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FAQ - All Skills

R

Ravenspyre

Guest

Way of the Samurai

A Guide to Bushido in Ultima Online™
Created by Ravenspyre​

Welcome to Way of the Samurai; a guide for Bushido that states, describes, and attempts to answer various questions concerning this warrior based skill. Now, before we get started, I am going to state up front that this guide is not a guide on how to make a killer template, or how to make the ultimate PWNing machine. At best, this guide will give pointers on template combos, item combos, and what skills go well together and what skills do not.

What you can expect in this guide is an explanation of the various abilities, weapon specials that require Bushido to use, Honor and Perfection, and various other aspects of the Samurai described here.

All images are the copyright of EA Games

Last Update: January 14th, 2008​


How to Learn Bushido and Ways to Train

You have several methods open to you in how to learn Bushido when you decide to take up the road to becoming a samurai. The first method, and perhaps the easiest, is to create a new samurai character. However, that option is not always open to some players. So in those cases, you have the following methods to introducing your path on the way of the samurai.

First method, you can go to either New Haven or the city of Zento located in the Tokuno Islands, which is located on the island Mokata-jima. From there you will locate a samurai and ask to be trained in the art of Bushido. In Zento, just about any guard or warrior looking character can train in Bushido, while in New Haven, the samurai trainer is located in the very far north of the city, in a lone Asian-esque shrine. The fee will be 250 gold, minimum, to train, as you need at least 25 skill to begin your pursuits of Bushido. Just open the context menu and select Train Bushido, then drag the requisite gold onto the NPC in question, and your skill will automatically be elevated. Another method, and about the only choice for murderer’s on production shards, is to find 25 points worth of skill jewelry. This will get you to the requisite 25 skill to begin your training as a samurai.

But that doesn’t finish your beginning steps on the road of Bushido; you also need a Book of Bushido which can be gotten one of three separate ways. The first, and probably the easiest for all but murderer characters, is to go to a scribe in Zento, or the Samurai trainer in New Haven, and buy a Book of Bushido from him. This will probably be the cheapest method as well.

Your second choice is to shop around at player vendors, though finding one might be difficult and many players tend to charge more for these rather common items.

The final method, and the most difficult, is to find a ronin samurai in Tokuno, typically found wandering around Isamu-jima near the castle or by the Fan Dancer Dojo. This final method proves the most difficult as the ronin will employ a number of different weapons, all their weapon specials, as well as use bushido moves. However, the reward for defeating them nets you several hundred gold, a Book of Bushido, and probably some very nice gear and equipment especially if you are hunting for samurai style look for your character.

Now, once you have acquired the necessary base skill, and a Book of Bushido, the method of training to become a samurai is pretty straight forward. Much like any other skill in the game, you will be employing skills that you can possibly succeed at, of course, the best skill gains are when you have about a 50/50 chance of success or failure. However, starting out in a skill, this is not going to be something readily available to a samurai.

Since most starting samurai will most likely be below 50 skill your basic choice at this time is using Confidence. This skill is pretty easy to spam, but it costs 10 mana per use, so be sure your intelligence is decent enough to begin with. Having focus and/or meditation can help as well as a a lot of Mana Regeneration gear on. This can carry you to 50, though gains will start coming less and less frequently.

Starting at 50 skill, you can finally dump the Confidence spam and move into the heart of the samurai moves; in this case lightning strike. This easily spam-able move is only limited on two things; your chance to hit and how fast your weapon swings. Basically, go out and start whacking away at this with Lightning Strike and you will watch gains come pretty straight forward; Lightning Strike is even capable of taking you all the way up to 120 skill, but make no mistake, it’s a very slow process doing so.

At 60 skill, you can opt to use Evasion, however I will make this clear; the method using this has now been nerfed due to the PvP changes. There is a 20 second recharge time on Evasion, so the best method would be to include Evasion in your Lightning Strike attacks every so often to attempt to help and accelerate your gains. Of course, Evasion seems to have a quirk in it, where it caps out on how much skill you gain based on the Bushido Skill Scroll you have used on your character; mid 90s for no scroll, and roughly 107 skill for those with a 120 scroll.

At 70 skill you can opt to start using Momentum Strike to start taking down foes, however this presents several problems. One, Momentum Strike is very mana intensive attack, 10 mana per use in fact which will necessitate high focus and meditation or lots of Mana Regeneration gear. Two, to even have a chance of working, you must always have two or more targets around you at all times. Three, since you are basically attacking twice in one action and the nature of needing multiple opponents at a time, which will cause a lot of durability damage to your weapons and armor in the long run, so you can expect to be carrying a number of weapons at a time or using a lot of armor. This ability can net you a lot of skill points fast, like Lightning Strike did, but make no mistake, it is the hardest method to use to gain skill.

The titles for samurai who achieve 110 skill points in Bushido is Tatsujin, and those samurai who achieve 120 skill points in Bushido are called Kengo.
 
R

Ravenspyre

Guest


Bushido Moves and How They Work

The following is a list of the Bushido specific moves, their mana cost, the skill necessary to use the ability, and whether if it is an attack or a stance, and the duration for the stance. In parenthesis () will be the game description followed by an explanation of what the move actually does. It should be noted, that an attack which also includes weapon special moves, cannot be used at the same time as another attack. A stance cannot be used with another stance either. However you can have a stance active while using an attack.

Honorable Execution ~ 0 Mana ~ 25 Bushido ~ (Attack)
(Attempts to deliver a killing blow to your opponent, gaining a swing speed boost afterwards. Failing a killing blow results in massive resistance penalties for a short duration.)
What it Does – Honorable execution is a killing move like it describes. You use this as the final attack on your opponent which makes timing very critical for this. Outside of its normal use, you also gain hit points back for honorably executing your opponent, which is also dependant on your perfection. Executing your opponent gives the following perks;
†Swing Speed Increased by 0.25s - Duration 10s
† Restore Health by roughly 8 to 10 + additional per level of perfection.

Failing to execute your opponent has the following penalties;
† Magic Resistance skill set to 0
† All your resistances suffer a -40 penalty
† You are unable to use any Bushido attacks for the duration of the failed execution
These penalties persist for roughly 6 seconds after a failed execution, or until you successfully parry an attack, whichever comes first.

Ability Usefulness: :lame:

This move is damnably hard to time and place; the penalties are outrageous, and even if you do get successful in using it, the duration of the swing speed increase is negligible, and hardly noticeable.



Confidence ~ 10 Mana ~ 25 Bushido ~ (Stance) ~ Duration 20s
(Places you in a defensive stance of confidence, allowing you to gain stamina and health each time you parry.)
What it Does – Every time you parry with confidence active you gain the following health and stamina back.
Stamina Regain : 1 to (Bushido / 5)
Health Regain : 1 to (Bushido / 12)
Example – If you have 100 Bushido, and you activate Confidence and parry an attack, you will get 1 to 20 stamina back and 1 to 8 health back.

Outside of this, Confidence also has an innate health regeneration bonus when the stance is first activated, restoring a phenomenal amount of health based upon your actual bushido skill. This health regeneration persists until the amount of health it would restore is reached, or until you are struck by a damaging effect or other effects;
  • Confidence Heal : (Bushido * Bushido) / 576 + 15
Example – If you have 100 Bushido, upon activating Confidence your HP will start to gain 32 Health over the next several seconds in an accelerated HP Regeneration. However, if during this time period you take any damage, the health regeneration will immediately stop.

Usefulness: :D:D:D
This move is useful in rebuilding health fast. It's cheap to cast, especially after a death you can go from 0 to near full very quickly. Also in a fight with tough opponents you can use this on the run or stand toe-to-toe and get the benefits.



Evasion ~ 10 Mana ~ 60 Bushido ~ (Stance) ~ Duration 3s to 7s ~ Recharge 20 s
(Puts you in a evasive stance for a short duration, allowing you to parry magical attacks like dragon's breath and energy bolt.)
What it Does – Evasion dramatically increases your parry chance, also giving you the ability to parry direct damage attacks from other sources, such as spells, and dragons breath. This does not give the evader the chance to parry status effecting spells and abilities, however, if the effect does damage over time, which can be parried, such as poison or bleed ticks.

As of publish 43, Evasion formula underwent some changes and no longer multiplies your block chance by a flat 50%. Instead it is based on your Bushido, Anatomy, and Tactics skills. The duration of Evasion is also influenced by these skills. Examples of the multiplier to the evasion bonus to your parry skill are as follows.
  • Evasion Bonus : 16% - 40% without GM Anatomy or Tactics
    † 42% - 50% depending on level of Anatomy and Tactics skill starting at Grandmaster.
Example – If you have a 30% chance to parry, and your skill combinations net you a 40% parry bonus, your parry chance will increase to (30 * 1.4) = 42% for the duration of Evasion.

† It should be noted that as of the PvP Publish, Evasion has a 20 second recharge associated with it now, thus it can no longer be used back to back.

Usefulness: :sad3::sad3::sad3:
This move has been on the receiving end of alot of nerfs lately. The first was to nerf down it's parry bonus and duration by making it reliant on bushido, anatomy and tactics skill, and the second slapped a recharge timer on it of 20 seconds. This move has gone from useable 5 cool points to a situational power that you only put up when you know the explosion falmestrike is coming.



Counter Attack ~ 5 Mana ~ 40 Bushido ~ (Stance) ~ Duration 40s or next successful parry
(Places you in a defensive stance that automatically allows you to counter attack the next time you successfully parry.)
What it Does : For all intents and purposes this move does exactly what it says. Your next parried attack will deliver a counter attack that does not interrupt your normal swing timer. This attack takes normal hit and miss ratios into account, so can miss. The bonus of this stance, is that it uses any attack that you had ready at the time, delivering that attack on a successful counter attack.

Usefulness: :coco::coco:
The usefulness of this stance is so situational and so problematic that it becomes more or less a waste of mana, unless you think you are lucky enough to parry and to get a successful hit check after the attack. Better than Honorable Execution honestly, it's still far off the list of usefulness.



Lightning Strike ~ 5 Mana ~ 50 Bushido ~ (Attack)
(An attack with a large bonus to your hit chance.)
What it Does – This increases your hit chance by a large percent, and in effect, acts like hit chance increase jewelry.
  • Hit Chance Increase : 50% Hit Chance Increase (caps apply)

Lightning Strike also has another function outside of the normal one provided above. It gives a chance at a critical strike, which is a direct damage attack that bypasses armor, delivering the full damage you are capable of to your opponent.
  • Critical Strike Chance : (Bushido * Bushido) / 72,000
Example – If you have 100 Bushido and attempt to use Lightning Strike on a target, you have a 13% chance to do a critical strike. This critical strike will ignore any resistance the target has, delivering your maximum possible damage (this includes slayer, Damage Increase, Perfection, Enemy of One and any other applicable effects) directly to the targets Health Points.
† The damage from this critical strike is capped at 35 in player versus player situations.

