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UO Tips!

Sarsmi

Grand Poobah
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
General mouse/keyboard controls/macros:
  • Ctrl + shift brings up an item tag. You can drop items directly onto the tag if they stack, you can double click item tags, and you can right click while having CTRL + SHIFT held down on tags that you don't want visible.
  • Ctrl +q repeats the last thing you said, but not everyone realizes that repeated use of ctrl +q will cycle back through the things you've said. Very handy when pricing a lot of stuff on vendors.
  • Ctrl + W goes the other way.
  • Hold the right mouse button down and click the left, and your character will follow your cursor.
  • Alt + Shift then left click someone to "follow them".
  • When you have a pile of life bars but someone leaves and you want to get rid of just the one, Press Alt and left click the bar then let go and the bar will no longer be attached.
  • Holding shift can move whole stacks without choosing an amount.
  • Special moves can be accessed via the purple book at the feet of your paper doll. The two moves available to you vary depending on the base weapon you're holding. The moves can be quickly accessed by dragging the icons to your desktop (in the same way as magery scrolls), or by assigning them to client macros.
Newbie Tips (Production shards):
  • When gaining skill make sure you have another skill set to lower if you are at your skill cap, else you could waste time and resources trying to train a skill that won't gain.
  • In New Haven you can do escort quests around town every five minutes and earn 500 gold per escort. It's a great way to make some starting cash to buy a horse, buy up new skills, etc.
  • Before you do the dark knight quest, make sure you have at least 35 magery and are using a recall scroll to recall off the rune. It is a one time use rune and if you fizzle, you're out of luck.
  • There is some debate about which character a new player would want to create first in order to advance quickly. Melee characters are often the preferred choice as it costs very little to start them off and they don't require expensive magery reagents.
  • Another method of making money as a new player is NPC buying and selling. You can buy items from an NPC and resell to another NPC, netting a profit. Items that you can do this with are sold in bulks of 500. Keep in mind that every 1k of an item you buy the price will raise by 1 gps, and every 1k of item you sell the price will lower by 1 gps. You will also need to sell items to the appropriate NPC - the blacksmith will not buy fishsteaks, for example. Good places to buy items are in Felucca (though there is a risk of being killed by other players), good places to sell items are Luna and other places where a lot of players buy items from the NPCs, therefore bumping up their prices. This is a decent way to make some gold, but unless you are working your magery skill by recalling around and marking, you will not gain any skills this way.

Powergaming a newbie on a new shard (by Harlequin)
  • Newbie quests in Haven are a very good source of starting skills and blessed equipment eg undead slayer spellbook, blades for cutting corpses, lrc wizard hat. Blessed equipment remain with you even when you die.

  • Use KR to create a char, it allows you to pick 4 skills and 120 skill points, plus the dark knight quest. The 2D client only allows you 3 skills and 100 points.
  • For the first char, you will want a scribe mage to make money/mark runes/make runebooks/scribe scrolls. You also want to start off with skills at 49 instead of 50 to take advantage of the newbie quests. The NPCs woun't offer to apprentice you if you already have 50 points in the skill they teach.
  • I like to create a character with 49 scribing, 49 necro (to get the initial necrobook/regs), minimal magery (to get the initial spellbook/reg), any remaining points into chiv (spellbook). Use an elf with maxed-out INT.
  • First thing when you emerge in New Haven, buy a packy. You need it to carry the gold you will be making. Next, find and escort your first NPC. Put whatever you don't need in your bank, and all gold/regs/blank scrolls/scribe pen on you.
  • Accept the focus trainer's quest (she's just next to the bank). Just double click her, read through the instructions on how/where to train and accept her quest. Additional note on the "where" - A gong sounds when you enter an enhanced skill gain area that you are eligible for. Also, an icon will show in the buff/debuff list (the one you get when you click the blue button in your character status gump)
  • Make your way to the mage shop up north. Buy out all the blank scrolls and nightshade from the 4 mage vendors there. Remember to buy 1 nightshade for each blank scroll. Don't spend all your gold on blank scrolls, only to find that you have no money to buy nightshade. Accept apprentice quests from both the meditation (3rd floor)and inscription trainers (2nd floor).
  • Stay on the second floor library room where the inscription trainer is in, and start scribing poison scrolls. That 1 point in magery that you started with, gave you a pouch with 30 of each reg, and a spellbook with 12 spells, including a spell called poison. Poison is one of the cheapest spell to cast/scribe. You should hit 50 inscription in a few tries (2 tries if extremely lucky). Double click the inscription trainer to collect your Hallowed spellbook. This book has 1st-5th spell circles all filled and is an undead slayer to boot.
  • You can now do the necro quest or continue scribing until you hit 50 med or 50 focus or the shop keeper runs out of blank scrolls. The latter should happen first. But rememember to collect your rewards from the respective trainers once you hit 50 med (lrc wizard hat) or 50 focus (mana regen bracelet).
  • Once you feel like taking a break (eg shop keeper ran out of scrolls, waiting for mana regen, it's getting old, you've earned your first 10k of gold), you can work on getting a full necro book. Go to the necromancer building east of the mage shop. Accept the necromancy quest.
  • Head out east to the old Haven ruins. You will hear the gong to signify that you are in the right area. The undead here will not aggro you. Equip your undead slayer spell book, then use the necro spell "Pain Spike" to kill the undead. Zombies are the weakest, Skeletons are a bit stronger, Spellbinders are a bit stronger than skeletons because they cast curses. Should take you no time to get from 49 necro to 50 . Now go back to the necro trainer and collect your full necro book.
  • Now you can continue scribing to make more money, train scribing higher level spells, work on the Magery, Resist, Hiding/Stealth/Ninjitsu apprentice quests, or go loot LRC, +skill, resist items from public corpses at popular hunting spots. Once you can cast mark, you can mark runebooks for your other characters and start creating a warrior or even crafter.
GGS/Skill gain:
  • Grow plants on characters who still need to work skills, you can get your GGS when you log them in to water the plants each day.
  • Creating a single button macro each for "last object" and "last target" is most handy. For example, say you want to chop a tree but you're running the circle of transparency. Whenever you get too close to the thing you can't target it 'cause it turns invisible. You can first target it from a distance, then use your "last target" macro button to hit it once you get in close.
  • If you have a skill that is tough to gain in and you don't mind shelving the character for a bit (and have a bit of cash), buy a scroll of alacrity for the skill you need to train. Wait until it is GGS time then gain in your skill and immediately log them out. Log them back in when it is time again for your GGS gain, until you have used up your 15 minutes.
  • If you have less then 25 points in a skill, you will gain off every single attempt to use it (even if you fail).
  • Newbie quests in Haven are a very good source of starting skills and blessed equipment eg undead slayer spellbook, blades for cutting corpses, lrc wizard hat. Blessed equipment remain with you even when you die.
  • Use KR to crate a char, it allows you to pick 4 skills and 120 skill points, plus the dark knight quest. The 2D client only allows you 3 skills and 100 points (great tip!)
  • When training a new skill on a char I always remove all other skills I do not need to a soulstone, you get much faster GGS gains that way.
Virtues and Gains:
  • To gain compassion, mark a rune a bravehorn start and bravehorn finish... recall to the start (where the deer spawns) and then gate to the "finish" (the pond you're taking him to) you will gain compassion on every trip and you don't have to wait 5 minutes to gain the most mind numbing virtue... like you do escorting NPCs.
  • The star symbol at the top of your paper doll allows you to access the virtue system. Two virtues which are well worth following are Honor and Sacrifice.
  • Honor is gained by targeting monsters with it then killing them - gain enough and you can then target yourself, causing monsters to ignore you for a limited time. Monsters with more fame give more Honor. It only decays when you use it.
  • Sacrifice is gained by using it on humanoid red-titled monsters (such as demons and evil mages). This causes you to lose all your fame, but gain in Sacrifice accordingly. With enough in stock, you can resurrect yourself a limited amount of times each week. Sacrifice decays a small amount each week, but not with use.
  • Regular Liches (not lords or ancient) & Enslaved Gargoyles are also valid targets for sacrificing fame. Only the evil mages are actually Red (daemons are not red, though definitely low karma, and valid sacrifice targets).
NPCs (non aggressive):
  • When buying large quantities, hold down the shift Key and Double Click on the item (such as 999 scrolls) and you'll buy them all.
  • Saying 'Balance' to a banker NPC tells you how much cash is in your bank, but does not include checks - use a house placement tool, and when you pick a design the real total you have in the bank (cash and checks) is shown as the 'bank balance' available to build the house.
  • If you wish to avoid having a quest NPC's health bar and targeting circle pop up when you double click them, use Ctl/Shift to bring up all names, then double click their name tag. This will bring up the quest gump without the health bar and targeting.
Killing monsters/Monster behavior:
  • The respawn engine checks what mobs are missing and randomly spawns any mob that hasn't reached it's quota. eg The area is supposed to have 2 boars, 3 goats and 3 bulls. If you kill everything, at the next respawn interval, the engine randomly picks one of the 8 animals to respawn. This means (for example) to get the solen queen pretender to spawn more quickly, do not kill her attendants, but lure them off instead.
  • A non-player's dex rating determines it's movement speed. At about 125 a creature can move about as fast as a running, unmounted character. This is why rune beetles and most paragons are so incredibly fast.
  • Like how dex determines a mob's speed, their int seems to determine their pathfinding ability. Ore elementals aren't very bright and are slow, +1 for using a bow.
  • If you want the mob to flag on you, just teleport... all monsters automatically flag on you.
  • Another way to get everything on the screen flagged on you is to open your paperdoll when you are walking. This refreshes the screen.
  • One good thing to know is if your down in doom carry some kind of bladed weapon, (This is where use last object is handy!)... when you see the "unholy bones" lying on the floor double click the bladed weapon and target the bones, (sometimes you have to do it 3 or 4 times but eventually they will be destroyed) this keeps them from spawning more spawn on you. You DO NOT have to be standing beside the bones... You can actually cut them up from across the room.
  • The unholy bones aren't just a Doom thing - Neira the Necromancer (the champ spawn boss) ALSO tosses unholy bones, and they can be cut just like the Doom DF versions.
  • Another point re Unholy Bones, the amount of chops required to destroy them varies, and relates to the the strength of the monster that'll spawn.
  • As Connor says, a mage weapon elemental slayer bow works great. Use a couple of +magery jewels to offset the -magery.
  • To tip a cow keep double clicking on any cow....eventually it'll fall over!
  • Do the same with a boar and it will squat.
  • Let's say your training or just farming with Swoop. Isn't it a real pain when he flies up onto the rocks and just sits there? (editor note: yes!) I have a strategy that will drag him off the rocks 9 out of 10 times. Get the Swoop's gump up. Move you and/or your pets as far away from the Swoop as possible and then attack. Works 9 out of 10 times.
  • A tamed goat (or mountain goat) will eat anything you feed him inside a leather bag. He will also eat leather sandals (at least) without any bag.
Looting:
  • Sometimes corpses of mobs stack on each other and the bottom one doesn't open (it gives you a "you must wait" and opens only one of them). Just hold your use last object macro down and you will eventually open it. You can also move a few tiles away and hit your last object macro, then move back and hit it.
  • If the corpse is in an inaccessible area, you can cast teleport/shadowjump and target the corpse.
  • Disable gump offset so that all containers/corpses that you open will be placed at the top right of you client window. Then open your loot bag and position it directly below that position (Ed note: I do this! Very useful). This way when you loot, you minimize the dragging you have to do and thus speed up your looting. Minimizing mouse movements to improve efficiency by up to 500% is taught in designing efficient human interfaces like application frontends or webpages.
  • Similarly try to set macro keys to cast spells/use skills as much as possible, especially those you use often or those you need to use quickly (like recall and sacred "retreat").
  • Mimic common macros that you use on different characters - assign the same buttons to the same macros for different characters so you are comfortable swapping characters and won't hit the wrong buttons in a panic.
  • Cutting up copses and animate dead/spirit speak closes that corpse's gump for everyone that has already opened it. Can be used to buy you a bit of time to loot a public'ed corpse if you are far away, a tad annoying to other people though.
Party/Group/Chat:
  • UO has a chat system!
  • When you are running in a party and have the party bars up, if you are a mage, you can click on the Red dot on someone's health bar to cast Greater Heal and the Green dot to cast Cure.
Crafting:
  • Check the Craftsman Forum for more tips, including the numbers for the Salvage bag (it gives 1 extra ingot per item, and you need to be 101.1 or higher mining, counting gloves, to get the most ingots back).
  • When filling BODs, fill the exceptional ones you have first. If you fail to make an exceptional bone armor piece that you need, you can use the normal to fill a normal bone bod, and save on resources that way.
  • Like water troughs, looms do not require you to be near them to use.
  • For efficiency of space, add ons like anvils/ovens that you do not need to dbl click or target to use, but simply need to be within 2 tiles of it, can be placed on floors above or below you.
  • Also for efficiency, you can cram everything in a small space. Use a teleporter to get to the center of the room. Keep all containers within 2 tiles so they are within easy reach. You can plop an arcane circle down in this area too.
  • You can dye some containers with a furny tub - crates stack higher than chests so if you need more containers it may be worth it to use them.
  • Using a square goza mat raised up several times, you can place an anvil or small forge on the mat, then place it's counterpart underneath. This is true for any single tile add-on. Multi-tile add ons can be "broken" using goza mats, and can be usable in their smaller forms. See the Homes and Castles forum for unusual and useful ways to use goza mats.
RESOURCE GATHERING:

Bone/Hides/Wool:
  • For bone gathering shadow wisps work really well, they drop cuttable bone about half the time. Ant lions drop bone as well. However, if you are needing regular leather, regular quality bone armor (for tapestries or rugs), you can kill skeletons for any kind of bone armor drop, or you can kill savages for arms and legs. You can also enhance this bone to get spined, horned, or barbed regular quality bone for bods.
  • Not only do Tsuki wolves have bones, but give hides, and spawn very fast!
  • When harvesting bones, if you are turning the bones from the normal piles/parts into the crafting resource, if you go overweight, the bones you cut will fall to the ground. HOWEVER, if you put them into a Salvage Bag, and use the "Cloth" or "All" option, all the bones will but cut into a single pile in your backpack, even if overweight.
  • Double click a skinning knife while wielded or a butchers war cleaver (made by smiths, ML recipe) and target a corpse. If it can give hides and you are lightweight enough it will skin the animal, cut the hides into leather, and put them in your backpack. It will leave the leather on the corpse if you are too heavy.
  • Shearing live sheep gives more wool overall then shearing dead sheep.
Miscellaneous:
  • Salvage bag smelts/unravels at 1 single go, it's faster and gives back more resources than smelting individual items. NPC provisioners sell these bags.
  • A good way to collect bolts from meers with no karma loss and no fighting use the spell dryad allure on the meer captains then release them and they will drop a blue bag on the ground that says meer captains bag open it up and take the 50 plus bolts and there is a bag of 15 to 20 regs also no gold but easy way to farm bolts with no danger!
  • You can use empty pitchers on cows to milk them.
  • If you use the "shift" method to buy all of an item at once, the stack of items will fall to the ground if it will not fit in your pack, so be prepared to immediately pick it up and stick it into a pack animal (if possible) or your bank. The downside to trying this near a bank is that someone faster than you might pick the pile up before you and stick it in THEIR bank box instead.
  • Besides getting the gargoyle pickaxes via BOD rewards, they can be farmed off gargoyles. I camp hyloth for daemons and gargoyles to gain fame/karma/arties/gargoyle pickaxes/normal gems/gold. I admit that there are better ways to farm fame/karma/gold, but none will give me gargoyle pickaxes and arties at the same time. Because I am also switching between daemons and gargoyles, I also seem to get arties faster. So I'm killing multiple birds with 1 stone and saving time. :D
Mining Ore:
  • Verite and valorite spots change very quickly, however agapite spots remain for much much longer. Use a garg pickaxe in conjunction with a prospector's tool to bump those aggy spots up to valorite.
  • As Connor says, a mage weapon elemental slayer bow works great. Use a couple of +magery jewels to offset the -magery.
  • Like how dex determines a mob's speed, their int seems to determine their pathfinding ability. Ore elementals aren't very bright and are slow, +1 for using a bow.
  • Valorite elementals reflect all melee/bow damage that you do, a miner with low dex and tactics in this case works well because you actually get a chance to heal yourself +2 for using a bow.
  • Elementals (and other monsters) have problems getting past the steps of player houses, and get stuck like the animals/npcs that loves to block your recall spot. So just plink away with your mw bow, +3 for using a bow. This is another instance where you can turn something annoying into something you can use beneficially. NOTE: don't use this method for non magic casting monsters, as it is considered monster blocking.
  • The types of coloured ingots I use most are dull (for filling bods), shadow (for swampy armour), bronze (for tinkering golems), gold (for enhancing luck) and valorite (for enhancing resists). So this is how I upgrade my ore:

    Iron gets upgraded to dull via prospector's tool
    Dull gets upgraded to shadow via prospector's tool
    Shadow I leave alone
    Copper gets upgraded to bronze via prospector's tool
    Bronze gets upgraded to gold via prospector's tool
    Gold I leave alone
    Agapite gets upgraded to valorite via prospector's tool and gargoyle pickaxe
    Verite gets upgraded to valorite via gargoyle pickaxe
    Valorite I leave alone

    I save my gargoyle pickaxes to spawn valorite elementals and farm them for an easy 25 valorite ore. I always pick up prospertor's tools that people throw away at the smithy.
  • 1 fire beetle plus 2 packies work wonderfully. I have a UO macro to use last item on last target for mining and lumberjacking. And I have a UOA macro to smelt large ore on my beetle. Once my weight turns red (from the UOA indicator) I will hit the UOA smelt macro. This way my last target doesn't get messed up and force me to retarget the mining spot again. Just note that if you are overweight, the ingots that you smelt drops to the ground.
  • Sometimes, if you hit the smelt macro at the wrong time or due to lag, the smelting cursor targets your last target (meaning your last mining spot). When this happens, the ore isn't smelted. If you dbl it again, it will say "Someone is already using that". In this situation, it takes about a minute for the server to timeout your pending smelting attempt. To bypass this, dbl click any smaller ore of the same type and click on the large ore. This will combine the ore and make them all smaller pieces, and you can smelt them now.
  • The smaller pieces of ore are actually very useful. They are the lightest, and changing the big ores into small ones makes them lighter overall. Useful if you don't have a firebeetle and are using 5 packies to hold the ore until you reach a public forge.
  • NEVER let the medium ores exist in your pack or on pack animals, as they weigh 16.67% more than their equivalent amount of large ore (and 75% more than their equivalent amount of small ore). by comparison, medium ore would only fit 228 medium and 2 small into a pack animal (the equivalent of 229 ingots), much less than either of the other two options. So, merge them with small piles whenever possible.
  • To gain mining quicker, smelt the hardest ores that your skill allows you to, 1 piece at a time. If you are working on gaining mining, remove your mining gloves and Jacob's pickaxe.
  • To go above 100 mining if you want to use both the +mining gloves and Jacob's pickaxe, first equip the pickaxe, then equip the gloves, else the points won't stack properly.
  • Recording a macro in UOA to mine relative tiles that are 2 tiles away from you allows you to reach alot of spots you normally can't reach manually. Like certain mountains where it merges with the grass (those areas that gives a "can't mine" or "can't see" message, but you can mine it using UOA), and also the walls of mining caves (those black areas). It's still restricted to the 8x8 tile resource grid of course, if you have mined from another tile in that 8x8 grid, this won't allow you to mine more from that grid.
 

