Patch notes 1997

This is the page for patches to Ultima Online during 1997. All patch notes for this page are available at[1].

1997 Patch Notes

9/25/97

• Optimizations and tweaks were done to reduce lag.
• We've fixed any server stability problems as they manifested (including the problem with secure trading).
• Ship holds are now only openable when on the ship.
• You can no longer teleport onto ships.
• The sign on player buildings is no longer pickable.
• The rate of item decay was slowed down.
• All types of gorgets are now available for sale.
• The variety of treasure in creature inventories has been increased, including higher circle spell availability.
• Released pets now have a neutral notoriety, instead of the notoriety of their former owner.
• Cooking now burns food on failure.
• Failure at bowyering and fletching now consumes wood.
• Failure at tailoring hides now consumes hides.
• Dice should work (for the board games).
• The skill advancement curve has been adjusted to make it harder to advance the higher you go.
• We have added support for Soundblaster AWE sound fonts. These are located on your CD.
• The skill advancement problems caused by the last patch are resolved and areno longer occurring. We are working on a solution for those who were affected by the problem.
• The weight problem with depositing large amounts of gold and then getting stuck will be fixed.
• Shops paying extremely high prices for items if you had a lot of them to sell is fixed.
• Counselors are able to understand ghosts.
• Orcs (regular ones, not orc captains) will loot corpses of creatures they kill or see killed. This is behavior that we will eventually make more widespread.
• The frequency of guards in the woods should be drastically reduced. Guards at road guardposts will stay by their guardposts.
• The frequency of magic items on creatures will be reduced.
• When purchasing items worth more than 2000 gold, the money will be automatically withdrawn from your bank account.
• The secure trading window will only function at short ranges.
• You can now remove items that are too heavy for you.
• You no longer lose items that are too heavy for you when you log back into the game.
• Horses that run out of loyalty now buck you off and run away.

10/10/97

• Counselors
  • are able to hear ghosts.
  • now get a light source.
  • log out instantly regardless of location
  • are set to neutral notoriety
• Items
  • Cleavers now work as bladed items (you can chop and carve with them).
  • Scissors are now sold by weavers.
  • Various new shop deeds are available, with larger spaces, counters, internal l ockable storage rooms, and other anti-theft and crowd-control layouts.
  • The "hint" message for bladed items will only come up when you use the item in correctly.
  • Chess, checkers, backgammon, and dice sets should now be sold in shops.
  • Communication crystals should work while in your backpack.
• Pets and hirelings:
  • Hirelings now destroy their equipment on death (this leaves them naked, but re solves an exploitation problem).
  • Hirelings now give the correct amount of days they will work when you pay them twice in a row.
  • The problem with your horse's name showing at the character select window is f ixed.
  • A new pet command, "transfer," was added. This completely transfers loyalty fr om one boss to another. This should be used to sell pets to other players, rather than "friend," which merely adds an additional master.
  • Animal trainers now understand the word "stable." They will charge you 30gp fr om your bank account to stable a pet, and will keep it safely (unless they are killed) and well-fed even while you are logged out. The word "claim" will retrieve all pets y ou have at a given animal trainer.
  • Horses truly buck you off when they run out of loyalty (no "ghost horse" is le ft behind).
• Notoriety:
  • When clicking on someone, their name appears red, gray, or blue, depending on the following:
    • if performing a bad action such as theft, attack, or snooping would lower your notoriety, they show in blue
    • if performing such an action on them would improve your notoriety, the name shows in red
    • if it would have no effect on your notoriety, it shows in gray
  • We fixed a problem whereby you could never regain good standing after crossing a threshold of being evil.
  • We corrected a problem whereby attacking untame but tamable animals affected your notoriety and could result in guards being called.
  • The 1/100 chance of notoriety increase has been removed, since there is now a notoriety time cap on improvement.
  • We regularized the notoriety title scale; this may result in your title having changed by one stage from what it was previously.
• Economy:
  • Adjusted code related to item pricing.
  • Adjusted the target stock calculation for shops.
  • Lowered base prices of all types of bows.
• Creatures and Ecology:
  • Reagent frequency has been increased.
  • Dungeon spawn rate has been increased.
  • Guards will now appear in banks.
  • Architects are a little more common.
  • Corpsers and reapers are little rarer.
  • Guards will now tend to stay put around their post, rather than wandering off. This means no more guards in the woods except right near guardposts.
  • Orcs, trolls, ettins, lizardmen, ratmen, orc captains, harpies, liches, mongba ts, headless, and daemons all loot now.
• Skills:
  • An exploit to quickly raise the skill was fixed in lumberjacking.
  • Failure at lumberjacking ruins some of the wood.
  • Adjusted the list of skills shown when you ask to train with an NPC.
  • Inscribe doesn't copy the scroll if you lack the reagents.
  • We removed an extra and erroneous hunger report in animal lore when it was used on pets.
  • The word "lumberjacking" now works to train in lumberjacking. (It used to only take "lumberjack" and "woodcutting").
• Spells and Scrolls:
  • Scrolls will now cost mana: 1/2 the mana of a regular spell.
  • Scrolls will only be usable by people who have mastered spells of at least two circles below.
• Miscellaneous:
  • Humanoid spellcasters such as liches, mages, etc, have an increased chance of having magic items. Magic items on other other creatures are correspondingly reduced.
  • Strange cursor items no longer appear in chests.
  • Several doors that didn't have sounds now do.
  • Various stability fixes were made.
  • Removed hanging chainmail from quest items.
  • Various map bugs were fixed.
  • Found a way in which players obtained the wrong death robe.
• Client patch:
  • Container windows will have open and close sounds.
  • The problems many had with windows such as the skills window or paperdoll not opening when you tried to open them will be fixed. This occurred when you closed the c lient with windows partially offscreen.
  • Some problems with friend notification were ironed out.
  • Shopkeeper status window maximizing when you bought or sold is fixed.
  • Ghost movement has been adjusted to restrict their movement a little more.