Usefulness: :drool::drool::drool::drool::drool:
There should be no questions asked on how useful Lightning Strike is. It's probably the most common attack you will see if a template possesses Bushido. It's inherent HCI plus it's chance to crit (aka ignore all resistances) make this attack very useful, but overly used too much.



Momentum Strike ~ 10 Mana ~ 70 Bushido ~ (Attack)
(If you strike your opponent with this ability, you will automatically strike a nearby opponent. You receive a damage boost if you kill your first opponent.)
What it Does – Pretty much does what it says. This move only works if you are fighting more than one opponent at a time. If you hit your first opponent with this, you will attempt to attack another nearby opponent, with normal hit and miss ratios applying. Damage bonus seems to always be in effect, regardless if the first opponent dies or not, however, any bonuses on your first opponent you receive do not apply to the second one, unless they meet the stipulations such as enemy of one the same monster type or same monster type for slayer weapons. Honor perfection bonus damage does not transfer to a secondary target.
  • Damage Increase to Secondary Target : Roughly 100% increase, doubling the normal damage delivered.

Usefulness: :wall::wall:
Situational attack, again, it's usefulness will rely solely on how many mobs are around you. The secondary target always seems to get flattened fast, but if you have a weapon with Hit Chance property on it, you could very well end up swapping targets alot because of that. It's a good crowd clearing move, but no where near as useful as a weapon with Whirlwind on it.
 
R

Ravenspyre

Guest
Bushido Based Enhancements

The following list is an example of Bushido based enhancements to already in place abilities and skills. All these enhancements are passive effects, and thus are going to be based on your actual bushido skill, as well as their inherent power effects.



Parrying : The strength of the samurai lies in the fact he can parry with weapon alone and forsakes the use of shields. As a result, concerning the samurai and his weapon use, the parry formulas work as follows;

Bushido Based Parry
  • One-Handed Parry (shieldless) : Parry * Bushido / 48,000 = Chance to Block
  • Two-Handed Parry (shieldless) : Parry * Bushido / 41,140 = Chance to Block
  • Parry with a Shield Equipped : (Parry – Bushido) / 4
  • Legacy Parry Chance (without Bushido and shieldless) : Parry / 8
Note: For a skill of 100.0 or greater in either Bushido or Parry, a 5% bonus is added to parry chance. This is a one time bonus, thus you will not get 5% for Bushido at or over 100 skill and another 5% for parry at or over 100 skill. You only receive the bonus once for one or the other as long as they remain at or over the 100 skill mark.

Example: If you have a Bushido skill of 90 and a parry skill of 100, your base chance to block with a one handed weapon will be 18.75% chance to block, plus 5% for parry being 100, for a total of 23.75% chance to block. Your two handed parry at the same skill will be 21.88% chance to block, plus 5% more for a total of 26.88% chance to block with a two handed weapon. If you use a shield with the same figures, your chance to block will be 2.5% plus 5% for a total of 7.5% chance to block with a shield. In other words, as a samurai, your chance to block worsens with a shield.

  • Best Methods for Gaining Parry - There are many guides on this, but for samurai, it's a tricky thing to do. The best way to train parry is to do it before you pick up Bushido, that way you can use a shield, and do the atypical sheep method. However, if that option is not available, the next best thing is to get a weapon in a weapon skill you have no skill in, like macing if you are a sword user, and use that to parry. Like any parry training, you will want to bring alot of back up shields (or weapons) as parrying can tear out alot of the items durability.


Whirlwind : ((# of opponents * Bushido) * (# of opponents * Bushido) / 3600) = Bonus Damage
Note: Damage Bonus for Whirlwind caps at 100. Also, Bushido counts as a weapon skill towards the reduction of the mana cost of weapon specific moves and abilities.
Example: If you are using a weapon with Whirlwind on it, and you are surrounded by 4 enemies, and have a Bushido skill of 90, the additional damage you do to each of those enemies will be 36 points of additional damage.

Usefulness: :drool::drool::drool::drool:
Though this move is dependant on how many mobs are near you, go someplace, say Doom and fight renderer's with a fire or cold damage based weapon (or consecrate weapon if you are a paladin samurai) and just watch the damage climb and climb from that alone. Jump in hte middle of a bunch of spawn and whirlwind once and watch how fast the mobs drop; it almost feels like a requirement to have Whirlwind based weapons.
 
R

Ravenspyre

Guest


Honor and Perfection

Honor is the life blood of a samurai, so much that it can help dictate how a fight turns out; it can even dictate his health, mana, and stamina after prolonged fights as well. This determination is known as the perfection for samurais, as they strive to perfect their techniques and adherence to Bushido as they continue about their daily lives.

Honor, at its most basic, offers a user the ability to increase their potential damage output by up to 25%, just by simply honoring yourself. However, for those who are following the path of Bushido (those with a skill of 50 or greater) they gain a new advantage. The opponent they have honored, they start to improve in their perfection. This perfection makes a samurai even more deadly to his opponents.

Perfection has a system known as Steps of Perfection that are also based on the samurai’s skill in Bushido. At 50 skill a samurai is at his least understanding of his goal of perfection and thus has to work harder to attain his perfection. In this case, the samurai has to gain 20 steps in perfection to Achieve Perfection. A samurai at 100 skill, however, understands perfection better, and thus only needs to gain 10 steps to Achieve Perfection. A Kengo samurai, is at the height of his understanding of perfection and will only need 9 steps to Achieve Perfection.

Now, what do these steps of perfection do? Well that depends on your relative Bushido skill honestly. Achieving Perfection nets you a bonus of 100% to damage and a luck bonus for the creature you honored equivalent to 1,000 luck. Basically put, for a samurai of 50 skill, each step is a 5% bonus and a 50 luck bonus to the target he honored, while to a Grandmaster samurai, it’s 10% damage bonus and 100 luck per hit. A Kengo samurai it’s roughly 11% damage bonus and 110 luck, though once Perfection is achieved the damage bonus is always 100% and the luck bonus for that target is always 1,000.

However, the benefits of perfection do not end there either. For each step of perfection you have, at the defeat of your opponent, you also gain back some health, stamina, and mana based on the level of perfection you have. Low perfection, low returns, achieved perfection however, you can almost expect to get fully restored in all relevant states fairly easily. Remember, the amount of your luck bonus, and stat replenishment is based on your current level of perfection, not the highest you achieved in a fight.

However, perfection isn’t easy to attain, or maintain. To gain perfection one must strike his opponent. To keep perfection, one must not miss. Basically this is how it works. Each time you strike your foe, you gain a step of perfection, just one step. For any miss, whether it’s natural miss or parried attack, you will lose three steps of perfection. This means that if you struck your opponent 5 times, but missed once, you would be back on step 2 of perfection. If you miss again, you will be back at step 0, and a message will state you have lost all perfection.

Of course there are rules when it governs the use of honor and perfection. First rule, you must be able to have a clear line of sight, and thus your opponent must have a clear line of sight as well, to honor them (flying mobs must be grounded before they can be honored). Second, Your opponent can not have been wounded in any way, whether this is from natural damage, or from health boosting spells or abilities. They must be in top shape before they can be honored. Finally, only one person can honor an opponent at a time, so if someone else already has the honor, no one else can honor that same target.
 
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Ravenspyre

Guest
The Good and the Bad; Common Template Combos

There are a multitude of template suggestions out there, as well as possible templates. This part of the guide will examine skill combinations with Bushido and the relative good and bad side effects of either. Remember, this is just one persons view point as others can possibly have other relative view points that are just as valid based on their play experience, and remember;your play experience may very well be different from everyone else’s. If template questions pop up I will try to answer the question as best as possible or allow others with more experience to do so.

  • Archery
    Archery and Bushido can be good together, in fact a lot of archers make great use of Bushido. However, archery has one major drawback; parry does not work with it. This means that any parry based moves will never work for your archer, ever. However, this drawback comes with a few perks; the lack of needing parry gives you free skill points to cram into a template that is typical over-crowded, and as archery is a ranged attack, you have a bit more freedom on your item preferences since you will be less likely to be in melee. Remember, though, that moves like Momentum Strike require you to be near two opponents (that means right next to them) for it to work.


  • Chivalry
    Chivalry and Bushido almost seem to go hand-in-hand together, especially with the concerns of a very crowded template. One of the boons of chivalry is that it is highly effective at low skill, as most of the spells of chivalry are based more on your karma than on your actual skill, thus making chivalry a very cheap and effective skill to cram into tight template builds.

    The drawback in chivalry is that you will need some magery based items to make it effective. Fast Cast, Faster Cast Recovery, and Mana Regeneration. This can make for some frustrating hunts in the decent suits and gear for your character to achieve the full effectiveness of this combo, though when it is achieved, it is quite powerful.

    Enemy of One combined with Perfection can produce some massive damage to enemy targets you are facing in PvE. You can even expect to level quite a number of foes this way.

    Consecrate Weapon lends to the fact you can really deliver some damage to the weakest resist of an enemy in a short amount of time.

    Divine Fury coupled with the samurai's ability to parry, and you can pretty much never have to worry about stamina issues again.


  • Magery
    Magery and Bushido can work well together, but the drawback in this field is that you not only need warrior based gear for melee, but also magery based gear with Fast Cast, Faster Cast Recovery, Spell Channeling weapons and SDI to make it effective. Cramping in Evaluate Intelligence as well and you are looking at a very cramped template. More than likely, to be effective, your template will probably have to give up tactics, which means no weapon special moves, but other’s may have suggestions on that field to make it work.


  • Necromancy
    Necromancy seems to be a premiere skill for PvP, especially given the potent nature of some of the curses. However, necromancies drawback, again, is the simple fact that Bushido is a very cramped template, and you maybe looking at giving up tactics again to have an effective build, which means no weapon specials. Make no mistake, the forms and curses, utilized correctly, are very powerful. Any necromancer worth his salt will be able to utilize the skills and combos very effectively to delivering devastating impact damage in a short period of time.

    Curse Weapon is good for the samurai with our ability to hit more accurately than most builds, with a good life stealing weapon you can probably keep yourself topped out in life, even through lethal poison.

    Wraith Form is good for regaining mana, also ontop of that add in the simple fact that Wraith Form can also recall 100% of the time as long as you have a mage book with recall and the regs to use it.

    Vampire Form is also looked at as a premiere bility, with the inherrant mana regneration and life drain attack.

    All other Necro spells are just gravy ontop of those effects.


  • Pure Warrior
    The pure warrior is the most handicapped concerning the changes made recently. To be the most successful with his build the pure warrior will most likely have to give up magic resist to gain tactics. Though there are a plethora of items that pretty much negate curses, and such, falling back and relying on those items can be just as costly as not having magic resistance to begin with. Basically put, the current system rules in the game for Ultima Online as they are right now, makes playing a pure samurai warrior past a one trick pony almost a moot point.


