Detect hidden. Stratics claims it detects floor traps of saw, spike
etc types. I have played in two dungeons and haven't seen one of these
randomly spawning traps yet are they present at all or in any
frequency or is it not important? Can pk/pvpers still hide in combat?
Stratics lists parry as raising the AR of a shield only yet all my
friends are raising it. For the AR bonus it doesn't seem worth it.
What else does parry do besides add AR to shields?
Weren't some advantages given to Maces to counteract the inherent
poisoning advantages given to bladed weapons? What are they and how
does Mace skill compare in terms of damage dealt, and pvp versus
Fencing or swordsmanship?
Does Wrestling have any advantages now or does it still suck?
How does Archery stack up these days in the damage pantheon? Suck, ok
or great? Any special limitations or tips needed for its use these
days?
How common are things that can use or require the lockpicking skill?
Is the income potential from an average dungeon crawl worth the
150-200 skill points? This ties heavily into the trap question above
since if traps are more prevalent this would be a more needed skill.
Thanks for any help and if you have any sites that feature analysis or
playing tips feel free to share, I get the impression that Stratics is
behind the times somehow and the vault has turned into a news/chat
room.
--
Silverlock, ICQ 474725, MSN Passport: Sylve...@hotmail.com
AIM Screen Name:Sylverlok
Household Pests? The SW-404 'SpitFire' APRL cleansing system
will remove them, we Guarantee IT! Not responsible for damage
to persons or structures from use of this product.
Dial 1-800-FRY-THEM for info and a home demonstration.
As far as I know the traps never got put in. They announced them like three
or four times but I've never seen them. You can't hide in combat anymore.
> Stratics lists parry as raising the AR of a shield only yet all my
> friends are raising it. For the AR bonus it doesn't seem worth it.
> What else does parry do besides add AR to shields?
>
That's about it at present. A good shield can add a substantial amount of AR
to your defense. Check update.uo.com for the upcoming changes under In
Testing.
> Weren't some advantages given to Maces to counteract the inherent
> poisoning advantages given to bladed weapons? What are they and how
> does Mace skill compare in terms of damage dealt, and pvp versus
> Fencing or swordsmanship?
>
Mace weapons at present can lower the stamina of you opponent and do damage
to thier armour. Can't comment on the PvP aspects of it though.
> Does Wrestling have any advantages now or does it still suck?
>
Not much at present other than it's supposed to lower casting interuptions.
They are adding some new things to it though which are also listed at In
Testing.
> How does Archery stack up these days in the damage pantheon? Suck, ok
> or great? Any special limitations or tips needed for its use these
> days?
>
I've only just started using archery for the first time since I started
playing. It's not bad but it's not what it was in it's hayday so I've been
told. Like above they are planning on additions to it.
> How common are things that can use or require the lockpicking skill?
> Is the income potential from an average dungeon crawl worth the
> 150-200 skill points? This ties heavily into the trap question above
> since if traps are more prevalent this would be a more needed skill.
>
Locked chests can be found in many places in dungeons and in overland spawns
of orc and mercenary camps. The income potiential varies, some chests have
good payouts others are hardly worth the coupld seconds it takes to pick
them.
> Thanks for any help and if you have any sites that feature analysis or
> playing tips feel free to share, I get the impression that Stratics is
> behind the times somehow and the vault has turned into a news/chat
> room.
>
You're welcome.
--
Adamus of Trinsic
Perfect Ring of Scars
Atlantic
I just recently got parry up to decent levels on one of my characters. The
shield seems to absorb enough damage that I harvest corpsers for wood for
arrows.
>
> Weren't some advantages given to Maces to counteract the inherent
> poisoning advantages given to bladed weapons? What are they and how
> does Mace skill compare in terms of damage dealt, and pvp versus
> Fencing or swordsmanship?
Knocks the heck out of stamina. Stamina seems to drop almost as fast as hit
points so you end up with a stationary target. Kind of neat really, you cant
let auto combat take over if you have a superior character and just type
away while you kill the guy.
It also damages armor at really fast rate. You won't see people sparring
with armor and wands anymore, they have to do it naked.
I still think poison is superior to armor damage and stamina loss, but I
have more macers then blade users for some reason.
>
> Does Wrestling have any advantages now or does it still suck?
Sucks hard for now, may continue to suck. Only advantage is lack of spell
interruption.
>
> How does Archery stack up these days in the damage pantheon? Suck, ok
> or great? Any special limitations or tips needed for its use these
> days?
Useful for monster harvesting, very rarely in PvP. Lots of dex monkey, 100
25 100, fighters now. Two teleports over a fence and they are oom, you can
use a bow to annoy them but it still does damage so slow you would never
kill them.
