Returning Player: Help w/ Basic Questions

[FatMagic]

Hello all!

I'm returning to the game after 4+ years of being inactive... so I'm really really out of the loop as to what's been happening (yah I learned in-game last night that there are no more house deeds! man did I feel out of the loop!).

So here are my basic questions...

(OH just for FYI, we play on Chesapeake.)

1) My brother and I are going to play a duo together doing some PvM Dungeon Runs, just for fun. We aren't trying to get rich or get "phat loot", we just want to have some fun whacking monsters and working our way through dungeons. What would be the two best templates/builds to do this with? We used to both just be Warrior-type builds, but I wasn't sure if there was a better combo now with all the new class types (Paladin, Ninja, Samurai, etc).

2) What dungeons should we hit for basically characters that are starting out, or close to starting out? Can we just goto the mainland and hit the Virtue dungeons without a problem? Is there a listing somewhere that might show us the approximate skill levels for each dungeon so I know we won't get whomped?

3) Where are the best vendors to buy some basic armor sets for us? I used to be able to run right outside of Brit and find vendors galore -- now all I was able to find was empty abandoned vendors everywhere. I just want to get some armor for our Warriors (or whatever we choose), and didn't know where to look!

Thank you all for the help ahead of time, I look forward to your responses

 

[Frarc]

1) Paladin Warriors and samurai warriors are pretty good. X-healing each otehr when fighting stuff works realy well if you fight often together.


2) Most Anti-Virtue dungeons are pretty good to start with, maybe not Hytloth. First levels of Despise and Shame are good to sharpen skills . Just see how far you can get everytime you go and then always try to go further and further. Also fighting in those dungeons gives you points (can't actualy see those) and eventualy can give you some Anniversary items.

http://www.uoguide.com/Artifacts_%28Virtue%29


Keep your stuff insured when adventuring!


3) Most vendors you find around Luna/Malas. Shop wisely there, some vendors are very pricy!



And welcome back!

 

[FatMagic]

Frarc,

Thanks so much for the help!! Very informative, exactly what I was looking for. Here are a few more follow up questions.

1) Paladin Warriors & Samurai Warriors! Sounds really fun! In regards to cross-healing each other, do you mean using Magery to heal, bandages, or do the Samurai/Paladin's have healing abilities?

2) Which items should I be insuring, just our Armor/Weapons? I could see that getting fairly expensive after a while (unless we don't die!)

3) Ah OK, that's why I couldn't find them around Brit. Are there any armor sets in particular that are a good start for a Paladin/Samurai combo? Any suggestions, even the smallest, are extremely helpful to me... since I don't know anything about UO anymore!

Thank you again

 

[Frarc]

1)Paladins have healing/cure spells and Samurai also have some spells that makes regeration health faster. What i like on my paladin is that he got both healing spells from Chivalry and bandages. That way i can use bandages on the peoele around me and myself and also can use spells on myself or otehrs at the same time. You kinda have spells ready for emergencies while you can help the others at the same time. Chivalry and Samurai also have those extra damage spells for hard hitting. For a paladin high karma is important too , you get that with fighting better and better monsters. For Samurais the Virtue of Honor is very important. You gain that with honoring monsters before you hit them.


2)When starting with training i would not insure alot. First armor should be something with high physical resist. You can get your fighting skills high enough at first with just fighting Earth eles. After some time you will gather some good weapon/armor .Insure everything you like when you find the nice suit you like. Getting a good amount of gold for insurance won't be much a problem. A good demon slayer weapon with Paladin ability Enemy of One can get you very far and easely gather gold.

3) A good set and no need for insurance is the Virtue armor. iIts all blessed and gives 70 in all resist when you have all the pieces. It will take a while to get them all together. A good 70 in all resist armor is a good thing to have as a warrior. You can try to make those yourself with runics or collect artifacts. Or a combination of self made armor and arties is a good thing. Some vendors sell good full suits too. Its will be a matter of finding the one that you can afford. Not everything comes cheap these days


Its all going to be alot to learn/relearn at first but after some time you you get the hang of it. We can all give you advice whats best and works for us. But eventualy you have to see what works out best for yourself. Alot is try and fail and try again. Ask what you like, we can give you a push in the right direction but in the end its you who makes the final decision.


For alot of information about stuff i would tell you to mark this webside:
http://www.uoguide.com/Main_Page

 

[DevilsOwn]

little warning about the old dungeons... if you had before gone to Destard after gaining your strength to battle wyverns, drakes and dragons please be aware there are now greater dragons roaming those caves... they bite hard

 

[FatMagic]

Well, I never previously have fought anything harder than a Troll or Undead things.. so I hope I won't have a problem then. And i've never been to Destard as far as I know.

Will I still run into these greater dragons in the old dungeons?

 

[Frarc]

Will I still run into these greater dragons in the old dungeons?

Most of them are in Destard. You can run into them where normal dragons can spawn.

 

[T_Amon_from_work]

Destard, the Daemon Temple on Fire Island is possible. As Frarc notes ... anywhere a Dragon may spawn, there is a chance of a Greater as well.