  • Paladin Necro Samurai -
    Make no mistake, this is a powerful template combination, but it is definitely not a template for beginners. The requirements of balancing out the extremes of necro and chivalry are dificult, as chivalry is highly karma based in it's powers, while necromancy produces massive negative effects on your karma.

    Close Wounds is very susceptible to this,a s the amount healed by Close Wounds is affected by your karma level. If you end up bottoming out karma, you could very well be healing about as much as a mage heal spell or less.

    Cleanse by Fire is affected by Karma in the sense that the fire damage you take is decreased by higher karma, and increased by lower karma. The exact amount varies, but based on karma you can expect anywhere from 9 to 55 fire damage from this effect based on your karma.

    Remove Curse is also Karma based in the fact the higher your karma, the better chance you have of removing the curse. If you are negative karma, you pretty much almost have no chance to remove the curse.

    The duration of enemy of one, consecrate weapon, and divine fury also are affected by karma. If you have low karma, then the affects are very short, while with high karma they last for quite a bit longer.


  • Spellweaving Samurai -
    I've not heard alot about this type of template, and my experience with spellweaving is actually quite limited. On one hand, the combination looks quite viable, however, in my experience with spellweaving and the pre-emptive nature of many of the spells in that set, it doesn't seem like it would lend itself well to the samurai type of palystyle. However, that should not dissuade someone who is curious or thinks it might be a good combination.

    Of note should be Gift of Renewal, Immolating Weapon, and Attune Weapon spells from Spellweaving. Gift of Renewal is a Heal Over Time effect, with an added bonus that it can attempt to cure poison, which most likely is similar to all other effects that can cure poison; the amount of skill in Spellweaving determines what level of poison this effect can attempt to cure. However, the drawback is that it seems to have a recharge effect in place till it can be cast again. The duration of this is based on your skill level as well.

    Immolating Weapon adds additional fire damage to your weapon attack for a few seconds based on your Spellweaving skill. This can be useful to add extra damage to your attacks in a given time period, and especially useful against those types of critters weak to fire damage.

    Attune Weapon is a protective spell that is auto cast on yourself. This spell will reduce all weapon based damage by 50% for a short duration. Fighting Peerless bosses this can probably prove to be quite useful, and these are starting spells to boot, so should be fairly easy to attain and use.

    Gift of Life would also be quite useful to pre-empt cast on yourself, or your pet Hiryu, if you use one. If you die while the spell is active you can auto res yourself, though there is a recharge on this.

    Word of Death is probably another spell that might prove useful on those Peerless boss fights, but since most Samurai spend their time in Melee, with the exception of archer samurai, this maybe rather dificult to pull off.

    I will note, Arcane Empowerment may also affect Bushido's Confidence power, though I will state I am not sure at all on this since I have never attempted it. Arcane Empowerment basically increased the effectiveness of spell damage and healing, but since we do not do spell damage we are left with the healing aspect. If anyone tests this and finds that Arcane Empowerment does indeed affect Confidence send me a PM and I will edit this part of the FAQ accordingly.


  • Alchemist Samurai -
    This template seems rather bizarre at first, but it actually has a sound approach. With the ability to create potions at a whim, provided you have the proper reagents and bottles handy, you also get an extra benefit in that your potions are more readily powerful than someone who does not possess alchemy. The drawback of such a template is you will rely more on your potions for healing and curing. This gives a slight benefit in that you will have a few skill points free to play around with in your template build. Just remember, to utilize many potions you will rely more on single handed weapons over two handed ones.


  • Elf versus Human -
    Both have their flaws and their strengths, however in my personal opinion, the elf comes out far weaker to the human in these regards. An elf's advantage is he has inherent night sight as well as additional base mana, however he lack's in strength and the additional mana comes at the cost of the human's inherent mana regneration from his bonus skills.

    A human comes with the 20 bonus skills, of course, as well as additional carrying capacity. This ontop of the plethora of night sight items with the right properties you do want makes the slight mana boost of an elf seem paltry, especially given the nature humans have a natural mana regneration thanks to the invisible 20 skill points in focus and meditation. Personall,y I would make a human samurai over an elven one, but personal taste is what it boils down to.

    Another drawback to elves is that alot of worn gear, esepcially head gear, kills a look for your elf, especially if you were going for a certain look and appearance, you could end up wearing the unsightly elven helm instead of the samurai one, or a circlet instead of a kasa.


  • Gargoyle Samurai: (the following information is based on what is readily known about Gargoyles found on the Stygian Abyss site.)
    The gargoyle will soon be added to the UO client, and from the looks of what racial abilities that they will possess they will bring some interesting additions to the samurai profession. First up is their beserker state. That can be a handy trait to have for a samurai giving more speed and power, with the samurais ability to parry making up the defense deficit. Ontop of that the mystical insight can help lads to a lot of cramped templates when it comes to cramming in rudimentary things like recall power. The downside I see in the gargoyle is their need to have specific armor crafted for them. This could be difficult in terms of gear and equipment. One I am up in the air about (no pun intended) is flying. Not needing a mount is nice, but then again, not being able to mount on a hiryu can be a bit of a pain in the long run.
 
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Ravenspyre

Guest


How to Set Up in Kingdom Reborn
  • Making Spells/Items Self Target
    Drag a spell or an item (such as bandages) to a hot bar location. Right click the spell or item to pull up the context menu. On the menu, at the bottom, you will see the menu item Target; select that. A new context menu will open, and you will have three choices;
  • Self – Automatically uses the item or spell on yourself.
  • Cursor – Calls up the classic cursor option thus allowing you to target first.
  • Target – Automatically attempts to cast the spell or use the item on your target, the one you have highlighted with the circle.

    Select self from the menu and every time you push that action button, you will automatically use the spell or the item on yourself without having to retarget yourself or setting up a special macro.

    This can even work for Skills and Virtues, though Virtues seem to be damnably picky and not letting you use the target function. Only skills that have a Green button are useable however, so it’s not a good thing to clutter your bar with a bunch of brown skills.



  • Creating a New Hot Bar
    Right click any action bar you have active to open the context menu. Select Create New Hot Bar. A new 12 slot hot bar will be placed on your game screen which you can drag anywhere on screen. You can adjust the size and even the angle of the bar by grabbing the little triangle in the lower right corner of the action bar down to as little as one box. If you wish to change the bar from vertical to horizontal, take the arrow and pull down on it instead and the bar will switch to vertical then.



  • Binding a Hot Key
    To bind a hot key to a specific action spot on the action bar, to avoid clicking, right click the action bar to pull up the context menu. Select Assign Hotkey and a message box will appear that tells you either to push ESCAPE to cancel or to hit the key you wish to assign to the hot box. Note; in order to bind a key be sure that it isn’t already assigned to another action in game, such as the function keys, which are assigned to you and your party, respectively.



  • Creating an Disarm/Arm Macro
    Creating a macro is pretty easy and straight forward in UOKR. Nothing simpler than just dragging and dropping a bunch of images onto the main area. First, you will want to open up the Main Menu, which can be done one of two ways; first you can hit escape, unless you have something targeted, this should call up the Main Menu immediately. If something is targeted, it will take a second push of Escape to call it up. The second way is to push the little house icon right next to your back pack on the tool bar. This will call up the Main Menu as well.

    Next, Scroll down the menu and click on Macros/Actions option, this will open up the macro dialogue; two boxes, one is the macro list, the other is the actions list. Now, the macros list will probably be empty for you unless you already been experimenting. At the bottom you will see Create, click that now and a new dialogue box will open up.

    This new box is called edit macro; what we want to do is create a weapon disarm/arm macro. First, click the NO ICON SET box, and scroll through the list of icons. I suggest an icon that can help you easily identify the weapon you wish to arm. For instance, for my demon slayer weapon, I chose the 8th circle icon, Summon Daemon, as my icon. Where it says macro name, I chose to put in the spot Demon Slayer Blade, but you can choose to name it whatever you want or leave it as macro1, though a name makes it easier to identify.

    Now, naming and setting an icon is definitely not the last step. Next you will look over in the actions. Currently it’s set to All Actions, which is perfect, because the first two actions are the ones we want actually. In this case, they will be equip and unequip items. But they need to be placed in a specific order. First, take and drag unequip items into the first box. This will open a new dialogue, and in this dialogue you will want to choose the main hand and off hand slots and put an X mark in the box. This part of the macro tells that any current item, if applicable, you want disarmed and taken off immediately.

    Now, before you can put the equip item action into the macro you must first put in a delay. You can either scroll down the list or hit the left arrow right next to All Actions that will take you to a list called Other. Just below the Salute action, you will see Delay. Drag that into the second box next to equip. A dialogue will ask for an amount of time to delay. Leave it at 0, as that seems to work in my macros just fine.

    Now, comes the final part. Go back to the All Actions page, which can be reached by hitting the right arrow next to Other, if you swapped pages. Now, drag Equip Item to the third box in the macro, and a new dialogue will open. In this dialogue, you will want to drag your weapon into that slot. In this case, the demon slayer bladed staff of mine, since that’s what the macro is being named for. Hit the okay button, and it is done.

    At this point you can choose to either bind the macro to a key or drag it into a hot bar and click it from there. Anytime you use this macro, it will automatically disarm any weapon you are using and re-equip the weapon you want in this macro. You can basically make as many of these macros as you think you need, but remember that the item you wish to arm has to be in your pack if you want it to work.

    Also note, this macro can work for multiple items at a time as well. On the equip portion of the macro, for instance, you can enter both a sword and a shield. You can even take the macro further to have it change your clothes entirely, but that also requires a bit of editing of the unequip portion of the macro to.



  • Counting Resources
    To count resources, all you have to do is drag a countable resource to your hot bar. Anything that can be counted normally (potions, reagents, gold, ingots, etc.) will automatically get counted here. Note, it’s always easier to make another hot bar to do this instead.



  • Instant Looting
    To instantly loot an item in a monsters corpse, right click it. That’s it. You can also choose to place items on your mouse cursor directly in your inventory by hitting the inventory key while the item is still on your cursor. By default, this should be the ‘I’ key, but for instance I changed it to my ‘B’ key, so if I want to do that I will have to hit the ‘B’ key.
 
R

Ravenspyre

Guest
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

This portion of the Guide is a constant work in progress. I implore that any new questions that have answers be directed to me in PM, or a possible mod asking them politely to modify this portion of the Guide to include the answers to the FAQ as needed.
  • Does Archery Work with Bushido?
    This is a trick question. Yes, Archery works with Bushido, however specific Bushido moves will not work without parry skill. In this case, Counter Attack and Evasion both will not work without parry, and the secondary aspects of Confidence will not either. Momentum Strike also will require the archer to be next to two opponents to get it to work effectively and the parry stipulation of a failed honorable execution will not work with archery either. The reason these do not work with archery is because you cannot ever parry with a bow, and the likelihood of this changing is pretty low.