10/16/97

• Notoriety:
  • We're slowing the rate of notoriety drops from attacks.
  • We're adjusting the intervals in the title scale, so you'll see that your notoriety title may well change; this is only a change in the title, and not to your actual notoriety value.
  • The problems with notoriety not being affected by spellcasting are fixed.
  • We tweaked the notoriety curve somewhat to adjust some of the loss rates.
  • A bug in notoriety advancement that made it go up many times faster than it was supposed to will be fixed.
  • A bug with notoriety not falling under some circumstances will be fixed.
• Items:
  • The weapon or armor moving into inventory for no visible reason has been fixed.
  • Objects in houses will not decay as quickly.
  • Armor ratings for magic armor should be correct now.
  • The double axe will become two-handed.
  • Changed strength requirements and armor values for female armor.
  • Several sorts of knives and cleavers have had their swing rate slowed.
  • Female platemail now has the same dexterity penalties that male plate does.
  • Communication crystals will not use a whole stack of gems to recharge, but just the one.
  • Cloth will say how many yards of cloth are left.
  • The problem with all of your mandrake root being consumed at once will be corrected.
  • Items in player-made chests and other containers won't be vanishing anymore.
• Economy:
  • Jewelers purchasing from players.
  • Prices on magic items in shops should be correct.
  • Hair dye will be cheaper.
  • We think we've fixed another set of strange shop stocking (specifically reagents) and pricing (particularly stackables) issues.
  • Purchasing large items will check your backpack for the gold before automatically withdrawing from the bank.
  • Reagent supply in shops will be increased.
• Ecology:
  • Dragon and drake AI has been tweaked.
  • Iron maidens won't kill you outright, and they will have some warning to them.
  • Forest birds and jungle birds have been weakened.
  • The regrow rate on ore and lumber will be faster.
• NPCs, Guards, Pets and Hirelings:
  • The missing shopkeepers should be back.
  • Hireling stats have been revised; the upper end isn't as nice, the stats vary a lot more depending on which one you hire, and a good knowledge of anatomy in picking one to hire will help a lot.
  • Miner guildmasters will be more common.
  • Some cleanup code to get rid of the oldstyle guards still hanging around in the forest was done.
  • The pet "transfer" command will cause the pet to stop following.
  • The "transfer" command on pets will turn off their previous guarding and following orders.
  • Zoo creatures aren't tamable anymore.
• Miscellaneous:
  • Ships will no longer dump players back on land after a server restart (unless another player on the ship moves the ship before the other passengers log in).
  • Ghosts will be able to use the planks and give orders to the tillerman while manifested.
  • The problem some had with resurrecting immediately sometimes not working will be fixed.
  • You will get a message in the lower left corner of your screen when you cross into and out of justice regions.
  • We've now got sanity checking on the various ways of coloring items; this means that those who had found ways to get interesting skin shades and clothing hues won't be able to anymore.
  • Begging should be largely fixed.
  • The "infinite newbies" exploit is fixed.
  • Problems with weight involving horses will be fixed.
  • The area west of Trinsic that has no bridges over the river will gain them.
• Client Patch:
  • Items you can move will highlight under your regular cursor (not just ones in your backpack, but also items on the ground!)
  • Lag issues with light sources will be improved.
  • Target highlighting will turn the creature, player, or NPC under your cursor while in war mode red, so you can more clearly determine whether you are targeting the right thing.
  • The first stages of weather! At first it will be localized and purely cosmetic, and over time we'll have weather fronts and other effects.
  • Counselor paperdoll problems will be fixed.
• Some special notes:
  • Existing mandrake won't be fixed, only new mandrake. It won't stack and if you use it to cast, it will all count as one mandrake.
  • It will take some time for the shopkeepers to stock up to normal on the reagents. We'll keep an eye out to see if this is still having problems.
  • We've heard reports of "timewarp" still occurring, so we are not listing it as fixed yet.

10/29/97

Extra changes that just made it into this patch:

• A few banker problems were fixed. This includes problems with sometimes being unable to open safety deposit boxes.
• Safety deposit boxes now close when you get far away from the banker.
• The change making NPCs stop using spells if they figured out their victim was using magic reflect did not work and was removed from the patch.
• NPCs and creatures are now unable to open locked doors.
• The behavior of the "Call GM" button has changed. These changes are in order to sort the calls before a GM is paged, so that responses can be more timely.
  • When you click on it a window with radio buttons will come up.
  • You can cancel out of this window, but cannot move whilst it is up.
  • The radio buttons list categories of problems. Select the one you want and then hit OK.
  • Depending on the type of call, you will either be sent to a web page to mail in a bug report, or a counselor will be paged, or you will be able to enter a reason for your GM call and a GM will be paged.
  • Note that entering a reason for your call that does not match the category will result in your call being misfiled and not answered!
• An exploit involving resurrecting while polymorphed has been fixed. This was a popular way to break into houses.
• Field spells now have reduced damage based on magic resistance.
• Ships and houses now put a duplicate key in your safety deposit box when they are built. Note that existing houses and ships will not do this for you!
• Earthquake and field spells now also have reduced damage in towns.
• The paralyze spell has had its duration decreased, and its effect also diminishes based on magic resistance.
• A problem with stabling animals not returning your animal sometimes has been fixed.

These changes are the result of player feedback from testing. Many thanks to those who helped out! You're helping the game become better for everyone by doing so.

