07) 18th March

07) 18th March

<h2>Ultima Online Patch Notes for 03/18/1998</h2> <ul> <li>All "tell" messages from GMs will now be yellow.</li> <li>Numerous more areas have gained music.</li> <li>The help menu has been revised.</li> <li>The "white hair" problem will be fixed. It is purely a client display problem, so affected characters have suffered no adverse effects. White hair will revert back to its normal color when the fix is available.</li> <li>Flame traps have gained sound effects.</li> </ul> <b>Last minute changes:</b> <ul> <li>Guarding now expires if the pet moves too far away from the guarded item.</li> <li>Opening the paperdoll of a guarded player is no longer a criminal action.</li> </ul> <b>Login process</b> <ul> <li>Passwords on a character level have been disabled; we have been getting too many calls from those who have lost their password.</li> <li>The server ranking system will always show Test Center last, to avoid confusing it with a regular game server.</li> <li>All previous updates have been consolidated into a single patch. This patch is approximately 370KB.</li> </ul> <b>Creatures</b> <ul> <li><i>Wild creatures</i> <ul> <li>NPC behaviors have been optimized and sped up. Aggressive creatures are now more immediately aggressive.</li> <li>The number of creatures in the world has been increased; in addition, creatures in stables and invulnerable creatures (such as vendors) no longer count against creatures in the world.</li> <li>Slimes now have a chance of splitting into two slimes when struck.</li> <li>Some creatures now have acidic blood that can dissolve your weapon when you strike them, damaging the weapon slightly.</li> <li>Human and humanoids alike will be a bit more talkative in combat.</li> <li>The jungle south of Trinsic should have improved creature population.</li> </ul> </li> <li><i>Pets</i> <ul> <li>Changes to stables: <ul> <li>Any of the friends or bosses of a pet can now retrieve it from the stables, instead of only the person who stabled it there.</li> <li>All stables will have their contents wiped.</li> <li>Stablemasters will have a limit on how many creatures they can stable.</li> <li>Stabled animals will be destroyed after one real life week of being left in the stables.</li> <li>Stabling pets will charge money first from gold on hand, then from the bank.</li> </ul> </li> <li>Changes to pet guarding: <ul> <li>Pets will be immediately aggressive when a guarded object is used or taken.</li> <li>Guarded objects and people will have [guarded] over their head when looked at, and approaching them will give you a warning.</li> <li>You will not be able to guard items that are in towns.</li> <li>Items that are in towns will be considered not to be guarded when they are left there or if they move, when they walk there. The [guarded] tag will go away to indicate this. When they leave towns, the tag will be restored and all previous guarding will resume.</li> <li>It will no longer be possible to guard items in containers.</li> <li>You will not be able to guard living things other than players and other pets.</li> <li>Getting or using a guarded item will now flag you criminal. (This includes using doors, for those who wish to guard their houses with pets/hirelings).</li> </ul> </li> <li>Pets will no longer be able to fetch things that weigh too much for them.</li> </ul> </li> <li>The number of creatures in the world should be drastically increased overall by the above changes.</li> </ul> <b>Magic and magic items</b> <ul> <li>The spellbook should now be able to handle stacked scrolls.</li> <li>Wands will now invoke the notoriety query window.</li> <li>An exploit with polymorph has been fixed.</li> <li>Problems with excessive damage for wands will be fixed.</li> </ul> <b>Optimizations and performance improvements</b> <ul> <li>We will be testing new code that may significantly reduce the bandwidth requirements for play, thus helping performance.</li> <li>House decay rate has been doubled (it is now approximately 11 days from perfect condition to its destruction).</li> <li>The problems with campfires not burning out will be fixed, and existing abandoned fires will start to burn out and clean themselves up.</li> <li>The limit on items in a container will be lowered to 125.</li> </ul> <b>Skills</b> <ul> <li>Learning skills by watching will be limited to one tile distance.</li> <li>The peacemaking skill will only send messages to those who are in combat mode.</li> <li>Problems with copying books with the inscription skill should be fixed.</li> <li>Tailoring: <ul> <li>Failure will now leave the correct amount of cloth scraps.</li> <li>The loss of cloth at failure now depends on the item that the player attempted to make.</li> <li>You can now sew cloth scraps back into a bolt.</li> <li>The ratios of wool, cotton, yarn, and thread needed to go from raw material to finished cloth should be correct now.</li> <li>Shuttles of thread now stack, and have been renamed to spools.</li> <li>Both sides of looms are usable now.</li> <li>Using thread works correctly, as does yarn.</li> </ul> </li> </ul> <b>Guilds</b> <ul> <li>Guildmaster's titles should now show over their heads like regular guild-granted titles.</li> <li>Entering "none" for a title strips the title from that player.</li> <li>The listed order of members in a guild is now fixed, and the list will not rearrange itself.</li> </ul>