Warrior Skill FAQ
Below is the FAQ for gaining the skills associated with the UO Warrior. Please try and remember that raising skills should be fun and not a race to see how fast you can become a 7x GM Warrior. Start your Warrior with 50 Healing and 50 Magic Resist. These are probably the hardest skills to raise although Resist is pretty easy to get to 50. You may want to choose another skill besides resist if you are looking to get a “newbie” item from some other skill. Make your highest stat Dexterity, this will allow you to gain skills faster. Some players will even start with 10 Strength. Although I would recommend at least 20 Strength for newer players.
How do I GM Tactics, Macing, Fencing, Swordsmanship, Wrestling?
With the changes brought to us by Publish 16 the old methods of raising weapon skills are no longer effective. In order to gain you must be able to hit your opponent, and their melee skill must be in the same range as yours.
Sparring a Guild Mate that has similar Tacts/Weapon skills is a good way of gaining. The "Pits" in Jhelom is another option. If you decide to try Jhelom take lots of bandages, a few hundred gold, and a weapon that causes minimal damage (i.e. a Wand if your a macer). Depending on your skill level hire the following Npcs:
30-60: 6gp wrestlers
60-75: 8gp wrestlers
75-90: 7gp fighters
90+: 8gp fighters
Try to avoid hiring an NPC wielding a macing weapon, they will destroy your armor and lower your stamina. This means you will take more damage and swing slower, meaning less gains.
What other monsters can I fight to GM Weapon Skills?
Fighting monsters to gain weapon skills is also very effective. Its also much more enjoyable and profitable. Here is a list of monsters that can be fought to gain skill, depending on your skill level, and where you can find them:
0-30 (skill can be bought up to 28-32 if you find the right npc)
Birds, mongbats, cats, boars, pigs, dogs, cows, goats, sheeps, rabbits, chickens, snakes, slimes
Any forest almost anywhere, near minoc/yew moongate, outside delucia.
30-45
-Hinds, llamas, horses, great harts, ridgebacks, (tamed/released) bulls, eagles, gorillas, mountain goats, timber wolves, giant rats
Moonglow (right outside of town on the South and Eastern sides). Delucia has lots of great harts and bulls north and east of town. Around minoc moongate there's a few great harts and bulls as well. If you find you're out of targets, bulls can be good for gaining, but you'll probably make a lot of tamers mad. Ridgebacks can be found in ilshenar's central area, the easiest way is the compassion gate, then south and through the cavey entrance and up. There's usually a lot of tamers busy with them though.
45-70
-Skeletons, liches
Any graveyard, but I like Yew since it spawns *only* skeletons. Just beware of any bog things or plague beasts if you fight in Trammel. Yew crypts in Trammel is also good. You should only fight liches of course if you're just training another combat skill(and got high resist), but i found i gained pretty good on them at this level.
70-80
-Lizardmen
You can go to a swamp, like the one beneath Compassion, the Trinsic swamps, or the Destard swamps, but you can also go to Lvl. 1 Despise (I prefer there). No need to worry about jukas, ratmen, plague beasts, and bog things. Also the cold blood title spawn(when it's at it's lowest level) in ilshenar/felucca/lost lands has tons of lizardmen.
80-85
-Ratmen
Head to the Destard swamps on the North-West side, lure a few ratmen away and fight them 1 by 1. Also, in ilshenar, north of sacrifice, there is a medium size rat fort, you'll probably have to drag a few away at a time there. You can also go into the cave where the spawn is smaller.
-Orcs
The orc dungeon, lure a few of them away and attack them. Spawning orc camps around delucia or the orc forts near cove and britain also work well.
85-90
-Harpys
Covetous Lvl. 1 or lvl 2, just have to watch out for the occasional stone harpy, lvl2 doesn't have any stone harpys though. In ilshenar there's also a harpy nest north/east of the spirituality gate, be sure not to have negative karma or you'll be swarmed by pixies!
90-GM
-Harpys, stone harpys
As said above. Stone harpys can be found in the same place, they've got slightly higher combat skills but hit much harder, so they might not be a good choice.
- NPC warriors
Either hire one or fight them in the jhelom fighting pit.
- Ogre lords
Despise lvl3, some rune libraries have specific rune to this place. Best for archers though since they hit so hard.
- Earth elementals
Shame Lvl. 1, or if it's camped there you can go to Lvl. 2 or 3. There's also some places in Ilshenar, in the desert outside the gargoyle city, around the rocky place north of gargoyle city(get there by honor shrine, walk up and into the cave entrance), the rocky place south of the gargoyle city(it no longer has ore elementals) and in the ratman cave mentioned above(3 tiny spawn spots with only 2 earthys each)
-Bone and skeleton knights
City of the Dead in the lost lands, or if you can get a few friends you can head over to Deceit Lvl. 2, a.k.a. the BK room
GM-120
Several things work above GM. NPCs still work, but while easy, the gains are very slow. Rotting corpses are very effective, especially if you lure one up to the humility shrine in Ilshenar and use the ankh to cure poison. They can also be found at the bottom of covetous. With a little manipulation of the spawn a wall, like the infamous bone wall can be created.
