September 16, 2004

Leurocian sent a little bird my way to give me a heads up on Publish 28. We're going to get a few more monsters with treasure maps!

• Ettins, Level 1
• Evil Mage, Level 1
• Evil Mage Lord, Level 2
• Efreet, Level 4
• Ethereal Warriors, Level 5
• And Meer Eternals will get Level 5 instead of Level 4 maps.

August 21, 2004

Leurocian has been bouncing ideas off of me for the last 2 weeks, and I gotta tell you that EA has a gem in him. Not only does he has fabulous ideas, but he listens to suggestions and implements them daily.

The biggest concerns raised, he's addressed nicely. It doesn't diminish Doom, it doesn't diminish champ spawn pvp, it doesn't require treasure hunters to retool their characters, and adds a Level 6 treasure map! Here are the details; these are slated for Publish 27 and most of the coding is done already:

Paragon Creatures in Ilshenar

A small percentage of Ilshenar monsters will spawn as a Paragon of its kind (not including Champions of Evil). Paragons will be faster, smarter, harder to kill.

When a Paragon dies, there is a chance that its corpse will contain a special treasure chest. These treasure chests will be collectable and come in different hues. These chests will be locked and trapped. These chests will always possess a treasure map one level higher than that monster will normally carry. For instance, Earth elemental paragon treasure chests will carry level 2 treasure maps, and Ancient wyrm paragons will carry Level 6 treasure maps. Killing a paragon also gives a small chance of a minor artifact in the top attacker's backpacks. Luck will be a factor in getting these artifacts.

Level 6 Treasure Maps

Level 6 treasure chests will spawn ancient wyrms, balrons, blood elementals, poison elementals, and titans. Level 6 treasure maps will always possess one minor artifact. Level 6 maps require GM Cartography and GM Lockpicking to open.

Minor Artifacts

Here's a listing of the minor artifacts. The actual stats of each minor artifact hasn't been released yet:

• Polar Bear Mask: Bear Hat (white)
• Luna Lance (white)
• Captain Quacklebush�s Cutlass (red)
• Night�s Kiss (black dagger)
• Ship Model of the H.M.S. Cape
• The Admiral�s Hearty Rum
• Candelabra of Souls
• Iolo�s Lute (white)
• Gwenno�s Harp (white)
• Arctic Death Dealer (War Mace)
• Enchanted Titan Leg Bone (Short Spear)
• Nox Ranger�s Heavy Crossbow (green)
• Blaze of Death (blaze halberd)
• Violet Courage (purple Female Plate Armor)
• Cavorting Club (dark green)
• Burglar�s Bandana (dark gray)
• Dread Pirate Hat (black Tricorne Hat)
• Phillip�s Wooden Steed
• Gold Bricks
• Alchemist�s Bauble (bracelet, reverse blaze)
• Bow of the Juka King dark green)

Ancient SOS and Fabled Fishing Nets

There is a chance that any message in a bottle becomes �an ancient SOS� instead of �a waterstained sos� when opened.

Essentially, �an ancient SOS� is a level 4 treasure chest that will always contain a new type of special fishing net called �a fabled fishing net�.

When �a fabled fishing net� is used deep in the sea, it will spawn a new sea creature called a leviathan. Like other special fishing nets, various sea creatures will also spawn, but in greater number. For comparative purposes, leviathans are equivalent to a paragon blood elemental in difficulty.

Like with paragon creatures, possible minor artifact items may be rewarded to player characters who battle and defeat these legendary creatures. Along with typical loot, a leviathan always carries two kinds of ropes, a message in a bottle, and a chance for a level 5 treasure map.

- Dizzy, Treasure Hunters of Brittania

August 16, 2004

Publish 26 has been introduced to the shards today. Changes for treasure hunters include improved treasure hunting loot; dig up that treasure and report back! Read the full details here.

July 22, 2004

Leurocian
(Designer, Ultima Online)
07/22/04 04:59 PM
Re: Loot [re: Dizzy]

I reviewed the T-Hunter loot generation and noted that the minimum intensities definitely needed a boost for T-Hunter loot. I solicited internal feedback from Fertbert as well as my fellow designers, and we all agreed that a boost was in order. So I internally bumped up the minimum intensities for T-Hunters (and fisherman since they also use level 1 to level 3 chests).

Thanks for bringing this to my attention Dizzy!

- Leurocian,
Designer, Ultima Online Live

krims0n
(Lore Keeper)
07/22/04 05:16 PM
Re: Loot [re: Leurocian]

Thank you!

Can you tell us if it's scaled so that level 5 chests have a higher min intensity than level 1 chests?

