July 30, 2003

Publish 19, with all the changes to Treasure Hunting listed below, goes live worldwide today.

July 29, 2003

New THB chapters were established last night on Pacific and AOL Legends. If you've applied to be a THB member before, please apply again! Both guilds are now accepting applications.

July 28, 2003

In a post on a mailing list, Sunsword said:
Yeah, apparently I'm failing in my micromanaging abilities, QA has all of this well in hand. :)

They did indeed check all 200+ spots and only found 1 definite problem and 2 possible ones. I wasn't aware that they had already done so. Good for them! Given the magnitude of the changes we are doing in this publish, fixing the 3 spots wasn't given priority.

It's been taken care of.

--
Anthony Castoro
Producer, Ultima Online

July 23, 2003

From this thread:
Question: Also, some stuff I'm seeing on the boards appears to be only partially thought through.
Answer: Appearances can be deceiving. We do have to make decisions about what problems to solve and what problems to leave to a later date. Yes we were aware that changing collision rules for flora would increase housing space and affect some treasure map locations. On the former, we see this as a good thing. We also have code optimizations to improve our overall performance that should offset the additional housing and increase service stability. We'll see what impact that has on vendors. As for t-maps, that system needs to be addressed anyway, and we decided that it was out of the scope of this publish. Would it have helped to communicate that ramification earlier? Clearly, yes.

Anthony Castoro
"SunSword"
Producer, Ultima Online

July 22, 2003

Publish 19 should be published this week: Publish 19 Bugfixes:
Treasure maps, SOS bottles, the Dungeon Doom �Lich guardians�, and Khaldun �puzzle boxes� have had their loot improved. In addition, reagents inside treasure map chests will stack together.

This morning Pacific received the new Pub19 publish, and was promptly reverted for 2 hours due to an overlooked bug with pricing bags on vendors. MrTact indicates that they'll try again with Pub19 tomorrow. In the meantime, in a thread discussing the Pacific revert, these insights into the upcoming treasure hunting bug were revealed:

From MrTact:
Question: Any chance you can fix the issue with t-maps being covered by new houses now with the flora changes since you have to work on the code some more anyway???
Would love to, but it's not as simple as that. Right now, we have a very specific isolated issue that needs to be fixed. We can fix it, QA can test that one thing, and we can get Pub19 rolling again. If we were to try and tackle the t-map issue right now, it would probably delay the publish by a week or more. Plus, since we're already later than we wanted to be, it would impact all future publishes.

and�

Question: Thanks for the response Mr Tact. =) I understand that completely. But I am glad to see that it's something that you are thinking about. =)
Answer: I know this is small consolation, but if it makes you any happier about the t-map situation, one of the reasons we want to wait is to ensure we have the time to go through and clean up all the locs that have been busted forever.

MrTact

You can read the thread here.

Dizzy / Sphyr

July 22, 2003

Looking over several sites for news, I found some news worthy of capturing. So I've "backdated" some news entries as follows:

• Added UoHoC chat log information for July 3, 2003;
• Added Ianstorm chat log information for June 18, 2003;
• Added UoHoC chat log information for June 5, 2003;
• Added UoHoC chat log information for May 1, 2003;
• Added Ianstorm chat log information for April 18, 2003;
• Added UoHoC chat log information for March 6, 2003.

Dizzy / Sphyr

July 10, 2003

It looks just like I imagined it would back here. Dust everywhere, stacks of books, todo lists tacked everywhere. Looks like an old cartographer spent many, many hours back here.

We've had treasure hunting news since 2001, of course, but I'm not going to begin to address it all, just the recent news.

Age of Shadows fell on our land earlier this year, changing our "vanquishing" and "invulnerable" treasures into more complicated multi-resist systems. I'll have to re-do the "profiles of treasure chests" eventually, but since there are more changes coming next week, I'll wait a bit. Age of Shadows scattered reagents throughout the chest, but that little problem will be fixed next week. Also next week, loot in Cleverly and Deviously tatttered treasure maps will be improved.

Our beloved Blackheath has retired from moderating the UO Treasure Hunters Forum; visit this thread if you'd like to add your thanks for all her hard work.

I've agreed to step in and fill the roles created by Magellan and Blackheath for THB and the Treasure Hunter's Forum. I post under the name of "Dizzy", but treasure hunters on Lake Superior know me as "Sphyr".

Over the next coming weeks I'll be asking in the forum what changes you'd like to see. I started with a new front page logo and the news, but more will be coming soon. :)

Dizzy / Sphyr

July 10, 2003

From UoHoC chat tonight:
Lord-Xanthor - *Blackheath_THB* Now that BOD books are becoming a reality, is there any chance of similar books for other things? An atlas to store treasure maps in would be great!
MrTact - Hmm, I think I've seen this question before
MrTact - The answer is, depending on whether the bod books are as successful as we think they are, yes, we will probably do more "mass storage" specialized containers
MrTact - They are nicer for you guys & they save on server memory, so it's win-win for everybody.

June 18, 2003

From Ianstorm chat tonight:
TrinityX - *Lord_Lythande* With the boosting of lvl 4 and 5 treasure chests, is there any plans on adding luck into the equation for the quality of items found in them?
Hanse - Luck is currently coded separately for monster loot drops.
Hanse - It would take a bit of tweaking to get that in (not as easy as you'd think it would be).
Hanse - So, not for publish 19...

June 5, 2003

From UoHoC chat tonight:
Lord-Xanthor - *Darlene* T-Huntin isn't very interesting for most people at the moment and nothing has be done in general for T-Huntig in a long time now. What do you think about adding Powerscrols for Lockpicking and Catho AND adding Level 6 and 7 Maps in a future Publish to make it more interesting again?
Hanse - Neat idea!
Hanse - I got smacked by management for putting in more treasure map locations after a feature lock date earlier this year. :)
Hanse - Cuz we didn't have enough QA time to test the locations...
Hanse - We'd like to do more mini-quests such as treasure maps in the future. I believe we'll see more changes like that not too long from now. :)

and

Lord-Xanthor - *Sphyr* What kind of changes to treasure chests can we expect in Pub19 as was hinted in last month's UOHOC?
Hanse - Treasure chests in dungeons that spawn randomly will start spawning magic items.
Hanse - That's the only change in Publish 19 for treasure chests.

May 1, 2003

From UoHoC chat tonight:
Lord-Xanthor - *DrkShdw* Are there any planned changes to cartography? You can draw maps to 99.5, and due to GGS, you can GM it less than 10 maps.
OSI-Vex - In addition to what Fertbert just said about havving a good hard look at the whole skill gain system, we do have plans to also take a good hard look at skills in general during the coming year. Some skills will see significant changes and some will see minor tweaks -- but there'll be something there for everybody. I wish I had more details to give right now...[

April 18, 2003

From Ianstorm chat tonight:
TrinityX- *Dizzy* Can treasure hunter's loot be looked at? Vorpal bunny loot is better, and those 2-stacks of reagents are a pain. *crosses fingers* You have no idea how irritating a L5 t-hunt can be with 50 stacks of 2 reagents in it.
Vex- Some loot is being re-evaluated for the upcoming Publish 18. I am not sure of the exact details -- sorry I can't be more specific.
MrTact- Also, wrt to looting stacks of stuff, we have something tentatively planned for Pub 19 that should make you smile.

March 6, 2003

From UoHoC chat tonight:
Lord-Xanthor - *sethd* When doing Treasure Maps, does luck play a role in the magic items in the treasurebox you dig up
Vex - No, luck only affects the loot you get from monsters you kill. It doesn't impact runic crafting, treasure chests, or SOS bottles.