As of late I've been owning more ass than White Folx the Pimp, since everything else in UO serves only to bore me. This site has a lot of information up about how to gm a character into an mmog version of an unstoppable tank pixel anhialating machine. But... even though you might have a badass character, if you don't know how to use it. What good will it do you? This is it. The end all be all pvp lesson. Let me be honest. I don't know the fastest way to gm eval, nor how to raise resist to 100 in a matter of 3 days. In fact, I don't pay for any of the 6 accounts I currently play. But when it comes to knowing what to do with the characters I do play, I have no competition. No, as much as you sitting there in your chair stuffing your fat ass with twinkies, like to think you can beat me, you can't. Period. I don't care if you are a mage, a med warrior, or an 3llt3 UO:R axer, I can kill you. That being said, Let's get a few things out of the way. If you care nothing for pvp, you should still read this article, you might get interested in something besides hammering a mountain 2000 times to get 10 valorite ore. PvP is optional now with the advent of Trammell so it's no longer a necessity to learn, but I urge you to anyway. There is far less traffic in the dungeons in Felucca so you could have all that ph4t l3wt for yourself if you care to learn so you won't be so scared of the inferior *character wise* oh so dreaded "pk". Ok now, before I continue any further it's only prudent for me to tell you that if you're on dial up, your a hopeless cause. .

Take a step into the 21st century and get a broadband connection. Even if you don't pvp, it will help you not lag die to an Ettin. "But Ian, I live in BFE, I can't get a broadband connection." Cry me 2 tears in a bucket, it's not my fault your Uncle’s brother married your mom and your town's clock is still a sundial. You deserve to die. Moving on, get a connection because it's 100% of pvp, that is to say if you don't have a high speed conect, you will die to me 100% of the time. Now, after you get a decent connection, pvp is 100% how calm you stay when you employ the tactics I'm going to teach you. Grab a nice cup of Jo or whatever it is you would like and pull up a chair. You're done dying, you're through taking shit from Shr3dda dA k1llah, you are my student. I mentioned in my opening statement that pvp is all about how you maintain your composure in a fight. Simply put, if you're nervous, or overexcited you tend to make mistakes. You must have the confidence to KNOW you're going to win. Even my bard is on a chaos stone, my main is factions, and all my other characters are chaos/order so when I'm playing a character, chances are at some point while I'm playing I'm going to get attacked, unless I'm the bloodthirsty mongrel doing the attacking. Now, when I do get attacked, this is what goes through my mind, I wonder how much loot I am going to get when I kill this person or persons. I truly feel that every fight I get into I'm going to win. The fact is you have to keep a cool head, it will take a while to build your confidence up but that truly is more than half the battle.

Ok, to the meat of the lesson, I play a mage so I'm going to first teach you the finer points of mage combat in either 1 on 1 or 1 on 2 situations. I fight these all the time, I've been known to fight against greater odds but I'm writing this for your benefit, not to show you my prowess. Ok, preparation is the key, so arm yourself with all you will need. I am what is referred to as a pot whore. I carry usually 10-15 greater cure and greater heal pots at a time and usually 5 or so total refreshes. The number of these actually increases the longer I play as I'm usually looting other people's after I kill them. Also, use the skills you have, I don't care if you have hiding, use it. I have been called a newbie for everything you could imagine.. a pot newbie, ping newbie, a mage newbie, basically any word used to be put in front of newbie I've been called, but guess who much more often that not, walks away with these people's belongings. That's right :) I'm starting to accept newbie as sort of an endearing term.. don't let it bother you. In fact, if you can help it at all, don't talk shit. Notice in THIS PIC, this guy kept mouthing off, saying he couldn't die. And from what I had seen, he was right.. Crazy Dawg, (who on my shard is a guild mate and known as a good pvper, couldn't kill this guy and gave up chasing his sorry ass) so when I squared off against him I just bid my time.. I knew he couldn't help the urge to talk shit.. and guess what you're not doing when you're talking shit...that's right..not defending.. so during his.. "haha you'll never kill me newbie" spiel, I casted 4 ebolts at him.. dead. Nothing special.. 4 old school, spank your ass ebolts and he died. Lesson being talking smack should be done only after said victim is dead. Truly that's the only time you have the right. Ok, I use normal template magery, eval, resist, med, wrestling and scribe with hiding. Whatever your template is you can employ most of the same tactics.. I strongly recommend getting inscription, it absorbs a lot of melee.

Ok so if you're fighting a mage here are some tips. To take off reflect I use harm.. some people use fireball some people use lightning.. I like harm. Anyway, after reflect is off start a combo with Explosion.. now if you see him do the same do this.. cancel your explosion and cast poison, as soon as you see him cast a spell after explosion release your poison on him and cast small heal.. what just happened is you interrupted his combination while in the process poisoned him and healed a good portion of the damage that was done with his explosion using minimal mana.. now stay close to your target. Now is the time to cast either react armor or protection.. if you cast ra stay close to your target so you can disrupt either his curing or heal spells when you can..if you know this person uses small heals a lot you're going to have to use poison.. if he likes to use large heals hold off on the poison until his health is low. Casting protection will help you to not get interrupted. I personally like react armor. Not to mention that if you get attacked by a second party while you are attacked and that person is a towny with a haly or an axe, you won't get insta death because of a combo and a huge melee item.

