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Rags to riches: Noob's journey in making his first billion

Tabin

Seasoned Veteran
Stratics Veteran
I thought I’d share my personal story of how I managed to make my first billion. I’m hoping newer players will find it useful for their journey. For the vets, hopefully you read this and find it entertaining as you probably forgot what it's like to be a noob! It’s a long story so grab some popcorn and relax! Here it goes.


Starting out: I began my journey on the Atlantic server because I read it was the most active. I also read that a pure paladin was able to slay the nastiest of bosses. I was sold! So Tabin was born as a mace-paladin. Having awful armor, 1k gold and low skill, I wasn't able to do much. I knew the best thing to do was try to get my skills as high as I could by training off skeletons/zombies till 50, ettins till 65ish, earth eles till 70+ etc. I looted all the gold from my kills and prioritized my spending to buy a horse, 40 skills, bandaids, and armor from NPCs.


My first 100k: I managed to save up roughly 30k gold from farming earth eles. I was 80+ fighting skills and healing with both chiv and bandaids. I felt ready for the next step. Time for some better gear. I galloped around towns to player vendors and HOLY-chivalry-smokes! Things were insanely expensive. I asked a player at New Haven bank, how can I afford some better gear? "Behold!" The vendor search option…I found a juicy demon slayer cleaver, picked up the map, compared the map location to a world map, and galloped my noob self over there! (Ya, I didn't know you can recall with the map) I bought that cleaver and was ready to start butchering some demons. I looked up where to find them and it seems demon temple was a good spot. Someone helped me find a rune library and off I went. That's where I started farming demons and made my first 100k. Each slayed demon had 500+ gold and they dropped pretty quickly in a few hits. Soon enough, I bought and placed my very own plot of land.



My first mil: At this point, I joined a guild. Someone was recruiting on general chat and I figured why not! I asked on my new fellow guildies if anyone would like to join me for some demon hunting and demon dinner. I think I heard crickets chirp. No response. So after farming demons by myself for the next few hours, I finally caved and ask, what I should be hunting next. I was told succubus or Miasma. I tried succubus and was successful there. After farming that, I bought a Scorpion slayer scimitar to try out Miasma. (still had no idea about ele wep dmg, dbl strike, and armor ignore). I sacred journeyed to it's lair and sure enough, I got wrecked when I couldn't heal myself. I gave up and went back to killing succubus. Also did Troygs since it's easy and perfect for skill training. I did some reading on stratics and looked at artifacts that I could get. Tybalt's Shadow apparently dropped a robe that would give me free stats. I figured out how to get into The Abyss and I managed to make my way to Tybalt. Not without dying at that tricky invisible walk way though! It took about 5 kills to finally get my first artifact drop worth 700k-1mil!


My first 10mil: One day, I attempted to participate in a guild hunt and was kindly told to sit out because of my gear. A fellow guild mate saw my ridiculous noob armor and offered to give me a new set and explained to me the importance of HLL, HML, and HSL. After he hooked me up, I was rocking a new set of 60s all resist, +HP, +mana, + stam gear. He said the gear he gave me cost about 5mil. He also told me I need to use a weapon with armor ignore. After he told me the best end game weapon and armor typically consist of some crafted gear, I contemplated making my own. I honestly wasn't thrilled because crafting felt like a chore, but I reluctantly created one anyways. (a human crafter...oops!) I was also suggested to try Narvey as a good first boss to defeat. I bought myself a crafted spider slayer bladed staff and off I went. I met up with another newish player and we took her down by jousting her! The entire time he was yelling at me, ROCKS! ROCKS! and running around in circles. I had no idea why until later. I continued to farmed Narvey with other random strangers. I also met my first toxic player...this female character that would call me names and get easy loot/art drops by teleporting in right when Narvey was about 20% HP. Anyways, eventually I got my first Tangle! Took me a week or so of farming it, but it felt great to earn my first big ticket item. I still didn't have 10mil in the bank though. Nope! I didn't want to part with my precious new apron. I kept farming, hoping for a second Tangle while looting every magic item. Every single one. Why? For training my crafter/imbuer of course! After a Narvey kill, I would even sacred journey back for left over loot that other players didn't pick up. Some nice folks realized what a bum I was and started leaving the junk on the ground for me. Then another day, I found a new goldmine for magic loot. My guild did a Scali run and there was sooo much left over loot, I came back with my pack horse. Ya...I was THAT guy. With all the unraveled residues, I looked up how to transfer the material to get 120 imbuing scrolls. I under cut the market and started selling the scrolls for 400k each and that's when money really started raking in. Soon enough, I reached the 10mil mark.



