I was going to do another “in depth” look at how to start strong, but figured you were tired of reading me drone on and on…. (ZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz) so I just decided to put points of interest up here for a quick view. It’s not laziness it’s compassion.
1. Having a minor crafting skill on a combat character should be a means to gain money early. After that try to make it something that supports your characters abilities (bowcraft for archers, blacksmithing for warriors to repair, alchemy for anyone for heals). This isn’t necessary but I always like self-sufficient characters.
2. To get a head start as any combat character you should go “bunny hunting©”. Killing small animals is a time-honored tradition.
3. Almost all animals have hides. Double click a dagger or bladed weapon, target the corpse, and meat and hides will appear in your pack. Birds give raw bird and feathers. Hides are worth 3gc to a tanner but are heavy. You can cut them into leather with scissors but ONLY if you are going to use them yourself. A tanner will not buy leather (no idea why… but they’re NPC’s). Feathers are worth money to a bowyer. Meat/raw fish or bird can be cooked for food and money.
4. To cook foods use a dagger on a tree. Kindling will fall at your feet. Double click it and after a few (read: many) attempts you’ll get a roaring fire (camping helps this but is worthless for anything else, so I’d just take the attempts and not waste a skill slot). Double click the raw food and target the fire and you’ll probably burn most of it. LOL, but after a while you may eventually cook it. That is worth good money to an innkeeper or provisioners (and to feed you and your animals).
5. Starting in Britain is a good way to meet many other players real fast. West Britain bank is the local “hang out” for most of them… For something of interest, an unnamed player town has sprung up East of Britain on the road. A good vendor Tim along with others can often supply items cheaper than NPC’s (yes, cheap plug, but I AM writing this! Ppbbbttt!!)
6. Britain Sewers is one way to sharpen your blade. I’d normally recommend taking on animals first for resources and money as well as skill.
7. Once you’ve gained a bit of armor and a good weapon, try out the various graveyards around the towns. Start with skeletons and zombies. Skeletons are a GREAT resource for better armor. Bone armor (chest, arms, helmet, gloves, legs) is pretty strong. They cannot be repaired and are brittle however. I call it “disposable” armor until you can find something more permanent. I often carry a bone chest with me in dungeons (and recommend my guild does as well) in case my plate is destroyed.
8. Beware of Liches, wraiths, and burning skeletons… magic is very dangerous starting out. Mummies are hit point monsters at this level and are hard to kill. If you DO kill one, he’ll give you 250 garlic that you can use yourself, or sell for 1gc a piece to a mage. Good money. Ghouls are my personal favorite. You get armor, gold, a weapon, and a nice gem.
9. Reagents spawn in various places on the ground. On the way to Britain graveyard, for example, there is a mandrake spawn, a blackpearl spawn, an ash spawn, and two nightshade spawns. You can stock up pretty well just running up and down there.
10. DO NOT BEG!!!! One of the biggest annoyances of players of all multiplayer online games is begging newbies. Begging is often the sign of a veteran player trying to swindle the rest of us for freebies. We were all newbies once and we know it’s tough getting started. In my view that is a great enjoyment of the game… growing stronger and stronger and knowing you did it yourself. However, many guilds (Hands of the Divine for example) try to help new players when they can. This is not mandatory or even consistent. We really don’t know who is “new” or who is just a “new character” of someone else. Several people have been known to hand out an occasional weapon or bone armor to help out. I sometimes give out potions of nightsight (because the dark can be really spooky in a graveyard) myself and maybe a heal. But do not expect it. We try to help but we all had to start small. Of course, we will give all the advice you can stand. Not sure if that is a blessing, or curse.
11. Spellbooks and practice weapons you start with are newbied items. This means that when you die (and you will) you will not lose them and they cannot get stolen. Even if you find a better weapon, put the practice one in your bank box just in case you lose everything. A spellbook need not be in your hands to be used. The only way you can ever lose it is if you put it on the ground or give it away. If you ever put it in a pack/bag/pouch while inside your backpack it will fall when you die. Don’t.
12. Sometimes on this shard items will seem to disappear from your pack. This is usually when you try to equip a shield with a two handed item, or put a spell into a spellbook that is already in there. Often, if you close and open your pack it will be there.
13. Please help keep the shard clean. If you find seashells, plates, forks, blankets, or other random stuff that punk players leave lying all around the shard please pick them up. You can deposit them in any trashcan at banks, or as I used to do, just dump them in any animal/monster corpse, as they will decay with it. Don’t put it on player corpses as they just dump them back on the ground. The more items on the ground, the more lag we experience.
14. Any Lich summoning staves you find are illegal. They are bugged and have many reasons why they are. Just trash them or better yet, call a counselor and tell them where you got it so they can maybe end the spawn. (Or find out if someone is selling them)
15. I recommend the top level of Despise (West of Britain in the mountains) as your first dungeon crawl when you are ready. They are mainly lizardmen and most people can handle them. To open about half the chests you’ll need someone who can cast the 3rd circle spell Unlock.
