Could Toxic Sliths please be balanced a little?

[DarkVoid]

In Ter Mur to the east of the Royal City there are spawning Toxic Sliths which occsaionally drop toxic venom sacs on their corpses which are needed to create scouring toxin.

Unfortunately the great speed and powerful bite of these poisonous animals combined with their deadly poison attack means that most of my characters are too busy running off to cure/heal to attack them for long. My mage and my tamer do okay around them but the spawn rate of them seems a bit high.

There is also a wandering healer to the north of the bridge where they spawn, unfortunately since this area is practically camped by spawning toxic sliths it's rather useless trying to resurrect there. Either he should be on the other side of the bridge or he should wander a lot more.

Please balance these monsters out so that they're not quite so difficult to handle, or move the wandering healer to a more favourable location.

Wouldn't it be nice if wandering healers could see what you'd get attacked by if you were resurrected at their location and move to a location where the player could avoid unwanted conflicts with dangerous creatures?

 

[UOKaiser]

In Ter Mur to the east of the Royal City there are spawning Toxic Sliths which occsaionally drop toxic venom sacs on their corpses which are needed to create scouring toxin.

Unfortunately the great speed and powerful bite of these poisonous animals combined with their deadly poison attack means that most of my characters are too busy running off to cure/heal to attack them for long. My mage and my tamer do okay around them but the spawn rate of them seems a bit high.

There is also a wandering healer to the north of the bridge where they spawn, unfortunately since this area is practically camped by spawning toxic sliths it's rather useless trying to resurrect there. Either he should be on the other side of the bridge or he should wander a lot more.

Please balance these monsters out so that they're not quite so difficult to handle, or move the wandering healer to a more favourable location.

Wouldn't it be nice if wandering healers could see what you'd get attacked by if you were resurrected at their location and move to a location where the player could avoid unwanted conflicts with dangerous creatures?

?. Another sarcasm post? Is this sarcasm day or something for people? Really I feel like i missed something.

 

[G.v.P]

How about a stationary healer on the left side of the bridge?

I'd suggest gcure pots, might help you out, but if you have a char who can cast an EV and invis, that would more than do the job as well.

Confusion pots are nice too, although they have a long cool down.

 

[G.v.P]

?. Another sarcasm post? Is this sarcasm day or something for people? Really I feel like i missed something.

lol hey that's what makes the game great ... we all will complain about something that seems strange to other users during our tenure as clients to EA Mythic ;P

 

[UOKaiser]

Wait is this siege? Or production?

 

[UOKaiser]

lol hey that's what makes the game great ... we all will complain about something that seems strange to other users during our tenure as clients to EA Mythic ;P

Is that it was strange. Im hearing things today that make no sense. Like this one I can see that it might be difficult for a underdeveloped character but don't think a whole game design needs to be made because of it. I would agree if it was extremely impossible. But seemingly I and everyone else can usually mass kill these things in that area without looking then this leads me to beleive that the character is not strong enough for that area yet. If he was on my shard i'll be glad to help him out with equipment, skills hell even kill them all for him.

The only other thing i can think about if this is on siege where rules and situations are different.

 

[RavenWinterHawk]

Please develop a slayer of slith, so we can one hit them like everything else.


Maybe just give us the ingredient, forget the fight.

 

[Jhym]

Ummm... no....

My 110 macer, with 105 parry and 105 healing has no trouble with up to 3 at a time, though I prefer one on one. He can also take on a raptor pack, though I have to run at least a few times.

If you are having trouble with the poison, petals would help with that, but I'm not seeing the issue otherwise.

 

[Beastmaster]

Nothing wrong with toxic sliths. I've carried 3 newbie characters there just for the loyalty gains and have only died twice.

 

[Stupid Miner]

Please develop a slayer of slith, so we can one hit them like everything else.


Maybe just give us the ingredient, forget the fight.

... Reptile?

 

[Falseprophet]

I have several hundred venom sacs, they drop 30 at a time occasionally from the puzzle room in the underworld. just run all your characters through there every day. besides the venom sacs it drops 30 silver serp venom, 30 void essences, lucky coins, all the other deco items.

