Prophet's Golemeer Essay - January 2002

Tinkering:
To make and heal your own golems.
Meditation:
Keep that mana-regen up while you lose it due to golem damage.
Magery:
I'm assuming you don't want to hold hands and walk your golem everywhere.
Healing:
You need an efficient healing method if things get hairy. If you are pushing your golem(s) to the max, then losing life shouldn't be a rarity. Healing through Magery isn't an option due to lack of mana and chugging healing pots all day isn't exactly the best method either.

This leaves you with three skills left over. Remember ingots are used to heal the golem, so if you don't have a mule or another character with Mining, then it should be seriously considered as a fifth skill. Each template will have the option for adding Mining. Obviously, this would somewhat weaken the character, but you don't want your character to be a gold sink and with the increasing popularity of BODs, ingots are going down in price any time soon.

Eval. Int./Wrestling/Resist
The pure mage golemeer. You've got the mage 5 + Tinker/Heal. Very effective in PvM as well as PvP. If needed, drop Resist in favor of Mining.

Music/Peace/Provo
The controller. Very effective in PvM as all bards are. And you've got that extra fire power when there is only one creature around. Peace or Provo can be substituted with Mining, really a personal preference. I would drop Peace before Provo, because you are still very effective solo'ing with Music/Provo. Peace on this template would seem more to just be an emergency button.

Weaponskill/Tactics/Anatomy
The warrior golemeer. With anatomy you can now cure poison and rez. If something has to be dropped in favor of Mining, however, Anatomy should be the first to go. With this template, you just put your golem on the creature and then jump in the pit yourself. Archery would allow you to assist from afar making it a great choice here especially for those retargetting baddies.

Taming/Lore/Veterinary
The taming golemeer. You own PvM. Somedays you feel like hunting high-level spawn. Other days you avoid the oppression of being an icky tamer and bust out your mid-level spawn-killing machine. Focusing on being more of a Golemeer than a Tamer, the strategy here would be to go out fighting with your golems while riding a kirin, unicorn, or mare. If things are looking bad for Mr. Golem, then you dismount and relax. Plus with 240 points dedicated to these three skills, you get five stable slots. If Mining is essential, then drop Veterinary for it. GM Taming/Lore still nets you four stable slots, enough for a mount and three golems.

If you want to do the occasional PvPing, then the warrior or pure mage golemeer would be the way to go. If you are just wanting to hunt and make a little gold, then the Controller or taming golemeer is the right choice for you.

Golem Creation:
Remember that you can only make 5 golems during any 24 hour period and you need these materials to make one:
Clockwork Assembly Power Crystal 50 Iron Ingots 50 Bronze Ingots Gears
Healing/Repairing your golem (Be within 2 tiles):
Double-click tinkering tools Click Repair button Target Golem Golem is healed. Iron ingots are used up. I believe you can use bronze ingots also, but I've only used iron. The more damage you heal, the more ingots are used. Also note that there is a 12 second delay between heals.
Finding a need to repair your golem:
Golems are immune to poison and are practically immune to magic too. The are not, however, uber melee specialist. You put one against an Ogre Lord and you might as well start thinking about making your new golem. Basically, golems can handle a majority of the mid-level spawn, especially those magic-oriented baddies (think elementals, gazers, daemons). I'm sure most of you are quite experienced with the monsters inhabiting the lands and dungeons of UO, so I'm attaching a series of reports that Sister Kendra, of the UOSS Tinkers forum, made while testing her GM-made golem, Ozzy Jr. These reports have great information and will really give you a comparative idea of what your monster is capable of. Just remember this is with a GM-made golem. Golems produced by lesser-skilled tinkers will be much weaker.

Without further ado:
Golem Reports
by Sister Kendra of UOSS Tinkers Forum

Report #1:
My new Golem vs. the liches
When golems were first introduced and I got my first crystal, I made one with my tinker at 88 skill. I killed a few bears with him and marched down to the woods near the orc fort to pit him against a lich.
Ozzy (as in Ironman, get it? uh...never mind) died very quickly. So I committed to GM Tinkering and try again. I GM'd last night and promptly made Ozzy Jr. We gated to the lich woods and attacked the first lich we found.

