Complex Gaming recently published a list of the best PC games.  We are very proud to see that Ultima Online was ranked number 8 of the 50 Best PC Games of All Time!

It is time for another Ask and Answer. This week we received a lot of questions regarding adding features and items to the game. Here are the answers to your questions:

UO Auctions

From Purple Pixie, Atlantic
I totally think the bag with 3 snow and 3 grass tiles will be a miracle to those of us who love to decorate for the seasons and don’t want to go into construction mode and destroy our establishments. I just have one small request of wish for an addition… or even divide it 2x, 2x, and 2x… with sand tiles. We don’t have sand tiles in our house construction AND these could be used for “festive reasons”… not to mention in gardens to show off fancy cacti. Could you please consider adding them? Thanks (Lady Frany Flame)

Mesanna:  Currently there are not any sand tiles in the same tile format as the grass and snow but I hope to get some good ones in the future *makes note*

Question: Have the Dev team ever considered adding Fossils to the game? it seems an angle that could be added to luck based mining that the art is already in place to add. something that would also expand saltpeter mining as its also luck based. could create some nice decoration just outta shell and skull n bone art already in the game. with the possibility of a very rare fossil finds and getting your name attached to the find? (Treasure Seeker)

Mesanna:  Hrm interesting idea but no we have not thought about adding fossils to mining.  We have been talking about how to make resource gathering more exciting though.

UO Mania

It would be nice to be able to receive a “secure shard transfer crate” from a character on some other player’s account, that only the characters of that account on the destination shard can open. In this way we could securely organize shard transfer shipments for third parties (clorenz )

Mesanna:  This would be a very difficult thing to put in the game, the risk is way to high for us to address this type of transfer.

UO Japan

Certain pet seems to have skills which can’t be shown by Animal Lore skill. Could you tell us what those “hidden” skills are? Is it possible for pets once being resurrected to reach skill cap again? (Nickname: kann)

Mesanna:  There are the basic set of 8 skills that show up in the pet’s Animal Lore skills gump.  We will put it on our list to review this and update the list in a future publish.  As far as the pet reaching skill cap after resurrecting there is no reason why they should not do that, if you are having issues please let us know.

The color of antique wedding dress is very nice. Is it possible to add dyes of the same color or similar white color as a Clean Up Britannia reward?（Nickname: Tru）
SIDE NOTE: The hue# is 2953.

Mesanna:  We are always looking to add new dyes, at this time I will only say its possible.

UOForums

When going from the Abyss to one of the Abyss Champ (who are on the Feluca facet), one gets a PvP Warning that can be switched off through the context menu. Could you include into this system the PvP Warnings when going through house teleporters? I own two houses, one of them in Felucca and the constant warnings get old fast. Any possibility to switch them off would be appreciated. (Merion)

Phoenix:  We would like to research this before making any commitments but it’s a reasonable request.

High Seas was a big hit when it came out. Even tho still played to a degree, alot of folk wanted to play “Land & Sea” fights, where a ship can fire its cannons on shore in an attack mode. ( of course this would mean the cannons on the fortress would take damage or even some of the structure). Maybe have it like damage to a ship where you have to repair and attack the structure when defense is lowered like a ship…. Question is: Will the opportunity ever arise for the chance to have “Land Cannons” that fire in order to build Fortress’s and have the chance for land and sea conflicts? That way someone can attack a fortress and the Fortress can fire back in defense. (Eyes of Sosaria)

When we were doing High Seas we talked about Land Cannons and came up with a lot of ways to exploit them,  We figured it was best to not put them in the game.

Ultima Online Bibliothek

Hello again, recently I remembered the thing about the gypsy camps and the moonstone jewelry. Is it possible to get the camps back to get a chance for it to drop again? Or maybe you could add the jewelry to another monster or another mini-boss? (Medea,)

Mesanna:  The gypsy camps were causing some side issues in the game so Phoenix added the chance for the moon jewelry to drop on the Cook in Wrong.

