Test Center

Ultima Online Publish 72 Details, Clients 4.0.17 and 7.0.17

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> Well, here we finally have it, Details about Pub 72 for UO, and it’s already made its way onto the Test Center:

Publish 72 comes to Test Center today, along with the Enhance Client Patch 4.0.17 and the Classic Client Patch 7.0.17.

Here are the notes for your reading pleasure, thanks!

Publish 72.0.0

Clean Up Britannia

We are proud to announce the return of Clean Up Britannia!

Similar to the original Clean Up Britannia and subsequent Spring Cleaning events, you may now discard your unneeded items in exchange for points good for the purchase of interesting and powerful new items.

Here’s how it works:
* Use a trash can, either in public or in your house, to discard items. When the items are destroyed, you are awarded points.
* You may appraise items before throwing them out. Select “Appraise For Cleanup” from a trash can’s context menu, and target items to appraise them.
* Speak to a Cleanup Officer in New Magincia, Britain, New Haven, Ter Mur, or Buccaneer’s Den to see how many points you have, and spend those points

Things you can Turn In
* All items which could be turned in for Spring Cleaning in 2008 may now be turned in for Clean Up Britannia
* Many older and rarer items are now worth a lot more points!
* Any leftover points for Spring Cleaning 2008 convert to points for Clean Up Britannia
* Many new items can now be turned in for points:
*** Almost any item crafted from wood, leather, or metal (the rarer the material used to craft the item, the more points it’s worth)
*** Almost any equipment loot drop (stronger magical item properties increase their point value)
*** Gold and Bank Checks
*** Raw resources such as leather, wood, and ingots (the rarer the resource, the more points it is worth)

Things you can Buy
* Most of the items from Spring Cleaning 2008 are available in Clean Up Britannia
* The high-end item sets are available as replicas. These knock-offs are much cheaper in point cost, but have 125 durability and cannot be improved by Powder of Fortification.

New Imbuable Item Sets are available:
* Berserker’s Gear: the wearer gains a special berserk combat effect when at low health
* Fisherman’s Gear: wearing these items enhances the effectiveness of any fish bait used by the wearer
* Virtuoso’s Gear: these items improve a bard’s Mastery Bonus
* Various new decorative and equipment items are available for sale

Honesty Virtue
As you travel the lands of Trammel and Felucca, you may find lost items. These items will say “Lost Item (Return To Gain Honesty)” when you mouse-over them.

To turn in a lost item for Honesty credit: In a bank of each of the Virtue Towns (Britain, Yew, Moonglow, Trinsic, Skara Brae, New Magincia, Jehlom, and Minoc) there is a lost and found box. Put the item in the box for Honesty credit. You may use Forensic Evaluation skill to gain more information about the owner of the item. If you turn the item into the Lost And Found Box in the city where the owner lives, you will get double Honesty points for your extra effort. If you give the item to the original owner, you will get quadruple honesty points.

Honesty gives you discounts at NPC merchants. The higher your rank in Honesty, the bigger your discount. The discount is applied to the total purchase. The discount is not shown in the merchant window, but you will see a system message once you make the purchase.

Other Virtue System tweaks:
* The total virtue point cap has been increased so that it is easier to maintain Knight rank.
* All virtues now decay at the same rate as the current rate for Valor. (This is a significant decrease in decay rate for most virtues.)
* Skills that had their decay rate reduced now spend virtue when you use them.

Anniversary Gifts
Happy 14th Anniversary to all our players! This year we have done something a little different. We have a few new items and included last years items for anyone that may of missed them. Hope you enjoy this token of appreciate for all your years of dedication to UO. As always you have to be 30 days old to receive an anniversary gift. The gifts will stay active until October 31st.