<shakes head> I used Destard as a hide farm, leaving gold and items for anyone - hell, even gems were left. Not any more ... GDs hurt a lot.

 

[FatMagic]

Excellent advice -- thanks guys.
So would a Mace Paladin be OK? I have a toon who is 77 in Mace, and I would hate to switch. And obviously, a Swords Samurai is the other way to go?

Any suggestions on a Paladin template, and also a Samurai template for starting out? With the idea that we will be just running around PvM dungeons, and healing each other.

Thanks guys so much for the help.. everything is so different, it's taking me a while to catch up again.

 

[Frarc]

I have a 2 handed mace fighting Paladin.

This is his template:

110 Chivalry
110 Focus
100 Mace
100 Tactics
100 Resist Spells
100 Healing
100 Anatomy


If you want a 1 handed mace you could change focus for parrying. But then you need armor with alot of mana regeneration or a good mana leech weapon so he can cast spells often.



My Samurai looks like this:


120 Bushido
100 Swords
100 Tactics
100 Parry
100 Resist Spells
100 Healing
100 Anatomy


Do know a Samurai need to use 2 handed weapons to parry with. They can not parry with shields well. You can also use mace for a samurai and fight with Tessen. Or Fencing and fight with Sai's.


Plenty combination to try. If you doubt you can always try a Test Center and set some skill combinations there and see what works best for you before you try on your main shard.

 

[FatMagic]

AWESOME!!! Thanks a bunch! This will help tons. Just giving us a nice template to shoot for is really helpful. These will probably work perfect for our "dungeon-runner" characters.

And I completely forgot about the Test Center.. thanks for that reminder

Now to go find some armor & weapons for these guys

 

[FatMagic]

Oh! Silly question:

How do you get a skill to 120? I keep reading about skill scrolls... is that what will bump it up? I know my account is 27 months old, so I get 10 extra skill points (right?) - but what about my brother, who doesn't have any age on his account.. how can he hit 120 on a skill?

 

[GFY]

Something you may want to look into is archery. A Samouri Archer with healing skill and band aids standing next to another warrior type does awesome damage and is very hard for anything to kill. Just remember to heal your partner and have him heal you!

 

[T_Amon_from_work]

Skill scrolls can be gotten from battling champ spawns I think. or purchased of player vendors ... it allows you to get a skill up to 105, 110, 115, or 120. Extending that cap still has to fit within the total 700 or whatever account cap.

 

[Frarc]

http://www.uoguide.com/Skill_Cap


http://www.uoguide.com/Power_Scrolls

 

[FatMagic]

OK.. so now I have a new question.

I have an old Thief character, that really is quite useless since I don't care to do any PvP. So I want to convert him into a Ninja PvM guy... so I was looking at all the skills, and here is what I'd like to do, but can't figure out the best way to do it.

I'd like to have the Ninja with Ninjitsu (obviously), and I already have good Stealth & Hiding, which helps with the skills. I'd like to use Kama's since my Fencing is already decent. And I heard that Tracking with a Ninja helps damage on the "sneak" attacks... so what else should I have along with these skills?

If you guys could just throw a basic template together, I would be most appreciative

Thanks for the help... learning this all again is fun... yet a bit frustrating!

 

[Farsight]

The thief is far from useless in the non PvP world. You just have to know where and what to steal from. The new potions and balms that you can steal from monsters in the ilshenar champ spawns, for example, are selling very well and are quite useful. And don't forget about the spawning rares you can "pick up" from the ground. Some of those also sell very well indeed.

Try this on for size:
100 hiding, 80 stealth, 100-120 stealing, 100-120 ninjitsu, then add on 3 skills for fighting, such as fencing, tactics and chivalry (ninja-paladin... funny!) or magery, eval int, meditation. With the right equipment (burglar's bandana for example), you can even add in a fourth "support" skill such as tracking (helps with death strike in theory) poisoning (perfect ninja skill), healing (if you switch out chivalry for anatomy or something else).

If you're determined not to steal, a friend of mine has hiding, stealth, ninjitsu, fencing, tactics, healing and anatomy and he's a real pain to try to kill. If we're fighting monsters, we just put him on the front line in dog form with a bracelet of health and only have to heal him every once in a while. It's quite amusing watching his health soar up during a fight.

 

[FatMagic]

Well actually, I don't really want to lose my stealing.. that's the skill that MADE my character, and to lose it I would be bummed. Albeit, it's only around 78ish, so I'm not a GM in it (or any skill, they are all hovering around 80) - but I still like the skill

So I might try out that first build you gave me... I like keeping my stealing around, and then having the fencing/tactics and probably Magery since I already have that at 50... unless you think Chiv might be better instead of Magery. (I'm so used to recalling around, I wouldn't know what to do without it!)

Thanks for the advice... I look forward to learning more

 

[Farsight]

The thing about chivalry is that you don't need a lot of skill to make it useful.

With 55 points in chivalry, you have a 100% chance of successfully casting heal, cure and remove curse (but you still need orange petals/potions as 55 skill isn't 100% reliable in curing) and a more than decent chance of successfully casting divine journey, which is chivalry's version of recall.