GM archer with ~25-30 dex only fires a shot every 9-10 seconds, and misses
1/2 of those. It only drops to a shot every 5 secs or so with 90 dex,
missing 1/2 of those.
>
> How common are things that can use or require the lockpicking skill?
> Is the income potential from an average dungeon crawl worth the
> 150-200 skill points? This ties heavily into the trap question above
> since if traps are more prevalent this would be a more needed skill.
I have a picker/detect/remove character, I don't really like that
combination relative to a lockpicker using telekenisis, but OSI is talking
about making it so telekenisis doesn't work.
The character does make a lot of money though. Just running around the Orc
camps in Delucia he can make between 1500 and 3000 gold an hour w/o having
to kill anything. I don't have a vendor, but his access to things like Orc
masks and rarities is quite good. More then a few page 8 scrolls in those
dungeon crates and chests too.
>
> Thanks for any help and if you have any sites that feature analysis or
> playing tips feel free to share, I get the impression that Stratics is
> behind the times somehow and the vault has turned into a news/chat
> room.
Don't know if you ever liked escorting for money. They have changed this now
such that your character can only escort once every 15 minutes.
Other day I was fooling around. Just got 4 characters and moved them to the
inns in Ocllo and Jehlom. It was pretty much: Login with chr 1, escort to
destination and go back through the gate to logout in the inn. Repeated this
with chr 2-4 and while it was quite a bit slower at making money then the
old 2-3 at once escorting, still made ~4k and hour.
The others have answered most of the questions. I'll touch on a few:
> Detect hidden. Stratics claims it detects floor traps of saw, spike
> etc types. I have played in two dungeons and haven't seen one of these
> randomly spawning traps yet are they present at all or in any
> frequency or is it not important? Can pk/pvpers still hide in combat?
>
Those traps are non-existent to my knowledge. There are "fire holes" in
areas like the entrance to covetous, but that seems to be about it. You can
hide as soon as you break line-of-sight. So you can't hide right in front of
the guy, but if you run and tab out and duck behind a building or similar,
you can then hide.
> Stratics lists parry as raising the AR of a shield only yet all my
> friends are raising it. For the AR bonus it doesn't seem worth it.
> What else does parry do besides add AR to shields?
It doesn't "add" AR to shields. High parry skill combined with your shield's
AR boost the "fake" AR rating that the game puts on your status screen.
Without Parry skill, shields are useless. Parry determines basically whether
you actually use the shield. If you aren't giving any points to parry, stick
with a good two handed weapon. The AR of the shield (damage absorbed from
blows) remains the same. You have a (parry skill/2) chance of blocking a
blow, and if blocked, the AR of the shield determines how much damage it
will actually absorb. This is all about to change. The concept will remain
the same, but shields will scale between bucklers, which successfully parry
86% of blows at GM Parry, but absorb little damage, up to chaos shields,
which only parry 36% of blows at GM parry, but absorb lots of damage.
<snip>
>
> How common are things that can use or require the lockpicking skill?
> Is the income potential from an average dungeon crawl worth the
> 150-200 skill points? This ties heavily into the trap question above
> since if traps are more prevalent this would be a more needed skill.
Keep in mind you'll need lockpicking, remove trap, *and* detect hidden. You
need detect hidden to raise remove trap, and even so, you'll blow yourself
up about 3/4 of the time anyway.
Also, as to the mace question - soon each type of weapon will get a special
attack for the two handed varieties. Maces will do double damage every few
hits, swords will halve an opponents intelligence for 30 seconds, and
fencing weapons will paralyze the target for 7 seconds (which is not
breakable)
Are the little and lot values going to be a percent of the total
damage or a flat number per shield type?
>>
>> How common are things that can use or require the lockpicking skill?
>> Is the income potential from an average dungeon crawl worth the
>> 150-200 skill points? This ties heavily into the trap question above
>> since if traps are more prevalent this would be a more needed skill.
>
>Keep in mind you'll need lockpicking, remove trap, *and* detect hidden. You
>need detect hidden to raise remove trap, and even so, you'll blow yourself
>up about 3/4 of the time anyway.
>
3/4? Are they always fatal to a 100 str character? What about a 50 str
character?
>Also, as to the mace question - soon each type of weapon will get a special
>attack for the two handed varieties. Maces will do double damage every few
>hits, swords will halve an opponents intelligence for 30 seconds, and
>fencing weapons will paralyze the target for 7 seconds (which is not
>breakable)
>
>
That is totally unbalanced. A 7 second unbreakable paralyze? And
halving intelligence (you know mana won't jump back up when the int
goes up that's not how it works in Uo) compared to 20% more damage?