Leurocian
(Designer, Ultima Online)
07/22/04 05:19 PM
Re: Loot [re: krims0n]

Yes, it is scaled.

July 21, 2004

Leurocian
(Designer, Ultima Online)
07/21/04 11:34 AM

I want to thank everyone on their input in this thread about loot.

I also want to give an update on what we're proposing to adjust.

1. Gold has been rescaled, bumped up for the higher end critters, and has also been adjusted for creatures that needed adjustment (e.g., Solen Queens should now yield better loot than the warriors/infiltrators, crystal elementals got a boost, as well as bog things, enslaved gargoyles and the fire gargoyles, rotting corpses, etc.)

2. Min and Max intensities were adjusted in the loot tables for non-boss higher end critters. There were a lot of cases where nothing was the result. This has been adjusted as well.

3. Dungeon Chest loot has been bumped up as well. Adjusted min and max intensities, gold, and # items.

I tested Plague Beasts, and they appear to grow in power just fine when provoked. They gain hit points, and they gain loot, so I'm not sure what's wrong with them. Their AI doesn't appear to have changed since I last engaged them in combat with my bard, unless their AI was recently fixed internally.

Definitely when you get a chance, hop onto a Test Center - once these changes are there - and let me know what y'all think. If anything seems too much or too little as far as loot is concerned, we can always adjust it appropriately.

Thanks again for all your feedback!

- Leurocian
Designer, Ultima Online Live

April 23, 2004

Statics House of Commons has some new about treasure hunting -

Brannoc - *Minotaur2k* Meow, So will Ilshenar ever see Dungeon or Puzzle chests for T Hunters? Or anything for T Hunters?
Oaks - It's very unlikely.
SunSword - He meant "no."

Not necessarily a bad thing - treasure hunting is as good as it's been in a long time. Ilshenar locations would require you to walk, too, so treasure hunting for hire would definitely take more time than most people would like.

April 22, 2004

Legends THB has undergone a change in management - Please welcome the new guildmaster Midnight Star!

April 7, 2004

Atlantic has a new THB chapter! Established as Treasure Hunters of Atlantic (THA), our new guildmaster Tyrion Lannister is now accepting new applications! To join THB, click the "Join THB!" link on the left.

February 12, 2004

From tonight's UOHOC chat comes this little tidbit:

*Eddy* Are you planning to do anything about lvl 1 and 2 treasure maps? As they are worthless right now?
*Hanse* They have less items, true.
*Hanse* But they have chances to spawn very good items.
*Hanse* Remember, the chests are still worth harvesting for low-level treasure hunters. Maybe you should graduate up to higher-level maps and sell the lower ones?

January 15, 2004

Oceania has a new THB chapter! Imrik has accepted the new position of guildmaster on Oceania and now accepting applications. To join THB, click the "Join THB!" link on the left.

January 8, 2004

Catskill has a new THB chapter! Established as Treasure Hunters of Sosaria (THS), our new guildmaster Gargath is now accepting new applications! To join THB, click the "Join THB!" link on the left.

December 30, 2003

Hanse popped in to say thanks to all the happy treasure hunters on this thread:

Designer_Hanse
(UO Live Designer)
12/30/03 09:29 PM
Re: A BIG THANKS TO HANSE [re: Deft Touch]

Err, a powerful explosion trap on the box? You want more loot on boxes that don't kill you immediately if you don't cast tk on em? I'm kinda confused about your wording in your post.

Anyway, uh, yeah... When we work on so many different systems, we do have our attention divided. It does take a while to get some fixes that folks are interested in. I'm sure there are folks out there that would have preferred other things were balanced. Glad y'all like the latest changes with publish 22 and treasure maps/MIB's.

and again on this thread:

Designer_Hanse
(UO Live Designer)
12/30/03 09:37 PM
Re: Pub 22 ROCKS! [re: LESTAT (SiK)]

"Not all that long ago you hinted, then said, then flat out promised that LEVEL 4 and 5 TMAPS would be getting some special loot etc."

Uhm, you misread what I stated for publish 21. I increased the amount of loot in level 4 and level 5 treasure maps. I did not add anything special to them, with publish 21. Publish 22 increases property intensity ranges (up to 100%) and lowers the amount of wands and shields.

December 20, 2003

Europa's THB chapter has been reestablished thanks to the efforts of our new guildmaster Dragonking! Dragonking's has established the chapter under the initial "I" reflecting his previous experience with the Immortality guild since the THB initials are in use by the old, obsolete stone. THB of Europa is accepting new applications for guildmates now!

