Thursday, May 11, 2017

Ultima Online: May 11, 2017


One cloudy morning I found myself on a ship sailing the unknown. Who knew what adventures awaited me once I found land. My parched throat begged for water. My grumbling stomach asked to be fed. Who knew when I would reach land?

Or maybe the answer is a bit less dramatic: trade quests. Up until watching the MWG stream, I had completely written off trade quests. A few months ago I came across a mention of trade quests when finding out how to obtain some signs to go with a hanger I had picked up. I immediately dismissed the thought of trying said quests out, assuming that 'trade quest' meant 'fishmonger quest.' I do not have a fisher(wo)man, so I thought these quests were beyond doing for a while yet.

Turns out I was wrong! Oops!

The best thing I've gotten so far is a Transcendence scroll in Spellweaving. Outside of that I've gotten ingots, leather, and gold.


Plant growing has continued. I'm 99% finished with moving the plant vendors over. I haven't moved over anything from my original plain colored plant vendor and every time I think to I'm in the middle of doing something else.


During one of MWG's streams, they mentioned that they wouldn't mind watching someone build and decorate a house. That stuck with me, and now whenever I'm doing a major deco session I go ahead and stream it. I'm still far from done and I run into lots of issues with creative road blocks, but once I get on a roll with a room/area there's no stopping me.


In a stroke of creative genius, I added a marshmallow duckling to the tubs on the 1st floor. I'm sure I'm not the only one to've thought of this, but I'm ridiculously happy about this little detail nonetheless.

Saturday, May 6, 2017

Ultima Online: May 6, 2017


Thanks to General Chat, I came across a lovely twitch streaming couple a few weeks ago. Ever since then, I've managed to miss their streams time and time again.

This week I hit the ManWomanGaming jackpot!

Tuesday they decided to do some treasure maps and mentioned in their stream that anyone was welcome to join. Two of us hopped in and helped them complete a few ingenious (level 6) maps.


After our treasure hunting shenanigans, Woman and I spent some time drinking and having a private party with her brand new bartender.


On Thursday I caught their stream again and helped them do some more level 6 maps. While they were doing some trade quests later in the stream, they happened to run by our castle and I gave them a little tour of what I had completed so far. I have not worked on the castle in a while, but I'm super happy with what I've completed so far.

That brings me up to today. April was not much of a UO month, and I can't guarantee that I'll keep playing enough to have semi-consistent posts, but whenever I do hop on I will try to post about it. This has been the longest time that I've consistently played the game in over 5 years. It has been a wonderfully rewarding experience and if I were to never return after today I would be happy with how my time on UO ended. I don't have any plans to quit playing, of course, but my point is I've enjoyed falling in love with the game again.

Friday, May 5, 2017

Ultima Online: May 5, 2017


There was an interesting auction the last weekend of April. This particular one had a litany of trolls interfering at several points and one presumably young one pestering Briar.


Outside of the various flame field potions, someone kept bringing greater dragons and shadow wyrms to the house, renaming it some variation of "Virtue's Live Auction Sucks", and releasing the creature near the steps. At one point it looked like someone had tried to call in a harbinger, but it only popped up for a second before disappearing.

In the middle of all this, a character started asking Briar how she could add in her items to the auction. She couldn't seem to grasp Briar's words of "it's too late to submit for this auction" and "those items you have (level 1 primers, newbie weapons) will probably not sell for much." The character kept insisting and I feel quite bad for Briar, as she was being patient with the person.

Eventually that person left in a huff and started advertising in general chat that she was having "bets" for her fantastic items in Luna. Somehow she got it in her head that bet=auction.

I can only laugh so much, as I have very "fond" memories of pulling almost this exact trick many a moon ago. Only the time I did it was before AoS and on the top floor of a tower. I seem to recall lots of caps on my part.


One thing I forgot to mention in all of this plant growing madness was the series of great deals I had on some seed boxes. I'm collecting seed boxes to better store and organize my seeds, so I've been keeping an eye on Vendor Search. Two seed boxes I bought had a lot of naturalist colored seeds (score!) and yet another seed box had a complete seed set. It not only completed my set of original seeds, it had all of the colored peculiar plant variations as well! Now the only things I'm missing are some bonsai and vanilla plants. Unfortunately for me, the colored vanilla plants are a complete random chance when cross-pollinating and do not produce more seeds once grown.

Monday, May 1, 2017

UOD: May 1, 2017


Publish 97 has been fully released, bringing with it some Easter clickys at Justice Falls. I'm really impressed by the swan graphic!


If anyone tries telling you the black graphic is rarer, it's not. No specific name or color was any more rare or common than another.

The clicky was available for 5 days (today being the last day, if I'm understanding the countdown correctly) and is usable on a per-char daily basis. In other words, if you have an account with all 7 character slots filled, you could have received 35 swans from that account alone. So if someone is trying to price hike, just keep in mind that there are a lot of swans in circulation.


On a less-important note, Publish 97 also brought the taming publish to all production shards! ;)

The world is slowly filling up with these new tameables, and general chat is constantly chattering with sales of said pets.