Guild Voting Changes
Added functionality to resolve guild hierarchy issues when a guild has no active (characters that have logged in within the last 30 days) voting members. When a guild has no active voting members (Guild Leader, Warlords, Emissaries or Members) and only has active non-voting members (Ronins) the system will now hold a special election which will promote the guild member (Ronin) that was most recently active to become the guild master. If the system is unable to identify the most recently active member, it will randomly select an active guild member (Ronin) to promote. This special election will ONLY occur when there are no active voting guild members.

Halloween
This year’s Halloween Event will begin October 1st thru November 12th. We have added a special treat for you this year so keep your guard up. *evil grin*

Bug Fixes
* Converting stoneboots to Gargoyle stone Talons will no longer give a TID error.
* You can no longer use the Sacred Journey ability to recall away to your ship when you’re flagged.
* The amount of ingots were corrected to be the same when salvaging in a bag or by the smith hammer.
* You can now salvage deer mask, bear mask, and tribal masks via the salvage bag.
* Gargoyle alterations should now recognize the small soul forge.
* Your poison skill will affect the poison strength applied to Shurikens and Fukiya Darts.
* Grape vines fished up from MIB’s will produce grape bunches (this does not apply to the ones already fished up). Non functional grape vines previously fished up can be traded in for functional items at the Ye Olde Winery in Yew.

Classic client 7.0.17
* Cliloc Changes

Enhanced Client 4.0.17
* Cliloc Changes
* Players are no longer able to filter out GM reponses
* Updated the Enhanced Client default target type for several mysticism spells

My thoughts on Publish 72
Publish 72 is big – it’s covering the 14th Anniversary, some guild changes, some virtue changes, some imbuing changes, and a new Clean Up Britannia campaign. The guild changes and virtue changes are actually pretty important in my book, because the guild changes are going to benefit returning players whose guilds ceased to be active for one reason or another, although it was possible for players to eventually become guildmaster of their guilds after they had ceased to be active. Still, it’s good to see some thought put into it. The Honest Virtue “mini-quests” (my terminology) are one of those things that is helping to flesh out the game world of Ultima. It’s adding content to places that already exist, especially in this case Britannia proper, and it’s giving people a reason to visit the older towns. That’s always good. Clean Up Britannia and Anniversary Gifts…it’ll be interesting to see how those play out so I’ll reserve judgement for now.

High Resolution Artwork
I wanted to see the artwork update!!! And I know it’s coming, it’s just a matter of time. This was a huge publish though, and if you look at Publish 71 and everything that has happened since Publish 71 back at the start of July, namely the account management system migration, I’m not surprised to see the artwork being pushed back out of Publish 72.

What I’m hoping is that maybe the high resolution artwork will make an appearance of some sort, whether on UO Herald or in-game, on or around the time of UO’s 14th Anniversary, which would be fitting.

Virtues
Some love is being shown to the virtues, especially the Honesty Virtue, and it’s only fitting today that GOG released Ultima IV for free.

Overall
I wanted to see artwork, but given the events that have transpired since July, I’m impressed with Publish 72. It’s very balanced – something for the returning players, something for the item collectors, something for the fans of the older Ultima games, a decent amount of bug fixes, and quite a few classes and playstyles were covered.

via UO Herald

Ultima Online Publish 71

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Last week, the UO producer mentioned they were close to another publish and some updates, and they weren’t kidding.

Update: Full patch notes are now on UO Herald.

Update #2: Additional Notes/fixes

Game Balance Changes

Focus Skill Spec (PVP)
Increase of spell damage increase cap from 15% to 30% (Reduced from TC 40%) for templates that focus in only one spell school. Focused players, having no more than 30.0 modified skill points in another main skill set will be able to benefit from the raised cap.Main skills include: Magery, Necromancy, Mysticism, Ninjitsu, Bushido, Animal Taming, Musicianship, Chivary, Spellweaving.
Poisoning:

A few tweaks to Poison and Poisoning Skill. Poisoning skill now grants a small measure of resistance to being poisoned. When poison is cured by any means except potions, the target receives a temporary resistance which is similar to, but less effective than the natural resistance granted by the poisoning skill.
Spells:

Poison (Magery): Players with greater than GM Poisoning and GM Magery will have a 10% chance to inflict lethal poison at distance of less than 3 tiles. Poison strength now reduces with range instead of dropping to 1 at ranges 3 or greater.