• Client patch required:
  • Target cancelling moves to the ESC key, instead of right-click. This enables you to move while in target mode. If you have a target cursor, ESC will not close the open windows until the cursor is gone.
  • Problems with certain macros not saving properly will be fixed.
  • The targeting highlight will change to be red, blue, or gray, just like when you click on people to look at their names. **This way you can tell at a glance whether your attack would result in a notoriety gain or loss.
• General:
  • A fix for timewarps (logging out and when returning, finding yourself at the position of the previous backup) will go in. We are not sure this will resolve the issue totally, but hope it will produce substantial improvement.
  • Safety deposit boxes! All banker functions remain intact as before. But in addition, if you say "bank" to the banker, he will open up your personal chest. Note that there is a limit on how much this chest can hold! Also, gold in your account and gold in the box are the same gold; there's just two ways of getting at it now.
  • When you build a house, the key will appear in your backpack instead of in front of the house.
  • We've added numerous lamps to the map, fixed some sign names, and fixed over a hundred other map bugs.
  • The "stuck green" health bar problem should be fixed for any who were still suffering from it.
  • Items vanishing from containers when the servers come back up will be fixed.
  • Hair dye no longer turns beards white.
  • You will now get a message when you target a player in combat, so you will know you have done it.
  • Several stability issues were fixed.
  • Click detection on sitting people will be improved.
  • You will now get a message when you try to open a spellbook that is not openable because it is too deep in your backpack.
  • We've added in some spam-reduction (and thus bandwidth reduction) for those who hold down a key to repeat the same action over and over.
  • Bolts look like bolts (not arrows) when fired now.
  • Various turnips, onions, and gourds will now behave slightly differently when used (harvest, then eat!)
• Skills and Stats.:
  • You won't be able to fish through docks anymore.
  • The atrophy curve for stat will be flattened. This effectively makes the stat cap higher in actual play and resolves the "stuck strength" issue.
  • We doublechecked all the metal costs for blacksmithing and fixed a tunic and a pair of gloves to have correct values.
  • Messages when you eat will now give your hunger level.
  • Healing rate when hungry will be slowed.
  • Healing rate when full will also be slowed.
  • The amount of food needed to become full has been greatly reduced.
  • You can't eat during combat anymore.
  • You can't steal during combat anymore.
  • Skill atrophy after you have gained a very large amount of skill points at once (such as from training) will be distributed across all your skills more evenly, rather than just hitting the highest or the next one you used especially hard.
  • Carpentry's wood costs should all be correct now.
  • There is now a helmet category in blacksmithing.
  • Some bugs in blacksmithing (repairing, and "empty lists") were fixed.
• Notoriety:
  • Committing a criminal act (an action that results in the loss of notoriety) will flag you for two minutes as a criminal. **During this time period, actions against you will not result in any notoriety changes at all. Note that looting is not currently defined as a criminal act! Also note that attacks of any kind are still illegal in guarded areas!
  • The reversed Dark Lord/Evil Lord title display is back to the way it used to be (as documented on the web site).
  • We fixed a bug in notoriety whereby it would not go up if you attacked an evil non-humanoid creature.
• NPCs and Creatures:
  • Herds of deer, flocks of sheep, herds of cows, packs of timber wolves, and small packs of undead will start roaming the land.
  • Evil mage towers that take prisoners for necromatic rites will appear.
  • Gypsy camps and brigand camps will appear.
  • You will be able to rescue prisoners and escort them back to the location they request, for a reward.
  • Orcs, lizardmen, and ratmen have been increased slightly in difficulty.
  • Creature spawn rate and thus overall creature populations will be increased.
  • Pets and summoned creatures should attack when ordered now.
  • Items in ships and houses should not decay at all now, unless the house or ship itself does.
  • Strange text in female NPC conversations should be fixed.
  • Dragon's breath and monster spellcasting now obeys line of sight.
  • Wandering healers won't resurrect people on ships or in houses.
  • You now get a message when riding and are out of stamina.
  • A portion of Despise will now have dragons.
  • A portion of Hythloth will now have daemons.
• Spells and Magic
  • Strange messages about trying to cast a spell when double-clicking on various items and NPCs will go away.
  • Field spells should now work properly, damaging when they are supposed to and only when people are actually in the field.
  • Magic reflection will work on spells cast by monsters.
  • Spellcasting creatures and monsters will be smart enough to stop throwing offensive spells at someone with magic reflection on.
  • Recall runes will use the name of the region you made them in, and you can use them in your pack.
  • You can only mark recall runes now.
  • Night Sight should be improved.
  • "Stat affecting" spells and items should be working better across the board. This will break existing magic items that alter your stats. :(
  • You can't mark on a ship anymore, nor in houses, as this was being used on to enter houses and ships that weren't there when the mark was made.
  • Resurrect in houses or on ships will only work if both people involved are in the house or on the ship.
  • Directly damaging spells cast at players in towns will do minimal damage.

