is a bit different here. You could just trap and shoot bone knights from 0 to 100 skill, but you won't gain any healing, you will waste a lot of arrows (you're slowly making them yourself, so fuck that idea) and you won't make any profit whatsoever. Thus, we're going to do it the old fashioned way.

As I said before, going to Delucia is the first place that you want to go. After you get your bandages and make yourself a bow and arrows, go outside of town and fight the weak animals: birds, sheep, cats, dogs, hinds, mongbats, etc. Try to fight mongbats more than the rest, because they're paying for your scizzors that break every 2 seconds. Don't forget to chop them birds for feathers.

Once you hit 30 archery, fight skeletons. There's two places you can go for this: north to the city of the dead or back to the Vesper graveyard. I chose the Vesper graveyard because there's a nice fence there to block them off and no bone/skeletal knights, orcs, 50 liches and everything else that's in the city of the dead. They'll give you the same 12 gold as mongbats do but they also give bone armor, and if you kill one with an axe equipped, you will get that axe. Axes are your friend, because they too break every 2 seconds.

When you hit 40 skill, go outside of Delucia and find an orc camp (there's about 8 million, so you shouldn't have any problems) and fight orcs and orc captains. Only kill orcs if they're in your way. Your main focus is orc captains, because they give 40 gold, a ring tunic, food and their axe.

When you hit 50 skill, go back to the Vesper graveyard and make your way towards the Britain swamps. This is where you're going to fight lizardmen. Now, there's about 500 that spawn there - along with other things, so walk slow until you get 1 or 2 on your screen. Attack them and run away to get them alone. They give 35 gold and a chance of a weapon or piece armor. Watch out for the pk's in this area. More about this on the tips at the bottom. The good thing is that lizardmen will get you to 62 skill relatively fast, so you won't have to stay there long. If you run out of arrows or bandages, follow the road on the left side of the swamp and go into the wilderness. There's tons of birds, sheep and trees there. Walk to Britain (keep following the road to the left) if you need to turn the wool into cloth.

Once you hit 62 skill, you can go to the wilderness or to the beginning of T2A, and fight harpies and ogres. Harpies give 75 gold and 50 feathers and ogres give 100 gold.

When you hit 71 skill, fight bone/skeletal knights outside/inside (they're sometimes outside) the city of the dead. Thankfully, I'm the smartest man alive that finds all the l33t secrets and have found a decent trap spot. This is a little different than the normal "teleport to blocked one-tile area" though. What you need to do is slowly lure them down to the general area that the screenshot shows. This shouldn't be too hard, because just up ahead a little ways is the city of the dead. Keep walking slowly until you're both (or fifth, if 5 monsters decide to follow, which they always do) at the road that cuts off (the one you run passed, as shown in the screenshot). This is where you haul ass until you get to where the arrow is pointing. Since they're slow as hell and then some, they'll be around that area still. Get their attention by running around naked or by shooting at them, then just fire away. Note that if you stand too close to the edge, they'll keep doing a dance. It's annoying and I don't think you can hit moving targets so just step back aways (the spot on the screenshot is perfect) and they'll stop. When you get higher skill, you will be able to actually kill them. They usually give 85 gold, a good helm and good armor. They will take you all the way to GM.

Now this may seem a lot of work, but it's not. When you're playing, it goes smoothly and very fast. Plus you won't get bored out of your mind right away. I'm currently at 57 strength, 93 archery, 53 anatomy, 42 bowyering, 66 healing, 56 lumberjacking, 56 tactics, 50 magery/resist (I started with 50 in each, 'cause I'm dumb) and I have 7k and a shitload of armor, so it's working for me. No reason that it can't for anyone else (except Watts). You don't even have to play all day long. I only put in a few hours each day and I fucked up my character from the start.


Now for some common sense tips:

ALWAYS get hit so you can bandage yourself. The only exception to this is when you trap bone/skeletal knights. If you don't do this, you won't gain any healing. Even if you have 1 hp taken away, heal. Once you're at full life, get hit and heal again. Repeat infitum. Your healing will fly, and your anatomy will go up passively when it's "time" as well.

Buy about 5 scizzors at a time, because they break constantly. Walking to town sucks when you're in the middle of no where, also.

Eat. Chop up some corpses to get raw meat and use a bladed weapon (pick a few up on the monsters that you kill) on a tree to get kindling. The 30 some skill points you get in each won't hurt you any.

Don't buy anything, except scizzors. There isn't anything that you can't do by yourself. The NPC quality stuff you pick up is just fine for the time being. There's no way to lose money if you don't buy anything. You will gain a lot when you're killing shit, however.

When you see reagents, pick them up. You will find a lot when you're out and they add up. If you get enough, you will be good for later. The goal is to not spend any money.