I was initially disappointed by his performance. My dexer equipped with a silver katana kills a lich in about 10 seconds. It took Ozzy much longer. The good thing though was he lost little health. With no repairs whatsoever, he only lost about 1/5 of his health.

Unfortunately, I've never played a tamer so I have no clue how to control a pet. Well I ended up watching Ozzy wade, on his own, into a crowd of three liches. I thought he was history but I rode after him and prepared to repair. He lost a lot of health initially, like 1/4 health in the first 10 seconds but I repaired that back to full. I was shocked to see how long the repair delay was and didn't get to repair him again until he was a hair under half health. I had lost all my mana and didn't think to actively meditate so I just kept applying bandages to keep my health up.
Ozzy killed all three liches and I never lost more than about 10 hp. WTG Ozzy!

I killed a few more liches but made another dumb control mistake and dropped him into a group of FOUR liches. Instead of repairing right away, I stayed about 3 tiles back and just meditated. This worked much better. I maintained active meditation throughout the fight and never lost any health. I repaired the golem three times but was a bit disappointed to see how little it healed. I think the best I saw was a 1/4 health gain. I guess I was expecting similar results as healing or casting GH but it's more like drinking a GH potion. Ozzy killed all four of those liches and we called it a night since I was running low on ingots.

I do have a question for all you experienced tamer/golemeers: How do you handle a retargeting monster? I was thinking about trying a daemon but I think the daemon would target me the whole time instead of the golem and switch to me any time I tried to get close enough to repair. Prophecy: I'm pretty sure you can just teleport next to your golem to > repair and avoid retargetting, right?

Report #2:
Golem vs. Daemon
Well after all your great advice in my post about liches, I decided to take Ozzy to the hedge maze. I'd never been there before but heard it was a good place to kill daemons.

I rode there and marked a rune and then gated Ozzy in. I had him stand in the corner (Bad Golem! ) while I went to find a daemon. Sure enough, one found me soon enough. I rode back to Ozzy and waited for him to arrive. Once the daemon got close enough, I teleported over the hedge and stood to watch the battle.

Before Ozzy reach the daemon, it casted a few spells on me. Clumsy, magic arrow, etc. No big deal. Then it cast poison. At this moment, I realized something terrible; being a mule, my tinker is not at all prepared to handle any emergencies in the wild. I had no cure potions. My healing is at 55 and my anatomy is zero. My spell book has about 15 spells in it and cure is NOT one of them.

My health plummeted and I knew I was going to die so I recalled to Skara at the last minute and died in front of the bank.

I rezzed quickly, re-equipped, and bought some cure pots. Recalling back to the hedge maze, I was shocked to see Ozzy standing over the corpse of the daemon with almost full health! Rock on, Ozzy!!

So we spent the next hour killing daemons. I was surprised to see that my golem takes MUCH less damage from a daemon than he does from a lich but it takes longer to kill them. At one point, Ozzy fought 2 daemons and 3 imps at the same time and never got below half health. I repaired him at that point even though there were only a few imps left. The key for me was to actively meditate while he fought so I never lost more than 15 mana points during the entire battle.

Thanks again for the advice on retargeting monsters and controlling a pet!

Report #3:
Golem vs. Ice Fiends
The Ice Fiend's (IF) Lair is one of my lockpicker's favorite spots so I marked another rune and pulled Ozzy out of the stables. We gated in (I finally raised magery to 80 so i can gate without a scroll...big plus! [NOTE: raised magery from 33 to 63 in one PH and from 63 to 80 in the second. LOL! What an easy skill!]). There was an Ice Fiend ready to play so I "Ozzy kill'd" and watched the fight.

Ice Fiends are MUCH tougher than daemons. Ozzy was quickly down to 3/4 health and I was losing mana fast. The IF pretty much tracked right with Ozzy for health so I figured a few repairs and he'd be OK.
Amidst bandages, meditating, and running from that annoying cold damage, I repaired Ozzy twice and he killed the IF.

