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Can we have a patch to un-screw High Seas?

Spock's Beard

Sage
Stratics Veteran
Put saltpeter on every alchemist in the game.

Let us recall to the Sea Market.

Rip out all the pointless crafting steps like potash and charcoal.

There is literally zero fuse cord for sale on Atlantic. Which isn't surprising. I mean have you SEEN what it takes just to make a fuse? It's literally easier to make a robot golem to kill your enemies than it is to make a fuse, since golems were added to the game before it took on this miserable stance that crafting needs to be as annoying as possible.

Seriously HS was pretty much ground zero for this attitude of "Pointless busywork will increase player engagement, whoops this content coincidentally died for no reason!" that has plagued the game ever since. I know Cal recognized the mistake to at least some extent and wanted to streamline things, or so he said, but then he hit the bricks and it never happened.

High Seas content is kinda interesting, or at least different enough to give the game some variety. Just let us bloody DO IT without jumping through utterly pointless hoops.

"WELL SPOCK YOU CAN JUST GET A DEDICATED CRAFTER TO DO IT..."

Yes, I can, and I did. She's sitting next to me at the bank ranting about how stupid the crafting was as I type this.
 

GarthGrey

Grand Poobah
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
UNLEASHED
Put saltpeter on every alchemist in the game.

Let us recall to the Sea Market.

Rip out all the pointless crafting steps like potash and charcoal.

There is literally zero fuse cord for sale on Atlantic. Which isn't surprising. I mean have you SEEN what it takes just to make a fuse? It's literally easier to make a robot golem to kill your enemies than it is to make a fuse, since golems were added to the game before it took on this miserable stance that crafting needs to be as annoying as possible.

Seriously HS was pretty much ground zero for this attitude of "Pointless busywork will increase player engagement, whoops this content coincidentally died for no reason!" that has plagued the game ever since. I know Cal recognized the mistake to at least some extent and wanted to streamline things, or so he said, but then he hit the bricks and it never happened.

High Seas content is kinda interesting, or at least different enough to give the game some variety. Just let us bloody DO IT without jumping through utterly pointless hoops.

"WELL SPOCK YOU CAN JUST GET A DEDICATED CRAFTER TO DO IT..."

Yes, I can, and I did. She's sitting next to me at the bank ranting about how stupid the crafting was as I type this.
I have a dedicated crafter (why is stratics highlighting the spelling of crafter LOL), as do many others, and it's still a ridiculous grind. Oh they've hinted that they're going to "look into it", I love that response. The High Seas are dead because the ridiculous coding for crafting ammunition and firing the cannons is just that, ridiculous.

And before the miner crowd chimes in, yes you can dig up niter deposits which become saltpeter, it still doesn't change the fact that only the alchemist at the Sea Market sells it, and on Siege, you only get one. At least on prodo there's a trammel and a felucca one.
 

Ender

Crazed Zealot
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
UNLEASHED
Since it first released I wanted to do pirate ships but yeah, no.
 

Dot_Warner

Grand Inquisitor
Governor
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
UNLEASHED
I agree with removing the unnecessarily bloated crafting steps. Nobody wants to do them.

Other things to fix:

Add a pirate NPC quest person at the JHELOM DOCKS. Nobody wants to make the time-wasting trip to the sea market, we don't have 15 mins to just **** around on a boat every pirate. Stop thinking about it and pancaking do it already.

Streamline cannon firing to TWO CLICKS. LOAD and FIRE. Sure, require we have the necessary crap on us to do that, but don't make us click every damn thing. (Yes, I use a macro that does it all for me) While you're at it, remove the question about the ammo if there is only 1 type in our packs. Auto-clean the cannons as the first step in the simplified process.

Increase the variety of the loot on ships. Its always the same boring things. Replace the food with something we actually might bother to take. Have a chance for artifacts, kotl tech, imbuing resources, ML resources, recipes...etc.

Make an UNDEAD ship. Black and white hued, always looks damaged, etc.

Could have seasonal (date determinate) spawns of special ships. Rotating by itself every month or major holiday:

Fall:
October: Grim Reaper's Frigate - Halloween themed orc ship. Undead crew, reaper captain. Can contain old Halloween content (including the Conjurer's stuff).

