Having taken a fairly long break it was pretty daunting coming back… and coming back to a server where the rules are different added a new dimension to the jitters. I looked high and low for a ridiculously longwinded guide to starting a sampire on siege perilous and just couldn’t find one… after I had made a start I decided I would make one. It’s a bit longer than I intended but I’m a very special boy.
So, without further ado…
Mumm-Ra presents……
A guide to being a sampire on siege perilous…. I have often wondered about the naming of this server… I mean I understand the perilous bit, really, I do… but siege.. I would have gone for Perilous electronic environment…. Hmmm. The abbreviation may not have had the same ring to it as SP though.
Joking aside… I decided to put this little (quite monstrous as it turns out) “guide” together to aid players who are new to the server or the game, perhaps both, make a start and hopefully stick around. I have played on and off on UO since around 2000 then due to rather unfortunate circumstances I lost my main game account and started my current account around 8.5 years ago and stated on great lakes.
A good few years ago I played on siege for a couple of weeks with no real understanding of the server and soon lost interest and went back to GL to run around in mega suits and insured gear…. I stopped playing around a year ago and recently came back and realised that my bank card had expired and I had never updated it on the billing page oh the horror… not really… More of an awakening… my house had collapsed and I had lost TON of stuff.. I still had 7 characters with amazing gear and hundreds of millions of gold but I didn’t really see where the challenge of building up a stock pile of stuff on a production shard was so I blew off the dust from my stratics account and headed over to the Siege forum and started asking a few questions. The memories came flooding back and I started thinking about the “good old days” and how “Uo used to be” and all that jazz. My mind was made up. I was leaving the productions shards behind and heading over to Siege Perilous to try and recapture some of those old feelings that made me love this game as a tubby 15 year old. (I’m 35 now and still a little soft around the middle)
I knew I wanted to be as self sufficient as possible so I thought about a character that was going to be able to generate gold, hunt reasonably tough critters, possibly clear champion spawns alone and potentially survive (although not win) if a PK came along. I settled with a sampire. OK so that was the character selection out of the way… I’ll come back to that in a moment, well perhaps longer than a moment but bare with me…
Firstly a little about the server and what makes it a challenging, unique and rewarding place to call home. First and foremost you are limited to a single character. If you want to run multiple templates you will need soulstones to manage this. I intend to do this so I made sure I had sovereigns in my account, this is not a must and you will be able to buy them in game with gold so just play how you want to. Also I will cover this later in detail but the skill gain system works differently on Siege . For this reason I decided to use a Mythic token to give me a boost but I will write this guide from the perspective of starting from scratch… which I did for some skills still so it still rings true.
Siege perilous is a little closer to the Ultima online of old… Its still had the benefits of the expansions and the new items and skills but there is no Trammel. Its all fel rule set, this doesn’t mean that everyone here is a PK, far from it. It just means that if you are outside a guard zone (or inside it on occasion) you can be attacked. Don’t be put off by this. It adds a real element of challenge that simply doesn’t exist on other servers. There is also NO item insurance, there are still some blessed items like spell books and rune books and you get to select a single item to “siege bless” but for the most part, if you fall, you gear goes with you. Now not everyone who kills you is interested in everything in your pack. Some players will take items that are useful to them. Others will take everything they can carry… Simple rule of thumb, if you don’t want to lose it. Don’t carry it with you.
For this reason you will want to be using gear that is good enough to get the job done and nothing else. The suit I am currently using is cobbled together from pieces I have been given in game and is a combination of imbued studded leather and looted pieces. It isn’t pretty but I wouldn’t be crying if I ran into trouble or got cornered by monsters and couldn’t get back to my body to get it back. Get in to that mind set as soon as possible, you want to get basic gear together asap then work on a second set to replace it as soon as possible. Sooner or later you will lose it. Its as simple as that. If you want to be running around in the same gear all the time you either need to have multiple copies of it or be good enough to never die…. I would take the realistic approach and go with multiple copies J. Just so we are clear on this… you will die pretty often and you will probably lose your gear pretty often. Back in the day this was the norm…. Here on Siege this is the norm. Its not that big a deal, prepare for it, if your ready for it to happen all you need to do is run to the bank and re-equip your gear and your back in the action… just don’t go back to the same place if it was another player that killed you… unless you are sure they are no longer there.
A few other things before we go into character creation.
There is NO recall, NO sacred journey and any item that you use has durability… you want to skin something? Don’t use your sword… carry a vendor bought butcher knife… speaking of vendors, they won’t buy anything from you. They are happy enough to sell you items but they won’t buy anything from you and the stuff they do sell is a little more expensive that what you will pay on production shards. The only way to make gold is by completing quests, selling to other players or looting it from the slain. Again, don’t be put off by the lack of “easy transport” The gate spell works just fine. In addition to this the population of Siege have set up an INCREDABLE transport hub system using public houses situated near moongates and dotted all around the globe that utilize teleporters, they are linked to other houses at popular locations and can send you to your desired location in the blink of any eye. The majority of the locations also have crystal portals there too. Another thing…. There is a beautiful, lush landscape set out for you to explore. Learn it, run to places and adventure…. Its an experience just in itself. I am really enjoying running from A to B and stopping off at C and D sometimes too! I am revisiting places I haven’t seen in years!
Speaking of housing… you can have a house on Siege and retain your house on your current shard… Be considerate though, only place if you intend to stick around, if you do place a house and decide siege isn’t for you… do the right thing, Demolish it or pass it on to someone. Someone else may want the spot.
About the community and population.
There is a healthy and bustling community on Siege Perilous. I can hand on heart say that I have been made to feel very welcome. The people here will welcome new players and will help you make a start, don’t beg, there is no need. If you ask around and tell people you are new to the shard and need a hand to get going people will volunteer to help you. I was lucky enough to receive some armour, some jewellery and some weapons… everything I needed to get going, and I was asking to “buy a starter suit” as I had earned a little gold before I hit general chat.. When I had enough gold to then ask to buy a better wep… guess what. A guy just passed me it.
That guy giving you a sword and a set of armour today…. He might just murder you next week…. Don’t take it personally…. We all play the game our own way. Brush it off and have fun. If you do get murdered, don’t start talking crap to the guy (or girl – Siege has pretty PK’s) who killed you. Stick around… you will be surprised how much you can learn from an experienced PK, once you are all finished with your training you might just do better next time you cross blades. Its all part of the experience. Most of the players on the server have been around for a very long time and if you are willing to learn you will get more than just a death robe from the encounter. You might even earn the respect of the person who killed you… who knows. Next time they see you… they might just walk past… or at least smile as they drop you… at least you are helping someone else enjoy the game! Win / win!!!
OK, so its fair to say I have pretty much fallen in love with the server. I will take you through the first baby steps I have taken here on Siege and how I am going about building up resources and gold and training skills. I will tell you about how the skill gain system works, give you a few hints and tips and generally waffle on.
So, on to character creation. There are a few things to consider. skill gains work differently here (more later) but you are going to need to be active as soon as possible. Gold initially is going to be scarce and you are going to need / want to be spending it and in short… you wont have it. Now assuming you don’t have ANYTHING here is how we are going to play it. I went for Human.. JoaT gives an invisible 20 skill in everything. Handy… very handy…
This is from a sampire point of view. I am writing this as its what I am going through but it covers elements of casting, fighting skills and I also am working imbuing and general character management and bankroll / resource management that people may not be used to in the modern game.
I had the following in mind for my template:
120 Swords
120 Bushido
100 necro,resist,parry,tactics
80 chiv
I went for the following starting skills. 50 resist 50 parry…. I used the mythic token to boost Swords, necro, bushido, chiv and imbuing to 90 skill! I set my str and dex to 100… I made a mistake with starting skills. I should have chosen tactics over resist as resist is so much easier to raise than tactics… lesson learned.
The reason I went for Imbue on my mythic boost is because I want to be able to replace suits easily. This way I will be able to buy a bunch of barbed studded leather suits and just imbue them myself… remember what I said about losing gear earlier??
When selecting starting skills there are a few things to consider. Firstly, do you intend to use a mythic token? If yes then your starting skills are the ones that are NOT being boosted by the token.
