I
I Am The Night
Guest
I would like to take a few minutes to answer some VERY frequently asked questions in the Assassins Forum. I know this will lower our post count to about 1 per week but I'm sorry, I just get tired of seeing ppl as the same 3 questions over and over and over.
HIDING:
Hiding is a movement based skill. In order to raise this skill, you need to move around. ALOT. An idea for raising this skill quickly is to set your spacebar to "useskill: hiding". This annoying tactic will let you use the macro whenever you speak to someone. If you travel quite a bit and use Ultima Online as a chatroom, this is the way to go for you! another similar way to raise this skill is to use it in combination with other skills; for example if you are training fighting, add a "hide" in between swings
The quickest way to raise hiding is to use the well-documented 8x8 boat training method. This skill raises quite well with 8x8, and some even just set thier boats to "slow forward" and proceed to do something else... while sitting in front of thier computers of course!
These 2 ways are really the only 2 viable ways to raise hiding, depending on your viewpoint of 8x8. If you consider it cheating, then use the spacebar macro, but dont expect to GM hiding anytime this year with this trick!
A small extra point to hiding: at GM, and only GM, you can hide from an aggressor without breaking line of sight. At any other skill lvl, you will need to at least run around a corner to hide form your attacker. This is a HUGE reason to GM hide if you are going to use it for anything but emergency pvp escapes inside housing areas.
STEALTH:
To even be able to use stealth, you need 80 hiding. Stealth is both movement based, which means ALOT of moving, and difficulty based, which in this case means you need to wear more and more armor before you can advance pass a certian lvl. To train this skill, first get your hiding to 80.0.
Gaining Stealth - Post Pub 16 (Thanks Lord Lythande)
The following method seems to the most successful way to gm stealth:
0-30 Buy from Thief Guildmaster
30-65 Stealth with only newbie clothes and a robe on
65-95 GM Full Studded Leather Suit
95-GM GM Full Studded Leather Suit and GM Close Helm
As of pub16 you can only gain in any skill if you succeed. Wearing the afore mentioned articles seems to give the best success/fail rates then other armor types.
The best way to gain stealth is by using the 8x8 method. Start your stealthing right after you hit 80 hiding. You can wait till you GM hiding, but from what I have seen and what others have said, if you start training stealth with 80 hiding then both should gm about the same time. When you use your stealth skill, both Hiding and Stealth are checked. You must pass both checks in order to be successful in your stealth attempt. This is the reason that hiding and stealth should gm about the same time. While actively working stealth, you will get passive hiding gains because of the skill checks.
You MUST have your hiding skill at least 80 or higher to be able to stealth. If you drop hiding at any time and it falls below 80, you will be unable to stealth. If you attempt to stealth with hiding below 80 you will get the message 'You are not hidden well enough. Become better at hiding'. This was tested on Test Center to see if it could be done.
Be prepared for a long haul to gm stealth. The gains are slow after your skill is around 70-80. I didn't notice any walls while training stealth, just that gains did come slow but they did come.
Succeeding Stealth
To succeed at stealth when you are around people, OSI has a base formula for figuring this out. The formula is as follows:
<font color=red>Stealth + Dexterity / 2 VS. Intelligence + Detect Hidden / 2 </font color=red>
There are alot of other factors that go into this formula such as: armor worn, how many people you try to stealth by, if you are in front of them, just to name some I have found myself. Stealth is not checked against another player unless you are within 2 tiles of them. As long as you remain 3 tiles or more away from anyone only your hiding/stealth is checked to see if you succeed. Thus when stealthing around alot of people your chance to be auto revealed increases.
Your stealth skill determines how many steps you can take. For every 10 points of stealth, you can take 1 step. Thus at 30 skill you can take 3 steps, 40 skill - 4 steps, and so on up to 10 steps at GM.
Being Revealed
The follow are some of the ways you will be auto revealed or unhidden:
1- Failing your stealth check will unhide you
2- Crossing server lines will unhide you
3- If someone steps on you they will get the message 'You shove something invisible out of the way'
4- If you step on another play, you will be revealed (stepping on animals will NOT reveal you)
5- Being in the area affect of the Reveal spell will reveal you
NOTE: Anyone that has the Tracking skill of at least 20.1 CAN track you even while you are stealthing around. Be wary of PKs and Assassins that use tracking in their templates.
