I think somebody miscounted. It takes 10 105s to make a 110; 10 110s to make a 115 and 10 115s to make a 120. 10x10x10=1,000 105s to make one 120 scroll. Having 105s and 110s drop in Tram wouldn't affect the 120 powerscroll market much. Before I left UO for over a year, I had been to a lot of champ spawns, and gotten my warrior all scrolled up. However, I never received a single 120 magery or EI scroll. There's a good reason why they're like 25 million each; they hardly ever drop. And when they do, everybody wants them. Maybe the Devs should look at the drop rates for the scrolls in comparison with the number of people who have the skill.
Powerscrolls as a whole were one of the awful ideas that the AOS Dev team came up with. Maybe the worst. Before AOS, UO was mostly skill based. I actually liked the UO:R idea of Trammel and the new skills of chivalry and necro. But AOS ruined the balance in PvP, made weapons and armor far too complicated, vastly unbalanced PvP due to power scrolls and artifacts, which made a few very rich players totally unkillable and the rest of us had to either spend endless hours in Doom and champ spawns just to stand a chance, and pretty much made the whole game a lot less fun.
When powerscrolls were introduced, if the Devs had increased the skill cap to 820, to allow us to keep 7 skills at maximum, and made them easy enough to get that it would have kept PvP balanced, it wouldn't have been so bad. If they had just NOT PUT THEM IN THE GAME IN THE FIRST PLACE, it would have been much better.
When I got back to UO, I noticed that things have changed somewhat; the current power scroll system does benefit a couple of large guilds, which monitor all the champ spawns and raid them just in time to get the scrolls, if any Tram guild does venture into Fel to do a spawn. Other than those PvP guilds, everybody is stuck with the prospect of buying PS, or praying that they can escape the carnage with one.
A really good set of Devs wouldn't have needed power scrolls to get people to stay in Fel (remember that most of us still lived there before AOS). They could have made it so that valorite and frostwood only spawned in Fel. They could have made it so that the monsters in Fel had the best loot. The ML and Tokuno expansions could have had Fel rulesets in parts of the dungeons. Especially places like the Trog cave, where you can just stand there and collect 500 gold every 5 seconds. If you need something massively expensive, just stand in the cave and pick up the gold from the Trog corpses, which fall as fast as they can spawn. Empty your bank and carry a bag of sending and 100 trans powder. In a day's time, you can buy that jackal's collar or 120 magery PS. They could have made it so that normal people had a real incentive to go to Fel, not just hardcore PvPers. They could have forgotten the whole idea of power scrolls and kept PvP balanced. Fel could have been the place that people went to play the game, once they had "wet their feet" in tram. Instead, it's a deserted wasteland, where the reds rule. Before AOS, people still played in Fel. I kept a second account just to keep a Fel house; I went to Khaldun a lot because it was the best place to get a vanq weapon. The Tentacles of the Harrower always had people at it, taking turns. Sometimes a red would venture in, but the other people there would team up and kill him. It wasn't all hostility and hatred. The way that AOS was implemented turned Fel into a place that maybe 80% of the players don't even venture into for fear of insta-death; the artifacts were put into the Tram ruleset. Players can get the best crafting materials without venturing into Fel. The best monster loot is in the ML dungeons. Nearly all the quests are in the Tram ruleset. And the one resource that only spawns in Fel is limited to champ spawns, which require several players in a guild to work, and when they are worked, are easily taken away from the normal players by the PvP guilds.
I have a better solution to the power scroll situation, and the fact that Fel is deserted, to boot:
1. Make sure that there are really tough monsters, like the ancient wyrm in Destard and put one back in level 4 Covetous to replace the useless event dragon that's still there, on the bottom levels of all the Fel dungeons. Make the Khaldun tentacles a little stronger. Those creatures would all have a chance of dropping both fel-only (NOT OVERPOWERED, but useful) artifacts and power scrolls, up to 120s. People with max skills should be able to solo them, and the drop rate could be pretty low, like for the marties at Miasma, or lower.
2. Change the RNG so that Fel ruleset mining and lumberjacking has a much better chance of giving valorite and frostwood. Make the odds for them much lower in Tram rulesets. I noticed that the opposite seems to be in effect lately; my miner spent the day in Fel and was PK'ed 8 times, losing 4k in insurance, a garg pickaxe, prospector's tool, several shovels and all the ore I had mined every time, but I only found 1 valorite vein, and it only lasted 3 or 4 times digging until I would get the "no metal" dialogue; I went to Tram ruleset mines and found 3 spots in a matter of minutes, and each was good for about 16 times digging. Who cares if we get 2x the ore per use of the shovel, when the total ore from the spot is less than in Tram, and the valorite spots are less common? Shovels are worthless, I just tinker new ones when they wear out, and the valorite ore is worth 500 gold per ingot. I know that it showed me that mining in Fel is pretty much a waste of both time and gold.
Besides changing the RNG so that mining in Fel is worth the added risk, they should make a new set of fel-only crafting marties that you can only get by harvesting resources in Fel. A shovel that never wears out. A hammer that never wears out. A sewing kit that never wears out. A lockpick that doesn't break when it fails for a GM lockpicker. And crafting powerscrolls. Most crafters already have them, so most of them would just be dropped on the ground, but they would be an incentive for newer crafters to venture to Fel.
(Making lockpicks break at GM and tools wear out in the first place was one of the many AOS grief tactics that the Devs pulled that I never will understand. Pre-AOS, a character could just keep the newbied lockpick he got as a new character, not use it till he GM'ed lockpicking and never have to worry about it breaking. At GM lockpicking, you shouldn't fail 35 times and break 15 lockpicks before picking a lock!!! Pre-AOS, a miner could just keep his newbied shovel. A tailor could keep his newbied sewing kit. A blacksmith kept his newbied hammer. WHY OH WHY did the AOS team make them all wear out??????????? It's like the AOS team had a bet about how much they could mess up before we all left.)
I like the idea of having the high-end monsters at the lowest levels of all the Fel dungeons drop power scrolls and a fel-only set of arties and fel resources drop crafting powerscrolls a LOT better than having any power scrolls drop in Tram, but letting the low-end ones drop in Tram really wouldn't make any difference anyway, when it takes 1,000 of the 105s to make just 1 120.