For the purpose of this guide I will assume you are just going for it old school and starting from scratch. You want to use the “advanced” option. This allows you to select the 4 individual starting skills. Now on Siege you can not pay gold to NPC’s to train Skills this is a big deal as it can add a fair bit of time to your starting journey. OK so for a melee character I would start with 50 in your weapon skill. You want to be fighting things ASAP to be earning gold. for the remaining skill selections its down to preference really…
I would consider the following… you need a way to heal.
You can do this a few ways… the necromancy spell curse weapon gives 50% leech life… its doesn’t last long and you need to hit something and do damage to get health back…. Not bad if you are able to do decent damage and hit regularly…. On the other hand if you scratch together an LRC suit you can train necro in no time… so do you want to waste an instant 50 points in a skill that is very easy to train… I chose necromancy as on the token as gains slow down past 70 but initially its easy to train up.
Chiv. Again, LRC works for CHIV, close wounds is a very effective healing spell and the minimum skill required is 0.0 and the overall benefits of chiv are not to be sniffed at, at early levels. Again though, you can train the skill in safety once you have an LRC suit it wont cost you anything (no tithe) and you can gain it up fairly quickly.
Bushido – Confidence, great healing ability but will be interrupted if you are hit… also taking bushido before training parry will make parry training a bit harder, not a game breaker but something to consider.
Personally I would be going for tactics as my second skill to give you a damage boost. Initially the whole “sampire” thing will be on the back burner until you hit 99 necro. It does however have some interesting steps along the way and can make for some fun times so if you have managed to stay awake this long WELL DONE! And keep reading… please….
Right, so by now you are stood outside a rather attractive Britain bank with 1000 gp in your backpack, a dagger and an appetite for adventure! I first organised my skills into a handy “Uber 1337 SkIlLz” tab then set all the ones such as focus/med/anat etc to lock so they didn’t raise as I trained.
The first thing you need to do is to grab…. A book of chivalry I’m not sure if you select chiv as a starting skill and sink a couple points in if you get one free so please do try this as it will save a few hundred GP!, what are you waiting for, run down to the local moongate and go to luna and grab the book if not. Depending on what weapon skill you decided to go for you will need a weapon next. At this point I went to the blacksmith and bought a Katana… the fastest weapon going for me. If you are sticking with fencing just use the dagger while you are about it grab a buckler so you can begin to gain parry. With whatever gold you have left head upstairs in luna mint and go to the ankh and tithe the remaining gold.
Ok so here you are, this is as basic as it gets… if you are a long standing player this is probably the most vulnerable you will have felt for a long time… it will be short lived… and in its own way very rewarding. Starting from the ground up like this will be an experience you will most likely have not experienced since your first days in UO, however long ago that may have been.
So now you need to start your journey. I will try to avoid posting a series of locations here… I don’t want this to be “A PK’s guide to easy targets” but you are going to want to be hunting something that is easy to kill, drops a little gold and deals minimal damage.. there are whole host of options and locations but in the interest of being near to a safe area I would suggest a graveyard.
Brit graveyard is good…. Once the Halloween events are don’t the toughest creature you will face will be a shade and there is a guard zone within 2 screens. Another interesting feature is the way the entrance is configured. To the left of the gate there is an area where you can stand in the corner on the outside and attack the monsters through the fence, this is not an exploit or anything as there is still access to you through the gate but the AI just tries to use the most direct route to you, you can still take damage but if you move a step to the left you can heal then step back to the right and you are in combat again. Easy!. You will still have to walk around to collect your loot but by doing this it stops you being surrounded. You wont gain a great deal of skill here but it will allow you to build up a little gold and cobble together a few armour pieces / jewellery and another wep. You will be surprised how much gold you can get together bashing skeletons, zombies, ghouls and shades. The shades will also be a reasonably safe source of early resist gains, you will also be able to make some headway in to training chiv. Initially close wounds and consecrate weapon will take you to around 50 skill and you will be gaining parry all the while. Pick up all the necro regs and magery regs you see also. Anything they have that may be of use pick up. I picked up everything. If you plan on training Imbuing take everything with magical properties for unravelling. Take any bones and cut them up with scissors and stock pile them, someone will want to buy them. Take the cure potions, refresh pots and use the str and dex pots as you go along. Also the heal potions can come in handy in a tight spot. Basically you can’t be picky at this stage. Anything and everything will have value at some stage. See that shirt? Cuts in to cloth, cloth can be sold or stored up in your bank for if you ever decide to train a tailor or run a ship.
Once you are able to heal with close wounds reliably and have a basic set of armour its probably time to be moving on. You should have a good few thousand gold in your bank and a bunch of bone and a bag of junk magical items in your bank box along with a few stacks of regs for magery and necromancy.. Pick through them all, anything that is superior to your gear gets swapped out. Any jewellery that has the bushido skill on also gets saved for later.. you are looking for a ring/brace combo that gives 25 skill… If you are going to work on imbue then stone it off later head to the royal city and use the public souleforge and unravel the bag of magic junk and watch the gains fly! You will get a few magical residue possibley essence depending on your skill/ If you are not planning on working imbue yourself you can do one of 2 things with the junk magic items, ask in general chat if someone with the imbue skill will unravel them for you or drop them in the trash can for the turn in points…. Again, you will be surprised how quickly 30-40 points a pop will add up. If someone unravels for you store the residue/essence until you have piles of 500 then offer to sell in general chat
Ok so by this stage you will probably be around 55-60 swords and tactics and around 50 parry/chiv – good going so far.. I would hope you will have around 15-20k in your bank box, if not more (depending on how much you have been tithing) and be ready for the next stage.
This is probably as good a stage as any to do the next part and a logical step and will introduce a new dimension to your character. We are going to take parry up to 70 skill…. It will take all of about 20-30 mins and will be very easy… all you need is a buckler or 2. If you stocked up on a couple health potions bring some along but not too many. Head to Del’ moongate wearing nothing but the buckler… carrying only the bucklers a couple heal pots and a few refresh potions have a weapon with you but don’t equip it yet. This can be a blacksmith bought wep. What you need to do is firstly make sure wrestling is set to lock or drop. Run about and target as many sheep, cows, rabbits and cats as you can. Now leave combat mode and equip your sword. That’s it. They will all start whacking you, every now and then you can drink a health potion or cast close wounds to heal but basically just stand there until you hit 70 skill.
Right. Remember how I said that skill gains are different here… Here’s how it works. Siege has a system called RoT or rate over time. Unlike production shards once you hit 70 skill there is a delay between each 0.1 skill gain.
Between 70 and 79.9 there is a 5 min delay between each 0.1 gain.
Between 80 and 89.9 there is a 8 min delay between each 0.1 gain.
Between 90 and 99.9 there is a 12 min delay between each 0.1 gain
Between 100 and 120 there is a 15 min delay between each 0.1 gain.
Don’t despair… this also has its benefits. Each successful use of a given skill once the timer “resets” is a guaranteed to gain as long as you are within the gain range. An example of this is as follows. At 75 Swordsmanship you strike an earth elemental, you continue hunting, the moment the 5 min timer expires you strike an earth elemental. The earth elemental’s wrestling skill is within the range that would result in a skill gain so you automatically gain 0.1 skill. Example 2. You have 90 Necromancy skill. You cast Wither and get a 0.1 gain. 12 mins later you cast wither. You are guaranteed to gain 0.1 as the timer has reset.
OK. Sorry for the diversion but it seemed important to add it in there.
So now you have 70 parry and your first skill in RoT we need to add in Bushido. I waited until now as you wont notice a drop in gains now parry is in RoT as you will auto gain. Bushido reduces your chance to parry with a shield and you would need to parry with a 2 handed weapon and the critter hitting you would need to land a hit and you would then need to pass a parry check to get a gain… this way you avoid that.
