Publish 105 Forgotten Treasures Release 2 on Test Center

[Tina Small]

@ShriNayne

I read it as a Grup activity in the sense that "while" the Treasure Hunter is busy with the Chest, solving the Puzzle, the rest of the Group would fight the spawned Guardians...

A "Team" work where each member of the Team (Group) would do his/her part to accomplish the entire job....

A Group activity, that is, seen as the Group being a Team with individual members of that Team tackling different tasks all important to get to the end goal, that of looting the Treasure Chest...

Popps, the rest of the group cannot be doing anything else while the puzzle is being solved, other than fending off PKs and spawn around the chest location.

You locate the chest and dig it up and monsters spawn. Then you try to unlock and untrap the chest (i.e., unlock and then use remove trap to bring up a puzzle to solve if you're doing horde or trove chests). Once you have the chest open and trap-free, then more monsters spawn randomly, usually one at a time, until you empty the chest.

 

[Lieutenant Dan!]

Kyronix said that if we didn't want to do the puzzle then another group member could, in this paragraph :

The whole group helps with the entire encounter. Puzzles may not be fun for you, however, someone else in your group may find them exciting. That is the intention of group play - to divide up actions to those who enjoy doing them most for the overall gain of the group. Not every character (or player) can be or will be good at everything. This is why the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

But then he tells Margrette this...

Only the player who digs up the chest can unlock, untrap the chest. There is only 1 treausre hunter per chest.

I am finding this confusing, can the other group members do anything or not? Can other group members do the puzzle but not the lock or trap?

Good point @ShriNayne . It seems that much of what @Kyronix is trying to do is promote group play for the higher level chests.
But they are only discouraging group play by not allowing other party members the ability unlock and untrap
As is now with 'only 1 treasure hunter per chest' everyone else in the party are nothing more than hired thugs standing around with there thumbs up there a$$ waiting to kill the badies. Boring
I really don't see a down side in allowing other party members the ability to unlock/untrap. Especially if they plan on making the higher level chests heavily skill dependent.

 

[MalagAste]

I mispoke...they are statues from the last anniversary, in the Khaldun trapped chests. All the chests you had to do puzzles on to get them, all the chests that were done, all we got was one statue...its on the west tower top of the castle at vesper/brit crossroads

That's all I managed was one statue out of hundreds of chests... I tried and tried to get them... daily. Mine sits in the Theatre located in the clearing just south of Yew Gate tram on GLs ... can't miss it it's the house with the YEW on top.

 

[Alkaseltzer]

Cool

 

[popps]

Popps, the t-hunter I'm using on TC is the one I have on Balhae. Her suit has 600 luck on it: 100 luck imbued on each piece of her armor and nothing on the jewelry or footwear, no talisman, etc.

If I remember correctly, I got blasted pretty well here and on the official forum for posting pictures of loot I'd dug up on TC because it wasn't up to par, I guess, because of the low amount of luck on my TC t-hunter's suit.

Well, last week one night late while I was picking up all the bags from the first round of testing on TC, Kyronix popped in the house. He wanted to see the maps that had chests that would never completely come out of the ground and the maps for chests that came up completely empty. We reset some of those maps and he went with me to try them again. Then he asked me if I had any questions. I asked him about when luck counts. It counts when the chest is made and it is only based on the t-hunter's luck. Then I mentioned that I was going to transfer some stuff over to TC from other t-hunters and tamers I had to try to make up a better suit, e.g., add a lucky talisman and soles of providence and the luck jewelry set from cleanup. Then he asked me what kind of footwear I liked. I answered thigh boots and the next thing I know, he had made a whole set of thigh boots with luck on them, ranging from 500 up to 3500. He said it was in appreciation for all the testing I'd done. Well, that blew me away and I was very excited that I could now do some better testing to see the impact of luck.

I gave Arroth the 3500 luck boots, because his suit only had about 200 luck on it and because he had also been there on TC every day testing and testing. I may hunt up Tanager and hand over another pair of the lucky boots.

So there you have it. I wasn't planning to say anything because I figured someone would squak about it. I am very appreciative of what Kyronix did. No one is paying me to do the testing. I've been doing it because t-hunting is something I enjoy doing, even though I only started doing it a few years ago and am still not very good at it and obviously haven't put the amount of effort into it that many others have, as evidenced by the crummy suits my t-hunters wear.

If you want to make a fuss over the boots, fuss at Kyronix for being kind. I can't take them from TC. They'll disappear the next time the shard is wiped. I'm a UO nobody. I am not an EM on the side or a counselor or anything like that. I don't butter up EMs after events (I go to very few). I usually don't make it to meet and greets and when I do, my questions are straightforward and not full of effusive and overblown greetings. I've never had contact with Mesanna other than to have her fix a tamer that got completely borked on Origin one time when testing out a new publish there. I've paged GMs a total of maybe 10 times in the 14.5 years I've been playing UO and I don't try to chat them up. I don't collect rares. I don't run a third party shop. I'm a nobody as far as Broadsword is concerned. Except for last week when Kyronix noticed all the testing efforts and gave me something on TC to help with the testing. It will have no impact whatsoever on my game play for production shards or once TC is wiped.

No problem with it at all.

I was just curious as to how you managed to get that kind of luck on a suit....

Personally, I would LOVE if, on the Test Server, players could get Luck out of a voice command so as to be able to easily test various chests at various Luck numbers instead of having to mess around with artifacts and all that....

I think it would be beneficial to the entire testing process...

So, I am very OK with what Kyronix did, I would actually think that it could be beneficial for the testing is the same could be available to all players on the Test Server...

 

[Riyana]

I checked it out on TC. It's a bit buggy (mainly with regards to puzzles), but I believe the bugs are known and likely to be addressed.

