Ultima Online Patch Notes for 04/13/1998
This update listing includes the contents of the mini-patch that went in on 4/20/98.
- You can no longer teleport with a teleporting object and stay invisible.
- An “unused” tile will no longer appear before a player recalls to a location (it required a slow connection to see this tile).
- Guild abbreviation and name changes should update properly on players.
- Speaking while invisible or hidden now reveals the player.
- “Spellbook crashes” will be fixed.
- Characters with invalid names will no longer be creatable with third-party programs.
- The trick for getting vendors to make items not-for-sale that are not eligible for it will be fixed. All items in vendors currently will be fixed retroactively!
- Incognito is castable again
- Poisoning has been tweaked.
- You now need approximately a 65 alchemy to make greater poison, and around a 95 alchemy to make deadly poison.
- Snooping will no longer cause the snooper to be flagged criminal.
- Black dyed items can no longer be made. Nothing will be done regarding currently existing black items.
- Townkilling of criminals is no longer allowed.
- Potions made with alchemy will now have names indicating whether they are greater or lesser potions.
- An exploit involving acquiring high stats was fixed.
- Keyrings will no longer be openable in vendors.
- You can no longer overload vendors.
- Targeting checks were fixed in protection, archprotection, and magic trap.
- A fix for reactive armor was put in place. It now lets through more damage than before. The amount it lets through now depends on your magery skill. However, the remainder is now reflected back at the attacker and does damage to them.
- Guild warfare is not in yet, but the guildstones will have newly revamped menus which should be easier to use. You’ll see the warfare choices listed, but they will not yet be operational.
- A method players used to intentionally crash other player’s clients with lightining bolts has been fixed.
- Repairing items will now always reduce the maximum durability of the item. This, while making all weapons more fragile, will also greatly reduce a macroing exploit used to boost strength. The loss of durability is very small: basically, if you reforge a damaged sword, it will not be quite as sturdy as the original.
- A revised table of stat dependencies for skills makes the three stats almost exactly evenly distributed amongst the skills. This should make the strength advancement problem go away.
- A problem whereby using magic items that increased skills could be used to instantly raise your skill will be fixed.
- Marking a rune will always mark the rune at the location of the caster, not of the rune.
- We are adding gravity for items. If you remove an item from underneath something else, the above items will fall to the ground.
- A new interface window will go in for most guildstone functions that involve picking from a list. It will make paging back and forth easier and resolve problems with incorrect selections when there are multiple pages.
- Guild abbreviations will be limited to four letters.
- Communication crystals will now cost ten times less and will come with ten times more charges.
- Greater poison will no longer lower stats.
- There are now five levels of poison. The difference between them is the rate at which your health goes down. These levels of poison will have different levels of difficulty when you try to cure them. You will be able to make differing levels of poison with alchemy.
- Numerous sorts of creatures will gain poisonous attacks.
- Hiding whilst fighting will become completely impossible. This means that if anyone is attempting to attack you, or you have currently got an opponent active, you will not be able to hide. You will still be able to run away and hide.
- Body parts from chopping corpses will decay at an accelerated rate, and will also decay regardless of where they are kept.
- Spellbooks will be equippable. This is a purely cosmetic change. It will not change the mechanics of casting at all (except that you will be able to cast with the spellbook in your hands).
- Death animations for creatures will be in.
- You will be able to resign from your guild anywhere, by simply saying out loud, “I resign from my guild.”
- Nested backpacks and excess items in creature treasures will no longer be generated. Instead, the selection of non-gold items has been reduced and randomized more, and the amount of gold has been randomized more.
- Pets will not go wild as fast. This basically means that the amount of loyalty lost over time is less. Feeding your pet will still keep it hapy, only now it will be for a longer amount of time.
- Vendors will no longer make items “not for sale” unless they meet the following criteria:
- They are books (so you can change the title on the book and use it to leave messages for customers)
- They are unlocked containers (so you can classify items into categories)
- They are within a for-sale container (so you can group not-for-sale items into a single for-sale set)
- Keyrings are considered to be containers.
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- All existing not-for-sale items will be set to a price that matches their appraised value.
- Vendors will now charge their employers based on the value of the goods that the employer sets, rather than on the appraised value of the goods they hold. In other words, setting an item to a very high price will raise the rent on that vendor. If the appraised value is higher than the sale price, then the appraised value will be used.
- The detect hidden skill will work on players and NPCs again.
- Horses will remain the correct color when you ride them.
- Gate travel will only create a gate at the location of the caster, instead of offset to the left or right of the caster. (There was some confusion earlier about what exactly this item meant).
- Acid blood will no longer harm ranged weapons, nor give the erroneous message when no weapon is held.
- The “mouse cursor flicker” will be fixed.
- Magic statues and braziers will no longer be created as magic items.
- The problem with guild-granted titles disappearing when logging out should be fixed.