19) 23rd November

Ultima Online Patch Notes for 11/23/1998

EXPLOITS

• Numerous loopholes used by third-party programs will be corrected. As we have stated before, we intend to continue moving aggressively to prevent these programs from having any utility. We don’t wish to describe all of the fixes we made, so that exploiters have as little warning as possible, but one change in particular merits notice.
  • The “Fast last-target spellcasting” exploit will be corrected. This involved placing a small skill delay after completion of casting.

SKILLS

• We fixed a cause of the overly rapid stat advancement. Skills that affect more than one stat will no longer cause accelerated gain for all of the stats.
• The magic resistance skill will no longer raise any stats. This was done because this skill causes involuntary stat gains when you are attacked with magic.
• The last skills which had learn by watching still enabled will no longer have it enabled:
  • Begging
  • Evaluate Intelligence
  • Animal lore
  • Anatomy
• Various cooking issues were addressed:
  • Problems with transferring liquid from bottle to bottle will be fixed.
  • Sweet dough will now be a different color.
  • It will now be possible to make cake. Before, mixing sweet dough and flour gave cake mix, but cooking it gave cookies, instead of cake.
• Provocation will check vertical distance.
• Tailoring gained a line-of-sight check.
• You will not be able to shear sheep through walls.

SPELLS

• Players will be unhidden by speaking words of power when casting spells.
• Casting blade spirits in player-built towers should be fixed.
• The Dispel Field spell will be fixed.
• Guild titles and abbreviations will no longer display when incognito.

ITEMS

• Armor will also go through the same sort of “retroactive fix” that was recently put in for weapons. This will eliminate “pre-patch” armor with excessive bonuses.
• Lighting a torch within your backpack will automatically equip it.
• A bug allowing you to combine ore and get around the regular container limits will be fixed.
• You will be able to choose what color to dye your hair with hair dyes. This menu system is preliminary; a more complete menu will be installed with the next update that gives a wider range of color choices and more control over which color you get.
  • A menu will pop up letting you choose from blonde, red, black, gray, or brunette.
  • A random color is chosen from within that range.
  • Also, the dyes will be permanent, instead of wearing out.
• The bug with incognito making hair dyes permanent was fixed as well.
• The spyglass will now give the moon phases when double-clicked.

MAP

• Several Lost lands entrances will become impossible to teleport into.
• Housing will not be allowed next to Lost Lands entrances.
• Several map bugs will be corrected.

CREATURES

• The following creatures will become aggressive:
  • Ancient wyrms
  • Dragons
  • Giant silver serpents
  • Corpsers
  • Kraken
  • Swamp tentacles
  • Energy vortices and blade spirits will also be more aggressive.
• The problem with dragons stopping breathing fire when reactive armor is cast on them will be fixed.

HOUSING

• These changes are all related to the upcoming transition to housing. We realize that there are still aspects of the plan which are controversial; however, we are proceeding with the aspects that received general approval.
  • Vendor packing up:
    • When the owner says “vendor” (or equivalent to keyword to the vendor) it checks to see if it is in a valid location.
    • Valid locations are inside houses owned by the owner (currently keyholder). Once ownership is complete, friends of a house will also be able to place vendors in a house.
    • If the vendor is not in a valid location, he turns into a deed in your backpack.
    • The deed does not weigh a ton, as it would if all the vendor’s stuff were in there.
    • The deed does not affect the item limits on the backpack.
    • The deed is called “a deed for a vendor named (so n so)” so you can tell who you are moving.
    • The deed works like any vendor deed. To place him you just use the deed in a valid location.
  • The limit on vendors in a single building is now set up at 100.
  • Teleporting guildstones in invalid locations (meaning, guildstones in tents):
    • When the guildmaster double-clicks the stone, he receives a guild transportation stone.
    • This stone he can take to a valid location and teleport the guildstone there by using his transporter stone.
    • During this time, all guild members cannot access the stone.
  • Tent reimbursal
    • When doublclicking on a tent chest for the first time, the player (if they are the owner of the tent, determined by whether they have a valid key) will have all the chest contents placed in his bank as well as a sum gold of 10,000 gold.
    • The chest is then destroyed.
  • Housing lockdown.
    • Use of a house key on any item (not creature) within the house allows toggling lockdown state IF the owner is the person using the key.
    • In the initial implementation, any keyholder is an owner. Once ownership goes in, owners and friends will be able to do lockdown.
    • Targeting an item not already locked down will lock down the item if the following conditions are met:
      • The item is not adjacent to a door.
      • The total number of locked down items on the multiobj does not exceed the set maximum. The maximum depends on the size of the building. Here is a table. The numbers are somewhat approximate, because even though the buildings grouped together are extremely similar, they do vary slightly, and therefore may have one or two more or less lockdowns than described below.
        • Houses with approximately 25 lockdowns and 1 secure:
          • Stone and Plaster House
          • Field Stone House
          • Small Brick House
          • Wooden House
          • Wood and Plaster House
          • Thatched Roof Cottage
          • Blacksmith shop
          • Clothier shop
          • Miller shop
          • Pickpocket’s Den
          • Weapon Training Hut
        • Houses with approximately 86 lockdowns and 4 secures:
          • Brick House
          • Bakery
          • Smithy
          • Tailor Shop
        • Houses with approximately 108 lockdowns and 5 secures:
          • 2 Story Wood and Plaster House
          • 2 Story Stone and Plaster House
        • Houses with approximately 244 lockdowns and 12 secures:
          • Tower
        • Houses with approximately 375 lockdowns and 19 secures:
          • Small Stone Keep
        • Houses with approximately 577 lockdowns and 29 secures:
          • Castle
    • Generic items cannot be locked down.
    • Items flagged as locked down cannot be chopped with axes.
    • Containers that are locked down may become secure. If they are secure, they can only be opened by a keyholder. Again, once ownership goes in, they will only be openable by the owner and friends of the house.
    • If the locked-down container count does not exceed the max number of secure containers for the building, the container is made secure. The maximum number of secure containers depends on the building’s size.
    • Looking at a secure chest will tell you that it is “[secure]”
    • The locker is notified that he has created a new secure container, and told how many more his buildings can support.
    • If the max number of secure containers has been reached, the container is locked down, but a message is given that it is not a secure container because the building’s capacity for secure containers has been reached.
    • Targeting a locked down item “unlocks” it so you can move it again. If it was a secure container, it ceases to be secure.

GUILDS

• Declaring peace will now properly give the name of the guild you declared peace with.