May 2000

Factions and you
Posted May 31, 2000 - 3:55 PM PDT by Adam Ant

There are a few things on the newly updated Factions document over on the Origin website which I would like to discuss:

If the character carrying the sigil is killed by an opposing faction member, the sigil will appear in the attacker's backpack.
If the character carrying the sigil is killed by a non faction member or a monster, the sigil will return it it’s previous location.
Doh! I see an exploit! The problem is that you can round up a bunch of mercenary buddies (not in the faction) to help in the battle. If things get dicey, you just have the non faction mercenaries kill the thief which returns the sigil to the defending town.
I would change this so that if the one carrying the Sigil is killed by a non faction member or monster, the Sigil stays on the corpse and the warring parties need to fight it out right there for possession. Think of it like a fumble in a football game. The Sigil would be untouchable by monsters and non-faction members. If the body that has the Sigil decays, then the Sigil goes back to it's home town.

Once the sigil is in the faction's stronghold, it must be defended for 24 hours.
This just seems too long for me. I think most players only play for 3-4 hours and would like to know the outcome in the the next few hours.
Here I would suggest a 4 hour defense. This would make it so that an individual (which we all are) could actually enjoy the whole experience. I mean truthfully, do you want to risk your life, march the Sigil back to your home town and have to log off with all your buddies, not knowing how the next shift is going to perform? If the next shift even knows how to protect the thing? Nah, too complex. OSI needs to trim it back to 4 hours and it will be *much* more fun.

After 24 hours, the sigil will be "corrupted" and must be returned to the city. Once this is accomplished, the faction that returns the sigil to the city will control that city.
There is an interesting aspect to this which I don't think many realize:
There is an opportunity to defend the location to where the Sigil is to be returned. If the corrupted Sigil cannot be returned, the victors cannot take possession of the town. This is not necessarily bad, but if not understood it could really hose the 'town capture' mechanics.
I would suggest Origin fully explore this and either support it officially or disallow it.
My suggestion would be that after successfully defending the captured Sigil for the requisite amount of time, that the Sigil automatically teleports itself back to the town from which it came. At this time the victors may claim the town and take control without further ado.

(the faction that controls the town may)Purchase special shopkeepers. The financial advisor can purchase and place four different shopkeepers:

• Reagent Vendor


• Ore Vendor


• Wood Vendor


• Bottle Vendor

The Guardians are coming to Baja!
Posted May 31, 2000 - 11:40 AM PDT by Adam Ant

I just received this from RascalT and he wants to start a GUL guild on Baja. I think it's a great idea.
Here is what had to say: -Adam Ant

I would like to post some of my ideas here and get feedback from both Guardians on other shards as well as potential Guardians residing on the Baja Shard.

First off let me Introduce myself. My name is Roland Martin I am a GM Macer/Tac, 90 Anat, 65 Healing, 40 Stealth, 85 parry, 35 Resist and 35 Magery (Locked-I use scrolls alot) I have been playing UO for about 2 years now and have considerable experience PvP I have just recently stumbled onto Adam's Adventures and was VERY intrigued by both his RPing as well as showing both OSI and fellow players that PKing is/can be a GREAT addition to UO. It adds the element of fear as well as excitement to the game. **Climbs down from soapbox** Anyways, I just wanted to let you know the why, who and what of my interests concerning starting GUL on Baja.

Now to the ideas and dreams I have for GUL on Baja. First and foremost I seek the approval and support of Adam and his "Captains", without this it is a moot point. Secondly, my dream for GUL Baja is to have a "cause" behind PvP interaction on Baja. The typical 12 year old running around killing miners, newbies and lumberjacks is NOT what I want to see flourish on Baja! But instead, I would like to see what Adam has accomplished on Napa, which in a nutshell is a widely known (and respected) aspect of the game that is just as important and has as big of an impact as Player ran cities, events and social groups.

This is my goal, my vision and my hope that GUL Baja will someday be. If these words, this dreams, this goal has struck a chord in your RolePlaying Spirit then I hail you as brothers and invite you to take up the gauntlet that every Lich Murdering Miscreant has/is/will throw down in defense of these great Lords! So take up your arms, shine that armor and........email me=) Good hunting to all GUL!!! Long live the Keepers of Knowledge, Long Live the Lich!

RascalT

Have you thoughts on this post by RascalT?

Character reengineering
Posted May 30, 2000 - 9:08 PM PDT by Lucan

Adapt or die, that's what I'm thinking these days.

I am a Grandmaster mage / mace / tactics / meditation / wrestling - Master resist / evaluate intelligence.
As hard as it was, I decided to loose the tactics and mace and pickup inscription and healing / anatomy. Yup, you heard me right, give up the killer mace for inscription. You will also notice I am trading two GMs for three skills. This is how it will work: 80 inscription, 60 healing and 60 anatomy.

