IDOC: In Danger of Collapsing. The final decay stage of a house before it will vanish from Britannia. Here are some basic IDOC camping tips. Tip 1 Know where you're going! Okay first off. Find your 16 most wanted house locations, mark them with runes and get plenty of recall scrolls. Next, put the runes and scrolls into rune book. Have one book for the most wanted houses, have a second book of the houses that are less high on your priorities list.. What you are looking for is just to get one house out of the 2 books. Have plenty, and I do mean plenty, of recall scrolls. When checking IDOC's on Lake Superior, as soon has I missed one house, I'd quickly recall to my other spots to see if they had fallen (noticed or unnoticed) and then go to my second location. I didn't want to be fizzing at a time like that. Tip 2 Taking a Gamble There are a lot of houses that will fall, keep this in mind. You're going to have to gamble a bit. Let me explain. In order to beat the other campers, if it is a large camp, you're going to need to place a small house on the spot where the larger one is going to fall. Generally it is a rule that if a large house is falling and thus leaves a large open area, the small house placers beat the larger house placers. That is gamble #1, do you place a smaller house, or the same type. Gamble #2; say you place a small house, if you don't do it in the correct location, someone else may be able to place a 2nd small house near yours, in that case you'll have to either pay for his/her house or sell yours. If you are not able to sell/buy the other house in a quick amount of time, you're going to be stuck with a small house. (Which is okay if that is all you were after ;). The bigger part of this gamble is, if the person who placed the second house wants yours and is willing to pay, they have to wait 10 days before they can do the deal! (They'll need a second account. See below.) Do you wait? Here is how to get along with gamble #2. Something to consider is going to the store and spending a few bucks on getting a second account. You get 30 days free trial. (That is a 10$ value there, I have seen UO:R sold for low has 20$) Or you can use a friend's account. Just be sure they are not under any sort of house restriction. To test this, just have them double click a deed with the character you will be using If you do this, you'll want to create a character on your new account. For now, we'll call him Flippy. Select 50 Magery, 49 Hiding, and 1 Detect Hidden. The third skill doesn't really matter. I suggest starting in Moonglow. Main reasons are: 1. The moongate. It is right outside of town, and with it you can get most anywhere quickly. 2. The horse seller is just outside the inn that Flippy was created in front of. You will need a horse. Some preparation work would be to have identical rune books, that your main character owns. Again, have plenty of recall scrolls ready. However, if time is not on your side (hence you are reading this just as houses are turning IDOC) just make sure you have a way of getting to your newly placed house. If time is not on your side do the following: Log in with your account that placed the house. (If you are not already) With your main character, secure a bag on the floor, for friends of the house. Then put your deeds, reagents, and recall scrolls in that bag. Log out, and log in with Flippy from the new account. Get Flippy to the house. Use the moongate to get you there faster. Again, if your house is on an island you'll have to recall there off a rune you made before all this started. Once you are at the house, go inside, and log off. Quickly log back on with your main account. You will see Flippy standing in the house, friend him to the house. Log out Log in Flippy and get the books out of the bags, along with whatever else you did put in there to help. Now Flippy is ready to go and try again, while your main character is waiting to sell the house (10 days to wait) This also works if the second person who placed wants to sell quickly or is thinking about selling. He's in the same boat that you are in. You might want to inform him that he cannot place another house for 10 days. He can confirm this by double clicking on an extra deed he might have. If he didn't think ahead, it might just push him to sell it to you, so he can go off and try again. Go get Flippy to finish the deal. (Of course you'll need to drop the check in the secure bag you made, and then have Flippy get it and use it for the deal) IMPORTANT IF you now own BOTH houses, one on each account, DO NOT DEED anything! Not for a while anyhow. There are programs that let people macro the house placement, they don't even have to be present for it to place, so once they loose to you they will sit and camp that spot waiting for you to deed your house, allowing their macro program to place the house. TIP 2 summary: If you want to better your chances you are going to need a second account. Tip 3 Have the following on you: A bag of empty water pitchers, 10 will do. You