Remember the exact minute that you gain a stat, because on every hour, you will gain one on that same minute - until you're capped, of course. It would be a shame to gain int from healing and/or anatomy because you forgot or were too lazy to look at the time when it was stat time, like I did about 5 times. Also, if you use lumberjacking as an attack to gain that hourly strength, lock anatomy. I gained int twice when I didn't want to because of not doing this as well. And you thought I was joking when I said I was the smartest man alive. Did I ever prove you wrong.

If you see a black wisp, run. They're called "a wisp" like the other, but they're black and are aggressors.

"Mommy, I saw a red name on my screen!" There's 3 different kinds of reds on SP. There's red NPC's dressed like healers that heal red players. These aren't aggressors so you don't have to worry about them. They're relatively easy to point out, because they have names like "Stan" and don't skip across your screen. There's evil characters. You can point these out easy as well, as they have "[evil]" on their title. If you die by one, it's not a big deal. They can't loot you unless you annitiated the attack, which you shouldn't be doing since you're a newbie. Most of them don't even know this and will be standing at your corpse saying, "wtf? wheres the loot?" on hours end. Feel free to laugh at them. Then there's your general, pk red. These you have to watch out for. Some of them are nice and won't attack, but you never know so don't go by them until you're ready to PvP (should be in about 5 years). If you see a pk's name on your screen and are in the old lands (particularly by the swamps, because there's 2 guilds of pk's that live there and kill anything that moves), run the opposite direction, touch a house and hide. Remember that even if you have 0 hiding, there's about a 90% chance of successfully hiding if you're touching a house. You don't have to be on the steps either. If someone happens to see you and attacks, don't be stupid and just run as fast and far as you can, because you will run out of stamina in about 10 seconds and will end up dying very quickly. Instead, run until they can't see you on their screen and hide while touching a house. If you can't get at least a screen away, run to the opposite side of a house that they're by and hide. Since I'm too lazy to go to the old lands and get a real picture of a house, I made another blurry microsoft paint image for your viewing pleasure:

The box is a house (sort of) and the two dots are you and the evil peekay that's chasing you. While he's chasing you, take a sharp turn, touch the house and you will be free to hide. This may sound stupid as anyone with a brain would know where you are, but don't think too highly of people. I hid right in front of someone who was chasing me, and he thought I outran him so he ran the direction that I was going and came back about 10 minutes later and just went home. Fucking retard. Anyway, houses are your friends in the old lands. I've never been killed in the old lands because of them. I've been chased/attacked about 100 times though. In the new lands, just try to hide when you see a red name. To be on the safe side, pick up hiding as a main skill for this purpose only. If you can't hide, you shouldn't be too far from home, so just run like hell. You should be able to make it if you're fast.

In semi-relation to the above, don't carry more than you need, because you might get pk'd or killed by a monster at anytime. All that you really need is 50 bandages, 100 cloth, 100-200 arrows, a bow and a couple axes. On regular shards, 8k and 80 magic items is bank time (at least for me). A couple hundred gold and a half dozen pieces of NPC quality armor is bank time here. Or, if you're close to town, bank whatever you don't need.

Don't pick up what you don't need. If you see a spear laying on the ground, don't pick it up. You're never going to use it and NPC's don't buy anything from you.

5am isn't closing time. If you're a loser that wakes up at 9pm and sleeps at noon, SP doesn't go down except on Sunday's. Good deal.


That's all I can think of right now. Feel free to tell me how I suck and that there's better ways to do everything and/or give me an applause for the excellent graphic work.


In other news, I was bored enough to look at all the lines on the link Eric posted about, and these are great:

Looks like my dragon has finally found a nice cave to rest in.
No, I'm actually a wizard. Want to see my crystal balls?

•A bunch of little goodies for today...

It's Saturday, and I thought it would be nice if I got off my ass and posted an update...

Well...the Veteran Rewards were delayed...Are you surprised?

I also came across this UO monster webpage...I'm not really sure how accurate the information is, but I thought the animated graphics were pretty cool.

UO Powergamers...Where do we rank today on the top 100 list of UO websites?

That's honestly all I could find for today...If you're really bored, you could check out this webpage...but I'm hoping you have better things to do.

Cya Later.

•Just a quick note.

We received an official (yes, official) word that the bugs on the bugs page aren't bugs or bannable offenses, so you can use them without any worries.

•Some corrections.

I didn't realize that there was a burst hour on Siege too. Since bowyering isn't affected by ROT, there's no reason to start with it - just powermacro it during the burst hour. You don't have to start with 1 lumberjacking or buy any axes either, because you can just go outside of town and loot old orc corpses that have axes. Since NPC's don't buy anything and most people don't care for NPC quality items, you will find a lot on them. It's not a big deal if you already started with 1 lumberjacking though.