November: Harvest Festival Merchants - Human crew, giant turkey captain spawns when crew dies. Contains new food, cornucopias/horns of plenty, recipes, etc.

Winter:
Elf Merchant ships carrying holiday-themed items, old holiday gifts (so they don't vanish forever). Red, white and green hued gargoyle ship.

Etc.
 

CovenantX

Crazed Zealot
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
UNLEASHED
Too many realistic but unnecessary steps to firing a cannon. It's been pointed out several times.
Sadly this is why a lot of people don't really enjoy the High-seas ship-associated content


The content feels like you're doing so much clicking/targeting (work) you don't even get the experience of what that content was (I'd hope) intended to deliver.
 

GarthGrey

Grand Poobah
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
UNLEASHED
I agree with removing the unnecessarily bloated crafting steps. Nobody wants to do them.

Other things to fix:

Add a pirate NPC quest person at the JHELOM DOCKS. Nobody wants to make the time-wasting trip to the sea market, we don't have 15 mins to just **** around on a boat every pirate. Stop thinking about it and pancaking do it already.

Streamline cannon firing to TWO CLICKS. LOAD and FIRE. Sure, require we have the necessary crap on us to do that, but don't make us click every damn thing. (Yes, I use a macro that does it all for me) While you're at it, remove the question about the ammo if there is only 1 type in our packs. Auto-clean the cannons as the first step in the simplified process.

Increase the variety of the loot on ships. Its always the same boring things. Replace the food with something we actually might bother to take. Have a chance for artifacts, kotl tech, imbuing resources, ML resources, recipes...etc.

Make an UNDEAD ship. Black and white hued, always looks damaged, etc.

Could have seasonal (date determinate) spawns of special ships. Rotating by itself every month or major holiday:

Fall:
October: Grim Reaper's Frigate - Halloween themed orc ship. Undead crew, reaper captain. Can contain old Halloween content (including the Conjurer's stuff).

November: Harvest Festival Merchants - Human crew, giant turkey captain spawns when crew dies. Contains new food, cornucopias/horns of plenty, recipes, etc.

Winter:
Elf Merchant ships carrying holiday-themed items, old holiday gifts (so they don't vanish forever). Red, white and green hued gargoyle ship.

Etc.
Love the undead ship idea, if only our devs thought like players. I still think they code for BS and play WoW when they're done.
 

Dot_Warner

Grand Inquisitor
Governor
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
UNLEASHED
Another idea: Dreadnaughts (1 Britannian, one Pirate)

Large Britannian ships carrying an appropriate crew of Britannian Navy officers or flea-bitten sea-dogs of several levels of difficulty (ensign/swabbie to Captain). Much nicer loot with better chances for rare items. Only 1 of each spawns at a time.
 

Tanivar

Crazed Zealot
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
The sea market alchemist on Siege typically restocks once an hour, you spend an entire day building up the vendor quantities and buying enough saltpeter for a couple thousand fuses. If you can't dedicate an entire day. dawn to midnight, to make the purchases, your just screwed.
 

Dizzy

Lore Master
Alumni
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
Campaign Benefactor
I never did the high seas. I thought it sounded cool, but when I read all the steps necessary to outfit a cannon and fire it, I abandoned before I start. Since I only play 2-3 hours a week at most, it would take all month to get a cannon ready.
 

Spock's Beard

Sage
Stratics Veteran
Streamlining the firing of the cannons would be nice, but honestly I can deal with the excessive clicking if I have to. But I can't even do that if no one on the game's largest shard is bothering to sell the crap it takes to do it.
 

Morgy123

Journeyman
Stratics Veteran
i got highsea for tresure hunting never fired a cannon ever in uo
like you say make vendor sell cannon balls and evry thing at a flat ratio and have some desent loot and i am sure some would have fun doing it

spending days up on days just to get the stuff needed to go hunt pirates just dum
and wile you at it redo tresure hunting the loot just bad no point buying maps wen you end up barly get back your money for the map
 

Parnoc

Certifiable
Governor
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
You can make macros both in the EC and in CC for one touch loading cannons. It was posted I think somewhere but I don't know where, sorry, I'll look for it and see if I can find it. If I can't find it, I'll see if I can post it from mine. Not very good at stuff like that though.
 