Now I’m really curious – is it really true that no one on the production shard has managed to fetch a Void Lobster yet? After 3 years it should be possible to get one of those bloody critters, right? Can you give us a hint (even a small one will do) how to catch one of those? Thanks! (Medea, )

Mesanna:  Funny you should ask this question now, Bleak just fixed this bug for Pub 80.  And yes no one to my knowledge has fished up a Void Lobster.

The Epiphany armor that dropped from Blackrock Golems states to grant a ‘mana burst’ effect. To my knowledge that ability is not active at the moment. Since the armor is marked ‘exceptional’ and has 255 durability I assume it is meant for imbuing und wearing this
armor. Is the effect simply undiscovered as of now or not yet implemented? (Pcuvush, )

Misk:  Both the epiphany set (mana burst) and  the regeneration set (health burst) effects are active and do function in game.  The virtuous pieces are aligned to positive karma players and the villainous pieces are aligned to negative karma players.  Both sets can be imbued, however they cannot be enhanced.  The burst occurrence rate scales based on the number of pieces you are wearing (up to a maximum value of 5) and the power of the burst  scales based on your karma level.  The burst effects are triggered by being attacked.  Currently the regeneration set spawns on Charybdis and the epiphany spawns on Niporailem.

Today is my last day as Community Manager at Mythic. I’ll face a new and very exciting challenge from Monday on.

It has been great to work on Ultima Online and all other Mythic products for the last 2 years. I met amazing people here in the teams as well as out there among you players. My only regret is that I had to spread my attention over 5 different titles and never had the time to be really dedicated to one of them. But I take a lot of great memories with me.

I thank you for being the awesome, annoying, loyal, critic, understanding, demanding community that you are. The support you continue to give UO is really appreciated, and I know I leave the game in very good hands.

Until we meet again – thanks for all the fish, and no, you can’t haz my stuff.

It’s the time of the year that everyone gets creative and decorates their homes to reflect their feelings of the holidays.  UO would like to announce a Holiday House Decorating Contest.  Petra from stratics has been kind enough to help out with gathering and setting up the voting page for the contest.  There will be 10 winners total and you as the players will help pick the winners.  The rewards will be a special hued Reindeer with the text, “Winner of the 2012 Holiday House Decorating Contest” and the top voted design will have their house go down in the history of UO by making it a mini house that will be available next year.  This time you guys are the judges!

Rules
1 entry per account
10 winners total
Submit pictures to uocontests@stratics.com
Submissions close December 5th, 2012 and Voting closes December 15th, 2012
All entries must have a character name, shard, facet and location
All pictures submitted must be in jpg format

We look forward to seeing your creative decorations!

In the wake of a new focus our studio has recently changed its name from BioWare Mythic to Mythic. Everything else stays the same – our passionate teams will continue to support and develop our existing titles as well as working on some new and exciting projects.

If you want to learn more about our studio, visit our new website, our dedicated Facebook page, or follow us on Twitter @MythicNews.

Publish 79 will be on Origin and Izumo after tomorrow’s maintenance.  In an effort to get more feedback from all our players, we will be sending publishes to both Origin and Izumo shards.

In addition to the Publish 79 notes the following changes have been made:

• Artifacts obtained from the Exodus Encounter cannot have powder of fortification applied
• The New Haven Mine has opened on the Southern Edge of the island
• The trade window will no longer be empty when trading a tamed turkey

In this week’s Ask and Answer we have a interesting mix of questions that the developers answered. Here they are for your reading pleasure:

UO.stratics

Has there been any thought as to letting us use any of the boats in the huge lake in Malas near Umbra, or sail in any of the waters in Ilshenar? (Bazer – Apr 2011)
Could rowboats only be allowed in Dungeons, Ilshenar, Ter Mur and Malas? (Basara – October 2012)
Will you allow us to use rowboats in dungeons please? There is so much wasted water in like ice dungeon and I need to catch Winter Dragonfish and Blue lobsters so….thats all (Lord Gareth – June 2011)
Maybe it would be nice to allow rowboat placement in dungeons? There some dungeons where a rowboat can be handy to fish. Otherwise rowboats don’t realy have a good use cause they are slow and have no hold.(Frarc -Mar 2011)I wouldn´t mind rowboats in Ilshenar, Gravewater Lake etc either …. (Ertai Vodalion – Mar 2011)

