Check Your Inbox for a Message from Origin – Discounts of 10% – 40% Possible

Check your email for a message from Origin/EA with the subject of “A surprise discount inside – how much will you save?”

It’s a Halloween promotion from Origin.com, EA’s online store, and it includes coupon codes for anywhere from 10% – 40% off, with some getting lucky and getting 100% (very few I imagine).

It looks like you can use it for multiple items, just make sure and put the code in after every item.

Of interest to Ultima Online players, the following do seem to take the codes:
* Ultima Online High Seas Booster
* Ultima Online Stygian Abyss account upgrade
* Ultima Online Stygian Abyss new player/30 days.

The email will have something that looks like this, with the code below it:

Additional Notes for Publish 73, Preview of Publish 74

There are additional notes for Ultima Online Publish 73, and along with it, a glimpse at the upcoming high resolution artwork update for Publish 74, which is housing/walls.

Additional Notes:

Clean up Britiannia
Added 4 new pigments – Polished Bronze, Glossy Blue, Black and Green and Deep Violet – 1 charge 250,000 points. We will be changing this out each month so stock up while you can

Arenas Go Live
The arenas located throughout the lands will go live with this publish. The arenas are located in the Lost Lands (both facets), Haven, and Ocllo. The following additions and changes have been made after the public testing done on the arenas test shard:

* Match hosts may now choose to allow or disallow Field Spells
* Match hosts now choose to allow or disallow potions, or to allow only non-healing potions
* A bug that caused some summoned creatures to attack their owner in an arena match has been fixed

Moving forward, we will continue to accept feedback and use it to make further improvements to the arenas. In an future publish, look for the addition of a wagering system.

New High Resolution Terrian Art
As I am sure most of you have noticed the difference in the terrain in the Enhanced Client. Just letting everyone know this is just the first of many more to come. Next publish we will be updating the Wall tile art, I think everyone will really appreciate the new look. Below are a few pictures of what is coming:

Details: UO Herald

Shard of the Dead: Dungeon Deathmatch Edition

It’s nearly Halloween, and thanks to a developer dropping hints on Stratics, everybody was alerted to a Shard of the Dead.

Now the details have been revealed.

We are proud to announce our annual Shard of the Dead. This year, we’ve started with a clean slate to bring you an all new toe-to-toe slugfest. We’ve swept the elementals out of Dungeon Shame and replaced them with some gruesome and hellish beasts along with some exciting loot. Here’s how it works:

You may create a character on the Shard of the Dead, or copy a character from your regular shard. No matter which option you choose, you will arrive without any items, money, or pets on a platform where you must choose to join a team. Enter either the Order Gate or the Chaos Gate, and you will be transported to a safe haven for your team. Here, you must obtain some gear and supplies, in order to prepare to enter the Infernal Battlegrounds.

Lucky for you, the dungeon floors are literally strewn with powerful magic items. All you have to do is survive long enough to grab some and put them on. You may sell items you don’t want to get precious gold to buy basic supplies. Picking up new skills is incredibly fast. There are items that grant stat boosts as well.

Once you accumulate enough to fight the monsters in the dungeon, you will find they drop still more powerful loot, along with gold and items that allow you to summon strong pets.

Be careful, though! All your equipment is cursed. If you die, you must start naked again in your team’s base.

If you can gather a group of friends, have a go at the Disciple of Lucifer. He’s extremely tough, but his loot is very worthwhile. One of his treasures is a deed to bless a single item, making it just a little bit easier to start over.

Every few minutes, a gate in each team’s base will open, taking all who dare to go to the Infernal Battlegrounds. Here, Order and Chaos engage in a struggle to capture each others’ bases, and to hunt down and slay The Butcher. Fighting in these battles offers opportunities for still greater rewards, including the Supreem Headless Bomb and the Flask of Invulnerability, along with your pick of the cursed items picked from the corpses of your slain enemies.

Scoreboards in each team’s base show battle records, and players’ mouseover tooltips show their PvP stats.

So come on down to Shard of the Dead and join us in the slaughterfest!

Source: UO Herald

Treasure Hunt – Napa Valley vs Catskills

With Sonoma going down, Napa Valley is now challenging Catskills to a cross-shard treasure hunt.

Having defeated Sonoma in the last Cross Shard Treasure Hunting Challenge, the Blue Beetles of Catskills knew they would have to defend their title soon enough. What wasn’t known was just who they would be defending it against. We now have an answer as the shard of Napa Valley has delivered the following challenge to Catskills:

The ages pass and a new power rises from the Myst of the Mountains deep in the Napa Valley! A new voice cries out to be recognized and make their stand! We are Napa Valley and we throw down the gauntlet in a test of wits and stamina of the Cross Shard Treasure Hunt Challenge against Catskills. The Treasure Hunters of Napa Valley boldly stand to take possession of the trophy and bring it Home where it belongs!

In accordance with the rules of competition, the Champions respond:

Challengers of Napa Valley,

Bold words to suggest our trophy belongs with you! Perhaps the Myst of the Mountains has clouded your vision, or the wine of your vineyards impaired your minds; For if you saw clearly the monumental task that lay before you, you would not speak in such confidence! The Blue Beetles will bewilder you with their speed, bedevil you with their skill, and beguile you with their good looks.

Make no mistake – our bravado is well earned. We respect your desire to Challenge, however. Therefor in keeping with the rules of the competition, we accept – and look forward to proving once again that the true “home” for the title is with Catskills.

– Shard Catskills

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
DATE: Tuesday, November 8th, 2011
TIME: 6:30pm Pacific, 9:30pm Eastern
PLACE: The Chessboard in Nujel’m, Test Center

UO Herald

UO Publish 73 – Test Center, Client Patches 4.0.19 and 7.0.19

Courtesy of the UO Herald, and it is massive. It also includes the first of the high resolution artwork updates for the Enhanced Client.

Summary/Opinion
I made a pretty strong statement yesterday about 3 things to start fixing Ultima Online and I still stand by those things. They are not things covered by any single publish. But that’s not what I’m here to talk about, I’m hear to talk about Publish 73, and from reading through it, is very comprehensive and has things for old and newer players alike. I don’t have an opinion yet on the artwork – once I try it out tonight, I will. The Dungeon Shame improvements are, I hope, the first of more upgrades/revisions of existing dungeons. The Shame Itemization Upgrade is interesting and will take a lot of time to study, but it shows an awareness of the confusion that new players have.

Shame Upgrade
Dungeon Shame has been revised. The monsters have been revised to be a little bit more challenging and scaled in difficulty for new-to-veteran players. The shame loot system has been revised so you should notice less items with throw-away intensity values on properties, and an overall improvement in the loot generated.

First and second levels will provide a good training ground for journeyman to adept skill levels while level 3 should provide a little more of a challenge. On the first 3 levels there will be a renowned monster that can be spawned at a key point in the dungeon by summoning from an altar to give you a taste of the monster difficulty at the next level.

All the monsters within the dungeon have a chance to drop dungeon crystals which can be used to spawn the renowned of each level. In certain areas there will also be a chance when killing creatures for a renowned version of those creatures to be spawned. Similar to a paragon but not as friendly.

Level 5: The monsters on level 5 are a bit heavier and harder hitting than the other levels.

Overview of Shame’s purpose

Read more