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| The Golden Rule, by Azrael-Daedal, edited by Den Dragon |
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The golden rule states, "He who hath the
gold, maketh the rules!"; gold is where it's at in Ultima Online. If you
just created a warrior or a mage and are telling yourself that you're going
to be the best-ever then you should probably delete that character and keep
reading this page. What you really need in a character is good money-making
capability-- once you have that, everything else comes easy.
For example, my favorite combination is to start with the skills of Blacksmithing,
Mining and Tinkering. These are exceptionally complimentary skills.
With Mining you can use a pick or a shovel to mine for ore. Your
Mining ability will allow you to turn the ore into ingots. Ingot's
generally sell for 5gp each, but you can also turn them into armor or
weapons with the Blacksmithing skill. Get it? Your shovel
or pick axe, and tongs or smith's hammer will eventually break.
In the current economy these items become pretty expensive to replace
after a short period of time. This is where your Tinkering skill
can come in handy; with this skill you can make shovels, pickaxes,
tongs and smith's hammers! This type of character is very well rounded
because, even with a limited amount of equipment, you can build quite
a lot of cash. Another money-making combination is Bowyer, Lumberjack
and Animal Taming (but we'll save that one for another time...)
Now that you have a bunch of gold, so what? You wanted to be a warrior
or a mage, not a blacksmith. Here's the beauty of it: When you create
a character you have about 100 points to distribute. Weighted evenly that's
around 33 per beginning skill. Well with the gold you just made you can
go to NPC's and train from 18-30+ in a skill. I repeat gold = skill. If
you've tried to play the game you noticed you can try to uses a skill
for hours with no results. It seems like you really need at least
a skill of 10 to barely succeed, with around a 25 to really start to get
anywhere. See how important gold becomes? After I had built
up some gold I was able to train in Animal Taming, Tracking, various combat
skills, Bowyering, Item Identification and Arms Lore-- all of which have
proven to become very profitable. For example, with Animal Taming
I can tame and sell horses-- with VERY profitable results. With
the Tracking skill I can find wild horses to tame.
It should also be noted, however, that buying skills actually costs you
points from your stats in the long run. Buying skill gains you the ability
to instantly perform at an acceptable level, but it does not build your
strength, intelligence or dexterity like training the skill the hard way
does. If you can afford to pass on the 5-10 stat points you can usually
gain by practicing a skill to 33, then you should probably just buy the
skill in question. However, if you really need the extra hit points, carrying
capacity, stamina, speed or mana, you might want to just take the time
to practice the skill to that level!
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| Character Creation Tips, by Azrael-Daedal, edited by Den Dragon
& Mohdri Dragon |
I have a few tips I would like to share on
Character Creation. These tips should be obvious if you have read
the Golden Rule, but I know there are people just like
me that like to go straight to the meat. So here it is:
- You have 100 points to distribute between 3 skills.
- It's really hard to go up in skill level.
- You can buy skill from 18-30 points for 180-300 gold.
Therefore my suggestion is to lopside your skill distribution. Make
one skill a 50, one a 49 and the last a 1. Here's the reasoning. Allotting
any one skill with less than 25 points is a waste. For a couple hundred
gold you could buy skill up to 25 points. It's better to grab two
really good skills and leave one to buy or develop (this is especially easy
with the gold all characters begin with). Suggestions would be to
get:
- Blacksmithing(50), Mining(49), Tinkering(1)
- Bow/Fletching(50), Lumberjacking(49), Tailor(1)
- Animal Taming(50), Tracking(49), Herding(1)
- Animal Taming(50), Herding(49), Tracking(1)
These are all good money making combinations. The one point allocated towards
the final skill will provide you with the starting equipment for that skill.
Also remember, if you're not concerned about training your stats, you
can buy skill. Make some money then buy what's important to you.
Also keep track of what city you decide to start in. For example,
if you decide to start in Trinsic be aware that there is no one to teach
bow/fletching, tinkering, or tracking. This could also work to your
advantage since this area may lack characters with these abilities.
A final note. I have found the hiding skill to be very valuable
to me. If you spend a lot of time outside the city walls mining
or chopping wood, hiding comes in handy. I don't currently have
a character will a good hiding skill. I've bought my skill up to
16. Using the skill for a long time has only increased the skill
to 18. This may be a good skill to invest in early as it seems to
rise slowly (although you can gain a phenomenal amount of dexterity by
taking the time to practice this skill).
Good luck,
- Azrael-Daedal
(baja server)
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| Tips for the Newbie, by Endarire II |
| The first thing you do when you can access
the UO servers:
When you start out make multiple characters (chars). One should be
a tailor/fisher, another a carpenter/lumberjack/tinkerer (50/49/1),
another a smith/miner/camper (50/49/1), another hiding/resist/mage (50/49/1)
and the last one a warrior tac/swords or maces/parrying (50/49/1). Have
them all start at Ironwood Inn in Vesper with 60 str. Why? I'll tell
yas in a sec.