I heard the double damage is only 1 in 5 hits? If so that equates to
only 120% of normal damage which is probably lower overall then if you
stuck with one handed mace weapons without the bonus. Ugh no sense in
doing maces then.
> >
> ><snip>
> >
>
> Are the little and lot values going to be a percent of the total
> damage or a flat number per shield type?
>
flat number. Probably (no confirmation) the AR of the shield (which is not
and has nothing to do with the increase in your total "AR" when you don the
shield. Check uo.stratics.com for the list of shield ARs) A Heater shield
has an AR of around 26 I believe. Chaos is ~32.
<snip>
> >
> >Keep in mind you'll need lockpicking, remove trap, *and* detect hidden.
You
> >need detect hidden to raise remove trap, and even so, you'll blow
yourself
> >up about 3/4 of the time anyway.
> >
>
> 3/4? Are they always fatal to a 100 str character? What about a 50 str
> character?
3/4 isn't a hard number. But even at GM detect and remove trap, you can fail
the skill check frequently. Yes, many traps are deadly even to a 100 str.
character. Almost all are deadly to a 50 str character.
>
> >Also, as to the mace question - soon each type of weapon will get a
special
> >attack for the two handed varieties. Maces will do double damage every
few
> >hits, swords will halve an opponents intelligence for 30 seconds, and
> >fencing weapons will paralyze the target for 7 seconds (which is not
> >breakable)
> >
> >
>
> That is totally unbalanced. A 7 second unbreakable paralyze? And
> halving intelligence (you know mana won't jump back up when the int
> goes up that's not how it works in Uo) compared to 20% more damage?
> I heard the double damage is only 1 in 5 hits? If so that equates to
> only 120% of normal damage which is probably lower overall then if you
> stuck with one handed mace weapons without the bonus. Ugh no sense in
> doing maces then.
>
No, each of the special attacks is a 1/n frequency occurence. I don't think
it's as low as 5, I think more like 10. So either you whack a halberd at
someone and have a small chance of halving their mana, or you swing a long
spear and have a small chance of an unbreakable uber-paralyze, or you swing
a war hammer and have a small chance of doing up to 70 or so points of
damage *plus* damage modifiers like strength, anatomy, tactics, and magic
weapon status. So Maces are in fact incredibly overpowered with this
system. If you get a lucky hit with a war hammer, you can kill with a single
blow. (100 str, 100 anatomy, 100 tactics, war hammer of vanquishing can do
87 points of damage before armor *before* the chance for a double damage
blow is accounted for. Even against GM plate and GM parry with a Chaos
shield, there's a good chance you're toast if he gets lucky.) At best with a
slow halberd, you can halve a player's mana. Fencing's paralyze will
supposedly still allow you to heal and cure, but you will not auto-fight
back. With a 100 dex DP kryss fighter who packs a long spear, you're toast.
He can get about 8 swings in with no retaliation, while healing himself back
to full as you do nothing but finger-slip and convulse from his deadly
poison. But we'll see. I haven't had a chance to test the effectiveness of
these changes, which are active on test center, so I may be ranting with no
basis.
> Can pk/pvpers still hide in combat?
Yes, but more difficult. As they either have to do a lot of tabbing in and
out of combat or breaking LOS.
> Stratics lists parry as raising the AR of a shield only yet all my
> friends are raising it. For the AR bonus it doesn't seem worth it.
> What else does parry do besides add AR to shields?
It raises the chance to parry a blow with that shield.
> Weren't some advantages given to Maces to counteract the inherent
> poisoning advantages given to bladed weapons? What are they
stamina loss and AR loss of the victim
> and how does Mace skill compare in terms of damage dealt, and pvp versus
> Fencing or swordsmanship?
Mace fighting rules
> Does Wrestling have any advantages now or does it still suck?
It has the same it has before, it lowers the change to get interrupted with
a spell.
> How does Archery stack up these days in the damage pantheon? Suck, ok
> or great? Any special limitations or tips needed for its use these
> days?
Great if done correctly
Sucks if done incorrectly
> How common are things that can use or require the lockpicking skill?
> Is the income potential from an average dungeon crawl worth the
> 150-200 skill points?
Depends on the character you develop
I wouldn't invest these points for a Chaos townfighter..
> Household Pests? The SW-404 'SpitFire' APRL cleansing system
> will remove them, we Guarantee IT! Not responsible for damage
> to persons or structures from use of this product.
> Dial 1-800-FRY-THEM for info and a home demonstration.
Is there not enough worthless crap that has to be sent from one server to
another..?