I think this combination rocks because killing a mage that has healing is no easy task. I choose 60/60 healing/anatomy to give me 80% success rate on curing poison and 27-52 of HP healing! Now while Mr. Dex R. Monkey is trying to remove my liver, I will be under the influence of the new and improved Reactivate Armor spell. At 100 Evaluate Intelligence, 100 Meditation, and 80 Inscription, I expect to absorb about 60-70 HP of damage with only about 10% of the damage coming through the armor to me.

I think this will be a fun character to play. The one problem I see is that I currently walk around with Magic Reflect always turned on. The UO:R patch made it so You cannot cast Reactivate Armor if Magic Reflect is currently active. Doh! *hopes OSI will change this* This means you will not be able to keep Magic Reflect on all the time. You'll instead need to put up one of Magic Reflect, Reactivate Armor or Protection depending on the given situation.

Lucan [Guardian, GUL]

Care to comment or share your reengineered character template?

GUL Opening on Great Lakes
Posted May 27, 2000 - 9:59 PM PDT by Adam Ant

TheUltimateSoldier is starting a guild for the Guardians on Great Lakes. He has read our code of ethics and sworn to abide by them.

He stopped by our message board to tell us about it.

If you are the Great Lakes shard and would like to help protect the lich population, please drop TheUltimateSoldier a line.

--Adam Ant

Grabby 2.0 BETA now available
Posted May 27, 2000 - 2:52 PM PDT by Adam Ant

I just uploaded the beta version of Grabby 2.0.
Here is what I added:

1. Add a minimize button.
2. Add option to export to either .BMP or .JPG formats.
3. Allow setting of the output directory
4. Allow setting of output image quality
5. Add Web based help
6. Add AboutBox

--Adam Ant

Care to talk about Grabby?

UO Web Presents Extreme
Posted May 27, 2000 - 9:06 AM PDT by Adam Ant

Want UO Info?:
Back in the old days, I thought the UO web site was pretty week. I would almost never go there but instead go to Stratics for tips and tricks on skill advancement, weapons studies and utility downloads.
Or I would go to COB if I wanted to enter a discussion forum that generally had intelligent posters. Not only that, but the game developers themselves would participate as well.

Well times are a changing. A month or so ago the ‘official’ Ultima Online message boards went up in the MyUO section of the UO web site. This I would guess is at least a minor problem for the folks at COB as they are quite likely going to loose a number of regular posters.
It only stands to reason that the ‘official’ Ultima Online message boards would be frequented by the developers and other UO support personal. We all want to be heard by the folks that created our favorite game, so we start moving away from COB.

If that didn’t complicate things enough, Stratics has opened up like a gazillion message boards for everything from Alchemy to Witch hunting! Man, those are some sweet boards.

Want Free Web Hosting?:
This is so amazing, I still don’t know how they do it.
My host is UOGuilds and they give me a free web site. *shrugs*, I’m still waiting for Evilseed to come up to me and say: "We can’t afford this any more, we need money." I also have a professionally hosted web site that costs me $39.00 per month that is really no better than my UOGuilds hosted account. It’s just weird. Oh I know, I do need to run a banner ad on my pages on UOGuilds, but I don’t think anyone's making money there either. From where I stand, it looks as if the banners are simply pointers to other UOGuild hosted sites. Oh well, I hope Evilseed is making money somewhere.

And more Free Web Hosting!:
I was just surfing the web this morning and ended up at Ultima Haven. Man, that’s a pretty site. Kudos to the Ultima Haven webmaster.
I spotted this link: Get hosted. Following the link I find that Ultima Haven is offering yet more free web hosting with unlimited disk space!

You also get:
1 subdomain (yourname.ultimahaven.com) or hosting of your domain
Unlimited storage (within reason)
1 FTP account
1 POP3 e-mail account and unlimited forwarding
CGI upon request (and approval)
MGOForum on your site (on request)
MGOChat on your site (on request)

You know it’s funny, I'd continue pay my $10.00 a month for my UO account, even if I weren’t playing just to keep all this free web hosting!

These are truly amazing times.
So my advice to you is take advantage of all these wonderful offers. I mean, you could take web administration in school, or learn it all for free and while having fun!
Start a free web site, put up a free message board, get a free news updater. Get involved!

--Adam Ant

Care to comment on this post?

Angel Island Proposal on Stratics!
Posted May 26, 2000 - 10:44 AM PDT by Adam Ant

The Angel Island Proposal has just hit the big time over on Stratics! It's in the Napa Valley News section and titled:
Q & A with Adam Ant.

Pelle Svanslos did an interview with me and we talked about the Proposal and some of the more interesting aspects of Angel Island.

Thanks Pelle! I think the article will really help to raise the awareness of the proposal.

Care to comment on Pelle's article?

