Publish 11

The following is a list of changes deployed as Publish 11 on March 14, 2001.

The Lands of Ilshenar

Ilshenar is a third facet in the world of Britannia. Ilshenar will have different conditions from the facets of Felucca and Trammel. Player interactions on Ilshenar will be just like Trammel with the following exceptions:

1. Players who are within “murder” status will be able to travel to Ilshenar under the following guidelines:
   • Murderers will be able to go to Ilshenar once per month. If a player’s murder status wears off, and then they return to a murderer state, the “once per month” guideline will still be in place. Once the trip to Ilshenar is taken while in murderer status, the count starts and the player may not again enter Ilshenar until they are either not a murderer, or until a month has passed.
   • If a murderer has taken the effects of stat loss, they will not be able to gain skills while in Ilshenar until the reduced skills are returned to their pre-stat loss numbers. For example:
     • Player A loses 20% of their skills to stat loss.
     • Player A will not be able to gain any skills in Ilshenar until this 20% that has been lost has been regained.
     • Player A will be able to gain skills in Ilshenar once this percentage lost to stat loss has been restored.
   • Stat loss and murder counters are still in effect, with the same time durations per murder. These have not changed in any way.
   • Other players cannot attack murderers in Ilshenar.
2. Traveling to and within Ilshenar. Players visiting Ilshenar will not be able to cast gate or recall within the Ilshenar lands. Travel will behave in the following manners:
   • There will be no recall or player created gating within Ilshenar.
   • Travel to and from Ilshenar will be via public moongates. The gates within Ilshenar will be scattered around those lands, and will connect to public moongates located within Trammel and Felucca.
   • There will be a moongate located on the Buc’s Den island for murderers to be able to use to get to Ilshenar.
   • Players will be able to use a menu system on the public moongates to select destination, including which facet.
3. Siege Perilous will not have an Ilshenar facet.

Note that in order to travel to Ilshenar, you will need to be using the Third Dawn client. Regular clients (2D) will not be able to travel to Ilshenar.

Various Fixes and Changes

These fixes will be active on the Chesapeake shard following its Wednesday, March 7th maintenance period and will be included with publish to all remaining shards.

• Fixed an issue with faction score loss.
• Fixed an issue with housing sign text color.
• Fixed an issue causing locked down trees to leave ornaments behind when automatically re-deeded.
• Fixed an issue where pets could not be claimed by name from stables.
• Re-enabled the “gold” command to allow players to collect gold from vendors.
• Fixed an issue causing some exceptional items to lose the last letter in their name.
• Fixed pricing for taxidermy kits and flipflop tool.
• Fixed numerous error null strings.

Localization and Macros

With the update of localized language support for Ultima Online: Third Dawn, the way in which speech commands work, will affect the use of certain macros. Players will no longer be able to combine long strings of speech commands to use as a single macro, such as “Vendor, tell the guards to buy me the bank.” Macros using combined speech commands may not work in all cases. To use speech commands effectively, they should be limited to the appropriate command (such as “bank” when standing inside a bank, or “vendor buy” when purchasing from a vendor.)

Additionally, the appearance of certain text strings within the game will be modified to accommodate translation.

Bandage Creation Changes

• Players can cut multiple bandages at once using the following manner:
  • Players place an amount of cloth in their backpack. The cloth must be in a player’s backpack to be cut into bandages.
  • When scissors are used on the stack, it will be cut into a stack of bandages equaling the amount of cloth that was in the stack being cut.
• Bandages will weigh equal to that amount of cloth. For example, one bandage will weigh exactly the same as one cloth and likewise one thousand bandages will weigh the same as one thousand cloth.
• All pre-existing bandages will be “grandfathered” with these weight changes, so that they equal a 1 to 1 weight ratio compared to cloth.