Why use all 5?:
Why? Because the carpenter is your first main source of income! He
can make and sell wood shields (along with other furniture), and when
his tinkering skill is high enough, he can make lockable chests! Why's
that so important? Answer: PC's seem to love lockable chests, and will
pay well for them. Also, if you can tinker up more carpentry hammers/jointing
planes, you'll save yourself the trip to town. PLUS: You'll start with
a hatchet to cut down trees, and trees are FREE!! AND: Your hatchet
will never break by cutting down trees! (Happy happy joy joy!) Also,
have your guy train on dummies w/his hatchet, so his str and dex improve
(to carry more wood).
Your tailor is a good asset after you've built up some cash, or if
you want to try something new. Do the skullcap thing by buying a bolt
of cloth, then keep making skullcaps until the bolt is near empty, then
sell the bolt. Keep making/selling until the shopkeeper will buy no
more, then wait another 30 min or so. Eventually with your mage or warrior
you'll kill something yielding hides, so you can make and sell PLATE!!
Yes, I said PLATE, woman's plate. The fishing part is so you raise dex,
and you can cut up the fishes and give them to beggars to raise note!!
The smith is obvious: to have him deck out your pcs w/plate, and to
be able to make gold from selling excess armor. (For example, a ring
tunic goes for about 108 gold.) You mine for your own ore, and camp
if/when necessary. (Like if you hear reports of pks coming towards the
mountain, you can escape w/out fear of dying.)
You want all this gold for 3 reasons:
- If you die, you'll have some to go back on.
- Buying reagents gets a HELL of a lot more expensive than you think!
- To help others if you feel so inclined.
Your mage and warrior should both be able to cast 4th (recall). If
you keep casting second and third circle spells repeatedly, you should
be able to reach fourth circle without much trouble.
You want to start out with 1 handed weapons and a shield to improve
parry. Start small with dogs, cats, etc then move onto Orcs, etc. (You
should transfer some armor from your smith, as well as some $ for parrying,
archery, arms lore and item id.) If you want to raise dex easily, fish
or chop trees. Get str by repairing and mining. You can also spar with
another person, if you both aren't same note, or one's willing to take
note loss. Just equip your armor, but use a knife, smith hammer or club
as a weapon. (Knife for swords, a hammer or club for maces. Using weak
weapons will give you more of a stat gain.) To 'spar' archery, have
a friend mage cast summon creature over and over, and you kill the creature.
(Also works with elementals if you're good enough.)
Your mage will have a hard time starting out, so as with your warrior,
have an npc train them in magery. (Every 1 goldis about .1 for a skill,
and npcs won't take any less than 10 gold each time you request training.)
Your other moneymakers better have plenty of gold for your mage! Look
around and see if you can buy a full spell book, but don't expect to
pay less than 2k for it. (2-4k is more like it, unless you find a REALLY
generous/nice person who'll give it away for less.) Focus on weaker
spells for now. If you have the reagents and at least 30.1 magery, you'll
cast 1st spells every time. Start by casting each of the spells 1-3.
Use good ones on you, and bad ones on bad things OUTSIDE town. (Although
I've heard you're free to kill other's pets w/out penalty.) Also as
with your warrior, try to get to GL note. If you do, and go to Brit,
you can get a Chaos/Virtue Guard shield with is excellent ac, and allows
you to cast spells with it on!
Hope this helps!
- Endarire II of Atlantic Shard
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| An Alternate Method, by Otis |
| Start with a high strength, usually 40
and balance dexterity and intelligence...20 lockpicking, 50 magery, 30
parry. I usually start in north Britain and spend some gold on either
reagents if I get reactive armor or get someone to scribe reactive armor
and spend the rest on reagents for it at the magic shop. I put on reactive
armor and head straight for Despise. I usually wander around in Despise
collecting scrolls and putting all that I don't have in my spell book
(in case I die) and gather up as much armor, weapons, and loot by running
from treasure area to treasure area. Parry and reactive armor usually
allow me to dodge monsters if I keep moving. If I'm lucky a nice adventurer
or two will let me join in the battle with scorpions or other fairly tough
monsters. I just keep collecting until I can't carry anymore and head
back to town. At the very least if I die and get looted I still have my
starting equipment (including lock picks for more dungeon hopping) and
all the spells I gathered. Low level characters really don't get hit too
hard by resurrecting (skill wise) anyway. This usually gets me about 500
gold or so and a fair set of armor. I then buy tailoring, a weapon skill,
and tactics (as much as I can in tactics) and head back to the dungeon
and fight little things (rats, etc) until I get strong enough and wealthy
enough to cast spells for a while and get 4th level spells for recall.
Once you get that...the game gets MUCH easier. As a final note: I keep
anything that is really worth anything to me in the bank and I don't expect
to keep anything I carry with me in case of PKs, lag, or bad luck.
- Otis of Napa Valley, Baja
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