So, you want to know what all the hype about UO Assist is all about? Why so many people hand out the US$ 15 it costs to buy? Well, my first suggestion is for you to read the official site at http://www.tugsoft.com. It has a few guidelines and general usage of the utility. We'll walk through a couple of the more specific uses of the program, especially useful for mages. Imagine UO with all the shortcuts you could possible imagine (almost), and you have very nearly understood the hype about UO Assist. I'll go through each of the "tabs" one by one, and walk through which parts are useful.

Common

This section of UO Assist has quite a few very useful features. Starting from below, we have filters that can stop many of the annoying sounds in UO, as well as the weather (rain and snow) that can seriously slow down UO on some machines.

Next, from the top, there's two features, one of which is also in the UO client, namely "Show Incoming Players Names" - this one works exactly the same as the client one; on top of that, you can toggle "Auto Show Corpse Names" to automatically show names of corpses as soon as they die (very nice in crowded areas).

The following ones are minor ones, and are only there for convenience sake - being "warn of reagents on ground" that tells you if there are reagents near your position,;"replace path finding with 'follow cursor'" which means that instead of a double-right-click trying to path find to the location, it will simply keep moving in the direction of the mouse (note: this feature can be completely turned off in the client); and "reveal hidden power words" which moves all the nasty spam some people put on their spell macros to the lower left corner.

Then there are the somewhat useful ones for mages: "range check last target" and "queue self/last target". The first one does simply what the name says, and while good in theory, it isn't excellent in the field; first off, it's bugged in terms of some ranges on spells, and second off, whenever you try to target something on your person, it will always display "Target out of range.". Now, queuing is a different story; when a target is queued it will simply last/self target as soon as a target cursor appears - in mages case, mostly when a spell is cast. This means that spells are cast instantaneous upon casting, rather than with the slight delay that you can always expect from manually using last/self targets. Note, however, that queuing only works if you use the UO Assist "Last Target" and "Target Self" macros, and not with the client side ones.

Arm

The Arm page is, very shortly put, the same as arm/disarm left/right in the UO client, but on steroids. It allows you to set 4 different combinations of weapons, shields or both and call upon them where ever you need them. It also, as a minor thing, allows you to set a bag that you can choose to disarm into, instead of into the main backpack.

Dress

Dress works very similarly to the Arm tab, just with clothes instead; it allows you to setup 4 different suits to wear, that you can put on with a single key press - for instance, if you happen to die and have your insured armor on you, you can press a key and have it equipped again. Also note, that this page can be of tremendous help with such keys as "remove hat" and "remove ring/earring" as it allows you to swap hats and rings basically on the run by pressing a few keys; you just have to set most of what you wear to being the same so it won't try to equip items that aren't on you.

Keys

This is where all your macros are setup basically; make room on your keyboard, cause there are plenty worthwhile keys here.

First off, we'll see a bunch of "arm" and "disarm" options; I suggest setting all of these, as not only are they immensely useful for warriors, but for mages too. For instance, you can arm a wand with one key, disarm the wand with another and use a third to put on a shield. Very useful, especially when you get used to playing around with it - the fact that you can equip both a weapon and a shield, or for that matter disarm both, with one keystroke makes it superior to the way the client handles it.

Next is the keys attached to the dress tab - they're pretty self explanatory, and work fairly much like the arm/disarm keys. Play around with it, and soon you'll be able to switch rings and hats on the run if needs be.

Last Target and Target Self are next - these work exactly like the ones in game, but as described earlier, must be used if you want to take advantage of the target queue. One thing this function has that the client does not, however, is the ability to tie last target and target self to the mouse wheel which gives you access to them whenever your hand is on the mouse.

Following those are a bunch of utility keys, only one of which are used commonly - "count resources". This one is fairly important to do sometimes, as UO Assist does, on occasion, lose track of how many reagents you have (more on this in the display section) at which point you will have to count your resources. The whole "play/stop macro", "record/stop macro" and "select macro" is mostly for advanced usage, and allows you to record macros on the run; which, granted, is very nice, but for most users it really isn't necessary.

Play Macro # can, unlike the previous, be very worthwhile though; you can, literally, record macros for almost all your needs. I'll try to cover this a bit more in the macros section, but you'll want to be able to play at least some macros on the run.