  • Can Bushido Attacks/Stances fail to execute?
    Yes, they can. Just because you have the pre-requisite skill value does not mean they will automatically work. There are tell tale sound effects that let you know when the Attack/Stance has fired off. If you do not hear any of these, then the action failed to happen. The amount of skill necessary to have 100% chance of success at an Attack/Stance is roughly 40 skill over the minimum to use.

  • Why do I need more Bushido than the amount necessary to have 100% success if I just want X move?
    Good question. Do you really need high Bushido if all you are after is that one move or stance? No. However, Bushido is much like any other skill in the game, it not only decides the chance of success, it decides the over-all effectiveness of your attacks and stances. It also effects your passive abilities such as parry, whirlwind, and Perfection. Basically put, the greater you knowledge of Bushido, the greater the effect it has.

  • Why can’t I use my Lesser Hiryu anymore/it’s failing to bond to me?
    Lesser Hiryu code was changed. For a long time, anyone could command and bond a Lesser Hiryu without any Bushido or taming skill, they just couldn’t ride it. However, a recent changed now makes it a requirement that you either having taming or a minimum of 90 Bushido skill in order to command and bond a Lesser Hiryu.

  • I can’t use my weapon specials anymore, what happened?
    A recent change put in a requirement of 70 Tactics for the primary weapon special and 90 Tactics for the secondary weapon special, on-top of other requirements. This change was mostly aimed at PvP balances, however, it has damaged a lot of valid templates that are too cramped to fit in Tactics normally.

  • I am a Paladin/Samurai, and damage doesn’t seem to increase from perfection.
    Damage is capped at 300% from DI based enhancements. A slayer weapon against the appropriate type of critters will give you a 200% damage increase. Enemy of One itself will give another 50% increase. That's 250%. Damage increase from weapons and jewerly can easily add an additional 50% at this point to. The result is basically just too easy to cap damage with the samurai/paladin build.

  • If I don’t get the Perfection damage bonus, what good is Perfection then?
    Two reasons to still attempt to Achieve Perfection; First, your level of Perfection acts as a sort of luck towards your target. The higher your perfection the greater luck value for that target only, you get, thus the increased chance of better loot. Secondly, Perfection levels also restore heaps of lost health, mana, and stamina versus your target. Especially tough fights, like certain Paragons, it would be wise to be able to restore what was lost to you.

  • Why is my parry crap when I use a shield?
    Because samurai do not use shields, plain and simple. Though some will try to point out the fan as such a thing, the reality of that weapon was it was used to communicate troop movement in battle, and also used to parry incoming attacks. It is also a weapon in UO, thus those who wish to fall back on the fan can do so. However if you want a mind set to reason it, think of it this way, hiding behind a shield is cowardly, and it would insult a samurai’s honor to be considered a coward, thus the reason why shields hurt a samurais parry chances instead of helping it.

  • Does Human inherent +20 skill effect my chance to parry with a shield?
    No, it has no effect on your inherent chances to parry with a shield, as long as you do not have any real Bushido skill.

  • Does Bushido skill jewelry effect my chances to parry with a shield?
    Yes, it does. Skill jewelry, for all intents and purposes, acts as real skill, thus if you are carrying 30 points of Bushido skill jewelry, then the system thinks you have 30 real skill of Bushido. This will negatively impact your parry chances with a shield, so suggest finding other jewelry if you plan on playing with a sword and board.

  • If Lightning Strike gives 50% Hit Chance Increase, and the cap is 45%, why do I need Hit Chance Increase Items?
    Overflow; plain and simple. Despite having a high inherent accuracy, things like hit lower attack will lower that chance tremendously, and having overflow can help negate some of that effect. Furthermore, relying solely on Lightning Strike, though a powerful attack, is relying solely on luck and is not going to be 100% when other moves, such as Concussion Blow or Armor Ignore maybe more useful, and more reliable when you need an instant burst of damage.

  • How come I don't get Perfection in PvP?
    A while back ago, they changed the honor code to be unable to honor targets in PvP situations. You can honor yourself and get the 25% damage increase from that, but you cna not honor another player and get Perfection in PvP. It was basically stated as a balance change.

  • Lightning Strike doesn't seem to hit hard at all in PvP.
    Again, another change for the sake of PvP balancing. This change came before the Perfection nerf for PvP, and Lightning Strike damage was capped at 35 maximum. Honestly, this rule should be lightened up, since many attacks and other weapons outshine Lightning Strike in this regard now, especially since Samurai can no longer get the Perfection bonus in PvP.

  • Why do I randomly get the dismounted debuff when my Lesser Hiryu is fighting?
    A code was recently introduced that acts as if you had used a dismount yourself if your pet uses a dismount move on your target. This is mostly a PvP change, however, the Lesser Hiryu's chance of dismounting was drastically nerfed to only 20% chance.

  • If I have X Bushido value, can I still parry if I don't have parry skill?
    Anything multiplied by 0 is still going to be 0. That's a fundamental fact of mathematics. The only time this might not be true is in the situation when you have 100 or greater skill in Bushido. At that point you are given a base of 5% chance to block. Anything less than 100 skill and you have a 0% chance to block.

    It should also be noted that human character's may also not have to contend with this issue as deeply, as they get an invisible +20 skill points. Therefor you would place all the formulas above with 20 skill parry.

  • If I have X parry skill, can I still parry with only a weapon and without bushido?
    Yes, you can. If you look in the above post on Parrying, you will see a value called Legacy Parry Chance. This value describes the chance for someone using a weapon without a shield, and no bushido skills, ability to block an attack with weapon alone. Again, this might not be true for human characters, however, who get an invisible +20 bushido skill, so that maybe taking into the equation on block chance with weapon alone.

  • Does Perfection give luck bonus or not?
    This has been hotly debated since the first time Jeremy stated that Perfection luck bonus was turned off. However, Jeremy ate her words when she stated in the August 17th, 2007 Five on Friday that her and the team were in error and that Perfection was indeed giving bonus luck.

  • What's with the difference in Steps of Perfection based on skill?
    I honestly don't know. I've been testing and working with Bushido ever since Samurai Empire came out, and this was a new thing to me as pointed out to me by Fisher King in the older Samurai FAQ (before the new forums). I tested it myself just recently, and this change is indeed the case. However, I must also stress another factor that it is quite possible that I may have been in error, despite my talking wtih Leurocian when comprising the original fact and this may have always been the case. However, I will also digress that this may have also been an undocumented change as well.

  • Can I use a UBWS weapon I don't have skill in to use Evasion?
    No, you can not. To combat PvP twinking, this change was put in a long time ago. If you are using a weapon that you have no skill in but has Use Best Weapon Skill as a modifier, and especially those mages who try to use Mage Weapons, Evasion will not work with it. I believe this goes for all parry based skills using those weapons as well.

  • Does using a shield on my Bushido only (no parry) character ruin my DCI chance?
    I have no idea where this came from, but lately I have been seeing alot of people getting confused on this notion. Defence Chance Increase is not even in the same ballpark as parrying. Plain and simple. Defense Chance Increase affects the initial Hit/Miss calculations when comparing weapon versus weapon skill, not your parry chances. When parrying is taken into account, in other words blocking, that is figured after the hit/miss calculation is done as a seperate check. So short answer, no wearing a shield on your samurai will not affect your Defense Chance Increase, though it will gimp the crap out of your parry.

  • How much will Defense Chance Increase affect Bushido Stances?
    First, as in the previous Question, Defense Chance Increase has no affect on your parry. Zero, Zilch, Nada. Parry is a seperate check from the Hit/Miss calculation performed by the system when attacks are performed. What DCI affects is your defense based value of your weapon skill versus their weapon skill. At equal skill, you and your opponent have a 50/50 base chance of hitting or missing. If you have 25% DCI, you would get (50 * 1.25 = 62.5) chance of them missing you.

    Now, how this affects things like parry. Higher DCI means that your stances are less likely to occur. Stances like counter attack, which rely on the parry check, would see less use. However this is not a bad thing actually. Parry's intent is to be there when a melee attack bypasses your primary defenses and that becomes your secondary defense. The armor you are wearing, the resistance, is your tertiary defense, and basically the final step before damage is applied.

    So basically, in short, the higher DCI you have, the less useful powers like Counter Attack are, and the secondary effects of Confidence. However, Evasion and the primary effect of confidence is still quite useful.
 
R

Ravenspyre

Guest
Bushido Issues

The following list is just a comprised list of issues with Bushido and it’s abilities, and weapon specials.
  • The new tactics requirement for weapon specials hurts pure warrior based samurai templates, requiring them to dump necessary skills in order to be able to use their weapon specials again.
  • Using Riding Swipe, because of the rules of the weapon, can turn the weapon special user grey, thus attackable or guard whacked in a guard zone because the secondary hit to the mount which is counted as a separate entity instead of being appropriately flagged to the target. Killing the users mount also does not work until the target has dismounted from his mount. (need to test for confirmation)
  • Counter Attack is near worthless in its current form. It requires the user to parry an attack, then a hit miss calculation is taken into effect. Despite Counter Attack will use the recent readied weapon special, it’s no guarantee of a hit. Counter Attack either needs to counter all parried attacks for the duration of the stance or the countered attack needs to be a guaranteed hit.
  • Honorable Execution is totally worthless for samurai. The duration of the swing speed increase is hardly worth the gauging and deciding if a target is damaged enough that your next hit will kill them. This attack needs to be changed to be more useful for samurai and the penalties associated with it reduced dramatically. A change is in order to make this attack more worthy instead of making us fall back on constant Lightning Strike spam.
  • Momentum Strike is also a tough one to gauge on its worthiness as an attack. The stipulation of two targets standing next to plus anytime a To Hit effect goes off on a target other than your primary target, you will automatically retarget the critter that got hit by the To Hit effect instead and start attacking it. A change to make this more useful is in order, so as to stop making Lightning Strike our only move we use.
  • Frenzied Whirlwind does not benefit at all from the samurai whirlwind damage bonus, despite it being a whirlwind attack. This makes the move absolutely worthless compared to it's big brother whirlwind.
  • The removal of Perfection in PvP makes the Lightning strike damage cap of 35 redundant now. This damage cap needs to be loosened up a bit as other moves are more devastating than Lightning Strike.
  • More of a general concern, but tactics skill jewelry will not let you use weapon specials, even if they take your skill past the requisite 70 or 90 skill to use the primary or secondary weapon special. This is high contradiction versus every other skill in the game that benefits from skill jewelry.
 
H

halo12tpd

Guest
I just trained my Assassin up to 70 ninja and it seems that since last patch reduced difficulty for Mirror Image it no longer works to train to 70...I stopped getting consistent gains in mid 50's. Alternative: Shadow Jump, got mad gains often one after another for 3 or 4 succesful all the way from 50 to 70...don't know about above that cause im on Seige in RoT.
 

GrayWolf

Visitor
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
Slight Corrections:

Animal Form does not make you appear (show your name in) gray.