First 100mil: Trying to make 100mil was a huge milestone. A decent set of crafted armor cost 35mil. Slayer bladed staffs were 2mil+. My gear was preventing me from killing anything stronger and at the same time, I couldn't afford better gear! I was stuck farming Narvey for weeks trying to get that second Tangle. To progress, I knew I needed to finish my crafter. I spent a good chunk of gold buying ingots and the 120 power scroll to work my way to legendary status while slowly working on imbuing. Farming Narvey got boring so I started exploring other options. I made a spreadsheet of every valuable artifact drop with info about the boss, weakest resist, where to find it, and the difficulty level. I did more research and figured the next easiest place would be Blackthorns Castle. I found my way to the Captains and got wrecked. I asked stratics pros for help and got some answers, but I still couldn't solo Blackthorn Captains. I did meet another paladin and we were able to farm Blackthorn Captains together by cross healing each other. I also started farming Balrons as an alternative way to get blackthorn arts. I eventually saved up to get a metal version of the mace and shield helm. Around the same time, I hit 3x legendary (BS, tailoring and Imbuing) with my crafter. The world changed for me. I imbued left and right! I crafted budget version of weapons for every specific encounter. I finally had enough LMC to switch builds and try out a sampire. I was envious of how easily they soloed Narvey. After getting past that learning curve of keeping yourself a live and healed with life leech only, I was finally able to start solo Miasmas and Narvey. Next up on the chopping block were Dreadhorn, Paroxy, and Medusa. With some research on stratics, I eventually figured out how to key and kill each of them. Of course, I failed many times along the way. I unfortunately never got anything from Dreadhorn or Medusa but I did get the Crimson Cinture from Paroxy as well as the swamp dragon. I was still far away from breaking 100mil though since I didn't want to part with my treasured loot. I continued my UO research and found other legendaries to farm. I got another crimson cinture, more tangles, and another animated legs of tinkering. I sold those and broke the 100mil mark


First billion: After breaking 100mil and finding a few reliable farm spots, I started optimizing my gear and dropping loads of gold to upgrade everything. I used a spreadsheet to design my armor and artifact set and tested various different setups/builds. I felt good enough to join guild runs with my improved gear. I was excited to end my mostly solo career! ShadowGuard was semi new at the time and it was serious end game content! I took some time to gather the courage and make my first attempt (about 2 months after it came out). I tried it with the large guild and it was a huge disappointment for me. I was the only melee player in the party and everyone else was a summoner/tamer/bard or archer. It wasn't their first time so they knew better. Not knowing what slayers to use or anything, I couldn't do enough damage to keep myself healed. Being in a large group, I also wasn't able to honor any of the bosses. To top it off, I also created a TON of spawn whereas pets for some reason didn't create any. I died and remained so when my guildmates killed the last Shadowguard. Everyone was too busy to res me. A guildmate also complained about the spawn I created and suggested I make a new toon for roof. Afterwards that, I vowed never to do a large group run. I did more research and found out the amount of spawn I created, scaled with the size of the party. Because the spawn was so annoying, almost everyone was using a tamer to farm roof. Still, I guild chatted to see if any one was willing to try a smaller group, but no luck. I felt like my only option was to find a smaller guild, so I reluctantly said a few goodbyes and resigned. I went back to farming crafting material and Narvey, where I bumped into a friend of mine. I convinced him to do Shadowguard with me. He used his tamer and I was on my Sampire. After keying for what felt like an eternity, I suggested we wait for maybe 1 or 2 other players, but he said "lets just try it." When we got in, and we thought "Oh ****. If we die, we wasted our keys" which is typically what happens with other Boss encounters like the peerless. Turns out, you can leave and re-enter...Anyways, not knowing that fact, we powered through it and together (ok 90% of it was all him) and we managed to beat it! It took us 3 long gruesome hours! I didn't run back to town to grab a proper set of weapons so I ended up being the off screen resser. We both didn't get artifact drops (so we thought) and logged out shortly after from UO exhaustion. The next day when I checked my bag, I found a cameo in my backpack. HOLY SMOKES! For some reason, when an artifact from the shadowguard room drops in your bag, it doesn't say "ARTIFACT" in the middle of your screen like I thought it would. I must have missed the text in my chatlog. Getting that cameo was like a drug. I was HOOKED. I was determined to farm ShadowGuard. I did some research, made a new sets of weapons, and convinced some other ShadowGuard-virgins to go with me. I went in with two other tamers. With the proper weapons, the shadowguards dropped much faster! We started doing runs once every other day. The drop rate for artifacts was nuts. Each of us was getting a drop out of every 4 runs. Plus the legendary loot sold for boat loads of gold back then. I ended up joining my friends guild, which really consisted of just 4 or so active players. We got good enough to the point where we could start farming it with just two players and you'd get more loot that way. I sold two arachnid cameos and saved up to afford the ones I needed (demon, undead, repond, reptile). Eventually, I was comfortable enough taking first-timer tamers through and after a run with a really new/under geared one, I realized I could probably solo it. It took me 3 attempts but I did it! ShadowGuard felt end game for me and trying to farm anything else just wasn't economically comparable. With everything I needed for my sampire, I eventually hit the 1bil mark from all the legendary loot and artifact drops. There wasn't much to look forward to beyond that so I gradually started playing less and less. That's when my journey ended, 8 months from the day I started. Thanks for taking the time to read all this =)
 
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CorwinXX

Crazed Zealot
Stratics Veteran
I did Shadowguard several times (only two players in the party - Bushido Paladin + Bard, 2k luck suits) and never got any artifact.
 