Thanks Velglarn! In conclusion, it is not the AR, but the TYPE of armor pieces you are wearing.
Training stealth without 8x8 is possible, but very tedious! Stealth will FLY if you 8x8 it to at least 80. Also, while training stealth, you will get intermittent hiding gains. The skill passively checks hiding everytime it is activiated, in addititon to the fact that you need to be hidden in order to stealth! Exact armor to skill level allowed can be found on the main Stratics page under Stealth, and at the UO Thief forum.
***NOTE that it is the type of armor that matters, not the AR. This means work up from light armor, like leather, to heavy armor, like chain.
GMing stealth will take twice as long as hiding, as there is a horrible skill delay built into stealth (10 seconds). You must hide, BE SUCESSFUL, and then wait 10 more seconds before you can even attempt to stealth.
Tip (Corran Horn and Goodguy): While hidden, and you hit your stealth macro, equiping your weapon will resest the step counter and your next step will reveal you! Either keep your weapon on you before you hit stealth macro or after all your steps.
POISONING:
Poisoning is a target based skill. This means you never need to move around to GM. You will need, however, ALOT of targets to poison. Also, this skill is the single biggest resource waster in the game. Be prepared to either camp the reg shops for a few weeks, or have a steady supplier of GP, and later DP kegs.
When poisoning, also make sure to watch your "show real" skill, as not knowing exactly when you gain will utterly ruin you. It is heavily DEX based too, which means as you get higher and higher, you will see more and more "show real" only gains as that DEX is fazed out.
The key to poisoning is that you cannot poison a target, not gain and poison the target again for skill gain. Which means, if you have 25 daggers you are poisoning, and poison them all without a gain, you need to find more targets before you can re-poison those for skill gain. This becomes VERY annoying as you get above 80 and begin to hit "skill walls", which are places where you will need to poison 5-10x the normal amount of targets to get a single .1 gain. The standard way to begin poisoning is to get 5 backpacks. Fill each one of these bags with 24 targets, either weapons or fish steaks or whatever you think will let you gain the fastest. This will give you exactly 125 items, which you can then throw into a secure container. Alot of ppl believe that it is neccessary to "refresh" your targets every so often, but I personally used the same targets since 80 and had no problems. Keep a pile of fishsteaks (250 or so) around just in case too, as hitting the "skill wall" at 90+ can require several hundred targets to "break" through, which is pitifully less then your 120 targets your working with now.
Another big question is when to switch from GP to DP. This is a horrible question to deal with! It will wrestle in your soul the entire time through the 90's. Ppl say its possible to GM, or get DAMN close, on GP, and depending on your patience and bank account, GP might be the way to go. For those ppl that DO use DP, I would recomend switching at 95 "show real". a keg of DP will run you no less then 4000 shade to make with a GM alchmest. Going rate seems to be 25-40k for a keg on my shard, Atlantic.
As an end note, there is no "real" benefit to GMing posion. Your weapon corrodes ALOT less, but it still corrodes. Your chance to poison is the person who applied the poison's skill /4 so at GM its 25%, at 80 is 20%. Still, some report poisoning thier victims MUCH more at GM then at 80. 80, btw, is the minimum skill to be able to poison a target with 100% chance.
-----------------
A great tip from ffbooks to raise poisoning if you have the alchemy skill:
The new crafting menus allow you to train any crafting skill and "blue button click" skill (hiding, poisoning, stealing etc) simultaneously:
-Set up a macro to perform the blue-clicky skill multiple times (e.g. a macro to poison 40 daggers).
-Start the macro
-Double click the crafting tool, and craft away!
You will continue to train poisoning in the background, but still be making the craft item in the foreground
At GM Alchemy, you can make ay poison potion- including DP- at a faster rate than the quickest UOA poisoning macro (delay 11,000) that I can run on my connection. This means that if I have 10 empty bottles in my pack I can keep them filled with DP, as well as using them to train poisoning simultaneously, without using any kegs. (I use ten, rather than just one, for those bad runs where I fail to make a potion ten times in succession).
Main Advantages:
1) No time wasted in making/buying kegs before PH
2) No time wasted pouring potions into empty bottles
Thanks ffbooks!
--------------
I am the Darkness, the Fear, the Evil.
I am He Who Lurks just out of reach of the Light.