Golems can also take you fairly easily up to 115. Anything else that has a strong melee should also be effective.
Parrying
Parry is a little harder to GM. It is important to understand the parry skill before becoming a GM Parrier. The chance to parry a blow is based on your parry skill as well as the type of shield you are using. The higher the base AR of a shield the more damage you will parry, but the less often you will parry a blow. So using lower AR shields use the parry skill more often and will raise your skill faster. Bucklers are a very good choice to GM Parry.
The formula for chance to parry is:
chance to block = skill - base AR * 2
Just about any creature will give gains up into the 50’s. After that fight hard hitting creatures like Bone Knights and Earth Elementals until you get into the 80’s or 90’s. Fighting more than one creature at at time will also help speed gains. Gains will slow down at this point. Fighting Cyclops, Stone Creatures, Dull Copper Elementals, Titans, Deamons, and any other hard hitting creatures will get you to GM from that point.
It does
not matter what type of armor you wear while working parry.
If you are in a hurry to GM Parry the fastest method is to fight a group of Harpies at the same time. Try and get a Stone Harpie plus at least 4 regular Harpies on you at the same time. A friend to help you heal is helpful but you can do this method solo.
You can still GM off of Blade Spirits but not as fast as before Blade Spirits were changed. You will need to fight several at the same time.
Healing
Healing raises fairly quick until you get into the mid to upper 80's. The best way to raise healing is to heal yourself and others as often as you can. Healing gains are mainly based on movement not on the amount of damage healed. Apply a bandage anytime you take any damage and move around in-between heal attempts.
Once you get into the 80's the gains will slow down. Attempting to resurrect a ghost is the fastest way to do this, but it can be done solo by using a magic wizards hat. By putting the hat on and then off again you will have 5 hit points to heal. You can often get a healing partner by posting a message in the healing forum. The ghost can just answer no when the resurrect box comes up.
Anatomy
There are 3 ways to raise anatomy.
- Directly by using the Anatomy skill on Players/Creatures. Set up a macro and use it all the time on other players as well as monsters.
- Indirectly from hitting Creatures/Players. Kill as many creatures as possible. Killing different types of creatures seems to work better than killing the same thing over and over again.
- Indirectly by using the Healing skill. As with healing, apply a bandage any time you can. Anatomy can be GM’d at the same time as healing as noted above. There is currently a little Anatomy “trick” that can also be used. The idea is to get on a boat and apply bandages until you get an Anatomy gain. Immediately stop the boat, lock your healing skill then continually apply bandages (using a Magic Wizards Hat works well). Using this last method is the currently the fastest way to GM Anatomy. Some players report getting gains of greater than 30-40 points of Anatomy in one spot.
Magic Resist
Magic resist is a very important skill and you should try and get it as high as you can. If you want to fight the hard creatures or PvP you will need Magic Resist. Magic Resist is also a difficult skill to GM. With the removal of powerhour and the implentation of control slots on summoned creatures makes resist much harder to gain.
The fastest way to GM Resist is to have several mage friends summon Daemons on the shore while you sit on a boat. Attack the Daemons and have them cast on you until out they are out of mana. You will need several healers to survive the mana dumps. Remember, summoned daemons have been vastly improved, you won't need nearly as many as people used to use. 1-3 should give good gains.
For those of us who would prefer to raise it with normal game play try the following.
0-50
Cast Fire Field and run through it. Don't just stand in it, run back and forth. For this to be effective you will either need to be in a guild or in Felucca.
50-80
Almost any magical creature will give gains in this range (Liches, Airs, Waters, Fires, Daemons, Elder Gazers, Orc Mages etc.) Fight as many of these creatures as you can.
80-100
This is when things start to get hard. You need to have magical monsters casting spells on you continuously. The tougher creatures (Elder Gazers, Daemons etc) take too long to kill and gains from these are very slow. Their mana runs out before they are dead and you spend too much time finishing them off.
The best creatures to fight at this stage are Bone Magi, Rat Magi, Evil Mage Lords, Wisps and/or Reapers. Bone Magi are possibly the best. They have a low number of hit points and cast lots of 6th and 7th circle spells. There are two main areas where these spawn. Deciet and the Graveyard in the Fire Dungeon. Wisps can be found in many areas, a good Reaper spawn can be found north of Minoc.
Once you get into the 90's try and get two to three Bone Magi (or whatever creatures you are fighting) casting on you at the same time. This is the most efficient way to raise resist, since you need lots and lots of spells cast on you to raise it. Allow the Creatures to get low on Mana, kill them, and get the next ones that spawn. Continue this until you GM. Expect gains of 0.2-0.8 at this level. You may get skunked every so often, just keep at it and you will get to GM.
Rat magi are also effective, there is a set of Ruins in ilshenar near the Sacrifice Shrine where two of these spawn. I GM'd resist on one of my characters fighting these. I was able to do this fighting a single Rat Magi most of the time.
Thanks to: Beren, Vidala, Seas, Stoneduck