Now you can’t actually train Bushido from 0 skill Arrrgh! But wait! Remember that bag of junk Jewellery I told you to sort through! You did sort through it and find the Jewellery right????? If not you will easily have enough gold by now to buy a ring / brace combo to get you going, check on vendor search and search bushido and find a ring / brach combo. If not ask around and Either myself or another helpful player will sort you out. You need to get to 25 skill. At this junction we may as well add necromancy to our character as well depending on your gold situation is. There are a few things that may prevent this so I will make a few recommendations at this stage. Firstly depending on how much gold you gathered get an LRC suit. Either ask in general chat or buy one from the vendors. You should pay around 20k for one at the most! You will also need a necro spell book… about 8k. if you cant afford one at this stage just hunt monsters for a little longer. Even the most basic of monsters will net you 30k in no time. You may even have a decent stack of necro regs depending how many you looted from your earlier hunting trips. You could go and buy necro regs from the NPC vendors in umbra but this could be a bit more of a gold sink in the long run as you will want to be casting a heck of a lot to get as many gains as possible. There is a vendor called “coco’s” just east of umbra, I’m sure there are more vendors out there but I have listed this one here as it’s the one I know! If anyone else wants to chip in with the location of their shop and the prices of there wares then PLEASE do! Heck… why not start a “Starter bundle” that has a basic suit and selection of weapons to buy? . Anyhow, wherever you buy your LRC suit get it equipped.
So from here we will now assume a few things… you have 25 skill from jewellery in bushido. Initially you don’t need to head back out in to the wild. You can stay in a safe place and do a little training if you desire. Now the main thing that held me back at this stage was that I had no way to regain mana other than the mana leech on my wep… you might have a few items left over in your bank box that have a bit of LRC and MR on there that will give you a little recovery and you will have JoaT focus and Med but for the most part it will take forever to regain in this way. At the same time you will be feeling a little vulnerable having just dropped a hefty chunk of your gold into the suit and not want to risk losing it… decisions, decisions… Come on dude/dudette! This is Siege! Grab adventure by the horns and get out there! So long as you have a weapon you can get back in the game so I would use that wonderful siege bless on your blade, unless you have a stockpile of them and have supplemented your suit with a looted armour piece then bless that… by now you should have an idea of the one bit of kit you don’t want to lose. Also by this stage you should be doing a bit of a pre session check list. So lets run through… scissors.. check, empty bag, check. Looted potions if required (but not too many as you will be picking more up) check. Right… off we go.
I will do a quick run through here of what to fight / cast and when and then do a write up below of how to put it in to practice in the game. There are probably a hundred differing ways to do this and as I said before I don’t want to put a bunch of locations on here or paint a target on your back so this is just one possible method for each way so if anyone has other idea’s please chime in and suggest them.
Melee skills.
50-60 skeletons, zombies or Lizard men – Lizard men can be found in many locations and not only do they have a little gold but when skinned they provide a steady supply of spined leather for you to stockpile then sell.
60-70 Ettins, Trolls and Ogres – again, can be found in many locations – one on one will not be an issue but can become more of a problem in larger numbers so try draw them off one at a time.
70-110 Earth Elementals – hit a little harder but drop a little more gold than ettins and also gems and small ore. The gems will be in demand from anyone who uses imbuing (possibly even you) If you have a giant beetle then take the ore. eventually get someone to smelt it for you or keep it in your bank for if you ever take up mining… free ingots. They will sell or you could sell the ore.
110-120 I am not at this stage yet but previously I have used either Ogrelords or Troglodytes in the Painted Caves, they both give good loot and while the ogrelords hit hard you will be dealing decent damage and leeching nice HP by then so will not have an issue with them. The trogs don’t hit as hard but the spawn rate is a bit tougher to deal with but cross this bridge when you get there. Another viable option here would be to work the ratmen mini champs in the abyss. You will be kicking out enough damage to deal with the spawn by then and although there are a lot of creatures there you will be doing enough whirlwind damage to keep yourself alive. The champs don’t hit so hard and so long as you have a repond / vermin slayer you won’t have an ussue.
Bushido.
Using the Jewellery to get you to 25 skill cast confidence until you reach 40 skill, drop one of the Jewels (+15) and cast confidence until you can then reach 50 skill by re adding on the jewellery .. Once you can hit 50 skill with the jewellery and can cast lightening strike. Cast lightening strike until you are at 50 real skill then drop the jewellery. LS will take you all the way to 110, evasion will take you to 120!
Necromancy.
Curse Weapon from 0 – 30
Wraith form from 30 to around 55
Horrific Beast from 55 to 70 -75 – Yuk!
Wither should then take you all the way to GM as you will be in RoT from 70
Chiv
Close Wounds 0 – 30
Consecrate wep 30 – 45
Divine fury 45 – 60
60 – 70 enemy of One
70 – 80 Holy Light – Goal reached!
OK that might seem like a lot to take in there but the butt load of text coming up will put it in to some form of order (I hope). So picking up where we left off we will assume you are between 55 – 60 skill so we will be heading out looking for lizard men. There are numerous locations and many resources online that will tell you where to find them. Feel free to PM me and I will tell you the locations but like I said, public shout outs might be bad for your healthbar. I would set up a couple of macros here. You are going to be working a few skills at once or you could focus on them one at a time, its up to you but either way a macro will help. Hit Alt + O, go to the bottom left tab and then press “add” select the button you want to associate with the spell you want… lets start with confidence. And set it to say… action, cast spell, confidence, apply. Then add again. Select F3, action, cast spell, curse Weapon, apply. While you are running to wherever you are going to hunt Lizard men alternate between confidence and curse weapon. Confidence will replenishes health and stamina over time but will stop if you are hit. It will also potentially give health and stam each time you parry. Curse weapon will grant you 50% life leach while you have a melee weapon equipped for a short time. Both are handy and are the first step on the training journey. Depending on where your stats are you will run out of mana quickly so just cast when you can while you are heading off to hunt. When you reach your destination get ready to jump in. Keep an eye on your mana, you always want enough left to cast close wounds so look at your spell books and learn the mana costs of the spells. Both of the initial spells you are using have the added benefit of healing you so it’s a bonus at this stage. You are going to be wanting to mix in divine fury while hunting the lizard men and making sure you are looting everything that may be of value. Make sure that you have the Chiv spell “dispel evil” as an icon, if not a macro. It’s a very good spell to use when training. It will stop you from getting surrounded. While its main effect is karma based it basically causes monsters to run away from you. It can also dispel summoned creatures or dispel “necromancer forms” depending on the fame/karma of the target. It’s a very underrated ability.
Make sure you make regular trips to the bank, if this become tiresome then check the vendor search or ask in chat and buy a bag of sending so at the very least you can send your gold back to the bank. You would only have to make a trip bac to drop off your bag of items every now and then.
Once you get to 60-65 skill move on to ettins, these are easy to kill and drop around 125-145 gold and a magic item or 2. These range from pathetic to reasonable in quality. I have looted Items from ettins that I have equipped. Bag it all up, sort through it later. I hunt these in Ilsh. If hunting in ilsh the paragons may be more of a challenge but if you are mounted you could always run away. By now your necromancy should be up to 30 and with a bit of luck your bushido (with jewellery) will be 50. Time to pop your mount in the stable. Wraith form is next on the list along with lightening strike.. you can either make new macros or change the ones you made. Wraith from grants you 100% mana leech and lightening strike gives a massive hit chance increase with a chance to deliver a critical hit. You should pop in and out of wraith form until an ettin spawns, then remain in wraith form and spam LS until it dies. Each hit will replenish your mana. Then rinse and repeat. Keep an eye on your real skill for bushido. As soon as it hits 50 you need to start honouring everything you kill so you can benefit from the perfection system. Each step will grant a small damage increase and once you achieve perfection you will gain a boost to luck also. The other benefit to the addition of lightening strike is when used in conjunction with curse weapon it becomes a valuable source of healing. Pop curse weapon then hit LS and you can get your life leech with an added hit chance success, add in confidence and close wounds and your at full health before you know it. The quicker you can get your real skill to 50 the better as you will most likely be finding a few better items by now and a few useable jewellery sets from your hunting trips. Look out for anything that has SSI and HCI/DCI. Other useful stats are +HP, +Stam and +MANA, same goes for armour but keep in mind that you want to try and retain your LRC. In this stage I would bag up as many items as you can that are casting focussed… I.E. +mana, LMC, LRC, MR don’t worry about resists. all will be revealed. It shouldn’t take you long to progress to 70 wep skill and enter in to RoT for swords , tactics ,bushido and parry will have been climbing. Necro will have taken a bit of a back burner.
