After more than 10 years: this is my first treasure hunting/fishing experience

[Layla Ambers]

Hello!

I am a returning player that has been away for more than 10 years. One of my favorite things to do in Ultima Online was digging up treasure chests.

My treasure hunter is 7 x GM and has music, provocation, magery, meditation, eval int, cartography and lockpicking - from ~ 2002. I need to change a few things, obviously.

I still had some old lvl 1 maps (~2002) that I completed to shake off some rust before trying to do some higher level maps. I used a rune library to get to the spot, dug up the chest and nearly got killed by headless ones, skeletons and mongbats. I was caught completely off-guard. Never would I have expected the initial spawn to be that strong. Back in the day I used to just stand there, loot the chest and recall out - at least that's how I remember it. My gear is also still from ~ 2002, which I didn't know at that time, would have such an immense impact.

After 3 old lvl 1 maps, I decided not to do any higher levels.

So I tried fishing. My fisher has GM fishing, alchemy, cooking, item id, magery, meditation and eval int. After a few minutes I pulled up a sea serpent. And again I almost died. The serpent spammed magic arrow and interrupted me every single time. Having zero resist isn't a good idea. Noted. With item id being completely useless, I decided to drop it for resist. With ~ 45 resist now, sea serpents aren't a problem any more. I remember sea serpents not being that annoying.

Learned two valuable uo-lessons that day.

1) my old chars/templates - as they are now - are completely useless
2) I REALLY question the accuracy of my memory... am I getting old?

Anyways.

Through fishing I got quite a lot new lvl 1 maps, so I gave treasure hunting a new chance - I also got a few nice pieces of gear from doing some mibs.

I decoded the map and it pointed me to Moonglow. My treasure hunter not having any mining, finding the spot was impossible. After 30 minutes I finally gave up. Clicking the map to select the "dig for treasure" option every single time is pretty annoying. After dropping meditation for mining, I had 81 mining (71 + jacobs pickaxe) and tried again. I went back to Moonglow and started to dig for the treasure. Another 30 minutes passed. I took a screenshot, zoomed in and tried to locate the spot - still nothing. Another 30 minutes passed and I started to get a little bit annoyed.

After some more screenshots, map-tilting, zooming, overlaying the uoam map and the tmap in photoshop, twisting my head to the side and cursing, I was sure that I was digging at the right spot. It was an obvious spot, right under the SW npc-house on the island. Still nothing.

I play with the CC and thought that maybe the EC would make any difference. It did, the pin was about half+ screen away from the pin in the CC. So the procedure above was repeated. Another 30 minutes passed, still nothing. I got a little bit (game) angry.
I ran a half screen away and randomly clicked the ground... *dig* *dig* *dig*.

The whole process took about 3 hours.

So I tried another map. Pin pointed me to Jhelom. Right inside a house. Nice.
Dug for 5 minutes but didn't find the spot. Used EC and the pin was about a half screen away. Dug again. Nothing. Went a few steps east, just as I did with the first map, *dig *dig *dig*

* The CC pin is completely off
* The EC pin is a little off

Here is a link to an imgur-album with some screen shots of the 2nd map (EC/CC map view; zoomed in with photoshop and the actual location): http://imgur.com/a/vmcZN

Doing level 1 maps with at this rate is a waste of time. The second one just took 5 minutes, but I can't imagine "playing that game" in a (high) spawn area like serpent's hold. I find that mobs do respawn really fast.


I really enjoy playing UO after all that years. On the first day of my return I found a really nice keep spot in fel on catskills. This was like a little dream coming true and I always wanted a keep when I still played uo. So much has changed, and so much is still to learn. I didn't think that it would be that hard to "get in the game again". I didn't see much else than fishing and some thunting yet. I am under-geared and under-skilled and have no idea what to do/change with my other chars (2 accounts). But I see it as a good thing, I still have so much stuff to explore.

Thanks for reading and please excuse any mistakes, it's 1:30 am here and I am really tired.

tl;dr - I just wanted to say "hi" and share my first uo impressions after more than 10 years.

Screens from the 2nd map: http://imgur.com/a/vmcZN

- Greetings from Austria (Europe), Layla

 

[startle]

Welcome back to the wonderful, wacky world of UO, Layla !
What shard are you playing?

 

[Basara]

The chests got a boost - and the old 200-spot T/F only system got replaced by an all-facet random system.

Mining has become much more important than before, especially with the CC location bug.

The CC location bug is that some (not all) people are having the maps show up about a screen off. That one under a house probably wasn't, but who knows?

The solution to the location bug is to first make sure you have 80 or better mining. The Soulstones added to the game while you were gone will allow you to trade out mining and one of the other two skills (as long as you are the only person that ever decoded the map, you can take Cartography off after decoding a set of maps, and have just LP and mining for the dig).

Then, when you find the spot where the map says the chest SHOULD be, drop a bandage on the ground, and start digging a spiral out. Eventually, you'll find the chest. As most of your chests, due to the bug, will be the same distance and direction from where the map says it should be, so make note of how far you are from where the map indicates, and start digging every map offset by that distance and direction.

Personally, I'm finding my maps about 1 screen width east of where the map says (you look to be about the same). It MAY be a factor of where many of us move the screen from its position in the extreme upper left position, as moving it also messes up house placement tools. Or it could be completely different.

 

[popps]

Welcome back to Ultima Online !! The greatest game there is !

To better find treasure Maps, look at this thread http://stratics.com/community/threads/cant-seem-to-find-treasure.296372/ . In a few posts there you can find some usefull links to better find treasures' locations.