11/5/97

• A general upgrading of creature difficulty.
• A much more detailed menu-based help system accessed via the Call GM button.
• Book titles and other more detailed names will show in shop windows.
• A major stability issue that also caused lag was resolved.
• Fixed an exploit whereby you could remove items from locked containers if the container was already open on your screen.
• Added a macro called "AllNames" that lets you bring up the names of everyone on screen instantly.
• Combat mode highlighting now works correctly on sitting people.
• Fixed some problems with combat highlighting, particularly on animals. The neutral hue is now different as well.
• Mining now has a small animation, a delay, sound effects, and autostacking of ore in your backpack.
• Fletching and lumberjacking also now have sound effects, animations, and require "process" time.
• Changed the animation used by the energy vortex.
• Teleporting too close to houses and ships is now impossible.
• Gate travel is now two-way, so that if someone tries to trap you on a roof you can just walk back.
• There are now four damage types: direct (ignores armor), physical, fire, and energy.
• Slashing, bashing, and piercing weapons now damage different types of armor materials at different rates.
• The damage taken by fire and energy attacks will depend in part on the sort of armor you are wearing.
• All offensive spells now affect notoriety and call guards, including non-damaging ones.
• A general revision to spell damages was done to tier them better. *Flamestrike in particualr is much nicer now.
• Ships and boats now put a spare key in your safety deposit box when you build them.
• You can double-click a recall rune and edit the text on it to label it whatever you want.
• The paralyze spell will take magic resistance into account.
• The problems with directions and locations being identified as "0 0 0 0" should be fixed. Note that existing recall runes will not be corrected (but you can now rename them as you prefer, see above).
• Lords British and Blackthorn's guards now match city guards in abilities.
• More undead should show up in cemeteries.
• "Good" brigands and pirates should stop appearing.
• There were apparently stregnth requirements on some items of jewelry; these have been removed.
• A few more types of creatures will start to travel in groups.
• You can now sell items that are in containers in your backpack.
• Practice weapons now always stay with you when you die, just like spellbooks do.
• Fixed some more messed up notoriety titles (Noble and Lord were reversed, and "looking"--the single-click--was giving you "Lord" status at a different point than your character window was).
• Paladins are tougher now.

11/12/97

This patch brings your client to version 1.25.16.

This patch was accompanied by wiping all characters' notorieties. This was deemed necessary to better judge the functioning of the system, to avoid hurting those who had suffered from unexplained notoriety drops with the new harsher notoriety system, and to give a good baseline for play henceforth.

• The "chain lightning" crash has been fixed.
• A new UO.CFG toggle has been added called NotorietyQuery. If you set this to on by editing your UO.CFG file to include the following line:

NotorietyQuery=on

you will have a yes/no window pop up when you attack someone that would cause your notoriety to fall. Note that this applies only to regular attacks at the moment, not to spells, and not to ordering :pets, hirelings, or summoned creatures to attack!

• Newbie items are not stealable.
• All issues with magic reflect in towns should be resolved.
• Several crashing bugs were fixed.
• Newbie items now transfer to the ghost rather than staying with the corpse.
• "Profession" titles are now only visible at extreme notorieties.
• We have a fix for creatures spawning outside of valid locations that we hope will ameliorate some of the problems. (The larger fix is still in progress).
• The total amount of creatures in the world has been increased. We will be monitoring this closely to judge server load.
• Items in containers in your backpack will now show in the sell window.
• The AllNames macro will not work on invisible things.
• The base penalty for resurrecting with penalties has changed from 25% to 10%, plus the standard resurrection penalty.
• The "snoop bug" for fixing notoriety is corrected.
• The cap on snooping is back to dastardly; it had gotten out of sync with the names when we changed the definition of specific titles a while back.
• Corrected a problem with mining whereby it wasn't working at the full range it was supposed to. Also increased the range by another virtual yard.
• The harbormaster will be drydocking ships.
  • Saying "dock" to a harbormaster will bring up a targeting cursor.
  • It costs 100 gold to drydock a ship. This value is up for debate, and we'd like to see feedback on it.
  • The deck of the ship must be clear of all items. You can leave items in the hold.
  • You must have the key to the ship in order to drydock it.
  • Walk over to the ship and target it to drydock it.
  • You will be given a claim ticket. The ticket names the location where you drydocked the ship.
  • Use the claim ticket to place your ship again.
  • You can only place the ship again near where you drydocked it.
• Ships will no longer cause the radar window to open and close.
• Double-clicking a key and then targeting the key again will let you name the key.
• You can no longer magic lock something already locked.
• We fixed a cause of items dropping through house floors.
• Doors now close on ghosts.
• The damage on magic trap has been adjusted.
• The interaction of chain lightning and magic reflect works now.
• Mindblast no longer calls the guards on the victim if the caster takes damage from it.
• Armor blocks some magical damage now.
• Magic arrow now has reduced damage if resisted.
• Temporary stat mods now affect stamina, armor rating, and health. *Note that this was not a bug, but it confused so many people, we changed it anyway. ;)
• Guards will now answer calls to catch people on roofs.
• Various NPCs will now be posting on the bulletin boards hiring people for escort jobs.
• You should see more variety in the types of prisoners held by various mean NPCs and creatures..
• The amount of metal in piles of ore in adjusted:
  • two small piles yields one ingot
  • one medium pile yields one ingot
  • one large pile yields two ingots
• The weight of the above piles has also been adjusted to match.
• Increased variety in creature treasures.
• Various other types of creatures will now have rewards when killed (such as logs from reapers, etc).
• Wisps have been weakened.
• The warlord keeps have been upgraded a bit.
• Fixed the mystic llama herders and bearded ladies.
• Made flying creatures avoid flying over water and mountains.
• Healers who are of notoriety neutral or higher will refuse to resurrect players who are notoriety below Dastardly, with the message *"Thou'rt not a decent and good person. I shall not resurrect thee."
• Healers who are of notoriety neutral or higher will ressurrect players who are Dastardly and Dishonorable, but will say "Thou hast strayed from the path of virtue, but thou still deservest a second chance."
• Regular virtue shrines will refuse to resurrect players who are below Dastardly, with the message "Thy deeds are those of a scoundrel; thou shalt not be resurrected here."
• Blackthorn's shrine will resurrect anyone, but it will say this to players of notoriety below Dastardly: "Thy deeds are those of a scoundrel, but in the interests of diversity, thou mayst be resurrected here."
• Made bankers not respond to ghosts.
• Bankers will not respond to players who are too far away.
• The increased damage from energy and fire attacks on metal armor will be toned down.
• House longevity will change to nine days (it used to be three).
• The AllNames macro will be limited to on-screen only.
• A fix for following NPCs and creatures getting stuck on server boundaries.
• The delay on lumberjacking will be reduced.
• The amount of ore available in the accessible portions of mountains will be doubled.
• An exploit related to getting items out of locked containers was fixed.