Val-Tur

Lore Keeper
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
I came back to the game recently and one of the first things that I did was to explore the whole "High Seas" content. I pretty much have done everything but Corgul. Long story short, I have spent countless hours in this grind of "content" trying to manually gather the materials to make ammunition & fuse cords and then actually jumping through the 5000 hoops to make it all. You are forced to either spend millions on saltpeter @ the only vendor in the Sea Market or you are almost forced spend millions on making a luck suit so you can mine more than one deposit of salt peter per hour. I always wanted a max luck suit, so I made one. And let me tell you, I would refuse to mine saltpeter without it. It makes 1000% difference.

I like the entire idea of the expansion. But OMG it is a total grind & money sink just to be able to participate in the most fun part - hunting pirates or being a pirate. Hardly anyone to no one sells any of the stuff because they either keep it to themselves (due to the grind of making it all) or they don't care anymore (dead content). Please do something about this. The UO community begged for sea content for so long just to get what is now dead content. Everything from making ammo to the way you have to prepare and fire cannons needs to be revamped, badly.

On top of that other encounters need to be added. What about being able to actually use your ship to fight various legendary sea monsters? The fabled "Kraken" for example. Random encounters with mini-bosses that wont wreck your ship in 5 hits. That way they can be fought solo or with a group.
 

GarthGrey

Grand Poobah
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
UNLEASHED
This thread isn't quite as long as the other one we made regarding High Seas, and it got 0 results or dev responses as well. I expect this one to go the same route, unfortunately.
 

Captn Norrington

Stratics Forum Moderator
Moderator
Professional
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
UNLEASHED
Campaign Supporter
it got 0 results or dev responses as well. I expect this one to go the same route, unfortunately.
This thread already got a dev response, Kyronix liked the original post.

Untitled.png
 

Riyana

Operations
Administrator
Professional
Governor
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
Event Coordinator
UNLEASHED
Campaign Patron
They've mentioned wanting to work on High Seas stuff several times. I believe it's on their to-do list... it's just a long list. No harm in tossing out ideas in the mean time.
 

Yadd of Legends

Babbling Loonie
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
UNLEASHED
Campaign Supporter
OK, as someone who hunts merchant ships a lot while hating the preparation grind, I'll add a +1 to this thread.
PS, I get about 1k saltpeter an hour mining with no luck, running along the walls in Ilsh north of Spirituality. I'll have to try a luck suit and see if it makes a significant difference.
 

Spock's Beard

Sage
Stratics Veteran
I always try to keep my dev suggestions realistic. Like if I want to talk about systems design and streamlining, I don't confuse the issue with a bunch of suggestions for content additions. They don't have a large team over there, and they already have a list of stuff to do that they're very unlikely to abandon because of anything they read on the forum, so I try to make my suggestions things that could plausibly be squeezed into an existing schedule.

Saltpeter everywhere: Should be a trivial change. And I don't want to hear squat about ruining the market value of saltpeter either, because I've been trying to buy it and even on Atlantic there's nobody selling it in meaningful quantities.

Recall to Sea Market: Ditto for being trivial.

Crafting overhaul: Most complicated thing on the list, but trimming some steps out of a few recipes shouldn't really be that much of a problem even for a game with a backend as messy as I suspect the UO one is.

They really need to just do a quality of life and content reincentivization patch. New junk to get in the Doom Gauntlet, a toggle to display dragons as reptalons so we can see WTF is happening at EM events, etc etc etc all my other pet hobbyhorses.
 

Yadd of Legends

Babbling Loonie
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
UNLEASHED
Campaign Supporter
I agree with most of this, but the suggestion to make GDs appear like reptalons bothers me. How about if they just made it so they don't flap their friggin wings? Just keeping their wings at their sides would help a lot, without some inexplicable magical sight trick.
 

