When I have problems getting hard I just read this thread.
If I could go back in time I would have taken screenies constantly.
In the spirit of long rambling posts, i'll write a bit about MY PERSONAL UO HISTORY.
My first PVP experiences (not getting PK'd, but actively wanting to PVP) came on Oceania! I had played uo with a friend during T2A, but didn't have my own PC. When I finally got one (my sister was given one, a total piece of shit machine), my step dad started playing UO because his friend from work did. His friend played Oceania because it was easier to get a house (COS ITS FUCKING AUSTRALIA) so I played there too. I had a character called scammer, which was an internet alias I had used for a bit. I didn't have any idea about scammers in UO, so was confused why some people didn't like me.
Anyway, a combination of shit PC and super high ping meant I didn't know simple things like the fact that horses made you faster.
Cos me my sister and stepdad were all hooked on UO, he bought a new PC and got fast internet. It was ADSL, and was almost 10x faster than previous internet (512dsl). But actually it wasn;t that much faster..
I PVP'd against guildmates, some of whom had actually been to Feluccia! I had GM parry and swords, so I was really good against dexxers. I didn't really understand about tram and fel. Before there had been PKs, but now there werent any.
ANYWAY, it wasn't until a friend from school also told me he played uo did i think about moving shards. he told me about test shard, where you could make your character super strong, so i went on there to check it out.
WTFFFFFF. Not only was it fun to make your character awesome, but it was so FAST. I was one of the fastest people there. Someon said that if I am fast there, I would be even faster on europa, which is for european people.. so I made char on there!
INTRODUCING ALAKASTER!
I remember spending ages getting my stats up early on. I didn't know how to ping pong skills, so i just raised macing high for str and fencing for dex. Ended up having high dex so that's what I took.
After all the PVM bullshit was done, I started going to fel a bit. OFC char wasn't anywhere near "done", but I think I probably had gm tact anat fenc by the time I started pvp'ing. It was pretty easy and very fun. Did a lot of pvp'in at brit gate, which is where I first met JOE (ALL CAPS LOL). JOE was a mage and had really good skills AND green hair. I thought he must be really good, although I think we never really fought. He was friends with m00, who owned one of the houses near the gate.
I got friended to a different house and did a lot of pvp there. Eventually I was bored and saw lots of faction action going on,so joined TB (It was the only faction who had a base I could find).
MEANWHILE, IN TRAMMEL...
I had been reading lots of forums, and had read stories from people like Galad, Belan etc, and thought that looked cool. I had also never had a mage before, so I made one.
MERLARK!!!
He had the basic mage skills, as well as music and prov. Early on I spent a lot of time killing ogre lords to make gold, as well as arctic ogre lords. When my prov and music got higher, I also killed DRAGONS. But Merlark was a pure PVM/Loot char, I never tried pvp'ing with him, and wouldn't for many years... At one point I trained a bit of lockpick as well, and enjoyed hunting monsters in khaldun.
BACK IN FEL....
I made a thief, and named him after my RL friend because a) he was an idiot and b) it sounded generic. Meet ADRIAN.
Only Joe and Slamer will know this char. I spent a lot of time training him up before I started doing proper stealing. I didn't have the patience (or know how) to train stealth, so I thought i'd make him a disarm thief. I believe his skills were stealing/snoop/hide/heal/anat/wrestle/arms lore. Stealing was very fun. I didn't really take many pictures, but I had my own way of stealing. I'd usually run past someone while spamming last object on their backpack and stop a few tiles away. The backpack remained open if I didn't move so I would have time to target what I wanted, then run past again and steal. It was simple but effective, and I was much better than most of the other thieves which littered the moongates and cities. I had a few thief friends, one being Ghost (S!S) and Billie Piper (S!S). Ghost died a fucking lot, but could stealth, so that was kind of cool. Billi Piper had two chars, one who was a thief and one who wasn't, but they both looked the same. So people would attack her thinking it was the thief and then die or get a count. That was always very funny to me.
I made a lot of money on my thief, it's probably how I first came in to riches. Most people weren't that used to disarm thieves. I stole so many axes from Ragnar from Minax and other factioners. They were always WTF to see me attack them as I ran past and steal their weps in one motion. To me it was really simple (target their wep and then run past with disarm toggled and use skill > steal > last target). I also started scamming.