Poison Strike (Necromancy) : Necromancers with greater than 60 poisoning skill will have a 3% to 9% chance (Scales with poison skill) to poison their target.

Healing Skill
* For healers with 80 skill or greater in healing and anatomy, at half the Heal Duration for self heals, healing will attempt to remove poison and bleed effects. This will reduce the amount healed when the heal is finished its normal duration.
* Max Heal Duration Reduced to 8 seconds.
* Slip Damage Now Scales based on Dexterity
**Faction Bandages do not require the healing skill and so function using the old healing methods.

Cure Potions:
Success chance for curing poison with cure potions has been adjusted.

Cleansing Winds:
Should no longer heal target after removing mortal wound.

Enchanted Apples:
* Cooldown Increased to 30
* They now have a chance to fail depending on the level and number of curses applied to the user.
* Failure does not invoke the cooldown period.

Petals/Poison Immunity:
Deadly poison and stronger now have a 25% chance to break the poison immunity granted by orange petals.

SPECIAL MOVES:
Lightning Strike
* Mana Cost raised from 5 to 10.

Dual Wield
A successful Dual Wield attack will give the player a chance to execute an extra attack at reduced damage for a short duration. Players can execute additional dual wield specials during the initial effect to provide a very slight buff to the duration and an increased chance to execute extra attacks.
Duration of the dual wield effect scales with Ninjitsu skill above 70. Extra attacks are commited at 60% damage of a regular attack and CAN cause additional weapon effects.
Executing additional Dual Wield strikes while already under the dual wield effect will extend the duration by 2 seconds and increase the chance by 15%.
The effect can be stacked up to 2 additional times.

Defensive Mastery:
Defensive mastery will now provide an increase to physical resistance which can exceed the 70% resist cap. The increase scales with Bushido/Ninjitsu and Parry skills. Damage Penalty now Scales between 60 -10% with Bushido/Necro. Increased duration to 5 seconds.

Block:
On executing a successful block, players will receive a bonus to their defense chance which scales with their Ninjitsu or Bushido skill for a short duration. Players will also receive a temporary penalty to their hit chance and damage. While under the block effect, the next damage the player receives will be severely reduced. (Damage reduction scales with parry skill above 70)

Psychic Attack:
A successful psychic will now afflict the target with a 15% Mana Cost Penalty, and a 15% Spell Damage Penalty. This can be stacked one additional time, but does not offer an increase in duration.

Force Arrow:
This attack now provides a 20% Damage increase. Additionally it will reduce the target’s DCI by 10%. This attack can also be stacked multiple times for a further DCI reduction of 5% per stack and 2 second duration increase.
The Dazed effect, will now provide a GUARANTEED spell interrupt. Even if the target is under the effect of Protection.
Once this effect wears off, it cannot be re-applied for 10 Seconds.

CHIVALRY
· The way chivalry and abilities work has been revised so that the effects, and durations now place more emphasis on skill level rather than just karma. In cases where Karma is evaluated, it will provide a modifier to the chivalry skill factor. This means that chivalry will provide a baseline for the power or duration of the effect and karma will either increase or decrease that baseline. In order to achieve the highest possible levels, both skill and karma will be required.

* Divine Fury:
· Bonus effects and stamina regeneration from divine fury now scale based on chivalry skill and karma. Stamina regeneration from divine fury is no longer a full refreshment, but rather a set amount of stamina. Stamina factor increased to 4x duration (from 3x ). Chivalry Elder level and above receive reduction in the DCI penalty.

* Cleanse By Fire:
· Cure chance for poison has been updated.