Tyrath

Grand Poobah
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
I see a lot of people mining for Saltpeter all wrong. #1. 2000 luck is required for good results 2400 + Statue + Do it in Fel. in a dungeon. 90% of the niter deposits will be the big ones. THe big mistake I see is people strip mining like they are mining for ore. At GM mining one hit per 8 tiles pulls it up, walk 8 tiles and hit the floor again. Imbue the mining gloves and then enhance to 140 luck you will hit a lot more 4 salt peters than 1,2 or 3s. High Luck, mobile one hit mining, and changing from the 190 luck gloves to the 140 gloves after pulling a deposit. I average 3000-3200 per hour and 290-340 per deposit. If you mine like a strip miner you are only going to pull 1-2 deposits per hour even with high luck. even with no luck as long as you are hitting ever 8 square tiles you will pull deposits but rarely will they be the big deposits and you will only pull 100-150 saltpeter per smaller deposit. On Siege I run around 1500 luck and averge 2200-2300 per hourand no fel luck bonus. I do not suggest mining despise :) But Wind Counts as a dungeon (Wind does seem to be much slower and lower% of striking a deposit, the orc mine counts, fel hythloth is fairly easy to mine as long as you can take a hell hound, gargoyle or occasional daemon down. Anywhere in ilsh. is a dungeon and the mushroom cave is a good safe spot. But wall mining produces as much as cave mining, just remember to toggle handles as they like to pop inside the mountain and out of sight. Almost frustrating seeing someone mining for niter and mining every ore section one at a time and complaining it is so slow, and then accusing you of somehow cheating because you are walking around pulling a deposit every 5 minutes or so and pulling 300+ saltpeter from most of them. On Siege buying the alchemist up to 999 or mining 2k+ per hour......... I will mine :) On prodo I am just a cheap ass and will mine for that reaon.

Should also be noted that the area is reset like every 5 minutes so if you mine a 8 tile path that takes 5 minutes to mine after 5 minutes go back to where you started and repeat. Toss on a tinker tali and take a fire beetle and make your shovels or picks 2-3 at a time as you mine. No need to carry a pack full of bod shovels a 100 use exceptional shovel will finish most deposits, use your 50 uses for hitting every 8 tiles. 3-4 shovels in the pack weigh a lot less and when your are getting up around 3000 salt peter in the pack you are getting weighed down. Take a bag of sending and send the salty peters to the bank get heavy on ore send it to the bank. You can stay in the field mining for a long time like a day or two with just BOS. Always nice to return from a mining expedition and find you have 40,000 + salt peter for your efforts. I usually sell 1/2 to the alchemist for quick cash 20k salt peter usually pays out 4.8- 5.4 million depending on how many people are buying or selling. Not bad gold for less than 7 hours mining.
 
Last edited:

arkiu

Journeyman
Stratics Veteran
The thing that kills me about HS is that it hasn't been truly revisited since release - so often a content addition is released with no real follow up. It has great rewards that require quite possibly the most boring grind-a-thon in the game. I'm surprised no one has said anything about what it takes to make a legendary fisherman because lets be honest... raising fishing to 120, let alone obtaining a legendary power scroll, is an awful and totally non-enjoyable experience. Agree on most suggestions here - doesn't need drastic changes but it needs changes to improve QOL. HS is a cool concept and wish it was maintained better.

On a side note I feel like certain elements of HS like boating around and blasting canons recklessly could have been incorporated into pvp a lot better.
 

Tyrath

Grand Poobah
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
Charybdis is the most useless encounter in entire UO.
Streamlining the firing of the cannons would be nice, but honestly I can deal with the excessive clicking if I have to. But I can't even do that if no one on the game's largest shard is bothering to sell the crap it takes to do it.
The problem of selling them on any shard is you have to charge a small fortune for fair compensation for the value of the saltpeter, the time sink, the sheer boredom of making the potash (Which should be the same as making the charcoal) and then the slow boring grind of turning it all into fuse cords. Then what you can reasonably sell them for. Honestly I can grab a spider slayer and head to the solen hive and farm dread spiders and make 10x more gold in the same amount of time it takes to make the fuse cords and it is a whole lot less boring. If they made the potash making the same as charcoal, reduced the time to make the fuse fuse cord and the black powder....... Basically streamlined that down to half the time investment. I would probably make 500-1000 and toss them on a vendor every week. As it is now I am only going to make enough for my own use.
 

Tyrath

Grand Poobah
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
raising fishing to 120, let alone obtaining a legendary power scroll, is an awful and totally non-enjoyable experience
The 120 fishing scroll is arguably the hardest scroll to obtain. Raising fishing to 120 is slightly less annoying than raising taming to 120. And overall I don't see a lot of difference in legendary and GM fishing. Legendary Fisherman is pretty much the equal to Dinosaur Hunter reward title in its usefulness IMO.
 