Tuan

Slightly Crazed
Stratics Veteran
I've been playing from nearly day 1, though there have been long stretches where I barely play at all, and maybe made 1B total. I was one of the earliest to have a million in the bank that I earned 100% legit (duping was a HUGE thing early on). I probably did that 8 months from when I started playing.
 

Tuan

Slightly Crazed
Stratics Veteran
If you have been playing from nearly day 1 you couldn't have a million in your bank just because it wasn't possible to put so much gold in your bank.
Why not? I had a bag with piles of 60k in it all nicely aligned etc. 1M gold = 17 items. This was definitely possible on day 1.
 

Tuan

Slightly Crazed
Stratics Veteran
Also, I was thinking about what I did to earn my first 1M.

Mining and Smithing. Back in the days before insurance, before Trammel, before smelting - just getting to 100 smithy, if you mined all your own ingots, would net you several hundred thousand from selling the stuff you made to the NPC. Most of the rest was from selling GM made suits of armor - even before the days of the makers mark when you had to just trust me that it was GM made.
 

Tabin

Seasoned Veteran
Stratics Veteran
I did Shadowguard several times (only two players in the party - Bushido Paladin + Bard, 2k luck suits) and never got any artifact.
Hmm I think it can be hit or miss. Some people get dry spells. My drop rates were similar to DJAd in the following post: Shadowguard roof needs a higher drop rate...
Not sure if Devs changed it since. I know people say the drop rate for roof sucks, but if you compare it to peerless, it's a world of difference.

I've been playing from nearly day 1, though there have been long stretches where I barely play at all, and maybe made 1B total. I was one of the earliest to have a million in the bank that I earned 100% legit (duping was a HUGE thing early on). I probably did that 8 months from when I started playing.
Duping...why must people ruin it for everyone! Now, it's scripting...can't compete with their deep pockets.
 

Tabin

Seasoned Veteran
Stratics Veteran
whats is this build you use for this ? i would like to start a chapter like this also?
I started with a mace paladin because that is what I was familiar with and I like how mace fighting destroys monster's stamina. Healing with bandages was cheap and didn't require a lot of good gear to get it working. I was aiming for a standard 6x 120 mace paladin initially. Mace fighting, parry, tactics, anatomy, chiv, and healing.

You can certainly go the classic paladin route, but now that I understand the game a little bit better, I'd recommend a different build. You often need the 300 skill points in fighting skills to get lower mana on your special attacks which the classic paladin lacks. Also, some monsters don't have a slayer weakness so the best way to achieve a near 300% damage cap is to use bushido + chivalry together. So a good starter build would be a bushido paladin. It is basically a sampire but drop necromancy for healing. 120 swords, 120 tactics, 100 anatomy, 100 healing, 120 bushido, 60 parry. This way you'll learn all the cool things bushido has to offer and it will be an easier transition into a sampire if you ever do decide to go that route. I actually use the bushido paladin build when I want to kill Corgul or Blackthorn captains. For the most part though, I stick with some Sampire variant.
 

Max Blackoak

Babbling Loonie
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
UNLEASHED
the above template has room for 100 chivalry, so I guess that's where the remaining 100 points went...
 

Tabin

Seasoned Veteran
Stratics Veteran
Thanks tabin what did your starter gear look like? you dont have chiv in the build?
Max caught my missing 100 points. There is 100 chiv in the build. You can get a pretty decent starter gear shopping on Vendor Search. Just aim for either 35% SSI + 150 stamina or 20% SSI + 180 stamina to start so you can swing dbl axes at 1.25 per second. You also want to prioritize 70s in all resist at a bare minimum, get 45% hit chance increase and 40% Lower mana cost. Next importance is +25 hp from your gear.

For your budget starter suit, you want to find 3x used crafted pieces on VS with 5hp, 8stam, 8mana, 8LMC and maybe 5%HCI or DCI in it. Then 2x high resist legendary pieces to get you to 70s resists.

The first weapons I would recommend is a 100% Fire dbl axe with arachnid slayer for Narvey and Miasmas, and a simple bladed staff with HLL, HML, HSL, DI. If your budget is super tight, you can survive without a slayer as long as you use Enemy of One and you honor your opponent for perfection bonus damage but it is much easier starting out by killing things with slayer weakness.

Btw, I started on Atlantic so vendor search was an option for me. If I had to start from scratch on a quiet server, I'd probably make a crafter and find ways to farm imbuing ingredients to get some of my gear.
 
Max caught my missing 100 points. There is 100 chiv in the build. You can get a pretty decent starter gear shopping on Vendor Search. Just aim for either 35% SSI + 150 stamina or 20% SSI + 180 stamina to start so you can swing dbl axes at 1.25 per second. You also want to prioritize 70s in all resist at a bare minimum, get 45% hit chance increase and 40% Lower mana cost. Next importance is +25 hp from your gear.

For your budget starter suit, you want to find 3x used crafted pieces on VS with 5hp, 8stam, 8mana, 8LMC and maybe 5%HCI or DCI in it. Then 2x high resist legendary pieces to get you to 70s resists.

