Hellooo, I'm looking to start up again! ^_^

[Hakumen]

Alright so I used to kinda play this (on my dads friends account) back about 6 years ago and am looking forward to really getting into it for the first time. I think I know the basics of how the game works and all, but there are a few questions I have about the game right now.

-About how many people are still active in UO? What are the most active servers? (I like more of a crowded kind of server)

-What are the rules on loot? As well as I can remember, if you died, you dropped everything except spellbooks and runebooks. Although I have heard of an insurance system as well but never looked into how it worked (could someone please explain it to me? )

-My previous question kind of ties in with this one. Are there options to play a more hardcore style? What I mean by this is are there some servers that make it so when you do die you drop everything and there is no insurance?

The reason I ask about the loot is because I love PvP and remember it being very dangerous and dirty and yet so rewarding whenever you set out far from town looking to hunt.

I have such great memories of this game and am hoping to return to those great times. Even what some might regard as bad memories were always so much fun to me (getting PKed, then stuck wandering the swamp looking for a healer and a way back to Britain heh).

Anyway, basically I'm looking forward to joining UO again and am hoping to become friends with many of you. And thanks in advance for any help you guys can provide!

 

[Basara]

Alright so I used to kinda play this (on my dads friends account) back about 6 years ago and am looking forward to really getting into it for the first time. I think I know the basics of how the game works and all, but there are a few questions I have about the game right now.

-About how many people are still active in UO? What are the most active servers? (I like more of a crowded kind of server)

Still over 100k players, with about half in Asia. The most active US server is Atlantic.


-What are the rules on loot? As well as I can remember, if you died, you dropped everything except spellbooks and runebooks. Although I have heard of an insurance system as well but never looked into how it worked (could someone please explain it to me? )

Insurance, you access by clicking on your character to bring up the gump (the same way one could click on yourself for opeing paperdoll, and doing the old-style quests). You see "Toggle Item Insurance" and another line to set insurance to auto-renew. You use the targeting circle you get from clicking the toggle line to target all items you want to insure. It costs 600 GP per item, 600 more on each auto-renewal. Containers can't be insured, nor can items that can stack.
Now, when you click your corpse, everything still in it, as well as the insured stuff re-equips. The blessed stuff (the spellbooks, etc.) you have to manually re-equip if you were carrying it in your hand (there are books with bonuses now, so there's a reason to carry magery books in hand now).
In PvP, if you kill someone with insurance active, you get 300 gold per insured item.


-My previous question kind of ties in with this one. Are there options to play a more hardcore style? What I mean by this is are there some servers that make it so when you do die you drop everything and there is no insurance?
Siege Perilous Has such a ruleset, but is also extremely hard in other ways (can't sell to NPCs, one character per account, etc.), and as such is fairly low population. Your account has to spend a certain amount of time in-game to be able to access SP.

I would suggest trying to get back into the game, using Atlantic, Chesapeake, or one of the other East Coast shards/servers, then once you get up to speed with how the game has changed from 6 years ago, then create a Siege character, and see which playstyle you like better.

 

[Hakumen]

oh wow, that insurance system actually sounds much better to me now. Thank you for the detailed reply!