Chests have far fewer items in them but they are generally of a better quality than the piles of trash we get now. I emailed Kyronix some thoughts about some quality of life improvement possibilities, like being able to find the chest more precisely without just digging around blindly in the right area, or streamlining digging so you can do it more directly than shovel to map to ground over and over.

It is my understanding that the puzzles aren't necessary to get the best loot. You can do a lower map for the same loot table, just won't get as MANY items in a chest... which actually makes you able to knock out a lot more faster on lower level maps.

I don't like the element of randomness that increases the likelihood of item loss from circuit and cylinder puzzles that are almost impossible to get on the first try regardless of character OR player skill. I hope they put some more thought/adjustment into that.

All that said, I would have liked to see the ability for players to make our own maps and treasure hunts--give us some content generation ability like we were told was coming back at the 20th party.

 

[mspossi]

today I had time to copy a char to the test center:
My opinion, despite the puzzles, this new kind of looting.
Despite getting lost about an hour trying to decipher some puzzles...the system is great!
has top level guardians ... I'd say ... WTF!
I hope that in the official version they are more "friendly"...if it is not easier to kill these devilishly insane guardians ... it will be impossible to do the treasure hunt alone.
another thing I noticed, it's no use using "telekinesis" to unlock the trap.

 

[ShriNayne]

All that said, I would have liked to see the ability for players to make our own maps and treasure hunts--give us some content generation ability like we were told was coming back at the 20th party.

I think they would rather that we all forgot they ever mentioned that, since they have never mentioned it since, I guess it was too difficult to do...

 

[mspossi]

I checked it out on TC. It's a bit buggy (mainly with regards to puzzles), but I believe the bugs are known and likely to be addressed.

Chests have far fewer items in them but they are generally of a better quality than the piles of trash we get now. I emailed Kyronix some thoughts about some quality of life improvement possibilities, like being able to find the chest more precisely without just digging around blindly in the right area, or streamlining digging so you can do it more directly than shovel to map to ground over and over.

It is my understanding that the puzzles aren't necessary to get the best loot. You can do a lower map for the same loot table, just won't get as MANY items in a chest... which actually makes you able to knock out a lot more faster on lower level maps.

I don't like the element of randomness that increases the likelihood of item loss from circuit and cylinder puzzles that are almost impossible to get on the first try regardless of character OR player skill. I hope they put some more thought/adjustment into that.

All that said, I would have liked to see the ability for players to make our own maps and treasure hunts--give us some content generation ability like we were told was coming back at the 20th party.

Regarding digging at random, you must use skill mining ... it will be easier to dig in the right place.
I think with this will get tighter the personage's engineering.

 

[Khaelor]

Chests have far fewer items in them but they are generally of a better quality than the piles of trash we get now. I emailed Kyronix some thoughts about some quality of life improvement possibilities, like being able to find the chest more precisely without just digging around blindly in the right area, or streamlining digging so you can do it more directly than shovel to map to ground over and over.

I don't like the element of randomness that increases the likelihood of item loss from circuit and cylinder puzzles that are almost impossible to get on the first try regardless of character OR player skill. I hope they put some more thought/adjustment into that.
.

I have to say this, with mining I could never find the chest. Live servers, I don't use the ec. On test center I could find the chest within 1-3 digs with 100 cartography and a Davies locker.

You can click the map to get a context menu now to dig instead of shovel map spot. Another quality of life improvement.

The loss from failures can hurt, not that common..most times. If you treasure hunt with someone in party on the enhanced client on tc, they can actually see what items are lost in a chest due to failures, because they show up as ghost loot images...we've had as low as seven items in a trove chest after failures from lockpicking and puzzles.

 

[Yadd of Legends]

I could now do some better testing to see the impact of luck

Excellent - I've always been skeptical how much difference luck makes - looking forward to your results

 

[Pawain]

I have to say this, with mining I could never find the chest. Live servers, I don't use the ec. On test center I could find the chest within 1-3 digs with 100 cartography and a Davies locker.

You can click the map to get a context menu now to dig instead of shovel map spot. Another quality of life improvement.

The loss from failures can hurt, not that common..most times. If you treasure hunt with someone in party on the enhanced client on tc, they can actually see what items are lost in a chest due to failures, because they show up as ghost loot images...we've had as low as seven items in a trove chest after failures from lockpicking and puzzles.

Very good write up on testing the T Chests!

I hope all of those things get changed as you suggested. Treasure Hunting will have the MAJOR Loot upgrade!

Thank You!

 

[Keven2002]

I wanted to thank @Tina Small for helping me with my testing on TC1. She was nice enough to give me a pair of luck boots for testing and Carto glasses (unfortunately I didn't realize they were garg only and couldn't use them Doh!). I stuck to doing ONLY fel chests for the +1000 luck. I did 7 Trove maps and 1 Horde map which was an assortment of Mage / assassin. Thanks to Tina's generosity and the luck suit I currently have (plus luck statue) I had a whopping 5830 luck PLUS 1000 luck from fel for a grand total of 6830 luck (which is impossible on a prod shard). I really wanted to test the impact luck played on everything so I did all but one map with 6830 luck and the final chest with 1000 luck (only a Fel 1000 bonus). Below are my results.

Out of 8 chests done I had 1 circuit / 2 slider / 5 cylinder (which happen to be bugged! I couldn't remove any loot from ANY of the cylinder traps after completing the puzzle. I was told this is a known defect by Tina).

Out of 8 chests done 7 of the 8 were metal chest (not rusty) and only 1 was gold. The 0 luck chest was metal like many of the rest WITH luck.

All 7 Trove chest had 17 or 18 items in them and the Horde chest had 9. I partied someone for 4 of the Trove chests but didn't notice any increase in items.