Now although I used a mythic token I have still taken all these steps to raise tactics and I didn’t have much starting gold either. I made a lot of gold killing ettins… I’m talking a couple hundred k at the cyclopse valley. They drop quickly, they spawn fast and it builds up before you know it. Killing ettins has got me a house… a few LRC suits (just in case) a soulforge and a bit of fall back gold in my bank box. That’s one of the best things about siege for me. On GL I have hundreds of millions of gold and it means nothing… here I have the most basic of gear and less than 200k and I feel like I am actually achieving something… that’s how I always remember feeling playing the game.
The next stage is annoying …… Back to necro training. Iin horrific beast form you cant cast any spells apart from transformation spells …… it hamstrings everything! Remember how I said to stockpile the casting gear… here is where it comes in. this next bit will be a bit boring. It won’t take long but we need to get through it… we need to get from 55 to 70 using horrific beast. Horrific beast prevents you from using certain abilities and is generally a pain in the butt so just get dressed in all the casting stuff you can and have at it. Pop in and out of the form as many times as you can. You could continue to fight as you do it just going in and out of horrific beast but it would still take the same time I guess. I personally at this stage would be looking at my bank balance… seeing how much gold I had and looking on the vendor search for an alacrity scroll. If you can cover the cost it will speed things up a lot but its up to you. It still wont take long and you can do it in sections to break it up , hunt, come back. Do a little more. To tie it in to your rot gains. Spam beast. As I mentioned you should now be in to RoT and move on to earth elementals. Run and hit an earth elemental with a lightening strike. Run out spam beast. Run back in. something like that. The main thing is that you get past this stage. Horrific beast can be a decent form to hunt in as it grants you awesome HP regain but the restrictions are just too much for me personally. However you decide to work through it… do.
By now pretty much all of your primary skills are going to have hit the RoT stage and things slow down a bit. You will continue your journey much the same way as previously mentioned, there is now going to be a 5 min gap between each gain so you be having a bit more focus on the hunting and a little less focus on the training, you will be able to use the blue skill gains and the clock on your PC to keep an eye on the 5 min gaps between gains and perhaps tie in your bank runs with right after you gain so by the time you get back you gain as soon as you enter a fight. You should continue to gather items and gold and replace your gear as you go as you are still progressing towards that magical 99 skill in necromancy!
You can use the information in the skills section above to give you an idea of what to fight or you can check online for monsters that are within 20 points of your weapon skill range for gains. We have neglected resist up until this stage. This because resist is super easy to train up to RoT level. You want to get targeted by as many casting monsters that don’t use “serious” direct damage spells… basically you want to be getting debuffed and poisoned buy stuff like shades and spectres… you will find 4-5 of these in brit graveyard. You can run around the grave yard and target them all. Lure them down to the gate then run out and around until you are on the other side of the fence and just let them cast at you. They will just keep casting and casting… they will drop the odd fireball and lightening on you but nothing you can’t heal. You will be in RoT before you know it. There are other graveyards and other critters… this is just a suggestion. Any weak spell caster will do the trick. If you make a few friends or join a guild you could have a few guild mates just spam curse or weaken on you over and over and this would work also.
As Soon as you get to 99 necromancy you become a “Sampire” with the combination of samurai and Vampire. Cast until you succeed in entering vampire form by using the spell vampiric umbrace… this will grant you immunity to low level poison and give you the ability to leech back life through the melee damage you deal. You can no longer consume anything containing garlic, you are less resistant to fire and you look a little pale but you are now a powerful melee character. We will assume that your other skills have progressed in line with this and I will direct you in the right direction in regards to the gear to use but as with anything in UO there is no hard and fast rule so feel free to experiment.
Now if you have worked imbue yourself or if you are getting someone to make the suits you will still want the same thing roughly. A suit that has enough fire resistance to factor in the drop from vampiric embrace and 70 in all resists. Then the remaining imbues should be as follows 4 HP increase 7 MANA increase 7 STAM increase 4 LMC. And there will have been 1 resist imbue.. That’s it. No frills… no bells, no whistles… you want the suit to be barbed studded leather. There is no head piece so you can use an artefact quality looted armour piece for the head piece, this can either be bought or by now you will be able to hunt tougher critters that will drop these. For your weapon you don’t need a super weapon either. Depending on what you are hunting you may want to have a slayer but the bare minimum you want on there is SSi and Hit Mana Leech, both of these want to be just below the point where they cost “big resources” that way the cost is reduced. As for Jewellery, you shouldn’t be needing any skills on here now so a flat 13 in HCI/DCI and Damage increase would be the primary stats to go for. You could add on STR and DEX or possibly INT if you are lacking mana but if you are wanting to keep the costs down the 3 primary are the way to go. You should also Aim to get the swordsmanship mastery primer as soon as you hit go skill. The passive “warriors gift” gives you an additional 5 HCI and DCI which will give you a total of 31 each. This will be more than enough. The reason I suggested Di on the ring/brace is the life you leech is dependant on the damage you deal so the more damage you can put out the better. You will have 40 on your weapon so the closer you can get to 100 the better. You will always want to be in the thick of the fighting and will generally want to carry a couple of weapons. One of which will pretty much need to have whirlwind on it. This is by FAR the best way to keep your mana and health at max. You want to be surrounded by enemies and spamming whirlwind whenever possible. You can display the corpse bars of all slain enemies by pressing ctrl and shift, once you open a corpse close the bar and loot them all. Then move one and do the same, your second weapon should generally have armour ignore… this will be used for tougher single target enemies like spawn champions for example and will be used to spam armour ignore. Take barracoon for example. You have worked through the spawn with a double axe, barracoon pops, you honour him, cast enemy of one and hit him with armour ignore over and over, as you are doing such high damage you should always be leeching back enough mana to perform the special move, if he spawns a group of rats switch back to the double axe and whirlwind them, then back to the second weapon, I use a broadsword but others prefer a bladed staff. The key thing is that you must be constantly dealing damage and as much of it as possible… not you may have noticed that LRC is no longer a thing…. If you want to use necro spells, and they will come in handy you are either going to have to use regs or stock up on arcane clothes. I would say a bag of regs is the way to go. The arcane clothes are handy as a last resort but if you are relying on necro spells and they turn white you are stuck! If you have a bag of regs and a pair of arcane boots in your pack you can always equip the boots and know how many charges you have left.
Experiment with different combinations of necro spells to boost your damage output now you can stand up to tougher creatures… Pop a corpse skin on a monster and then hit consecrate weapon, this will lower the fire resist then make you deal your damage to the fire resistance…. Add in enemy of one when there is only one type of monster for a 50% damage boost and in conjunction with a critical hit produce some wonderful damage. I know I am going a lot of information but exploration and experimentation should still be a part of your journey… read the description of the spells in the spell book and play around with things…. Want to know what happens if you drop blood oath on an ettin?? Try it… wonder what happens if you cast evil omen before you dump a pain spike on an earth elemental? Go ahead… by doing this you will have more of a feel for the skills at your disposal rather than just relying on the few basic abilities that I have mentioned will help keep you alive. I try to find as much use for every skill I can… they are there after all… if you are in an area where there is heavy spawn those couple of bone knights you animate from corpses might just ease the pressure a little by killing a couple of monsters for you.
You should, by now, have a scavengers mind set, there is nothing wrong with this. This server is designed to be harder than a production shard… and it is. It might take you longer to get items together… trust me, it takes seconds to lose them, not just to players, if you die in a heavy spawn area and just can’t get back to your body you will still lose your gear. This is one of the elements of siege that I like the most. You will end up getting some good armour pieces, you might end up with enough to make a suit full of them… you wont though… you will make several suits built around one of each of the pieces.
I know I have gone on, and on…. And on…. but I have still only really scratched the surface here… There is a massive, diverse and thrilling world out there just waiting for an adventurer with enough courage and determination to experience it at its fullest….. I’m looking at you!