Because of this, you should start with 50 anatomy and 50 tactics - stats stay the same. Since you're not buying anatomy, buy some swords for lumberjacking or taming to tame horses.

Thanks to Ll'Umbra Chuck for the tips.

Note that if you already started your character the other way, it's not the end of world and you're still in good shape so don't think that you have to delete your character. This way is a better route to take though.

•Redrum's fast, easy and simple beginners guide to Siege Perilous.

Well, I decided to start on SP because, well, I wanted to. I didn't really understand what the hell was going on at first, but I caught on really, really fast. The Official Siege Site is a good place to go to find out what skills are affected by ROT. Notice how archery, bowyering, lumberjacking and healing aren't affected by the system. That's a god-send right there.

I checked out some Siege guides, and they all say to make a miner, tradesman, rogue, tamer or bard to start and make money. I say bleh to that. That stuff is boring and makes you work. We can't have that. However, Lum did mention in his SP Guide that archers are good. He's right. They're the most fun and cost a short amount of gold, and so that's what we're going to make.

Start with 45 strength, 10 dexterity and 10 intelligence; 50 tactics, 49 bowyering and 1 lumberjacking. The 1 lumberjacking is for the newbie hatchet. When it asks to choose a town, pick Vesper.

Since anatomy is affected by ROT and goes up fairly slow at low levels, go to the healers and buy some skill. It only costs about 500-600 gold to get 25 skill. You start with 1000 gold and you won't buy much after that, so just do it. Now go to the graveyard outside of town and go in the building that leads you to T2A. Incase you don't know which one it is, I made a tiny image:

Now make your way to Delucia (follow the road west until you get to a bridge. Then go south until you see another bridge to the west. Go across it and follow the road to the left until you get there). This is where we get our free bandages. Go to where all of the sheep are, and shave them with your dagger to get piles of wool. Every pile of wool yields 3 balls of yarn, and you need 5 balls to make a bolt of cloth which is 50 bandages. So for every 2 sheep you shave, you get 50 bandages. Once you get a lot of wool (50ish is good, 'cause you want it to last), go to the tailor shop and make your bolts of cloth. Also purchase a pair of scizzors, which is about 33 gold.

Now use your newbie hatchet to chop some trees and make yourself a bow and lots of shafts. Since you pretty much suck, kill weak birds (magpies, skylarks, etc) to get feathers. They die in one hit and yield 25 feathers. Double click on the feathers and click on the shafts to get arrows. Now just run around and shoot animals with your bow. When you run out of arrows, repeat the above. You should also let some animals hit you so you can gain healing. Healing raises REALLY fast, which is a good thing. And when you see sheep wandering around, shave them. When you get stronger, fight stronger animals and eventually monsters to make money.

To get strength, once it's that hourly time to gain a stat, chop some trees. Lumberjacking is a strength skill, so you will get strength from it. Once you hit 100 strength, use fencing on every hour to get dex to shoot faster. Note that you can only gain 6 stats a day. Go back to Lum's Guide for detailed information on how the system works.

That's it. None of the main skills that you're using (archery, bowyering, healing, lumberjacking) are affected by ROT. For the skills that are affected by ROT (anatomy, tactics), they'll go up alone when it's time because they passively raise when you're using archery and healing. The only thing that you have to spend any money on after you purchase skill and scizzors is more scizzors and hatchets when yours break. That's not a big deal, though. It's only 135 gold or so for both of them. You can kill a handful mongbats and other low-end monsters at first to buy them. The rest is all "do-it-yourself-for-free". You basically have it made. Once you feel that you're in good shape, change your character into something you like, because this is just a mule (who says you need more than one character to have a mule? :-) ) to get you started.

Just as a side note, Siege is awesome. Everyone is nice, helpful and respectful. Since Grynn didn't believe that I could put the Shadowclan in their place, I decided to pay them a visit. What happens when you meet them is that they all surround you and demand that you to give them tribute by giving them something you have. If you do, they all tell you leave now or die. If you don't, they kill you. It's relatively pointless. I was expecting some kind of party invitation or something. Bastards. I'll be back for them. The Orc Fort will soon be mine.

Also, a rabbit in Delucia, by the new dungeon, is a badass. Watts and I were fighting one for 30 minutes when we started on Siege last night. I'm not joking. Watch out for Fred the killer rabbit.

I need much coffee too.

•This Update Originally Had A Different Title

Let me start by saying that trying to test the features of the UO melee combat system is actually pretty difficult. Some things in UO are easy to test, like checking to see if Med rates are effected by a character's Int (it is, and by quite a bit) or by wearing leather armour (it isn't). But coming up with the definitive "best choice" sword or armour combo is a lot more involved.