Tyrath

Grand Poobah
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
Streamlining the firing of the cannons would be nice, but honestly I can deal with the excessive clicking if I have to. But I can't even do that if no one on the game's largest shard is bothering to sell the crap it takes to do it.
Should just be one click to go through the motions of clean, charge, and load and a second click to fire. And either set the cannon to fire grapeshot or balls in the cannon menu, if you want to change just open the cannon menu and have a click button like changing from mark don't mark in the crafting menu. If this were archery and you had to draw arrow, place arrow, draw bow, release arrow and click each step of the way....... archery would lose popularity overnight.
 

ShriNayne

Babbling Loonie
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Stratics Legend
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Awards
5
Should just be one click to go through the motions of clean, charge, and load and a second click to fire. And either set the cannon to fire grapeshot or balls in the cannon menu, if you want to change just open the cannon menu and have a click button like changing from mark don't mark in the crafting menu. If this were archery and you had to draw arrow, place arrow, draw bow, release arrow and click each step of the way....... archery would lose popularity overnight.
If cannons were more user-friendly, as you suggest, then I would probably have tried more than once to use them, I kind of gave up after that first time, I spent ages getting all the items together and then it was just such a hassle to use them. :(
 

Tyrath

Grand Poobah
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
If cannons were more user-friendly, as you suggest, then I would probably have tried more than once to use them, I kind of gave up after that first time, I spent ages getting all the items together and then it was just such a hassle to use them. :(
And that is sad because High Sea's should be some of the best content in the game and while I am one of the few that enjoy it, I would enjoy it a lot more if it was not huge time dump just to get ready and then a click fest once you set sail.
 

GarthGrey

Grand Poobah
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
UNLEASHED
I see a lot of people mining for Saltpeter all wrong. #1. 2000 luck is required for good results 2400 + Statue + Do it in Fel. in a dungeon. 90% of the niter deposits will be the big ones. THe big mistake I see is people strip mining like they are mining for ore. At GM mining one hit per 8 tiles pulls it up, walk 8 tiles and hit the floor again. Imbue the mining gloves and then enhance to 140 luck you will hit a lot more 4 salt peters than 1,2 or 3s. High Luck, mobile one hit mining, and changing from the 190 luck gloves to the 140 gloves after pulling a deposit. I average 3000-3200 per hour and 290-340 per deposit. If you mine like a strip miner you are only going to pull 1-2 deposits per hour even with high luck. even with no luck as long as you are hitting ever 8 square tiles you will pull deposits but rarely will they be the big deposits and you will only pull 100-150 saltpeter per smaller deposit. On Siege I run around 1500 luck and averge 2200-2300 per hourand no fel luck bonus. I do not suggest mining despise :) But Wind Counts as a dungeon (Wind does seem to be much slower and lower% of striking a deposit, the orc mine counts, fel hythloth is fairly easy to mine as long as you can take a hell hound, gargoyle or occasional daemon down. Anywhere in ilsh. is a dungeon and the mushroom cave is a good safe spot. But wall mining produces as much as cave mining, just remember to toggle handles as they like to pop inside the mountain and out of sight. Almost frustrating seeing someone mining for niter and mining every ore section one at a time and complaining it is so slow, and then accusing you of somehow cheating because you are walking around pulling a deposit every 5 minutes or so and pulling 300+ saltpeter from most of them. On Siege buying the alchemist up to 999 or mining 2k+ per hour......... I will mine :) On prodo I am just a cheap ass and will mine for that reaon.

Should also be noted that the area is reset like every 5 minutes so if you mine a 8 tile path that takes 5 minutes to mine after 5 minutes go back to where you started and repeat. Toss on a tinker tali and take a fire beetle and make your shovels or picks 2-3 at a time as you mine. No need to carry a pack full of bod shovels a 100 use exceptional shovel will finish most deposits, use your 50 uses for hitting every 8 tiles. 3-4 shovels in the pack weigh a lot less and when your are getting up around 3000 salt peter in the pack you are getting weighed down. Take a bag of sending and send the salty peters to the bank get heavy on ore send it to the bank. You can stay in the field mining for a long time like a day or two with just BOS. Always nice to return from a mining expedition and find you have 40,000 + salt peter for your efforts. I usually sell 1/2 to the alchemist for quick cash 20k salt peter usually pays out 4.8- 5.4 million depending on how many people are buying or selling. Not bad gold for less than 7 hours mining.
Good post, the one thing you left out I think, is that the niter will pop up on the first dig, every time. If it doesn't pop up and you get ore...move on to the next spot.
 