The first weapons I would recommend is a 100% Fire dbl axe with arachnid slayer for Narvey and Miasmas, and a simple bladed staff with HLL, HML, HSL, DI. If your budget is super tight, you can survive without a slayer as long as you use Enemy of One and you honor your opponent for perfection bonus damage but it is much easier starting out by killing things with slayer weakness.

Btw, I started on Atlantic so vendor search was an option for me. If I had to start from scratch on a quiet server, I'd probably make a crafter and find ways to farm imbuing ingredients to get some of my gear.



Thank you for you advice im also on atlantic
 

Tabin

Seasoned Veteran
Stratics Veteran
tabin what did u sell to get your starting gold to buy said pieces
How far along are you? What is your current gear? Did you hit 90s in weapon skills and tactics yet?

I went from skeletons/zombies -> ettins -> earth eles -> demons (after buying demon slayer) -> succubus. Before you start hunting demons, save up like 25k or 50k gold to buy some junk armor with high resist in all areas. Then save up for some cheap HCI DCI rings. Loot gold and light weight magic items, then use imbuer to turn light weight magic items into imbuing resources. Sell imbuing resources for gold. Eventually, you'll replace your noob armor with a "beginner" set of armor that I described earlier. It should cost 1-3mil total. The beginner armor should be good enough to allow you to farm Miasma (make sure you have HLL arachnid slayer) and Narvey. The only downside with Miasma is that you need a lockpicker to get the maps out of the chests or make a friend. You can also try Tybalt's shadow and get the cloak. Then there's the deamon spawn in the Abyss dungeon. You'll get both imbuing ingredients, gold, and a chance at animated legs of the insane tinker. As you get better, then you can work your way to Blackthorn dungeons and earn your mace and shield reading glasses.

Anyhow, there are many many ways the earn gold in this game. My story is there to help but you should definitely explore the world, don't stay in the same area for too long, and try new things that might be worth while. That's how I managed to figure most things out and I definitely felt immersed into the world of Britania. =)
 

Silent Singer

Certifiable
Stratics Veteran
UNLEASHED
Tabin, nice write-up, I like to see stories like this. As someone who has played on and off since 2001, I have never had a billion gold. This past weekend the total gold I had across three accounts on production servers was 250k. The fun for me on prodo is building whacky RP-ish toons (like a necro librarian for my Legends Dread Library public portal house. So any drops or gold I make goes right back into a new toon.

However, I think you might be interested in Siege Perilous if you feel you've end gamed on the production servers. Siege is an OSI server (you select it in the same list as Atlantic), but the rules are the closest thing we now have to original UO.

There is no Trammel. There is no item insurance. There is no transferring from other shards. There is no selling to NPC vendors. You are allowed a house even if your account has one on a production server. Skill gains after 75 are through the RoT system. There is no recalling. Only one toon is allowed per account.

The result is an economy where the maximum list price you find on any given day on vendor search is 10 million gold. The primary avenues that were used to dupe items or script unlimited on somewhere like Atlantic are very much diminished.

The challenge on Siege is to do all the things you mentioned, but knowing you can lose your suit at any moment, so there is a balance between warring what will be the most effective with the least amount of pain if you lose it. Crafting plays a huge role. Entire schools of thought revolve around different pieces of gear to build your suit against (you are allowed to put a 'Siege Bless' on any one item of your suit).

Siege is the shard that kept me from permanently leaving several years ago, and it sounds like you might appreciate some of the challenges that can be found there.

Good luck!
 

Tabin

Seasoned Veteran
Stratics Veteran
Tabin, nice write-up, I like to see stories like this. As someone who has played on and off since 2001, I have never had a billion gold. This past weekend the total gold I had across three accounts on production servers was 250k. The fun for me on prodo is building whacky RP-ish toons (like a necro librarian for my Legends Dread Library public portal house. So any drops or gold I make goes right back into a new toon.

However, I think you might be interested in Siege Perilous if you feel you've end gamed on the production servers. Siege is an OSI server (you select it in the same list as Atlantic), but the rules are the closest thing we now have to original UO.

There is no Trammel. There is no item insurance. There is no transferring from other shards. There is no selling to NPC vendors. You are allowed a house even if your account has one on a production server. Skill gains after 75 are through the RoT system. There is no recalling. Only one toon is allowed per account.

The result is an economy where the maximum list price you find on any given day on vendor search is 10 million gold. The primary avenues that were used to dupe items or script unlimited on somewhere like Atlantic are very much diminished.

The challenge on Siege is to do all the things you mentioned, but knowing you can lose your suit at any moment, so there is a balance between warring what will be the most effective with the least amount of pain if you lose it. Crafting plays a huge role. Entire schools of thought revolve around different pieces of gear to build your suit against (you are allowed to put a 'Siege Bless' on any one item of your suit).

Siege is the shard that kept me from permanently leaving several years ago, and it sounds like you might appreciate some of the challenges that can be found there.

Good luck!
Glad you enjoyed the long read!

I was tempted to move to SP before. I considered it but the fellucca rule set with no insurance scares me. I enjoy the gameplay style of progressing and slowly earning new items that marginally improves your character to tackle more and more challenging content. If my gear gets looted, I get set back a decent amount of time and gold. I did play UO in pretram days and even did some PKing though.

