Is PVE dead (i.e. hunting, gathering)?

[BardATL]

I have been away from UO for close to 2 years, I recently decided to try and come back. Once I read up on it I realized the nerf that was done to bags of sending. My question is, is there a way to hunt and gather items such a regs from liches, leather, or even looting the gold off monsters without having to recall every 10-20minutes?

 

[Radun]

ride a blue pack beetle... every little while just walk off a little to where it's safe to dismount for a second, hop off, drop loot into beetle's pack.. be careful not to overload it though, or you won't be able to run, just able to walk slowly which can get you killed if you're being chased.
other than that, no, you just need to recall a lot.

 

[BardATL]

I was afraid that was the response I was going to get, but thanks anyhow. Was hoping there was some way to avoid all the recalling as it seems to make a already tedious task that much more tedious, especially since I was doing some of it on a tamer

 

[Pawain]

I used the blue beetle to gather clockwork assemblies for the turn-ins.

I mark runes and recall when I gather leather.

It is a shame that casual gamers have to change gameplay because of the power gamers and cheaters.

 

[Crysta]

Could always just do it the way we did before bags of sending and just RUN it to the bank.

 

[Oriana]

Could always just do it the way we did before bags of sending and just RUN it to the bank.

LOL I agree Crysta. There was a time before BoSs that you either ran everything to the bank, or recalled back and forth. I do that now. I take my archer or mage out hunting gather the resources and hide them in a corner, then when I'm done, I bring in my crafter with her bettle and packs and take it home. Sure it's a bit of a pain, but thats how I did it before BoS and it still works fine.

Oriana

 

[Dermott of LS]

...

Rune for home + commodity deed box = a pretty quick drop off and return system (just as much as a bank).

Only exception would be if you were going further and further down into the bowels of Ilshenar dungeons, but then if you're just looking to farm certain areas for whatever reason, even in Ilshenar there are places to make the need for a Bag of Sending non-existant (due to gypsy bank and moongate placements).

Seeds could have helped PvM quite a bit, but they drop too fast. Just a few kills and you're set up for a given group, an hour or so cycling through the groups should give you all you want from each batch if you're going for a set (or if you're going after one particular plant, staying with one creature will give you enough chance to get that plant).

What PvM needs ISN'T the return of the bag of sending for heavy items, but more uncommon and rare drops that are used in other places in the game (the spring cleaning items that were active drops were reasonable examples).

One good example of monster loot is the ant lion. A decent amount of gold, and then a batch of items that are useful in other areas (fertile drit for plants, ore for metals, junk magic items for recycling, skeletal pieces for bones, new seeds, and the occasional "skeleton of a random type" with a little bit of extra loot).

If you try to grab everything, sure you'll be full in a heartbeat, or if you focus on specific items (i.e. dirt and seeds only, or bones only, or bring a fire beetle to smelt ore), you can stay down there longer.

Still I'd like to see special uncommon/rare items drop that are used for other purposes be it crafting, new quests, or whatever. The question though is what should the drops be and at what rate should they occur.

Right now a LOT of monster loot is waste because it either drops too fast, or the system involved has become overly stale (such as treasure maps).

I'd say that the problem with PvM is NOT the Bag of Sending nerf, but the general lack of excitement in monster loot as a whole. Instead of hoping for a special drop, and feeling accomplished when it happens, PvM has been a "farm as much in resources as you can" activity which is why teh Bag of Sending nerf had such an impact.

 

[Petra Fyde]

When loot became generic 'rich back pack' 'filthy rich back pack' UO lost more than many realised. Before the butchery that was Age of Shadows we hunted specific creatures for best chance of specific weapons. If you wanted an elemental slayer you hunted daemons, if you wanted a repond you hunted lich, a good source of vanquishing weapons was terrathon matriachs. Almost everything in game had a reason to be hunted. Gold was not the main reason to hunt.

I love custom housing and many other things that have been brought into the game, but oh how much I long for the simpler armour and weapon mods. I don't want to calculate swing speeds, I don't want to add up armour resists, I don't want to total up lower mana cost. I loathe mathematics. A silver supremely accurate katana of vanquishing sounds so much more impressive than 'undead slayer hci 14 di 35'

 

[Splup]

Hunting is mostly dead because you can't get anything worth looting from regular monsters... Well I quess you can, but you just never will. Looting gold is pain in the ass cause of no BoF, and inflation has eaten its worth pretty much. Only things worth killing are bosses and maybe Coils.