Let's say you log on with a couple of friends to test the damage you can do with a GM katana. The first thing you need to keep in mind is that the damage inflicted by the katana is a random amount, scaled in a range from a minimum to a maximum. Because the amount is randomly determined by the OSI servers, it is entirely possible that you can get the minimum amount over and over again. This basically means you need to record a very large number of blows if you want to get an accurate picture of how much damage a katana can do.

At the same time, you also have to keep in mind that the stats, skills and skill levels of your testers play a part. Melee skills, Anatomy, STR, and now Lumberjacking all add damage bonuses or give damage reduction during melee combat. This is why the Stratics weapons study used what look like weird character configurations for their weapons survey.

Then there's item quality to factor in, magical or GM bonuses, another random range of damage absorption if any of the testers are wearing armour, and the whole thing starts to get a little crazy. Logging on to Test Centre and spending a couple hours doing this isn't exactly my idea of fun. I wouldn't wish this on anyone.

So in the absence of being able to "scientifically" test melee-related stuff, you can rely on a combination of two things: the "official" OSI description of how things work in UO (as in the formulas on Stratics and the OSI Update pages), and on the anecdotal information that gets posted on websites like ours (information gained from people actually playing the game).

The recent "best" armour combo thread in the Forum and Paladin's update last week on what AR really means is a good example. (Just a quick recap, the AR rating you see displayed on your health bar really doesn't tell you the whole story. When you take a hit, it randomly falls on one part of your character's body, either on the torso, the legs, the arms, head, hands or neck. The torso takes 35% of the hits, the legs take 20%, the head and arms take 15%, and the neck & hands take 7.5%. The displayed AR is only an overall measurement and doesn't take into account the random hit locations, which means two combos with the same AR are not necessarily equal. Go read the thread and the post if you want to know more.) With a little explanation of the game mechanics and some advice based on in-game performance you can see what people are wearing, and more importantly why.

A good example of how people get these things wrong is an article Gator found a while back (btw, it's not Gator's mistake, he just thought it was interesting and posted it. Blame some guy named Regalic.). About half of the article on Parry and what shield to choose is correct, but the part about magic and GM shields having lowered chances to parry is all wrong. If what this article suggests were true, the absolute best choice for shields wouldn't be a NPC vendor bought metal kite, it would be a NPC vendor bought kite that was on the verge of disintegrating. The author gets it right when he describes the UO:R system for determining if you successfully parry or not - the %chance to parry = your parry skill - (shields AR*2). But once again, the AR rating you see when you pick a shield while wearing no armour doesn't tell the whole story.

All shields of a type, say a buckler, share the same base AR. For argument's sake, the AR you see when you equip a NPC bought buckler and nothing else at GM Parry is the base AR. A GM buckler or a buckler of Invulnerability both have the same base AR as the NPC version, but the number you see in the character bar includes the magical or GM bonus, which is why they appear to have a higher rating. The %chance to parry formula uses this base AR to determine if you parry successfully or not, not the displayed AR, so all shields of a type (buckler, kite, heater) are as likely to parry as the NPC variety.

There is a separate formula for determining how much damage is reduced by a successful parry, and this is where the magic or GM bonus comes into play. With a bonus, you get the same chance to parry, but can absorb an improved amount of damage based on the rating of the shield. Now, given the randomness of both the %chance to parry and the possible amounts of damage, this wouldn't be a easy one to test, but at the same time I wonder if the guy ever bothered to strap on a store-bought metal kite and a upper range magic kite to see if it worked his way.

The last little gem I wanted to mention was this link. We've talked about this one before on UOPG, but since it seems to be making another round of the info sites, I thought I'd bring it up again. The author of this one basically claims that some GM-made weapons do more damage than others. Go have a look at the link so I don't have to explain any more. Done? Sound convincing? Yep, unfortunately the game mechanics don't swing that way.

A weapon like a NPC katana or maul delivers damage over a minimum/maximum range (you can find the exact figures on Stratics) and has item hit points in a certain range. The item HP are important because they determine how durable that weapon is (how long you can use it before it wears out and starts delivering less damage). A player-made version of the same weapon gets the GM mark because it has item HP in a range much higher than a store-bought. The GM mark is not only a sign of increased durability, it also adds a bonus to the amount of damage you can do.

Because a GM marked weapons still come with a range of item hit points they show up under a range of prices when you place them on a vendor and allow auto-pricing. But this is only an indication of durability, not of potential to do damage. The best any (and more importantly, EVERY) new GM weapon can do is damage in the min/max range plus the damage bonus. The bonus is a set amount and does not scale with the item HP.

As weapons get used, they deteriorate and lose item hit points, and the damage they do is reduced. A high auto-priced (and therefore a high durability) weapon has the potential to deliver top performance for the longest period of time, it CAN'T do any more damage than the min/max range + damage bonus.