Another thing which might help, is a new Veteran Reward, the Davies' Locker Table, which is an 8th Year Veteran Reward. But I imagine all accounts can use, also if not yet 8 years. Once you decode a Map and put it in the Table, it will show the actual cohordinates of where the treasure is located. Which is great if you have several Maps because you can group them by the same location cohordinates, grab them and go do them !

If your account is an old one, check out all your bank boxes and characters backpacks, you may still have some old items which are now rares like Anniversary items from those years, practice items and similar which may be worth tens upon tens of millions of UO gold today and will help you get nice game gold to get restarted with new equipment or stuff you may need now.

If you let us know what shard you are playing there may be other players able to help you out get restarted in the game !

Good to see you back in UO !

 

[DerekL]

2) I REALLY question the accuracy of my memory... am I getting old?

Yes.

Doing level 1 maps with at this rate is a waste of time

Practice makes perfect. You're essentially a well kitted out new player - it'll take more than a day to master the game.

 

[Krinkle]

I really enjoy playing UO after all that years. On the first day of my return I found a really nice keep spot in fel on catskills.

Welcome home!

For better gear, take a look at the skill Imbuing
http://uo2.stratics.com/skill-guides/skills-and-professions/imbuing
and Reforging
http://uo2.stratics.com/items/runic-re-forging

If you have the Stygian Abyss expansion, then you can get Imbuing ingredients from the denizens of that foul den of evil.

If crafting isn't your thing, then make your way to Dungeon Shame. The denizens have newer armor that you can acquire. Wrong, Exodus and Despise have the newer style gear, but Shame can accommodate all styles of play depending on the level of dungeon you explore. You can unravel the magic items with the Imbuing skill to get some basic ingredients for making magic items.

I play on Catskills, so if you only wish to Fish and Treasure Hunt, I can Imbue some current armor for you, if you like.

I don't like recommending skills to people because that really depends on play-style. However, if you wish to eventually complete level 6-7 treasure maps, and do not wish to give yourself a headache, you will need something a bit more powerful than Energy Vortexes to kill the Guardians. Might I suggest the two easiest (currently) Mysticism
http://uo2.stratics.com/skill-guides/skills-and-professions/mysticism
for the summoning spell Rising Colossus or Animal Taming for Greater Dragon. I don't mean they are easy to train, just that they can make the Treasure Hunting experience not take all day to complete one map. If you decide to go this route and need a spellbook, PM me here and I can get you one in game. Some of the books can be painful to acquire (Spellweaving, although Mysticism can be annoying to track down a full book as well).

Another thing, Bard Masteries. Since you have a bard, most new and returning people don't know about this extra ability that you can get in addition to your bard skill.
http://uo2.stratics.com/skill-guides/skills-and-professions/musicianship/bard-mastery
These compliment your particular Bard Skill and you can acquire one at 90 skill by completing a quest at the Britain Bard School.

 

[Adol]

Every 30 days now, the maps will re-randomize, so if you get one that seems impossible to solve you can just wait until it becomes Tattered again.

Regarding the pin location, the target isn't where the red head of the pin is, but where the pin pierces the map in EC. If you use the Pinco UI it's been replaced with a big red cross centred on the spot (but which blocks the view of the nearby details out, bah)

 

[DreadLord Lestat]

If you use the EC you can set a macro to dig for a map to make life a lot easier.
1. Create a Macro and drop the treasure map into the open macro box.
2. Right click the map so you get a targeting option and the choose stored.
3. A targeting cursor will appear and target your decoded map that you want to dig up.
4. Save Macro.
5. Drag Macro to bar or set a hotkey (right click on macro tile and choose set hotkey)
6. Dig up treasure. Every time you click on the macro tile on the bar or use the hotkey it will give you a targeting cursor for you to dig with. It makes life so much easier.

As far as mining goes on your treasure hunter. Get yourself uocartographer and use EC. Once you have enlarged the treasure map enlarged, you can zoom in with uocartgrapher can compare landmarks. My treasure hunter has zero mining though he is human so he has the automatic 20 from the human benefit of Jack of all Trades. Most times it takes me less than 1 minute of digging with the macro to find the treasure spot. I think the longest one which was almost on a road took me 5 minutes. I personally find that once you get the hang of it, mining is a waste of time but that is my opinion and I have not needed mining.

You can get uocartographer here: http://stratics.com/community/threads/uoam-uocartographer-ec-tips-sa-map-links-and-uoth-here.186189/
You can find a lot of help on setting it up here: http://stratics.com/community/threads/uocartographer-black-screen-fix.294639/

The op for the second link has a website for uocartographer but I have not been to his site and can not vouch for it so I posted the stratics download link for uocartgrapher. Both links that I posted are for Stratics only.

Resist on your fisherman is not really needed once you get a all 70's resist suit. You can usually get them from 100k and up with all 70's resist and 100% lrc but I am not familiar with Cats as I have not played there since 2003. You should also invest in a slayer spellbook. I use a reptile slayer spellbook and 2 shot sea serpents and 4-5 shot deep sea sertpents using ebolts with gm magery and eval. If you cast protection, you will lose some of your overall resists but you rarely be interrupted casting on the sea serpents.

There are a lot of different viewpoints on mining for treasure hunters and resist for fisherman and these are my opinions. I do 10-25 maps a week and usually spend a few hours fishing up MIB's and then doing the SOS every week so I practice what I preach. I hope this helps and if you play Chessy at all I would be glad to take you on a few maps and show you what I do. If I get a chance, might try and make a video of how I find the spot and dig it up.