cazador

Grand Inquisitor
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
I can say as a casual player who mostly pvp's when high seas came out, like everyone I got excited. I bought the update moved to test..starting messing around. Wowed at how cool of an idea sea battles would be, and never used a high seas boat again. Not because I didn't want to, or because it's dumb. It was just an extremely tedious, non rewarding experience..mind numbing to say the least. An awesome idea, with extremely flawed implementation...


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 

Merlin

The Enchanter
Moderator
Professional
Governor
Supporter
Stratics Veteran
UNLEASHED
Campaign Patron
I would like to do more fighting on boats. Only problem is that, as Spock pointed out, it's incredible tedious to craft and/or purchase most of the items needed. This needs to be simplified.

I'd also like to see another "sea boss" added - or some type of champ spawn content, if possible.
 

Val-Tur

Lore Keeper
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
I see a lot of people mining for Saltpeter all wrong. #1. 2000 luck is required for good results 2400 + Statue + Do it in Fel. in a dungeon. 90% of the niter deposits will be the big ones. THe big mistake I see is people strip mining like they are mining for ore. At GM mining one hit per 8 tiles pulls it up, walk 8 tiles and hit the floor again. Imbue the mining gloves and then enhance to 140 luck you will hit a lot more 4 salt peters than 1,2 or 3s. High Luck, mobile one hit mining, and changing from the 190 luck gloves to the 140 gloves after pulling a deposit. I average 3000-3200 per hour and 290-340 per deposit. If you mine like a strip miner you are only going to pull 1-2 deposits per hour even with high luck. even with no luck as long as you are hitting ever 8 square tiles you will pull deposits but rarely will they be the big deposits and you will only pull 100-150 saltpeter per smaller deposit. On Siege I run around 1500 luck and averge 2200-2300 per hourand no fel luck bonus. I do not suggest mining despise :) But Wind Counts as a dungeon (Wind does seem to be much slower and lower% of striking a deposit, the orc mine counts, fel hythloth is fairly easy to mine as long as you can take a hell hound, gargoyle or occasional daemon down. Anywhere in ilsh. is a dungeon and the mushroom cave is a good safe spot. But wall mining produces as much as cave mining, just remember to toggle handles as they like to pop inside the mountain and out of sight. Almost frustrating seeing someone mining for niter and mining every ore section one at a time and complaining it is so slow, and then accusing you of somehow cheating because you are walking around pulling a deposit every 5 minutes or so and pulling 300+ saltpeter from most of them. On Siege buying the alchemist up to 999 or mining 2k+ per hour......... I will mine :) On prodo I am just a cheap ass and will mine for that reaon.

Should also be noted that the area is reset like every 5 minutes so if you mine a 8 tile path that takes 5 minutes to mine after 5 minutes go back to where you started and repeat. Toss on a tinker tali and take a fire beetle and make your shovels or picks 2-3 at a time as you mine. No need to carry a pack full of bod shovels a 100 use exceptional shovel will finish most deposits, use your 50 uses for hitting every 8 tiles. 3-4 shovels in the pack weigh a lot less and when your are getting up around 3000 salt peter in the pack you are getting weighed down. Take a bag of sending and send the salty peters to the bank get heavy on ore send it to the bank. You can stay in the field mining for a long time like a day or two with just BOS. Always nice to return from a mining expedition and find you have 40,000 + salt peter for your efforts. I usually sell 1/2 to the alchemist for quick cash 20k salt peter usually pays out 4.8- 5.4 million depending on how many people are buying or selling. Not bad gold for less than 7 hours mining.
I run a 2300 + luck suit (before luck state), & mine in trammel dungeons - I pull about the same as you do in fel. I do not keep strict track of how much per hour - I usually judge it per run of the dungeon (entrance to my "finish spot").
 

Val-Tur

Lore Keeper
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
Good post, the one thing you left out I think, is that the niter will pop up on the first dig, every time. If it doesn't pop up and you get ore...move on to the next spot.
You are so correct. Saltpeter per resource square is checked once every 5 minutes. The check is done on the first swing. If you are mining for saltpeter & swing more than once on the same spot, you are wasting time. Hit it once, move, rinse & repeat. Once I found this out, my saltpeter runs increased 10x.
 