A GM weapon is a GM weapon is a GM weapon. Some last longer than others, but they all start off with the same potential to do max damage.

And now I need much coffee.

•Test Center Tips

Being the outstanding "Board Whore" that I am. I have noticed a certain trend in the questions being asked there about this and that. First let me inform everyone that I enjoy answering questions from the readers. Hell, its how I earned my coveted title of Holy Whoreness. But I do have a small suggestion, and a little bit of info on how you, as the Young Jedi Powergamer can get some l33t info yourself. Hell get some info and bring it over to us on the forum and school us "experts". Best option for info? Why the Test Center of course. Now I am going to go over this because some people, that's right, some people may not have a clue about the Test Center. Believe it or not. The good thing is that if you need to test *ANY* skill then the Test Center is the place to be. How so? Well for example you wanted to know how much MB damage you could do to someone with only 50 Eval Int. Compared to damage with 100 Eval Int. Just log into TC, and have at it. Well, let me break it down a little further.

Set Stats & Skills

My favorite thing about TC is this simple yet very useful tool. Want 100/25/100? Easy. Say "Set STR 100" "Set INT 25" and "Set DEX 100". Viola, you are now 100/25/100. Want GM Swords? "Set Swordsmanship 1000" Reason for 1000 instead of 100? Well dont forget that GM in a skill is actually 100.0. So say you wanted 95.7 Parry for some damn reason, "Set Parry 957". There you go 95.7 skill. Its easy as that.

Starting Equiment

Now I am not talking about the deadly practice sword. I am talking about GM made products, the good stuff. How do you get it? Easy, "SET Blacksmithing 1000" and have at it. The bad thing about supplies is that TC doesnt offer nearly as much as it used to. As of now you get about 200 boards, 200 feathers, 50/each reg, 200 Ingots, 9k gold, alot of cloth, 200 bandaids, 5 Trammel/Felucia stones, blank runes, and a full spell book. Used to be where you got 1k of every source imaginable, including regs. But just make due with what you have and enjoy. Afterall you can just "Set Mining 1000".

Now get out there and test some stuff. And remember to bring your fantastic results to our mighty forums and share. Afterall we share everything with you, don't we? So don't be stingy!! Want to know how us l33t Powergamers do it? Well know you know, and in the words of that famous cartoon, "And knowing is half the battle."

Later

•Can you say..."WOW" ?

Although I don't sell or buy on eBay, I frequently browse through the UO section on eBay to see what's on the market these days. Browsing through, I saw the most expensive UO item that I think I have ever seen on eBay. Its final price was $3,250.00 for one account. In all honesty, it was a pretty damn good account, but for $3,250.00? Come on, let's be reasonable people. You really have to have a large sum of money stashed away in your bank (real life bank) to make such a large purchase as this. If the winner of this auction is reading right now, I have no intentions on offending you.

Oh, you can view this ended auction here. I'm still wondering what this guy was thinking when he placed that bid. (the winner of the auction.) *sighs* Oh well.

In other news, for you banned players out there, Calandryll posted to the OSI Discussions Board:

Once a player is banned, if we find that they bought a new account, we will suspend that account as well.

Cya later.

•Sing along with your favorite UO hits...

This of course has nothing to do with anything that has been in discussion lately (eBay, Rewards Program), and I'm sure someone's posted a link to it before, but I got a good laugh out of it last night. Anyway, check out this UO Parody Songs website. Some of the songs are just plain stupid, but some are quite hilarious. Just a little something to keep you busy while eBay and lag are pissing you off.

In other news, Melantus of OSI speaks on the recent bannings ...:

We do not suspend players for posting negative views about OSI. Check the boards here (our own boards) and see that there are negative comments or complaints about OSI. All we ask is that the complaints stay cordial and constructive, not vulgar or insulting.

They don't mind negative views about OSI...but they ask that the views remain non-insulting. Hmmm...

Cya later.

•The rest.

Here's a screenshot of the verite and valorite robes, the new horse as a statue and a copper cloak. We (I) have come to the conclusion that all of the robes/cloaks blow. However, they do say, "a(n) enter-color-here robe/cloak", so collectors/rare hunters/e-bay rejects/people that need to be shot would like them. It's recommended that you kill anyone wearing one.

Thanks to Nissa for the screenshot.

•Rewards.