December 10, 2003

Publish 22 with all of our new improved loot is almost here! Hanse, on this thread, told us the good news:

These treasure map and SOS/MIB changes are available on Test Sosaria. You can see the difference with level 1 treasure maps, if you want to check them out.

Designer_Hanse
(UO Live Designer)

December 4, 2003

Publish 22 promises to bring treasure hunting relief as Hanse addresses the poor quality of loot that's entered our chests inthe last two publishes. In this thread:

Designer_Hanse
(UO Live Designer)
12/04/03 12:02 PM
Treasure map loot... [re: Tippah]

Actually, the results of combining two different changes (change in the same file for pub 19 and pub 20) caused the loot to become worse. I'm testing the pub 19 fix that was removed in pub 22 today.

and

Designer_Hanse
(UO Live Designer)
12/04/03 01:46 PM
Re: Treasure map loot... [re: Dizzy]

Yeah, I typoed the publish number. It should have been publish 20 in that post instead of 29. :P

I changed the chests back to publish 19 distribution and magical properties. The tests I ran showed a dramatic reduction in shields and wands, but they're not totally removed from the chests (some chance of a few undesirables still exists).

I'm not sure if the changes will be available to the public for testing this week, though.

MIB's also use the same loot generation, so they're affected, as well.

and

Designer_Hanse
(UO Live Designer)
12/04/03 02:04 PM
Re: Treasure map loot... [re: Red_Falcon]

Yes, this loot improvement is in publish 22.

and

Designer_Hanse
(UO Live Designer)
12/04/03 02:11 PM
Re: Treasure map loot... [re: willie of chessy]

Sure, here are the specifics.

The chances on current shards...

Weighted list:
Weapon: 16
Bows: 1
Armor: 17
Shield: 17
Jewelry: 17
Wand: 17

So, wands have a chance of 17 out of 85 (20% chance) per roll.

The new system for pub 22 is like this:
Weapon: 3
Bow: 1
Armor: 5
Shield: 1
Jewelry: 5
Wand: 1

So, a weapon is 3 in 16 (18.75% chance) and a wand is 1 in 16 (6.25% chance) per roll.

Also, the intensities can be higher (current maximum is 80%, but the new maximum is 100%) and there are more chances for additional properties.

and

Designer_Hanse
(UO Live Designer)
12/04/03 04:07 PM
Re: Treasure map loot... [re: Hassle]

The number of items generated in a treasure chest will stay the same as publish 21. You'll just have a less chance of getting wands and shields.

and

Designer_Hanse
(UO Live Designer)
12/04/03 04:10 PM
Ranged weapons in treasure chests... [re: Dizzy]

Hah! You beat me to the punch. I was just going to post that ranged weapons have a higher chance to spawn in publish 22 than in publish 21. :P

Yes, it's an improved 6.25% chance instead of a 1.12% (rounded up) chance.

and

Designer_Hanse
(UO Live Designer)
12/04/03 04:51 PM
Re: Ranged weapons in treasure chests... [re: Hassle]

Ah, my chart outlines chances and not how many items are created in each chest. The number of items in each chest is determined by difficulty and random rolls, so it's not an exact amount.

A weighted list is a way to display chances something will happen. You can "weigh" down an entry with more or less chances and not worry about making the chances even out to one-hundred percent. Anyway, that's how we're using it to pick each individual item. So, the 85 is the total number of chances, not items.

and

Designer_Hanse
(UO Live Designer)
12/04/03 05:00 PM
Re: Treasure map loot... [re: looker100]

Bows should just be lumped in with weapons, actually. Originally they were, but the "Use Best Weapon" magic effect was removed from the bow magic properties and left on all the other weapons. Because of that change, we had to split bows from weapons. Thus, there's a separate category that folks could perceive as being a special category, which is not the intention.

Bows aren't exactly 25% of the weapons available in the game, but definitely do not approach 50%. That's why they only have a 1 weight in the treasure map loot list.

November 1, 2003

Hanse, on this thread had the following hints for treasure hunting changes in Publish 21:

Extra loot is on TC2, for publish 21. I'll post on the board.

and

Ah, level 4 maps are working properly, but it looks like someone accidentally erased the extra loot in level 5 maps. I've fixed this issue.

The minimum value for the extra loot is 1% on a property, so you probably will not see extra-ordinary loot every pull. Unlike runic hammer generated items, which have higher minimum magic values and are linear, this loot uses the random curve for generating the magic property values (we refer to them as intensities). This is consistent with our monster loot drops and keeps insane magic items rare. So, the improved loot is there, it'll just take some time to find it (well, random averages...you could get lucky your first pull!).