During this chatter, I caught someone asking for a rez in dungeon ice by a marcey.


I ran to marcey's aid, as did MadDog, someone I see frequently at Scalis events and champion spawns. We rezzed marcey, guarded her until she reached her corpse, and then helped her tame the white wyrm that had been her demise. It was a new teal-colored wyrm.


As her way of thanking us, marcey took us around Britannia to show us the spawn locations of the new animals she had located. As we talked about it, I mentioned that one of the animals MadDog was interested in spawned on T-map chests.

We decided to group up and run a few treasure maps to try and bring out the new tameables.


MadDog switched to his treasure hunter and marcey and I stayed on our current characters. The plan was for marcey to act as the tamer and once we were all done she would divvy out the pets we had tamed.


Unfortunately nothing that we wanted spawned, and it grew late enough for everyone to need to get off.

I quite enjoyed this adventure we embarked on. Here's hoping I run across them and we choose to go on these adventures again.

Sunday, April 30, 2017

UOD: April 30, 2017


In the last week of April I happened to come across a mass-Scalis "run" and joined in on the fun.

I didn't get anything over the course of several bosses, but it was fun participating in the mass destruction of sea-faring creatures.


By this time I had started feeling less butthurt about my plants and began working on them. It's been a slow process as I'm trying to stagger the plants' growth. I don't want to get stuck in a cycle of mass plant tending once every 9 days.


Nestor and I did our first level 7 T-Map. It was interesting, to say the least.

We managed to do one level 6 map after this before Nestor hopped off for the night and I found other adventures to embark on.


One of those adventures was a two-day EM event to bring in the start of a new story arc.


It went about as well as can be expected for an end-of-month EM event. At that point there had been no EM drops for April, and a lot of people were banking on a drop for this particular night.


As usual, there was too much going on and I was too laggy to really grasp what was happening. I do know that the person we were helping turned out to be a Big Baddie and he turned into a big green muscley alien straight out of Space Jam.


My biggest complaint for this particular event is that the fighting happened within town limits. My mage/bard couldn't cast Energy Vortex, Earthquake, or any other of her normal spells. With the crowds and Enemy of One spam, it was all I could do just to sit there and keep myself healed without crashing. I may have gotten one or two hits on the boss.


At one point the boss was teleported to a different area of the city and the fight ended there.


Poor Bennu was berated by one particularly upset man, insisting that Bennu was the worst EM ever and he should stop ever doing events. It was a combination of humorous and sad to see how riled up this person got.


In any case, the day continued and I stopped by the bank before heading back home. Of course, the ne'er-do-wells were at it again. I left before they truly trashed the place.

Saturday, April 29, 2017

UOD: April 29, 2017


I finished the desert oasis section on the castle. It's a quaint little escape from the "troubles" of Britannia.

I've been working on the castle on and off for a while. Progress has slowed incredibly, both due to my own boredom at decorating and lower play hours.


I had a moment of sad disappointment in myself. I started a fresh batch of seeds with the intention of cross-pollination. Unfortunately, I completely forgot about the plants and when I finally remembered to check on them each plant was already at its seed-producing stage.

Talk about a waste of one entire batch of plants. This situation discouraged me so much I haven't touched the plants in a long while.


Later in the month, there was a very... controversial? Popular? High profile? IDOC within Luna walls. General chat became an unbearable cesspool for days afterwards. Virtue's Live Auction fell in the middle of the drama that went on, leading to this little tidbit at the beginning of one night.


I've been buying up a lot of sand and grass tiles as part of my grand castle decorating scheme. While taking some older non-stackable tiles to the chest in Britain, I came across yet another disgusting scene.

*shakes head*

Those damn Orcs.

Tuesday, April 25, 2017

UOD: April 25, 2017 - Orcs Are Filthy


Why, you might ask, is my character sleuthing around West Brit Bank on a late Friday night?

Reconnaissance.

In actuality, I have wanted to see what these weekly "ORC PARTY!"s are all about.


Unfortunately, I was less than welcome within the shabby establishment and had to settle for sitting meekly against the bank walls. Apparently "ORC PARTY!" means "NO HUMIES ALLOWED!"

*grumble*

I'll show them.

At one point there was a full bench of orcs lamenting the humans and their disgusting treatment of orcs. All the while they drank, became rowdy, and left a right mess of Brit Bank!


As the night wore on, the orcs only trashed the bank further, and I began to understand why orcs were treated as subhuman. Who would want to associate with such reckless, messy heathens? What humans would do such a thing to a well known and loved establishment? Don't answer that.


What makes matters worse is they are absolute liars! As they "cleaned up" (I don't know about you, but that doesn't exactly look clean to me) one orc thanked another for the mask he had been given. A nice enough gesture, had it not been another Orc lie!

The moment the others gated away, he took off the mask, threw it on the ground, and walked away! Talk about rude!

I can say my desire to see what's so special about this weekly "ORC PARTY!" has dissipated.