Stats and how they work. I've heard it all, some say mindblast is based on base stats and not on altered stats i.e. clumsy, feeble, and weaken. Well, it's been my experience that when you alter stats even further, mindblast deals more damage. That's all I can tell you. So, when fighting a mage cast your clumsy as soon as you get a chance.. if you don't subscribe to the stat altering theory that's fine. Cast weaken. that takes 10 hps off right off the bat. Every little bit counts in these fights. It's also 10 hps they can't heal. Also, have the str, agility, and intelligence icons up (if not already on macro) in the event that the person(s) you are fighting are smart enough to cast these on you to counteract it by casting these helpful spells on yourself. In long duels what I like to do is curse the person I'm fighting and cast bless on myself.. that's a 20 pt sway in all stats. Most smart players you come up against will always even their stats.. I do, if someone curses me, I bless myself. If someone blesses them self, I curse them. I remember a fight I got into where this guy spent the first 5 minutes cursing me and I would bless, he called me a newbie and recalled. The key is I would not just blindly mana dump on this guy, and let him rock me with 0 mana while I was cursed. I play smart, and I hope you will to. Don’t be afraid to use ebolt. If you know someone has uneven stats, mindblast the hell out of them. But most mages have evened their stats, and that is because the people who have the balls to play a mage these days, know what they’re doing. Here are a few combos you should try out.N

Combo 1.
Harm until reflect is off.

Explosion Poison Clumsy Mindblast 2x E bolt to finish

Combo 2.
Harm Poison Curse Explosion Poison E bolt twice to finish

Ok that is mage on mage combat. I put that first because it is the most complex to teach, and truly something that you must just experience and practice constantly to get good at. Now for mage on townies. This is probably the easiest thing to do in the world. Here is a good formula, if a townie misses, you win, if a townie hits you, you die. But basically it’s simple to never die to a townie (even the dreaded UO:R axer) If you engage a townie as a mage the FIRST thing you do is cast react armor or protection.. I always have ra on and I will cast mass protection so that I’m also protected as well. A lot of you walk around with magic reflect on and I strongly advise against this because if you come across a townie you can’t put on your ra right away, which can equal you suffering a very quick death. So with that just harm to take off there reflect (which they will usually have on unlike mages) and then cast feeblemind which is Rel Wis. Try out an mb on them.. most townies usually have unbalanced as hell stats so it rocks them.. if they have unbalanced stats just mb their ass until they’re seeing monochrome. I get bored fighting townies a lot so I like to toy with them from time to time, especially if it’s just 1 or 2 of them (react armor is that good with high inscription). I’ll cast an explosion followed by a weaken followed by a poison followed by a few lightnings.. it’s fun. But if you’re going for an out and out kill. Just Rel Wis and mindblast with poison thrown in there. Simple as pie. (note: don’t toy with axers, just kill those pussies as soon as possible.)

Ok, I don’t know much about townies but I can run up to someone and attack them with the best of anyone. I usually play a townie if God forbid I die with my mage and I need some quick revenge. I’ll log on with my axer and go take on entire guilds. It’s fun for exactly 4 minutes and 23 seconds but then I’m bored and need my mage. ( For the life of me I still can’t figure out how people have fun playing a townie in this game but for those that do.. let me tell you what makes fighting a townie tough for me.) Townies are tough for me when they are well equipped with cure and heal pots and have good resist and balanced stats. I have only come across a few in my whole playing career that I simply can’t kill consistently. Those players are good though, they have perfected the simpleton task of playing a simple character. More power to them. Honestly I can’t tell you how to play a townie. Remember to bandage self, drink lots of pots, and make sure you surf gay porn because it is a requirement that you be homosexual to play them.

In closing, I’ll summarize my main points.
-Get a good connection, if you ping over 150 you’re in serious trouble and should look into other forms of internet service.
-Be Prepared. Don’t be in such a mad rush to kill that you forget to equip yourself with potions, regs, bandaids, TRAPPED POUCHES (this is the killer for me, when I forget something it’s this. Most of the time I have 15 trapped pouches on me and never get para’d but it’s the one time that I just died, grabbed a sac of regs and went back that I get parad and ganked) so take the extra 20 seconds and trap those pouches ;)
-Stay calm. Be confident. Play with your mind and not your fingers. There is no “skill” in pvp as it’s so often referred to as. It has to do with smarts. Just play smart and realize that there is no true “honor” in this game. The same person you let pass after they rez, 9x out of 10 is going to be the person that grabs a spear and 5 bandaids and starts trying to kill you again. You’re not in pvp to make friends with those that have the gall to be orange to you. Be friends with your guild mates, not those who choose to fight against you.
-Keep trash talking to a minimum if you can help it. I used to be the worst at this but I’ve grown out of it. I found that most of the time I died it was right after I decided to type instead of fight. Vice versa most people die to me any way, couple that with them typing instead of hitting whatever macro key they’re greater heal is, and you get a lot of dead shit talkers. Besides, it’s much more fun taunting a ghost whose only comeback is, oOooO. I know this can’t possibly turn any of you into good pvpers but it can get you in the right frame of mind. PVP IS FUN. It’s an ongoing drama coupled with revenge and plots and chest thumping. PvPers are the biggest group of roleplayers in the game. Trust me on this. Most aren’t even smart enough to know they’re doing it. I roleplay a badass motherfucker that even the best in this game know that they are in for a fight when they encounter me. I like that.
Care to join me? For readers of this site: If any of you out there would like some pvp tutelage I will be happy to get my character out on Test Center and show you the finer points. I’m willing to take the time if you are willing to learn. Email me and hopefully I can group up some of you so we can do it at once.
By the way. Watts not only told me that Kansas would beat my beloved Illinois team, but I believed the term he used was "They are going to stomp them a new ass." Hmm.. I won't go into our heated discussion but at the end I said UI 79 Kansas 67. The final score of that game was UI 80 Kansas 64. I am great, and I know it. Bow down