Kyronix: Using Rowboats in dungeons and Malas/Ilshenar is something that isn’t as simple as flipping the “rowboats on” switch.  As far as dungeons go, all the areas where you’d presumably place a rowboat would need to be checked given the new level of accessibility, basically the dungeons weren’t built to be sailed, the same, albeit to a lesser degree, goes for Ilshenar.  Malas however, that’s a pretty straightforward body of water and we’ll discuss the matter further.  As far as fishing goes we’ve made some passes at various aspects of fishing that will be visible in the Pub 80 bug squashing extravaganza.

Essentially back when they increased the chances for lower end creatures to give relic frag generating loot they broke the loot generators ability to drop single mod items like 20DCI/HCI, 4MR, Stats, 150 luck, 35 EP, etc. Can they somehow undo what they did or give the loot generator better chances of dropping single mod items with max intensity? (DEVs can you please take a look into the loot generator?) (silent)

Phoenix:  Such items are currently produced by low-end runic tools. We do not have plans for the near future to revisit monster loot generation.

(I rewrote the question into a more concise form – MMoore)
Will you take a look at the contents of the holds of pirate ships, the loot of pirates, and the rewards for capturing pirates? The time investment, cost, and risk are not commensurate with the reward.

Phoenix: Yes, we will have a good look at these in a near future publish.

In the SA Dungeon, to the right of where the Slasher of Veils spawns at the Destroyed Monument/Statue in center of other buildings. When fighting the Slasher Of Veils in this area and a hell hound is on the statue area, provoking the hell hound on the Slasher can cause the Slasher to teleport on top of monument base then teleport players up also, killing them, leaving them with no way down and unable to retrieve items from their corpses. Will this be looked into in the near future? (From Trokip – submitted via PM) Also (asamdan, Ask the Devs Jul 2010)

Kyronix: I will submit an unconfirmed bug into the system, and if it checks out (which it sounds like it will) will look to altering the world building in that area so this no longer occurs.

Will we ever be able to use soulstones that we find from other people for something besides deco? Like maybe using them in the creation of fragments or being able to wipe the stone empty to use them again, maybe with limited charges? (PowerFullPete, Jan, 2010)
We all have a few odd unowned Soulstone’s gotten from housefalls or found in luna. These unowned stones are good for deco but Id like to see perhaps a trade in. Red ,Blue an green ones litter uo, tons of dye tubs,statues stc.. so to clean them up Id like to see something like the Holloween mask lady set up perhaps in luna to except the rewards trade in. Old for new choice. Would go along way to clean up unwanted rewards and get something we can use. (Lady Storm, Jun, 2010)
Will we ever be able to re-link full soulstones or soulstone fragments to different accounts similarly to what is possible with teleport tiles? (Forte~, Sep, 2010)
Can there be a way to use old soulstones? Especially when the players who originally owned them (and paid for them, real money here) have quit the game? They are already paid for? Why can’t we re-use them? I understand they are account bound. But why can’t the skills be re-moved and the stone be re-newed? It seems pointless to have hundreds of soulstones in game, that we ALREADY PAID FOR, be completely and utterly unusable. It’s real money floating around in a game, and being worthless. EA (as a last resort) could even sell us a tool that would un-bind them and wipe the skills from them for a couple of bucks. So that at least it could be used again. It costed someone money to purchase in the first place. Why can’t they be re-used if the player who bought it has quit the game entirely? (Templar Asarhi, Jun, 2011 )

Phoenix: We are currently evaluating ideas for what to do with these, including implementing an exchange program that will allow multiple soulstones to be turned in and exchanged for new soulstones.