Tyrath

Grand Poobah
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
Good post, the one thing you left out I think, is that the niter will pop up on the first dig, every time. If it doesn't pop up and you get ore...move on to the next spot.
First dig at GM Mining, but going for niter at less than GM mining is a waste of time and effort.
 

Tyrath

Grand Poobah
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
I run a 2300 + luck suit (before luck state), & mine in trammel dungeons - I pull about the same as you do in fel. I do not keep strict track of how much per hour - I usually judge it per run of the dungeon (entrance to my "finish spot").
Where Fel makes a difference is if you are not running a high luck suit and the Fel Luck bonus bumps you up to peak luck for pulling the big deposits. Plus you get double ignots per swing as a bonus. And there are quite a few scripters that mine the Orc Mine and pop the niter deposits but don't mine them. Went down there one day on ATL and there were 18 deposits popped in various states of decay but a easy haul of saltpeter without having to pop them myself. And as a bonus I got the scripter killed by luring the earth els out to where he was recalling to
 

Val-Tur

Lore Keeper
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
Where Fel makes a difference is if you are not running a high luck suit and the Fel Luck bonus bumps you up to peak luck for pulling the big deposits. Plus you get double ignots per swing as a bonus. And there are quite a few scripters that mine the Orc Mine and pop the niter deposits but don't mine them. Went down there one day on ATL and there were 18 deposits popped in various states of decay but a easy haul of saltpeter without having to pop them myself. And as a bonus I got the scripter killed by luring the earth els out to where he was recalling to
I never even see script miners on my server these days.
Where Fel makes a difference is if you are not running a high luck suit and the Fel Luck bonus bumps you up to peak luck for pulling the big deposits. Plus you get double ignots per swing as a bonus. And there are quite a few scripters that mine the Orc Mine and pop the niter deposits but don't mine them. Went down there one day on ATL and there were 18 deposits popped in various states of decay but a easy haul of saltpeter without having to pop them myself. And as a bonus I got the scripter killed by luring the earth els out to where he was recalling to
I guess I should put mining on my ninja / stealth char and see if I can find some script miners to get some free saltpeter. I cannot remember the last time I saw even a script miner on my server, let alone another regular player mining.
 

Tyrath

Grand Poobah
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Stratics Legend
I never even see script miners on my server these days.


I guess I should put mining on my ninja / stealth char and see if I can find some script miners to get some free saltpeter. I cannot remember the last time I saw even a script miner on my server, let alone another regular player mining.
Have not seen a scripter mining on legends in years. Pretty common on ATL and last time I was on GL there were a few. On Siege they learn fairly quick that they mysteriously die why scripting.
 

Tyrath

Grand Poobah
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
Just wear a luck imbued mask of orcish kin :) No one mines the Orc Mine fel side because you can't recall in or out of it.
 

GarthGrey

Grand Poobah
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Stratics Legend
UNLEASHED
Instead of liking the OP, I would rather a dev chime in and explain a few things. Like why you can make charcoal with your entire stack of wood in your pack, with 0 cooking skill...boom 300 charcoal 1 click..but when it comes time to make Potash, it's 1 Mississippi.....2 Mississippi.....what was the reasoning behind that ?
 

Kyronix

UO Designer
VIP
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Stratics Legend
UNLEASHED
Instead of liking the OP, I would rather a dev chime in and explain a few things. Like why you can make charcoal with your entire stack of wood in your pack, with 0 cooking skill...boom 300 charcoal 1 click..but when it comes time to make Potash, it's 1 Mississippi.....2 Mississippi.....what was the reasoning behind that ?
There was a different team for the development of High Seas, so I can't comment on why certain features were implemented the way they were. That being said, we agree with a lot of what has been posted in this and the other High Seas threads and hope to address some of those concerns in a future publish.
 

Tyrath

Grand Poobah
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
There was a different team for the development of High Seas, so I can't comment on why certain features were implemented the way they were. That being said, we agree with a lot of what has been posted in this and the other High Seas threads and hope to address some of those concerns in a future publish.
Biggest issues I see.

