Former Cats roleplayer now back and looking for direction... (1997-2007)

[gnerbz]

Mostly because I need a chill game to grind in that's a big nostalgia hit (my wife is currently playing Star Wars Galaxies for the same reason), but also because I just miss playing UO and I don't want to play it unofficially... I'm taking the old car out for a spin. I still have my 78 month old account (which is a misnomer as I played from 1997-2007, though there were some breaks...). So, here I am, and when I left it was... a LOT different. I'm sure the player base has shrunk, but that's okay. I just want to see some people, build and furnish a nice house, maybe engage in light roleplay. I don't know if Cats is still good for that or if Atlantic is where it's at now? I felt like a lot of people left for Atlantic at one point toward the end of the Golden Age of RP. I was there when Shadowclan, Celts, KoY, United Pirates, and Undead still roamed. I was in the Guardians of Virtue and several others. I even ran my own guilds to some success (Blue Pigeons and Le Resistance! for example). I was a big writer of stories and arguer on the RP forums we had back in the day and I was always around for tavern night.

Do UOAssist and Automap still work?

What shard stateside is most populated?

I'm not married to Catskills as I don't have any established characters or resources - I'm starting fresh because I want the grind. I'm currently looking at returning player info as I find it to catch up on changes to the game.

 

[Tjalle]

Welcome back!

 

[Penderrin]

Wait... I can play Star Wars Galaxies again?
Goodbye UO

 

[Cyrah]

Welcome back as well.

 

[Stinky Pete]

You may be surprised that Catskills still has an RP population. Perhaps the healthiest one of all of the official shards. I for one would love to see some stories from you and I hope you find what you are looking for. Catskills also has regular Tavern nights which are posted here on Stratics monthly.

Tavern Night Rotation Schedule: February 2022

Week 1: Tuesday, February 1, 2022 at 8:30 p.m. Eastern Time: Fens Apothecary and Oddities (Phoebe Nox) Coordinates: 71.06'S, 40.38'E [1901, 2433] Trammel Week 2: Wednesday, February 9, 2022 at 8:21 p.m. Eastern Time: Que's (James) Coordinates: 27.51'S, 42.40'W [716, 1940] Trammel Week 3...

community.stratics.com

 

[Ellie]

I have a lot of books written by players from ages ago. I have a library SCB Reading Room in Vesper fel in a sandstone keep on the south side of town. Go check out some of the books you might recognize some of the names.

PS If you want to try something different try Siege. A guild called NEW can help you along and get you started. Just call for Shalimar.

Welcome back.

 

[Don Killa]

welcome back if you are looking for a guild that explores every facet of the game msg me!

 

[gnerbz]

Hey thanks for the warm welcome. While I don't plan to RP exclusively, I do want to find a rather populated shard for events (those are still a thing right?) and general shenanigans. Catskills was a little quiet last night compared to Atlantic, but maybe I was just in the wrong place. I also need to look at what skills are needed these days as when I ran a Thunter/fisher I didn't need remove trap. I see that's a thing now.

 

[Pawain]

Hey thanks for the warm welcome. While I don't plan to RP exclusively, I do want to find a rather populated shard for events (those are still a thing right?) and general shenanigans. Catskills was a little quiet last night compared to Atlantic, but maybe I was just in the wrong place. I also need to look at what skills are needed these days as when I ran a Thunter/fisher I didn't need remove trap. I see that's a thing now.

Welcome

ALL Shards have a large turnout for EM Events. I'm sure the new to you Dynamic events will be populated on any shard. We are in a holding pattern waiting on the next ones to begin sometime next month.

 

[gnerbz]

At this point, it all feels new to me. When I left back in 2007, I gave away my big plot north of Minoc and deleted my characters. I truly believed I was done. So, starting from scratch is a thing! It's quite intimidating what with new templates/meta and events and skill changes and gear changes and and and... So, I'm just trying to figure out the best way to get going again (beyond training randomly to get 3 characters built again (my main was a thief, my pvm was a thunter (where I soloed mostly 3s-4s and randomly 5s), my crafter was also GM begging, then I had an archer bard for other pvm shenanigans). All characters had options with +skill gear and LRC. My thief also had fishing, for example. I don't know the current meta, but I do know I want a similar set up.

 

[gnerbz]

You may be surprised that Catskills still has an RP population. Perhaps the healthiest one of all of the official shards. I for one would love to see some stories from you and I hope you find what you are looking for. Catskills also has regular Tavern nights which are posted here on Stratics monthly.