Siege Shard General Chat

Is it possible to get a better explanation of ‘drift speed’ and ‘turn delay’ on large ships? In other words, which ship type is fastest, and which is slowest? Also could we get these figures, plus ‘durability’ and ‘cannon damage’ figures for the Britannia Boat?

Phoenix: All ships move at the same speed, except rowboats.

The Tokuno and Orc ships have 100,000 hit points. The Gargish ship has 140,000 hit points. The Britannian ship has 200,000 hit points.

 

UO Auctions

Question: Has the Dev team ever considered adding further higher levels of ingot and stone that could be extremely rare but give material bonuses similar to that of heartwood? this may open up slightly more deversity on how you can kit up a human/gargoyle melee fighter, as the material bonuses of wooden armor often outshine metal/stone?
(Treasure Seeker)

Phoenix: We do not have plans to add new types of special materials at this time.

Question: Have the Dev team thought about ways to bring back dragon scales as a recourse now that the armor is obsolete? i think perhaps an item crafted by tinkers that adds +1 resist or +5luck to a crafted armor piece would be a good way of bringing back the scales and also making balancing crafted sets a bit easier .
(Treasure Seeker)

Bleak: We are currently working to bring back value to all types of armor including Dragon Armor

UO Mania

could you let us use the Retouching tool on an ethereal mount statuette in the trade window, so that other players don’t need to give us their ethereal mounts to make them transparent? (clorenz)

Phoenix: We will take this idea into consideration.
 

If you have something you want to know about Ultima Online and the team, post your questions on your fansite. All interesting questions will be collected and send to our team, so we can continue to answer them.

Update 11:30 am EST: Europa and Drachenfels are back online.

Greetings!

We will be bringing the shards Europa and Drachenfels offline tomorrow, Tuesday November 6th, at 7:00 am EST (12:00 GMT) for essential maintenance.
At this time we anticipate that both shards will be back online no later than 12:00 pm EST (17:00 GMT).

Please be sure to check this post for updates regarding the downtime.

We would like to announce the top scoring players on the Shard of the Dead this year. Congratulations to all of you!

Publish 79.0.0

New Veteran Rewards

• 15th Year: Garden Shed House Add-On
  • Contains two secure containers that do not count towards house storage limits
  • Each container holds 125 items with no weight limit
  • The shed has standard house security settings controlling container access
  • To access the containers, stand near the door of the shed and double-click it
• 13th Year: Exodus Statuette
• 11th Year: Navrey Night-Eyes Statuette
• 9th Year: Virtuebane Statuette
• 8th Year: Davies’ Locker
  • This is based on a real-life glass top table containing a three-dimensional map of Britannia, created by Alan Davies. The table resides in the front lobby of Mythic Studios.
  • The in-game item is a house add-on that looks like the real thing.
  • Davies’ Locker can store up to 500 treasure maps and/or SOS bottles!
• 5th Year: Metallic Leather Dye Tub
• Moved ethereal horses to  one year, all existing horses will also be one year to ride

Holiday Gifts

• Players will receive a gift bag on login during the month of December. This only applies to paying subscriber accounts and characters that are 30 days old or older.

• The bag contains:
  • 3 Snow Tiles usable for house decoration
  • 3 Grass Tiles usable for house decoration
  • A Metallic Cloth Dye Tub
  • A random small decorative holiday tree: either a “winter tree”, a “festive tree”
    • And rarely, an “infested tree”. What is it infested with???
  • A card from a member of the development team

Thanksgiving Horn of Plenty

• A new Horn of Plenty will become available through unknown means during the month of November
• Has a maximum of 10 charges. Regains 1 charge per day during November.
• Double-click to obtain food from it.
• New food items:
  • Sweet Potato Pie – contains six slices of pie
  • Mashed Sweet Potatoes
  • Turducken Platter – contains eight servings of various food items, including Roast Turkey, Roast Duck, Roast Chicken, Turkey Legs, Giblet Gravy, and plates of food.
  • Basket of Rolls contains a baker’s dozen dinner rolls
• Chance of something special happening when used outside of your house

Castle Courtyard Ownership

• Castle owners are now able to lock down and secure objects in their castles’ courtyards

New Fortune’s Fire Casino Game – Dice Rider

• Place three bets. The dealer rolls dice to make a five-die “poker” hand. During the course of the game, you may pull back up to two of the bets.
• See the casino dealer for payout information and complete rules of the game.