Ostard/LLama Form does not allow you to remain stealthed at (full run) mounted movement rates.
 

Lord Kotan

Slightly Crazed
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
Fient cuts all damage (melee and magical) damage in half dealt to you, for 4-5s

If I feint a dragon, it will only do half damage to me. It will still do full damage to anyone else it attacks. The effect wears off after almost 4s.
 
G

Guest

Guest
From Five on Friday, 25 Jan 2008

"How are the various Chivalry spells' duration determined?"

There are three spells in Chivalry that have a variable duration - Enemy of One, Divine Fury, and Consecrate Weapon. Turns out they use very nearly the same formula. (Warning, math ahead!)

The base formula is as follows:
duration in seconds = (square root(karma + 20000 + (Chivalry*100)) / divisor)

The "divisor" part is the bit that varies from skill to skill -
for EoO it is 1
for Divine Fury it is 10
for Consecrate Weapon it is 20.

"Karma" can be anything from -20000 to 20000. Chivalry can, obviously, be anything from 0 to 120. It's also all converted to an integer, so fractions are dropped.

As for the actual results, for people who don't want to play with spreadsheets:

==== END FoF
(From T'Amon-from work)
My "take " on this and some step-thru formulas based on my current Paladin setup ...
Karmic level = 5 (> 9,999) and still get "some" karma from dragons so I am under 15000. Let's use 12000 as the number.
Chivalry = 100.0 points (GM)

Enemy of One
duration = (square root(karma + 20000 + (Chivalry*100)) / divisor)
duration = (square root(12000 + 20000 + (100.0*100))/ 1)
duration = (square root(32000 + (10000))/1)
duration = (square root (42000)/1)
duration = 204.939015/1 = 204 seconds

Divine Fury
duration = (square root(karma + 20000 + (Chivalry*100)) / divisor)
duration = (square root(12000 + 20000 + (100.0*100))/ 10)
duration = (square root(32000 + (10000))/10)
duration = (square root (42000)/10)
duration = 204.939015/10 = 20 seconds

Consecrate Weapon
duration = (square root(karma + 20000 + (Chivalry*100)) / divisor)
duration = (square root(12000 + 20000 + (100.0*100))/ 20)
duration = (square root(32000 + (10000))/20)
duration = (square root (42000)/20)
duration = 204.939015/20 = 10 seconds
 

Lynk

Grand Poobah
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
For Shuriken / Fukiya - how is the hit % chance caluclated?

Is it the same RNG that we would get for Melee skill vs Melee skill, only with my Ninjitsu substituted for Melee?

Basically, I have a mage with 80 ninja (for llama form and mirror images), is it basically a check of 80 skill vs 120 skill?
 
T

Turdnugget

Guest
Not sure on the calc numbers, but even at GM ninja vs. 120 ninja you miss a LOT of shuriken/dart throws =/

You'll cycle through a lot of charges before one even lands... unless you're throwing them at miners.
 
T

Turdnugget

Guest
Sorry Max. Your attempt at a sarcastic jab backfired.

I forgive you though :danceb:
 
M

Maximilliean

Guest
Thanks, but that was an attempt at a bad joke not sarcasm.
 
F

Fumoffu

Guest
Can someone tell me what your title is at 120 ninjitsu or 110 ninjitsu. Like bushido is Kengo samurai.
 
R

RichDC

Guest
At 120 the title is Kage ninja.

Not sure on 110

The hit chance of shurikans/fukiya's seems to be more related to the level of poison than the DCI of the victim. At 120 with DP i still miss Miners every now and then!

Oh...and...they are affected by Evil Omen.
 

Lynk

Grand Poobah
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
At 120 the title is Kage ninja.

Not sure on 110

The hit chance of shurikans/fukiya's seems to be more related to the level of poison than the DCI of the victim. At 120 with DP i still miss Miners every now and then!

Oh...and...they are affected by Evil Omen.
It's strictly related on to your Ninja, but I don't know what the formula is.

I don' think it checks DCI of the opponent.

I would love to know the math behind determining a hit.
 
C

Chaosy

Guest
Sampire Guide [courtesy of Lynk]

The Sampire

I personally believe that the Sampire (Samurai Vampire) is the most efficient overall Player vs. Monster (PvM) character ever designed. While I'd like to take credit for this brilliant build, I can't. In fact I don't really know who was the first Sampire, nor would I believe anyone if they told me they were.

What is a Sampire?

A sampire is a character that uses (at least) Weapon Skill, Necromancy, and Bushido. The main objective is to get into Vampiric Embrace form and deal lots of damage to the enemy. While in Vampiric Embrace you perform 20% life drain whenever you strike an enemy (20% of the damage that you deal will be returned you in hit points). Example, if you deal 100 points of damage while in Vampiric Embrace you will be healed 20 points of damage.

The 'Samurai' comes in with Bushido. Certain parts of the bushido skill gives you large advantages in terms of offense and defense (which we'll cover shortly).

What can I kill with a Sampire?

The short answer, anything. I personally have killed everything from paragon succubi, to Dreadhorn and Irk, Miasma, ranging to Baracoon and paragon Balrons.

How does a Sampire work?

A Sampire deals as much damage as possible, while taking as little damage as possible. The more damage you deal the more you are healed, the less damage you take the less you have to heal.

What skills does a Sampire have and why?

There are two different schools of thought on this after the publish that was an attempt to nerf sampires. I call them the 'Connor' and 'Lynk' schools of thought. First we will cover what the templates have in common and then we'll discuss where they are different.

Weapon Skill (macing, fencing, or swordsmanship) - This needs to be 120. You can get away with 115 but any peerless boss or doom boss will be extremely difficult. A weapon skill defines your chance to hit as well as to be hit. As mentioned earlier, the whole idea behind a sampire is to deal lots of damage while taking as little as possible. It needs to be one of the three skills listed because of the next required skill....

Parry - Parry should be 120, but you can get away with 115. With 115 parry you have a 32% chance to parry, with 120 you have a 35% chance. Is the 3% chance worth it? In my opinion yes. If you can't afford it go with 115 and when you can afford it go to 120. You will be effective with 115. In fact, 115 only has a 1% chance increase to 110. Anyone can afford a 110 parry.

Bushido - Bushido is an integral part to this template. Bushido allows you to honor your foe, lightning strike, and parry with out a shield with no penalty.

You can honor your enemy as long as it is at full life. Make sure you ALWAYS honor your enemy before hitting it. When you honor your opponent, you begin to achieve 'perfection'. Perfection is an ability that gives a damage bonus based on the amount of consecutive hits you deal to your target. In order to use it you must have at least 50 bushido and then honor your target creature. After that, every successful hit will increase your perfection while a miss will lower it. As your level increases each hit will gain a 10% damage increase bonus (to a maximum of a 100% bonus at the highest level). This does not stack on top of the 300% damage increase cap.

Lightning strike will grant you a 50% hit chance bonus when attacking your target. This bonus does not exceed the hard 45% item increase cap. Lightning strike also gives you a chance to perform a 'critical hit' on your opponent. When you perform a critical hit you hit your opponent for roughly 200% more damage than you normally would (this stacks on top of the damage increase cap of 300%). This is key to a sampire, because for 1 v 1 PvM it allows you to exclude hit chance from your suit and focus on other mods that might be beneficial. With that being said, if you can afford it it's wise to include hit chance for the times you get mana drained and/or you need to use a special move like whirlwind or momentum strike. Hit chance is still extremely valuable.

Bushido allows you to parry without the use of a shield. In fact, using a shield with Bushido actually hurts your chance to parry. This grants you the ability to use a 2 handed weapon which hits harder, or use a one handed weapon and drink heal/agility/strength/refresh potions.

Necromancy - Necromancy is used for Vampiric Embrace which was covered earlier. You need a minimum of 99 necromancy (after items) to sustain vampiric embrace form. Some templates (which will be covered later) also use it for curse weapon.

Chivalry - Chivalry is essential. There are several spells use with Chivalry that make it invaluable to a successfull sampire. The first of which is Enemy of One. This spell grants a damage increase of 50% (while you receive a 100% dmg increase from other monsters than your target). Consecrate Weapon is also regularly used which makes all damage you deal allocated to the lowest resist of your target.

These are the required skills, the remaining skill points are what cause 70% of the sampire debates between the most knowledgable and regular Stratics contributors.

The Lynk Method (supported by NickyDishes) - This method inovlves using skill increase items to fit in Tactics (damage), Anatomy (damage and healing bonus), and Healing. The benefit to this build is the obvious healing. On top of the constant life leech, you also get 60 point bandaid heals every four seconds. In order to use this template you need to fit in a lot of skill increase between armor and jewelry. The cons to this suit is it is very hard to change equipment when you find a better piece. This template is left more to those that have aquired an arsenal of oddball jewelry and armor. Not recommended for the casual player.

The Connor Graham Method - Connor's method is a little more diverse. He sets up his template to use Tactics, but his last skill (that isn't mentioned above) ranges between Anatomy, Resist, or Spirit Speak depending on what he fights. It's a great style and requires the use of soul stones but it really does make a difference.

Anatomy is the best all-around skill, since it will increase your damage output, and thus enable you to leech more life back.

Resisting spells is good for long fights with necromancy-casting opponents. Specifically this is a good skill for use in Doom, where the bosses frequently cast blood oath. A well timed blood oath will kill a no-resist sampire every time.

Spirit speak gives your other necromancy spells a little bit of added oomph, enabling you to wither through low end spawns, use wraith form instead of vamp form for leeching mana or using curse weapon for emergency life leeches.

What stats should I use?

100 strength (minimum)
10 int (30 mana with elf)
As much dex as you can get away with up to 125

Items:
The sampire depends on the right items to get away with this template, which can be very pricey or very cheap.
The bare minimum you'll need for a sampire is:
Armor:
45% DCI (70 if you depend on divine fury)
All 70's resists

Weapon:
A weapon that swings at the highest possible speed (1.25 seconds)
High mana leech
High stamina leech

Combined armor, talisman and weapon
100% damage increase

You can get all of that for a relatively small amount of gold with a little bit of creativity, then build up over time to get the higher end items.

For example, a new sampire could use an aegis of grace, fey leggings (elf version) and a ring or bracelet with 10% DCI to cover the DCI requirements while adding 20% damage increase to a ring and bracelet as well as wearing the gauntlets of nobility or stormgrip (both are less than 500k gold at the time of this guide) and a 40% damage increase weapon with mana and stamina increase in order to start out.

Through Miasma or Thrasher hunting, you can earn a lot of gold and earn minor artifacts which you can sell until you can afford better weapons and armor.