get them from the NPC Inn Keepers. To empty the pitcher of water simply double click it, then target your self. Repeat this until 10 pitchers are empty. You'll use this if someone is placing water barrels to block placement and you need to empty them. Apples for your horse Plenty of recall regents, with scrolls, as mentioned above. Deeds to various type of small houses. The largest is either a Sandstone Patio House or a Two Story Log Cabin. Small houses are best. Tip 4 Organization Organize your back pack. I place all my deeds neatly in a row across the top, then I place something on top of each. I do that because when you try to place a house using a macro, the deed moves from one spot to the next, kinda like leather does for a tailor. It is not a big deal if you use macro keys for house placement, however once you realize that you need to try a smaller house, you will be able to distinguish the macro'ed deed from the others. Tip 5 Setting up the macro. First let me tell you right off you could be up against a computer here. For a long time people have wanted to know one way or the other, and I'm telling you now, some people out there are using programs that help them place quicker. Let me put it to you this way, if you're up against someone like this, you're basically in a starring contest and clicking contest with a computer. Who sees the house fall and can click the OKAY button the faster? You, or the other person's computer? All is not lost though, houses don't always stay up. Due to some other issues, and with the limits of the game (15 people at the same time clicking "OKAY place house here") will sometimes cause the house not to stick, and even the computerized placer can fall victim to that issue. You being the HUMAN with a BRAIN can keep trying to place a house even though the computer's went up. You just keep trying for a while, choosing the same location. It might happen that the house will fall and yours will come up!. What macro is best to use. I use 2 Macros the first is used just to bring up my deed, and I then target the location manually. Last Object that's it... Once I find where I want to click, I setup this macro: Last Object Wait for Target Last Target This works best when targeting the ground. I usually just do the first one over and over and over again. Tip 6 Reducing the LAG This is very important. When recalling to an IDOC house, ALWAYS go and walk up onto the stairs. WHY? Have you ever noticed the LAG when this happens to you while out adventuring or running away from a baddy? The reason is all the items in the house become visible to you when you walk onto the steps of a hosue. If camping a house and it falls, guess what happens? You'll get to see all items. That LAG can affect you, with all those items suddenly appearing. So step up to the stairs, take a walk inside if possible. Then go outside and camp. The same applies if you have to log off then back on again. This could be the edge you need. Tip 7 Beware of your surroundings! Be sure to read about what can block house placement and make sure you're not in the same boat. If a water trough is in the house, you'll need to try and place around it, same with a guild stone, since they may block house placement. Tip 8 BE QUIET! STAY HIDDEN! Some people will try to get you to talk just to throw you off. Don't get lured into it. If you want that Villa, if you want that X house, you'll be purely solo for hours in the next day or so. Even with very low hiding skills, you can stand up next to a house, and hide. Tip 9 DON'T BELIEVE WHAT THEY SAY, BUT DO LISTEN If you are hidden and some people start talking about when the house went IDOC, don't listen to them. If true, that sort of talk wouldn't be shared out in the open. They'd be private messaging that sort of info. So when someone says something like: " ohh, this house is a pain, it just went IDOC 3 hours ago". You know what not to do, right? Don't believe in what they say. You need to listen to what they subliminally said, which was; "TO ANYONE HIDDEN AND LISTENING, I'M REALLY TRYING TO GET YOU TO RECALL AWAY, WHILE I PLACE THIS HOUSE WHICH BY MY ESTIMATES WILL FALL WITHIN THE HOUR" Tip 10 CAMP, don't Hop Some people will recall from one location to another, and keep doing this for some reason, I wonder why. If they really want the house, they would camp it. Of course, they could just be looters. So tip 10 is... don't get crazy and start recalling all over the place, pick the house you want the most that will fall the soonest and camp it. If you fail to place, recall around to all the houses in your 1st choice rune book, making sure they are still there. Then recall to the location that your wanted second most. Tip 11 The Storm after the fall. If you are new to IDOC camping, you'll notice a twinge in your arm and/or a rapid heart beat as a house falls. Try not to let this get to you. The rush of adrenaline is very high, some people freeze and cannot continue when the house finally falls. Yes, that really happens! Why does this happen? It does because for 4 hours, you are staring at that screen, thinking about how nice that house will be, how much fun you can have with it, it will be yours... Oh yes it WILL be yours *raises eyebrow *. IF only you can click fast enough, or in the right place. FALL FALL FALL FALL... *KNOCKS DOWN DOOR* FALL.. you look away.. for a sec.. then turn back quickly *DID IT FALL?