Tavern Night Rotation Schedule: February 2022

Week 1: Tuesday, February 1, 2022 at 8:30 p.m. Eastern Time: Fens Apothecary and Oddities (Phoebe Nox) Coordinates: 71.06'S, 40.38'E [1901, 2433] Trammel Week 2: Wednesday, February 9, 2022 at 8:21 p.m. Eastern Time: Que's (James) Coordinates: 27.51'S, 42.40'W [716, 1940] Trammel Week 3...

community.stratics.com

I'm not surprised, it was being held together by Aedon and Beleg back when I left. I disappeared from the scene awhile after KoY went through it's changes and then left. My favorite era was Abbey squatting that transitioned to Skara Brae squatting. The Hand and C^E were stirring up trouble, Celts were unintelligible, vampires were looking gloomy, Bedlam and Freehold were being mysterious, rare sightings of Winterfell and Hospitallers, Orcs and Undead invading quiet nights. Ah, memories. I'm not opposed to playing on Cats, but my RP would be limited to random interactions while playing and not focused on that being a large part of my gameplay like I did back in the day. I mainly want to look for a lively overall community, have the option to PVM with folks, collect cool stuff, and build a nice house.

 

[Barefoot Scribe]

There are several weekly player events on Cats that are PvM but not strickly RP. On Wed. at 7:30PM eastern there is a white net toss in New Magincia and the Friday Night Hunt at 8PM eastern which starts at the Yew moongate Trammel. United Pirates are still active as is GRI, another older guild. A former Shadowclan orc has recently organized the Burzuum Tribe Orcs who have a small village west of Umbra and get together on Thursday evenings at 8PM eastern for some light RP fun together. Hop into Gen. Chat or get on the Discord so that people can meet you and give you a helping hand.
These days Luna Bank is where people tend to hang out for random interactions.
Unless you are looking for a castle or a keep, there is ample space for placing a nice house, especially in Malas.

 

[Keven2002]

At this point, it all feels new to me. When I left back in 2007, I gave away my big plot north of Minoc and deleted my characters. I truly believed I was done. So, starting from scratch is a thing! It's quite intimidating what with new templates/meta and events and skill changes and gear changes and and and... So, I'm just trying to figure out the best way to get going again (beyond training randomly to get 3 characters built again (my main was a thief, my pvm was a thunter (where I soloed mostly 3s-4s and randomly 5s), my crafter was also GM begging, then I had an archer bard for other pvm shenanigans). All characters had options with +skill gear and LRC. My thief also had fishing, for example. I don't know the current meta, but I do know I want a similar set up.

Really depends on what you want to do but the end-game level templates are going to be some version of a Sampire and Tamer.

In the meantime to make money while you build your templates you could make a smith/miner to fill bods for powder of fortification which has a pretty good return.

A thief for PvM / RP is viable as there are handfuls of random artifacts all around laying on the ground to steal but those are primarily low value (as scripters will already be targeting the high dollar ones that rarely spawn - like the painting over in Doom gauntlet). I won't get on my soapbox on how thieves from a PvP sense (ie use snooping to steal from players) have been nerfed but I wouldn't recommend wasting time on that build unless you are doing it on Siege due to the fact there isn't much you can steal from people these days aside from potion/petals.

Tmap hunter can be fun in spurts but with the Tmap overhaul they did a few years ago some will argue it's not as good as it used to be. It is a good source of pink/blue scrolls which can sell for some good money but I've yet to have a legendary artifact in a chest that is better than something that could be looted from the guardians that protect the chests (ie I've seen better loot on a greater dragon protecting a Trove map than I actually got in the chest).

 

[Don Killa]

Really depends on what you want to do but the end-game level templates are going to be some version of a Sampire and Tamer.

In the meantime to make money while you build your templates you could make a smith/miner to fill bods for powder of fortification which has a pretty good return.

A thief for PvM / RP is viable as there are handfuls of random artifacts all around laying on the ground to steal but those are primarily low value (as scripters will already be targeting the high dollar ones that rarely spawn - like the painting over in Doom gauntlet). I won't get on my soapbox on how thieves from a PvP sense (ie use snooping to steal from players) have been nerfed but I wouldn't recommend wasting time on that build unless you are doing it on Siege due to the fact there isn't much you can steal from people these days aside from potion/petals.

Tmap hunter can be fun in spurts but with the Tmap overhaul they did a few years ago some will argue it's not as good as it used to be. It is a good source of pink/blue scrolls which can sell for some good money but I've yet to have a legendary artifact in a chest that is better than something that could be looted from the guardians that protect the chests (ie I've seen better loot on a greater dragon protecting a Trove map than I actually got in the chest).

you using luck for those trove maps?