Various Fixes And Changes

• A problem with players crashing when placing houses near server “boundaries” has been fixed.
• Holiday trees will be changed in the following manner:
  • Holiday trees that exist in tree form will automatically redeed themselves. The tree deed can only be picked up by the deed owner or the house owner (deed owner is the character that placed the tree originally).
  • The tree deed will decay in seven days if not picked up by the house owner or deed owner. No other characters can pick up the tree deed, until the house owner or deed owner has picked the deed up.
  • Holiday tree deeds no longer function to allow placement of a holiday tree, until reactivated again.
• Localization changes have been added.
• Stablemasters have been fixed to sell the correct creatures. A bug has been fixed with stablemasters and their pricing. This bugfix will result in higher prices for creatures sold by the Stablemasters.
• A change has been added to the tutorial, requiring new accounts to enter the tutorial at least once. After this initial entry, players will be able to exit the tutorial as desired. New players will also be able to review parts of the tutorial at will, via the help selection menu.
• A bug with runebooks not closing properly upon a player’s death has been fixed. This caused runebooks after the death to fail to open.
• A problem with escort NPCs not paying the reward if their desired destination is a dungeon has been fixed.

Faction Trap Changes

Faction traps will be modified in the following manner:

• Faction traps will award silver to their placer when they successfully damage or kill an enemy faction member.
• The silver being awarded will come from the victim, and will be subject to existing silver-award eligibility. Thus, the placer will not receive any silver from opponents not eligible to award silver.
• The trap will award 20 coins for damaging an enemy, and 40 coins for killing an enemy.

Faction Trap Removal Tool

Faction tinkers will be able to create a faction-trap removal tool. This tool will be necessary to remove faction traps set by enemy factions. The tool will function in the following manners:

• The tool will appear within the tinker creation window, if the character is qualified and carrying the necessary materials to make the tool (500 silver, master or greater tinkering skill, and 10 ingots).
• The tool will have 25 uses, decreasing upon either success or failure to disarm the trap. The tool must be in the base level of the player’s backpack to function.

Good Creatures Attack Evil Karma

Creatures of “good” alignment will react aggressively toward players with negative karma. These new creatures are specifically being introduced with the release of Third Dawn.

Player Owned Vendor Changes

• Player-owned vendors will be able to give the gold they are holding to their owners in bank check form if the amount is between 4999 gold and 1 million gold. If the gold amount being held for the player by the vendor is between 4999 and 1 million gold, the vendor will hand this to the owner in the form of a bank check (as long as the vendor is actually carrying this amount). If the amount is less equal to or less then 4999 gold then the vendor will hand the owner the amount in gold form. If the gold held by the vendor is more than 1 million gold, the vendor will retain the amount over 1 million gold until the next request for gold is made by the player.
• Player-owned vendors will give a more accurate description of their gold and payment status.
• Player owned vendors will properly “clean up” from a player-owned house, if they are removed from that house. This fixes a bug that caused player owned houses to sometimes refuse re-deeding even when empty.

Item Identification Window

Information regarding an item’s magical or exceptional properties will now be displayed below the initial item information, once identified using “item identification” skill.

The information display window will function in the following manner:

• When a player clicks on a magical or exceptional item they will get generic text describing the item, such as “magic longsword”.
• When the item is identified, the additional information for the item will be displayed below the initial information. For example, “a magic longsword” would read as (if these were it’s attributes):
  • A magic longsword
  • Silver/Accurate/Vanquishing/Massive/Ghoul’s Touch Charges: 5
  • Note that maker’s mark is displayed outside of the “item identification” system and thus will appear without requiring the item to be identified.

If an item has not been identified, the quick display will appear as the text, “Unidentified” and the player will not have access to the extended info until he has identified the item.

House Decoration Tool

Players will be able to use a House Decoration Tool to assist them with the decoration of their houses within UO. The tool has the following abilities:

• The tool will be sold on Architect NPC’s
• The tool has the ability to turn certain objects to face south-to-east, or east-to-south. An example of an object that is able to be turned would be a wall clock. Not all objects may be turned.
• The tool has the ability to raise or lower certain objects, thus allowing items such as the wall clock to be “hung” on a wall. Not all objects can be raised or lowered.

The tool itself operates in the following manner:

• The player using the tool must be the owner or a co-owner of the house where the tool will be used.
• The player must actually be in the house to use the tool.
• When the player double clicks the tool, targeting the tool again with the target cursor will bring up a menu. The menu choices are “turn”, “up”, and “down”. This changes the operating mode of the tool to the choice that is made.
• Upon selecting turn, up, or down, the player will be able to target an item in the house to apply that effect. The tool will remain in whatever mode was selected, until the tool mode is changed again (refer to above).
• The player can either double click the tool again and then the house object to apply the last movement style chosen on the tool, or the player can use the target cursor on the tool itself to choose another movement style (such as selecting down instead of up).