--Adam Ant

Housing on Felucca
Posted May 23, 2000 - 3:47 PM PDT by Adam Ant

I nice little spot just opened up by my 2-story, just big enough for a small house.
So I ran off and picked up a small house deed. Doh! Lord British has put a hold on all house placements, not just in Trammel but Felucca too!

Rats, I thought I was going to get a house for my guild
Oh well, a good friend from Battle Vortex has a large smithy he will let us use !!

Grabby:
I’m putting the finishing touches on a new version of Grabby.
This version adds the ability to output to JPEG format which should help you guys that have the slower machines or are low on disk space. I’m also adding the ability to configure the output directory etc..

For those of you that don’t know, Grabby is a screen capture utility I wrote to be used while playing UO.
It’s the same utility I use the get the screen shots in all of my adventures.
You can read about it here.

Angel Island:
Well I just added another 20 supporters to the Angel Island Proposal page.
I must say, we’re starting to get the attention of some rather influential folks in the UO community.
I’ve also been seeing the Support Angel Island logo on lots of sites around!

Well I’m off to go play the game!

--Adam Ant

The DevGuys speak
Posted May 23, 2000 - 2:48 PM PDT by Adam Ant

Well, I just listened to the Runsabre interview over at Battle Vortex and was fairly impressed.
I must say this is Adrick’s best interview ever. He would ask a good question, then Runsabre would answer it. It was really nice, and we didn’t hear about the blue PK once!

I don’t know about you. But to me it sounded like Runsabre was seriously considering scrapping ROT on Siege Perilous because it was not as good at discouraging macroing as the system currently in-place on all shards. To this I say Waa Hoo! I mean I love the new system and you can really GM the skills that could previously only be GM’ed by macroing.

I thought Runsabre’s compromise to Adrick’s suggested removal of the Gate spell was right on the money. Runebaby said that maybe just eliminating Gate into and out of dungeons would suffice. I agree. Besides not all of us have enough time to sail to ice island everytime we want to whack on Polar bears.

Okay Rune, it almost sounded like you said that ‘no stat-loss’ worked on Siege Perilous because there was no recall. *thinks* … okay, deal!
Maybe we could devolve Flucca into sort of a Siege Perilous. That is, remove Recall and possibly remove Gate from dungeons. Then remove stat-loss.

The only thing I was surprised to hear was that Rune really believed there was going to be more merchants on Siege. Um, Rune… grinding potions is boring as hell. Nobody is going to pay $10.00 a month to sew GM fancy shirts. With only one character per account, I wouldn’t be surprised if only 1% of the population would sign-up to be a merchant for any length of time. And Sorry, I ain’t buying the Tailor / Mage argument either.
Kal Vas Pincushion! *Betsy Ross is attacking you!*

The only thing missing from this interview was the voice of Fear. (Fear, I heard that Runesaber was all prepared to give you the castle.)

Comments?

--Adam Ant

Please welcome Craggan and Lost as GUL Captains!
Posted May 22, 2000 - 10:46 PM PDT by Adam Ant

When it rains it pours I guess.
Last night we were blessed when Lost signed up to “captain”, The Guardians of Undead Lords.
Well tonight we were graced once again when Craggan also signed up to the task.
It’s funny ya’know, when I opened-up GUL to membership, players were coming from all over, even other shards to be apart of GUL. I had no idea it would spread so fast.
I have never tried to recruit anyone (except the captains) to GUL. Now players are appearing daily to sign up.

Well I’ll tell’ya, having Craggan and Lost as leaders in our guild is not only an honor, but also a coup d'état.
These guys (in case you didn’t know) run, organize and basically own the Grimoire events!
Not familiar with Grimoire ? Well check this out.

Welcome Craggan *bows*
Craggan will still retain his tittle of “Grimoire Executioner”, but don’t be fooled. This guy is all GUL!

The GUL member will be trained and made battle-ready by these fine military leaders.

Have you been reading my adventures? Do you also wish to protect the Wizards of Old?
Join us. We will succeed and own every lich haven in Sosaria.

Until next time,
Adam Ant

The Guardians now have a Captain!
Posted May 21, 2000 - 10:10 PM PDT by Adam Ant

I have been searching for a strong leader to help me in growing GUL and make it a true force within UO.
Well I have found that person and he has signed up to the task. Captain my Captain!

In other news:
Interest in the Guardians of Undead Lords guild has been really strong. I'm getting requests to join almost daily. If you're interested in finding out what we're all about, read our code of ethics (located to the left there,) then go here.

Seems that when the cats away, another cat steps in to help out! Floybin, D'eth, you guys rock!

Sorry, no rants today. Check back tomorrow!

--Adam Ant

Please be patient :)
Posted May 20, 2000 - 8:36 PM PDT by Adam Ant

I have been growing and consolidating my sight. Please bear with the lack of news and rants.

I do have a new tale for you though. Check out my first visit to Dungeon Deceit:
Episode #66.
I should have the site in good repare in a day or so.

--Adam Ant