DA DA DAAAAAA!
I didn't do any hardcore scams, but thought hard about how to make money easily. What I ended up doing was offer to sell my house to people (sometimes it was my house, sometimes it was just any house), and ask them to put the checks spaced out in a bag, so I could properly count them. Then I'd cancel trades and steal the pouch. It was so simple but it worked. A lot. At the time the thief forum had a contest every week for the best theft, and I think I won it a record amount of times (MORE THAN CRAZY JOE LOLOLOL). People started to question how I was always stealing these pouches, and I told a few of them. They went crazy for it on the american shards and I had a few friends make 50 mil + in a few weeks from doing that scam.
The best thing I ever stole was a blessed item. I remember that I was in Jhelom and saw a DJ at the moongate (I think it was Luke Skywalker, or something like that). He had a magic kryss on him so I stole it and jumped in the moongate (LOL SKILLED). When I got home I id'd it and it was a blessed +10 vanq kryss (durable). But I had stolen it. I tested the item out and it was more like newbied. If I died it stayed in my pack but it could be stolen. I contacted a gm and told him that the item wasn't blessed properly and he fixed it. BAM. Nice weapon for Alakaster. I kept that kryss for ages, but somehow lost it (LOL SLAMERESQUE). Possibly someone stole it from my house in brit gate ,I forgot.
OVER IN PVP LAND.......
I was owning factions. I ALWAYS 100% raped this shadowlord fencer named Storm. In the end I stopped killing him because he didn't give me any score and would just be friendly with him, and we'd usually attack mutual enemies. I didn't realise until quite a bit later that the thief which sometimes stole my shit (Ghost) was actually that REALLLLLLY SHIT fencer (Storm).
But factions was going well. I was pretty RESPECTED and one time narrowly missed out on being voted Commanding Lord, which I was pretty gutted by, although I had no idea what it actually would mean, and viewed it as a popularity contest.
I could win most fights because I was really fast (most people didn't have such good cons) and also had magery on my template, something I thought was very clever. I think my temp was something like gm fenc tact anat heal resist 70 magery 80 hiding 50 med, or something like that. I believe I gm'd resist with my moongate homies help (thanks JOE). But yeah it was crazy. At some point I bought UOA (I think Joe encouraged me to do it so he could train my mages magery for me, I was too stupid to use 8x8 macroer) and I was basically unkillable. Bandages, magery AND pots gave me so many ways to heal, it was awesome. Then I thought "What if I had even more magery and mana, I'd never die!!"
NEW CHARACTER TIME. ENTER: INSTANT DEATH.
Gay name, but I think my thought process was "If someone I kill is in a party, the message will read "I was killed by Instant Death"". Which doesn't sound that right but anyway that's what I did.
When I first started playing the char it was real hard. I remember practicing against a friend in ELR (I think his name began with, he rode an ethy and wore a black floppy hat). I only had 50 resist but my defense was amazing, like I thought, healing and magery was awesome. But i sucked offensively, I didn't know how to fight without a wep. After a bit I got the hang of it, but was super eager. I entered one Ancient Oak tourny (saw it posted on the boards) and got totally raped, and couldn't really understand why. I was doing really well fighting in the field, but I didn't understand about interrupting, self interrupt and fast casting (actually not fast casting, more like fast cast recovery). If you guys don't know what this is: Pre aos there was an inbuilt FCR limit. I dunno what it was, but it was probably around 4. But if you held a spell for a few seconds on your cursor, the next spell would have the fcr removed (so it was like fcr6, you could cast the spell immediately without waiting). I learnt it son after I got raped at AO tourny, but I think a lot of people never understood how this worked, right up into AOS. Incidentally, this didn't get changed in AOS, and it's something I utilized in my early AOS ownage.