House objects being moved must be locked down prior to being moved, and will remain locked down during the Decoration Tool movement process.

Taxidermy Kits

Taxidermy Kits will allow for players to use corpses of certain creatures to create trophy deeds, which can be used within houses to generate a wall mounted trophy.

Taxidermy Kits will be found on NPC Tanners, usually found within “leather and hide” shops in towns. Only master and above carpenters can use the kit itself, as those without master or grandmaster status in carpentry will be unable to figure out the kit’s workings or purchase them.
A master carpenter is defined by UO as a player with 90.1 or above base carpentry skill (base skill, visible by checkmarking selecting “show real” in the skill window).

The player will need the following items to create a trophy:

• Taxidermy Kit
• 10 boards
• corpse of either:
  • Orc
  • Gorilla
  • Troll
  • Brown Bear
  • Polar Bear
  • Great Hart
  • Big Fish (note that “big fish” that have been stacked with other fish will not be useable by the taxidermy kit)

When a player with appropriate carpentry skill and materials double-clicks the taxidermy kit, they will get a targeting cursor. This cursor must be targeted on the corpse of the creature intended to be the trophy. The player will need to be at the corpse of one of these creatures to successfully use the taxidermy kit. The taxidermy kit will disappear upon successful usage, and a deed for a trophy will be placed within the player’s pack.

Any player attempting to place the trophy will need to have owner/co-owner status within the house. The trophy will need to be locked down to prevent decay or other players taking it. Double-clicking the trophy if it is not locked down will cause it to return to deed form in the player’s backpack.

Hair Stylist NPC

A new type of NPC will become available throughout Britannia, which will offer restyling of hair/beards and dying for hair. Options for dying beards and hair range from both at the same time to separate selections for either hair or beards.

The choices on this vendor will allow for selections of:

• Adding a new hair style (including “bald” style)
• Adding a new beard style (including no beard)
• Regular hair dye selection
• Regular beard dye selection
• Special hair dye selection (“neon” or bright colors, including 2 shades of “ice white”)
• Special beard dye selection (“neon” or bright colors, including 2 shades of “ice white”)
• The curly hair and “bun” hair styles will not be available from this menu.

These vendors will be in the major towns, within the alchemy shops. They will be distinguishable from regular vendors by their appearance.
The Hair Stylist NPC will recognize gold in the customer’s bankbox as payment if a selection is made, but it will not use gold that is in “check” form. The gold must be in gold form.

Updates

Update 1

On March 14, 2001, the following was published:

• Some issues with the Faction system were corrected, including:
  • Joining multiple faction characters from the same account has been fixed.
  • Fixed an exploit with Silver accumulation and retention

Update 2

On April 3, 2001, the following was published:

• Problems with item identification have been fixed, and will now function in the following manners:
  • Items will now retain properly the list of which player or players have recently identified the item. As new players identify the item, playerw that have not identified the item recently might need to re-identify the item again to see the full description of the item’s attributes. The owner (defined as the player holding the item in their main backpack or equipping the item) will not need to re-identify the item unless the item is removed from their inventory and identified by other players enough times.
  • The players who “owns” the item will never be removed from the list, as long as they own the item. Ownership is described as holding the item in possession, or within the topmost backpack container.
• The new player tutorial will now accept localized speech commands.
• Vendors will now change directions to face only the vendor owner when spoken to. Additionally, the distance required for owners speaking to vendors to change their directions has been increased. Players wishing to purchase from vendors will now be able to do some from an increased distance as well.
• A problem with dungeon traps overlapping has been corrected
• An issue with Inscription was fixed.
• Guildmasters unable to remove players from the guild with names listed on the second viewing page of the guild menu has been fixed.
• A problem with guilds being unable to rescind or remove a war declaration once issued has been fixed. Now guilds can rescind a war declaration after it has been issued, before the guild being declared upon accepts the war declaration.
• A fix has been added to fix crafting for anvils and forges. Also, abbattoirs and pentagrams are now fixed to properly check against the carpentry skill. Thus, these items can now be crafted as intended. The fletching requirement for forge and anvil making has been fixed (removed).