So I do remember the good o'days! I took a 10+ year long break and started UO up again hoping to do epic guild hunts downing nasty monsters. So now...I'm pretty much a trammie and spend most of my time theory crafting and helping other players in PvM.

It would be cool to have a regular shard just without shard shields or xfer token transfers. If Broadsword ever decided to create a new server like that, I'd 100% buy a mythic token or two and start from scratch!

Anywho, thanks for the SP invite. Much appreciated! Maybe one day... ;)
 

Max Blackoak

Babbling Loonie
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
UNLEASHED
if you ever make the move hit me up and I can help you. I run a sampire on Siege and can do pretty much all the content that people on prodo do but with a lot cheaper gear so I can afford to loose it. It's a matter of adapting is all...don't let no insurance scare you away. Instead of slowly progressing your blessed gear on Siege you will slowly progress your stash of materials used to replace gear if lost. It's the same, but different ;-)

and the best part is: it is 100% risk vs reward!
 

Li Mu Bai

Adventurer
Stratics Veteran
Thx Tabin. It is a really kind of You to spend so much time to write all those things up.

I would like just add a few things:
- If You use shame to train skills (whirlwinding there is not a bad idea to train up weapon, anat, parry and tactics while hunting) You should get some shame crystals. Killing the 4 bosses is quite easy. Honor on the 4th one helps a lot. So do the teleport scrolls for the 2nd one. On felucca shame is 100% empty on most shards and You get 100% chances to get ingredients for a whetstone. It is 10-15 minutes job to kill all of them and You can sell a whetstone for a few mils
- troglodytes are also good way to earn some gold while training on the 80s-90s. they drop 500 gold each and insta spawn
- At lower levels solens for training and gaining bag of sendings/powder of translocation for sale is also not so bad imo
- You can get like 200k in 15 minutes by killing faery dragons + some nice imbuing materials. At lower levels of skills/gear just bring your BoS and leave the place when wyverns appear. If You are smart and patient You are able to do the whole road in this mini spawn by just keeping enough faeries to clear the rest including renowned wyvern (a chance for Animated legs)
- Champion spawns are Your best bet on any level - just get a whirlwind slayer, preferably with aoe and clear the lowest levels of spawn - arties for cleanup points and pinkies for sale. It is not so hard to do the whole spawn on 100s with a starter suit - like 40 hci/dci 20 hpi and such. Without mace and shield even - i did it a few times with Rikktor. On a horse, not armored swampie even. I had run a lot but did it. 6 PSes + 6 chances for a nice primer + chance for an arty (lieutenant guard is about 30 mil, Rikktor droppes it) means that you earn. On lower levels you can just do 2 first steps of each spawn and sometimes you'll find about 300k lying on the floor.
- Trader quests are also a good idea - materials are not worth an effort but ocasional pinkies can be. And You can learn alot about the geography and such.
 

Maximus Neximus

Certifiable
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
Thx Tabin. It is a really kind of You to spend so much time to write all those things up.

I would like just add a few things:
- If You use shame to train skills (whirlwinding there is not a bad idea to train up weapon, anat, parry and tactics while hunting) You should get some shame crystals. Killing the 4 bosses is quite easy. Honor on the 4th one helps a lot. So do the teleport scrolls for the 2nd one. On felucca shame is 100% empty on most shards and You get 100% chances to get ingredients for a whetstone. It is 10-15 minutes job to kill all of them and You can sell a whetstone for a few mils
- troglodytes are also good way to earn some gold while training on the 80s-90s. they drop 500 gold each and insta spawn
- At lower levels solens for training and gaining bag of sendings/powder of translocation for sale is also not so bad imo
- You can get like 200k in 15 minutes by killing faery dragons + some nice imbuing materials. At lower levels of skills/gear just bring your BoS and leave the place when wyverns appear. If You are smart and patient You are able to do the whole road in this mini spawn by just keeping enough faeries to clear the rest including renowned wyvern (a chance for Animated legs)
- Champion spawns are Your best bet on any level - just get a whirlwind slayer, preferably with aoe and clear the lowest levels of spawn - arties for cleanup points and pinkies for sale. It is not so hard to do the whole spawn on 100s with a starter suit - like 40 hci/dci 20 hpi and such. Without mace and shield even - i did it a few times with Rikktor. On a horse, not armored swampie even. I had run a lot but did it. 6 PSes + 6 chances for a nice primer + chance for an arty (lieutenant guard is about 30 mil, Rikktor droppes it) means that you earn. On lower levels you can just do 2 first steps of each spawn and sometimes you'll find about 300k lying on the floor.
- Trader quests are also a good idea - materials are not worth an effort but ocasional pinkies can be. And You can learn alot about the geography and such.
I'm so mad at myself. I had no clue that Fel was 100% chance for the whetstone ingredients. I've been wasting my time in Tram where I've killed 10 guardians and gotten zero ingredients. Thank you for sharing.
 

Taylor

Former Stratics CEO (2011-2014)
VIP
Alumni
Supporter
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
UNLEASHED
Campaign Benefactor
Reading this took me right back For a moment, I felt that magic and wonder all over again Thank you for the story!
 