 

[Keven2002]

Yikes lol... talking about Tmaps AND Luck on the forums is a little like opening pandora's box because most people will pound the drum in one way or another about it.

But yea when I've done Horde/Trove maps in the past I used a max luck suit and also a majority of my maps are in Fel so that's 4k+ luck running. That's when I make sure I check the guardian's corpses too because I've kept quite a few pieces from like ancient wyrms / greater dragons / frost dragons.

That said, the last 30-40 maps I've done I didn't use a luck suit (I played with luck statue hit or miss plus Fel bonus). At first when I didn't use the luck suit it was just laziness of transferring the suit and lack of mana on it but I saw a few decent pieces so I decided to keep going to see how it shook out.

The loot difference that I've kind of noticed is that with max luck running the legendary items would be top side # of properties (7-8 mods without factoring in resist) but they seemed diluted and only 1 maybe 2 would be max (or near max). For example I might pull something with dex/stam/int/mana/lmc/MR/SR but the values would be like 2 dex and 8 stam and 2int and 3mana and 6lmc and 3MR and 1 SR.

Compared to non-max luck I'd get legendary items that might only be 5-6 properties but many (sometimes most) would be near the max value so that same type of piece would be like dex/stam/lmc/MR/SR and would be like 4dex / 10 stam / 8lmc / 4MR / 1 SR.

Ultimately both types of loot, to me at least, aren't really worth grinding treasure maps because I can get a better property-intensity ratio killing other stuff. When I do maps now it's mainly just lower end ones (still haven't gotten the +5 carto glasses yet) and when I accumulate enough higher ones to do it's just for the pink/blues.

That said, I don't think I've done any maps with 0 luck so not sure how that would go.

Hopefully @Anon McDougle doesn't mind me taking his example from the official forum (as it relates to luck). This is kind of what I'm talking about for Tmap loot (as you can see he pulled up a chest). It has 7 mods (which I typically would see with higher luck) but it's like 1% casting focus / 3int / 5 HP (this is good) / 2 stam / 8 mana (this isnt bad) / 1% DCI / 25% LRC (perfect). For me personally that wouldn't be something I'd use in a suit and I'd likely have a hard time selling it so it would either collect dust in a chest at home or go in the trash.

 

[Anon McDougle]

Yikes lol... talking about Tmaps AND Luck on the forums is a little like opening pandora's box because most people will pound the drum in one way or another about it.

But yea when I've done Horde/Trove maps in the past I used a max luck suit and also a majority of my maps are in Fel so that's 4k+ luck running. That's when I make sure I check the guardian's corpses too because I've kept quite a few pieces from like ancient wyrms / greater dragons / frost dragons.

That said, the last 30-40 maps I've done I didn't use a luck suit (I played with luck statue hit or miss plus Fel bonus). At first when I didn't use the luck suit it was just laziness of transferring the suit and lack of mana on it but I saw a few decent pieces so I decided to keep going to see how it shook out.

The loot difference that I've kind of noticed is that with max luck running the legendary items would be top side # of properties (7-8 mods without factoring in resist) but they seemed diluted and only 1 maybe 2 would be max (or near max). For example I might pull something with dex/stam/int/mana/lmc/MR/SR but the values would be like 2 dex and 8 stam and 2int and 3mana and 6lmc and 3MR and 1 SR.

Compared to non-max luck I'd get legendary items that might only be 5-6 properties but many (sometimes most) would be near the max value so that same type of piece would be like dex/stam/lmc/MR/SR and would be like 4dex / 10 stam / 8lmc / 4MR / 1 SR.

Ultimately both types of loot, to me at least, aren't really worth grinding treasure maps because I can get a better property-intensity ratio killing other stuff. When I do maps now it's mainly just lower end ones (still haven't gotten the +5 carto glasses yet) and when I accumulate enough higher ones to do it's just for the pink/blues.

That said, I don't think I've done any maps with 0 luck so not sure how that would go.

Hopefully @Anon McDougle doesn't mind me taking his example from the official forum (as it relates to luck). This is kind of what I'm talking about for Tmap loot (as you can see he pulled up a chest). It has 7 mods (which I typically would see with higher luck) but it's like 1% casting focus / 3int / 5 HP (this is good) / 2 stam / 8 mana (this isnt bad) / 1% DCI / 25% LRC (perfect). For me personally that wouldn't be something I'd use in a suit and I'd likely have a hard time selling it so it would either collect dust in a chest at home or go in the trash.