 

[the 4th man]

My imbuer is human, I needed loyalty points. He's also a crafter for the most part with magery. I used eval int, from another character and went there.

Dropped EV's, nothing else......didn't die either. Tactics!!

You drop the EV's closer toward the healer and lure the sliths there.....is it slower?? Yes, but, it does get the job done. If you have to run across the bridge, do so, there's no shame.

As Jesse The Body once said, "He who fights and runs away, lives to fight another day!".......He also said, " A thumb to the eye will stop anybody!!"rolleyes:

 

[Guido_LS]

1) Cross bridge to toxic slith area
2) drop 2 blade spirits (use scrolls if necessary)
3) agro and lure 1-2 sliths to blade spirit area
4) invis (either via spell, scroll or potion)
5) rinse and repeat.

1-3 can be done 100% reliably on a char with 30 skill points in magery - 1-4 can be done with 50 skill points... it doesn't take the ability to drop EV's constantly.

 

[G.v.P]

Please develop a slayer of slith, so we can one hit them like everything else.


Maybe just give us the ingredient, forget the fight.

... Reptile?

I think he was being sarcastic.

There is a Gargoyle Mace that I have to try tomorrow. I think Petrified Snake. It looks like it will own Toxic Sliths. And a lot more, hehe.

 

[Luke Carjacker]

Um, wanted to get loyalty on my crafter to use the Queen's forge. He's got 60 Magery (plus a +15 book, and some jewelry to get into the 90s overall), zero eval, zero meditation, and I had no trouble killing enough of these suckers in one evening to get to 10,000 loyalty.

Granted, I didn't try to loot them, and in certain cases that can be a challenge above & beyond killing something (like when gathering shimmering effusion keys), but since these fellas don't have area hit, ranged or spell attacks, I don't see looting as much of a challenge either. Any moderately developed warrior, mage, tamer, archer or anything else should be able to mow through these without breaking a sweat.

 

[hawkeye_pike]

Please develop a slayer of slith, so we can one hit them like everything else.

Maybe just give us the ingredient, forget the fight.

Reptile slayer works well. You should also consider to wear an armor with appropriate resists (physical, poison).

And if someone is asking for a "balance" (Balance against what? Newbie players?), you should also go and balance all other monsters in the game that can kill me.
Sarcasm aside: The monsters in UO are already so ridiculously easy to slay (due to a lack of AI) that monster hunting is no challenge most of the time.

 

[Basara]

They tend to spawn right next you while you loot - doing more than looting leather with a BWC or Harvester's Blade can be dangerous (and the HB can get you killed from all the meat putting you overweight if you forget to drop it).

Not sure where this "stationary healer" idea comes from. There are often healers there on LA, but they wander, are as likely to be north of the flight tower as near the bridge, and are the easiest-killed-by-summons NPCs in the entire game. Several times, these healers NOT being there at all (or killed by someone and not respawning) has forced me to run all the way to the Royal City for a rez.

Lastly, that area borders a region that has a REALLY bad tendency to develop anlorvaglem (especially), and sometimes the other two top-end voids. My imbuer got mugged there once by THREE of the damned things sitting there, and THEY were the ones that were farming the spawn, not I (remember that voids and spawn attack each other). By the time I got them distracted enough to loot and run, I'd lost a half-hour of hunting (run in, loot, take a few steps, die as they kill me through my invisibility spell; repeat until 2 have wandered off enough for your to escape after looting), then another half-hour with my tamer and a friend's killing those three and TWO MORE that were in the area (and the uber-Ballem that looks like a Dark Father, and the big bog-thing-looking one; yeah, the area had a REALLY bad infestation that day).

It's not all that hard a spawn, other than the Slith's speed (which is faster than most Paragons). IF they'd tone the speed down about 10-30%, so that people on mounts weren't only just BARELY able to outrun them, and so that they can be targeted more easily (my biggest problem on my tamer/bard is they run out from under my cursor, and sometimes so fast I have trouble even grabbing their bars). they'd be fine.

