03) 16th October – Ultima Online

Ultima Online Patch Notes for 10/16/1997

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.