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[LordBucket]

And so ends a succesful adventure on level 1 of Despise. No deaths, about 10 points of skill gains for me, and a little over 1000 gold each in about an hour.

Though that sounds low now that I look at it. I remember individual mobs dropping a couple hundred gold each on live. What's everyone doing for gold?

[Glowcat]

Gazers for the most part, dropping 40-70 gold each and dying relatively quickly. Primarily I wanted to raise Resist Magic on them but it did help me eventually purchase a house. Now I just sorta kill things here and there while I develop my crafter and so income has dropped considerably.

[gomez]

I can't seem to get the tool tips to work correctly, for instance If I hover the mouse over my stats then a tooltip appears, but if I hover over a weapon or piece of clothing nothing happens.

Is this a feature or a bug?

Edit: never mind, it's me being thick and forgetting it is a T2A server

[LordBucket]

Gazers for the most part, dropping 40-70 gold each

it did help me eventually purchase a house

You farmed ~800 gazers? You might be more dedicated than I am.

Anyone intereted in buying cloth or bandages? Selling 50 bolts/2500 bandages for 3000 gold. That's 20% cheaper than britain moongate prices.


EDIT:
Also, can someone explain to me how armor works in this version? There are no stats on anything, and so far as I can tell, no material types. Dragons drop the same leather as rats. I tried upgrading my armor, went from 12 to 33, but I can't tell the difference. I don't seem to be any more durable than before. I also tried making both normal and exceptional armor pieces to compare them, and I get the exact same armor rating on my status with each piece.

[Stuebi]

At first I was generally interested, since im looking for a Game that allows for house building (Haven and Hearth didnt scratch that particular itch very well), but after some research it just looks like a giant Grind'n'grief-fest and im not overly fond of those two things. How does the housing work? Can I hermit somewhere and build a cabin in the woods? And what's combat like?

[Stuebi]

I don't think there are different leather 'types'. Might be worth suggesting in the forums, but then again, mages are already (as ever) totally OP, so the thought of them getting stronger armor doesn't really thrill me.

Dunno about specific numbers, but AR definitely makes an observable difference. A decent set of magic plate will make a massive difference in your survivability vs melee monsters.

At first I was generally interested, since im looking for a Game that allows for house building (Haven and Hearth didnt scratch that particular itch very well), but after some research it just looks like a giant Grind'n'grief-fest and im not overly fond of those two things. How does the housing work? Can I hermit somewhere and build a cabin in the woods? And what's combat like?

There isn't much griefing on this shard - at least, relative to other online games I've played. It's easy to avoid, particularly if you ask for a bit of advice and take basic precautions (e.g, ensure you take the Hiding skill). Grinding is hard to judge - in my opinion, grinding is always a part of MMOs. An Corp seems to do more to reduce the grind factor than other shards, particularly with the 300% skillgain in dungeons.

Housing works like this: You save up cash and buy a deed. You find a spot somewhere in the wilderness that you like, and use your deed to place the house. Bigger houses require more room, obviously; a small house can go in a billion places, but for castles, the largest houses currently available, there are probably less than a hundred potential spots.

You can put anything you like in your house, decorate it how you like, add in things like forges, anvils, etc.

Combat is best experienced for yourself, really. Or at least, I can't think of a way to describe it without it becoming a tl;dr long block of text. Generally, combat's good, bar mages being OP.

EDIT: Anyone online for some dungeoneering?

Argh, you got me interested now. I'd love the idea of playing a craftsman in the wilderness. Maybe i'll take a look.

[jashman]

Been playing a few days now, and I'm sure I'm just missing something... but my skills are at 821.6 total. Do some just not count towards the 700 cap?

Edit: Nevermind, "show real." Haven't played since '97. I'm dumb.

[LeoLeonardoIII]

So it sounds like the best strategy for skill gain would be making an alt with low skills, training those skills up enough to be your seven highest, setting all others to decay, and killing masses of weak enemies. Transfer skill gain scrolls to the main.

Actually seeing the code would be interesting, because it's possible you could have your 3 highest be fighting skills, then the next 4 are very low skills that you set to gain but won't rise due to the combat (magery, crafting, magic resist). If the drop potential is checked against the level of the skill that would drop, then those 3 would drop scrolls on a weak monster. But if the drop potential is based on your highest skill, the weak monster wouldn't drop any scrolls.

Then you use another alt with 3 Magery-related skills and 4 very low other skills (probably the fighting skills that weren't dropping scrolls for your other character).

You'd still need to work the two characters up. You'd start with a fighter and slowly gain his fighting skills until his gains stopped because he's hitting weak enemies. Switch to the mage alt and do the same. But your mage alt immediately gains a ton of mage skills from drops your fighter collected, and as you play the mage you get tons of drops for your fighter's main skills. I think this reciprocating scroll generation should raise both their main skills very quickly, letting you cap out soon and switch to whichever is most efficient at killing and switch his low skills to crafting.