11/21/97

• This patch brought the client to version 1.25.20. Information on what it contained has been lost.

12/9/97

This patch and fixes made to it bring your client to version 1.25.19.

• Known Issues
  • Sitting to the north and west looks a little goofy. Since there are no animations for sitting at all (it was done by sprite distortion), and since the chairs were not drawn to support this, it will never look perfect.
  • The problem with being able to drop items in invalid locations (see below) that was fixed means that there are now a lot of items players have left in invalid locations. These items will still be vulnerable to theft or being taken, until players move them.
• Last minute changes
  • Graphical glitches with some types of hats when sitting north and west have been resolved.
  • Wooden shields have been removed from the blacksmithing skill, pending their move to the carpentry skill.
  • Guard calling should work correctly if there is no victim now.
  • Stealing will now work with pack animals.
  • The lack of ore should be resolved.
  • Aggressive spells cast from wilderness into a safe area will now call guards properly.
  • You can't herd tamed animals.
  • Magic arrow damage is fixed.
  • Pets will no longer carry out cancelled orders the next time you give them a certain different order (this caused pets to attack sometimes when you were giving them a different order).
  • A cause of server slowdown has been fixed.
  • A harbormaster problem found during testing has been fixed.
  • A problem with text collision detection introduced by this patch was fixed.
  • A problem with the incognito spell was fixed.
  • Archprotect will no longer cause permanent loss of AR.
  • A problem in bounty hunting was fixed.
  • Recalling using previously marked runes to the location of a newly made building will no longer work.
  • Pets will now follow players through gates made by gate travel.
  • A problem that allowed players to drop items in invalid lcoation (such as partway through walls) was fixed. This led to the ability to "take items through walls."
  • A data glitch was found that caused some items to have extremely high or low amounts of hit points--skullcaps in particular were very high --which led to strange prices for these items. Expect numerous changes in item prices and in item resistance to damage as a result of this.
• Virtue guards
  • To join the virtue guards (either Chaos or Lord British's) you must have the highest possible notoriety--just "great lord" will not do.
  • Find an NPC guard of the type you wish to join, and say "virtue guard" to them. if you qualify, you will be given a shield.
  • If you drop the shield, give it away, or die, it vanishes. This includes putting it in the bank.
  • If you fall below great lord while wearing the shield, it blows up and kills you.
  • Those who have Order shields may attack and kill those with Chaos shields without suffering any notoriety penalty, and vice versa. Note that if you kill them a second time, you WILL suffer, since the shield vanishes when they die. You can do this even in towns, so you can, if you wish, choose to storm Blackthorn or British's castles.
  • You must have the shield equipped to be considered a virtue guard! It won't vanish if you have it in your backpack, but it won't be conferring the benefits either.
• Client changes (will require a client patch to be visible)
  • A circle of transparency will allow you to see yourself behind buildings and other large obscuring objects, and manipulate items that are behind it.
  • Set the UO.CFG option UseCircleTrans=yes to enable it. (There is not yet a macro key for it).
  • This may affect your graphical performance, depending on your machine.
  • When ghosted, there's some nifty partial coloring effects.
  • You can now sit in all four directions by merely walking up to the chair, bench, log, or rock in the appropriate direction.
  • The AllNames macro now brings up the names of all creatures, players, and NPCs, plus also corpses.
  • You can now target the names of creatures and corpses, so you can hit AllNames, and then open your corpse behind a wall.
  • There is now a scrolling tab and scroll bar on the server choice menu.
  • The client title bar will display the server name.
  • Bow and salute now work for GMs and counselors
• Quests
  • A fix was made to keep escorted NPCs from just wandering off.
  • Unwarranted notoriety losses from doing fetch-and-carry and delivery quests have been fixed.
  • You no longer double-click the escort NPC to get him to follow, since people were doing that to look at them. Instead, you must say "I will take thee."
  • Excess prisoners and escortees now clean themselves up. (The excess nobles were because of this)
• Ships and houses
  • Ships are now movable with the plank extended.
  • You can no longer use gate travel to break into houses.
  • Ship planks are now locked upon creation.
  • The gate travel breakin exploit is fixed.
  • The recall breakin exploit is fixed.
  • Masterless pets and hirelings no longer wander onto ships.
• Server issues
  • The delay on character deletion will now be seven days instead of one.
  • Players will now receive a message if they reconnect from a lost connection.
  • With much help from players, a cause of slowdown when crossing internal server boundaries was tracked down. This slowdown dated from the installation of the safety deposit boxes feature. If you closed your client or rebooted your machine during this slowdown, it caused "timewarps" on occasion. We have put in a fix for the slowdown--the cause of the timewarps is still unresolved.
• Game mechanics
  • Notoriety changes
    • If you are below dastardly, newbie items are no longer exempt from falling to your corpse.
  • Spells
    • Beneficial spells case by good people on bad people will now lower notoriety slightly. The rule is, if your target highlight is red, it will result in a notoriety loss. There is a cap on loss that is based on the circle of the spell. Affected spells are:
      • heal
      • night sight
      • reactive armor
      • agility
      • cunning
      • cure
      • protect
      • strength
      • bless
      • arch cure
      • archprotect
      • greater heal
      • incognito
      • resurrect
      • invisibility
    • An across the board revision was done to spell damages.
    • The method by which area effect spells damage you has been changed to account for distance from the center of the effect.
    • All spells should now be cancelable.
    • The paralyze effect now cancels when you are attacked
    • Incognito was thoroughly went over to ensure that it could not be used to prevent notoriety changes.
    • When stepping into a gate that goes from a guard-protected region to an unguarded region, you are now given a confirmation window to ensure that you don't step into a trap.
    • Problems with chain lightning, earthquake, and fire field were fixed.
    • Spells cast by NPCs will now remove magic reflection from players, just as spells cast by other players do.