And later, when you get settled, you can improve your suit to give yourself 4 faster casting and your chivalry spells will be super-fast as well. Magery, on the other hand, has a maximum of 2 in faster casting.

The disadvantage would be that stealing and poisoning lower your karma, which makes the chivalry spells a lot less effective. So unless you want to spend a significant time working on raising karma, then chivalry may not be your best solution.

Magery, once trained, gives you invisibility, recall, gate, poison and summons, but in the long run it will reduce your options in suit building, since LRC is a requirement for mages these days.

So both options have their good points and drawbacks.

 

[FatMagic]

Yah my Karma/Fame is already fairly low on my thief from days past. So I think Magery may be my best option at this point, since I really wouldn't be to keen on keeping my Karma up.

And a question about gear: What is the best kind of gear? I picked up a full suit of Ninja gear with decent resists just for the sake of having SOMETHING (because I didn't have anything previously). You mentioned a Burglar's Bandana.. where can I get that? And I hope it isn't obscenely priced?

 

[FatMagic]

Quick update... i've been doing pretty good so far. On my Thief/Ninja character, I went this a build something like this (most of my skills are sub-70s/80s.. Hiding is 90).

Fencing
Tactics
Ninjitsu
Hiding
Stealth
Stealing
Magery
Meditation (added later)

I'm really enjoying Ninjitsu, just takes forever to level up while just killing things. I think i'll have to resort to just grinding the skill by Shadow Jumping.

I also stuck with Magery on the build instead of Chivalry, and was able to pick up a cheap 100% LRC suit - so that seemed to make it more fun. My only issue was the lack of mana... always really low, so I threw meditation in there... but now I'm not so sure on that choice.

But now I have a problem... I want to throw Lockpicking in there (i'm going to do a little treasure hunting with this character), and I don't know what to drop. I'm thinking I could probably just up and drop Magery & Meditation, and stick with the Melee type character, and get a little Chiv for the Sacred Journey ability, that way I can stick Lockpicking in there and get it to a reasonable level.

Mind you, I probably won't even GM any skill on this character (I just don't have the time, and I enjoy just faffing around with multiple characters), so I will have lots of flex room.

So I'm thinking this might make more sense:

Fencing
Tactics
Ninjitsu
Hiding
Stealth
Stealing
Chiv (30 skill)
Lockpicking (70ish)

Oh, and does LRC affect Chivalry?

 

[Basara]

Yes, LRC affects chivalry, but it is an all or nothing affair (if LRC kicks in, no tithing is used, but it uses full cost otherwise).

Plus, you have to have at least the minimum tithing cost for the spell in your tithing account, even at 100% LRC, for the spell to work (unlike magery or Necro, where you don't have to carry regs at all).

 

[Nine Dark Moons]

makoto-jima is also a great town for vendor shopping - if you're able to access the tokuno islands with your account. it's set up like luna (a big square) but is typically much more affordable.

 

[FatMagic]

Yes, LRC affects chivalry, but it is an all or nothing affair (if LRC kicks in, no tithing is used, but it uses full cost otherwise).

Plus, you have to have at least the minimum tithing cost for the spell in your tithing account, even at 100% LRC, for the spell to work (unlike magery or Necro, where you don't have to carry regs at all).

Excellent! Thank you. I think I will pick up Chiv since I have 100% LRC. I feel bad dropping Magery which is at 50, but I need the space for Lockpicking... so I just need to bit the bullet and do it

makoto-jima is also a great town for vendor shopping - if you're able to access the tokuno islands with your account. it's set up like luna (a big square) but is typically much more affordable.

No kidding! I thought Luna was all there was... and it's bloody expensive there. I'm glad to hear that Makoto-Jima is generally cheaper. I'm heading there tonite

 

[Nine Dark Moons]

No kidding! I thought Luna was all there was... and it's bloody expensive there. I'm glad to hear that Makoto-Jima is generally cheaper. I'm heading there tonite

On some shards, the road that connects Luna to Umbra (especially right outsides Umbra) is also a good place to find cheaper vendor shops, as is the Yew Moongate. On some shards Yew Moongate is surrounded by houses overflowing with vendors, but on others it's sort of non-existent. Same with Umbra Road.

Plus, I'd highly recommend picking up the vendor advertisement runes that are typically dropped in Luna bank, outside Brit Bank & New Haven bank, and usually in the dirt around Moongates too. That's a GREAT way to discover some awesome vendor houses that are usually way off the beaten track and many have great deals. I have a few rune books on many shards filled with those runes and try to bounce around and check them out about once a month. I'm sort of a vendor shopping addict... can ya tell?

 

[FatMagic]

Yah I've found a few "off the beaten" path places from picking up runes. I really like checking those out. There is something adventurous in it for me.. so I really enjoy picking up those runes.

I also enjoy shopping around. I never have enough money for the items (most are 250k+!), but I like to see what's around. Plus it gives me ideas for if/when I start up a vendor as well.

And now I have another question.... which I will post in another thread

 

[T_Amon_from_work]

Also, check in the vicinity of dungeons. For instance, Ice Isle (Deceit dungeon) has several vendors scattered around it on LA. Go to Destard and run around the mountains ... I found several shops that way.