Well, Test Rewards works now and I got in just long enough to pick a few robes and see the new horse. Here's a screenshot of someone riding the horse and 3 robes. From just looking, I bet the majority of the people will name their horse "shadow"... or, possibly "a". The robe I'm wearing is gold and the other two in my inventory are copper and agapite. On the screenshot, the colors are tinted a little, but they don't look a whole lot better in the original version. The horse is pretty cool, but the robes are not... at least not the one's given out for one and two years. I didn't get to see the verite or valorite robes, 'cause the server crashed before I could walk around and look at everyone's l33t stuff. That's basically all there is left to see. The cloaks are the same as robes, only they're cloaks. Go figure. And as for the bronze robe/cloak, I'm pretty sure nobody cares about them.

•Heartbreakers

The Redskins once again did their best to break my heart yesterday before finally winning the game. Am I the only person that thinks 4th and 2 on the opponents 17 with 52 seconds to play is a running down? Also, is Monday Night Football really a good time to test the emergency broadcast system? I didn't think so.

I'm starting a new warrior on a production shard, he'll be GM swords, parry, tactics, anatomy, healing, resist, and magery. I started him yesterday, and I'll report when he is GM everything. Next up is a fresh from scratch mage and then a nice new craftsman character.

•Pings for PvP.

Hail all.

There is a post in the forum that I would like to bring to attention. The post concerns a "good" ping for PvP. Let me do UOTrace real quick.

Well all. I am on a T1 at the University of Virginia. I just pinged an average of 9 ms. Yes that is 9 milliseconds with a 0% loss. I am also running a 450 P3 which is very fast for the UO client.

And guess what? I still get outran, outfought and outcasted.

What kind of connections are these people using? Nasa T7s? I of heard of someone that pings 3ms on Chessy. Is that possible?

In the forum people were talking about have a 100+ ms ping for pvp. Dont pvp if you have a 100ms ping. Move to Trammel asap and delete all your pvp characters. You will die to anyone that I consider "suck ass" in PvP and against a veteran you will be dead in 3 or 4 seconds. If anyone wants to test this or my abilities lets chat over at Test Center. It would be fun. A Powergamers tournament to see who is the best. Someone please arrange this on the forum. I am too lazy to do anything that requires motivation.

In other news I made 10k in exactly 8 mins at the Elder Gazer hallway with one of my dragons. That equates to an easy 50k in an hour if you have to drop off l33t two times. And those bitches are easy as shit. My dragon can take 2 at a time without needing to be healed.

In other news Provoking Bards rule Deciet. I have seen the same one on Atlantic Deceit every day I have been there since the dungeon changes. And when that new dungeon comes out there will be even more bards. Who is gonna go 1 on 1 with a Revanant? An idiot like me thats who but in general bards will rule the highways there.

Continuing I would like to thank a GM on Atlantic for helping me with a problem I had. Some punk called me a very racial name that I took offence to and I paged a GM bc it was kinda personal and he appeared in like 2 mins and helped me out greatly. I even got to visit the jail. You could get some good pvp in there. No running! And for those that say Powergamers aren't tattles they arn't unless it gets personal and then we start taking names.

A correction to a previous post. I doubt I will be getting a colored cloak. They look nothing special so I plan on decorating my rare museum with a Furn Dye Tub and a Lich Statue. L33t.

Lates

•Don't you just love eBay?

Wow, this talk about eBay has gotten hot and juicy. (Are those the proper adjectives for it?)

My two cents:

ProQuo: Great posts man, as always. Even those who disagree with you, should still respect the detail and support that you use to back up your opinions. I believe that the only valid opinions are those with support and reason. With support and reason, anything goes.

Now how about them eBay sales? Well, I'm not too fond of them, but we shouldn't stress people out over here with this whole concept. Ebay *does* effect game-play. This is a fact, my friends. But shit happens, you know?

For all of you eBay haters out there (I am one of them, for the most part) : Think of it this way - You are the smart decision-makers. Yes, the fact that you can't get this rare or that rare because of ebay does get a little bit aggrivating. BUT, you still have an extra $50 in your pocket, right? You may have a two-story, and not a tower...but there's another $500 that you don't have to spend.

I'm probably not making any sense, but what I'm trying to say is that the eBay buyers will get hit hard in the end. What happens when UO is gone? YOU (the eBay buyer) paid $1000 for an account with a castle! And it's gone! "Ouch" is what my wallet would say. UO items are non-tangible. They really don't hold any value...like someone (Paladin, ProQuo, who knows) said, they are just images created by OSI, put on your computer monitor to aid to a game's appearence. Nothing more than that.

I know we're all mad at the sellers because they're the ones who started this all. But it's the buyers that make it all happen. With no buyers, there is no problem.

Tip for all you eBay buyers: THINK before you spend MONEY (yes, the green stuff) on intangible, not-material goods. It isn't worth it. If OSI won't shut down UO's market on eBay, it's the buyers who can. (By not buying, of course.)

Sorry if I talked to much...I accept flames, as always.

Cya later,

Eric.