To fix this, the devs could have several different types of scroll drops which will only raise a skill if it's in the right stratum. For example if you have 5.0% magery and a magery scroll drops, it should be one that raises Magery 1.0% up to 10.0%, beyond which it won't work for you. If your Magery is over 9.0% the scroll that would drop would be one that raises it by 1.0% up to 20.0% max. Secondly, they could make it so instead of a scroll it's just a skill gain that happens for you. That way you can't trade the scrolls between characters.

[LordBucket]

mages are already (as ever) totally OP

Only in group situations. If you're a solo player, UO has some one of the weakest mages and strongest melee in any game in all of history.

Quick test:
Mage character with no melee skills vs melee character with no magic skills. Who wins?

Pretty sure it's going to be the melee. As for hybrids, sure you can put a mage in plate and give him a sword, but if the majority of his skillpoints are in non-magic skils and doing the majority of his damage without magic, is it it really reasonable to call that character a mage? A typical tank mage only has 3 out of 7 of his skills that relate to his casting.

Try playing a mage without swords, fencing, maces, archery, tactics, wrestling, anatomy or healing and get back to me about how powerful "mages" are. For that matter, go ahead and take the last four if you want. Try playing any mage at all with any skill combination at all you want except no weapon skill, and let us know how overpowered mages are after spending 500 on reagents for every 20 minutes of play, after watching your 25 damage ebolts get interupted by uninteruptible 40 damage halbard hits, and after being stuck sitting in one spot frantically trying to heal yourself up with spells that never finish while the guy with the big weapon can use bandages on the run to simultanously cure poison and heal himself while he runs around the screen hitting you.

Pure mages in UO are pretty much horrible unless they work in groups. Yes, if three mages pop out of the woods and all simultaneously cast on you, you're probably going to die before you can get away. Yes, if there are two mages and the one you're not in range of heals the one you are in range of, yes they'll probably win. Yes, if 5 people with big swords fight 5 people with big swords and magic, the ones with the big swords and magic will win.

But is it really fair to look at that and say "mages are overpowered" instead of "groups of well-coordinated players who outnumber their opponents and/or make effective use of focused fired do well?"

[LeoLeonardoIII]

How about whether it's better to hybrid into a tank mage or go straight fighter? And tank mage vs. straight mage? Is it just that tank mage is a really optimal choice?

[LordBucket]

So it sounds like the best strategy for skill gain would be making an alt with low skills, training those skills up enough to
be your seven highest, setting all others to decay, and killing masses of weak enemies. Transfer skill gain scrolls to the main.

Skill scrolls are not transferrable. Single click a scroll. It will state the name of the character it is valid for.

it's possible you could have your 3 highest be fighting skills, then the next 4 are very low skills that you set to gain but won't rise
due to the combat (magery, crafting, magic resist). If the drop potential is checked against the level of the skill that would drop,
then those 3 would drop scrolls on a weak monster.

Yes. That will probably happen whether or not you do it on purpose because melee skills rise so quickly compared to other skills. It's very possible to raise both magery and resist to 60 or so fighting monsters that are trivial to kill with your melee skills in 80+ range, even if those monsters no longer drop scrolls for your 80+ skills. Note that no scrolls exist crafting skills, hiding, poison, and probably a few others.

To fix this, the devs could have several different types of scroll drops which will only raise a skill if it's in the right stratum. For example
if you have 5.0% magery and a magery scroll drops, it should be one that raises Magery 1.0% up to 10.0%, beyond which it won't work for you.

They already do this.

http://uoancorp.com/wiki/index.php/Skill_Gain_%26_Scrolls#Skill_Scrolls

"The scroll is only usable for the skill range at which it dropped. (Example: Journeyman skill scroll will only work from 60-70 real skill; Expert from 70-80; Adept from 80-90; and Master from 90-100)"

You can save them up within the relevant tier to some extent. For example, the above link specifically recommends saving scrolls to level magery and resist from 90 to 100:

"While hunting for skill scrolls you can lock all of your skills but Magery and Resist in order force skill scroll drops of these types. Getting skill scrolls for the harder to raise and more expensive skills while hunting will be a more efficient use of your time. It is preferable to get skill scrolls for magery/resist because of their high resource cost and time to raise compared to other easy to macro combat skills.

 At a certain skill level, some monsters stop dropping skill scrolls. Therefore it's a good idea to save skill scrolls until you can go all the way to 100,0 with the scrolls you've saved up. Example: Air elementals in Shame drop master level scrolls only if you're 90,1 or below in a skill. That means that, if you stay at 90,1 or below you can save up enough master scrolls to go to 90,1 - 100,0 relatively easy. The other option would be to either macro from 90,1 - 100,0 or get skill scrolls from other monsters. However, the monsters that drop scrolls from 90,2 and above are significantly harder to come across and kill (Lich Lords, Dragons), so for certain skills such as Resisting Spells, the best way to GM it is to save up scrolls as described above."
 

[LordBucket]

tank mage vs. straight mage?
Is it just that tank mage is a really optimal choice?

Well, tank mage is the preferred pvp build for this era, but largely it's because there aren't enough skills to justify not being a hybrid. Whether you go magic or weapons for your primary damage dealing, a standard build will end up with 200 skillpoints leftover.

Talking about mages first, on this server, there are only 3 skills that affect offensive magic: magery, evaulate intelligence and meditation. Magery allows you to cast spells, eval increases damage, and meditation improves your mana regeneration.

