Five on Friday - October 10, 2008
"I read about raising skill/stat caps in SA in the House of Commons chat last week. Any more info on that?"
That post sparked a lot of really fascinating discussion, both in the office and the community. The conclusion we came to was that doing such a thing properly would require more time and manpower than we currently have planned for on Stygian Abyss. We didn't entirely rule it out, but it's definitely something that we'd have to take great pains over in order to make it a positive change - and we'd probably have to do at least one pass on the existing system first to clear up some issues left from previous expansion packs. So, in short, the negotiations fell through and the skill and/or stat caps are not currently planned to change with Stygian Abyss.
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"The new plants still don't behave the same way as the old ones when locked down. Will that be fixed?"
Yes - we've got the fix for that in Publish 56.
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"What is the plan for fixing the naturalist quest?"
In 56, all of the new plants will be added to that quest, so you will have the chance to get them in blaze, black, or white colors. This should also fix the current issue where you only get the new cactus as a reward - it should randomize properly again.
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"Will the new stackable items stack with existing items?"
Yes, they should - this is one of the things we're testing pretty heavily. UO is terribly quirky, so there may be one-off exceptions, but so far it's looking good.
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"Will the skill jewelry change affect tamers?"
This question generally seemed to come up as a thinly-veiled request for a tamer nerf, but there's an important point to be made here. Tamers can use skill jewelry to supplement their templates, but if they have a high-end pet and they take the jewelry off, they will have a lower chance of being able to successfully command it. Failed commands lower the pet's loyalty, and if loyalty drops too far, it will go wild. So, no, it's not as instant a change as taking your necro jewelry off in vamp form will be, but no sane tamer would raise his skill with jewelry to tame something then take it back off - he'd very soon get munched by his own pet.
Likewise, if you want to use skill jewelry to enter vamp form, you will still be able to. You'll just have to keep that jewelry on until you are tired of all the blood-sucking!
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Faction Item Follow-Up
Last week's post brought up a number of questions - here are some answers!
"Will the items be faction-blessed or insurable?" They will be insurable (except, of course, the potions, bandages, and similar consumables.) Players will be able to use clothing bless deeds on them if they wish, however, do remember that they will eventually wear out, since Powder of Fortification cannot be used on them (and Powder of Perseverance, the faction version, is more limited.) On Siege, they will be neither blessed nor insurable.
"Is the item that allows humans to wear elf armor faction-only?" Yes - only characters that are in factions will be able to use them.
"Will the new items be usable in Trammel?" Yup, as long as you meet the faction rank and membership requirements. (And assuming, of course, that you're allowed in to Trammel...)
"Some of the items the new ones are based on - such as the Crimson Cincture - do not have durability. Will the Faction versions?" Yes - all the faction artifacts (except spellbooks) will have durability and can wear out.
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"Will more items be added to commodity deeds in Publish 56?"
Right now adding empty bottles to commodity deeds is in testing - assuming we can make it work, that should go in, and we'll be adding more items in future publishes.
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"Will the fact that things like dough now stack change how Cooking skill gains work?"
(For the non-chefs out there, some items, such as fish steaks and cuts of ribs, can be cooked as a stack and is counted differently for the purposes of skill gain.) The new stackables, such as dough, will behave more like the other skills - if you have a stack of dough and a stack of honey and choose to create sweet dough, it will only use one of each off of the stacks, so you can make as many attempts as you have dough and still have a nice tidy backpack :)
Feel free to send in feedback if you'd like for fish steaks and cuts of ribs to behave that way, too - if I recall, the original change was to make cooking suck less with the original skill gumps, but the new one (and particularly the KR one) are much less tedious to use, and that feature may be obsolete.
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What's To Come:
Publish 56 is about four days behind schedule at this point. It may make it onto TC next week, or it may not - it depends on how many issues turn up and how long it takes to resolve them. This is an unusually large publish with many different systems involved, so we want to make sure QA has plenty of time to work on it.
Speaking of large, a warning for y'all - particularly the KR players. Due to some animation changes, this will be a very large (700mb) patch. The client will be patched when Test Center is updated, most likely, so plan accordingly!
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Chicago Town Hall
The Chicago Town Hall is next week - if you're at all interested in Stygian Abyss, don't miss it! Check out the details here, and we'd appreciate it if you RSVPed. --
Fansite News:
A minor procedural note: due to the updates to the web site, I now have an actual deadline for the Five on Friday. If you want to submit something, please make sure it gets to me my noon EST on the Friday you want it posted. On the positive side, you should see it consistently by around 3 EST :)
- [All Shards]
- UOGuide.com Achieves 4 Million Page Views! Seeking Factions Experts!
- UOGuide.com is happy to celebrate reaching the milestone of 4 million page views and continues to be the fastest growing source of UO info, history, tips and tricks!