16. Skill gain is very fast in the first 20 points, fast in the 30-50 point range, and slows down quite a bit the higher you get. Don’t get frustrated; if we could GM our skills so fast UO would lose much of it’s interest in starting out.
17. Not game related but forum here. Try to keep related subjects in the same thread. It helps those who want to assist you to see what all has been said already and on what all you still need help.
18. When you need a counselor to help, page only once. They will be able to see it just fine and will get to it as soon as they can. More pages do nothing but back the logs up. When you page, keep it simple. You’ll have to explain when they arrive anyway and very long pages sometimes cause problems.
19. Respect everyone. They’ll respect you in turn.
20. I’d recommend using the 2D client where possible. It seems to give the least trouble. Plus I just prefer that look. I’m old.
21. Don’t be an idiot and name yourself with curse words or drug humor. Remember that this may be a character you’ll have for quite a while and the reputation you gain at first may haunt you for good. Also some words in some countries are no big deal, while in others they are profanity. I try to keep my people’s names fantasy or at least reality oriented.
22. Sometimes random things pop into your packs that are obviously monster loot. No, someone probably isn’t reverse stealing. It is just a weird thing that the Godz of EE decided to let ride. So enjoy the extra stuff and shhhhh don’t tell ANYONE! Same thing goes for monsters. I killed an old headless (the weakest undead there is) and got 400 gold and various gems and reagents off it! Just assume that they killed someone or got an inheritance that you’ve just raided and enjoy it too.
23. Setting a macro for “Bank Vendor Buy Guards” is very helpful.
24. Learn healing and feed yourself often. Yes, you can die from starving and you will lose hit points and if you are hungry your natural healing slows down quite a bit. A new person does not have access to potions and magic much so the healing skill is of tremendous use. If your healing and anatomy are 60+ you can cure poisons, if they are 80+ you can actually resurrect someone with bandages! Pkers are much less of a problem if you can cure poison faster than they can deal it. Buy some cut cloth from a tailor or provisioners and cut it with scissors to make cloth. Cut the cloth again for bandages. I believe you can cut various clothes here too.
25. Almost EVERYTHING has value to someone. The only things you cannot sell (that I can remember) are raw meat/birds/fish, books, seashells, some tools, and regular potions (not lesser or greaters). Everything else has value to some NPC. The provisioners is your best friend in this. Masks, gems, some weapons, bandages, bags, he’ll buy almost everything (beware selling a container with anything inside of it. He will buy the bag and you’ll lose all that was in it). Then you can find what vendors buy the rest. As a new person I made a MINT off following others around in dungeons and picking up all the bags, boots, food, and random things they left in corpses. On EE you can even sell excess bone armor to tanners.
26. Do not loot the same corpse as another person. This is because if you happen to pick up the same item it often becomes bugged. That means it’s either stuck on the corpse and no one gets it, or worse, it gets stuck in someones pack and constantly says, “You cannot pick up that item.” If you are lucky it’s something you can sell. If not, page a counselor and explain your greed.
27. Mining, Lumberjacking, and (my favorite) all melee combat skills are good for gaining strength. Musicianship is great for dex. Spirit Speak and Evaluate Intelligence are great for gaining int. Stat gains are based on a percentage chance each time you gain a skill point. Once you start gaining slower points, switch to another skill from zero and you’ll gain skill points and stats faster. Once you hit 700.00 skill points, you can “seesaw”. I did it with Wrestling and Musicianship. Get wrestling up to 30 or so, (gaining a couple points in str) then let it fall and gain up to 30 points in Music (gaining a couple points in dex and maybe one in int), wash, rinse, repeat.
28. Magic weapons are rated strong to strongest like this: Ruin, Might, Force, Power, and Vanquishing. Careful with magic swords and axes. They reduce your int when wielded but are still worth it. If you put them down the int comes back. Magic shields are almost all Hardening, or (strongest) Invulnerability. Currently there is a bug with selling magic weapons. They will quote you a price, but you’ll only receive the value of a regular version. Players will often buy them from you. Bows and shields sell properly, however, so you can make quite a bit off them.
29. Use Item ID to ID potions too… Taste ID is only to find poisons in something. (I made this mistake for several weeks before I used the wrong one by accident was like DOH*slaps head*)
30. The decay rate on player corpses seems to be strange. Sometimes they last for a long time; sometimes they seem to decay in minutes. However, containers (bags, pouches, packs, boxes, etc) do NOT decay. (I found two bags by a lich that killed me that were mine from a week before) Most people put their loot and reagents especially in bags within their packs. This makes it harder to sell (having for some reason to pull them out of your bags into your main pack before they notice them) but if you die it keeps you from losing everything.
31. For Purchases up to 2000 gold you need to have the gold on your person. Over that they take the gold directly from your bank box. Again, however, the gold must be at the top of your bank box and not within another container. This should be easier to do because there is no chance of losing it from there.
I’m sure there are many other questions that you can have. Look for me, Masterpoet, or any other person in the forum or IRC channel to answer you. Most of us are very helpful. Feel free to Private Message me as well. Good luck and may the Divine watch your back.