* Enemy of One
· Enemy of one has now been changed to a Spell Toggle. You can remove the effect before the duration expires by recasting the spell. (Recasting while the spell is in effect will cost 0 mana and 0 cast time)
· The Damage bonus will now Scale based on Chivalry Skill. Duration Will Scale with Chivalry and Karma
Remove Curse

The difficulty of successfully removing curses now scales with the level and number of curses in effect in addition to factoring chivalry skill and karma.

* Consecrate Weapon
Consecrate Weapon no longer guarantees damage against a target’s weakest resist. Concecrate weapon now provides a scaling chance to do damage against the targets weakest resist type. At 90+ Chivalry, consecrate weapon will also offer a damage increase in addition to optimal damage type. Effect is now 100% Chance at 80 Chivalry. Scale is approximately 50% Chance at 50 Chivalry.

New Buff Icons
· Healing Skill
· Despair (Icon on player using it)(Bard Mastery Ability
· Tribulation (Icon on player using it)(Bard Mastery Ability
· Spell Focusing
· Focusing Weapons
· Hit Lower Attack (Debuff)
· Hit Lower Defense (Debuff)
· Block Special Move
· Feint Special Move
· DefenseMastery
· Psychic Attack (Debuff)
· Disarm (Debuff)
· Dual Wield
· Force Arrow (Debuff)
· Consecrate

New Fishing Features
· Trophies have been added for the following fish: kingfish, samurai fish, fire fish, Seeker Fish, giant koi, bull fish, stone fish, and lantern fish.
· Fish Oil: Fish oil recipe has been added to cooking. Fish oil is created from fish steaks and when used on lanterns will make them stay lit for a very long time. It can also be used to recharge the Oracle of the Sea (see below).
· Schools of Magical fish: The Order of the Dragonfish has discovered that most magical fish travel in schools. If you start catching a large number of magical fish in one area, it is likely you have found a school. After several fish are caught from a school it will move a short distance away. There is no known way to predict how to find these locations, you just have to get lucky and then pursue the school.

Lava fishing items have been added to all lava locations

Cracked Lava rocks: Players may use an axe on cracked lava rocks to see what is inside.

New Rewards for the fishing Quest
· Fish hooks are attached to fishing poles to give them special properties, double click the hook and then select the pole to use it
· Fish bait may be used together with fish hooks.
· Junk Proof Hooks: Using a junk proof hook will ensure you don’t catch shoes.
· Dredging Hook: Using a dredging hook will increase the chance of pulling up things from the depths that are not fish.
· Lava Hook: This is replacing the lava fishing pole and has the same effect, the main difference is that hooks are stackable.
· Oracle of the Seas: This reward looks like a blue spyglass and is used to find charybdis. Double click it to locate the monster. The monster location is good for 1 day. Locating the monster consumes a charge, fish oil can be used to bring the charges back.
· Charybdis bait: Can be used on a fishing pole. When at a location identified by the Oracle of the Seas, fish using charybdis bait to start the encounter. You may have to fish several times to get the charybdis to rise.
· Improved magical fish bait: The Order of the Dragonfish has discovered ways to improve fishbait for magical fish. (technical note: the way fishbait works essentially is by giving you a certain number of rerolls when trying to catch certain fish, the improved fish bait is simply giving you more rerolls)

New Sea Encounter
· Charybdis: This is a new sea encounter that requires special items from the fishing quest to start. Warning: the Charybdis is a dangerous monster and you should only provoke it when you have 2 or 3 friends to help and a fast ship in case things go south!

