03) 16th October

Ultima Online Patch Notes for 10/16/1997

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.