Sarsmi

Grand Poobah
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
Boats:
  • A portable boat is a very useful thing to have. They are blessed, and weigh only 1 stone.
  • You never know when they can come in handy, eg you are looking for an AOS slime location and when you reach the area, you realize it's on an island on you map, but it's too far away to teleport across.
  • Or when you need a buffer zone to escape from mobs/lick your wounds. Note: deliberately shooting at non-ranged/non-teleporting mobs from the safety of your boat is not legal.
  • Boats move at server speed ie, even if your lag is terrible and you ping 600ms, your boat moves at the same speed as the boat of someone who pings 10 ms.
Special Boat Tricks:
  • Boat deeds can be bought from shipwrights or provisioners. Buy the small ones as you can get around in them more easily. I prefer the non-dragon prow ones too.
  • Whenever you place the boat, you get 2 keys, 1 goes into your backpack, and the other goes into you bankbox. The 2 previous keys will be deleted if they are still in your backpack/bankbox. If you lose a key, dock and undock to get back both keys.
  • These 2 keys are special because you can recall off them. Never bring both keys out with you in case you die. If you ever need to use the "I am stuck option", you want to recall off the key in your bank to get back to your boat/corpse.
  • The recall spot of the key is the tile behind the mast. Never have anything blocking this tile, like packhorses/treasure chests etc. Make it a habit to move to another tile whenever you recall to the boat, I like to move to the front of the mast.
  • While on the subject, if 2 characters on the boat each have a key, the tillerman only listens to the one nearer to him and ignores the other.
  • Remember those special keys that you can recall off? You can't gate off them unfortunately. However! You can still open a gate FROM the boat - say you want to bring a couple of NPC escorts for a cruise and they don't seem to be able to walk up the plank. Just mark a rune on the banks, get on the boat and cast gate to the rune you have just marked. Tada!
  • Sometimes, the shore is too far away from your boat's plank and you can't walk off. In these cases use teleport. If you can't teleport then opening the plank, backing up against the mast, then running down the plank works too. An even more reliable method is to enable pathfinding in options, open the plank, back up against the mast and double right-click the shore. Let the client "pathfind" and magically teleport you to the shore. (ed note: finally a use for pathfinding that doesn't annoy me!)
  • More on escaping from mobs that I mentioned earlier - notice that if you open a plank and double click on it, you get teleported to the plank immediately? This allows you to board your boat without needing it to be near shores. If you are heading to dangerous areas, this can be a lifesaver.

    a - park your boat nearby
    b - unlock the plank (the one away from the shore, you don't want to risk mobs that are hot on your heels to simply walk up the plank) with your boat key
    c - open (ie lower) the plank
    d - lock it with your boat key (this prevents it from closing)
    e - insure your boat key (you need it to be on you to use the locked plank)
    f - record a UOA macro to use the plank (or a macro in the new enhanced client)

    So when you are in trouble just run near the boat and activate the macro. Poof! You are now on your boat and can get a breather. Oh, remember I mentioned it's illegal to shoot at non-ranged/non-teleporting mobs? It's perfectly fine if the mobs can shoot/throw/cast/spit at you.
Plant growing:
  • Create endless water pitchers by using a water pitcher on a wave tile many times.
  • If you make a UOA macro to fill the pitcher you don't even need to be near the water source (you can be a couple of screens away). Works for water trough add-ons too.
  • The ocean in Tokuno acts as a wave tile, so you can simply target the water around the short to make an endless water pitcher.
  • Plants grown in your backpack will not undergo a growth check until you log them in. So backpack gardening is a great method of plant growing for forgetful gardeners, or those who can't log in every day.
  • An alchemist makes a good gardening character too, since he can make any potions that is required on the spot.
  • For gardening, having the 4 different kegs of potions on you is very useful because when you click the respective icon in the plant gump to give it a certain potion, it automatically takes it from the keg.
  • My gardening area also makes use of my 2 tile workarea principle. I have a pouch (designated by P in the crude diagram below) right in the center of a 9x9 area. This pouch holds my resources and potion kegs. The positions that I would stand at are designated by the x. The dashes are all the spots where I can reach my plants. The advantage of this is that I can pick up 4 full kegs from the pouch into my backpack and start tending the plants. When I finish up with a quadrant, I will put 1 or 2 kegs back into the pouch and move to the next quadrant. Otherwise 4 full kegs tend to overload me. The water trough can be anywhere in your house, no range limitation. I recorded a UOA macro to fill my pitcher from the trough on the other side of my house.