I am the Bringer of Cowardice, Panic, Chaos.
I Am The Night.
--Created by I Am The Night, maintained by Fenwick
HIDING:
Hiding is a movement based skill. In order to raise this skill, you need to move around. ALOT. An idea for raising this skill quickly is to set your spacebar to "useskill: hiding". This annoying tactic will let you use the macro whenever you speak to someone. If you travel quite a bit and use Ultima Online as a chatroom, this is the way to go for you! another similar way to raise this skill is to use it in combination with other skills; for example if you are training fighting, add a "hide" in between swings
The quickest way to raise hiding is to use the well-documented 8x8 boat training method. This skill raises quite well with 8x8, and some even just set thier boats to "slow forward" and proceed to do something else... while sitting in front of thier computers of course!
These 2 ways are really the only 2 viable ways to raise hiding, depending on your viewpoint of 8x8. If you consider it cheating, then use the spacebar macro, but dont expect to GM hiding anytime this year with this trick!
A small extra point to hiding: at GM, and only GM, you can hide from an aggressor without breaking line of sight. At any other skill lvl, you will need to at least run around a corner to hide form your attacker. This is a HUGE reason to GM hide if you are going to use it for anything but emergency pvp escapes inside housing areas.
STEALTH:
To even be able to use stealth, you need 80 hiding. Stealth is both movement based, which means ALOT of moving, and difficulty based, which in this case means you need to wear more and more armor before you can advance pass a certian lvl. To train this skill, first get your hiding to 80.0.
Gaining Stealth - Post Pub 16 (Thanks Lord Lythande)
The following method seems to the most successful way to gm stealth:
0-30 Buy from Thief Guildmaster
30-65 Stealth with only newbie clothes and a robe on
65-95 GM Full Studded Leather Suit
95-GM GM Full Studded Leather Suit and GM Close Helm
As of pub16 you can only gain in any skill if you succeed. Wearing the afore mentioned articles seems to give the best success/fail rates then other armor types.
The best way to gain stealth is by using the 8x8 method. Start your stealthing right after you hit 80 hiding. You can wait till you GM hiding, but from what I have seen and what others have said, if you start training stealth with 80 hiding then both should gm about the same time. When you use your stealth skill, both Hiding and Stealth are checked. You must pass both checks in order to be successful in your stealth attempt. This is the reason that hiding and stealth should gm about the same time. While actively working stealth, you will get passive hiding gains because of the skill checks.
You MUST have your hiding skill at least 80 or higher to be able to stealth. If you drop hiding at any time and it falls below 80, you will be unable to stealth. If you attempt to stealth with hiding below 80 you will get the message 'You are not hidden well enough. Become better at hiding'. This was tested on Test Center to see if it could be done.
Be prepared for a long haul to gm stealth. The gains are slow after your skill is around 70-80. I didn't notice any walls while training stealth, just that gains did come slow but they did come.
Succeeding Stealth
To succeed at stealth when you are around people, OSI has a base formula for figuring this out. The formula is as follows:
<font color=red>Stealth + Dexterity / 2 VS. Intelligence + Detect Hidden / 2 </font color=red>
There are alot of other factors that go into this formula such as: armor worn, how many people you try to stealth by, if you are in front of them, just to name some I have found myself. Stealth is not checked against another player unless you are within 2 tiles of them. As long as you remain 3 tiles or more away from anyone only your hiding/stealth is checked to see if you succeed. Thus when stealthing around alot of people your chance to be auto revealed increases.
Your stealth skill determines how many steps you can take. For every 10 points of stealth, you can take 1 step. Thus at 30 skill you can take 3 steps, 40 skill - 4 steps, and so on up to 10 steps at GM.
Being Revealed
The follow are some of the ways you will be auto revealed or unhidden:
1- Failing your stealth check will unhide you
2- Crossing server lines will unhide you
3- If someone steps on you they will get the message 'You shove something invisible out of the way'
4- If you step on another play, you will be revealed (stepping on animals will NOT reveal you)
5- Being in the area affect of the Reveal spell will reveal you
NOTE: Anyone that has the Tracking skill of at least 20.1 CAN track you even while you are stealthing around. Be wary of PKs and Assassins that use tracking in their templates.
Thanks Velglarn! In conclusion, it is not the AR, but the TYPE of armor pieces you are wearing.
