I
imperterritus
Guest
UO has LOTS of skills, several of which have become close to, if not outright, useless. Several of them could be merged. I ask the devs to consider merging the following skills:
Cooking and Taste Id -- Except for being able to detect whether food is poisoned, the Taste Identification skill has no purpose any more. It used to be able to determine the level of poison in bottle or keg, but that is no longer necessary. Cooks should naturally be able to tell if something is wrong with food.
Arms Lore and Item Identification -- Arms Lore was made a useful crafting skill a few years back, but Item Id had been useless for a very long time, until the Styggian Abyss expansion let it show what an item could be unraveled into. That's still not very useful, because we're either going to unravel something or we're not; the resultant components will be what they are. The classic purpose of Arms Lore is gone, and the resultant success message now if used directly on an item is:
* "You study the item in an attempt to learn more about its craftsmanship and use."
That's really a meaningless stub. Merge the two skills, and have the Arms Lore direct-use message adopt the Item Id message.
Camping and Herding -- These skills are rare in the game, but are a natural fit for each other. Clicking your shepherd's crook would do the herding action, and clicking kindling would do the camping action.
Forensics and Tracking -- These two underused skills would mutually benefit by becoming one skill. Who knows, the Detective could actually become a template people find useful.
Detecting Hidden and Remove Trap -- One of the tightest useful templates is that of Treasure Hunter. It's so tight that mages were given Telekinesis, a low level spell, to pretty much replace the need for Remove Trap, even at GM level. Using the combined skill would remove the trap on first use (or provide message that the trap is still armed, absent, or indeterminate). Once trap was detected, a subsequent use of the skill would remove it.
Not part of this proposal, but something I've always thought would be natural, is that use of Telekinesis to remove a trap from chest would result in one or more items being destroyed. The higher the level of magery, the fewer the items destroyed. At least one would always be destroyed, though. (At random, not necessarily something valuable. If reagents or jewels were destroyed, all reagents or jewels wold be gone.)
Not merged, but allowed to work together -- Musicianship and Begging -- Using the Begging skill within 5 seconds after successfully playing an instrument would become an act of busking, not begging. There would be no karma loss, and the number of gold pieces earned would be double what a plain, successful, begging attempt would have returned (2 to 40 instead of 1 to 20). I was happy to see the Fire Horn added a fourth ability to bards. Adoption of this idea would add a fifth.
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If a character had both of a merged pair, he would retain the higher of the two sets of skill points. The points from the lesser skill would become free to use as desired.
Cooking and Taste Id -- Except for being able to detect whether food is poisoned, the Taste Identification skill has no purpose any more. It used to be able to determine the level of poison in bottle or keg, but that is no longer necessary. Cooks should naturally be able to tell if something is wrong with food.
Arms Lore and Item Identification -- Arms Lore was made a useful crafting skill a few years back, but Item Id had been useless for a very long time, until the Styggian Abyss expansion let it show what an item could be unraveled into. That's still not very useful, because we're either going to unravel something or we're not; the resultant components will be what they are. The classic purpose of Arms Lore is gone, and the resultant success message now if used directly on an item is:
* "You study the item in an attempt to learn more about its craftsmanship and use."
That's really a meaningless stub. Merge the two skills, and have the Arms Lore direct-use message adopt the Item Id message.
Camping and Herding -- These skills are rare in the game, but are a natural fit for each other. Clicking your shepherd's crook would do the herding action, and clicking kindling would do the camping action.
Forensics and Tracking -- These two underused skills would mutually benefit by becoming one skill. Who knows, the Detective could actually become a template people find useful.
Detecting Hidden and Remove Trap -- One of the tightest useful templates is that of Treasure Hunter. It's so tight that mages were given Telekinesis, a low level spell, to pretty much replace the need for Remove Trap, even at GM level. Using the combined skill would remove the trap on first use (or provide message that the trap is still armed, absent, or indeterminate). Once trap was detected, a subsequent use of the skill would remove it.
Not part of this proposal, but something I've always thought would be natural, is that use of Telekinesis to remove a trap from chest would result in one or more items being destroyed. The higher the level of magery, the fewer the items destroyed. At least one would always be destroyed, though. (At random, not necessarily something valuable. If reagents or jewels were destroyed, all reagents or jewels wold be gone.)
Not merged, but allowed to work together -- Musicianship and Begging -- Using the Begging skill within 5 seconds after successfully playing an instrument would become an act of busking, not begging. There would be no karma loss, and the number of gold pieces earned would be double what a plain, successful, begging attempt would have returned (2 to 40 instead of 1 to 20). I was happy to see the Fire Horn added a fourth ability to bards. Adoption of this idea would add a fifth.
- - - - - - - - - - -
If a character had both of a merged pair, he would retain the higher of the two sets of skill points. The points from the lesser skill would become free to use as desired.