On the making the fuse cords The time to make pot ash. Add another alchemist to the Tokuno Docks. Increase the speed that the fuse cords are made. Mining the Saltpeter is fine as it is now. Lower the cost of ignots for making cannon balls to 6 for light and 8 for heavy.

Out on the water. Make at least the cleaning and charging one click, would prefer the whole process one click with the same time and just set the cannon to fire balls or shot via some menu. Just streamline the entire process but NOT reduce the time it takes. Fix the Pirate ships from firing after scuttled and the crew is killed.

Very annoying watching your slightly damaged ship get trashed while fighting the dread pirate. About half the time you can park on the back of the ship and not take damage and about half the time the pirate ship flips and keeps firing and trashing your ship from the nose cannon.

Fix Merch ships, LOL I know this is not going to be very popular :) but they DO NOT fight back and are zero challenge. Shoot them till they are scuttled, loot them and optional kill the crew. Keep them the lower tier ship to ship combat and limit them to functional light cannons.

Incorporate the ships into PvP would love to see opposing fleets sailing into each other handing out broadsides. While archers and mages cast and plink away at the opposing sides cannon crews. Potential for a lot of group fun there.

Up the gold for capturing or killing a pirate to 30,000 make them worth capturing or killing. Right now the only reasons to kill or capture the pirates or kill them is for the orc ships or to have your pet attack them on the pirate pole and train the pets anatomy up really fast. why are the Pirate Ships chest looking like they are on their way to be vendors at a farmers' market?

Lose the worthless ice and fire cannon balls for turning in a captured pirate! Put in that third tier heavy cannon 48 pounder or dragon cannon whatever it was called as a rare reward but not so rare that they are unobtainable.

May as well allow recall and SJ to the floating market since anyone that is a regular there keeps a ship parked there and it is just a nuisance to recall to the ship, sail the ship in, do your business, hop back on ship, sail ship out past the line, park ship and recall back to the mainland...... Why all that hassle?

Keep the price of saltpeter high. It is one of the few ways a legit miner can earn a living since the ruining mining via the randomized ore, made mining predominately a scripter only activity.

Add a couple new ships I like the idea of a slow moving heavy dreadnaught class of ship and something like the large dragon ship being able to mount two light cannons and double their speed.

Fishing:
I can really see no difference between 100 fishing and 120 fishing other than a status and title thing. Improve the harder to catch fish odds even only by 5%-8% Improve the fisherman turn in suit not seeing any real difference with it on or off. Improve the chances for getting the then more useful 110-120 fishing power scrolls. It is stupid easy to get a 120 mage scroll and crazy hard to get a 120 fishing scroll in comparison. I literally finally got one 120 fishing scroll and the only reason I fish now it for chest and MIBs and tossing nets .

Loved the idea of the new fishing stuff until I discovered what horrible grind it was.

Those are my opinions and thoughts on how to improve the entire High Seas system and get more people on the water. Right now I may go two weeks without seeing another player on a boat and then it is usually parked at the Yamadon with a bard training provo and a Cu's healing by proving the yama onto the cu. Or parked at the rune beetles farming them from a ship. And occasionally someone Mining and Lumberjacking merch ships since mining and lumberjacking are no longer viable ways to obtain the higher ores and woods.
 

Tanivar

Crazed Zealot
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
Fix Merch ships, LOL I know this is not going to be very popular :) but they DO NOT fight back and are zero challenge. Shoot them till they are scuttled, loot them and optional kill the crew. Keep them the lower tier ship to ship combat and limit them to functional light cannons.
:twak:
 

Spock's Beard

Sage
Stratics Veteran
There was a different team for the development of High Seas, so I can't comment on why certain features were implemented the way they were. That being said, we agree with a lot of what has been posted in this and the other High Seas threads and hope to address some of those concerns in a future publish.
Can you just enable Sea Market recall and slap saltpeter on every alchemist in the next publish? That would help a lot and shouldn't take much time.

In fact, while you're at it, just put every cannon supply for sale on every NPC harbormaster and call it good. I mean in 5+ years there has never been a real functional market for the stuff anyway, so what difference does it make? Just slap it on there and let us play.

Like I know you guys probably want to do some big clever overhaul that'll be totally interesting two years from now when it happens, but what if you just threw all the crap on an appropriate NPC and just let us play right now?
 
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