    ---------
    ---------
    --x---x--
    ---------
    ----P----
    ---------
    --x---x--
    ---------
    ---------
  • I also have a pouch for each of the 17 original plants where I keep the seeds and mother plants. On top of each of the 17 pouches, I locked down a decorative version of the plant. Those that gives resources, I lock down the coloured version that gives resources (eg bright green snakeplant). The rest are plain versions. This way I have a quick visual cue to tell which pouch to open for what plant/seeds I need without having to read the engraving on the pouches.
  • My set of different coloured studs (father plants) I keep in a separate pouch. The fathers are swapped out if I find a new father that tend to give more mutations. This is superstition of course, but hey, no harm trying. :D
  • The control+shift method to bring up the plants' tags then dbl-clicking on the tags to bring up a gump is also useful if you stack the plants up. But remember to right click the tag to close it once the gump comes up, I have accidentally opened the gump for the same plants twice and then overdosed them.
Player vendors:
  • If you want your vendor to face forward but they are positioned awkwardly, you can open their menu, click on customize, then walk to where you are standing in the direction you want them to face, even if you are outside of the house at this point, and then right click the menu to close it. They will turn to face you wherever you are.
  • Besides going into and exiting the customizing to make the vendor face you, you can also say "<the vendor's name> browse" to make him face you.
  • Do you want to put a painting on the wall behind a vendor but can't get them off the tile? You can customize a customizable home and put a wall tile where the vendor is, commit, then go back in and remove the wall tile. This will pop them into the crate and you can retrieve them by using your own context menu on your avatar.
  • Alternatively (if you have a classic home) you can go outside of your house and click on their life bar to get them to come to your location. This gives you three minutes to do whatever you need to do on that floor tile.
  • This is for those that need to mark runes to their vendors - Set UOA's "use once" macro to ctrl+Q but leave UO's ctrl+q blank. Put all your marked runes in a bag and add it to the use once agent. Now you can press ctrl+q, it brings up the "rename rune" prompt plus brings up your last line of text at the same time (ie whatever you want to rename your rune to). Makes renaming tons of runes easier.
  • To give money to your vendors, put in a bandage (or whatever you have handy) and price it 100,000 gp. Then have a second account buy it. Works even better if the second account also has a vendor, so he can put a similar item on his vendor for you to pay him back (note: you can also do this with checks, so you can essentially buy back what you paid for the check and put it right into that character's bank.)
  • For those that only have one account and want to stock vendors with gold, grab a Bulk order book with a single BOD. Place the bod inside, price it with the amount of gold you would like to transfer on to your vendor. Once priced, place the book on the vendor and hit escape (making the book not for sale). You can then purchase the bulk order deed from your own vendor. This is the most effective way to transfer gold from your bank account straight to your vendor.
  • Always put a sample item or visual aid to let people see what your vendor is selling. You can lock down this in front of the vendor, or if you organize your vendor's goods in bags, put the sample/visual aid next to the bag. Nothing worse than finding a dozen unlabeled bags on a vendor and having to open each one to see what they hold. Lots of people just browse the first level.
  • If you are marking runes to your vendor house, do not mark all your runes at the same exact spot. Spread them around several tiles. The reason is that some people will not move from the tile once they recalled in, this will block other people from recalling from runes to the same tile.
Housing:
  • If you secure your trash barrel and set user settings to "anyone".. anyone inside your house can use it. Otherwise, only house owners can use it. Also, A secured trash barrel has no weight limitation (also true for any other secured container).
  • Locking down deeded items such as vet rewards, holiday items, taxidermy items, etc, that typically do not need to be locked down, will keep them from moving to the moving crate when you customize. (This also works great for those chopped up stone tables to keep them from poofing.)
  • Heritage token apple trees will give 20 apples from each tree. 10 from the top half, 10 from the bottom.
  • If you want to move heavy boxes inside your house (like from the first Floor to the 4th Floor) lock them down on the front steps and then customize your house. They will go into the moving Crate. Since you can get your moving crate anywhere in the house you just need to claim it on the floor you now want the boxes and take them out of the crate.
  • Although you can't stick things directly into your moving crate (or the strongboxes within the moving crate), you can drag items into any other containers that are already in there.
  • Some items (eg bulletin boards, soul stones) will always go into the moving crate when you enter house customization mode (even if they're legally placed). If you think you've lost something, it's a good place to look for it.
  • Avoid marking runes directly next to your steps, mark them 1 tile farther out. Animals and NPCs have a tendency to stand next to your steps. (They are actually trying to go to a tile inside or behind your house, but can't proceed beyond the steps).
  • Besides "I ban thee", also make a "Remove thyself" macro. Useful for private houses where you can't ban people/NPCs/mobs.
  • If your house has teleporters, you can also leapfrog the heavy item so it's on the ground next to the teleporter for the floor you want to move it to. hold down control/shift to bring up the item tags of everything around you & right click to remove the items tags for everything except your heavy item. step onto the teleporter and in the 1 second delay before you *poof
  • to the next floor, grab the item tag of your heavy item (while still holding down control/shift). that will allow you to teleport with the heavy item even if it's waaaaay heavier than you can carry. then drop it on the floor when you arrive and leapfrog it to the desired location.
  • Lose an item under your custom house foundation? First have a friend come into the house and log out on a placed teleporter next to/ on top of the item under the house. Have your friend log in while you are in customize mode and they should be able to grab the item.
  • Another method of recovering a lost item under a house floor if you have a necro is to summon a horde minion and walk around the area with it and see if it will grab the item up (Ed note: untested, let me know if it works).
Death and Recovery:
  • ctrl+shift object handles can be very useful. But 'all names' is better for finding your corpse in a pile of monster corpses.
  • Using all names you can set the appearance color of your corpses name which makes it easier to find.
  • I always have an insured bandage summoning Talisman on me ...Works like a charm if me and my pet die I retreat, summon bandies and it usually holds me over until i can loot my corpse or the mob that looted the bandies.
  • Here's a tip for those with ML humans. If you haven't done so, I recommend doing the spellweaving quest. With the JOAT 20 spellweaving ability, you'll be able to cast Gift of Renewal and Nature's Fury pretty consistently. These are a boon, particularly when you are dead and are trying to return to your body. Nothing like having a healing spell and something that distracts spawn, all of it only requiring mana and nothing else!
  • Logging out causes your pet to stable, so long as it isn't loaded with items. It'll automatically rejoin you when you next log in - so long as your character is alive. If this is not the case, then it'll rejoin you after you've ressed and relogged once more.
  • Mark a couple of spare runes and rename them to something like "re-usable". This allows them to be dropped into runebooks. Now you have spare runes that won't drop if you die. Just remove a rune from the runebook when you need to mark.
  • Also remember to charge your runebooks, even if you have an LRC suit. They can be lifesavers (eg running out of insurance money).
  • If you ever die behind a building and can't get to your corpse, and it looks like it's inside the building when you know you died outside, this is a glitch. It's still outside, even if you can see it on the floor inside. Use circle of transparancy or item tags to recover your things.
  • If you die, the mob that killed you will likely hang around your corpse. Having stealth allows me to safely loot my stuff back 99% of the time. Only times where it's a bit iffy is when there are a lot of corpses around. In this case, there's an advantage in having yourself guilded, since the show incoming option or allnames macro will show your corpse in green. This allows you to quickly identify your corpse. Just dbl click your corpse even if you are far away, this sets your last item. Then keep your use last item macro pressed and approach your corpse. You can also run past to do a drive-by if fighting mobs with area attacks like Crimson dragons.
UOAssist:
  • If you want to make UO count smoke bombs or enchanted apples... click the "User 1" in the resource menu... set the item and name it appropriately. Hit the "advanced" button and you can up to 6 items listed on your top bar. If you don't like them all running together, type what your item is, then put your cursor back the the beginning of the word and add a couple spaces till it wont let you, that way you can space out your 6 items across the top of your game window so they are easier to see.
Miscellaneous:
  • To see if an item is "newbie" and therefore blessed, you can try to sell it to the appropriate NPC vendor, cut it up (if it's clothing, newbie clothes can't be cut up), or try to lock it down in your house (it won't lock down. Be prepared to grab the item fast, as newbie items decay very quickly). Death robes are newbified items. If you like to wear robes, you can save yourself some insurance money by dying a death robe and wearing that.
  • You can throw almost anything into a backpack or bag and hand it to a cobbler to throw it away. And a goat.
  • If you are heading into a dangerous area, have a runebook open and drag it to the side. I drag it to the bottom left corner and leave the button to my safe rune visible for quick escapes. It's my panic button.
  • Another tactic is to open gate to destination, then recall to the same spot, if in danger, click gate to get back.
  • One more is to cast ethereal voyage before going into the area.
SKILLS:

Jack of all Trades:
  • If you are human and not a mage... you can use teleport scrolls thanks to JoaT... conversely... you can also use tracking!
  • Another JOAT perk is the inferred 20 points of Focus means you cannot use all your stamina just by running around. Elves without real Focus (or other stam regen) can't run indefinitely like a human can.
  • A human can take the Spellweaving quest, and become a spellweaver, using just their JOAT points. Any spell with a minimum casting skill of 20 or less can be cast, and as noted in the magic use section, can use non-spellweavers to get a high-level focus. The effects of a level 3-5 focus on even JOAT-level Spellweaving spells makes the effort worth it, as spells such as Gift of Renewal can give 7-9 HP back every 2 seconds for 30-60 seconds with a high-level focus (that's the equivalent to 4-6 high-magery Greater heals for 24 or less mana, and spread out in such a way to be much more useful).
Hiding/Stealth/Stealing/Snoop:
  • Stratics Hiding and Stealth FAQ
  • If you hide, you get a ten second "skill wait time" penalty. This penalty does not stop you from using stealth. The stealth wait time is only about three or four seconds, and that wait replaces the one you already had in effect, so by hiding then making sure you stealth, you'll be able to use your next skill sooner then usual.
  • There is a 100% chance to hide in your own home, and when you hide and then stealth you have a chance to gain in hiding. So hiding and stealthing in your own home is one of the fastest ways to GM hiding.
  • In order to hide instantly no matter how many aggressors you have on you... teleport (magery spell) and hit your hide macro right after you teleport (it used to be teleport, tab and then hide... 9 years ago... when people ran scribe hide mages!)
  • You can snoop mirror images which is useful for training (if you have ninjitsu).
  • For safe banking in Fel, hide yourself and use the banker's context menu to access your bank without revealing yourself.
  • 80 stealth is enough to always succeed in stealth attempts if you are wearing med-able armour.
  • Once you hide, you can immediately walk to start stealthing, no need to wait for the skill timer or double click the stealth skill.
  • Stealthing checks both your stealth and hiding skills, and consequently, gives you skill gain to both. On the flip side, you will be revealed if you fail either one of the checks
  • If you have ninjitsu, 50 ninjitsu will give you the ability to use smoke/eggbombs. However, eggbombs are much cheaper to make.
  • Assign one of your UOA marcos to use eggbombs and trigger it whenever you are in danger. I use my mouse wheel button, in case people do not know, the mouse wheel can be clicked like a button.
  • If you attempt to hide while too near a mob that has aggro'd you, you will get the normal "you can't hide right now" message. Unfortunately, if you try to use the eggebomb now, it will tell you that "you must wait to use another skill". Always use eggbomb first, don't save. A 50 gp eggbomb will potentially save you thousands of insurance money.
  • Also use invisibility in conjunction with hiding in the presence of mobs that can cast reveal. When you cast invis, it will break aggro. Spell casting monsters will attempt to cast reveal once at the tile where you invised yourself. If you can't or are too slow to move out of the reveal range, just hit your hide / eggbomb macro when you get revealed. As long as you did it before you were re-aggro'd by the spellcasting monsters, they will not recast reveal
  • To add on to the invis/hide tactic, just opening corpses to see what it contains does not reveal you unless it belongs to a player. So you can check out what's in a corpse and identify all the loot you want first, then make preparations/hover your mouse cursor on the chosen loot and quickly grab them all in 1 go to minimize revealing your presence
  • Using the above trick, I have looted tons of threads/plane swords/shields/paragon chests/gold during the Moonglow invasion by following berserker daemons as they kill other mobs. Once I open the corpse, I will drag the gold, but leave the gump open near my loot bag, ready to be looted by a single click on the "ok" button. Next, I hover my cursor on the chests/threads etc. When I am ready, I will begin to cast invis, while my character is going through the casting animation, I will grab all the threads/planeswords/shields/paragon chests, then click the "okay" button on the gump for the gold. Just last target yourself when the target cursor comes up. If any mob aggros me and catches me in their reveal, I will just eggbomb (Ed note: you can drag items even if you have a targeting cursor up, just don't click on the item, but instead click and hold down the left mouse button and drag the item as if it was a regular cursor.)
  • If you have already 50 ninjitsu, bumping it up to 70 will let you use llama/ostard forms, allowing you to move twice as fast while hidden (your llama/ostard walk speed is the same as an unmounted player's run speed). You can even sprint short distances without revealing yourself.
  • When you are hidden/stealthing, switching to animal form will reveal your position to players using KR. They will see a puff of smoke if you fail to cast and a big puff if you succeed.
  • Shadowjump reveals you the same way, other people will see the sparklies on the tile you jump from AND the tile you jump to.
  • When running away from players, animal form into llama mode (or any of the >70 skill that lets you walk at double speed), run in 1 direction, slow down to a walk (so that you don't auto reveal yourself on that first step after hiding), use smokebomb to hide, then immediately switch direction. Most people will think you are still heading in the same direction.
  • Shadow jump is more sensitive to z-axis than teleport. So if you can't get to a certain tile by shadow jump, you can try teleporting.
  • Chances to deflect an attack to mirror images is equal to Ninjitsu minus 30. Meaning if you have 120 ninjitsu, you can deflect 90% of all attacks. This is much higher than the 40% from 120 parry/120 bushido/wielding a 2-handed weapon.
Taming and Pets:
  • Stratics Taming FAQ
  • Stopped pets wander around like wild critters. Usually, a pet won't be "stopping" because you specifically told it to: feeding it also puts it into stop mode, so after doing so you must give the follow order again or it'll walk away from you.
  • Telling a pet to "come" will make it use more advanced pathfinding techniques to get to you then the follow command. However, when it reaches you it'll again go into stop mode until you give further orders.
  • Pets that are carrying items do not log out with you. I have forgotten to unload my packies at least once and when I re-logged in, they have already wandered off somewhere. To prevent loss of pets like your beetle or packies, keep a pet ball for each pet in your bank. Works only if you did not log off for too long and the pets did not go wild.
  • When controlling multiple pets, the one you've had out the longest will obey your orders first. This means that if you tell your group to attack an enemy, the first critter you pulled out of the stables will attack first, and the monster will attack that pet (as opposed to any of your other ones).
  • JOAT is also enough to allow the use of Animal Lore on tamed creatures. This reveals a full listing of it's stats, skills, resistances and damage potential. Pets gain stats/skills in the same way as characters, but gain no extra elemental resistances as their Resisting Spells skill increases. They lose 0.1 from each of their skills each time they die - that is to say, a tamer is probably worse off if his pets die then if he dies himself!
  • Giving a pet an order will make it happier if it follows it. If it ignores it, it'll lose happiness. The more happy a pet is the more likely it'll obey you.
  • A pet may refuse to be transferred, even if Wonderfully Happy, if you have never fed it.
  • White Wyrms will eat any amount of gold if offered.
  • If your Tamer is fighting with a rideable mount and you Vet a bandage on the mount, you can immediately remount and the bandage will still work.
  • If you're taming magic-casters, be sure to check their stats before they have a chance to cast buffs.
Barding:
  • Stratics Forums Barding FAQ and Information
  • Have a few different Bard instruments in your pack, in case any one of them breaks and to keep others from beating your head in (ever hear a lute constantly for an hour?). Always keep one newbie/blessed instrument for emergencies. You can also insure your instrument.
Magery/Necro/Spellweaving:
  • ML Humans can cast level 1-2 spells from scroll 100% of the time with only Jack of all Trades, and are about 75% chance to cast level 3 scrolls, about 50% to cast level 4 scrolls and 25% able to cast level 5 scrolls (allowing anyone willing to take the physical resist penalties to recast Reactive Armor, Protection and/or Magic Reflection). The human is also treated as having 20 Inscription, for these spells. Most spells that require Eval, aren't worth casting with no real skill. However, having a 25-27% chance of casting Blade Spirits from scroll can be useful.
  • ANY character with 0 real skill can be used by a JOAT spellweaver to get a focus. So, if you get 5 people on an arcane circle, even if none of them ever did the quest but you, you can get the good focus - and it's amazing the power of a high-focus Gift of Renewal, even cast with JOAT.
  • More Intelligence doesn't just mean more mana - it means faster regeneration too. Casting Bless on yourself will allow you to cast spells for longer.
  • NPC humanoids in your circle count towards the power of your arcane focus (not sure if this is true of tame pets).
  • Spellbooks with some level or LRC (Lower Reagent Cost) on them are constantly discarded by characters training Inscription. A human who wishes to cast the odd low level spell using JOAT can forgo LRC on his armor or reagents in his pack with such a book. An elf can do the same, to a lesser extent, if the book also has a +Magery property on it.
  • Holding a Mage Weapon causes your Magery skill to drop by the displayed amount, the greatest amount of which is normally -29. Wands (which are easily found in bandit/gypsy chests) tend to have the MW property in addition to Spell Channeling.
  • By holding a MW/SP wand and casting, you can go all the way to about 54 points of real skill while gaining off every attempt (54 - 29 = 25). It is therefore quite pointless to take the Magery skill when starting a new character, especially when you consider that the New Haven quests can enhance your early gain rate further.
  • Summoned Moongates can be closed with the "dispel field" spell, but it must be used on both gate (the entry and exit one) in order to completely close the gate.
  • Recall scrolls can be purchased at 42 gp in several towns, eg the ones in Haven. This seems random, but I'd always found them available from at least one of the mages in Haven.
    - RE: Harlequin's advice on Recall scrolls...
    Every time an NPC mage respawns as a result of something that causes a vendor reset, it will sell spell scrolls either of 1st circle only, 1st & 2nd circle, 1st-3rd circle, or 1st-4th circle spells. This is totally at random. Just because one can buy recall spells off an NPC mage in a given town currently, does not mean that the mage will still be there, selling them, after a server publish or an event that affects NPCs cycles in replacements(berserkers killing NPCs in Vesper, or the shadowlord corruption of towns, etc.)
  • Save medable MR 2 junk Armor pieces, they make great scribe suits.
  • If you use trapped boxes and have spellweaving attunement will absorb all damage from the trapped box so I always have that running and can open my trapped box up to 5 times and take no damage !
    note: this is with bolt traps don't know about explosion.
  • With a little magery you can stand back 5 tiles and cast telekinesis on an unlocked, trapped chest in order to spring the trap. Most trapped town chests have three traps, so you'll need to cast it three times.
  • You can recall with Necromancy and Spellweaving. For Necromancy go into wraith form and you can recall just like a mage does (By casting the spell and having regs or LRC). For Spellweaving, go into reaper form and you can recall.
Alchemy:
  • Prices of bottles and other raw materials reset when NPCs are respawned. This normally happens during major publishes/patches, or if you can kill the NPCs like during the recent town invasion.
  • An alternate way to get cheap bottles is to buy from the Ilshenar gypsies that respawn at different camps.
  • One more way is to buy already made NPC potions then drop them on empty kegs.
  • Lesser poison will break a paralyze spell if you do not have a dart-trapped box. I loot poison and cure potions off mobs for this reason.
  • Kegs are very useful, once you pour in a single dose of a certain potion, then next time you make that same potion, it will automatically go into that keg. However, when you start with an empty keg, have at least one empty bottle with you. When you make that first potion, it will need to go into a bottle first, you then need to pour that potion into the empty keg to prime it.
  • Train alchemy and poisoning concurrently if you want the poisoning skill. Greater poison takes 4 nightshade, a lot less than Greater Healing (7 ginseng)/Cure (6 garlic)/Explosion (10 ash). It will get you to GM poisoning slower but a lot cheaper. Also throw in some greater cures while you are at it to get you to GM alchemy faster and also to cure yourself in case you fail.
  • Always try to train with the strongest versions of the potions when possible. If you train with the lesser potions, you'll end up with kegs of lesser and medium potions that you won't ever use and can't sell, greater poison being the exception. Because even if you don't train poisoning, gardeners needs Greater poison instead of deadly posion. They also need Greater Cure/Heal/Strength.+
  • The potions to make and the skill levels required:

    Nightsight = 0 skill (but it's best to buy skills from NPCs as each nightsight lasts the entire UO night, which is apprx 2 hours. It will take ages before you use up a keg of nightsight potions, and that's considering you don't play as an elf with inherent nightsight, or have any nightsight equipment)
    Refresh = 0 skill (slightly more useful than nightsight, as you can potentially drink more, but still try to buy the skill from NPCs, it's less painful)
    Total refresh = 25 skill
    Greater agility = 35 skill
    Greater strength = 45 skill
    Greater poison = 55 skill
    Greater heal = 55 skill
    Greater cure = 65 skill
    Greater explosion = 65 skill
  • If you want to skip making certain types of potions above, you can also use Alchemy talismans to put yourself in the best skill gain range for making potions in the next difficulty level.
  • The newer earthen potions gives even more choices at skill gain levels. Some of them like invisibility are very useful for warriors.
  • Smokebombs are great! But Eggbombs (made by the Cooking skill) are alot cheaper to make.
  • Greater explosions are fun but dangerous toys. If you are stout of heart, it is possible to make a single, double and even triple throw macro in UOA to nail your last target with greater explosion potions. See this post for more details: Explodey post
Account Tips:
  • What is the Account Security Challenge Question?

    In order to add an extra layer of password security, new accounts are required to choose a security challenge question and answer. However, existing accounts can also add this feature, and we strongly recommend that all our players do so.