•Alchemy and Poisoning

While I've still got some points to make up on my Poisoning, I think I've got more than enough information to update on the two skills.

First, Alchemy. GMing Alchemy is a pretty straightforward process. The guide in the Skills section of this page is still completely accurate, and only needs to be adjusted slightly when you train in burst. Here's a what-to-make chart, starting from 0 skill:

     Skill Level                What To Make                     What To Add During Burst




        0-30              Buy skill from NPC Alchemist                    n/a
       30-50             Cure                                             Explosion
       50-64             Explosion                                      Greater Strength
       64-72             Greater Strength                           Greater Poison 
       72-80             Greater Poison                             Greater Heal
       80-90              Greater Heal                                 Greater Cure
       90-GM            Greater Cure                                 Deadly Poison (after 95)

You'll need a minimum amount of skill to attempt some of potions recommended for burst (if you can't get the potion to display in the Alchemy windows, you need more skill). When you add in potions from the next-highest skill level under burst, you'll get the best gains trying within 10-15 skill points of the start-point for that potion. For example, wait until you hit 54 before adding Greater Strength to your burst hour training. The one exception to this rule is Deadly Poison. Wait until around 95 before attempting DP, or you'll just waste a ton of regs for very little extra gain.

While it's a pretty simple skill to raise, you do need to buy a considerable amount of regs before you start. When you go to buy them, concentrate on nightshade, ginseng, and garlic, since that's what you are going to be going through the most of. I would suggest picking up at least 5000 ginseng, 7500 garlic, and 10000 nightshade before you start, along with a couple of thousand ash and mandrake root for the Explosions and Greater Strengths. So far that comes to around 75k gp worth of regs, and depending on a couple of factors you have no control over, you're probably going to need more. And you will need potion kegs, many, many potion kegs (especially if you are going to train Poisoning at the same time). If you make a concerted effort to train Alchemy every burst hour, it should take you about 2 weeks to GM.

Poisoning. I'm still in the mid-90's, but since Greater Poisons aren't giving me any more gain, I think the existing progression chart in the Skill section still stands, with a couple of tweaks:

     Skill Level                  What Poison To Use




        0-30                     Buy skill from a NPC Thief
        30-45                    Lesser Poison
        45-80                    Poison
        80-92                    Greater Poison
        92-GM                   Deadly Poison

The same burst hour rule-of-thumb that applied to Alchemy applies here too - when you get within 10-15 skill points of the next highest level, start adding in the next hardest poison. So, for example, at 35 you can start adding Poison potions to your burst session. Start off substituting in maybe 10-20% of the harder poison, then work up to completely replacing the lower poison as you get to the cutoff level.

The cutoff point for using Poison and the start point of using Greater Poison can actually be reduced to less than 75 (I started using 60% GP at around 73 on one character), but it means you need to pay close attention & nursemaid so the character doesn't GP themselves to death. Using Poison up to 80 still works, and may be the right way to go depending on your attention span.

Regrettably, once you hit around 92 you are stuck with DPs. I managed to get a few .1s off of Greater Poison at this point, but I blew through a keg of GP for each one. Not worth it.

I set up a massive UOAssist macro to train Poisoning. Since Poisoning is a target based skill, you must continuously cycle through a large number of targets in order to continue getting gains (you can't just keep poisoning the same single blade over and over again). Right now, I've got 20 daggers and 20 butchers knives split between 2 crates in my pack, along with 1 potion keg of poison and 1 potion bottle. The macro double clicks the potion keg (which is specified as Use Last Target, so I can change kegs without completely redoing the macro), filling the bottle. The macro then uses Poisoning, targets the bottle (specified as Use Type, again so I don't have to completely redo the macro when changing levels of poison), then targets one of the blades. Then it does the same thing 39 more times. Exciting, huh?

There are probably a number of ways to set this up. Feel free to post in the Forum if you've got one you like better...

I'm not sure how long it takes to GM Poisoning, partially because I'm not done yet, and partially because coming up with the kegs of DP is a real pain in the ass. Get used to shopping for shade, cuz you're going to be doing an awful lot of it.

I had a look at the Stratics Assassin essay in the course of writing this, which to my surprise has been updated under UO:R. Even more shocking, they bring up two good points. If you happen to be reading a book or otherwise looking away from the screen while running a UOA macro, a failure with GP below 80 skill will probably mean you are going to be dead. That's why you made all those kegs of Greater Cure in the first place, right? You definitely want to be in the room while training Poisoning. The other interesting thing Stratics pointed out was if you are poisoning a weapon then using it in combat, the anti-macro code doesn't apply. You can continue getting skill gain poisoning the same weapon. The only trouble with this is that poisoned weapons "corrode" once you use them, and you'll be going through quite a few weapons, even if you use oil cloths to stop the "corrosion". And it doesn't help mages much...

