Hiyas,
For an unknown reason, I've joined up the world of UO again. I realize now that there has been a heck of a lot of things that have happened in the past 8 years. I need help.
I have read the whole playguide on the uoherald webpage.
I went and downloaded the KR client thinking I'd have the latest stuff and that I had the option of 2d or 3d but it turns out it's only 3d. I still have my CD and CD key for UO: The second age. If I install that, am I going to be left out of a lot of content or will it just be "patched in"? I'm not too fond of the 3d client to be honest... but I'm trying hard to make it work. Looks like fileplanet has Mondains Legacy... is that 2d or 3d? should I grab it?
I think my mage is in a faction... he's got a funny looking horse... How can I tell if I'm in a faction? and which? He is 6xgm mage by the way, does he still kick butt or do I need an overhaul?
Also things seem "slower" than back in the day... is this just my impression? casting takes forever...
The good thing about reactivating old accounts is finding what's still in the bank... I have a check for a million bucks... will that get me far nowadays? (oh and how do I cash it?
)
What about houses? the concept on them has changed a lot, ownership and all... Is there any place for me to put down a house somewhere or is it all taken up like it used to be?
Lastly, are there any guilds out there on Chesapeake with mature players, looking for like minded players?
Thanks a lot for the help!
Welcome back!
Publish notes can be found at
http://update.uo.com/latest.html, going backwards in time. For some reason, however, the notes for Publishes 56 and 57 are not included. They can be found at
http://www.uoherald.com/news/news.php?newsid=454 and
http://update.uo.com/design_512.html, respectively.
You may also want to read the UO Herald archives (
http://www.uoherald.com/news/archives.php?offset=0). Unfortunately, you may have trouble with a lot of the "more" links that take you to the complete article. Seems to be working okay this morning. You will also find more information under the Update Center button on the left side on the UO.com website. The Knowledgebase under the Support button can also be a helpful resource if you're good at coming up with keywords to use for searches.
To determine if your mage is in factions, just say "What is my faction term status." If the answer you get is along the lines of you are not in the process of quitting the faction, then the character is in factions and you may have to go somewhere in Fel to mouse over and see the faction name or tag. If you see no response at all, then the character is not in factions.
There is a "Factions 101" thread on the Factions forum (
http://vboards.stratics.com/showthread.php?t=8437) that has some screenshots showing you the general locations of the faction strongholds. You will have to actually enter the stronghold and use the stone in/near the sigil room to quit the faction. The quit process now takes only three days. (Use that same "What is my faction term status" question to see exactly when you'll get out of factions after you've used the stone to quit.)
A couple of notes about getting to/from the COM base if that's the faction your mage is in. Magincia was destroyed about a year ago. The Magincia moongate only works for going TO Magincia. You can also gate, recall, or sacred journey there, however, it is now inhabited by a bunch of ghosts. Some of them (corrupted souls) are truly a nuisance. You can recall, gate or sacred journey to leave Magincia. There is also a very large black and gold teleporter near the docks that will take you to the Trinsic dock area (the only method of leaving Magincia with a sigil these days, other than using a boat). You can also use the teleporter in Trinsic to get to Magincia.
If you're going to the Minax base, the sign-up stone was moved to the entrance of the corridor leading to the base, so you may not be able to use any runes that used to dump you into that corridor.
The steps closest to the entrance of the SL base can now be used by ghosts. (They were impassable for quite a long time.)
The invasions that you read about are not going on in Fel. However, guard zones in the Fel faction towns were removed when the invasions started. So just be wary of anyone you may run into, even if they are not in factions, if you go to a faction town. Faction mates cannot use their pets to kill you, but are not prevented from killing you outright themselves. (Being a member of the same faction is no guarantee of safety.) There has been a rather dramatic increase in faction membership in the last couple of months, so there's a good chance you could run into company if you're headed to one of the bases. Best bet for getting into a base unmolested to quit may be to go late at night or early in the morning during the week.
Depending on how much time and gold you have to spend updating or tweaking your mage, you MIGHT want to just leave him in factions. Since the "no beneficial acts" rule was suspended in Trammel last year, you could still PvM with him outside Fel with no adverse effects. You can also kill the infected NPCs and invasion mobs (other than crimson dragons) in the invaded towns in Trammel with a faction character to earn some silver to purchase the new faction artifacts. You can also kill faction-aligned mobs in Fel to earn silver, assuming the commanding lord hasn't set the tithing rate to 100%. And of course you can kill OJs to earn silver and kill points and raise your faction rank. (Your faction rank determines which arties you can purchase/use.)
If you can get UO installed from your old CD and patched up (may take quite a while), you will end up using the 2d client (the 3d client was discontinued about two years ago). You can buy an upgrade code for Mondains Legacy from the uogamecodes.com site. (It also comes with a code that can be used to open a new account that includes all current content.) The ML upgrade gets you to 6 character slots and bumps your house storage by 20%. You can also purchase a code to give you another 20% house storage (it stacks on the ML 20% increase), an increase in bankbox storage, and a 7th character slot. (There are also cheaper options to just buy the increased storage or just the 7th character slot.)
Housing should be easy to find. A lot of people don't play anymore and EA/Mythic has been slowly dropping houses that should have fallen a long time ago. You should be able to place a house with max storage fairly easily on most shards (Atlantic and GL and some of the Asian shards being the exception). Keeps and castles are another story. If that's what you want, expect to look for a while unless you're on a shard like Origin or maybe Lake Austin.
Good luck to you and again, welcome back!