Finley Grant

Crazed Zealot
Stratics Veteran
UNLEASHED
Campaign Supporter
@Tabin

You sir have my highest respect.
Instead of complaining and relaying on others you decided to pull it through.

That's something you don't hear that much anymore.

Even now where the prices are high on Atlantic you went your way used your cleverness to achieve a lot.

Thanks for the amazing story. Even if I mostly only do trades I would be honored to go on a hunt with you now and then.
 
I thought I’d share my personal story of how I managed to make my first billion. I’m hoping newer players will find it useful for their journey. For the vets, hopefully you read this and find it entertaining as you probably forgot what it's like to be a noob! It’s a long story so grab some popcorn and relax! Here it goes.


Starting out: I began my journey on the Atlantic server because I read it was the most active. I also read that a pure paladin was able to slay the nastiest of bosses. I was sold! So Tabin was born as a mace-paladin. Having awful armor, 1k gold and low skill, I wasn't able to do much. I knew the best thing to do was try to get my skills as high as I could by training off skeletons/zombies till 50, ettins till 65ish, earth eles till 70+ etc. I looted all the gold from my kills and prioritized my spending to buy a horse, 40 skills, bandaids, and armor from NPCs.


My first 100k: I managed to save up roughly 30k gold from farming earth eles. I was 80+ fighting skills and healing with both chiv and bandaids. I felt ready for the next step. Time for some better gear. I galloped around towns to player vendors and HOLY-chivalry-smokes! Things were insanely expensive. I asked a player at New Haven bank, how can I afford some better gear? "Behold!" The vendor search option…I found a juicy demon slayer cleaver, picked up the map, compared the map location to a world map, and galloped my noob self over there! (Ya, I didn't know you can recall with the map) I bought that cleaver and was ready to start butchering some demons. I looked up where to find them and it seems demon temple was a good spot. Someone helped me find a rune library and off I went. That's where I started farming demons and made my first 100k. Each slayed demon had 500+ gold and they dropped pretty quickly in a few hits. Soon enough, I bought and placed my very own plot of land.



My first mil: At this point, I joined a guild. Someone was recruiting on general chat and I figured why not! I asked on my new fellow guildies if anyone would like to join me for some demon hunting and demon dinner. I think I heard crickets chirp. No response. So after farming demons by myself for the next few hours, I finally caved and ask, what I should be hunting next. I was told succubus or Miasma. I tried succubus and was successful there. After farming that, I bought a Scorpion slayer scimitar to try out Miasma. (still had no idea about ele wep dmg, dbl strike, and armor ignore). I sacred journeyed to it's lair and sure enough, I got wrecked when I couldn't heal myself. I gave up and went back to killing succubus. Also did Troygs since it's easy and perfect for skill training. I did some reading on stratics and looked at artifacts that I could get. Tybalt's Shadow apparently dropped a robe that would give me free stats. I figured out how to get into The Abyss and I managed to make my way to Tybalt. Not without dying at that tricky invisible walk way though! It took about 5 kills to finally get my first artifact drop worth 700k-1mil!


My first 10mil: One day, I attempted to participate in a guild hunt and was kindly told to sit out because of my gear. A fellow guild mate saw my ridiculous noob armor and offered to give me a new set and explained to me the importance of HLL, HML, and HSL. After he hooked me up, I was rocking a new set of 60s all resist, +HP, +mana, + stam gear. He said the gear he gave me cost about 5mil. He also told me I need to use a weapon with armor ignore. After he told me the best end game weapon and armor typically consist of some crafted gear, I contemplated making my own. I honestly wasn't thrilled because crafting felt like a chore, but I reluctantly created one anyways. (a human crafter) I was also suggested to try Narvey as a good first boss to defeat. I bought myself a crafted spider slayer bladed staff and off I went. I met up with another newish player and we took her down by jousting her! The entire time he was yelling at me, ROCKS! ROCKS! and running around in circles. I had no idea why until later. I continued to farmed Narvey with other random strangers. I also met my first toxic player...this female character that would call me names and get easy loot/art drops by teleporting in right when Narvey was about 20% HP. Anyways, eventually I got my first Tangle! Took me a week or so of farming it, but it felt great to earn my first big ticket item. I still didn't have 10mil in the bank though. Nope! I didn't want to part with my precious new apron. I kept farming, hoping for a second Tangle while looting every magic item. Every single one. Why? For training my crafter/imbuer of course! After a Narvey kill, I would even sacred journey back for left over loot that other players didn't pick up. Some nice folks realized what a bum I was and started leaving the junk on the ground for me. Then another day, I found a new goldmine for magic loot. My guild did a Scali run and there was sooo much left over loot, I came back with my pack horse. Ya...I was THAT guy. With all the unraveled residues, I looked up how to transfer the material to get 120 imbuing scrolls. I under cut the market and started selling the scrolls for 400k each and that's when money really started raking in. Soon enough, I reached the 10mil mark.