When you feel comfortable with that, you can learn to key the Dread Horn, which is the easiest peerless monster to kill with this template. After a while, you'll earn high end artifacts (the Crimson Cincture specifically, but ML ingredients and dread horn manes sell well too) which you can sell or trade for the highest end armor (mace and shield glasses, jackal's collar, ring of the vile, conjurer's trinket, etc)

Tactics advice:

  • Honor everything, even mongbats.
  • Use bushido's confidence, heal potions, refresh potions liberally. Use chivalry to cure only when you're done fighting (you auto-cure low level poisons in vampire form, and leech more damage than you take from any high level poisons)
  • If you aren't lightning striking, then you're doing it wrong.
  • If you don't have the mana to lightning strike constantly, then you need more mana leech
  • You can get away with no stamina leech on your weapon only if you have more than 70% DCI and can cast frequent divine furies as well as using refresh potions.
  • Honor everything (it bears repeating) Without honor, it's harder to hit that 300% damage increase cap, and makes things a lot harder for you.

A special thanks goes out to Farsight for his help and input. Items/Stats/Tactics was taken from an article he wrote. His article can be found here

The original post by Baghdaddy1 that catapulted the sampire into popularity can be found here
 
C

Chaosy

Guest
Re: Sampire Guide [courtesy of Lynk]

The Sampire

I personally believe that the Sampire (Samurai Vampire) is the most efficient overall Player vs. Monster (PvM) character ever designed. While I'd like to take credit for this brilliant build, I can't. In fact I don't really know who was the first Sampire, nor would I believe anyone if they told me they were.

What is a Sampire?

A sampire is a character that uses (at least) Weapon Skill, Necromancy, and Bushido. The main objective is to get into Vampiric Embrace form and deal lots of damage to the enemy. While in Vampiric Embrace you perform 20% life drain whenever you strike an enemy (20% of the damage that you deal will be returned you in hit points). Example, if you deal 100 points of damage while in Vampiric Embrace you will be healed 20 points of damage.

The 'Samurai' comes in with Bushido. Certain parts of the bushido skill gives you large advantages in terms of offense and defense (which we'll cover shortly).

What can I kill with a Sampire?

The short answer, anything. I personally have killed everything from paragon succubi, to Dreadhorn and Irk, Miasma, ranging to Baracoon and paragon Balrons.

How does a Sampire work?

A Sampire deals as much damage as possible, while taking as little damage as possible. The more damage you deal the more you are healed, the less damage you take the less you have to heal.

What skills does a Sampire have and why?

There are two different schools of thought on this after the publish that was an attempt to nerf sampires. I call them the 'Connor' and 'Lynk' schools of thought. First we will cover what the templates have in common and then we'll discuss where they are different.

Weapon Skill (macing, fencing, or swordsmanship) - This needs to be 120. You can get away with 115 but any peerless boss or doom boss will be extremely difficult. A weapon skill defines your chance to hit as well as to be hit. As mentioned earlier, the whole idea behind a sampire is to deal lots of damage while taking as little as possible. It needs to be one of the three skills listed because of the next required skill....

Parry - Parry should be 120, but you can get away with 115. With 115 parry you have a 32% chance to parry, with 120 you have a 35% chance. Is the 3% chance worth it? In my opinion yes. If you can't afford it go with 115 and when you can afford it go to 120. You will be effective with 115. In fact, 115 only has a 1% chance increase to 110. Anyone can afford a 110 parry.

Bushido - Bushido is an integral part to this template. Bushido allows you to honor your foe, lightning strike, and parry with out a shield with no penalty.

You can honor your enemy as long as it is at full life. Make sure you ALWAYS honor your enemy before hitting it. When you honor your opponent, you begin to achieve 'perfection'. Perfection is an ability that gives a damage bonus based on the amount of consecutive hits you deal to your target. In order to use it you must have at least 50 bushido and then honor your target creature. After that, every successful hit will increase your perfection while a miss will lower it. As your level increases each hit will gain a 10% damage increase bonus (to a maximum of a 100% bonus at the highest level). This does not stack on top of the 300% damage increase cap.

Lightning strike will grant you a 50% hit chance bonus when attacking your target. This bonus does not exceed the hard 45% item increase cap. Lightning strike also gives you a chance to perform a 'critical hit' on your opponent. When you perform a critical hit you hit your opponent for roughly 200% more damage than you normally would (this stacks on top of the damage increase cap of 300%). This is key to a sampire, because for 1 v 1 PvM it allows you to exclude hit chance from your suit and focus on other mods that might be beneficial. With that being said, if you can afford it it's wise to include hit chance for the times you get mana drained and/or you need to use a special move like whirlwind or momentum strike. Hit chance is still extremely valuable.

Bushido allows you to parry without the use of a shield. In fact, using a shield with Bushido actually hurts your chance to parry. This grants you the ability to use a 2 handed weapon which hits harder, or use a one handed weapon and drink heal/agility/strength/refresh potions.

Necromancy - Necromancy is used for Vampiric Embrace which was covered earlier. You need a minimum of 99 necromancy (after items) to sustain vampiric embrace form. Some templates (which will be covered later) also use it for curse weapon.

Chivalry - Chivalry is essential. There are several spells use with Chivalry that make it invaluable to a successfull sampire. The first of which is Enemy of One. This spell grants a damage increase of 50% (while you receive a 100% dmg increase from other monsters than your target). Consecrate Weapon is also regularly used which makes all damage you deal allocated to the lowest resist of your target.

These are the required skills, the remaining skill points are what cause 70% of the sampire debates between the most knowledgable and regular Stratics contributors.

The Lynk Method (supported by NickyDishes) - This method inovlves using skill increase items to fit in Tactics (damage), Anatomy (damage and healing bonus), and Healing. The benefit to this build is the obvious healing. On top of the constant life leech, you also get 60 point bandaid heals every four seconds. In order to use this template you need to fit in a lot of skill increase between armor and jewelry. The cons to this suit is it is very hard to change equipment when you find a better piece. This template is left more to those that have aquired an arsenal of oddball jewelry and armor. Not recommended for the casual player.

The Connor Graham Method - Connor's method is a little more diverse. He sets up his template to use Tactics, but his last skill (that isn't mentioned above) ranges between Anatomy, Resist, or Spirit Speak depending on what he fights. It's a great style and requires the use of soul stones but it really does make a difference.

Anatomy is the best all-around skill, since it will increase your damage output, and thus enable you to leech more life back.

Resisting spells is good for long fights with necromancy-casting opponents. Specifically this is a good skill for use in Doom, where the bosses frequently cast blood oath. A well timed blood oath will kill a no-resist sampire every time.

Spirit speak gives your other necromancy spells a little bit of added oomph, enabling you to wither through low end spawns, use wraith form instead of vamp form for leeching mana or using curse weapon for emergency life leeches.

What stats should I use?

100 strength (minimum)
10 int (30 mana with elf)
As much dex as you can get away with up to 125

Items:
The sampire depends on the right items to get away with this template, which can be very pricey or very cheap.
The bare minimum you'll need for a sampire is:
Armor:
45% DCI (70 if you depend on divine fury)
All 70's resists

Weapon:
A weapon that swings at the highest possible speed (1.25 seconds)
High mana leech
High stamina leech

Combined armor, talisman and weapon
100% damage increase

You can get all of that for a relatively small amount of gold with a little bit of creativity, then build up over time to get the higher end items.

For example, a new sampire could use an aegis of grace, fey leggings (elf version) and a ring or bracelet with 10% DCI to cover the DCI requirements while adding 20% damage increase to a ring and bracelet as well as wearing the gauntlets of nobility or stormgrip (both are less than 500k gold at the time of this guide) and a 40% damage increase weapon with mana and stamina increase in order to start out.

Through Miasma or Thrasher hunting, you can earn a lot of gold and earn minor artifacts which you can sell until you can afford better weapons and armor.

When you feel comfortable with that, you can learn to key the Dread Horn, which is the easiest peerless monster to kill with this template. After a while, you'll earn high end artifacts (the Crimson Cincture specifically, but ML ingredients and dread horn manes sell well too) which you can sell or trade for the highest end armor (mace and shield glasses, jackal's collar, ring of the vile, conjurer's trinket, etc)

Tactics advice:

  • Honor everything, even mongbats.
  • Use bushido's confidence, heal potions, refresh potions liberally. Use chivalry to cure only when you're done fighting (you auto-cure low level poisons in vampire form, and leech more damage than you take from any high level poisons)
  • If you aren't lightning striking, then you're doing it wrong.
  • If you don't have the mana to lightning strike constantly, then you need more mana leech
  • You can get away with no stamina leech on your weapon only if you have more than 70% DCI and can cast frequent divine furies as well as using refresh potions.
  • Honor everything (it bears repeating) Without honor, it's harder to hit that 300% damage increase cap, and makes things a lot harder for you.

A special thanks goes out to Farsight for his help and input. Items/Stats/Tactics was taken from an article he wrote. His article can be found here

The original post by Baghdaddy1 that catapulted the sampire into popularity can be found here
 
P

Pain_

Guest
Re: New Ninja FAQ Thread (Updated 12-01-07)

help me plz. ninjitsu stuck at 67.5 I use focus attack about 6 hours and gain is 0.0 :(( what i can do? ;)
 
C

Connor_Graham

Guest
Re: New Ninja FAQ Thread (Updated 12-01-07)

help me plz. ninjitsu stuck at 67.5 I use focus attack about 6 hours and gain is 0.0 :(( what i can do? ;)
Find some jewels to up your skill level and use the next higher spell.
 
S

Stupid Miner

Guest
Re: New Ninja FAQ Thread (Updated 12-01-07)

It's strictly related on to your Ninja, but I don't know what the formula is.

I don' think it checks DCI of the opponent.

I would love to know the math behind determining a hit.
From just a bit of testing seems to be straight ninjitsu vs weapon skill.

JoaT vs Rabbits 10 for 10
JoaT vs Swoop 2 for 20

You can test DCI yourself easily vs a guildmate.
I'd be surprised if it calculated DCI or HCI into the equation.
 

Lynk

Grand Poobah
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
Re: New Ninja FAQ Thread (Updated 12-01-07)

From just a bit of testing seems to be straight ninjitsu vs weapon skill.

JoaT vs Rabbits 10 for 10
JoaT vs Swoop 2 for 20

You can test DCI yourself easily vs a guildmate.
I'd be surprised if it calculated DCI or HCI into the equation.
Ya.. I'd love to get the formula to determine hit chance success.
 
S

Stupid Miner

Guest
Re: New Ninja FAQ Thread (Updated 12-01-07)

Ya.. I'd love to get the formula to determine hit chance success.
Spam the new Dev chat forum maybe? Dunno, afaik it hasnt been released.
 

Pandora_CoD

Certifiable
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
Re: New Ninja FAQ Thread (Updated 12-01-07)

What are some of the better "ninja" weapons to use?
 
O

o Kraken o

Guest
Re: New Ninja FAQ Thread (Updated 12-01-07)

I recently needed to consult this thread of mine again, so I thought I would repost it here in the Ninja FAQ for ease of use if others should look for it.


