5/24/2019
Greetings,
For the past several weeks we have been working through updating one of the core features of Ultima Online. Work on an update to the “Treasure Hunter” profession started long before the first line of code was written and the first pixel was drawn as we gathered feedback from players at the 20th Anniversary party, via e-mail and messages, and on the UO Forum. As we planned the update to Treasure Hunting that would form the foundation of Forgotten Treasures we identified key areas of the experience that needed update from both the player’s and our own perspective. As we try to deliver on these goals sometimes a feature feels right, and other times does not quite work out. We want to thank everyone who has participated in providing feedback for what’s on TC1 and would like to share with you several changes we have in the works,
- Items will no longer be destroyed with lockpicking failures, instead a grubber will spawn before the lock is opened.
- Items will no longer be destroyed when Remove Trap fails.
- Puzzles will no longer be a part of the Treasure Chest trap.
- Remove Trap trainers will still be available for purchase should players wish to train their skill this way. You will also be able to train Remove Trap via untrapping Treasure Chests and other traps already in the gameworld.
- Magic Untrap will no longer work on Treasure Chests, Magic Unlock will work as it is currently implemented on TC1.
- The Remove Trap loop for Treasure Chests has been redesigned as follows,
- When a player tries to open a chest that is trapped, they will receive a message to use the Remove Trap skill.
- The disarming process will begin when a player uses Remove Trap on the chest.
- During the disarming process Ancient Chest Guardians, chosen from the monsters that can spawn during the initial dig, will spawn to defend the chest. These monsters will not drop any loot.
- These monsters must be defeated before the chest can be opened.
- The length of this process is variable based on the player’s Remove Trap skill, with higher Remove Trap skill requiring less disarming time.
- If the player moves more than 16 tiles away from the chest or is killed during the disarming process, the process must be restarted.
- We have taken another pass at chest loot quality and have made the following changes,
- Magic Equipment will now spawn in all level chests.
- Doubled the amount of magic equipment that spawns.
- Added additional loot entries to all chest packages, primarily for Scrolls of Transcendence and Scrolls of Alacrity.
We’ve also identified a number of issues that could cause chests to erroneously come up empty or for chests to be missing certain loot items. We’ll have full details in the release notes when these changes hit TC1.
We are currently working through the changes internally and hope to have them live on TC1 early next week, these changes are not currently live on TC1. We know there are bound to be some questions regarding these changes, but we would encourage everyone to hold off until we have something concrete on TC1 as things often can change during internal testing. We, however, did not want to go into a long weekend without sharing our plans with the community!
For those of you who will be celebrating the Memorial Day holiday in the United States we hope you join us in honoring those who made the ultimate sacrifice and enjoy a safe and happy extended weekend.
See you in Britannia,
UO Team