At some point (I think pub 14 but possibly 15) I managed the most ownage thing I ever did in UO. I somehow found a guy who had a valorite hammer. At the time valorite weps were going for 2 mil a pop, and this was when a million was quite a lot of money. Powerscrolls didn't exist yet (despite what some people think, runics existed before p16, but people didn't use them as much, only factioners (who could faction bless a wep for amonth) and trammies. He had a "smith room" in his tower, with the hammer locked down. The door was locked, but with Joe's help I efielded myself into the room (which should have been unenterable). Then I got Joe's thief into the room as well. Then I ICQ'd the guy asking for a wep. I was sweating so much waiting for him to recall in and make it. I think that the guy actually had his friend with him when he came to take the hammer. He unlocked it and then YOINK, I had it on my cursor. I quickly recalled out and Joe recalled out a bit after me, and got the blame. I remember standing outside our tower just after we had made it back home and me and joe were like OMFOGMOFMOGMFOGMFOGMOFMGOFGMOGM! That was fucking awesome.
I don't think I actually made Alakaster a spear with it, because I was too much of a jew. But sold a few charges to people.
A bit after this, my stepdad and mum seperated. I know this because I remember visiting him one weekend and playing uo on his computer, and although I could only play uo for one weekend I remember paying someone for a valorite wep so I could have fun with it on Alakaster (couldn't make one myself, I didn't have a smith).
It's pretty lol to me that I can measure rl events in relation to what's going on in UO. Hahah.
P16 wasn't going to have much of an effect on me. I did a lot of noto'ing on Instant, stealing on thief and didn't really use Alak much. I took counts on people who annoyed me but I didn't want to lose skills so never considered going into stat, although I might have gone red once or twice. In early P16 I was still unguilded, and pretty happy that way. Whenever there was a spawn I would go with all the other blues (and ofc together with Joe). I had my own pc now, but only 56k internet, which was the gay. Not only that, but it was super slow. I had UO installed at my friends house and when I played there the speed was decent (a bit over 100ping), but at my own it was over 200. After a trace I realized my ping went to america and back to get to the server in London.. rage.. But it was better than nothing. I remember one time there was a big harrower which was going to go down at some point, all the skulls (apart from oaks) were placed already, and me Joe (who was visiting my house at the time irl) went to an internet cafe to play on a proper con. Good times.....
I don't remember if I joined I-C first or made my PK then joined I-C. But I remember that I didn't want Instant to go red, as he had full gm skills and my own champ hunting char. I still had Merlark who I had severely neglected, but he had the basic mage skills already so I decided to turn him red. The introduction of the defensive wrestle (based on eval and anat) meant that I could get away without training wrestle (which was a fucking pain) and could have different skills to everyone else. I don't think it was until I decided to make a pk did I bother to gm provoke. Firehorns were introduced to UO a bit earlier, and they were pretty strong, but of course no pvp'r used them. I think the template started as gm mage med eval resist music prov anat. I didn't have to train wrestling, anatomy was a lot quicker, and best of all, it meant that as I raised my mage skills I could just lower Anatomy to keep my defense up. Despite what cyric says, Iw as the first PK to do this, FAKT.
It was amazingly effective. Especially when Merlark was a bit scrolled. He didn't get any high level scrolls for a long time, but even with 110 Mage 110 Eval (which had for most of pub 16, I believe), I was able to kill anyone, including the few people who had all 120's. Not only was the damage good, but the surprise factor worked incredibly well. If I was fighting someone and they decided to run from me, it was like a guaranteed win. Eventually they would stop to heal and when they did all I had to do was firehorn them for some decent damage. My most memorable firehorn action was with Slamer. I think this might have been just after I moved to my new house. I ordered the DSL before we moved in, and it wasn't due to be activated for a while, but while moving stuff from my old house to the new one I tested it out and it was active. I lived in that house alone for a week before the rest of my family moved in. Anyway, I didn't have a desk (was at the old house) so I had my pc on the floor and would playing lying on my stomach!
There was a spawn at COTD, I think it was baracoon or maybe undead, I forget. But only me and Slamer were about. People would always just camp on the roof near the altar when it got to the later levels, so me and Slamer went underneath and started casting earthquake. This was before earthquake was a popular spell to cast. Which sounds strange, but this was a time when pk'ing wasn't that popular and people didn't have 120 magery, which meant a lot of fizzles. EQ wouldn't kill a player, but would get them to 1 hp. Anyway, after a few eq's I firehorned and killed loads of people. For those who don't know what a firehorn looks like, it basically does a flamestrike looking attack on people who are within it's radius. So if it's just one person there's one flamestrike, but if there's 10 people there are 10 flamestrikes on the people, it looks like a carpet bombing.
edit - Found this screenie, was lizards!
