Fishing

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.