Update 3

On April 4, 2001, the following was published:

• The following items have been fixed:
  • The warning message that pops up when entering a gate has been fixed to work properly with the button text.
  • The Help Menu option will now allow for contacting Game Support in the Ilshenar lands.
• The following items have been changed:
  • The treasure map window display has been changed to a scroll display. This is closer to the appearance of the scroll display prior to Localization.
• The following changes to the House Decoration Tool have been added:
  • Fix to the Decoration Tool usage with large crates.
  • Added the ability for the Tool to turn the easel without a canvas.
  • Added several paintings to the item list that the Tool can manipulate.
  • Removed the ability to manipulate the training dummy and pickpocket dips.

Update 4

On April 13, 2001, the following was published:

• The maker’s mark not appearing on legacy (older) items has been fixed. The maker’s mark will now appear on older items that are supposed to show a maker’s mark.
• A bug was fixed that prevented craftable items requiring grandmaster in a craft skill from being crafted properly.

Update 5

On April 26, 2001, the following was published:

• Problems with the facial hair change display window have been fixed in the following manner:
  • Selecting “none” for either beard or hair will no longer remove both together but rather the one that was selected.
  • When a change is selected via the beard page, the following window display will re-open to the correct page (the beard page).
• Problems with the thief disguise kit window have been fixed. Players will no longer be able to attempt to make a selection from the disguise kit option window while carrying a Faction sigil. the option was never applied while carrying the sigil, but was giving a “not permitted” message once the window selection was made.
• Problems with players being eligible yet unable to join Factions has been fixed.
• Certain accounts had characters join the Faction system during it’s early release. During this early existance of the Faction system, some players deleted their characters that were in Factions. Problems that existed within the system would prevent this account from re-joining Factions with another character even though technically no Faction character existed on that account any longer.
• Faction Election Changes: Faction elections have been re-written to correct several problems. Elections will proceed in the following manners.
  • Normal Election cycles will be 9 days. They will consist of 3 sub-cycles termed “election pending”, “campaigning”, and “open voting”.
  • Each of these election cycles can last from one to five days.
  • Election Pending
    • The election pending phase lasts five days, and during this phase players cannot run for office or vote for candidates.
  • Campaigning
    • This phase lasts 1 day, and is the phase where players choose to run for office.
    • Players must be of Faction rank 6 or higher to run for office. Up to ten candidate slots are filled on a first come, first served basis.
    • Players that quit Factions before this phase ends are removed from the election list immediately.
    • If there are no candidates on the list at the end of this phase, the Campaigning phase repeats for an additional day.
    • If there is only one candidate, the voting phase is skipped and that one candidate wins by default.
  • Voting phase
    • This phase lasts 3 days.
    • All members of the Faction can cast one vote for one candidate on the list.
    • Each candidate’s name and current vote total are displayed to every Faction member.
    • If there are ties in the voting, the candidate first on the list wins.

Update 6

On May 20, 2001, the following was published:

• Getting the last hit on a monster will no longer be a determining factor for looting rights.
• Players will no longer get credit for damage done to a creature beyond the amount of hit points remaining when calculating looting rights. For example, if a creature has 5 hit points and a player casts a spell on it that does 40 hit points of damage, the player will now get credit for doing 5 points as opposed to the potential damage amount of 40 points.

Update 7

On June 13, 2001, the following was published:

• NPC real estate brokers will now buy house deeds back at 20% below the base price of the deed, or the original price paid when the deed was purchased from a vendor (whichever is lower).
• NPC shopkeepers will no longer inflate the prices of their inventory when their stock begins to run low, and prices of items will be consistent on all shopkeepers.

Update 8

On June 14, 2001, the following was published:

• Addressed a lag issue related to faction lists
• House deed prices when reselling to real estate agents raised to the correct level on Siege Perilous
• Orc bombers will now deal damage to players wearing armor
• You can no longer provoke orcs onto a player wearing a mask of orcish kin.
• Stealing from an orc while wearing the mask of orcish kin will now cause the mask to explode.