NO CHEST I opened had any bag of gold/gems OR any M-Arties (that currently come in the green bags). No other maps were found and no skeleton keys or sashes etc were found. Also no powerscrolls or alacrity or trans scrolls.

The chest I did with 1000 luck (just from Fel) had 18 items but only 1 non noteworthy artifact. Everything else was complete junk that consisted of lesser magic items with only a few mods or several mods with very low intensities. This was only 1 chest here but there was such a drop off from the loot versus the 6800 luck that my feelings are if you don't have a pretty decent luck suit then you might as well stay home. You could seriously find better loot if you were to go hunt dragons in destard.

The remaining chests I did with the 6830 luck seemed that the in-game luck didn't impact the type of chest it was. Most were metal and the third one in was gold. The items it the gold chest seemed like they had a chance to be good. There was a legendary item (leaf gloves) with several mods but again the intensities weren't really maxed out and didn't really match up to be something you would expect for having 6800 luck.


In all of the other Trove chest I did there was only one other Legendary item and it was pretty weak as far as legendary items go. It was also in a mage trove chest which make me wonder the piece has +10 Stam on an arcane piece of armor.


Another noteworthy trove chest I opened (in a bad way) was a mage trove chest that had ELEVEN staves (out of 18 items). They were all terribly useless as mages don't really use a 2 handed staff (or crook which for some reason was also in the chest). They also had some very head scratching pairings of mods like -15 magery but NO spell channel ... or -20 magery WITH spell channel AND Use Best Weapon Skill... Overall that entire chest was all trash.

In summary I used 6800 to see if maybe awesome items would be possible and even with an amount of luck unattainable of prod server I don't see the loot being worth the energy. Out of 7 maps that are THE HIGHEST you can get there was very little (if any you could argue) reward. For those chests that were complete junk; I couldn't even make the 35-40k gold that comes in a level 7 chest today which is just insane to think about since you can't even get those maps from anything but other chests. I am certainly a little worried about these chest changes as I think I might be better off just doing the maps I have now. At least I'll get some type of consolation prize of gold/gems/essence/marties/skull keys/alacrity/trans scrolls. The loot table needs to be severely bumped up again to make the maps worthwhile; otherwise this loot "upgrade" is just going to be a TMap nerf

 

[Pawain]

In summary I used 6800 to see if maybe awesome items would be possible and even with an amount of luck unattainable of prod server I don't see the loot being worth the energy. Out of 7 maps that are THE HIGHEST you can get there was very little (if any you could argue) reward.

Thats the way Legendaries roll. Im glad we got him to add those in. Do the roof 10 times and you may get a version of this shield:


Do it 100 and you may get a Legendary Armor keeper.

RNG is a pancake.

 

[Keven2002]

Had a chance to do a handful more maps this morning before work. I wanted to test the Tram side of things where I used the same luck suit as before that had 4830 luck on it which I believe will still be higher than any attainable luck in Tram (on Prod server). I did 5 Trove chest. This time only 1 mage 1 assassin 2 ranger 1 warrior. Results were as follows:

1 gold chest and 4 metal chest (0 rusty).
ZERO legendary items.
1 slider puzzle / 1 circuit / 3 cylinder (which still aren't fixed and I cannot take loot. At this point it seems like a cruel joke that these are the puzzles I'm getting the most of).
No "other" items again like gold/gems/M-Arties/skeleton keys/sashes/pardons/alacrity/trans scrolls.
Chests had between 15-18 items; I saw some dust in a couple of them so I know I blew things up (but I never got a message saying the items blew up; I only knew because I saw dust).

I was a little confused by the loot in the chests at times because the one mage chest I actually opened was nothing noteworthy at all especially for jewelry (nothing with like 1FC/3FCR/SDI etc) BUT in the two ranger chest I opened I actually saw arcane rings that could be a pretty useful for a mage (below) granted they were both antique. (I also saw a -15 mage weapon in the assassin chest.) That said, the actual ranger items in those chests were pretty weak like the bow I also show below (had potential with 40SSI and 40 Velocity but fell off a cliff with mods like LMC/StamInc/StamRegen). The 2 arcane rings were the only potential keepers out of all 5 chest.



I also wanted to show an example of completely useless mods on weapons that are automatic throw away items. A war fork with +20 cold resist (and HP regen) is completely wasting a mod and items like this shouldn't even be generated. This was in the warriors trove chest.

Lastly I wanted to give an example of what I considered non noteworthy or "junk" that I mostly got in these 5 Trove chests to give you an example of what I was getting 90-95% of the time from these chests. Btw this mystic ring was in the ranger's chest...I'd think it would have been in the mages since it was mystic (I guess +5 archery makes it a ranger item).

My summary:
The loot simply does not seem like an "upgrade" over what we get now from a chest. We get loads more in the chests now and since there is 5X the amount of loot there is more chances to get these items I've seen and considered a "keeper". The biggest thing that absolutely blows me away is that NOW in addition to the chance to get the same exact things I've seen in these "upgraded" chest loot, I can also get gold/alacrity/trans scrolls/pardons/skeleton keys/Marties (those pure white instruments are handy). I think I might be forced to start doing my 6 & 7 maps NOW just to take advantage of those chances and not to mention the coffin pieces or master skeleton keys you can get from a level 7.

It really seems to me that they are making it actually MORE DIFFICULT to obtain items most people will use. The unfortunate part (which you will see in many of my screenshots as I tried to capture a visual of all items in the chest) is that by segregating types of items by class (ie. mages will see all staves vs assassins see daggers etc) is that this SEVERELY limits the chances of getting something most will use. What I mean by this is that there is the days of a true mage or true assassin or ranger are long gone; now everything is some type of hybrid. That being the case, mages hardly ever use a staff and assassins (actually almost nobody) uses a dagger and warriors don't use a club. By type casting the loot by template its filling these chests with weapons that are junk even if they are legendary. I know that you might get a double axe or comp bow eventually in a chest but then you play the RNG game; based on the items I've seen they don't blow the current chest items out of the water so I'd rather keep the 75+ items in a chest that give me more of a chance for a comp bow versus needing to have a ranger chest in Fel/Tram to get a chance... at least I'd have more items to unravel at the end now (with the essence/gold/talisman/marties/etc/etc).