I just can't realize why they don't do something to loot table... Making normal monsters drop items worth looting/using would help to narrow the crack between normal and superrich players, cause usefull pieces wouldnt be so damn expensive. And even make regular hunting worth a while... Now it's just waste of time except if you like doing PvM and do it for the fun.

 

[Dermott of LS]

...

What I've been a long proponent of in terms of items, is a hybrid of the new and old systems.

1. Lower the drop rate of weapons/armor/jewelry on monsters SIGNIFICANTLY. At best, outside of boss monsters (i.e. Champions, Peerless, Gauntlet), at best you should get two or three items and then only occasionally. Lower to mid level monsters should at best drop an equipment item every 3 to 5 creatures killed (unless they are non-magic creature specific drops such as armor pieces from bone knights), higher end creatures should drop one item consistently and up to three items rarely.

2. Stagger the item mods back to the 5 tiered system UO used to use. Rebalance the mod effects within that system. (obviously do not do this to "boolean" mods such as night sight)

3. Set up a naming procedure for these mods giving each teir a name (like the old system) and have the top two mods appear in the item descirption (i.e. An accurate sword of power), but have a way to see all of the mods and the totals of the mods in the character sheet info (in KR). Consider porting the KR character sheet into 2d due to this.

4. Reduce Slayers to the "Super Slayer" listings and tweak it so that the Slayer property is quite a bit rarer to get than the normal slayers we have now, but a LOT more common than the Super Slayer properties are now (both in drops and runic crafting).

5. Damage Increase should revert to a standard +X amount to damage rather than a +%. The percentage increases have allowed damage values to soar much higher than they should ever have to begin with.

 

[Uvtha]

LOL I agree Crysta. There was a time before BoSs that you either ran everything to the bank, or recalled back and forth. I do that now. I take my archer or mage out hunting gather the resources and hide them in a corner, then when I'm done, I bring in my crafter with her bettle and packs and take it home. Sure it's a bit of a pain, but thats how I did it before BoS and it still works fine.

Oriana

I remember the long brit to/from wrong runs I made back in the day. The only difference is back then it took probably more than an hour to get full with gold. Now it can take under 10 minutes. Theres a problem there.

 

[Uvtha]

And sadly on siege there is no recall. So you have to hunt near an area where you can either run to a gate, or cast one. I can't begin to tell you how annoying it has become to gather leather. First they take out the only good means of getting the leather out (bos) which i understand, but its really a pain, then they add in super dragons, so you MUST have a super dragon of your own to gather leather.
I could hunt nightmares for leather, but they are milllllles away from a gate/area to gate. Very annoying for a shard that needs GM leather suits.

 

[Pinco]

up for the personal attendant banker

 

[Coppelia]

For me personally, my kind of hunting was killed by the nerf of BoS. I used to travel through dungeons, hits this and that, continue to somewhere else and after I decided my journey (adventure) was over, I would recall to bank for the last gold coins and then to home.
Now I'm reduced to farm on one spot and not move for a while. As a tamer I can only use the blue beetle to bring back the piles of gold coins I left in the dungeon (hence why I have to stay on one spot). Needless to say I don't bear it very long. Bashing the same mob over and over at the same place for 30 mins is a pain, and I can only push to 1 hour max. This is not fun.

I went from nice adventures through dungeons, babbling my little stories while filling my pockets with treasures to a pure mindless farm. It's more efficient in terms of earnings, so it totally defeats the purpose of having less gold entering the system if the real reason really was the economy. So huntin, gathering... of course it's still possible. Well Destard has become a bit ********, leveldesign-wise, but it's still possible to gather ressources. But PvM wasn't only that for me in the beginning, so I really lost something. Something the supposed removal of a specy of bots didn't bring me back nor replaced. I feel sacrificed for nothing.

 

[Tina Small]

I guess I don't mind the mostly crummy loot that a lot of the monsters drop because I'm still working on getting established on a couple of shards. So I still find it fun and helpful to go hunting, especially with my tamer, for gold and for loot that I can enhance. It gives me an incentive to get the crafters done so they can tackle the enhancing. And the fact that most of the loot is junk but every once in a while there's something worthwhile is fine with me. If it was all worth enhancing, I'd soon have no reason to hunt. It also means my backpack stays empty a little bit longer on each hunt.