"Use Item in Hand" is very useful for, for instance, cutting up corpses when gathering hides - what it does is basically double click whichever weapon you have equipped - very useful for wands too. Next are probably some of the most commonly used keys in all of UO Assist - the drinking keys. There are keys here that will let you drink any heal potion, cure potion, refresh potion or night sight potion; these are very very useful as you don't have to stop to move your mouse over a potion to drink them, but instead, simply hit a key on the keyboard. And, of course, there's the "bandage self" key, which basically double clicks any bandage in your inventory and targets yourself with it; very nice for healers.

Next up, we have a few keys that are mainly designed for crafters, being able to smelt, unravel and repair everything in a bag by a single keystroke; very nice if you have the skills on your mage, but rather unimportant if you don't - of course, if you're setting your UO Assist to be global, then you will have access to the keys anyway.

And, finally, we have "Organize Bag 1-3". This feature is very nice; you can set it up to organize potions in specific locations in a bag, and it will move all of the potions in your main pack into the bag lined up nice and nifty where you want them. Can be used on pretty much everything, just put items into your main pack and hit a key, and they wind up where you want them to be.

Macros

This section allows you to record up to 16 macros of 200 lines each; that's a lot of macro space. The first thing I would do would be to record a macro that drinks a strength or dexterity potion. To do this, go to the macro page and hit 'record'. Then go into the UO window and double click on the potion you want to drink, and back to UO Assist to stop the macro. Now, right click on the line where it says "Use Item" and change it into "Use Item Type" instead. Now, try to "play" the macro, or press the key for it in the UO window, and voila, you will just have drunken another potion similar. Other macros that may work for you: a "use item type" macro for bolas (or a dismount, bola, last target, mount even) and orange petals. Use item for balls of summoning or bags of sending. The possibilities are basically endless, and the one thing you can't do is record macros that move items, or arm/disarm you.

Resources

Here we have one of the reasons many mages adore UO Assist. Setting "warn below" to something like '10', will highlight reagents on the title bar (assuming you're playing in window mode) whenever you reach below 10 reagents so you get some warning prior to "You lack the reagents to cast this spell." It means you can get out of any sticky situation to restock before you risk death due to low amount of reagents. Here you can also set up "user resources" on top of the preset ones - personally, I have strength potions, dexterity potions, refresh potions, bandages and explosion potions set here (you can find more user setups under the "advanced" button. You can literally set whichever you want to set here, and it will appear on the title bar so you can see how many you have left (although, only magery and necromancy reagents benefit from the "warn below").

Skills

Similarly to UO's own "Skills" page, UO Assist features this as well - not much to say about this one, other than you being able to sort skills however you wish, as well as being able to see how much you've gained in a single UO Assist session. Personally, I use this one far more than I do the one in UO.

Display

This would be one of the pages that actually act the most in terms of UO Assist, even if the page itself is rarely used - this is where you can toggle on viewing resources on the title bar, which is very useful. You can setup UO Assist to show your hit points, stamina and mana levels, either as bars or as numerical display so you don't have to use the status bar in game You can also select to view how many resources you have left, amongst those, reagents, gold, potions, arrows/bolts and the user types you could set up in the "resources" tab. Furthermore, it has options that allow you to see whenever your stats/skills change, just like the client; it has an option where you, by opening a container, get a message telling you how many items are in it; there's an option for warning you when you're overweight as; and lastly, there's the option to "show spell with power words" which basically attaches whichever spell is being cast when someone casts a spell (instead of "Kal Ort Por", you will see "Kal Ort Por - Recall"). And finally, there's a couple of small features, one allowing you to view everyone's text color as a preset one, and another allowing you to see yourself as an animal if you wish (note: this one will allow you to view the world in color when you're dead in the 2D client).

Agents

The last of the pages - Agents. This page allows you to do tasks that are normally a drag to do. As mentioned in the "keys" section, the organizer agents is found here, and will probably be one of your more used features. Another one that is good all-round is the "sell agent", mainly for allowing you to set a bag as "sell bag" - whenever you say "vendor sell" to a vendor, the sell agent will attempt to sell the entire contents of the bag in one go; a huge time saver.

Of minor importance for mages here are the pickup agent which basically allows UO Assist to put items you can pick up with the "pickup reagents" key into specific bags; handy enough for arrows and bolts, but since you won't be running around picking up reagents for too long, it's of limited use here (in my opinion). Also, the recycle agent deserves a special note here, as it's basically used by crafters for the macros associated with them (smelt, repair and unravel).