Gain Log from 110.0 to 120.0 Ninjitsu
http://vboards.stratics.com/showthread.php?t=146966

---

Legendary humility is the key to legendary patience
Legendary patience is the doorway to legendary ninjitsu.


Introductory Notes

Skills used:
Meditation skill: 100
Focus skill: 100
Fencing 75

Weapon used:
Dagger

Armor used:
Medable armor, 3 Mana Regeneration, 40% Lower Mana Cost

Technique used:
Death Striking my horse while unguilded in Trammel

Tool used:
UOAssist (100% legal UOPro tool cf. EA's approval of UOAssist)
I death striked my horse manually for 10 minutes, while I recorded it as a macro in UO assist. I then inserted a pause of 10000 between each death strike, so I had time to regain mana passively between each death strike. I then activated the macro manually every 10 minutes.


Gain Log

01. Session: 02 Hours 43 Minutes - From 110.0 to 111.0 - 1.0 gained

02. Session: 02 Hours 49 minutes - From 111.0 to 111.7 - 0.7 gained

03. Session: 02 Hours 20 minutes - From 111.7 to 111.9 - 0.2 gained

04. Session: 01 Hours 49 Minutes - From 111.9 to 112.9 - 1.0 gained

05. Session: 00 Hours 21 minutes - From 112.9 to 113.2 - 0.3 gained

06. Session: 03 Hours 16 Minutes - From 113.2 to 113.9 - 0.7 gained

07. Session: 02 Hours 06 Minutes - From 113.9 to 114.6 - 0.7 gained

08. Session: 02 Hours 43 Minutes - From 114.6 to 115.4 - 0.8 gained

09. Session: 02 Hours 21 Minutes - From 115.4 to 116.4 - 1.0 gained

10. Session: 02 Hours 41 Minutes - From 116.4 to 116.6 - 0.2 gained

11. Session: 03 Hours 55 Minutes - From 116.6 to 118.6 - 2.0 gained

12. Session: 03 Hours 26 Minutes - From 118.6 to 119.5 - 0.9 gained

13. Session: 00 Hours 20 Minutes - From 119.5 to 119.6 - 0.1 gained

14. Session: 01 Hours 01 Minutes - From 119.6 to 120.0 - 0.4 gained


_Total time: 31 Hours 51 Minutes - From 110.0 to 120.0 - 10.0 gained


Temporal Epilogue

1 death strike was approximately performed every 10 seconds.
Thus 6 death strikes were approximately performed every minute.
And 360 death strikes were approximately performed every hour.

360 death strikes per hour for 31 hours = 11160 death strikes
6 death strikes per minute for 51 minutes = 306 death strikes

_Total number of death strikes performed during 31 hours and 51 minutes amounts approximately to 11160 + 306 = 11466 death strikes
 
D

DiEx80

Guest
Re: New Ninja FAQ Thread (Updated 12-01-07)

Where do I find Ninja belts at? Are they craftable? The lack of a ninja belt to throw stars is putting me on hold on developing my ninja. It also is making me consider erasing his existence in Atlantic.
 
O

Old Timer1990

Guest
Re: New Ninja FAQ Thread (Updated 12-01-07)

Where do I find Ninja belts at? Are they craftable? The lack of a ninja belt to throw stars is putting me on hold on developing my ninja. It also is making me consider erasing his existence in Atlantic.
Tailors can make them.
 
B

Busters

Guest
Re: New Ninja FAQ Thread (Updated 12-01-07)

anyone know where to find the damage calc for deathstrike?? As in using it with just hiding, or hiding and stealth, or hide stealth and track??
 
T

Thiefy/Glorfiedel

Guest
Re: New Ninja FAQ Thread (Updated 12-01-07)

anyone know where to find the damage calc for deathstrike?? As in using it with just hiding, or hiding and stealth, or hide stealth and track??
http://vboards.stratics.com/showthread.php?t=188042

i think i do my math correct, if you want it for different skillpoints, just set up an excel-sheet, costs you 2 minutes.

but in the link above i did some examples.

without tracking, just substract the trackingbonus in my example.
 

Lorax_Pacific

Lore Master
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
Re: New Ninja FAQ Thread (Updated 12-01-07)

I killed a ninja guy and looted his book. Thought I would try wtih my elf the animal form since it shows 0 skill required. Nope...it reports you need at least 20 Ninjitsu skill to use that ability. Weird the book shows zero and I can't even get the gump to select rat or rabbit, while the FAQ shows zero skill required too. I tried switching out of vampire form thinking I was messing up, but no success.

I guess the FAQ above and the Book of Ninjitsu text is outdated compared to the developers coding.

-Lorax
 

Pinco

UOEC Modder
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
Sampire Info Collection and Personal Suggestions

I make this post for share in 1 place the info about the sampire equipment.


WEAPONS:

The base weapon type for a sampire depends on your skills.
Basically you have to choose the weapon based on what you are going to hunt:

Here is a list of the main 3 types of weapon and the name of the most used

- A weapon with feint (leafblade/daisho) for high damages critter. Feint usually halves the damage of any monster (even spell damage and firebreath)
- A weapon with whirlwind (radiant sword). Very usefull in places like doom and champion spawns. Whirlwind damage all the critters around you.
- A weapon with a big damage (ornate axe)

Remember this: the base speed of a weapon tells you how much harder you can hit: Slow Weapon -> High Damage - Fast Weapon -> Low Damage


The properties that you need could be a lot, but usually you have to make a chooice. Here is the more important ones:


Leech properties:

Every leech properties transform part of the damage in life/mana/stamina.
If you have a weapon with a low damage, you need an high leech (vampiric embrace is only 20% life leech and sometimes is not enough!) and vice versa, you can have low (or none is some cases) if your weapon can deal high damages.

- Mana Leech: the weapon restores up to 40% of the displayed percentage of the damage dealt as Mana. You MUST have this in any case. If you lack of mana means that you have a low mana leech.


- Stamina Leech: the weapon restores 100% of the damage dealt as Stamina. You can avoid this property if you plan to use total refresh potions or divine fury, in the other cases you must have it.


- Life Leech: The weapon restores up to 30% of the displayed percentage of the damage dealt as Hit Points. Use this if your weapon has medium low-damage.
NOTE: The lower is the damage and higher should be this mod. If you plan to use heavy weapon (like ornate axe) you can replace this with Hit Lower Attack




Other weapon properties:

Here is the list of the other nice properties that you can have into your weapon:

- Hit Lower Defense: lower the enemy defense chance by 25% for 8 seconds. NPCs has no defense chance so they go to -25% and could be a nice advantage. (I suggest to have it or you could be in trouble againist high end bosses)


- Hit Lower Attack: lower the enemy hit chance by 25% for 10 seconds. NPCs has no hit chance so they go to -25% and will hit you less.
NOTE: very usefull if you can fit it.



- Swing Speed Increase: increase your swing speed BUT if you put it in the weapon every leech properties will be scaled. Use this in the weapon ONLY if you can survive with a scaled leech. For example the leafblade at 30% SSI has the cap to 50% on leech rate instead of 68.




GENERAL EQUIPMENT ADVICE


- Defense Chance Increase: you need this higher as you can. 65% is the perfect amount for use Divine Fury. (35-40 still enough for survive if you have 120 in combat skill)


- Hit Chance Increase: many tells: "if you have lightning strike you don't need it", but I say: "if you wish to use the specials of your weapon you need this higher as you can". So if you plan to use the weapon special moves you absolutely need it or you miss a lot againist the high level critters.


- Lower Mana Cost: is very usefull, this low the mana cost of your special moves too. So if you plan to use special moves you need to reach 30-40% or they will cost too much mana.


- Mana Regeneration: optional property, is usefull only when you die for cast vampiric embrace.
NOTE: Mage Armor DO NOT affect mana regeneration. So you can use non meddable parts and this property still working.
Non-meddable armor piece block meditation passive and active regeneration but NOT the Mana Regeneration which come from items.

- Hit Point Increase: nice addition if you could have it. The more hp you have better is, if you use the feint special move you could keep it low without consequences. (130 hp are the best thing if you dont plan to use feint, else 110 are enough)

- Hit Point Regeneration: nice, but useless. You need to leech lot of life and you cant still and wait the life growing.

- Intelligence Bonus/Mana Increase: very usefull if you plan to use the special moves. The more is mana and more specials you can use. You absolutely need some if you are playing a human character. (30 mana points is a must have!)

- Resistances: be sure to have 70 in: physical, fire, energy. You can keep a bit lower cold and poison resistances, but you need to stay near 60.


Swing Speed Increase and Stamina balancement:

everyone sais that you need 180 stamina for a high swing speed, but is not always true...
We all must remember that in battle is very rare to keep the stamina at 180 (if you had 10000 potions on your pack, you can drink 1 every second and keep it). So you have to calculate the "spring" effect and check your speed at cap and for example, 60 less than the cap. Usually there are 3 usefull checkpoints in the stamina before reach really bad speeds, and every weapon has its own based on the base speed and SSI.

There are also some checkpoints on swing speed increase and between each checkpoint you earn nothing. So you have to make some test. Each checkpoint lower by 1 level the speed (for example if with 0 SSI you have the 1.25 at 180 stamina with 5% you have the 1.25 at 150 stamina)

here is the weapon speed table (by Athene):




Usually if you raise SSI you cant keep an high stamina level (because actually is physically impossible to have both in your equipment unless you start to sacrifice other properties).

The best way to have SSI is to have it outside the weapon, in this manner you can keep high leech level with high speed.

Human/elf characters could reach high level in SSI (outside the weapon) only with these items:

- Turquoise ring: 5%
- Jade Ambarad [Replica]: 5%
- Ranger Cloak of Augmentation: 5%
- Daimyo Helm: 10%
- Animated Legs of the Insane Tinker: 10%
- Full Assassin Armor Set: 20%
- [SPELL] Divine Fury: 10%


The best you can do is reach 55% with divine fury, the rest must go in the weapon.


Damage Increase

This is a very important part. The damage is the base of your survival skills and you need as much as you can.
First let's see the melee/range damage ABC:

The damage increase is split in 2:

- Passive (unlimited): this is given by Tactics, Anatomy, Strength and Lumberjacking (if you use an axe).

- Active (CAP 300%): this one is given by slayers, killer attribute, damage increase of your equipment and spells and honor.

The Damage Increase in your equipment is capped at 100%
Slayer Damage = +200%
Super Slayer Damage = +100%
Enemy of One = +50%
Divine Fury = +10%


Here is some suggestion about the damage:

- If you wish to raise a skill to 120 and your chooice is between tactics or anatomy, choose TACTICS. Because grant you a better damage increase than anatomy.

- If you are using a lesser slayer and you have 100% damage increase in your suit, you can avoid to use enemy of one.

- Honor: if you honor your target each shot give you a (bushido / 10) % of damage increase (capped at 100%) and 1000 luck bonus if you kill creature while you've "Achieved Perfection". If you miss a hit, you lose damage increase (only the one earned with honor) and luck too.
In addition of all that bonus, honor give you the chance to recover 100% of life, mana and stamina.