 

[Keven2002]

Thats the way Legendaries roll. Im glad we got him to add those in. Do the roof 10 times and you may get a version of this shield:
View attachment 97986

Do it 100 and you may get a Legendary Armor keeper.

RNG is a pancake.

Sorry this will be a bit rushed as I'm heading out the door...

I get it and I don't expect every single chest to have 5 godly legendary items every single time. That said, the difference between the roof and these new chest changes is that I can easily decide to do the rooms / roof whenever I want (assuming I have someone to help) versus Trove maps (formerly level 7) are very difficult/randomly come across to even attempt to do (assuming you have the people available to do them because they are now trying to make them "group hunts"). As I outlined previously the segregation of which items will spawn in a chest begin to severely limit where I can get certain items / mods.

I'll try to explain instead of pulling the "this new change sucks" card:

I've done a total of 5 horde (formerly level6) and 15 trove maps total on test and I haven't gotten a single Tmap in those 20 chest (not sure if that's turned off or if that's by design) whereas when I'd guess I get maybe 1 or 2 maps out of 10 currently from chests. These 20 maps on TC1 were done in maybe 3-4 hours since there was no spawn and I've just used maps that I can easily run to from a moongate or city. I honestly think that people would be better off killing the trove chest spawn for items versus expecting something from loot.

In my opinion there is just too much RNG going on here for these hard to come by maps that are further polarized by the profession. Now I might only get a composite bow in a range chest... what is the time frame of gathering 5 ranger trove maps on a prod shard? It's not balanced in my opinion compared to the roof that I could complete with a friend every hour. With the way things are looking for T-maps it looks like the roof will actually be a better option for me because the "upgrade" doesn't seem worth the effort to me in it's current TC1 state.

 

[petemage]

I did 5 Trove chest. [...] ZERO legendary items. [...]
No "other" items again like gold/gems/M-Arties/skeleton keys/sashes/pardons/alacrity/trans scrolls. [...]

My summary:
The loot simply does not seem like an "upgrade" over what we get now from a chest. We get loads more in the chests now and since there is 5X the amount of loot there is more chances to get these items I've seen and considered a "keeper". The biggest thing that absolutely blows me away is that NOW in addition to the chance to get the same exact things I've seen in these "upgraded" chest loot, I can also get gold/alacrity/trans scrolls/pardons/skeleton keys/Marties (those pure white instruments are handy). I think I might be forced to start doing my 6 & 7 maps NOW just to take advantage of those chances and not to mention the coffin pieces or master skeleton keys you can get from a level 7.

Couldn't agree more. I'm not sure what maps those people cheering for this crap did before, but it certainly were not level 5 or 6 or 7 maps The new loot overall is a desaster compared to today's loot.

 

[Theo_GL]

I can also get gold/alacrity/trans scrolls/pardons/skeleton keys/Marties (those pure white instruments are handy). I think I might be forced to start doing my 6 & 7 maps NOW just to take advantage of those chances and not to mention the coffin pieces or master skeleton keys you can get from a level 7.

Thats exactly what I'm doing now instead of testing anything - just plowing through as many high level maps as I can before the change. Then I'll sell/donate the rest of the high end maps. They are killing off one of my fun solo activities when no one is around to do anything i'll dig a few chests. Oh well. Another part of UO dying.....

 

[Swordsman]

I wanted to thank @Tina Small for helping me with my testing on TC1. She was nice enough to give me a pair of luck boots for testing and Carto glasses (unfortunately I didn't realize they were garg only and couldn't use them Doh!). I stuck to doing ONLY fel chests for the +1000 luck. I did 7 Trove maps and 1 Horde map which was an assortment of Mage / assassin. Thanks to Tina's generosity and the luck suit I currently have (plus luck statue) I had a whopping 5830 luck PLUS 1000 luck from fel for a grand total of 6830 luck (which is impossible on a prod shard). I really wanted to test the impact luck played on everything so I did all but one map with 6830 luck and the final chest with 1000 luck (only a Fel 1000 bonus). Below are my results.

Out of 8 chests done I had 1 circuit / 2 slider / 5 cylinder (which happen to be bugged! I couldn't remove any loot from ANY of the cylinder traps after completing the puzzle. I was told this is a known defect by Tina).

Out of 8 chests done 7 of the 8 were metal chest (not rusty) and only 1 was gold. The 0 luck chest was metal like many of the rest WITH luck.

All 7 Trove chest had 17 or 18 items in them and the Horde chest had 9. I partied someone for 4 of the Trove chests but didn't notice any increase in items.

NO CHEST I opened had any bag of gold/gems OR any M-Arties (that currently come in the green bags). No other maps were found and no skeleton keys or sashes etc were found. Also no powerscrolls or alacrity or trans scrolls.

The chest I did with 1000 luck (just from Fel) had 18 items but only 1 non noteworthy artifact. Everything else was complete junk that consisted of lesser magic items with only a few mods or several mods with very low intensities. This was only 1 chest here but there was such a drop off from the loot versus the 6800 luck that my feelings are if you don't have a pretty decent luck suit then you might as well stay home. You could seriously find better loot if you were to go hunt dragons in destard.