By the way… thanks for the welcome Siege!
My journey continues, yours is just about to begin.
With love …………. Mumm-Ra.
So, without further ado…
Mumm-Ra presents……
A guide to being a sampire on siege perilous…. I have often wondered about the naming of this server… I mean I understand the perilous bit, really, I do… but siege.. I would have gone for Perilous electronic environment…. Hmmm. The abbreviation may not have had the same ring to it as SP though.
Joking aside… I decided to put this little (quite monstrous as it turns out) “guide” together to aid players who are new to the server or the game, perhaps both, make a start and hopefully stick around. I have played on and off on UO since around 2000 then due to rather unfortunate circumstances I lost my main game account and started my current account around 8.5 years ago and stated on great lakes.
A good few years ago I played on siege for a couple of weeks with no real understanding of the server and soon lost interest and went back to GL to run around in mega suits and insured gear…. I stopped playing around a year ago and recently came back and realised that my bank card had expired and I had never updated it on the billing page oh the horror… not really… More of an awakening… my house had collapsed and I had lost TON of stuff.. I still had 7 characters with amazing gear and hundreds of millions of gold but I didn’t really see where the challenge of building up a stock pile of stuff on a production shard was so I blew off the dust from my stratics account and headed over to the Siege forum and started asking a few questions. The memories came flooding back and I started thinking about the “good old days” and how “Uo used to be” and all that jazz. My mind was made up. I was leaving the productions shards behind and heading over to Siege Perilous to try and recapture some of those old feelings that made me love this game as a tubby 15 year old. (I’m 35 now and still a little soft around the middle)
I knew I wanted to be as self sufficient as possible so I thought about a character that was going to be able to generate gold, hunt reasonably tough critters, possibly clear champion spawns alone and potentially survive (although not win) if a PK came along. I settled with a sampire. OK so that was the character selection out of the way… I’ll come back to that in a moment, well perhaps longer than a moment but bare with me…
Firstly a little about the server and what makes it a challenging, unique and rewarding place to call home. First and foremost you are limited to a single character. If you want to run multiple templates you will need soulstones to manage this. I intend to do this so I made sure I had sovereigns in my account, this is not a must and you will be able to buy them in game with gold so just play how you want to. Also I will cover this later in detail but the skill gain system works differently on Siege . For this reason I decided to use a Mythic token to give me a boost but I will write this guide from the perspective of starting from scratch… which I did for some skills still so it still rings true.
Siege perilous is a little closer to the Ultima online of old… Its still had the benefits of the expansions and the new items and skills but there is no Trammel. Its all fel rule set, this doesn’t mean that everyone here is a PK, far from it. It just means that if you are outside a guard zone (or inside it on occasion) you can be attacked. Don’t be put off by this. It adds a real element of challenge that simply doesn’t exist on other servers. There is also NO item insurance, there are still some blessed items like spell books and rune books and you get to select a single item to “siege bless” but for the most part, if you fall, you gear goes with you. Now not everyone who kills you is interested in everything in your pack. Some players will take items that are useful to them. Others will take everything they can carry… Simple rule of thumb, if you don’t want to lose it. Don’t carry it with you.
For this reason you will want to be using gear that is good enough to get the job done and nothing else. The suit I am currently using is cobbled together from pieces I have been given in game and is a combination of imbued studded leather and looted pieces. It isn’t pretty but I wouldn’t be crying if I ran into trouble or got cornered by monsters and couldn’t get back to my body to get it back. Get in to that mind set as soon as possible, you want to get basic gear together asap then work on a second set to replace it as soon as possible. Sooner or later you will lose it. Its as simple as that. If you want to be running around in the same gear all the time you either need to have multiple copies of it or be good enough to never die…. I would take the realistic approach and go with multiple copies J. Just so we are clear on this… you will die pretty often and you will probably lose your gear pretty often. Back in the day this was the norm…. Here on Siege this is the norm. Its not that big a deal, prepare for it, if your ready for it to happen all you need to do is run to the bank and re-equip your gear and your back in the action… just don’t go back to the same place if it was another player that killed you… unless you are sure they are no longer there.
A few other things before we go into character creation.
There is NO recall, NO sacred journey and any item that you use has durability… you want to skin something? Don’t use your sword… carry a vendor bought butcher knife… speaking of vendors, they won’t buy anything from you. They are happy enough to sell you items but they won’t buy anything from you and the stuff they do sell is a little more expensive that what you will pay on production shards. The only way to make gold is by completing quests, selling to other players or looting it from the slain. Again, don’t be put off by the lack of “easy transport” The gate spell works just fine. In addition to this the population of Siege have set up an INCREDABLE transport hub system using public houses situated near moongates and dotted all around the globe that utilize teleporters, they are linked to other houses at popular locations and can send you to your desired location in the blink of any eye. The majority of the locations also have crystal portals there too. Another thing…. There is a beautiful, lush landscape set out for you to explore. Learn it, run to places and adventure…. Its an experience just in itself. I am really enjoying running from A to B and stopping off at C and D sometimes too! I am revisiting places I haven’t seen in years!
Speaking of housing… you can have a house on Siege and retain your house on your current shard… Be considerate though, only place if you intend to stick around, if you do place a house and decide siege isn’t for you… do the right thing, Demolish it or pass it on to someone. Someone else may want the spot.
About the community and population.
There is a healthy and bustling community on Siege Perilous. I can hand on heart say that I have been made to feel very welcome. The people here will welcome new players and will help you make a start, don’t beg, there is no need. If you ask around and tell people you are new to the shard and need a hand to get going people will volunteer to help you. I was lucky enough to receive some armour, some jewellery and some weapons… everything I needed to get going, and I was asking to “buy a starter suit” as I had earned a little gold before I hit general chat.. When I had enough gold to then ask to buy a better wep… guess what. A guy just passed me it.
That guy giving you a sword and a set of armour today…. He might just murder you next week…. Don’t take it personally…. We all play the game our own way. Brush it off and have fun. If you do get murdered, don’t start talking crap to the guy (or girl – Siege has pretty PK’s) who killed you. Stick around… you will be surprised how much you can learn from an experienced PK, once you are all finished with your training you might just do better next time you cross blades. Its all part of the experience. Most of the players on the server have been around for a very long time and if you are willing to learn you will get more than just a death robe from the encounter. You might even earn the respect of the person who killed you… who knows. Next time they see you… they might just walk past… or at least smile as they drop you… at least you are helping someone else enjoy the game! Win / win!!!
OK, so its fair to say I have pretty much fallen in love with the server. I will take you through the first baby steps I have taken here on Siege and how I am going about building up resources and gold and training skills. I will tell you about how the skill gain system works, give you a few hints and tips and generally waffle on.
So, on to character creation. There are a few things to consider. skill gains work differently here (more later) but you are going to need to be active as soon as possible. Gold initially is going to be scarce and you are going to need / want to be spending it and in short… you wont have it. Now assuming you don’t have ANYTHING here is how we are going to play it. I went for Human.. JoaT gives an invisible 20 skill in everything. Handy… very handy…
This is from a sampire point of view. I am writing this as its what I am going through but it covers elements of casting, fighting skills and I also am working imbuing and general character management and bankroll / resource management that people may not be used to in the modern game.
I had the following in mind for my template:
120 Swords
120 Bushido
100 necro,resist,parry,tactics
80 chiv
I went for the following starting skills. 50 resist 50 parry…. I used the mythic token to boost Swords, necro, bushido, chiv and imbuing to 90 skill! I set my str and dex to 100… I made a mistake with starting skills. I should have chosen tactics over resist as resist is so much easier to raise than tactics… lesson learned.
The reason I went for Imbue on my mythic boost is because I want to be able to replace suits easily. This way I will be able to buy a bunch of barbed studded leather suits and just imbue them myself… remember what I said about losing gear earlier??
When selecting starting skills there are a few things to consider. Firstly, do you intend to use a mythic token? If yes then your starting skills are the ones that are NOT being boosted by the token.
