This series of guides was
inspired by my attempt to bring my friend Sam onto Angel Island. Sam was a
fairly experienced MMOG player but he had never played anything like UO and he
tended to make things way more complicated than they needed to be. He had a
difficult time believing that the UO interface was as simple as I described it.
I mean we only do basically 4 things with the mouse.
1) Right click to move
2) Left click once to get info on an item
or player
3) Hold left click and drag to move things
4) Double click to use things and attack
things
That's basically all it takes to play UO.
For those of us who have been playing for a few years this all seems obvious and
trivial, but let me tell you a new player can get pretty frustrated by that.
In order to help the newbies get
comfortable with UO and Angel Island we at Looters, Inc. have taken it upon
ourselves to create some basic guides. We've all created a few new characters
and are going to cover all the bases we need so that we can take these guys from
poor little newbies to nice loot filled players.
These aren't made to be particularly funny
so don't expect to be busting a gut when you read them. However, please
check them out and make sure that the information we've given is solid.
With all that out of the way, good luck
and welcome to the shard!
After an
account has been created and you've logged in the first thing you'll have to do
is create a new character.
Click the
"NEW" button on the left hand side to start the process and on the next screen
pick the "advanced" class.
At this point you can choose your starting
stats and skills. Your stats are located on the left and your skills on the
right.
The strength stat is used to
determine how much damage your character can dish out and how much they can
take.
Dexterity is a measure of how
fast your character can swing a weapon and it determines how much stamina you
have.
Intelligence is used primarily
for magic. It helps to determine how many spells you can cast and how fast it
takes to recover to cast again.
For the first character
we're going to choose the skills of swordsmanship, healing, and magery. As
you'll see a variety of other skills exist, but for now we're creating the
easiest class to play, the warrior.
Adjust the stats and
skills to approximately as shown below.
Why these particular stats?
40 Strength = 70 Hit Points
That's pretty respectable. You'll be able to
do some damage and not die.
28 Dexterity = 28 Stamina.
Basically this will prevent you from running
out of stamina to quickly and let you wear some of the heavier armor for
protection.
Heavy Armor = Good Protection but Lower
Stamina
12 Intelligence = 12 Mana
This is just enough to recall with (more on
that later).
Note:: recall (or any 4th circle spell) takes
11 mana.
It's hard to get this EXACT. So if you get
close, it's good enough.
When you are done here click the green button
in the lower left.
Now your character can be customized. Pick a
name, a hair style, clothing colors, etc...
Make sure you pick an awesome name.
uh......
Let's tone down the awesome just a bit....
A name like this will do two things; 1)
You'll look like a total dipshit, and 2) I know several people who will kill you
for being a total dipshit.
Much better.
Click the green button
to go to the next screen.
Vicious lies on this screen. At one point you
could choose the city you started in. Now, no matter what you pick you start in
Britain.
This is OK. Just click the green button.
Hooray!
Now you've appeared and
we can get to playing!
Hit ALT-P or double click your avatar (the
little man) and something called a paperdoll will pop up.
The paperdoll is used to change what you are
wearing or holding.
You can also access your backpack from here
and a variety of options are available on the right panel.
Click the "Status" button or press ALT-S to open your character status
window.
Everything of immediate
importance is labeled.
Click the "Skills" button or press ALT-K to
open the skills window.
Pressing the little arrows on the left will
open up additional skills.
For now, hit the "New Group" and the "Show
Real" buttons so we can get these sorted a bit easier.
A couple of things are
happening in the pictures below.
In the first picture the
skill locks are being set. This will prevent skills that aren't wanted or needed
from increasing.
In the second window
skills that are wanted are being dragged to the New Group to make them easier to
find and keep track of later on.
When it's all said and done, the "New Group"
should look something like this.
A maximum of 700 skill points is attainable
per character, with a maximum of 100 in any 1 skill.
In other words, not all of these skills will
be kept in the long term, however they are useful in the short term.
Is that music annoying yet? Press the
options button on the paperdoll or hit Alt-O to get into the options.
Find the "Sound and
Music" tab and turn off the music.
To your lower right (east) on the screen is
"The First Bank of Britain.," often called the West Brit Bank or WBB.
Walk to it (right click and hold where
you want to go) and say "bank."
This opens up a secure storage for this
character, nobody can get into it except this character. A maximum of 125 items
can be held within this container
The items contained within your bank box can
be accessed from any bank, anywhere. Each city has a bank.
Open your backpack by
hitting ALT-I or double clicking the pack icon on your paperdoll.
At this time you may choose to drop things
into the bank, or not.
It's a good idea to toss that bag of reagents
into the bank for safekeeping. You won't need them for awhile.
Hang onto the gold, you're about to use some!
To the blacksmith! Run North!
If you have trouble finding it you can hit
ALT-R and bring up a little map to help guide you.
It's a good day to be a
newbie, you've found someone at the shop already!
Introduce yourself, let
him know of your awesomeness, your great skill with the sword, and your
worthiness in battle!
or just say hi...
Aragorn Tepes, the great
vampire ranger... or ranger vampire?
Whatever, he said "Hail" and that's good
enough.
Outstanding job, a partner for adventure! The
absolute most progress, and fun will be had in this game if you have a friend to
work with you.
Before you leave you
have to buy a few things.... find a vendor (yellow names) and say "Vendor Buy."
Buy yourself a shield
and some sort of a sword to be better equipped for the skeletons.
Now run straight up (North West) of the
Blacksmith to find the Britain Graveyard.
It appears that someone is already here
killing skeletons and they've left a bone helm on the ground!
One of the most important rules of UO, if
it's on the ground it's fair game. Take that helm!
Now that you're at the
graveyard, go into combat mode (ALT-C or TAB) and find a monster to bash.
A zombie! Double click it and take it down!
The information popping
up to the left is just showing the increase in your skills.
While you're fighting make sure to
keep your partner healed.
Double click the bandages in your
pack
Target your partner
Wait 15 seconds
Repeat
You can tell the status of any
"living" thing by clicking and dragging off of them to get a "health bar."
Once the nasty thing dies double click the corpse on the
ground to open it.
29 gold! Fantastic... keep it up!
In the time you spend
earning skill in the graveyard you'll probably run into a variety of people.
This would be Skeeve and
he was kind enough to start healing without anybody asking. (Thanks Skeeve!)
Sometimes people aren't
that nice, more on this later.
After a good while of fighting you'll have
amassed a good bit of gold (646 in this case) and equipment.
When it's no longer worth losing it's time to
drop it in the bank!
Run back little newbie!
Once you get back to the
bank you must remember to split the loot as you promised. Doing anything else
makes you a tool and nobody will want to work with you.
To do this, click and
drag on the gold.
You'll see the amount of
items in the stack pop-up with a little slider bar.
To modify the amount one
can either type the number in or slide the little blue slider.
Hit enter or OK when
it's at a number you'd like (323 in this case).
Next, drop it on your
friend and the "Secure Trading" window will open, as shown below.
The trade window shows
your offer (on the left) and their offer (on the right). Click the little blue
diamond by your name if you are satisfied with the trade.
One must be careful with
the "secure" trade window as the moment something falls into your pack it
is vulnerable to theft.
A long day of fighting done, it's time to log
out at an inn.
Until next time when we investigate some more
advanced concepts...