The remaining chests I did with the 6830 luck seemed that the in-game luck didn't impact the type of chest it was. Most were metal and the third one in was gold. The items it the gold chest seemed like they had a chance to be good. There was a legendary item (leaf gloves) with several mods but again the intensities weren't really maxed out and didn't really match up to be something you would expect for having 6800 luck.
View attachment 97982

In all of the other Trove chest I did there was only one other Legendary item and it was pretty weak as far as legendary items go. It was also in a mage trove chest which make me wonder the piece has +10 Stam on an arcane piece of armor.
View attachment 97983

Another noteworthy trove chest I opened (in a bad way) was a mage trove chest that had ELEVEN staves (out of 18 items). They were all terribly useless as mages don't really use a 2 handed staff (or crook which for some reason was also in the chest). They also had some very head scratching pairings of mods like -15 magery but NO spell channel ... or -20 magery WITH spell channel AND Use Best Weapon Skill... Overall that entire chest was all trash.

In summary I used 6800 to see if maybe awesome items would be possible and even with an amount of luck unattainable of prod server I don't see the loot being worth the energy. Out of 7 maps that are THE HIGHEST you can get there was very little (if any you could argue) reward. For those chests that were complete junk; I couldn't even make the 35-40k gold that comes in a level 7 chest today which is just insane to think about since you can't even get those maps from anything but other chests. I am certainly a little worried about these chest changes as I think I might be better off just doing the maps I have now. At least I'll get some type of consolation prize of gold/gems/essence/marties/skull keys/alacrity/trans scrolls. The loot table needs to be severely bumped up again to make the maps worthwhile; otherwise this loot "upgrade" is just going to be a TMap nerf

The quality of these legendary items are horrible, even a casual player will not use them. I don’t mind rework on the template and skills, but the loot must contain some sorts of useful items.

 

[petemage]

Thats exactly what I'm doing now instead of testing anything - just plowing through as many high level maps as I can before the change. Then I'll sell/donate the rest of the high end maps. They are killing off one of my fun solo activities when no one is around to do anything i'll dig a few chests. Oh well. Another part of UO dying.....

And when you try to tell them some rando steps in and says he likes to fight 5 mongbats because mana phasing orbs are now found in the lowest level maps or what not. Beyond silly. So much wishful thinking that will never work out, like this silly "group" idea that has been debunked already on TC. RIP.

 

[Keven2002]

Thats exactly what I'm doing now instead of testing anything - just plowing through as many high level maps as I can before the change. Then I'll sell/donate the rest of the high end maps. They are killing off one of my fun solo activities when no one is around to do anything i'll dig a few chests. Oh well. Another part of UO dying.....

To be fair, I haven't done any maps with things that spawn as I'm really just looking to see if the new loot is actually worth it so I don't know if Horde/Trove are not actually solo'able. My feeling is that if you could solo before that you can solo now. When I was removing some items a few things did spawn (in Fel/Tram) and it was the usual Poison Element / Greater Drag / Frost Drag stuff that spawns now on a 7. My feeling is that if you were able to handle these before than you likely could still solo. They do say that having more people in your party increases the loot but I partied my second account to test that as well and I didn't notice any change in loot before or after being partied (maybe 1 person isn't enough to party with).

I think the bigger problem (for me at least) is that the quantity of loot has been drastically slashed yet it doesn't seem like the quality of loot has been even semi improved (compared to what we can get on Prod shards... where I still get legendary items in chests). So for me to take time to even solo Trove spawns I'd need some sort of payoff; otherwise if I really really really wanted to do chests (for mediocre results) I'd do the low level ones that don't even require remove trap skill. Based on what I've seen though from loot quality, you are literally better off going to Destard to kill greater dragons or head to blackthorns to kill Balrons.... similar quality and you can plow through them. I haven't seen any legendary items from GD or Balrons but I'd agree with Swordsman here...

The quality of these legendary items are horrible, even a casual player will not use them.

Again I'm not saying I need an insane legendary every single chest but I had almost 7000 luck total on my Fel chests and didn't get one single overly modded with high intensity item (even if they were the crappy mods I think should be removed) in 8 chests... my opinion is that if I can't win with a stacked deck then what is the likelihood that we will get these items with a realistic situation on a prod server? I'm thinking that an "upgrade" would mean I get more legendary items than I do now in the current system... I average about one legendary item every 6 or 7 chests (level 6) and the quality of them is the same if not better than what I've seen in TC1. I think I've seen 3 or 4 Legendary items in 20 chests (mainly current level 7 chests though) on TC1 which is right around what I average now (for level 6) so my thoughts are that the quality hasn't changed AND now I'm getting less other stuff... certainly seems like a punishment not an upgrade.

 

[petemage]

You can solo the new high level maps just as before. I never had more than 4 guardians spawn when I tried it on TC. In fact there is nothing that would require a group at all. That "group" vs. "solo" tiers is really only some lingo Kyronix came up with to justify this crap.

 

[ShriNayne]

Thats exactly what I'm doing now instead of testing anything - just plowing through as many high level maps as I can before the change. Then I'll sell/donate the rest of the high end maps. They are killing off one of my fun solo activities when no one is around to do anything i'll dig a few chests. Oh well. Another part of UO dying.....

I really agree with what you said there! I keep thinking I should go to test and then I stop myself, I DO NOT like the changes and I feel if I go to test I'm endorsing something with my time that I really don't feel is a change for the better.

 

[petemage]

I really agree with what you said there! I keep thinking I should go to test and then I stop myself, I DO NOT like the changes and I feel if I go to test I'm endorsing something with my time that I really don't feel is a change for the better.

I was reluctant first but then went there for a full day using exactly what I use on prodo. You should try that just to see it yourself. I don't think anyone will stop it and it helped me getting over it. A lot Willof people raised the same concerns I have, also on the other forum. Will see what prodo brings and try to move on..