For the purpose of this guide I will assume you are just going for it old school and starting from scratch. You want to use the “advanced” option. This allows you to select the 4 individual starting skills. Now on Siege you can not pay gold to NPC’s to train Skills this is a big deal as it can add a fair bit of time to your starting journey. OK so for a melee character I would start with 50 in your weapon skill. You want to be fighting things ASAP to be earning gold. for the remaining skill selections its down to preference really…
I would consider the following… you need a way to heal.
You can do this a few ways… the necromancy spell curse weapon gives 50% leech life… its doesn’t last long and you need to hit something and do damage to get health back…. Not bad if you are able to do decent damage and hit regularly…. On the other hand if you scratch together an LRC suit you can train necro in no time… so do you want to waste an instant 50 points in a skill that is very easy to train… I chose necromancy as on the token as gains slow down past 70 but initially its easy to train up.
Chiv. Again, LRC works for CHIV, close wounds is a very effective healing spell and the minimum skill required is 0.0 and the overall benefits of chiv are not to be sniffed at, at early levels. Again though, you can train the skill in safety once you have an LRC suit it wont cost you anything (no tithe) and you can gain it up fairly quickly.
Bushido – Confidence, great healing ability but will be interrupted if you are hit… also taking bushido before training parry will make parry training a bit harder, not a game breaker but something to consider.
Personally I would be going for tactics as my second skill to give you a damage boost. Initially the whole “sampire” thing will be on the back burner until you hit 99 necro. It does however have some interesting steps along the way and can make for some fun times so if you have managed to stay awake this long WELL DONE! And keep reading… please….
Right, so by now you are stood outside a rather attractive Britain bank with 1000 gp in your backpack, a dagger and an appetite for adventure! I first organised my skills into a handy “Uber 1337 SkIlLz” tab then set all the ones such as focus/med/anat etc to lock so they didn’t raise as I trained.
The first thing you need to do is to grab…. A book of chivalry I’m not sure if you select chiv as a starting skill and sink a couple points in if you get one free so please do try this as it will save a few hundred GP!, what are you waiting for, run down to the local moongate and go to luna and grab the book if not. Depending on what weapon skill you decided to go for you will need a weapon next. At this point I went to the blacksmith and bought a Katana… the fastest weapon going for me. If you are sticking with fencing just use the dagger while you are about it grab a buckler so you can begin to gain parry. With whatever gold you have left head upstairs in luna mint and go to the ankh and tithe the remaining gold.
Ok so here you are, this is as basic as it gets… if you are a long standing player this is probably the most vulnerable you will have felt for a long time… it will be short lived… and in its own way very rewarding. Starting from the ground up like this will be an experience you will most likely have not experienced since your first days in UO, however long ago that may have been.
So now you need to start your journey. I will try to avoid posting a series of locations here… I don’t want this to be “A PK’s guide to easy targets” but you are going to want to be hunting something that is easy to kill, drops a little gold and deals minimal damage.. there are whole host of options and locations but in the interest of being near to a safe area I would suggest a graveyard.
Brit graveyard is good…. Once the Halloween events are don’t the toughest creature you will face will be a shade and there is a guard zone within 2 screens. Another interesting feature is the way the entrance is configured. To the left of the gate there is an area where you can stand in the corner on the outside and attack the monsters through the fence, this is not an exploit or anything as there is still access to you through the gate but the AI just tries to use the most direct route to you, you can still take damage but if you move a step to the left you can heal then step back to the right and you are in combat again. Easy!. You will still have to walk around to collect your loot but by doing this it stops you being surrounded. You wont gain a great deal of skill here but it will allow you to build up a little gold and cobble together a few armour pieces / jewellery and another wep. You will be surprised how much gold you can get together bashing skeletons, zombies, ghouls and shades. The shades will also be a reasonably safe source of early resist gains, you will also be able to make some headway in to training chiv. Initially close wounds and consecrate weapon will take you to around 50 skill and you will be gaining parry all the while. Pick up all the necro regs and magery regs you see also. Anything they have that may be of use pick up. I picked up everything. If you plan on training Imbuing take everything with magical properties for unravelling. Take any bones and cut them up with scissors and stock pile them, someone will want to buy them. Take the cure potions, refresh pots and use the str and dex pots as you go along. Also the heal potions can come in handy in a tight spot. Basically you can’t be picky at this stage. Anything and everything will have value at some stage. See that shirt? Cuts in to cloth, cloth can be sold or stored up in your bank for if you ever decide to train a tailor or run a ship.
Once you are able to heal with close wounds reliably and have a basic set of armour its probably time to be moving on. You should have a good few thousand gold in your bank and a bunch of bone and a bag of junk magical items in your bank box along with a few stacks of regs for magery and necromancy.. Pick through them all, anything that is superior to your gear gets swapped out. Any jewellery that has the bushido skill on also gets saved for later.. you are looking for a ring/brace combo that gives 25 skill… If you are going to work on imbue then stone it off later head to the royal city and use the public souleforge and unravel the bag of magic junk and watch the gains fly! You will get a few magical residue possibley essence depending on your skill/ If you are not planning on working imbue yourself you can do one of 2 things with the junk magic items, ask in general chat if someone with the imbue skill will unravel them for you or drop them in the trash can for the turn in points…. Again, you will be surprised how quickly 30-40 points a pop will add up. If someone unravels for you store the residue/essence until you have piles of 500 then offer to sell in general chat
Ok so by this stage you will probably be around 55-60 swords and tactics and around 50 parry/chiv – good going so far.. I would hope you will have around 15-20k in your bank box, if not more (depending on how much you have been tithing) and be ready for the next stage.
This is probably as good a stage as any to do the next part and a logical step and will introduce a new dimension to your character. We are going to take parry up to 70 skill…. It will take all of about 20-30 mins and will be very easy… all you need is a buckler or 2. If you stocked up on a couple health potions bring some along but not too many. Head to Del’ moongate wearing nothing but the buckler… carrying only the bucklers a couple heal pots and a few refresh potions have a weapon with you but don’t equip it yet. This can be a blacksmith bought wep. What you need to do is firstly make sure wrestling is set to lock or drop. Run about and target as many sheep, cows, rabbits and cats as you can. Now leave combat mode and equip your sword. That’s it. They will all start whacking you, every now and then you can drink a health potion or cast close wounds to heal but basically just stand there until you hit 70 skill.
Right. Remember how I said that skill gains are different here… Here’s how it works. Siege has a system called RoT or rate over time. Unlike production shards once you hit 70 skill there is a delay between each 0.1 skill gain.
Between 70 and 79.9 there is a 5 min delay between each 0.1 gain.
Between 80 and 89.9 there is a 8 min delay between each 0.1 gain.
Between 90 and 99.9 there is a 12 min delay between each 0.1 gain
Between 100 and 120 there is a 15 min delay between each 0.1 gain.
Don’t despair… this also has its benefits. Each successful use of a given skill once the timer “resets” is a guaranteed to gain as long as you are within the gain range. An example of this is as follows. At 75 Swordsmanship you strike an earth elemental, you continue hunting, the moment the 5 min timer expires you strike an earth elemental. The earth elemental’s wrestling skill is within the range that would result in a skill gain so you automatically gain 0.1 skill. Example 2. You have 90 Necromancy skill. You cast Wither and get a 0.1 gain. 12 mins later you cast wither. You are guaranteed to gain 0.1 as the timer has reset.
OK. Sorry for the diversion but it seemed important to add it in there.
So now you have 70 parry and your first skill in RoT we need to add in Bushido. I waited until now as you wont notice a drop in gains now parry is in RoT as you will auto gain. Bushido reduces your chance to parry with a shield and you would need to parry with a 2 handed weapon and the critter hitting you would need to land a hit and you would then need to pass a parry check to get a gain… this way you avoid that.