Bug Fixes
* Fixed the issue that stopped players from stealing from monsters
* Fixed an issue with Tinkering, the correct ingots will now be used.
* Archery and Throwing will not stop at 25 skill points now when using the Advanced Training Dummy, they will train to the cap of 60 points.
* Fixed an issue where certain power scrolls were becoming cursed when bound in a scroll binder.
* Archery will no longer drop on Gargoyle jewelry nor will you be able to imbue it into any gargoyle items.
* Stygian Dragon will no longer teleport the player to him but he will teleport to the player to try to fix some reported issues of being stuck.
* You can no longer hand the Solen Matriarch a second seed while your current quest is active. You will now get a message she is busy.
* Fixed an issue related to stabling pets prior to death.
* Fixed the issue with The Tentacles of the Harrower spawning in areas out of the reach of players.
* All pets (not just bonded) can now follow their masters thru a gate onto ships.
* Players can obtain Ophidian Loyality by killing Terathans
* Sound has been added to Tinkering.
* Fixed an issue with the Weaving Friendships Quest, should display correct text now.
* Added a new system message for cooking with flour, if the bag is not opened instead of getting the message You do not have the components needed to make that you will get a message stating you need to open a bag of flour.
* Using Poppy Dust on a Silver Sapling Seed was turning the seed into a plain unused seed, this will not longer happen.
* Fixed an issue with missing text in the Scraping the Bottom quest
* When using the Easter Basket you will no longer identify itself as a cornucopia.
* The Devourer of Souls will no longer spawn out of the reach of players.
* Fixed the issue with the flour mill placing the bags of flour under the house.
* Fixed the levers in the Terathan Keep, doors should function properly now.
* Mana will no longer be consumed on Siege or Mugen when trying to use the Sacred Journey from a spell book.
* Parrots can now be placed on a perch on the Britiannian Ship
* Threads of Ether should now give the EC client the proper system messages when they are used or expired.
* You can no longer use Archery Special Moves without arrows.
* Nosferatu the Hellhound Treat Vendor has been removed
* Clainin’s Spellbook will no longer display spellchanneling.
* Pet Leather wolf golems will no longer be able to summon help.
* Putrefier now has a leash on it.
* Fixed an issue with placement of unmade beds
* The chance to get books from the fishing quest has been reduced.
* Fixed an issue that made it difficult to place addons on the second floor of a house.
* Resolved an issue with placing deeded house addons on the correct floor of the house.
* Fixed an issue allowing players to cast a spell without being frozen under certain conditions.
* Made the Magincia Bazaar vendors so you may customize and move them around in the stalls

Enhanced Client 4.0.16.0
* Cliloc updates
* Ter Mur world building update
* Added a tooltip for the War/Peace button
* Fixed a few issues with the default target settings in the hot bar (ex. Rising Colossus and Animated Weapon Spells)
* Fixed an issue that would eventually cause the Enhanced Client to crash if played long enough.
* Item properties will no longer appear for objects under the floor

Classic Client 7.0.16.0
* Cliloc Updates
* Ter Mur world building update
* Characters created with the legacy client now start with 120 skill points to match the EC instead of 100. Characters can also start with four skills instead of three.
* Fixed issue that was preventing players from receiving the “of ShardName” title when copying a character to a test center.

That’s a lot! Now the client patches have rolled out and that is in testing on the current Test Center. When Cal discussed several general areas they were working on, I mentioned that I liked they were working on adding or revamping already-established areas, the High Seas updates, some of the PvP work, and the bug fixes.

I consider bug fixes to be a very important issue, and this publish is full of them. I consider them especially important in light of BioWare Mythic wanting to attract new players and retain current players. Although many players on some of the forums are overlooking this kind of work, it’s being done, and there has been a definite shift in the attitude towards bug fixes.

Those who favor fishing are going to be interested in this update as fishing is being expanded quite a bit.

I do want to see the art updates, but as mentioned in the producer’s letter last week, that’s a little further down the road.

I’ve been doing some traveling and haven’t had much time in-game, but look forward to checking these out on the Test Center later in the week or next week.

Game Balancing Changes for UO

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Yesterday, I asked if we were getting PvP arenas soon and while that may still be the case somewhere in the future, yesterday’s downtime was based on game balancing:

From the UO Herald

Summary of the Game Balancing Changes
Bonnie “Mesanna” Armstrong
22 Jun 2011 11:41:01 EST

Greetings,

In yesterday’s downtime we have started to bring some changes to Test Center 1.