 

[ShriNayne]

If it comes to that I'll be moving on permanently

 

[petemage]

If it comes to that I'll be moving on permanently

Aww no u won't, forbidden by the community sorry

 

[MalagAste]

...

It really seems to me that they are making it actually MORE DIFFICULT to obtain items most people will use. The unfortunate part (which you will see in many of my screenshots as I tried to capture a visual of all items in the chest) is that by segregating types of items by class (ie. mages will see all staves vs assassins see daggers etc) is that this SEVERELY limits the chances of getting something most will use. What I mean by this is that there is the days of a true mage or true assassin or ranger are long gone; now everything is some type of hybrid. That being the case, mages hardly ever use a staff and assassins (actually almost nobody) uses a dagger and warriors don't use a club. By type casting the loot by template its filling these chests with weapons that are junk even if they are legendary. I know that you might get a double axe or comp bow eventually in a chest but then you play the RNG game; based on the items I've seen they don't blow the current chest items out of the water so I'd rather keep the 75+ items in a chest that give me more of a chance for a comp bow versus needing to have a ranger chest in Fel/Tram to get a chance... at least I'd have more items to unravel at the end now (with the essence/gold/talisman/marties/etc/etc).

I wanted to point that out and highlight it as that is EXACTLY what I believe they are doing... Making it more difficult to get decent items and downgrading everything... again they are trying to stem the problem started with AoS the Power Creep... you can NOT put that cat back in the bag after you already let it out.

This is only going to make those of us who have been here the whole time outperform and out damage any new or returning player even 5 years down the road causing a serious power gap like there was back in the old Fel only days... which I want to point out led to a massive migration away from UO.

If that's what the desired outcome is then by all means DEVs keep heading in that direction... if it is to add fun then I think you are missing the mark.

 

[Keven2002]

I really agree with what you said there! I keep thinking I should go to test and then I stop myself, I DO NOT like the changes and I feel if I go to test I'm endorsing something with my time that I really don't feel is a change for the better.

I understand where you are coming from but I'd at least recommend committing a few hours to trying out the stuff on TC1 (copy your char there); especially if you really love doing Tmaps. You just need to track your finding and post them and it really could help. If the Devs only see the same 3-4 people posting about how ineffective the loot is then they probably assume that everyone else is fine with it and if they really cared they would have tested it and gave feedback. Feedback has to be constructive (not "this loot sucks") so they can get an idea of what we expect to see rather than "upgraded loot". @Tina Small started another thread on this for both armor and weapons.

I think people should be more proactive on this and test now while we have some kind of say versus being reactive when it comes out because "it sucks" and decide to quit. If you really do enjoy playing UO and want to keep playing then help yourself (and the community) out by doing some testing (just do like 5 chests) and posting your results. Everyone won't get exactly what they want but I don't think I have seen a person yet say the loot is "upgraded" from where it is now. If everyone tests a few chests and gives that feedback then the Devs will see that their idea of "upgraded" is incorrect. Best case scenario, you (and others) help get what everyone actually wanted for Tmaps which is better loot. Worst case scenario is they don't listen and do whatever they want and you quit like you were going to do without testing (at least you tried to make it work).

I wanted to point that out and highlight it as that is EXACTLY what I believe they are doing...

Do we actually agree on something?! Let's hope this isn't the Devs final batch of changes for Tmaps because I think they have some distance to close on actually making chest loot something will use (or is worth all the revamped process). The current state of TC1 Horse & Trove (level 6 & 7) maps is certainly not worth me raising remove trap or making an effort to go treasure hunting.

 

[MalagAste]

I understand where you are coming from but I'd at least recommend committing a few hours to trying out the stuff on TC1 (copy your char there); especially if you really love doing Tmaps. You just need to track your finding and post them and it really could help. If the Devs only see the same 3-4 people posting about how ineffective the loot is then they probably assume that everyone else is fine with it and if they really cared they would have tested it and gave feedback. Feedback has to be constructive (not "this loot sucks") so they can get an idea of what we expect to see rather than "upgraded loot". @Tina Small started another thread on this for both armor and weapons.

I think people should be more proactive on this and test now while we have some kind of say versus being reactive when it comes out because "it sucks" and decide to quit. If you really do enjoy playing UO and want to keep playing then help yourself (and the community) out by doing some testing (just do like 5 chests) and posting your results. Everyone won't get exactly what they want but I don't think I have seen a person yet say the loot is "upgraded" from where it is now. If everyone tests a few chests and gives that feedback then the Devs will see that their idea of "upgraded" is incorrect. Best case scenario, you (and others) help get what everyone actually wanted for Tmaps which is better loot. Worst case scenario is they don't listen and do whatever they want and you quit like you were going to do without testing (at least you tried to make it work).



Do we actually agree on something?! Let's hope this isn't the Devs final batch of changes for Tmaps because I think they have some distance to close on actually making chest loot something will use (or is worth all the revamped process). The current state of TC1 Horse & Trove (level 6 & 7) maps is certainly not worth me raising remove trap or making an effort to go treasure hunting.

Scary isn't it? But yes it will kill Treasure Hunting for me. The puzzles are a NO... and the contents are pathetic.

As for posting on the "official" forums... that will NEVER happen for me... @Kyronix knows how I feel and I let him know what I think of the changes... but I will not ever post over there.

 

[Keven2002]

I'm also not thrilled with the puzzles or the remove trap or the group thing but honestly if the loot were severely increased in properties and intensities (and logical pairing) then I would at least entertain the idea of them being required to get some great stuff. The current loot tables from the 20 chests I've done (with beyond max luck etc) certainly don't seem like ANY loot would be worth the effort to raise remove trap and deal with the new changes. As the loot stands now, which in my opinion is more less the quality we have now (but A LOT less), there shouldn't be be any puzzle and should actually be less hassle than current maps because we are getting less items with the same quality AND we seem to be losing all the other "goodies" that come in level 5 & 6 maps.