Now you can’t actually train Bushido from 0 skill Arrrgh! But wait! Remember that bag of junk Jewellery I told you to sort through! You did sort through it and find the Jewellery right????? If not you will easily have enough gold by now to buy a ring / brace combo to get you going, check on vendor search and search bushido and find a ring / brach combo. If not ask around and Either myself or another helpful player will sort you out. You need to get to 25 skill. At this junction we may as well add necromancy to our character as well depending on your gold situation is. There are a few things that may prevent this so I will make a few recommendations at this stage. Firstly depending on how much gold you gathered get an LRC suit. Either ask in general chat or buy one from the vendors. You should pay around 20k for one at the most! You will also need a necro spell book… about 8k. if you cant afford one at this stage just hunt monsters for a little longer. Even the most basic of monsters will net you 30k in no time. You may even have a decent stack of necro regs depending how many you looted from your earlier hunting trips. You could go and buy necro regs from the NPC vendors in umbra but this could be a bit more of a gold sink in the long run as you will want to be casting a heck of a lot to get as many gains as possible. There is a vendor called “coco’s” just east of umbra, I’m sure there are more vendors out there but I have listed this one here as it’s the one I know! If anyone else wants to chip in with the location of their shop and the prices of there wares then PLEASE do! Heck… why not start a “Starter bundle” that has a basic suit and selection of weapons to buy? . Anyhow, wherever you buy your LRC suit get it equipped.
So from here we will now assume a few things… you have 25 skill from jewellery in bushido. Initially you don’t need to head back out in to the wild. You can stay in a safe place and do a little training if you desire. Now the main thing that held me back at this stage was that I had no way to regain mana other than the mana leech on my wep… you might have a few items left over in your bank box that have a bit of LRC and MR on there that will give you a little recovery and you will have JoaT focus and Med but for the most part it will take forever to regain in this way. At the same time you will be feeling a little vulnerable having just dropped a hefty chunk of your gold into the suit and not want to risk losing it… decisions, decisions… Come on dude/dudette! This is Siege! Grab adventure by the horns and get out there! So long as you have a weapon you can get back in the game so I would use that wonderful siege bless on your blade, unless you have a stockpile of them and have supplemented your suit with a looted armour piece then bless that… by now you should have an idea of the one bit of kit you don’t want to lose. Also by this stage you should be doing a bit of a pre session check list. So lets run through… scissors.. check, empty bag, check. Looted potions if required (but not too many as you will be picking more up) check. Right… off we go.
I will do a quick run through here of what to fight / cast and when and then do a write up below of how to put it in to practice in the game. There are probably a hundred differing ways to do this and as I said before I don’t want to put a bunch of locations on here or paint a target on your back so this is just one possible method for each way so if anyone has other idea’s please chime in and suggest them.
Melee skills.
50-60 skeletons, zombies or Lizard men – Lizard men can be found in many locations and not only do they have a little gold but when skinned they provide a steady supply of spined leather for you to stockpile then sell.
60-70 Ettins, Trolls and Ogres – again, can be found in many locations – one on one will not be an issue but can become more of a problem in larger numbers so try draw them off one at a time.
70-110 Earth Elementals – hit a little harder but drop a little more gold than ettins and also gems and small ore. The gems will be in demand from anyone who uses imbuing (possibly even you) If you have a giant beetle then take the ore. eventually get someone to smelt it for you or keep it in your bank for if you ever take up mining… free ingots. They will sell or you could sell the ore.
110-120 I am not at this stage yet but previously I have used either Ogrelords or Troglodytes in the Painted Caves, they both give good loot and while the ogrelords hit hard you will be dealing decent damage and leeching nice HP by then so will not have an issue with them. The trogs don’t hit as hard but the spawn rate is a bit tougher to deal with but cross this bridge when you get there. Another viable option here would be to work the ratmen mini champs in the abyss. You will be kicking out enough damage to deal with the spawn by then and although there are a lot of creatures there you will be doing enough whirlwind damage to keep yourself alive. The champs don’t hit so hard and so long as you have a repond / vermin slayer you won’t have an ussue.
Bushido.
Using the Jewellery to get you to 25 skill cast confidence until you reach 40 skill, drop one of the Jewels (+15) and cast confidence until you can then reach 50 skill by re adding on the jewellery .. Once you can hit 50 skill with the jewellery and can cast lightening strike. Cast lightening strike until you are at 50 real skill then drop the jewellery. LS will take you all the way to 110, evasion will take you to 120!
Necromancy.
Curse Weapon from 0 – 30
Wraith form from 30 to around 55
Horrific Beast from 55 to 70 -75 – Yuk!
Wither should then take you all the way to GM as you will be in RoT from 70
Chiv
Close Wounds 0 – 30
Consecrate wep 30 – 45
Divine fury 45 – 60
60 – 70 enemy of One
70 – 80 Holy Light – Goal reached!
OK that might seem like a lot to take in there but the butt load of text coming up will put it in to some form of order (I hope). So picking up where we left off we will assume you are between 55 – 60 skill so we will be heading out looking for lizard men. There are numerous locations and many resources online that will tell you where to find them. Feel free to PM me and I will tell you the locations but like I said, public shout outs might be bad for your healthbar. I would set up a couple of macros here. You are going to be working a few skills at once or you could focus on them one at a time, its up to you but either way a macro will help. Hit Alt + O, go to the bottom left tab and then press “add” select the button you want to associate with the spell you want… lets start with confidence. And set it to say… action, cast spell, confidence, apply. Then add again. Select F3, action, cast spell, curse Weapon, apply. While you are running to wherever you are going to hunt Lizard men alternate between confidence and curse weapon. Confidence will replenishes health and stamina over time but will stop if you are hit. It will also potentially give health and stam each time you parry. Curse weapon will grant you 50% life leach while you have a melee weapon equipped for a short time. Both are handy and are the first step on the training journey. Depending on where your stats are you will run out of mana quickly so just cast when you can while you are heading off to hunt. When you reach your destination get ready to jump in. Keep an eye on your mana, you always want enough left to cast close wounds so look at your spell books and learn the mana costs of the spells. Both of the initial spells you are using have the added benefit of healing you so it’s a bonus at this stage. You are going to be wanting to mix in divine fury while hunting the lizard men and making sure you are looting everything that may be of value. Make sure that you have the Chiv spell “dispel evil” as an icon, if not a macro. It’s a very good spell to use when training. It will stop you from getting surrounded. While its main effect is karma based it basically causes monsters to run away from you. It can also dispel summoned creatures or dispel “necromancer forms” depending on the fame/karma of the target. It’s a very underrated ability.
Make sure you make regular trips to the bank, if this become tiresome then check the vendor search or ask in chat and buy a bag of sending so at the very least you can send your gold back to the bank. You would only have to make a trip bac to drop off your bag of items every now and then.
Once you get to 60-65 skill move on to ettins, these are easy to kill and drop around 125-145 gold and a magic item or 2. These range from pathetic to reasonable in quality. I have looted Items from ettins that I have equipped. Bag it all up, sort through it later. I hunt these in Ilsh. If hunting in ilsh the paragons may be more of a challenge but if you are mounted you could always run away. By now your necromancy should be up to 30 and with a bit of luck your bushido (with jewellery) will be 50. Time to pop your mount in the stable. Wraith form is next on the list along with lightening strike.. you can either make new macros or change the ones you made. Wraith from grants you 100% mana leech and lightening strike gives a massive hit chance increase with a chance to deliver a critical hit. You should pop in and out of wraith form until an ettin spawns, then remain in wraith form and spam LS until it dies. Each hit will replenish your mana. Then rinse and repeat. Keep an eye on your real skill for bushido. As soon as it hits 50 you need to start honouring everything you kill so you can benefit from the perfection system. Each step will grant a small damage increase and once you achieve perfection you will gain a boost to luck also. The other benefit to the addition of lightening strike is when used in conjunction with curse weapon it becomes a valuable source of healing. Pop curse weapon then hit LS and you can get your life leech with an added hit chance success, add in confidence and close wounds and your at full health before you know it. The quicker you can get your real skill to 50 the better as you will most likely be finding a few better items by now and a few useable jewellery sets from your hunting trips. Look out for anything that has SSI and HCI/DCI. Other useful stats are +HP, +Stam and +MANA, same goes for armour but keep in mind that you want to try and retain your LRC. In this stage I would bag up as many items as you can that are casting focussed… I.E. +mana, LMC, LRC, MR don’t worry about resists. all will be revealed. It shouldn’t take you long to progress to 70 wep skill and enter in to RoT for swords , tactics ,bushido and parry will have been climbing. Necro will have taken a bit of a back burner.