Training stealth without 8x8 is possible, but very tedious! Stealth will FLY if you 8x8 it to at least 80. Also, while training stealth, you will get intermittent hiding gains. The skill passively checks hiding everytime it is activiated, in addititon to the fact that you need to be hidden in order to stealth! Exact armor to skill level allowed can be found on the main Stratics page under Stealth, and at the UO Thief forum.
***NOTE that it is the type of armor that matters, not the AR. This means work up from light armor, like leather, to heavy armor, like chain.
GMing stealth will take twice as long as hiding, as there is a horrible skill delay built into stealth (10 seconds). You must hide, BE SUCESSFUL, and then wait 10 more seconds before you can even attempt to stealth.
Tip (Corran Horn and Goodguy): While hidden, and you hit your stealth macro, equiping your weapon will resest the step counter and your next step will reveal you! Either keep your weapon on you before you hit stealth macro or after all your steps.
POISONING:
Poisoning is a target based skill. This means you never need to move around to GM. You will need, however, ALOT of targets to poison. Also, this skill is the single biggest resource waster in the game. Be prepared to either camp the reg shops for a few weeks, or have a steady supplier of GP, and later DP kegs.
When poisoning, also make sure to watch your "show real" skill, as not knowing exactly when you gain will utterly ruin you. It is heavily DEX based too, which means as you get higher and higher, you will see more and more "show real" only gains as that DEX is fazed out.
The key to poisoning is that you cannot poison a target, not gain and poison the target again for skill gain. Which means, if you have 25 daggers you are poisoning, and poison them all without a gain, you need to find more targets before you can re-poison those for skill gain. This becomes VERY annoying as you get above 80 and begin to hit "skill walls", which are places where you will need to poison 5-10x the normal amount of targets to get a single .1 gain. The standard way to begin poisoning is to get 5 backpacks. Fill each one of these bags with 24 targets, either weapons or fish steaks or whatever you think will let you gain the fastest. This will give you exactly 125 items, which you can then throw into a secure container. Alot of ppl believe that it is neccessary to "refresh" your targets every so often, but I personally used the same targets since 80 and had no problems. Keep a pile of fishsteaks (250 or so) around just in case too, as hitting the "skill wall" at 90+ can require several hundred targets to "break" through, which is pitifully less then your 120 targets your working with now.
Another big question is when to switch from GP to DP. This is a horrible question to deal with! It will wrestle in your soul the entire time through the 90's. Ppl say its possible to GM, or get DAMN close, on GP, and depending on your patience and bank account, GP might be the way to go. For those ppl that DO use DP, I would recomend switching at 95 "show real". a keg of DP will run you no less then 4000 shade to make with a GM alchmest. Going rate seems to be 25-40k for a keg on my shard, Atlantic.
As an end note, there is no "real" benefit to GMing posion. Your weapon corrodes ALOT less, but it still corrodes. Your chance to poison is the person who applied the poison's skill /4 so at GM its 25%, at 80 is 20%. Still, some report poisoning thier victims MUCH more at GM then at 80. 80, btw, is the minimum skill to be able to poison a target with 100% chance.
-----------------
A great tip from ffbooks to raise poisoning if you have the alchemy skill:
The new crafting menus allow you to train any crafting skill and "blue button click" skill (hiding, poisoning, stealing etc) simultaneously:
-Set up a macro to perform the blue-clicky skill multiple times (e.g. a macro to poison 40 daggers).
-Start the macro
-Double click the crafting tool, and craft away!
You will continue to train poisoning in the background, but still be making the craft item in the foreground
At GM Alchemy, you can make ay poison potion- including DP- at a faster rate than the quickest UOA poisoning macro (delay 11,000) that I can run on my connection. This means that if I have 10 empty bottles in my pack I can keep them filled with DP, as well as using them to train poisoning simultaneously, without using any kegs. (I use ten, rather than just one, for those bad runs where I fail to make a potion ten times in succession).
Main Advantages:
1) No time wasted in making/buying kegs before PH
2) No time wasted pouring potions into empty bottles
Thanks ffbooks!
--------------
I am the Darkness, the Fear, the Evil.
I am He Who Lurks just out of reach of the Light.
I am the Bringer of Cowardice, Panic, Chaos.
I Am The Night.
--Created by I Am The Night, maintained by Fenwick