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    1. Visit the Account Management Page.
    2. Select Create Account.
    3. Select Already have a member account and log in using your EA member account name.

    Note: This may be different than your UO account name–in particular, older accounts may follow the pattern "uo_youruoaccountname." If, by adding the uo_ characters, your account name becomes more than 16 characters, this feature will not work. Please click the E-mail Us link to give us the complete information about your account, and a support representative will assist you.
    4. The next screen should give you the option to select a security question. Follow all prompts to create a security challenge question and answer. Type carefully and choose an answer that only you would know.
    5. Click Cancel. The security question will be applied to your account.

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Sarsmi

Grand Poobah
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
Alrighty, whenever a mod can swap this thread out for the stickied one would be great. Also want to send a thanks to everyone who submitted tips, especially Harlequin who easily submitted half of these! I think we are UO efficiency soulmates. :D

Append more tips as you think of them to this thread! Also welcome are format and organization suggestions, etc.
 
R

RichDC

Guest
Only problem i have with this guide is that a melee char should be first choice, its far easier and cheaper to raise a melee then start killing things to fund the mage.

A melee can fairly quickly pull a full lrc suit together to help train the mage. Plus the items recieved from the quests can help start a neb dexers suit...no cost to insurance as there all blessed meaning they can spend all the money they recieve on other chars.
 

Sarsmi

Grand Poobah
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
Only problem i have with this guide is that a melee char should be first choice, its far easier and cheaper to raise a melee then start killing things to fund the mage.

A melee can fairly quickly pull a full lrc suit together to help train the mage. Plus the items recieved from the quests can help start a neb dexers suit...no cost to insurance as there all blessed meaning they can spend all the money they recieve on other chars.
kk I'll figure out a way to work that in.
 

Sarsmi

Grand Poobah
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
Forgot to mention, nice work btw. :)
Thanks! I made a note of the option to start as a melee character and also added a tip in about NPC buying and selling. It's boring, but it can be good money!
 

Harlequin

Babbling Loonie
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
Only problem i have with this guide is that a melee char should be first choice, its far easier and cheaper to raise a melee then start killing things to fund the mage.

A melee can fairly quickly pull a full lrc suit together to help train the mage. Plus the items recieved from the quests can help start a neb dexers suit...no cost to insurance as there all blessed meaning they can spend all the money they recieve on other chars.
I thought of doing that too, but my main problem is marking runes. I meant this as a sort of self sufficient guide in case you play at odd hours and can't find someone to mark runes for your warrior.

Oh, 1 more thing about the having a spellbook with level 5 spells, it has the quinessential bladespirit spell. With that 1 single spell, I can take on artic orge lords with crappy equipment and no lrc suit, then loot him for the lrc stuff mwuahaha

Next is mindblast - use it like the explosion spell, pre-cast, target mob, run offscreen :D
 

Harlequin

Babbling Loonie
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
Alrighty, whenever a mod can swap this thread out for the stickied one would be great. Also want to send a thanks to everyone who submitted tips, especially Harlequin who easily submitted half of these! I think we are UO efficiency soulmates. :D

Append more tips as you think of them to this thread! Also welcome are format and organization suggestions, etc.
My motto - laziness (much more than neccessity) is the mother of invention and efficiency!
 

Sarsmi

Grand Poobah
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
Alrighty, whenever a mod can swap this thread out for the stickied one would be great. Also want to send a thanks to everyone who submitted tips, especially Harlequin who easily submitted half of these! I think we are UO efficiency soulmates. :D

Append more tips as you think of them to this thread! Also welcome are format and organization suggestions, etc.
My motto - laziness (much more than neccessity) is the mother of invention and efficiency!
:lol:
 
C

Connor_Graham

Guest
If you wish to avoid having a quest NPC's health bar and targeting circle pop up when you double click them, use Ctl/Shift to bring up all names, then double click their name tag. This will bring up the quest gump without the health bar and targeting.
 

Harlequin

Babbling Loonie
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
One more on Mining

Recording a macro in UOA to mine relative tiles that are 2 tiles away from you allows you to reach alot of spots you normally can't reach manually. Like certain mountains where it merges with the grass (those areas that gives a "can't mine" or "can't see" message, but you can mine it using UOA), and also the walls of mining caves (those black areas).

It's still restricted to the 8x8 tile resource grid of course, if you have mined from another tile in that 8x8 grid, this won't allow you to mine more from that grid.



Achemy

Prices of bottles and other raw materials reset when NPCs are respawned. This normally happens during major publishes/patches, or if you can kill the NPCs like during the recent town invasion.

Alternate way is to buy from the ish gypsies that respawn at different camps.

One more way to get bottles is from buying nightsight potions and drinking them. Same with any potions that you can keep drinking.

Even lesser poison potions will work if you are desperate, drink 20 lesser poison and then a couple of lesser cures to cure yourself.

Note that when you take damage from the poison this way, your armour's durability will also go down as if you are being hit/damaged from weapons/spells.

Lesser poison will break a paralyze spell if you do not have a dart-trapped box. I loot poison and cure potions off mobs for this reason and the reasons above.

Kegs are very useful, once you pour in a single dose of a certain potion, then next time you make that same potion, it will automatically go into that keg. However, when you start with an empty keg, have at least one empty bottle with you. When you make that first potion, it will need to go into a bottle first, you then need to pour that potion into the empty keg to prime it.

Train alchemy and poisoning concurrently if you want the poisoning skill. Greater poison takes 4 nightshade, alot less than Greater Healing(7 ginseng)/Cure(6 garlic)/Explosion(10 ash). It will get you to GM poisoning, slower but alot cheaper. Also throw in some greater cures while you are at it, to get you to GM alchemy faster and also to cure yourself in case you fail.

Always try to train with the strongest versions of the potions when possible. If you train with the lesser potions, you'll end up with kegs of lesser and medium potions that you won't ever use and can't sell. Greater poison being the exception. Because even if you don't train poisoning, gardeners needs Greater poison instead of deadly posion. They also need Greater Cure/Heal/Strength. The potions to make and the skill levels required:

Nightsight = 0 skill (but it's best to buy skills from NPCs as each nightsight lasts the entire UO night, which is apprx 2 hours. It will take ages before you use up a keg of nightsight potions, and that's considering you don't play as an elf with inherent nightsight, or have any nightsight equipment)
Refresh = 0 skill (slightly more useful than nightsight, as you can potentially drink more, but still try to buy the skill from NPCs, it's less painful)
Total refresh = 25 skill
Greater agility = 35 skill
Greater strength = 45 skill
Greater poison = 55 skill
Greater heal = 55 skill
Greater cure = 65 skill
Greater explosion = 65 skill

If you want to skip making certain types of potions above, you can also use Alchemy talismans to put yourself in the best skill gain range for making potions in the next difficulty level.

The newer earthen potions gives even more choices at skill gain levels. Some of them like invisibility are very useful for warriors. But I have not really tried the rest.

Smokebombs are great! But Eggbombs (made by the Cooking skill) are alot cheaper to make.

Greater explosions are fun but dangerous toys. If you are stout of heart, it is possible to make a single, double and even triple throw macro in UOA to nail your last target with greater explosion potions. See this post for more details http://vboards.stratics.com/showthread.php?p=812725#post812725



Gardening
An alchemist makes a good gardening character too, since he can make any potions that is required on the spot.

For gardening, having the 4 different kegs of potions on you is very useful. Because when you click the respective icon in the plant gump to give it a certain potion, it automatically takes it from the keg.

My gardening area also makes use of my 2 tile workarea principle. I have a pouch (designated by P in the crude diagram below) right in the center of a 9x9 area. This pouch holds my resources and potion kegs. The positions that I would stand at are designated by the x. The dashes are all the spots where I can reach my plants. The advantage of this is that I can pick up 4 full kegs from the pouch into my backpack and start tending the plants. When I finish up with a quadrant, I will put 1 or 2 kegs back into the pouch and move to the next quadrant. Otherwise 4 full kegs tend to overload me. The water trough can be anywhere in your house, no range limitation. I recorded a UOA macro to fill my pitcher from the trough on the other side of my house.

---------
---------
--x---x--
---------
----P----
---------
--x---x--
---------
---------

I also have a pouch for each of the 17 original plants where I keep the seeds and mother plants. On top of each of the 17 pouches, I locked down a decorative version of the plant. Those that gives resources, I lock down the coloured version that gives resources (eg bright green snakeplant). The rest are plain versions. This way, I have a quick visual cue to tell which pouch to open for what plant/seeds I need, without having to read the engraving on the pouches.

My set of different coloured studs (father plants) I keep in a separate pouch. The fathers are swapped out if I find a new father that tend to give more mutations. This is superstition of course, but hey, no harm trying :D

The control+shift method to bring up the plants' tags then dbl-clicking on the tags to bring up a gump is also useful if you stack the plants up. But remember to right click the tag to close it once the gump comes up, I have accidentally opened the gump for the same plants twice and accidentally overdosed them...
 

Basara

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Harlequin:

RE: Nightsights for potion bottles

One of the recent changes mean that you can get an empty potion keg, drop a pile of 100 potions on it, and instantly have 100 empty bottles. I then just drop the keg in luna.


I typically make an extra keg or two just to be able to quickly turn bought potions into bottles.
 