First 100mil: Trying to make 100mil was a huge milestone. A decent set of crafted armor cost 35mil. Slayer bladed staffs were 2mil+. My gear was preventing me from killing anything stronger and at the same time, I couldn't afford better gear! I was stuck farming Narvey for weeks trying to get that second Tangle. To progress, I knew I needed to finish my crafter. I spent a good chunk of gold buying ingots and the 120 power scroll to work my way to legendary status while slowly working on imbuing. Farming Narvey got boring so I started exploring other options. I made a spreadsheet of every valuable artifact drop with info about the boss, weakest resist, where to find it, and the difficulty level. I did more research and figured the next easiest place would be Blackthorns Castle. I found my way to the Captains and got wrecked. I asked stratics pros for help and got some answers, but I still couldn't solo Blackthorn Captains. I did meet another paladin and we were able to farm Blackthorn Captains together by cross healing each other. I also started farming Balrons as an alternative way to get blackthorn arts. I eventually saved up to get a metal version of the mace and shield helm. Around the same time, I hit 3x legendary (BS, tailoring and Imbuing) with my crafter. The world changed for me. I imbued left and right! I crafted budget version of weapons for every specific encounter. I finally had enough LMC to switch builds and try out a sampire. I was envious of how easily they soloed Narvey. After getting past that learning curve of keeping yourself a live and healed with life leech only, I was finally able to start solo Miasmas and Narvey. Next up on the chopping block were Dreadhorn, Paroxy, and Medusa. With some research on stratics, I eventually figured out how to key and kill each of them. Of course, I failed many times along the way. I unfortunately never got anything from Dreadhorn or Medusa but I did get the Crimson Cinture from Paroxy as well as the swamp dragon. I was still far away from breaking 100mil though since I didn't want to part with my treasured loot. I continued my UO research and found other legendaries to farm. I got another crimson cinture, more tangles, and another animated legs of tinkering. I sold those and broke the 100mil mark


First billion: After breaking 100mil and finding a few reliable farm spots, I started optimizing my gear and dropping loads of gold to upgrade everything. I used a spreadsheet to design my armor and artifact set and tested various different setups/builds. I felt good enough to join guild runs with my improved gear. I was excited to end my mostly solo career! ShadowGuard was semi new at the time and it was serious end game content! I took some time to gather the courage and make my first attempt (about 2 months after it came out). I tried it with the large guild and it was a huge disappointment for me. I was the only melee player in the party and everyone else was a summoner/tamer/bard or archer. It wasn't their first time so they knew better. Not knowing what slayers to use or anything, I couldn't do enough damage to keep myself healed. Being in a large group, I also wasn't able to honor any of the bosses. To top it off, I also created a TON of spawn whereas pets for some reason didn't create any. I died and remained so when my guildmates killed the last Shadowguard. Everyone was too busy to res me. A guildmate also complained about the spawn I created and suggested I make a new toon for roof. Afterwards that, I vowed never to do a large group run. I did more research and found out the amount of spawn I created, scaled with the size of the party. Because the spawn was so annoying, almost everyone was using a tamer to farm roof. Still, I guild chatted to see if any one was willing to try a smaller group, but no luck. I felt like my only option was to find a smaller guild, so I reluctantly said a few goodbyes and resigned. I went back to farming crafting material and Narvey, where I bumped into a friend of mine. I convinced him to do Shadowguard with me. He used his tamer and I was on my Sampire. After keying for what felt like an eternity, I suggested we wait for maybe 1 or 2 other players, but he said "lets just try it." When we got in, and we thought "Oh ****. If we die, we wasted our keys" which is typically what happens with other Boss encounters like the peerless. Turns out, you can leave and re-enter...Anyways, not knowing that fact, we powered through it and together (ok 90% of it was all him) and we managed to beat it! It took us 3 long gruesome hours! I didn't run back to town to grab a proper set of weapons so I ended up being the off screen resser. We both didn't get artifact drops (so we thought) and logged out shortly after from UO exhaustion. The next day when I checked my bag, I found a cameo in my backpack. HOLY SMOKES! For some reason, when an artifact from the shadowguard room drops in your bag, it doesn't say "ARTIFACT" in the middle of your screen like I thought it would. I must have missed the text in my chatlog. Getting that cameo was like a drug. I was HOOKED. I was determined to farm ShadowGuard. I did some research, made a new sets of weapons, and convinced some other ShadowGuard-virgins to go with me. I went in with two other tamers. With the proper weapons, the shadowguards dropped much faster! We started doing runs once every other day. The drop rate for artifacts was nuts. Each of us was getting a drop out of every 4 runs. Plus the legendary loot sold for boat loads of gold back then. I ended up joining my friends guild, which really consisted of just 4 or so active players. We got good enough to the point where we could start farming it with just two players and you'd get more loot that way. I sold two arachnid cameos and saved up to afford the ones I needed (demon, undead, repond, reptile). Eventually, I was comfortable enough taking first-timer tamers through and after a run with a really new/under geared one, I realized I could probably solo it. It took me 3 attempts but I did it! ShadowGuard felt end game for me and trying to farm anything else just wasn't economically comparable. With everything I needed for my sampire, I eventually hit the 1bil mark from all the legendary loot and artifact drops. There wasn't much to look forward to beyond that so I gradually started playing less and less. That's when my journey ended, 8 months from the day I started. Thanks for taking the time to read all this =)
Great story. Pretty kewl.
 