* Not yet. You look away again a while later. Then turn quickly back. It's still there. The phone rings. Do you check the caller ID, thus taking away your eyes form the screen? HECK no! Let the answering machine get it. Your spouse wants to cuddle, and stuff... ACK will the nightmare ever stop?!??!? Will THIS house EVER FALL? FALL FALL FALL, RING RING, DING DONG DING DONG, Tinky Winky is DANCING on TV! MUSIC TOO LOUD, CANT FOCUS, NO SLEEP for 18 HOURS FALL FALL FALL, RING RING RING, DING DONG DING DONG. *poof* At this point I'd like to suggest the following: If you fail to place a house try not to get to upset, suck it up, and move on. One day, sooner or later, you will succeed. Tip 12 Closing down LAG Applications.. To reduce lag caused by Internet applications, do not have any of the following open. Web Browsers ICQ (or any other form of messengers, such has AIM) WebCam software Email software Internet Radio etcetera Think of it like this; if it sends information to the Internet or retrieves information from the Internet, you need to close it. Also, in UO Turn off Footsteps Reduce the speech to 10 Turn off all sound. I keep my journal up. However don't be caught reading the journal when the house falls. If you macro correctly the journal shouldn't be a problem. Tip 13 Where to place? Or, how to hold a large with a small. Okay, lets get this straight, if you are trying to secure a large tower, it's not going to happen with just you doing it. It takes at least 2 houses to secure one. Even then that is the very best scenario. I have seen 6 small houses go up on Ice Island in place of a tower. Count them: six. So unless you are alone, and no one has noticed your IDOC tower, then you're going to have to get a buddy. So much for the tips, now let's have a look at some pictures. Lets pretend that the house in Figure 7.1 is going to fall. Figure 7.1 Figure 7.2   While looking at Figure 7.1 try to get an idea of what deed you would have tried to use to secure the location. The following pictures will show you the strongest areas to place in. Using MS-Paint and a lot of patience I created the blue grid, it is a ground Zero Grid. What is a Ground Zero Grid? All objects on the same plane will line up correctly fitting nicely in each square, one object per square, objects that are on a hill for example will look like they are not in a square.   Figure 7.3, The grid overlay After placing where Figure 7.4 is, something like Figure 7.5 could happen. You may not have noticed but the 2 logs are now preventing a upgrade, even to a small tower! Figure 7.4 You could place a house here! Figure 7.5 Figure 7.5 could happen regardless, since you do not want to redeed in fear of others being around hiding and waiting for you to deed, you decide to wait a day or two.. Well, your neighbors might be a bit intuitive and do the above. So don't wait to long. Your best bet is to place where Figure 7.6 is. Figure 7.6 The Benefit of a small tower is this: The tower has the same width East to West as a Log Cabin. The Log Cabin, however, is deeper and in an area such as this, it is almost a guaranteed upgrade. Figure 7.7 Figure 7.7 Of course some may be disappointed by getting a log instead of a villa, however, logs are nice and large and have many secures, and as I always say; 'Tis a Home'. If you thought a sandstone would hold it, you would be disappointed at the fall. For a sandstone will not fit between the 2 smalls here. Has a rule, if your at a villa, and on the east and west side all you have is just enough room to walk between, a sandstone will not fit. Okay here is a Big one A large marble is about to fall, you take a look and see what you think would fit in this area. Figure 7.8 Okay this is a tight fit for all the houses, however after that large marble falls... and this is assuming the terrain is for the most part, even, Figure 7.9 shows us what could have been placed. Figure 7.9 Or we could try using a sandstone, it is a bit risky, since it is a larger home. Figure 7.10 Keep in mind that small houses are 7 tiles East to West, however you need to have 1 to on both the East and West side cleared of Walking Blocking objects.. Meaning if Flippy can walk right up alongside your house without being stopped by either a plant, rock or *cough* a house, you will be fine. So to find out if you have enough room, stand against the West Side of the building in the EAST. The tile you are standing on is Tile 1, take one step West, that is tile 2, if you are able to walk to tile 9 you are good to go. Having placed that sandstone where it is at, you are pretty much guaranteed to be able to replace it back with a large marble!.