The bottom line for me is that I'm still enjoying hunting the way it is today because I'm still working my way down a list of shards where I want to have good, playable characters. Right now it's Lake Austin and after that it'll probably be Lake Superior, Chesapeake and Catskills, along with working on dexxers and archers on shards where my tamers are mostly done. Don't have a house on LA yet and am not sure when that's going to happen. So for now, my tamer's filling up a bank box and the hatch of a boat. (May need a second boat soon at the rate I'm going.) I'm turning in leather, gold and scales at the library to get a couple of the talismans. Trying to earn enough gold to get better power scrolls. Also trying to get enough LRC, crummy or not, to dress a couple of crafters. And some resist armor to start a couple of fighters. Yeah, some of it's a bit tedious, but I have some goals and it's giving me an incentive to log in and go hunt every day.

Unfortunately, for folks who aren't like me and don't want to start all over again with building characters on other shards, hunting probably has gotten very very stale. Can't imagine what it's like to have played since the beginning of the game on mostly one shard with the same characters the whole time and hunting the same stuff over and over again with those characters. I'd be bored out of my skull or jumping up and down and hollering for more events or I'd be long gone. I guess that's the beauty of UO though that it will accommodate both the folks who like to stay on one shard and those who like to try them all out. There just seems to be a dearth of things to do lately for the folks who enjoy doing stuff other than character building.

 

[RoycroftLS]

I remember the long brit to/from wrong runs I made back in the day. The only difference is back then it took probably more than an hour to get full with gold. Now it can take under 10 minutes. Theres a problem there.

Yeah, prior to pub 16 it wasn't exactly practical to go farm the richest creatures in the game. That happens to be a point of contention for a lot of people, but that's been beaten to death in other threads before.

I understand the desire of the devs to limit the influx of gold into the game. I just disagree with their methodology of doing so; that is, by limiting the amount of gold a person is able to carry.

For example, if you have to run back to a bank every 9 minutes, and it takes you 3 minutes to drop stuff off and get back to farming, you're only getting 75% of the maximum gold potential.

Technically, you could cut all gold drops by 25%, make gold weightless, and have the same net flow of gold into the game without forcing people to run back and forth. Different monsters would require separate adjustments, but there aren't that many creatures that people farm for gold.

And yes, I know that system would favor scripters. But at present any system in the 2D client favors scripters. If the current solution to slowing scripters is to make hunting so monotonous that few honest players do it anymore, is it really a solution at all?

 

[Crow]

I don't mind recalling around at all...breaks up monotony

And for this, the question should have been, "Is PVM dead" And for that, I would have jokingly said, 'yes...it's very boring'.

I don't know anyone who brought bags of sending when they were expecting a fight.

lol

 

[GalenKnighthawke]

The change was a mistake.

But they say it's hurt scripted gold farming for RL money.

Assuming their right, was it worth it? I guess so. But it is surely a pain in the ass.

However, no, PvM for gold and resources isn't dead. It's just substantially changed. You'd be surprised how quick you can recall in and out.

-Galen's player

 

[Cybrdragon]

Bingo.

"Unfortunately, for folks who aren't like me and don't want to start all over again with building characters on other shards, hunting probably has gotten very very stale. Can't imagine what it's like to have played since the beginning of the game on mostly one shard with the same characters the whole time and hunting the same stuff over and over again with those characters. I'd be bored out of my skull or jumping up and down and hollering for more events or I'd be long gone. I guess that's the beauty of UO though that it will accommodate both the folks who like to stay on one shard and those who like to try them all out. There just seems to be a dearth of things to do lately for the folks who enjoy doing stuff other than character building."

 

[Sir Kenga]

The change was a mistake.
You'd be surprised how quick you can recall in and out.

Especially if one is scripting %)

 

[Olahorand]

Could always just do it the way we did before bags of sending and just RUN it to the bank.

Before BoS you could take an overheavy stack and go through a moongate with it, as long you still was able to move at least one step with that weight.
I wish, they would bring that feature back.

*Salute*
Olahorand