The following list is a short summary of the addressed topics:

Focus Skill Spec – Increase of spell damage increase cap from 15% to 40% for templates that focus in only one spell school.

Poisoning – A few tweaks to Poison and Poisoning Skill

Healing Skill

Cure Potions

Cleansing Winds

Enchanted Apples

Petals/Poison Immunity

Special Moves
Lightning Strike
Dual Wield
Defensive Mastery
Block
Psychic Attack
Force Arrow

Chivalry
Divine Fury
Cleanse by Fire
Enemy of One
Remove Curse
Consecrate Weapon

For details of all the changes, please see the discussion thread on stratics.

We look forward to your constructive feedback.

This was a message that Mesanna/Bonnie Armstrong posted on Stratics:

These proposed changes are being put up well in advance of Publishing them to all production shards. We do look forward to your opinions and feedback.

Thanks everyone

Mesanna and Logrus

This is from Logrus, a UO Designer:

Slight mistake in my wording, it should be Greater than or EQUAL to GM Poisoning or Magery. Poisoning won’t be going up to 120 for now.

The Focus effect is automatic. Basically once you hit 30 in one of the other skills you no longer receive the effect, but as long as you remain under 30 you are fine.

If your normal heal time is 4 seconds at 140 dex ( and greater than 80 heal/anat), then you have a chance to cure the poison at the 2 second mark. If you succeed your final heal will amount will be reduced in proportion to the poison level that was cured. If you failed then you will make a second cure attempt at 4 seconds.

My quick opinion – this is a bit of a revamp to PvP, which is needed, and is probably being done ahead of the arena work.

It’s a good sign that they are wanting to discuss it quite a bit with players before the final changes are made, and it’s also kind of sign that there is some serious long term work being done. I harp on this a lot, but looking at my crystal ball, there are a lot of little things being looked at these days.

Are We Getting PvP Arenas Soon?

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There is a very short blurb up on UO Herald today, posted by UO’s Associate Producer (Bonnie Armstrong), mentioning “PvP updates” and the Test Center being down:

We will be taking down TC1 to get ready for a PVP update. Please check stratics tomorrow for full details of all the upcoming changes.

We look forward to hearing your feedback.

I don’t know why they would post full details of upcoming changes on Stratics instead of UO Herald, but as soon as I hear about them, I’ll post them.

If you are unfamiliar with the Arenas concept, part of it was tied to the update last month that allowed you to directly copy one of your characters over to the Test Center. That’s copy, NOT transfer. You could then test out a character from a production shard on the Test Center. It would also allow you to take characters from one production shard and match them against other players’ characters.

Back in March, UO’s lead developer, “Supreem” discussed a bit about the need for character copy before arenas went into testing:

Supreem: It needs more work before it can go to a test center and we really want to make sure Character Copy is working before we open our arenas so that you can bring your live characters there, we don’t want to have to force you to spend hours setting up a character so that you can test arenas for us.

Character Copy – Live on Test Center

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Kai Schober has posted the following on UO Herald:

Greetings!

The character copy feature has gone live! This feature will allow you make a copy of your character from any shard that supports transfers to “Test Center 1”. There may be periods of time where this feature will not be enabled due to differences in server versions.

To start a character copy, login with the character you wish to copy and go to a safe logout location such as an inn. Open the help menu and select the “Character Copy” option. Follow the instructions to complete your character copy.

For those who aren’t aware, this is the ability to copy a character from a production shard that supports this feature to Test Center 1. This is not going to be something that is rolled out that allows you to copy characters to other shards. If you want to transfer characters to other shards, those will require the normal tokens and they are not copies, but actual character transfers.

This feature is a way to allow you to copy a character to the Test Center and then use it to try out various things using that character and his or her items. You will not be able to transfer/copy that character from the Test Center to production shard. This is a feature that will come in handy as we move towards the PvP arenas being implemented at some point in the future.