- We currently are in special need of experts on Factions to review and revamp the pages related to it! With all the changes and upcoming new content and items, Factions is sure to get a lot of interest from potential newcomers to the ongoing struggle for Sosarian domination. Many players are eager to give Factions a try but can find it difficult to get comprehensive info and advice on how to play and excel at it. UOGuide has some pages relating to Factions, but could certainly benefit from some real experts checking out the pages and giving them a once over.
- Any UO player is welcome to stop by UOGuide.com and update or add to any of the wiki pages to contribute their expertise. Other topics that could use some love include past UO Holiday events and gift items, some of the shard history pages, item info and history on several rares, but really any place where you find either missing or incomplete info. UOGuide is completely free and we're always looking for UO players to add their expertise to help make the wiki better, check it out today at UOGuide.com
- --Tancred RedStar
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- [Sonoma]
- PAS is beginning a period of shard events that will take place over the month of October as follows:
- October 10th - Friday - The People's Army of Sonoma (PAS) are pleased to announce a Shard Tamer Event from 8-10pm Central. PAS and other Alliance tamers will tame pets for Sonoma citizens that can control them at no cost.
- The goal is not to get "the best" greater dragon, or a white cu sidhe, etc. Our goal is to tame pets for players that can control them. So if someone wants a fire beetle for their smith char as a portable forge, then come to the event and make the request. But if you want a white cu sidhe, we cant help as that might take days of killing cu sidhes to get that color to spawn. If you are interested in getting a free pet, meet at the north side of Skara Tram bank at 8pm CT to get your requests included on our list. If anyone has any questions about how this will work, please ICQ KingDavid (KD) of PAS at 137449336.
- October 17th - Friday - Shard Gauntlet Event (free trips to gauntlet, PAS provides the gold skulls) Watch next weeks FoF or visit PAS website for more details.
- October 24th - Friday -Shard Blood Dungeon Event (PAS will escort and then help protect any players wanting to travel with us to Blood Dungeon Ilshenar to fight Balrons, Blood Elementals, and Succubi. All of these have a chance to be paragons, so there should be decent numbers of artis, gold, items to go around). Watch future FoF or visit PAS website for more details.
- October 25th - Friday - Shard Treasure Hunting Event (bring your level 6 tram treasure maps and PAS and Alliance tamers will take the players to their maps, provide firepower to subdue the spawn, and all loot goes to the map owners). Watch future FoF or visit PAS website for more details.
- We hope to see as many Sonoma players out as possible this month, and we hope everyone has fun with these Peoples Army of Sonoma (PAS) 'shard events'.
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- Its time for some chatter, games and preparing for a party with Whispering Rose Radio...
- Friday - Oct. 10th - Join DJ Sandman for UO Shard Chatter starting at 7pm PT, 10pm ET on WRR. Listen and participate with other UO players chatting about this weeks game topics. At the end of the show hear this weeks contributions to the "You know you have been playing UO to long when..." segment where hilarious endings are presented by UO listeners. Feel free to send yours in via the Whispering Rose Radio chat room (link is found on the www.wrrad.com website)
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- Saturday - Oct. 11th - Its time for the ever popular Brush LimpPaw show starting at 2pm PT, 5pm ET on WRR where listeners hear his Universal Outlook on current events as only he can deliver it.
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- Saturday - Oct. 11th - WRR Deal or No Deal ~ 'UO Style' is on PACIFIC this week starting at 3pm PT, 6pm ET. Participants will be playing for 10 Million and of course there will be 5 - 250k door prize drawings *remember, you must be there to win*. For a map of the WRR DoND location on PACIFIC... CLICK HERE.
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- Sunday - Oct. 12th - Its time for the weekly auction with the Pacific Auction House (located just East of the Luna Moongate). Serving the community for over 4 years, the PAH continues to bring players fantastic AUCTION deals. Get there early for best seating. Auction starts at 12pm PT, 3pm ET and is broadcasted live on WRRadio.
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- Thursday - Oct. 16th - The weekly "Tazz & Keg's Underground" radio show on WRR is broadcasted live at 7pm PT - 10pm ET. Entering the Tazz & Keg's Underground leads to a world you will never forget!!
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- Preparations are underway for the Chicago UO Town Hall Meeting on Saturday, October 18th. Whispering Rose Radio will be on hand with staff members broadcasting live while other WRR staffers will host a special in game 'Town Hall' gathering at Dave & Busters on Lake Superior. *See next weeks FoF for full details.
- Have a fun week playing UO while listening to the sounds of Whispering Rose Radio (www.wrrad.com) ~ see you all on the flip side!
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- If you want to see more shard events, check out the Stratics Shard Events Calendar!
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56 is really shaping up - I can't wait to get it out to you guys. Have a good weekend!
- Jeremy