Sparring Tips [long]
Damocles
I'm home sick from work today, so I thought of this little essay on
how to raise skill through sparring:
So you want to hit grandmaster swords. Great, who doesn't? The nice
thing about weapon skills is that they do rise relatively decently all
the way to 100...no four hour macroing sessions to raise .1 skill
here. Still, it can take a while if you're only fighting critters -
once you reach a certain point only some monsters will raise your
skill, and there's always the risk of lag, pks, etc. You can stand in
the skeleton knight wall in Deceit until you hit 100, but you have to
stay among the dregs of humanity, both in the wall and all the idiots
who try to break it.
Really, once you hit a level where common critters like bears,
panthers and orcs no longer raise skill (between 70 and 80), the best
way to hit 100 without much risk is sparring with someone else. First
thing, find a guild. Do not go grey to spar someone unless you
absolutely trust them and are in safe area, or you will end up dead on
the end of someone's energy bolt.
Okay, so you have your guild and you're ready to start up. This is
what you need to know:
1) Contrary to popular myth, the other person does NOT have to be
attacking you for you to gain skill. If he doesn't need it, you'll
save a lot of gold by having him stand still and take the blows. It
has no effect on your skill gain either way. The only exception to
this is raising Parry, which will not go up unless you are taking
hits.
2) To raise a weapon skill, the other person must have a higher skill
than you in ANY of the four categories (wrestling, mace, swords and
fencing) and have a weapon in that category equipped. For example, say
you have 80 Mace and your friend has 100 fencing. He'll take you right
to 100 with time as long as he has a fencing weapon in his hand as you
spar him.
3) To raise tactics, the other person must simply have higher tactics
than you do. Tactics goes up as you do damage, so if you want to raise
it alone, have the other person equip a weapon outside of his main
weapon class. In other words, if your GM fencer/tactics friend picks
up a mace, your 70 or 80 skill macer will hit him every time and your
tactics will rise rapidly. The downside to this is that your mace
skill won't go up at all, as it will checking against someone with no
skill in maces. Fighting him with a kryss in hand will decrease the
number of hits you score, but will raise both maces and tactics
together.
3) Maces and Fencing are provided with fast, low damage weapons in the
wand and dagger respectively. Use those to spar. The swords class has
some low damage weapons too (skinning and butcher knives), but they're
damned slow. I've had the best luck having a smith make me a below
average katana and letting it get all beat up. It's extremely fast and
has an increasing damage penalty as you go along (until it snaps
anyway). If time is not a big deal, use one of the knives.
4) If you're raising any weapon skill other than maces, have the other
person wear as much armor as possible so he doesn't have to heal as
much. If you are raising your mace skill, he'd better be naked or you
will eventually destroy everything he's wearing. This includes newbie
clothes and blessed items.
5) Make sure the person you're sparring isn't the annoying type. It
gets REALLY irritating listening to stupid comments in mangled UO
English for hours at a time. That's why I thought of the one below:
6) For people with multiple accounts: you don't need anyone to help
you raise skill this way. You don't even need MultiUO (which is
illegal anyway). Simply find a safe area which isn't insta logout for
you and login with the person you want to raise skill with.
Immediately logout again and get back in the game with the guy from
another account who will be beat on. Your other character will still
be there and will not timeout for 5 minutes. Attack him and tab out,
and let his auto defense attack you. He will gain skill just the same
as if you were logged in as him. All you need to do is keep yourself
healed up and log back in as your attacker every 4 minutes or so.
Don't do this during times of bad login server problems, though, or it
will be an exercise in frustration. Also, beware Murphy's Law...pks
may show up in a place where they haven't been in months just to spite
you and kill the guy you're not logged in as. Best to do this in town,
really.
Anyway, hope this helps prospective skill raisers out there. Have
fun...
Anyway, hope this helps any prospective skill raisers out there.
Nicktenor
Fantastic. Definitely one to save!
The Edge
RKJER
Damn, thats what i've been doing wrong! I sparred for 2 hours the other
night but only gained .1 swords. (85 now)
Robert
Catskills