Ultima Online Patch Notes for 10/16/1997

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Ultima Online Patch Notes for 10/16/1997

These are the official patch notes from the original release of Ultima Online. These patch notes were found at [1].

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.