 

[Keith of Sonoma]

I'm also not thrilled with the puzzles or the remove trap or the group thing but honestly if the loot were severely increased in properties and intensities (and logical pairing) then I would at least entertain the idea of them being required to get some great stuff.

BINGO! Sadly though, thats not the case. Loot is no better than before. IF, BIG IF, it is even AS good. Not from the testing I have done.

 

[Jelinidas]

I just don't see the major improvements in loot. Just dug a lvl 6 in fel.

62 items worth 2294 trash points. I drop 50 stoners there.
6 essence
1 skeleton key
1 tasty treat
approx. 40+ k in gold from chest and spawn
1 lolo's lute in the green bag
2 legendary artifacts. one in chest, one off spawn
1 pink, .5 detect hidden
regs and gems that I leave there
1 forged pardon

I was happy. No silly puzzles. Good spawn.

 

[petemage]

I just don't see the major improvements in loot. Just dug a lvl 6 in fel.

62 items worth 2294 trash points. I drop 50 stoners there.
6 essence
1 skeleton key
1 tasty treat
approx. 40+ k in gold from chest and spawn
1 lolo's lute in the green bag
2 legendary artifacts. one in chest, one off spawn
1 pink, .5 detect hidden
regs and gems that I leave there
1 forged pardon

I was happy. No silly puzzles. Good spawn.

The same map on TC will yield about 15 items, gold, some gems and nothing else.

 

[Jelinidas]

The same map on TC will yield about 15 items, gold, some gems and nothing else.

That's exactly my point. A lot of time and energy spent on this revamp. I just don't see the improvements. Kinda sad...

 

[zamot]

You can click the map to get a context menu now to dig instead of shovel map spot. Another quality of life improvement.

This has been that way for years.

 

[Kojak]

I do the roof for legendaries so don't care about that part - I like that there's new things to get out of the chests and I actually like doing puzzles so I like everything about these changes ... but keep complaining ... it's what you do

 

[Theo_GL]

I do the roof for legendaries so don't care about that part - I like that there's new things to get out of the chests and I actually like doing puzzles so I like everything about these changes ... but keep complaining ... it's what you do

Well, there he is. One person who thinks this change is good.

There's always one.

 

[ShriNayne]

Well I took the advice and I went and did 3 maps. That was quite underwhelming So few items, nothing of use, no pinks or blues, no resources, just an Hourglass and an Ancient Weapon. Two rusty chests, one normal metal one. All cache, Assassin, Mage and Ranger.

 

[Pawain]

I assumed the other things in chests stayed the same. The treats would fall under utility I hope. I also thought he was concentrating on one thing at a time.

This is the first line in the description:

Treasure Chest Loot

• Existing and new loot is available in Treasure Chest loot based on Facet & Package. This will allow players to target specific items they are looking for in chests they know will have a chance to contain those.

This is the higher level maps and general.

• Treasure Maps (All packages, up to Horde)
  • +1 over the current level of map
• Refinements (Artisan Stash)
• Minor Artifacts (All packages, Supply)
  • Legacy Minor artifacts & Pub 67 Artifacts
  • Legendary Cartography Glasses (+1-5 Cartography)
• Scrolls of Alacrity (All packages, Supply)
  • Skill is based on package and facet
• Special Crafting Materials (Artisan, Supply)
  • Essences, Mondain’s Legacy Ingredients available based on facet
• Recipe Scrolls (Artisan Supply & Cache)
  • Legacy recipe scrolls
• Powerscrolls (Felucca Only, All packages except Artisan, Horde and above)
  • Skill is based on package and level is based on chest quality up to +10
• Decorative Items (All packages when available, Cache and above)
  • Legacy & New Decorative Items based on package and facet
  • New: Hourglass Table, Decorative Ancient Weapons
• Utility Items (Assassin, Artisan, and Ranger Supply)
  • Legacy & New Utility Items based on package
  • New: Shield Engraving Tool
• Scrolls of Transcendence (All packages, Stash)
  • Skill & value based on package and facet
• Crafting Materials (Artisan Stash & Supply)
  • Wood, Metal, or Leather

All I know is the Armor and Weapon loot was total crap the first round. It is a lot better now.

If it is worse than what you get now then side by side comparing would help show him.

 

[Tina Small]

All I know is the Armor and Weapon loot was total crap the first round. It is a lot better now.

If it is worse than what you get now then side by side comparing would help show him.

It's not better now. Something happened in the last couple of days and more and more of the chests, even with GM cartography, are coming up metal or rusty and the loot is garbage. The loot in the gold chests is garbage too. There are so many properties mish-mashed together that don't make any sense and nothing is useful. I've dug up so many chests and I think there may be a handful of jewelry pieces I might use and maybe one or two pieces of armor for one of my mages. It also seems like whatever the requirements are for something to be considered an artifact up to a major artifact have been decreased and I haven't seen a legendary artifact piece, even with 3600 luck on the suit, since mid-week last week.

And don't get me started on the drop rate for everything else that could be in the chests and the chests that people are reporting don't even have gold and gems in them. And the puzzles and the destruction of items. And mobs in Eodon that don't fit the map levels.

I doubt I'll do much more testing. There's no point. I thought things were better last Wednesday, but now I see it's just another bait-and-switch, as always.

I've added some warrior cache chests to both spreadsheets that I've posted links to before. I'm going to try to put my thoughts together to post something on the official forums, but have a lot of stuff going on in RL and just might not get to it. It no longer seems very important.

 

[Pawain]

Well that sux. I tried to help up the loot. @Khaelor is testing and reporting. Good Luck all!

June 1 is getting close.