Xel N'Jare

Adventurer
How far along are you? What is your current gear? Did you hit 90s in weapon skills and tactics yet?

I went from skeletons/zombies -> ettins -> earth eles -> demons (after buying demon slayer) -> succubus. Before you start hunting demons, save up like 25k or 50k gold to buy some junk armor with high resist in all areas. Then save up for some cheap HCI DCI rings. Loot gold and light weight magic items, then use imbuer to turn light weight magic items into imbuing resources. Sell imbuing resources for gold. Eventually, you'll replace your noob armor with a "beginner" set of armor that I described earlier. It should cost 1-3mil total. The beginner armor should be good enough to allow you to farm Miasma (make sure you have HLL arachnid slayer) and Narvey. The only downside with Miasma is that you need a lockpicker to get the maps out of the chests or make a friend. You can also try Tybalt's shadow and get the cloak. Then there's the deamon spawn in the Abyss dungeon. You'll get both imbuing ingredients, gold, and a chance at animated legs of the insane tinker. As you get better, then you can work your way to Blackthorn dungeons and earn your mace and shield reading glasses.

Anyhow, there are many many ways the earn gold in this game. My story is there to help but you should definitely explore the world, don't stay in the same area for too long, and try new things that might be worth while. That's how I managed to figure most things out and I definitely felt immersed into the world of Britania. =)
Hate to necro (somewhat) but which succubi were you hunting when your skills hit the 90s? I'm currently 100 chiv, 85 archery, 78 tactics 56 Bushido (I know, going to have to move some things around eventually). I *can* tackle demons but finding a Daemon slayer weapon has been tough... assuming succubi are daemons correct?
 

Maximus Neximus

Certifiable
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
Hate to necro (somewhat) but which succubi were you hunting when your skills hit the 90s? I'm currently 100 chiv, 85 archery, 78 tactics 56 Bushido (I know, going to have to move some things around eventually). I *can* tackle demons but finding a Daemon slayer weapon has been tough... assuming succubi are daemons correct?
Yes, they are demon slayer. I imagine it'll be a bit tougher as an archer since you can't really stand toe to toe and melee. I would work your tactics and other skills up a bit more.
 

Xel N'Jare

Adventurer
Welp, went to Shame - I dumped almost 150 arrows killing a cave troll a few scorpions and a mud pie. Doesn't seem like an effective way to level up :)
 
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Innoxicated

Journeyman
Archer not always the easiest class to run as a main money-maker for a new/returning player due to the cost of arrows alone. Definitely need to work skills more (costing again more arrows) so that at least you know you're doing as much damage as you can for every arrow you expend. Consider making a mule with lumberjack and fetching, even at very low skill you can cut plain logs and make arrows.

you can also hunt ratman archers and centaurs, which both drop a good amount of arrows. Or if you fletch them yourself, you'll need to hunt harpies for feathers.

you gotta think, archer is one of the preeminent pvp classes, so that drives the price of bulk arrows (which is what you need for training) up substantially. Players running out of arrows and grabbing a quick stack of 500 ups the price on the npc vendors in town. What you should do is buy arrows from tram yew or similar where there isn't as much traffic.

Or better yet my pro tip is find the gypsy maidens at the gypsy caravans in ilshenar. The spawn locations rotate, but start at spirituality, head straight up to the lake, follow the road right to the inn, and find the camp there. Then double back and follow that road, stopping at every caravan and looking for gypsy maidens. They sell arrows and bolts at a significantly lower price.
 
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Tabin

Seasoned Veteran
Stratics Veteran
Hate to necro (somewhat) but which succubi were you hunting when your skills hit the 90s? I'm currently 100 chiv, 85 archery, 78 tactics 56 Bushido (I know, going to have to move some things around eventually). I *can* tackle demons but finding a Daemon slayer weapon has been tough... assuming succubi are daemons correct?
I agree with some of the other replies that you got. Archery isn't the cheapest to start with due to the cost of arrows. If you can afford a soulstone, you can swap out archery and start working swordsmanship, which is typically the best PvM melee skill due to Onslaught.

If you have a repond slayer, you can also hunt/kill Trogs. The spawn there is really quick but there isn't a lot of room to run around so you need to kill them fast or have a tanky build that can out heal their damage.

If you're in the low 90s, you can also kill gold elementals in blackthorn dungeon. You'll get gems, gold, crystalline blackrocks, and the occasional blackthorn dungeon loot. The skill gains are slow as you get higher into the 90s especially if you kill them super fast (you get less hits in per time spent).
 
Hey, thanks for sharing your story Tabin! I'm still too underpowered for champ spawns, but I'm not completely green. Now that I have the names of some easier bosses, I can actually start hunting instead of making my gold through crafting and trade deal SoTs. :D
 

Gromda

Adventurer
What a great write-up and show of determination on your part. Thanks for doing that!

I just returned to UO recently after about twelve years out of game and am still trying to figure out all the new content. So much to figure out.
 
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