Oh, and sliths are the ultimate leather sources in the game. Normals give normal leather, Toxics horned, and if you use the harvester blade with a human, you get back 30% more leather than you would with an elf using a Butcher's war cleaver (13 vs 10). It's definitely worth the risk to skin them, if you got the right tools (BWC or HB - not to mention a bag of sending with a lot of charges).

 

[CroakerTnT]

No Nerfs!

I like tough monsters!

 

[DarkVoid]

They tend to spawn right next you while you loot - doing more than looting leather with a BWC or Harvester's Blade can be dangerous (and the HB can get you killed from all the meat putting you overweight if you forget to drop it).

Not sure where this "stationary healer" idea comes from. There are often healers there on LA, but they wander, are as likely to be north of the flight tower as near the bridge, and are the easiest-killed-by-summons NPCs in the entire game. Several times, these healers NOT being there at all (or killed by someone and not respawning) has forced me to run all the way to the Royal City for a rez.

Lastly, that area borders a region that has a REALLY bad tendency to develop anlorvaglem (especially), and sometimes the other two top-end voids. My imbuer got mugged there once by THREE of the damned things sitting there, and THEY were the ones that were farming the spawn, not I (remember that voids and spawn attack each other). By the time I got them distracted enough to loot and run, I'd lost a half-hour of hunting (run in, loot, take a few steps, die as they kill me through my invisibility spell; repeat until 2 have wandered off enough for your to escape after looting), then another half-hour with my tamer and a friend's killing those three and TWO MORE that were in the area (and the uber-Ballem that looks like a Dark Father, and the big bog-thing-looking one; yeah, the area had a REALLY bad infestation that day).

It's not all that hard a spawn, other than the Slith's speed (which is faster than most Paragons). IF they'd tone the speed down about 10-30%, so that people on mounts weren't only just BARELY able to outrun them, and so that they can be targeted more easily (my biggest problem on my tamer/bard is they run out from under my cursor, and sometimes so fast I have trouble even grabbing their bars). they'd be fine.

Oh, and sliths are the ultimate leather sources in the game. Normals give normal leather, Toxics horned, and if you use the harvester blade with a human, you get back 30% more leather than you would with an elf using a Butcher's war cleaver (13 vs 10). It's definitely worth the risk to skin them, if you got the right tools (BWC or HB - not to mention a bag of sending with a lot of charges).

Yeah, I tend to want tbe leather off of these. I agree with the speed decrease, as I ping 75ms to my home shard Oceania, so speed is definitely an issue if I'm having trouble sprinting off when you get 2-3 sliths next to you and biting chunks out of you.

I've heard of the Puzzle room, will have to investigate that further, if that's an easier way I may well leave sliths for my tamer or mage. Getting my corpse back from the sliths spawn area isn't too difficult since I recently got some Undertaker's Staffs. The main problem though is having them gang up on newbie characters. Is it really too much to ask that either they be slowed down, the healer moved, or that they spawn at a slower rate? I think not. I also didn't know that petals counter their poison, I can see a lot more plant growth in my future now.

As to the technique for whatever character I use, I try to drag the health bars up first and then either drop EV's or spells I'm training with onto the health bars and kill them that way. I do try to lure one or two off but those sliths do tend to spawn right next to you when you're not expecting them to.

They are really fast though, they can reach you while you're dragging their health bars up. Even if they were a little slower (say 10%) that would be fine with me. If someone can come up with a really good reason why monsters with greater or deadly poisoning abilities should be allowed to rush up to characters then please tell us.

I'm not in favour of anything that can overwhelm people who have a slow ping and therefore have problems dealing with spawn which would not normally be a problem for someone on a fast ping. I played that way for several years until we finally got ADSL, and I can say from personal experience that I would not wish it on anybody.

To the respondents in this thread who gave tactics advice, many thanks! I have lots more to study now. Maybe it will help with other more difficult Stygian Abyss monsters as well. Perhaps someone will write up an essay on how to go about evaluating (not the evaluating intelligence skill) and assessing monsters in general and submit an article for inclusion on stratics. I look forward to any which are approved for publication.