•Good hunting locations.

There always seems to be a location where all of the good shit is, and for some reason, it's always Shame.

The passage from levels 3 and 4 is a safe place to go (you know, that place that used to spawn 8000 fire elementals in the wall and lag everyone in the process). In the passage, there's two elder gazers - one in one room and one in the other. One thing that elder gazers don't have the ability to do is open doors. If you're a mage, just meteor swarm the doors. Since you don't actually do anything but hide behind the door, you won't gain any skills. If you're a warrior, go in a door, run to the back and fight them there. When you're low on life and need to heal, run by the door, hit last object and hit last object again. This will open and close the door. Since they're not that fast and at the way back of the room, they won't even make it halfway across the room by the time you get out of the door. Once you're healed, repeat. I'm gaining every warriors' skill from doing this (including GM fencing), and I'm in the 90-100 range of everything, with the exception of resist. That's going up at a decent rate though. And the loot is nice: 3 reagents, 1000 gold and a decent chance of getting a magic weapon.

The beginning of Shame 4 is also fairly safe. In the little tower, there's one evil NPC mage that spawns. They give 300 gold, about 25 random reagents and l33t blue sandals. Best of all, they die in about 10 seconds. The air elementals are also good to kill. Since there's about 50 of them there, slowly walk up until you see one of their names pop up on your screen. Now just double click on them while you're in attack mode and run down near the beginning and you'll get to fight them 1 at a time. They sometimes attack you the second that you see their names - that'll work too. They give the same ol': 300 gold and a chance of magic items. They aren't that hard to kill if you have a decent character.

These two are great places for gaining skill, making loot and staying alive while playing solo. However, you should have an above average character before trying this, otherwise you will probably die. I haven't died yet, and I die more than anybody so that's a good sign. As always, I suggest going to Felucca since it's usually empty.

•Its Sunday, Why aren’t you at Church?

Damn heathens are just one breed that make me loose my faith in people. Another breed are Ebay’rs. While you were playing the game last week, socializing at you local tavern, massacring your enemies, or laying waste to hordes of monsters, these people were advancing their career as a UO farmer.

Having trouble placing a house? Want to know why gold is worthless? Want to know why you can’t afford that skull candle? You can blame Ebay and OSI’s lack of concern to the issue. I would say lack of response, but they did respond. The response was a media campaign of “Look, Our imaginary pixilated gold that exist only in the realm some guy created in his head is worth more then the Italian lira.” And we danced.

We all thought, at first, that it was cool too. We, as a group, were secretly delighted that a game we played was mentioned in respectable magazines like Time and Fortune when most games got sent to less respected PC Gamer. We had the success of Ebayer’s to thank for the publicity and the interest it sparked. Many even took pride in the “worth” of our account. But that was then and this is now.

Today, Ebay is a bane to both new players and veteran players alike in all forms of Multiplayer games. Verant, the makers of Everquest, realized this and changed their Terms of Service to make Ebay selling illegal. Verant didn’t have any other option as huge guilds held control of choice spots. They harvested these spots for powerful items and then sold them on Ebay. Today, the same thing is happening in our game of Ultima.

On my home shard, I’ve attempted to place dozens of homes and succeed in few. I often search out for decaying houses as I find they contain the best loot. Unfortunately, the resident Some Idiot’s of my shard realize this as well. Each time I happen upon a fallen or falling house, I spot them. The Ebay’rs often appear as a [young]. They remain hidden nearby as they macro placing a house, rarely moving.

Make a quick run through the plains near Britain, south of the desert. If you click on house signs, odds are you will find a few containing “For Sale on Ebay, ICQ 5555555 for the link”. Players hoping to buy anything as large or larger then a tower are forced to search Ebay as few sale for gold. If a player desires that skull candle to complete their motif, they better have a Visa. Most don’t accept UO gold, but if you want to buy it….Ebay is the location to find it.

In fact, Ebay was a major reason for the large scale duping that occurred over the summer. Exploiters realized that gold was selling for up to $750 for 1 million gold. They did the math and quickly decided to dupe, as a group, billions in gold. Others saw rares selling for hundreds of dollars on Ebay and decide to dupe those as well. The effect on the game was disastrous as gold went from being equal to the lira all the way down to the ruble. For you, uninformed…. it wasn’t and isn’t worth shit.

While the in game economy attempts to fix it self, OSI needs to take a brave step forward. They need to make it against the Terms of Service to sale UO Items for real world cash. They need to start banning the farmers and they need to do it now. It would return the game to the gamers and rescue it from those exploit the game for financial gain.

Head here to discuss religion. Here to call me a communist. Here to flame me Here to love me. Here to discuss.