    • Recall now only recalls to empty locations.
    • The resurrect spell now asks the target whether or not they wish to be resurrected.
    • A trick that let you cast magic reflect on others has been fixed.
  • Skills
    • Stat and skill advancement for fighting other players has been drastically reduced.
    • You can now spin flax into thread.
    • The big notoriety penalty for provoking guards is back.
    • The messages for item condition in armslore should all be correct now.
  • Bounty hunting
    • When someone is killed by another player, they may choose to report the crime if
      • The victim is dishonorable or better notoriety
      • The victim is not as bad a murderer as the person who killed them
      • The victim is not currently flagged a criminal (two minutes since they committed a criminal act)
    • At death, a window will pop up giving the choice to report the crime or not. A player can choose to not report a killing if it was accidental, or if they feel it was especially well-roleplayed, or if it was part of a guild war, etc.
    • If a killer accumulates too many reports:
      • All of their goods in the bank will be confiscated on the spot.
      • The gold they may have had in the bank is added to the local bounty for their head.
      • The killer's notoriety falls instantly to Dread Lord. (It is not "stuck" there--you can still rise if you can manage it).
      • A bounty is posted on the closest bulletin board listing the killer's name, a physical description (hair color, hairstyle, skin color), a tally of kills, and the names of some of their victims.
    • Reports "age" out, but once a bounty is set on you, it remains even if you don't kill anyone else for a long time.
    • Every time you get reported after a bounty is set, your bank is cleaned out again, and a local bounty is reissued. This can result in the bounty price continuing to rise. Bounties are local, meaning that different cities may have different rewards and different kill tallies for a given outlaw.
    • The outlaw must be killed under the following circumstances:
      • The person who kills him must be a player (of course)
      • The person who kills him must have a lower tally of reported murders than the outlaw does.
      • The person who kills him must be above neutral notoriety.
    • When the outlaw is killed under the above circumstances
      • They lose 10% from all stats and skills on the spot, regardless of resurrection methods.
      • A head labelled with their name is automatically placed in the backpack of the bounty hunter.
    • The head must be returned to a guard whose beat is near the bulletin board where the bounty is posted. Since bounties are local, returning the head to the wrong city won't work. You can also choose to return it to any of the cities where a bounty is posted, choosing the best based on the reward offered. Also, some cities may have multiple "precincts" if they have multiple bulletin boards; find a guard near the board that has the bounty posted.
    • Only the bounty hunter can turn in the head.
    • The bounty hunter must be of better than neutral notoriety when the head is turned in.
    • Fake heads won't work.
    • The gold posted for the local reward will be given to the bounty hunter by the guard.
    • Bounties may remain posted in other cities even though the reward has been claimed, but a given bounty can only be claimed once in the world, unless the killer returns to their ways. This will likely result in a killer who has bounties in multiple cities getting killed over and over again by eager reward claimants, for no gain. Our advice is, don't end up with lots of bounties on your head. :)
  • Combat
    • The type of damage no longer modifies the amount of damage taken by the player (so fire attacks no longer cause extra damage if you are wearing metal armor, etc.)
    • Fighting now checks invisibility and hiding.
    • All damage has been mathematically halved to slow down combat across the board. This takes place after damage absorption by armor.
    • The damage done by all types of bows has been increased.
    • The chance of damage to armor and weapons has been halved. (This went in over Thanksgiving).
• Manipulable game items
  • The message you get when you try to open a spellbook that is not in your pack has changed.
  • Silver weapons now do double damage against undead.
  • Wands changes:
    • They must be equipped to be used
    • The are all cancelable now
    • They all obey line of sight
  • Magic items that identify now take charges, and will obey line of sight. This will break all existing magic items of identification as they will appear to be out of charges.
  • Magic items are no longer destroyed when they run out of magical energy.
  • The explosion potion now does fire damage.
  • The explosion potion's damage in towns is reduced.
  • Shrines now ask the ghost whether or not they wish to be resurrected.
  • Scissors now also update the cloth yardage.
  • The "scrambled" bulletin board post titles will be fixed.
• NPCs and creatures
  • Fixes were put in to alleviate the "spawn point" overcrowding, which turned out to actually be habitat overcrowding. Creatures should be more evenly distributed now.
  • NPC spellcasters, and dragons and drakes, will now only attack things in a smaller radius using their special attacks.
  • NPC spellcasting has been slowed.
  • Stable masters will no longer accept summoned creatures for stabling.
  • Harbormasters should be staying put on the docks.
  • Harbormasters will no longer drydock ships that are too far away from them.
  • Summoned guards now clean themselves up much faster.
  • Pack horses and pack llamas can now be purchased.
    • They are exactly like any other pet in all respects: they need fed, you can name them, and they obey the same commands.
    • Doubleclicking them when not in combat mode opens their pack. This pack's capacity depends on the strength of the pack animal and the normal limitations of the pack capacity.
    • An overloaded animal will tire and slow down.
  • Cloaks will be a lot less common in corpses.
  • Brigands are now always of low notoriety.
  • Brigands in camps are no longer hirable.
  • All healers will be either Great lords or Dread Lords, so that you can easily identify whether they can resurrect you (no more, "hmm, this one is gray...")
  • Harbormasters are now guildmasters of the Maritime Guild.
  • Healers now ask the target whether or not they wish to be resurrected.
  • You can now use the banks from twice as far away.
  • Animal handlers are much tougher now.
• Map changes
  • Some inaccessible parts of dungeons will no longer spawn creatures.
  • Fixes were done to teleporters in Despise.
  • Skara Brae now has a bulletin board.
• Special hidden cool features
  • Don't be shocked if your chaos and order shields are confiscated, it is in a good cause. :)
  • Rumor has it that a long lost city has appeared again.
  • You didn't think we were going to tell you more here?