I must have got paged on by a lot of different people because I was taken to Jail really quickly. This is probably the closest I have ever got to being banned. The GM wasn't going to wait for me to explain how I had done it, but was accusing me of third party programs etc etc. I was like "no it's not a cheat I used a firehorn!!! Check my pack and my skills!!". Gooooooood times.
EEV came about from a post on stratics forums about doing champ spawns together. It was a pre existing guild which was GM'd by night but wasn't really a proper guild (sorry dude, it wasn't). Those guys were total trammies. Even though Night lived in fel, he was a trammie. I was pretty much the only "real" PVP'r among them, and it consisted of a lot of boardies. And Rizem. Yay.
Most of them had tamers and bards and stuff but I only had pvp chars. So I would take along Instant or my other blue mage (me and Joe had another mage on a vet account we had been given, and Joe (if he came) would bring his own char.
At this juncture I will talk about the SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP with Joe. Since our time at brit gate we were friends. And had met up IRL several times, and got on really well. Joe had access to my accounts, which he would use to train my characters (I hated training chars and Joe had several computers he could use, I didn't) but I rarely used his, only his tamer or mule sometimes. But the third account as well as the start of me joining guilds made for an interesting change. I basically used blue Joe (that's what we'd call him, because he was blue and had blue hair). I don't know if it was a way for us to use scrolls on a char without it being one persons char, but yeah. I played blue Joe and JOE played his own chars on his own account, unless I was playing other chars. I guess it's the kind of character/account usage brothers might have. But this became really confusing for people. Sometimes blue Joe was super awesome and dangerous, able to kill everyone. And sometimes Joe was controlling the character. I don't think JOE has ever formally joined I-C or EEV. He's basically the ultimate hanger on who has just followed me for years. He didn't really use forums I'd just icq or msn him and he'd come to wherever. It's weird, now I think about it!
Anyway, back to champ hunting. Champ hunting was going well, and when people invaded I would noto them. Then after a while we realized I could just pk anyone who came. For a long time I was basically the only fighting force EEV had. Everyone else was either worthless or worse. Some people weren't too bad (Coli), but most were shockingly bad. In AOS more people made PK chars and I trained them up like pokemon, but for almost all of p16 I was their only fighting force (I believe, the time between P16 and AOS really blend together to me). But the power of my firehorn template which allowed me to own anyone 1vs1 meant that even against a few people, if I had a healer I could take out multiple blues easily.
I really enjoyed P16. I did some factioning with Alakaster too, but mostly PK'ing. I think it was around this time that I bought (or got given, I forgot) a house outside of Destard. I didn't have enough accounts to hold it so later on in time I gave it to Slamer to look after (and eventually he just claimed it as his own). This was fun and destard was really busy. Not only with champ hunters but with pvm'rs and pvp'rs in general. I had a collection of runics on the top of the small tower which had been looted from people, t'was awesome. There was one really annoying dexxer who I disliked name Tyrion. He generally used a gold spear or something of similar value, but rarely one better than that. I believe he had a template similar to Alakaster (med fencer) so I don't think I ever died to him, as I was too familiar with the character, but he killed a lot of other people. I killed him several times ( I remember because it was very satisfying), but if he was about then I would move to another area because I couldn't fight people if he was there too....
When I look back, P16 was one of my favorite times in UO. A lot of people say I was only good in AOS but I disagree strongly.
åWhen AOS came out I basically had to change every single one of my chars. My strange quirky PK was now. .not useless but not viable. Awesome fencer was nothing special, heal mage wasn't longer viable. Not only that, I hadn't tried very hard to stock up on good armour (most people tried tog et as much invul armour as they could and then enhance it with barbed). The game had changed and I had gone from a killing force to totally average, because I hadn't taken the time to prepare or read up on the changes. Without being able to PvP properly, I got bored and stopped playing.
TO BE CONTINUED.....