-Hanse

and

I'm not sure. I just fix stuff. :P

Actually, I believe they're using the test centers for testing of other issues, right now. We'll probably have more external testing, but opening up depends on other tests finishing up first. Of course, this is all up to our QA department and I'm just making educated guesses.

Note: The current TC2 (as of this posting) is not publish 21.

-Hanse

and

Ah, the comparison I was noting is the actual magic item system and how it generates items. Comparing the actual items in treasure chests to runic hammers (two totally different systems) is misleading as they have nothing to do with each other. If you're looking for a consistency issue, the closest is an intensity value on items from many blood elemental versus loot in a level 5 chest.

Treasure maps (while you may argue "not a ton of level 5 t hunters") are much more common than many of the runic hammers (many given out a day versus 1-3 valorite hammers a year per shard).

There are solutions, such as beefing up the map loot, that are being explored. I'm glad you folks brought it to my attention, or I would not have double-checked and fixed em today.

-Hanse

and

The system is not getting only a 1% boost. My original explanation is probably unclear. I stare at numbers and code a lot, so I tend to lean towards mathmatical explanations.

Level 4 and level 5 chests are getting more items, so that they have more chances to get higher level items. The system uses an intensity curve of 1% and more. This means many items may have low intensities and they may mislead people to believe that treasure chests can not spawn good loot.

-Hanse

and

The significant increase in items in level 5's will be noticable. The chance for better items in them pretty much doubles, with publish 21.

Eek... I was hunting blood elementals with 0 luck yesterday over lunch with my pally/mage. That's why I made the comparison.

-Hanse

in addition, in an email when questioned whether the improved Publish 19 loot was removed in Publish 20, Hanse replied:

I have a gist of the issue. I saw the change, but I'm not sure why it went in. The magical loot drops in the chests are shared between monsters, though. That could be the issue that was resolved (too good of loot on some creatures).

October 25, 2003

Some of the improvements had a bug in them that only affected level 4 and 5 maps. They spawn good loot now, but there is supposed to be a chance for them to spawn better loot. The chance is somewhere around 25% to 50% chance per roll, which means just about every chest should have a few pieces. Whether they're good or not depends on the magic item generation system. So, the fix in publish 21 will allow better loot to spawn in treasure chests from level 4 and 5 maps.

The random roll to see if that better loot is created was omitted on accident. If you glance over the code, it looks so similar to each section (all the map levels are in the same function) that there's a tendency to read in the random roll. I have a feeling that's how the mistake was made in the first place. So, right now, the chance for better loot is always 0%.
=========
Designer_Hanse
(UO Live Designer)

October 4, 2003

Level 4 and Level 5 Treasure Maps are going to get an additional boost in the quality of their loot with Publish 21, anticipated at the end of November. Hanse dropped in on the UO Treasure Hunters Forum to drop us this note:

I sorta forgot to put a random roll in level 4 and 5 maps. Publish 21 fixes the issue. This allows high level treasure to spawn (not artifacts, but high-end magic items). I just found the bug the other day. *hides*
=========
Designer_Hanse
(UO Live Designer)

September 26, 2003

Napa Valley Treasure Hunters of Britannia has a new guildmaster! Capt will be ressurecting the THB chapter on this shard - if you'd like to join, hit the [Join THB] button on the left!

September 26, 2003

Europa has a new public rune library, thanks to Rab the Wizard!

September 15, 2003

Atlantic Treasure Hunters of Britannia has a new guildmaster! Dol Guldur has taken the reigns of T^B. If you're a member of the old THB, hit the [Join THB] button on the left - I'm sure he'd be happy to have you back!

August 26, 2003

The Sonoma chapter of THB recently took a Stratics reporter out on a treasure hunt. The story is quite fun and informative. Take a look at Uncover a Treasure: THB of Sonoma.

August 7, 2003

Dontae, co-Guildmaster of the Lake Austin THB chapter, announces an Open House on Sunday, August 10, to invite new Treasure hunters and to hunt treasure maps for people that bring them. You can find the full details here

August 5, 2003

The issue of not being able to add recall scrolls to runebooks is known. Sannio posted here:

Not being able to ad scrolls to locked runebooks is an issue we're aware of. We're looking into it, but I don't have a timetable right now as to when the issue may be addressed. I'll post an update when the situation progresses.
=========
Keith "Sannio" Quinn
Community Relations
Ultima Online (www.uo.com)
Origin Systems

August 2, 2003

Lake Austin now has a THB chapter! If you've wanted to join THB in the past and couldn't find a way to do it, please try again! Lake Austin joins the THB family, along with last week's THB additions of AOL Legends and Pacific. THB is growing again!

August 2, 2003

All the older news is available under "News Archives" to the left.