I killed three more and saw my title go to "Illustrious." Three days ago, I
was "the Rude" (from using snooping to ping-pong dex). Two mages gated into the area and I offered them the next IF. They either gave up or chickened out because as I was meditating, the IF targeted me and I was already a bit low on health. I tried to run but died after 2 consecutive flamesrikes. I watched Ozzy die a short time later.

I got my stuff back but was retargeted by the IF again and died in one hit. I actually invins'd at my corpse but the IF wandered by and his cold aura revealed me. At this point I figured that the 80 regs and 120 ingots wasn't worth the trouble and recalled home.

So Ice Fiends are definately tough but can be handled with repairs. Be very careful, though, as they re-target fast and there's not enough room to run. The cold aura hurts and will reveal you if you're hidden or invised and the IF will target you immediately.

So I'm down to "Noble" or something like that but will hopefully be back to Illustrious soon. I think it will be cool to eventually be a Lord Mule!

I only have 3 more power crystals so I'd better find more or learn how to keep a golem alive. I haven't seen a golem/controller spawn in a few days; anyone know if they stopped at the end of the scenario?

Report #4:
Golem vs. Poison Elemental (yeah, I'm stupid!)
I headed to Shame to try my luck against Elder Gazers but they were more camped than the ticket booth for Harry Potter so I moved up a level and found the Poison Elemental. I don't know what made me think this was a good idea but my newbie mage has killed a few PE's so I gave it a try.

I knew immediately that Ozzy was in trouble. Before even scratching the PE, Ozzy was hurt and I was losing mana. By the time I got my first repair in, I was out of mana and losing health.

I stood by Ozzy's side and kept a steady stream of repairs going for him and bandages for me as well as trying my best to meditate. Twice during the fight, Ozzy's healthbar was completely red but the repair kicked in just in time to save him.


Report #5:
Golem vs. Elder Gazers
Getting tired of these yet?

I took Ozzy to Shame Level 4 to try his hands at the most popular Tamer camping spot I know of, the Elder gazers.

I tried several times before I found the spot uncamped. I'm using the small, isolated alcove at the end of the bridge in the southern portion of the level. This was another favorite spot of my lockpicker so I knew it well. I also knew that it was very, very rare that someone wasn't there with a dragon.

I finally found it empty and unleashed Ozzy III (Ozzy II died to a spawn of 2 daemons and 8 imps at the hedge maze...I hate imps!). Now I know why this spot is so popular with the tamers.

Ozzy had no trouble at all with the elder gazer. With no repairing whatsoever, he finished the first fight with over 3/4 health and I never lost any noticeable mana. I repaired him once after each battle and killed a dozen or so EGs. Each EG carries about 1000 gold and gave me "A lot" of fame and karma at the Admirable level. This was easy money.

At one point, I got so cocky as to recall to the bank in the middle of a fight to drop off gold and pick up more ingots and Ozzy was doing fine when
I returned.

The only problem, other than trying to find the spot uncamped, was that you've got to be very quick with your "Ozzy kill" command because the area is fairly small. The EG will target you if you don't start your golem fighting soon. If it does, you need to run back across the bridge and either hide or invis. That can be tough sometimes because there is often an acid or fire elemental wandering around that area.

The spawn is very fast and it was usually less than 30 seconds between EGs; sometimes less than 10. Be quick with the commands!

Report #6:
Golem vs. Cows by Dragoon of Siege, humorours post Well, after reading all of the exciting posts about golems against, Ele's, Liches, Ice Fiends, Daemons, etc. I thought that I would add my two cents :-)

Guido, being the killing machine that he is, is the greatest tool for cow killing! My tailor/tinker on Siege has limited fighting skills. Guido has become an awesome tool for collecting hides....hehe.
I think he throws the Pk's off stride though. Outside Delucia is a favorite place for Pk's to kill the players collecting hides and the tamers in training. When a Pk comes calling now, I just cast para on the Pk and send Guido over to have a chat with them. He is very convincing.

Enjoy