Harlequin

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Harlequin:

RE: Nightsights for potion bottles

One of the recent changes mean that you can get an empty potion keg, drop a pile of 100 potions on it, and instantly have 100 empty bottles. I then just drop the keg in luna.


I typically make an extra keg or two just to be able to quickly turn bought potions into bottles.
Hey, that's pretty smart! No need to get yourself poisoned unneccessary too.

Stackable potions change +1 !
 

Sarsmi

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Added the latest tips with a little editing, fancied things up a bit with unordered lists, did a few other dinky things. :)
 
U

uoBuoY

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This is kind of obscure but I want to contribute!

Let's say your training or just farming with Swoop. Isn't it a real pain when he flies up onto the rocks and just sits there? I have a strategy that will drag him off the rocks 9 out of 10 times.

Get the Swoop's gump up. Move you and/or your pets as far away from the Swoop as possible and then attack. Works 9 out of 10 times.
 

Basara

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For the JOAT section (I thought I posted this already with the other items that ended up in the tips already).

A human can take the Spellweaving quest, and become a spellweaver, using just their JOAT points. Any spell with a minimum casting skill of 20 or less can be cast, and as noted in the magic use section, can use non-spellweavers to get a high-level focus. The effects of a level 3-5 focus on even JOAT-level Spellweaving spells makes the effort worth it, as spells such as Gift of Renewal can give 7-9 HP back every 2 seconds for 30-60 seconds with a high-level focus (that's the equivalent to 4-6 high-magery Greater heals for 24 or less mana, and spread out in such a way to be much more useful).
 

Sarsmi

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Yeah I ended up putting it in the spellweaving/magery/necro section since it seemed more applicable there, but I could generalize it a little bit for JoaT and put it in that section too...

*edit: I stuck it in JoaT as is, it looks good and my brain is fuzzy from doing BODs for the past hour and a half. *insert drooly lobotomy smiley*
 

Basara

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Actually, if you put it in that section, you left out half of it - only the part about the focus made it in, not the skill/spell info.
 

Sarsmi

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Actually, if you put it in that section, you left out half of it - only the part about the focus made it in, not the skill/spell info.
Yeah the numbers are more like something you'd find in a FAQ and less like something you'd find in a tips section. There's also a tip in "death and recovery" that mentions JoaT and spellweaving and touches on being able to cast nature's fury/healing spells - I think three tips for this particular feature is quite enough to get the point across. :p
 
U

uoBuoY

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2 Small Tips:

If your Tamer is fighting with a rideable mount and you Vet a bandage on the mount, you can immediately remount and the bandage will still work.

If your taming magic-casters, be sure to check their stats before they have a chance to cast buffs.
 

Draxous

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You can recall with Necromancy and Spellweaving.

For Necromancy, go into wraith form and you can recall just like a mage does (By casting the spell and having regs or LRC)

For Spellweaving, go into reaper form... and you can recall.


:danceb:
 

Flutter

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error. . . Changing to animal form while hidden doesn't leave a trace as stated above only shadow jump does.
 

Harlequin

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error. . . Changing to animal form while hidden doesn't leave a trace as stated above only shadow jump does.
I just tested this again, interestingly, it doesn't show up under the 2D client (you only hear the fizzle if the spell fails), but does show up under KR.

Ie, players using the KR client will see others that uses the animal form spell while hidden (failures give a thin wisp of smoke, successes give a big puff of smoke).
 
R

RichDC

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[*]Summoned Moongates can be closed with the "dispel field" spell.
Partially true, they will only dispel on one side. The other end will remain open.

(so if you open a gate walk through and dispel, no-one can return but the gate the other side is open so they can come through)
 

Harlequin

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Partially true, they will only dispel on one side. The other end will remain open.

(so if you open a gate walk through and dispel, no-one can return but the gate the other side is open so they can come through)
So to prevent gate jumpers from using your gates, leave the mage that casted the gate behind (the one with the rune) and use him to dispel the "entrance" gate. Afterwards, have him use recall to get to the same spot and join your friends that's on the other side. Must remember to tell them to move from the spot once they go through, so that they don't block the mage's recall spot.

Devilishly evil people can do the opposite, open a gate from the balron room to Luna, then dispel the one in the balron room so that gate jumpers can't use teh gate to get back :D
 
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RichDC

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So to prevent gate jumpers from using your gates, leave the mage that casted the gate behind (the one with the rune) and use him to dispel the "entrance" gate. Afterwards, have him recall to the same spot.

Devilishly evil people can do the opposite, open a gate from the balron room to Luna, then dispel the one in the balron room so that gate jumpers can't use teh gate to get back :D
Very possible to do either, i just thought it should be mentioned... not that i think there are any inscrupulous people in game ;p
 

Harlequin

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Very possible to do either, i just thought it should be mentioned... not that i think there are any inscrupulous people in game ;p
*embarrassed* I have learned not to gate jump, the hard way.

Now I only do it with characters that can handle similar contingencies, ie chars that can do any of the following:

1) Can use smokebomb or
2) Can use ethereal form or
3) Protection + have my escape runebook open and move cursor over the "use charge" button to recall to my safe spot (ohhhh! marking runes to a safe spot is another must! ie a spot that's not near banks/buildings where npcs/mobs/players will block you) or
4) Totally naked char/ghost (if you need mark, remember the tip to leave some re-usable runes in your runebook? those runes plus a 16% LRC spellbook will come in very nicely about now!) Use sacrifice to rez if you are a ghost. Ghosts make very useful scouts!

Then there's the blessed items template that does not fear losing insurance money to mobs or pk'rs. No need to bring regs. Spellweaving requires none, and has both summoning + damaging spells. But I'll get to that in a later tip update. Right now I'm trying to get off my arse and write tips for skills that comes after alchemy...

Edit: One more way is using honor, but I avoid using honor unless I absolutely have to, coz getting to knight is a bother, esp for my crafters...
 

SchezwanBeefy

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I don't think you covered this, but if you did I didn't see it and I apologize.
Is there a way to set a macro to automatically loot items like gold from a kill? I've seen people just loot really quickly and I feel like it takes forever. Having some kind of macro would be fairly useful for times when I'm fighting Trogdalytes in the Painted Caves when they're spawning like crazy.
Thanks!
 

Harlequin

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I don't think you covered this, but if you did I didn't see it and I apologize.
Is there a way to set a macro to automatically loot items like gold from a kill? I've seen people just loot really quickly and I feel like it takes forever. Having some kind of macro would be fairly useful for times when I'm fighting Trogdalytes in the Painted Caves when they're spawning like crazy.
Thanks!
If you use KR, you can loot any item with a single right click :)
 

Sarsmi

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I don't think you covered this, but if you did I didn't see it and I apologize.
Is there a way to set a macro to automatically loot items like gold from a kill? I've seen people just loot really quickly and I feel like it takes forever. Having some kind of macro would be fairly useful for times when I'm fighting Trogdalytes in the Painted Caves when they're spawning like crazy.
Thanks!
I use 2D and to loot gold or other stacked items quickly I'll hold down the shift key then left click on the pile and drag. That single click thing in KR sounds pretty cool though...
 

Harlequin

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Sorry, got stuck with "B" for the longest time after my "A"lchemy post...I now present "B", for Boats. I won't cover things like the commands or handing the tillerman a map etc since those are well documented.

Boats
1) A portable boat is a very useful thing to have. They are blessed, and weigh only 1 stone

2) You never know when they can come in handy, eg you are looking for an AOS slime location and when you reach the area, you realize it's on an island on you map, but it's too far away to teleport across

3) Or when you need a buffer zone to escape from mobs/lick your wounds. Note: deliberately shooting at non-ranged/non-teleporting mobs from the safety of your boat is not legal

4) Boats move at server speed ie, even if your lag is terrible and you ping 600ms, your boat moves at the same speed as the boat of someone who pings 10 ms.



Special boat tricks
1) Boat deeds can be bought from shipwrights or provisioners. Buy the small ones as you can get around in them more easily. I prefer the non-dragon prow ones too

2) Whenever you place the boat, you get 2 keys, 1 goes into your backpack, and the other goes into you bankbox. The 2 previous keys will be deleted if they are still in your backpack/bankbox. If you lose a key, dock and undock to get back both keys.

3) These 2 keys are special because you can recall off them. Never bring both keys out with you in case you die. If you ever need to use the "I am stuck option", you want to recall off the key in your bank to get back to your boat/corpse.

4) The recall spot of the key is the tile behind the mast. Never have anything blocking this tile, like packhorses/treasure chests etc. Make it a habit to move to another tile whenever you recall to the boat, I like to move to the front of the mast

5) While on the subject, if 2 characters on the boat each have a key, the tillerman only listens to the one nearer to him and ignores the other

6) Remember those special keys that you can recall off? You can't gate off them unfortunately. However! You can still open a gate FROM the boat - say you want to bring a couple of NPC escorts for a cruise and they don't seem to be able to walk up the plank. Just mark a rune on the banks, get on the boat and cast gate to the rune you have just marked. Tada!