Now although I used a mythic token I have still taken all these steps to raise tactics and I didn’t have much starting gold either. I made a lot of gold killing ettins… I’m talking a couple hundred k at the cyclopse valley. They drop quickly, they spawn fast and it builds up before you know it. Killing ettins has got me a house… a few LRC suits (just in case) a soulforge and a bit of fall back gold in my bank box. That’s one of the best things about siege for me. On GL I have hundreds of millions of gold and it means nothing… here I have the most basic of gear and less than 200k and I feel like I am actually achieving something… that’s how I always remember feeling playing the game.
The next stage is annoying …… Back to necro training. Iin horrific beast form you cant cast any spells apart from transformation spells …… it hamstrings everything! Remember how I said to stockpile the casting gear… here is where it comes in. this next bit will be a bit boring. It won’t take long but we need to get through it… we need to get from 55 to 70 using horrific beast. Horrific beast prevents you from using certain abilities and is generally a pain in the butt so just get dressed in all the casting stuff you can and have at it. Pop in and out of the form as many times as you can. You could continue to fight as you do it just going in and out of horrific beast but it would still take the same time I guess. I personally at this stage would be looking at my bank balance… seeing how much gold I had and looking on the vendor search for an alacrity scroll. If you can cover the cost it will speed things up a lot but its up to you. It still wont take long and you can do it in sections to break it up , hunt, come back. Do a little more. To tie it in to your rot gains. Spam beast. As I mentioned you should now be in to RoT and move on to earth elementals. Run and hit an earth elemental with a lightening strike. Run out spam beast. Run back in. something like that. The main thing is that you get past this stage. Horrific beast can be a decent form to hunt in as it grants you awesome HP regain but the restrictions are just too much for me personally. However you decide to work through it… do.
By now pretty much all of your primary skills are going to have hit the RoT stage and things slow down a bit. You will continue your journey much the same way as previously mentioned, there is now going to be a 5 min gap between each gain so you be having a bit more focus on the hunting and a little less focus on the training, you will be able to use the blue skill gains and the clock on your PC to keep an eye on the 5 min gaps between gains and perhaps tie in your bank runs with right after you gain so by the time you get back you gain as soon as you enter a fight. You should continue to gather items and gold and replace your gear as you go as you are still progressing towards that magical 99 skill in necromancy!
You can use the information in the skills section above to give you an idea of what to fight or you can check online for monsters that are within 20 points of your weapon skill range for gains. We have neglected resist up until this stage. This because resist is super easy to train up to RoT level. You want to get targeted by as many casting monsters that don’t use “serious” direct damage spells… basically you want to be getting debuffed and poisoned buy stuff like shades and spectres… you will find 4-5 of these in brit graveyard. You can run around the grave yard and target them all. Lure them down to the gate then run out and around until you are on the other side of the fence and just let them cast at you. They will just keep casting and casting… they will drop the odd fireball and lightening on you but nothing you can’t heal. You will be in RoT before you know it. There are other graveyards and other critters… this is just a suggestion. Any weak spell caster will do the trick. If you make a few friends or join a guild you could have a few guild mates just spam curse or weaken on you over and over and this would work also.
As Soon as you get to 99 necromancy you become a “Sampire” with the combination of samurai and Vampire. Cast until you succeed in entering vampire form by using the spell vampiric umbrace… this will grant you immunity to low level poison and give you the ability to leech back life through the melee damage you deal. You can no longer consume anything containing garlic, you are less resistant to fire and you look a little pale but you are now a powerful melee character. We will assume that your other skills have progressed in line with this and I will direct you in the right direction in regards to the gear to use but as with anything in UO there is no hard and fast rule so feel free to experiment.
Now if you have worked imbue yourself or if you are getting someone to make the suits you will still want the same thing roughly. A suit that has enough fire resistance to factor in the drop from vampiric embrace and 70 in all resists. Then the remaining imbues should be as follows 4 HP increase 7 MANA increase 7 STAM increase 4 LMC. And there will have been 1 resist imbue.. That’s it. No frills… no bells, no whistles… you want the suit to be barbed studded leather. There is no head piece so you can use an artefact quality looted armour piece for the head piece, this can either be bought or by now you will be able to hunt tougher critters that will drop these. For your weapon you don’t need a super weapon either. Depending on what you are hunting you may want to have a slayer but the bare minimum you want on there is SSi and Hit Mana Leech, both of these want to be just below the point where they cost “big resources” that way the cost is reduced. As for Jewellery, you shouldn’t be needing any skills on here now so a flat 13 in HCI/DCI and Damage increase would be the primary stats to go for. You could add on STR and DEX or possibly INT if you are lacking mana but if you are wanting to keep the costs down the 3 primary are the way to go. You should also Aim to get the swordsmanship mastery primer as soon as you hit go skill. The passive “warriors gift” gives you an additional 5 HCI and DCI which will give you a total of 31 each. This will be more than enough. The reason I suggested Di on the ring/brace is the life you leech is dependant on the damage you deal so the more damage you can put out the better. You will have 40 on your weapon so the closer you can get to 100 the better. You will always want to be in the thick of the fighting and will generally want to carry a couple of weapons. One of which will pretty much need to have whirlwind on it. This is by FAR the best way to keep your mana and health at max. You want to be surrounded by enemies and spamming whirlwind whenever possible. You can display the corpse bars of all slain enemies by pressing ctrl and shift, once you open a corpse close the bar and loot them all. Then move one and do the same, your second weapon should generally have armour ignore… this will be used for tougher single target enemies like spawn champions for example and will be used to spam armour ignore. Take barracoon for example. You have worked through the spawn with a double axe, barracoon pops, you honour him, cast enemy of one and hit him with armour ignore over and over, as you are doing such high damage you should always be leeching back enough mana to perform the special move, if he spawns a group of rats switch back to the double axe and whirlwind them, then back to the second weapon, I use a broadsword but others prefer a bladed staff. The key thing is that you must be constantly dealing damage and as much of it as possible… not you may have noticed that LRC is no longer a thing…. If you want to use necro spells, and they will come in handy you are either going to have to use regs or stock up on arcane clothes. I would say a bag of regs is the way to go. The arcane clothes are handy as a last resort but if you are relying on necro spells and they turn white you are stuck! If you have a bag of regs and a pair of arcane boots in your pack you can always equip the boots and know how many charges you have left.
Experiment with different combinations of necro spells to boost your damage output now you can stand up to tougher creatures… Pop a corpse skin on a monster and then hit consecrate weapon, this will lower the fire resist then make you deal your damage to the fire resistance…. Add in enemy of one when there is only one type of monster for a 50% damage boost and in conjunction with a critical hit produce some wonderful damage. I know I am going a lot of information but exploration and experimentation should still be a part of your journey… read the description of the spells in the spell book and play around with things…. Want to know what happens if you drop blood oath on an ettin?? Try it… wonder what happens if you cast evil omen before you dump a pain spike on an earth elemental? Go ahead… by doing this you will have more of a feel for the skills at your disposal rather than just relying on the few basic abilities that I have mentioned will help keep you alive. I try to find as much use for every skill I can… they are there after all… if you are in an area where there is heavy spawn those couple of bone knights you animate from corpses might just ease the pressure a little by killing a couple of monsters for you.
You should, by now, have a scavengers mind set, there is nothing wrong with this. This server is designed to be harder than a production shard… and it is. It might take you longer to get items together… trust me, it takes seconds to lose them, not just to players, if you die in a heavy spawn area and just can’t get back to your body you will still lose your gear. This is one of the elements of siege that I like the most. You will end up getting some good armour pieces, you might end up with enough to make a suit full of them… you wont though… you will make several suits built around one of each of the pieces.
I know I have gone on, and on…. And on…. but I have still only really scratched the surface here… There is a massive, diverse and thrilling world out there just waiting for an adventurer with enough courage and determination to experience it at its fullest….. I’m looking at you!
By the way… thanks for the welcome Siege!
My journey continues, yours is just about to begin.
With love …………. Mumm-Ra.