Which brings us to wrestling. Chance to hit is a simple melee skill vs melee skill test, regardless of which weapon is being used. You can't cast spells with a weapon equipped, but wrestling counts as a melee skill that can be used without a weapon. So if you have a hybrid sword/mage, he can't cast with the sword equipped. Assuming all skills are at GM levels for explanation, with sword equipped he has a 50% to avoid attacks, but he can't cast. If he removes the sword, he can cast, but he loses the 50% avoidance. Every attack will hit him, and will interrupt his spells in the process. Unless he has wrestling, which will give him the same 50% avoidance that swordmanship will without having to worry about removing and requipping his weapon between casts.

So, a pure mage can take wrestling instead of a weapon skill for the defensive effect while simultaneously always being able to cast. So that pretty much means that a "pure mage" will have:

 * Magery (needed to not fail spellcasts)
 * Evaluate intelligence (increases spell damage)
 * Meditation (improves mana regeneration)
 * Wrestling (For defense)
 * Resist (Pretty much everyone takes this. Math is complicated, but overall about  50% damage reduction from spells, plus reduced negative effect diuations)

So that leaves you with 200 points left over. On an official server, you could take inscription for the spell damage bonus and alchemy for the potion effect bonus. Here, those bonuses aren't implemented, so you pretty much may as well spend those 200 points on a weapon skill plus tactics, and poof you're a tank mage.

How about whether it's better to hybrid into a tank mage or go straight fighter?

Well, same sitation basically.
A straight fighter probably has:

 * Weapon skill
 * Tactics (150% base damage)
 * Healing (best case with anatomy: 43-80 point of healing every ~10 seconds for ~1 gold cost, plus cure poison and ressurect)
 * Anatomy (+20% melee damage, plus ~20 point of 43-80 from healing and the cure and ressurect abilities are from anatomy)
 * Resist spells (again, pretty much everyone takes this)

So like above, this leaves 200 skill points to do whatever you want with. What else are you going to spend them on? Rumor has it that the lumberjacking damage bonus to axes might be implemented on this server, so that's a possibility, but otherwise you're pretty much in the same position as the "pure mage" above: 200 points to spend, and there just isn't a whole lot of reason to not take magery, resulting in a similar set of skills.

Magery is very convenient to have because it allows you to heal, cure poison, cast fast spells like harm to interrupt long casts, recall anywhere in the world, teleport out when you're boxed in, cast strength on yourself if you end up carrying too much loot, etc. It's a very utilitarian general purpose skill, even with only 60 or so points of magery and no eval or meditation.

There are a couple other possible archetypes (bard, tamer, thief, crafter) and a couple variants within the fighter/mage world, but whether you approach it from "I'm a mage" or "I'm a fighter" in most cases you end up with a weapon skill, tactics, spell resist and magery. The difference from there is in which support skills you choose, whether you use a slow hard hitting weapon like a halbard or a faster weapon like a katana to interuppt spells more often, and whetyher you put more attribute points into dexterity for high swing speed or intelligence for a bigger mana pool.

[Glowcat]

I'm going to be on for a while if anybody wants to team up. I'll also be hanging out in IRC at Darkmyst #bay12uo (might not respond immediately).

[LordBucket]

Or we could make arguments that actually reflect the game, and not hypothetical situations that don't occur. Nobody makes
a mage without a weapons skill or wrestling, unless they're sticking magery onto another build with some points spare, such as a tamer.

That's kind of the point though. In the world that is UO, "mage" typically means, "guy in heavy plate weilding a halbard." That's not what anybody in the world other than a UO player means when they say "mage."

compare how well you do with a melee character versus a tank mage utilising Explosion-E-bolt-Hally strike combos.

Yes, the guy smacking you in the face with a halbard while casting spells beats the guy who has the halbard but isn't casting spells. Weapon+magic beats weapon alone. Now compare a guy with a weapon and no magic vs a guy with magic and no weapon. Halbard is swords, and a swordsman without magic is probably using a katana. Who wins?

You gave the answer in your last post:

Nobody makes a mage without a weapons skill or wrestling, unless they're sticking magery
onto another build with some points spare, such as a tamer.

Exactly. Nobody makes a mage without these things, but people do make dexxers without magic. The melee skill is the more important of the two.

Mages are blatantly OP in this era of UO.

No, hybrids are. If a "hybrid mage/swordsman" > "swordsman" > "mage" why do you look at that and say that mages are overpowered? I acknowledge that that's the naming convention. Yes, UO players look at a guy with  "sword skill, sword damage enhancing skill, hand to hand fighting skill...oh, and magic " and say "that's a mage! Mages so OP!"

But take a moment and think about any of the new-to-UO players in this thread. Do you really expect them to hear "mages are OP" and immediately start training swordmanship/tactics/wrestling?

[LordBucket]

I'm going to be on for a while if anybody wants to team up. I'll also be hanging out in IRC at Darkmyst #bay12uo (might not respond immediately).

Think I missed you. I'll be available in game in probably an hour or so. I'll leave IRC open with the same caveat: might not see a message immediately.