12/16/97

• Client changes
  • Some coloring issues with the transparency circle related to ghosthood and hued objects were fixed.
  • The interaction between the transluccency bubble and popped foliage was fixed.
  • Target highlighting for the criminal flag is now in place. You won't ever see a blue highlight on someone with the criminal flag.
  • We have added the capability to have target highlighting for any action, so it will start to manifest for spells, skills, etc, that may affect notoriety. These additions will be gradual and will appear over time.
  • You can't get "stuck" on text anymore, as it does not register the mouse right-click on it.
  • Options menu
    • There is now a completely new options menu graphic.
    • There are now toggles for your footsteps sounds, for the bubble of transparency, and for the notoroety query popup window.
    • The "Call GM" button has been changed to read "Help" instead, to better reflect what it actually does.
• Skills
  • The "training exploit" is now fixed.
  • Fletching is now difficulty based--of course, it's a very simple task. All it is is attaching arrows to shafts. :) So the success rate at 0 skill is around 50%, and at around 40% success is almost guaranteed. Bowyering was already difficulty based.
  • Provoking guards once again carries an extra notoriety penalty.
  • Player made traps
    • A tinker can now use his tools on ingots, and get three new choices on the menu.
      • explosion traps require a purple potion
      • dart traps require a crossbow bolt
      • poison traps require a green potion
    • Once you make a trap, you are prompted as to the object to put it on. You can only trap unlocked objects that are not in their home locations (meaning, owned by the game--chests and doors in towns are examples of objects at their home locations.)
    • The trap will go off if someone attempts to use the object while it is unlocked.
    • If the object is locked, the trap will not go off when someone tries to use the item (they get the "it's locked" message). But it becomes very difficult to pick the lock unless the thief has a good Detect Hidden skill. If the thief has both skills at a good level, he may succeed at both unlocking the item and also disarming the trap.
    • If you manage to pick a trapped lock without detecting the trap, the trap will go off when the item is used.
    • Using the right key on the trapped object will unlock the object and the trap will not go off.
  • Armslore
    • The full range of armslore messages should now be reported.
    • It now reports "brand-new" if an item has not been damaged.
    • This now works on items in a shopkeeper's sell window. So does item identification.
  • Crafting
    • Wooden shields are now made by carpentry.
    • We think the cause of unwanted anvil creation is fixed.
    • The lack of ore in the mountains should be improved. Please note that it is quite possible to "mine out" a region! If you want a reliable supply of ore, you may have to start up a business ferrying it from an island, or from a little-visited mountain range.
    • Scissors now update how many yards of cloth are left.
    • Flax should be spinnable now.
    • Birds will provide many more feathers now
  • Herding
    • You can no longer herd tame animals.
    • Herding is now difficulty based. You will only improve from tackling increasingly tougher animals to herd. The scale of difficulty is similar to that for animal taming.
  • Stealing
    • Stealing now works with pack animals.
    • Targeted stealing no longer works with locked containers.
    • You explicitly cannot steal from shopkeeper inventories.
    • It now obeys line of sight.
    • You can once again snoop into containers within containers, though naturally the difficulty becomes greater the deeper you go.
• Combat
  • A tweak was done to the way random values were rolled for weapon damages. As a result, weapons should be doing slightly higher damage, on average, but also with wider ranges. This will also result in higher prices for weapons.
  • Creatures will no longer go after a new opponent if they are already in combat. They also choose combatants based on proximity.
  • The price calculations for weapons and armor now better accounts for speed, damage, and AR. The value now takes into account the coverage the item provides, which should give a better indication by price of the actual utility of the item. This means that the range of weapon and armor costs was extended at the upper end, with plate now costing more than chain.
  • Many monsters were not doing enough damage to get through armor, so the amount of damage armor absorbs overall was reduced. The result was that armor does not protect as much in combat as it used to, and a fully armored fighter should expect to be considerably more at risk than before.
  • Archery
    • Arrows now inflict the damage one second after the arrow is lanuched, instead of when the attack is launched.
    • If an arrow misses, there is a good chance that it will be left on the ground just past the target.
    • If an arrow hits, there is a (lesser) chance that it will be stuck in the corpse. This doesn't work with players, who automatcally break arrow shafts that hit them. ;)
  • Melee damage now occurs after the swing animation, instead of before.
  • Standard weapon combat was slowed slightly.
  • Equipping a weapon in combat will restart your weapon swing.
• Magic
  • A bug with magic reflect and hiding was fixed.
  • Invisibility now also affects notoriety when cast on folks with low notoriety.
  • Friendly humans in town (shopkeepers, etc) do not take damage from spells in town now.
  • Inscribe has been fixed up, which should remove the duplicate spells in spellbook problem.
  • A problem with incognito interacting with the notoriety loss from aiding bad people was fixed.
  • Field spells now check for the location of the field for calling guards, and don't check spell resistance.
  • Area effect damage spells (chain lightning, meteor storm, and earthquake) now do less damage the farther from the center of the effect the victim is.
  • Archprotect has been fixed from messing up AR.
  • Magic resistance is now difficulty based--it only improves if you resist tougher spells--based on spell damage and spell level.
  • Nondamaging spells (including damaging spells in justice regions) no longer increase magic resistance, though they do check against it.
  • Gate travel moongates now take pets with you. Note that recall does not!
  • You cannot ride while polymoprhed, and polymorphing automatically dismounts you.
  • Gate travel will not work if something is blocking the old marked location.
  • Spell damage against non-players has been doubled.
  • Reagents have been made cheaper.
  • Health and mana above a player's normal maximum will wear off very quickly.
  • Casters of fire field, paralyzation field, and poison field are now flagged criminal for the duration of the field.
  • Damage from standing in a fire field (as opposed to walking into it) has been reduced, to help those who land in them when they step out of dungeons.
  • Players are exempt from notoriety decrease for beneficial spellcasting on their pets, if their pets happen to be bad things.
  • Incognito cannot be cast on virtue guards.
  • Summoning now tries to find a valid nearby location. They can only be summoned into a house or ship if the caster is in the house or on the ship.
• Creatures
  • Vendors (you can now hire NPCs to run your shop)
    • Tavernkeepers now sell "a contract for employment."
    • Use this contract near a house you own to create a vendor.
    • Vendors must be paid: they cost 100 coins per day, plus 1% of the value of everything they've got. This is withdrawn from they gold they hold for their employer.
    • If a vendor runs out of gold, he will destroy the gold he's holding and kill himself, leaving all the goods he's got on the corpse.
    • Vendors answer to their name, "vendor" and "shopkeeper"
    • Employers can give items to their vendors, and are prompted for an asking price and a description.
    • Employers and customers alike can open up the containers in a vendor.
    • Employers can freely take items from a vendor.
    • Employers can give containers full of items to vendors, and set a price on the container as a whole.
    • Customers can buy items from a vendor using gold they have on their person or in the bank.
    • Customers can use appraise and identify on items a vendor sells.
    • Customers can open items in a vendor's inventory if they are for sale.
    • You can shove through vendors.
    • You cannot steal from a vendor.
    • Vendors have the gold given to them from purchases, and employers may of course collect it (though they shouldn't collecy all of it, as noted above)
  • There's a new orc mage now. Also an orc lord.
  • Rumor has it that the orc fort is becoming more populated...
  • A bug was fixed whereby giving a pet an order, then cancelling it, then giving a fresh order sometimes resulted in the execution of the first order.
  • Pack animals
    • Looking at what a pack animal carries will not check snooping for the owner, but will for everyone else.
    • You can no longer put items in pack animals that do not belong to you.
    • They should be identified properly now when looked at or listed in a shop window.
• Ships and houses
  • The decay timer on ships and houses now resets only when the door or plank is used by the owner. The owner gets a message when this occurs.
  • The tillerman and the house sign now display the current decay state of the ship or house.
  • You can now double-click the tillerman to enter the name for a ship. You will be prompted in the lower left corner of your screen.
  • Looking at the tillerman will now give the name of the ship.
  • The name of ship now appears on the claim ticket when it is drydocked.
  • The tillerman no longer tells stories if no one is on the boat.
• Ghosts
  • Ghosts now automatically leave combat mode when resurrected.
  • You are now frozen after the yes/no resurrection window comes up.
• Map
  • Serpent's Hold, Minoc, Magincia, Moonglow, and Ocllo have all gained banks.
  • It will no longer be possible to build houses in Wind.
  • More monsters will appear in Wind.
  • A portion of Wind is now a justice region.
  • It will no longer be possible to build houses in dungeons.
• Quests
  • Escort and prisoner quest NPCs will no longer have generic human behaviors, so they should be a lot less distracted and talkative.
  • Escort quests now raise notoriety when completed.
  • Escortees and prisoners clean themselves up after the quest ends now.
  • Anytime an escortee or prisoner hears the voice of their leader, they will refollow you.
  • Some bugs were fixed which made them delete themselves after being spoken to.
  • Murder quests are going away.
• Miscellaneous
  • Banks now have a strict weight limit for items other than gold, set at 1000 stones. Gold is exempt from any weight limit. This should not cause any problems to the existing bank accounts.
  • Guards should now be called correctly if there was no victim to the crime.