View attachment 127402

Don't mind at all for a cache map regular chest i thought it was a nice piece and just under 3k luck I've been harping that if you want good luck you must accept there's gonna be bad luck as well

 

[Keven2002]

I agree. I think when it comes specifically to treasure chests that there is some sort of "max weight" logic that prevents items in chests (ie legendary items) from being the same strength as something you would loot from the roof or UWB. Just a theory of course but based on what I've seen there is a trade off between # of properties and their intensities. What you pulled there falls in line with what I've seen. Meaning that luck could potentially give you an extra property or 2 on a piece but (for tmaps at least) that can be a bad thing because it will dilute the intensity of the properties.

 

[gnerbz]

All good info here thank you. I loathe training taming but then it just occurred to me: does the satyr trick still work?

Cats still feels like home. Nostalgia I guess. So I will start from scratch there. Maybe I’ll do a tamer or whatever a sampire is for pvm (maybe stick fishing on him), thief mage for general shenanigans (I don’t expect much player stealing but I like having a rogue as my chill character), mule/crafter, some form of t-hunter (bard maybe if still viable) after I’m established… go from there.

I’m both looking forward to skill training and not. I don’t think I want to but a token but maybe worth for a couple characters. Meh lol feels like cheating.

 

[Keven2002]

Satyr trick does still work. For taming that taken might be pretty worthwhile. Once you get to 90 real skill for taming you can easily get to 120 by simply using the taming mastery (ie you don't need to go run around taming things).

For the fisher you might want to make them a mage (Mage/Med/Eval) or an Archer because most of what you will find (sea monsters / pirates / water eles / etc) will all be out of range for a warrior so having ranged attacks is the way to go.

 

[gnerbz]

Sorry for bumping this, but I just got back from vacation. Someone said there is a Discord server?

 

[AnneNomilly]

Welcome back. There are a few Discord servers but this is the one for the Friday Night Hunts (and more). Most people are hooked into this one and others. We tend to use voice especially on Friday Nights as we gather death robes but you do NOT have to be in voice to participate. We just find it helps, especially if it's something we need to give instructions for like a quest, etc. Warning, it's not PG, or really even PG-13 but loads of helpful people and a really great community. Come join us!

I think we might have seen you on our trip to Blackthorn's last night? But, some of the things that go on during the week/weekend (all times eastern):

Wednesday nights - 7:30 New Magincia docks, net toss. Lord Bytor will throw nets until three Scalis have been completed.
Friday nights - 8:00 Yew Gate Trammel - Friday Night Hunt. Destination changes each week, theme remains the same - collect death robes!
Sunday night - 9:00 and 10:00 (I think, might be off on the time) Kaz leads two runs to Shadow Guard

There are also the tavern nights, and two EM events each month. Would love to have you join the Discord and say hi!

Discord - Group Chat That’s All Fun & Games

Discord is great for playing games and chilling with friends, or even building a worldwide community. Customize your own space to talk, play, and hang out.

discord.gg

 

[gnerbz]

Welcome back. There are a few Discord servers but this is the one for the Friday Night Hunts (and more). Most people are hooked into this one and others. We tend to use voice especially on Friday Nights as we gather death robes but you do NOT have to be in voice to participate. We just find it helps, especially if it's something we need to give instructions for like a quest, etc. Warning, it's not PG, or really even PG-13 but loads of helpful people and a really great community. Come join us!

I think we might have seen you on our trip to Blackthorn's last night? But, some of the things that go on during the week/weekend (all times eastern):

Wednesday nights - 7:30 New Magincia docks, net toss. Lord Bytor will throw nets until three Scalis have been completed.
Friday nights - 8:00 Yew Gate Trammel - Friday Night Hunt. Destination changes each week, theme remains the same - collect death robes!
Sunday night - 9:00 and 10:00 (I think, might be off on the time) Kaz leads two runs to Shadow Guard

There are also the tavern nights, and two EM events each month. Would love to have you join the Discord and say hi!

Discord - Group Chat That’s All Fun & Games

Discord is great for playing games and chilling with friends, or even building a worldwide community. Customize your own space to talk, play, and hang out.

discord.gg

Which shard was that? I was on only briefly last night to make a character on Atlantic and Catskills. I logged because Atlantic felt very very laggy and I wondered if it was me, and wanted to log back in but my wife and I decided to watch tv and snuggle instead, soooo...

I will say I was impressed with the amount of folks on Atlantic, but I hope the lag isn't a thing... I don't think I felt the lag on Catskills, but in comparison I saw like 2 people in Luna compared to 50 people in Luna on Atlantic. I don't NEED population but it felt more like the old days. Either way I really need to train some toons and try to remember where things are. Also making gold to afford LRC or something for training is first and foremost on my mind.

Thank you for the discord link, will join it after breakfast.