The Exodus Encounter

Those loyal still to Minax and Mondain’s creation work fervently to rebuild the mechanical demon, in hopes of once again summoning Exodus into Britannia.

• Visit the NPC Exodus Arch Zealot outside of what used to be Ver Lor Reg in Ilshenar to learn about how to gain the Keys to the encounter and how to perform the Summoning ritual.
• Keys may be collected via three paths, the Warrior, the Rogue, and the Craftsman.
• In order to perform the Ritual you must party up with those you wish to play the encounter with.  You do not need to party to acquire the keys.
• Everyone in the party must have their own set of Keys to perform the ritual.
• You may perform the ritual at any shrine in Trammel or Felucca, except the Chaos shrine.
  • Due to the restricted architecture of the Spirituality Shrine, a “satellite” shrine has been constructed in front of the original, use that Shrine to perform the ritual.
• Exodus may be summoned so long as Exodus has not been killed in the last ten minutes.
• If at any time during the Encounter Exodus’ HP drops below 60%, additional groups will not be able to join the encounter, if Exodus’ HP regen to 75%, additional groups will be able to join the encounter.
• Players will be teleported to a random Ilshenar shrine if they opt to not leave the area within 10 minutes of Exodus’ death.  There is a two minute warning message before this happens.
• Defeating Exodus will give a chance to receive powerful rewards:
  • Scroll of Valiant Commendation [Replica]
    • Gives the character who eats it a +5 permanent gain to maximum stats
    • Cannot be stacked with a previous Scroll of Valiant Commendation
    • If the scroll has been used it will have a “Claimed By” item property
  • Bracers of Alchemical Devastation [Replica]
    • Hit Fireball 35%
    • Mana Regeneration 4
    • Faster Cast Recover 3
    • Physical Resist 10%
    • Fire Resist 8%
    • Cold Resist 8%
    • Poison Resist 8%
    • Energy Resist 8%
    • Mage Armor
  • Hygieia’s Amulet [Replica]
    • Alchemy Bonus 10%
  • Asclepius [Replica]
    • 15% Bandage Healing Bonus
  • Clockwork Leggings (Platemail Leggings) – Imbueable
    • Dexterity Bonus 5
    • Stamina Regen 5
    • Defense Chance Increase 25%
    • Physical Resist 5%
    • Fire Resist 3%
    • Cold Resist 2%
    • Poison Resist 3%
    • Energy Resist 2%
  • Clockwork Leggings (Gargish Platemail Leggings) – Imbueable
    • Dexterity Bonus 5
    • Stamina Regen 5
    • Defense Chance Increase 25%
    • Physical Resist 8%
    • Fire Resist 6%
    • Cold Resist 5%
    • Poison Resist 6%
    • Energy Resist 5%
  • Dupre’s Sword (Viking Sword/Stone War Sword)
    • Hit Mana Drain 50%
    • Strength Bonus 10
    • Hit Chance Increase 25%
    • Swing Speed Increase 35%
    • Damage Increase 100%

• Tinkering  Bonus  Talisman will no show the correct success rate.
• Rioters and Protesters have left all the cities
• Players will no longer be trapped inside the card table at the Casino
• Raised garden beds and plants inside the bed will be deleted when a IDOC house falls after the next server maintenance.
• Halloween masks that had one strength requirement will now display the correct requirement
• Players can dye display cases after it has been returned to deed form and replaced.
• Players can now dye metal chests with the metal dye tub
• Gargoyles can now complete the Hag’s Quest