 

[Lord Chaos]

Does hiding work instead of invisibility? or is that too troublesome?

 

[Harlequin]

Does hiding work instead of invisibility? or is that too troublesome?

Doable, but you need to run at least 8 tiles away and the toxic sliths moves very fast. Plus you don't want the buggers that are chasing you to lure away your carefully placed EVs.

So invis works better in most cases.

 

[UOKaiser]

Yeah, I tend to want tbe leather off of these. I agree with the speed decrease, as I ping 75ms to my home shard Oceania, so speed is definitely an issue if I'm having trouble sprinting off when you get 2-3 sliths next to you and biting chunks out of you.

I've heard of the Puzzle room, will have to investigate that further, if that's an easier way I may well leave sliths for my tamer or mage. Getting my corpse back from the sliths spawn area isn't too difficult since I recently got some Undertaker's Staffs. The main problem though is having them gang up on newbie characters. Is it really too much to ask that either they be slowed down, the healer moved, or that they spawn at a slower rate? I think not. I also didn't know that petals counter their poison, I can see a lot more plant growth in my future now.

As to the technique for whatever character I use, I try to drag the health bars up first and then either drop EV's or spells I'm training with onto the health bars and kill them that way. I do try to lure one or two off but those sliths do tend to spawn right next to you when you're not expecting them to.

They are really fast though, they can reach you while you're dragging their health bars up. Even if they were a little slower (say 10%) that would be fine with me. If someone can come up with a really good reason why monsters with greater or deadly poisoning abilities should be allowed to rush up to characters then please tell us.

I'm not in favour of anything that can overwhelm people who have a slow ping and therefore have problems dealing with spawn which would not normally be a problem for someone on a fast ping. I played that way for several years until we finally got ADSL, and I can say from personal experience that I would not wish it on anybody.

To the respondents in this thread who gave tactics advice, many thanks! I have lots more to study now. Maybe it will help with other more difficult Stygian Abyss monsters as well. Perhaps someone will write up an essay on how to go about evaluating (not the evaluating intelligence skill) and assessing monsters in general and submit an article for inclusion on stratics. I look forward to any which are approved for publication.

With adsl you need to configure your system to take advantage of it. Go to broadband reports and in there tools do speed test, tweak test, and perhaps any of the other ones to narrow down your trouble. Also call the dsl company and see if they can put you on fastpath. Then configure your network card for network throughput instead of cpu. If you have a nvidia card configure first packet for Ultima online. That should help.
I believe SA auto loot is still working so you can use SA to 1 click loot them and it's macros to quickly cut the corpse up.

 

[Harlequin]

If someone can come up with a really good reason why monsters with greater or deadly poisoning abilities should be allowed to rush up to characters then please tell us.

Because the old speedhacking silver serpents that did deadly poison damage once every 3 secs were nerfed since 1999. And they felt the current players should have a reminder of how fun it was. You know, just to mark the passing of a decade. Oh, that was when most folks were on dialup too...



Anyways, survival tip - each spawn area has different spawn spots. When you kill one, it'll find a random spot to spawn, either at a spot near you, or at a spot further away. Just let your blade spirits or EVs kill them until all of them spawn at a spot out of aggro range from you.

Now you can loot in peace.

 

[gjohnson5]

In Ter Mur to the east of the Royal City there are spawning Toxic Sliths which occsaionally drop toxic venom sacs on their corpses which are needed to create scouring toxin.

Unfortunately the great speed and powerful bite of these poisonous animals combined with their deadly poison attack means that most of my characters are too busy running off to cure/heal to attack them for long. My mage and my tamer do okay around them but the spawn rate of them seems a bit high.

You sound like more of a casual player who doesn't like dying. The playability of the game is not such that this is going to happen. You will also find that the standpoint of the people who post on the boards will not be encouraging to your point of view.

1. I would try camping out at fan dancer. You probably have the greatest chance there of getting a reptile slayer in your weapon skill. Tomb of kings might drop enough loot to where you might get lucky enough to find a reptile slayer. At the same time you can work on healing or whatever spell casting your char does to heal deadly poison.