Perhaps my silly mood will pass as well. :)

UOD: April 24, 2017


I was doing so well in catching up on my UO adventures... and then real life stole me away from the game. The downside: I'm still about a month behind. The upside: I haven't done very much this month so I'll catch up quickly... assuming I ever actually catch up.

Back to UO!! I tagged along for another EM event at the end of March. This time I paid attention enough to understand that there is some anti-Elf sentiment going on in Trinsic.


Why do I feel like I spend more and more time staring at a gray screen?

This particular situation frustrated me to no end. The particular creature that killed me was still under its invulnerable status. In other words, none of its poor victims could retaliate against it while it railed on us. I had spent a fair amount of time healing and rezzing people, but when I fell nobody moved and I had to find a nearby healer. There were complaints that the single healer wasn't enough, so EM Bennu spawned in several healers.

That same Enemy of One spam happened this time around and I crashed. By the time I got back into the game the boss was dead and everyone had gathered back in Britain. Phooey.



Yet another Virtue's Live Auction came up and I picked up a nice starter set of mini house deeds. Our set was lost one of the times we "quit" the game and lacked the foresight to store our valuables in the bank. Of course, since Ermac emphasized that this was not a full set of mini house deeds, we had to poke some fun at him and repeatedly ask if it was a full set.

Once I won the auction and walked up, I made sure to ask "So this is a full set, right? :P"

A rather short update. I'm getting back into the swing of things.

Friday, April 14, 2017

UOD: April 14, 2017


Building the castle has been completed!!

All in all building the castle has taken 26.5 hours across 16 sessions. Any additional work on the build will be credited towards my decoration timer.

Yes, I'm timing everything. I'm intrigued to know how long it actually takes to do what I'm trying to do.


Since the castle has been completed, I've gotten started on decorating. The 1st floor is getting there. According to Nestor, it's done, but he's the one who "decorated" the middle room and put in that row of fountains. If you ask me, they don't fit with the look I have going for the castle. One of these times he's asleep I will use his account to move the stuff he placed down.


I've decided to create a little desert oasis on one of the roof tops. It's coming along okay, but I want some finishing touches.


One of those finishing touches was at this auction. All auctioneer shenanigans aside, there was a set of water themed deco that was up for 75 million. Nobody seemed interested in it, and I couldn't decide whether I wanted it in time to place my own bid. I figured I would just attend the next auction and buy it up, but the item was no longer being offered by the time the next auction started.

I will have to instead scour Vendor Search frequently until the item pops up. Wish me luck!

Thursday, April 13, 2017

UOD: April 13, 2017


I spent one several hour session working on the castle, and it's nearing its final stages. I've started placing down short rough walls and cleaning up the design.


The one thing that has made the process so exhausting is double layers. Or as I call them, hiding layers. In short, the hiding layers help the design look more authentic to custom house designs - that is, while you're running around on the 2nd floor in a covered area, the roof or anything above it doesn't show. Because there's such a height difference between the 2nd and 3rd floor, upper floors would otherwise show themselves if you tried walking in formerly-uncovered hallways.


Nestor requested an oasis of sorts on the top of the build, so this is me raising the "grass" for said oasis. The reason I have to use gozas is because the height of this particular floor is beyond where grass tiles will stay. If I were to put grass tiles up there, they would disappear come server maintenance.

Some day I want to make a series of posts fully explaining the rules of house building, z axis levels, tips and tricks, and why certain things behave the way they do.


Nestor plays on the Enhanced Client. As you can probably tell, I play on the Classic Client. That's great and all, except in circumstances like above where I'm trying to sort through a bag that was filled via EC. It drives me crazy, and I can tell whenever he's been in a container that I've sorted because that bag starts to look more and more like this.

Wednesday, April 12, 2017

UOD: April 12, 2017


Work has continued on the castle. Nestor had to add his own flair (it is his castle) and threw down a bunch of parrots. I don't like them in that location, but I won't bother with relocating them until I've gotten more of the castle done.


Random champion spawns have continued, though they've died down a lot in the past few weeks. Even the constant sales of real estate seems to've slowed down. Either that or I've stopped paying attention to it.


One thing I do notice, though, is Shadow is forever in need of a home. I feel like it's a running joke on the server now, whenever someone announces a property that even remotely meets Shadow's advertised wants/needs. "Did you check with Shadow on that one?" "I know someone interested!" That kind of stuff. Shadow got on my nerves by spamming his desperate need for a house several times in a short window. I know he's gotten several houses, but through various means he's either dropped the house, resold it, or otherwise lost said house. Part of me wants to pick up a house spot that perfectly fits his wants just so I can lord it over his head.

Petty? Me? Nooo.

Okay, just a little.


Testing out the pet revamp has continued. I got my fill of training up and testing out animals I already own, so I started taming random animals to see how they would fare under the new training system.


Of course that means I have to train up a Super Cow and take him out for a spin.


It would be cool if there were a way on Test Center to set your pet's skills. That way I could really see the full potential of my Super Cow. As is, the cow may be trained up to higher slots but his skills themselves suck.