SLAYERS ADVICES:

Slayers are a very good thing to use, but be careful!
If you have an opposite slayer you will get 50% extra damage from monsters.
The worst case is wielding an opposite slayer with enemy of one on another creature. In this case you take 150% extra damage from the monsters! Like as they have the slayer againist you.

Some of the new Stygian Abyss mini-champion will trick you if you don't pay attention:
For example: every lava spawn has a Fire Demon and Lava Elemental. This combo is insane because if you wear the elemental slayer, the Fire Demon Breath hit you with a 120 damage (at 70 fire resistance). If you wear the demon slayer the lava elemental will hit you with a 30 damage spells.


Then how do I choose a weapon?

All depends on you game style, but here is how I choose a weapon:

- I like weapons with armor ignore (just because if you have low hp, you can hit with this special and heal yourself).

- I like one-handed weapons (using potions is a great advantage)

Here is the weapon list with Armor Ignore:

(I have highlighted the ones with medium speed and nice damage.)

Hatchet, Long Sword, Bladed Staff, Stone War Sword, Hammer Pick, War Axe, Disc Mace, Kryss, Spear, Shortblade, Broadsword, Katana, Leafblade

Except for the leafblade, the other ones do not have feint; so if you need this special, just switch the weapon when needed ;)

The feint weapon has not to be slayer or else, just put Hit Lower Attack if you want, but switch it fast (EC client is the best for this kind of macros)

While you are switching, DO NOT STAY UNARMED! sometimes happen the macros run too fast and fail to equip the weapons. In this case if you don't pay attention, you are dead.



Shields:


There are many nice shields around that can help you to fix the equipment. My advice is STAY AWAY FROM THEM!
If you use a shield with bushido you lower your parry chance from 35-40% to 5% and evey high level critters will take you down in few shots.

If you really want to use a shield you have to remove bushido and renounce to all its bonus (Honor, Evade, Lightning Strike - that is an almost free ignore armor)



Armor pieces and strength requirement

If you plan to go around without resisting spells, pay attention at your armor strength requirement!
Monsters like dread horn can lower your strenght enough to drop your armor (especially the chest), and you will fall if your resistances fall (obviously againist boss not mongbats!)
The best solution is raise your strength. Strength gave you the chance to keep your armor while cursed, increase your damage (more life leeched) and give you more weight available in your backpack (very important if you plant to bring with you lots of potions or bandages)



Wodland Armor

This kind of armor imbued and enhanced with heartwood could give much benefits (like damage increase 10 or Hit chance 5). But be careful! When you repair it, you have enough chance to fail and burn 1 total durability each fail. Once I failed to repair it 10 times, so remember when you buy this kind of item: is nice and good, but has shorter life than leather and metal armor pieces.


Additional Gameplay Tactics:

Everywhere is wrote to honor the opponent and strike hard till end. I wish to throw some extra informations:

Always remember the Swing Speed/Stamina spring effect:

- If you are facing a big boss and you have clumsy in your buff, remove it immediately (with an enchanted apple or remove curse or cleansingwind)

- If your stamina bring the swing speed lower than 1.5/1.75 drink a refresh potion or cast divine fury. You must keep a fast swing speed.

Losing strength could make you some trouble:

- Ensure you are not holding too much weigth. Keep always a bag of sending, it could be very usefull if you go overweight.

- Ensure you have the armor weared and not in the pack! Sometimes the curses can remove your armor, so use the enchanted apple to remove the curse and keep the dress agent ready.

Feeblemind is not a problem! If you have this in your buff, you can ignore it, usually you lose 2 to 4-5 mana points and remove this buff will cost you more than what you earn.

Blood Oath il your weak point. Keep always an eye into the buff/debuff bar, if you see the "red hand" of blood oath run away as fast as you can and eat an apple for remove this curse.
Resisting spells shall only reduce the damage that you take back, so remember to run away if you have blood oath. If you hit the enemy with this curse and you are dead.

True Fear is another big problem of this template. This unfair ability of some new bosses will freeze you, and you cant move until the effect is done. Even if you were damaged you cannot move. My solution for this problem is to have some invisibility potions with you. Just drink one when you are frozen and with a bit of luck you could avoid the death (if receive damage before to be invisible usually you can consider yourself dead).

Keep your karma higher as much as you can. More karma you have and higher is the chivalry spells duration.

You are the real enemy. When you are near death is common to think: "Hey now I hit the enemy with a 150 damage and I'm safe". The result of this thought is: "OoOOoOoO".
When you have low HP cast evasion and heal yourself. Use potions, spells or everthing you want, but move away and raise your hps!


Boss-Specific Advices:

Dread Horn: easy but keep an eye on your backpack, if you are cursed your armor could be in there. The hard thing here is to take the keys. Irk and its brothers can hit you so hard and if you are againist 2 or more of them you are dead. Do not use physical damage againist chagelings, make sure to have a valorite weapon (or a weapon with elmental damage).

Shimmering Effusion: this is a very dangerous enemy. As every mages in the game, he can cast 3 spells at once, but its spells hit you with no less than 50-60 damage each. When you are againist it the only way to be safe is using feint and never miss.
NOTE: he can summon the corporeal brume, and this guy will return the physical damage back. So be careful!

Chief Paroxysmus: make sure someone else goes for the keys, slime will destroy your weapon. The boss itself is not hard at all, just feint and hit hard, if you are in a party a healer could be usefull for removing the poison. If you are alone just remember to cast enemy of one when the plague beasts are dead.

Monstrous Interred Grizzle: a dangerous boss. Not because hit you hard, but because put you in a bath of acid and you are naked in few minutes. If you can avoid acid, the other problem is the scream that give you -60% in swing speed. If you can, avoid this boss.

Travesty: a suicide. He will become you, so imagine to fight againist yourself with 35k hit points and with all the skills (even the one that you have at 10) raised to 120.
He has Vampiric embrace, can cast revenant, wither, enemy of one, consacrate weapon and (if you are using the conjurer's trinket) he has an undead slayer for doing double damage againist you. If this is not enough, he spam mirror image and deflect your attacks away.

Lady Melisande: you will get some trouble from satirs (once discorded you become a piece of cake), and hers puke that slow your swing speed. If you could manage this, she's not so hard.

Medusa: when you solo her, remember o take with you 3-4 gorgon lenses and to remove the stoned monsters (when free).
Remove every undead slayer (the conjurer's trinket is one) or she double the damage againist you. For the rest I suggest only to use momentum strike when you are free from the stone for kill your evil twin immediatly before he start to attack you.

Stygian Dragon: his base damage is huge! The base hit can do 60-90, then he spam the wing strike (area damage of 80-90) and he use a fire strike that dismount you and damage with about 90-95. The best tactic here is to keep it with feint and run if you miss it. Usually he can do wing strike + fire strike as combo and if he is not feinted you are dead.

Slasher of Veil: hard. This guy is hard to take down in solo. His base damage is not huge, but he can hit you lot of times and with spells. His curses requires more than 1 apple to be removed and spam true fear and fire walls everywhere. For this one, the best tactic is hit hard as you can and evade when your life is less than 3/4 (because you dont know when he use the true fear and evade could save your life when you are frozen). The Invisibility potion here is useless, because he will reveal you or you still in a firewall (90% of the times you are on a fire wall)

My software UO Template Editor could help you a lot while you are building your template, so my last suggestion is to use it rolleyes:

Here is my template (you need UO Template Editor for open it)


I hope this post could be usefull :)
 
S

Stupid Miner

Guest
Re: Sampire Info Collection and Personal Suggestions

Havent read through all of this yet, but:

- Life Leech: the weapon restores up to 30% of the displayed percentage of the damage dealt as Hit Points. Use this if your weapon has medium low-damage. NOTE: With vampiric embrace this effect is forced at every hit!
Vampiric Embrace mechanically has nothing to do with Life Leech.
It leeches life, but the methods are completely different.

Vampiric Embrace converts 20% of the damage done into health.
Curse Weapon works the same way, but converts 50%

- If you are using a lesser slayer and you have 100% damage increase in your suit, you can avoid to use enemy of one but you still have to honor your opponent.
No, the item property Damage Increase is completely separate from most spell buffs, including EoO and perfection.

If you are using a lesser slayer, EoO and perfection wont increase damage at all.

The only spell that i am aware of that increases Damage Increase is Divine Fury, which gives +10%

Damage Increase increases the weapon's base damage by that amount.
Slayers, EoO and Perfection increase the character's Damage as seen in the Status Bar which is the total of combined Anatomy, Tactics, Damage Increase, Strength, and Lumberjacking.
 
L

Lord GOD(GOD)

Guest
Re: Sampire Info Collection and Personal Suggestions

Enemy Of One is 50%.

&

Specific Slayers are 150%.
 
L

Lord GOD(GOD)

Guest
Re: Sampire Info Collection and Personal Suggestions

Oh they must have changed it, they told us 150% in beta.
 

Pinco

UOEC Modder
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
Re: Sampire Info Collection and Personal Suggestions

good, good, I fixed the mistakes and added something about the woodland armor :)
 

Pinco

UOEC Modder
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
Re: Sampire Info Collection and Personal Suggestions

added the ornate axe and daisho (same as leafblade) SSI data :)

if someone need other weapons just ask or post the data...
 

Hildebrand

Certifiable
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
Re: Sampire Info Collection and Personal Suggestions

Great post.
But correction on Luck.. it gives 1000 luck bonus if you kill creature while you've Achieved Perfection with bushido.
 

Pinco

UOEC Modder
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
Re: Sampire Info Collection and Personal Suggestions

fixed and added the radiant scimitar SSI checkpoints, thanks :)
 

Kelly Daze

Journeyman
Governor
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
Re: Sampire Info Collection and Personal Suggestions

Why do you have all that mr when the leggings of bane are not medable?
 

Pinco

UOEC Modder
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
Re: Sampire Info Collection and Personal Suggestions

non medable items block the use of meditation and relative bonus, then it works perfectly. For the rest I use MR for vampiric embrace after ress and come from items with intelligence bonus/DCI :p

Thanks to you now I explained this in the guide:)
 
S

Stupid Miner

Guest
Re: Sampire Info Collection and Personal Suggestions

I'm often torn between sharing info and keeping it to myself. On the one hand, sharing info is the nice thing to do, on the other hand, it's annoying seeing people copycat my techniques because I put the hard work into figuring out how to do 300 damage per hit to Ratmen Renowneds, and they didn't. Also levels the playing field to my disadvantage. Oh well.

By the way, Fire Elementals are vulnerable to Flame Slayer, and there's no opposing slayer to it that i know of, so that solves that problem.

Oh and... Double Axes tend to get ignored. :)

Also, you might want to write in what those weapon's speeds are next to them.
 
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