 

[Uriah Heep]

Well that sux. I tried to help up the loot. @Khaelor is testing and reporting. Good Luck all!

June 1 is getting close.

June 1 is worldwide release?

 

[Pawain]

I just go by the info they put out. Rising Tide was a little late.

Ultima Online 2019 Roadmap – Ultima Online

 

[Tina Small]

I'm working on a spreadsheet listing the properties of all the weapons I looted out of cache chests during this second pass of testing on TC. Am up to 93 weapons and still have maybe another 60 to add. At the moment it's viewable by anyone with the link and you can make comments if you want. I think you can also sort it or filter it without affecting the original, but I can't guarantee that. I think when it's done I'll increase the line spacing a bit and then sort it by the Item Property Package and the Item Quality so it's easier to see which properties come from each of the "property packages" (see Publish 73 17th November – Ultima Online under the heading "Shame Itemization Upgrade" for more details ) . I really believe that the reason so much loot anymore is useless is because of this change. And I don't know if we'll ever get away from it. You'll see in the spreadsheet there are some items that aren't labelled with one of the property packages. I haven't sorted it yet to see if there's any consistency in the properties for those weapons that have no "package" assigned to them.

Going left to right, the properties should be mostly in the order they are listed on weapons, in case you're wondering about the order.

Anyway, just wanted to throw this out there and I'll be working on it tomorrow too. I'm so frustrated with how loot anywhere in the game anymore is so poorly put together for properties. It has been years now that when I loot anything the only things I look at are the jewelry and most of that is useless too.

Publish 105 Weapons (Round 2)

 

[Tina Small]

The spreadsheet now has all 168 weapons I collected from cache weapons on TC during the last week. They're sorted at the moment by the properties package, the name of the weapon, and the quality of the chest. You'll see a number at the top of each properties column showing how many weapons have that property. There's also a total for each line/weapon of what I called non-negative properties, meaning everything except cursed, 50 stone weight, or 125 strength requirement (yeah, I counted the -1 faster casting, kind of unavaoidable). Next to that number is the total number of the properties for each line/weapon that are one of the stat bonuses, stat increases, or stat regen properties. Almost one third of all the properties on these weapons are actually from these types of properties, which I think is kind of ridiculous and not what I believe most players want on weapons.

As I was putting this together, all could think of is that we have been just seeing mostly the same couple of packages of properties with small variations for years now. There's no real variety, even among the weapons that don't have one of the property packages associated with it. They kind of all follow a similar pattern too.

Is it worth doing something like this to analyze the armor loot as well?

ADDED:

Here is a list of all the weapon properties I found on those 168 weapons, in the order they are listed across the spreadsheet:

1. Durability Increase
2. Splintering Weapon
3. Hit Dispel
4. Hit Fireball
5. Hit Harm
6. Hit Lightning
7. Hit Magic Arrow
8. Hit Physical Area
9. Hit Fire Area
10. Hit Cold Area
11. Hit Poison Area
12. Hit Energy Area
13. Hit Stamina Leech
14. Hit Mana Leech
15. Hit Life Leech
16. Hit Fatigue
17. Hit Mana Drain
18. Hit Lower Defense
19. Hit Lower Attack
20. Spell Channeling
21. Mage Weapon
22. Slayer
23. Battle Lust
24. Blood Drinker
25. Reactive Paralyze
26. Velocity
27. Strength Bonus
28. Dex Bonus
29. Int Bonus
30. Hit Point Increase
31. Stamina Increase
32. Mana Increase
33. Hit Point Regeneration
34. Stamina Regeneration
35. Mana Regeneration
36. Balanced
37. Luck
38. Reflect Phys Damage
39. Enhance Potions
40. Hit Chance Incrs
41. Defense Chance Incrs
42. Faster Casting -1
43. Faster Casting 1
44. Lower Mana Cost
45. Swing Speed Increase
46. Damage Increase
47. Physical Resist
48. Fire Resist
49. Cold Resist
50. Poison Resist
51. Energy Resist
52. Lower Requirements
53. Use Best Weapon Skill
54. Cursed 50 Stone Weight
55. 125 Strength Reqrmnt
56. Damage Type

Just realized I meant to count the LMC , reflect physical damage, and enhance potions properties with the stat stuff, so going to modify that now.

 

[ShriNayne]

@Tina Small thank you for all your hard work!

 

[Lord GOD(GOD)]

Finally got round to trying some of this and I'm either doing something wrong, or not getting it, or it's just massively underwhelming.

I dug a handful of Hoard (Horde?) whatever the top free ones they give you on TC are in various lands. Needing Remove Trap is a bit rubbish, I assume it's a known bug but every time I get the cylinder puzzle I can't remove anything from the chest.

There's like 4-5 items per chest. One had a bag but I couldn't open or remove it because it was a cylinder puzzle chest and everything was blocked.

Nothing spawned once chest was open. Initial spawn was weak and boring.

 

[Keven2002]

@Kyronix I wanted to add a couple potential bugs (unless they are working as designed but they feel like they aren't).

1. Digging up the treasure chest and casting invis doesn't keep the hunter hidden which I thought was changed? I thought I read somewhere you were able to remain hidden when digging up chests now so if that is the case I think it should also apply to magic hiding (aka invis spell).

2. The blast range of failure to remove trap looks like it is almost the entire screen around the chest. This is unlike any other trap in the game (doing damage that far from the chest) so I'm assuming that it should follow other traps. Upon a failure there was a deer 8-9 tiles away that was blasted (poor bambi). I accidentally removed the chest before taking the pic but threw the map down where the chest was.

 

[Zeke]

My Treasure hunters room before new publish:


After testing on TC1:

 

[ShriNayne]

Awww I loved your room in the 'before' screenie....not so much 'after'....