7) Sometimes, the shore is too far away from your boat's plank and you can't walk off, in these cases, use teleport. If you can't teleport, open the plank, back up against the mast, then running down the plank work too. An even more reliable method is to enable pathfinding in options, open the plank, back up against the mast and double right-click the shore. Let the client "pathfind"
and magically teleport you to the shore

8) More on escaping from mobs that I mentioned earlier - notice that if you open a plank and double click on it, you get teleported to the plank immediately? This allows you to board your boat without needing it to be near shores. If you are heading to dangerous areas, this can be a lifesaver.

a - park your boat nearby
b - unlock the plank (the one away from the shore, you don't want to risk mobs that are hot on your heels to simply walk up the plank) with your boat key
c - open (ie lower) the plank
d - lock it with your boat key (this prevents it from closing)
e - insure your boat key (you need it to be on you to use the locked plank)
f - record a UOA macro to use the plank (or the new enhanced client)

So when you are in trouble, just run near the boat and activate the macro. Poof! You are now on your boat and can get a breather. Oh, remember I mentioned it's illegal to shoot at non-ranged/non-teleporting mobs? It's perfectly fine if the mobs can shoot/throw/cast/spit at you.
 

Sarsmi

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Thanks HQ! I edited in the boat bits on the second post. I'm probably going to have to re-org soon. I think next time I get a new group submission. :)
 
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swerv

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Just registered to say thanks for the great newbie tips. Coming back to UO after almost 10 years abscence and this really helps me get back into the swing of things. Looking forward to taking in all the changes and this really helps giving me a quick start.
 

Sarsmi

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Just registered to say thanks for the great newbie tips. Coming back to UO after almost 10 years abscence and this really helps me get back into the swing of things. Looking forward to taking in all the changes and this really helps giving me a quick start.
What shard are you playing on? I'm sure wherever you are there are people willing to help you get back into gear - post on the shard forum here and you'll find people who will help you out. :)
 
S

swerv

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Europa, A guy called Maitre in HLP guild approached me almost as soon as I was out of the tutorial and asked after my proffession. He offered a full spellbook and armour and although I said I would get the Necro spellbook from the quest he gave me a full set of armour which was a mixture of Horned and Barbed leather! Great for me as I'm practicing my necro and mage spells.

I did mess up a bit though because I went killing zombies and forgot to get the necro quest so by the time I went to get it I was already over 50 skill, oops. But following the tips and scribing poison scrolls has made me a quick 10k so my next adventure will be trying to find a vendor with full necro spellbooks in stock :)
 

Sarsmi

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Europa, A guy called Maitre in HLP guild approached me almost as soon as I was out of the tutorial and asked after my proffession. He offered a full spellbook and armour and although I said I would get the Necro spellbook from the quest he gave me a full set of armour which was a mixture of Horned and Barbed leather! Great for me as I'm practicing my necro and mage spells.

I did mess up a bit though because I went killing zombies and forgot to get the necro quest so by the time I went to get it I was already over 50 skill, oops. But following the tips and scribing poison scrolls has made me a quick 10k so my next adventure will be trying to find a vendor with full necro spellbooks in stock :)
I might still have some weapons and stuff on europa, PM me if you want me to check and pass over stuff to you. :)
 

Harlequin

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I did mess up a bit though because I went killing zombies and forgot to get the necro quest so by the time I went to get it I was already over 50 skill, oops.
Ah, there's a way to get it below 50 by see-sawing your skills. I am guessing your skill cap is 700. Instead of items, I will give you a gift of knowledge!


1) Lock all the skills you want to keep, then buy other junk skills till you are at the 700 cap (you'll get a red message saying you need to set some skills down to learn more).

2) Now lock all other skills esp focus, med, resist, eval, spirit speak and all combat skills (basically those that you can accidentally gain if you are attacked by a mob or just by using casting spells/running. (if you use UOA, this is pretty easy)

3) Next set necro skill to go down, and buy just enough skill to bring it down to "49.9".

Eg, say you have 54.3 necro, just buy exactly 4.4 points of another junk skill. That will bring your necro back to 49.9. In terms of gold, 4.4 points of skill = 44 gp. The numbers are just examples, adjust it according to your necro skill.

4) Then get the necro quest before casting any necro spells

5) Once you get the quest, set necro to go up and your other junk skills down. Cast necro spells until you get to 50.0 or more.

6) Finally, collect your necro book :D

Tada!



Notes: Of course, if you have already trained necro to the high 50s or more, it's better to buy a necro book. Or create a new char with 49.0 necro to get the full necro book, then find a way to pass the book to your first char.

I call this empowering move the "Using junk skills to see-saw a skill that you really wanted at a specific level trick" :D

By the power of greyskull, you have the power! With great power comes great responsibilities! May the force be with you! Go forth and multiply! A bird in your hand is worth 2 in the bush. Give a man a fish and he eats for a day, teach him to fish, and he will never ask you for a fish again! etc etc



Even if you decide not to see-saw, hopefully the knowledge will help you in other ways (like over training ninjitsu and stealth).
 

Sarsmi

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Ah, there's a way to get it below 50 by see-sawing your skills. I am guessing your skill cap is 700. Instead of items, I will give you a gift of knowledge!
You can do that, but then you lose the GGS gains you would have gotten on all your skills by having a total of 700 skill points instead of 200 or 300 or whatever. It would be better to start a new character with 49 necro, run them thru the quest, then get the book and trash the character. :)
 

Harlequin

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You can do that, but then you lose the GGS gains you would have gotten on all your skills by having a total of 700 skill points instead of 200 or 300 or whatever. It would be better to start a new character with 49 necro, run them thru the quest, then get the book and trash the character. :)
Quite true. Easiest to start a new char to get the full necro book, probably takes 10 mins :D

To get max potential for GGS, Soul stone and soul stone fragments make good skill removers though. But if you don't already have 1, it's probably not worth buying one just to get a necro book. Would be nice for training other skills.
 
S

swerv

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Ah yeah I'd forgotten about locking and setting skills to decrease. Oh well, I found a vendor selling a full necro book in some place called Malas I went to from a rune that was on the ground in Haven. Wouldn't of done that back when I used to play, lots of people enjoyed renaming runes to safe places when they were really deep in some dungeon :)
 

Necron87

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Hi, prompt to all please as well as with whom it is better for Flame Elemental Guardian to kill - the champion from the second Shame level?
 
F

foshee.blake

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Thanks! I made a note of the option to start as a melee character and also added a tip in about NPC buying and selling. It's boring, but it can be good money!
I'm sorry but extremely new but want to go to the edge.

Sent from my SM-N910V using Tapatalk
 

Nero

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Something I just discovered in the standard Enhanced Client:

If you buy stuff from NPC vendors (e.g. healing potions, but not all 500 in stock but just 350) and double click the icon (i.e. the healing potion on the list), you get a prompt to enter an exact number of items you want to buy (e.g. 350 healing potions). This is much faster than pressing the "+" icon forever to get to 350 potions.
 

Basara

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Now that there's been a bit of thread necro, here's one relevant to current publishes.

With Treasure Hunting & fishing up SOS, the Davies' Locker can give you the base latitude and longitude. This will put you at one corner of a 1 degree by 1 degree square where the chest is located.

1 degree is actually close enough to fish up the chest for SOS (hilarious, as in the real world 1 degree is often 100-150 miles)
For Treasure maps, though, you need to get a little closer, as you need to dig within 4-5 squares at GM Cartography (and you can dig a couple squares away from you, giving you a couple more range).

In the Classic Client, the map pin locations are unreliable - they can be displayed as much as a screen to the left of the actual location. So, it's better to forget what the map looks like (other than confirming you are in the right area), and go solely by the latitude and longitude the locker told you.

A map that is yyy N, xxx E is the Bottom Left (SW) corner of the 1x1 degree square.
A map that is yyy N, xxx W is the Bottom Left (SE) corner of the 1x1 degree square.
A map that is yyy S, xxx E is the Upper Left (NW) corner of the 1x1 degree square.
A map that is yyy S, xxx W is the Upper Left (NE) corner of the 1x1 degree square.

There are 60 minutes ( ' ) in a degree, but due to the game map scale, a single step actually equates to 4 to 6 minutes (we must all be wearing Seven League Boots). This results in a degree being 10 to 15 steps wide in each direction (and only RARELY the same number of steps N/S and E/W). This allows you to "mow the lawn" looking for the treasure, like an oceanographer or land-based treasure hunter using sonar/GPR or a magnetometer to scan for targets in a grid.

The hard part for beginning Treasure Hunters (and to a lesser extent, people fishing SOS) is to know their current location. This can be done as follows....

Enhanced Client users have several options, that can display your current coordinates. This can be in the game map, or (if I recall correctly) a command that should be able to be set up as a macro key. I can't remember if these are internal, part of Pinco's interface, or bits of original Pinco's that the Devs added to the base client later. You can also use a sextant.

Classic Client users have several options, depending on what additional software one uses.
  • Without the legal 3rd party add-ons, you can make/buy a normal sextant and use it to see your coordinates.
  • With just UOAssist, there is a command " -where " that will have it tell you your current location.
  • With UOAutomap (UOAM), UO Cartographer, Ultima Mapper, etc. (all of which require UOAssist to run, even if just an expired beta), these mapping programs have a setting to display your current coordinates in that map window. Also, some of the programs have the ability for you to "go to" a location in them, which allows you to look ahead and see what the area looks like around your map coordinates. That way, you won't be surprised if it turns out your map is in the middle of an Ilshenar Champ spawn or a forest known to be overrun by tsuki wolves in Tokuno, for example.
 
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