2. You can collect gems on the fan dancers and gargoyles shades. Dont sell them. Keep them for imbuing. If you don't find a reptile slayer, you can also work on an imbuing char to where you can make your own reptile slayer out of a weap with no mods. I would suggest leeching as that won't take relic frags.

3. Check all your loot for defence chance increase stuff and work with that. The higher the better. You will have less chance of getting hit and poisoned. You can also work on parry skill to help reduce the change of being poisoned.

4. If that not good enough try attacking them with archery or spell casting. That way you can attack at a distance. To keep distance between you and them, make sure you have a mount.

HTH

 

[Kallie Pigeon]

I found them a challenge to kill. Here is what I did originally. Once I decided to put magery on my imbuer I trained till my skill was good enough to cast a bladespirit better than 50% of the time. Then I would find one by using names of approaching monsters and listening. I would pre cast a bladespirit run in and cast the blade then run back before it can target me precast another and repeat. If it targeted me I would hide with potions if I could get far enough away or throw a greater confusion potion behind me and run off screen. Later I decided to add inscription so I made EV scrolls and cast them. Even now at 100 magery I prefer to use EV scrolls against them because they are so fast and I use magery invis to get them to stop targeting me since I can cast invis 100%. But they are relatively easy to kill if you do the right thing. You just need to stay on your toes and be aware of your surroundings. I was out there the other night and the spawn was crazy. I was trying to kill lowland bouras for a quest and man there was stuff all over the place. Just when the spawn dies down a little here comes a newbie who is lost. Bad place to get lost but fortunately it was quiet while he was there.

editted to add: My imbuer is gm alchemist and so can cure the poison quickly with a greater cure. If I were not a gm alchemist, I would bring both orange petals and great cures. I think the orange petals while not 100% effective against poison decreases the level of poison and makes it easier to cure.

 

[Lord Chaos]

Doable, but you need to run at least 8 tiles away and the toxic sliths moves very fast. Plus you don't want the buggers that are chasing you to lure away your carefully placed EVs.

So invis works better in most cases.

Thanks, that was what I was worrying about, their speed. Was looking for someone with experience with them, as I've never even seen them.

Normally hiding works great, much faster than invis. But if the monster "speedhacks", then yeah, too much risk of luring it away or getting cornered.

 

[Petra Fyde]

They're do-able with a crafter on Siege. I got my imbuer's loyalty there by killing them, with an occasional diversion to doing normal sliths for the Percolem quest by way of a change. Takes a bit of thought, and a few times I had to run to Royal City for a rez when I got careless. Do them carefully, don't charge into the middle of them and it's fine.

 

[Uvtha]

Well seeing as my crafter with nothing but 100 magery killed enough of them to use the queens forge (so like...250 of them or so) and only died like 3 times, I don't think they are too much to handle.

 

[LordDrago]

Please Devs, my mining tailor cook camper is having a very difficult time getting barbed leather from dragons. They are just mean, and claw me and breath fire on me and even cast spells. Could we please have a very nice, non-aggressive greater dragon outside of destard dungeon commit suicide once very minute so that I can get barbedleather from him?

thanks a bunches

 

[Uvtha]

Please Devs, my mining tailor cook camper is having a very difficult time getting barbed leather from dragons. They are just mean, and claw me and breath fire on me and even cast spells. Could we please have a very nice, non-aggressive greater dragon outside of destard dungeon commit suicide once very minute so that I can get barbedleather from him?

thanks a bunches

Great idea!

 

[Kojak]

maybe you could make it so I could walk up to the toxic slith and shake its hand and it'll hand me a toxic venom sac for free ... yay!!!

 

[Petra Fyde]

To summarize and end this before it goes downhill any further.
1. The general feeling is toxic sliths are just fine if you devise the right strategy.

2. low ping is not relevant when a crafter in the UK can kill them on Siege Perilous (ping 90 - 150)

3. The general feeling of the posters (without the trolling and sarcasm) is that you should put more thought into your strategy rather than ask that the creature be changed.