12/18/97

• Dragons and drakes have gotten a lot meaner, and a lot harder to tame and keep tamed.
• Idle animations will now be less frequent when more people come onto the screen, to reduce lag from crowds.
• You cannot trap locked objects anymore with the new tinker's traps.
• We've made some more small adjustments to creature population.
• The Orc Lord and Orc Mage have been slightly adjusted in difficulty.
• There is now a Tips Wizard that comes up when you log into the game. *This window is minimizable and resizable, and has a "Do not show again" toggle.
• There is now an Update Wizard that displays the latest update information if you have not yet seen it.
• The skills window now displays 1/10 point increments.
• We fixed a case where the yes/no notoriety query popped up erroneously.
• You may want to check in your backpack! Happy holidays!
• The duration of field spells is now dependent on caster level.
• Area effect spell damage now scales down the further you are from the center of the effect.
• Field spells are no longer capable of occupying the same space. They also do less damage.
• Town criers are now going to start appearing in the game.
• Various parts of the map have been designated "no player housing" regions.
• Don't be surprised if you hear "Ho ho ho!" around the corner.
• Training dummies in player houses should all work immediately now.
• Large smithies are once again available.
• Spinning wheels should all work properly again.
• The bounty system now has messages to indicate why you were unable to report a murder.
• Not getting any message at all can still happen, which helps us track down the causes of not being able to report.