Ultima Online Patch Notes for 12/09/1997

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Ultima Online Patch Notes for 12/09/1997

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

This patch and fixes made to it bring your client to version 1.25.19.

Known Issues

• Sitting to the north and west looks a little goofy. Since there are no animations for sitting at all (it was done by sprite distortion), and since the chairs were not drawn to support this, it will never look perfect.
• The problem with being able to drop items in invalid locations (see below) that was fixed means that there are now a lot of items players have left in invalid locations. These items will still be vulnerable to theft or being taken, until players move them.

Last minute changes

• Graphical glitches with some types of hats when sitting north and west have been resolved.
• Wooden shields have been removed from the blacksmithing skill, pending their move to the carpentry skill.
• Guard calling should work correctly if there is no victim now.
• Stealing will now work with pack animals.
• The lack of ore should be resolved.
• Aggressive spells cast from wilderness into a safe area will now call guards properly.
• You can't herd tamed animals.
• Magic arrow damage is fixed.
• Pets will no longer carry out cancelled orders the next time you give them a certain different order (this caused pets to attack sometimes when you were giving them a different order).
• A cause of server slowdown has been fixed.
• A harbormaster problem found during testing has been fixed.
• A problem with text collision detection introduced by this patch was fixed.
• A problem with the incognito spell was fixed.
• Archprotect will no longer cause permanent loss of AR.
• A problem in bounty hunting was fixed.
• Recalling using previously marked runes to the location of a newly made building will no longer work.
• Pets will now follow players through gates made by gate travel.
• A problem that allowed players to drop items in invalid lcoation (such as partway through walls) was fixed. This led to the ability to "take items through walls."
• A data glitch was found that caused some items to have extremely high or low amounts of hit points--skullcaps in particular were very high --which led to strange prices for these items. Expect numerous changes in item prices and in item resistance to damage as a result of this.

Virtue guards

• To join the virtue guards (either Chaos or Lord British's) you must have the highest possible notoriety--just "great lord" will not do.
• Find an NPC guard of the type you wish to join, and say "virtue guard" to them. if you qualify, you will be given a shield.
• If you drop the shield, give it away, or die, it vanishes. This includes putting it in the bank.
• If you fall below great lord while wearing the shield, it blows up and kills you.
• Those who have Order shields may attack and kill those with Chaos shields without suffering any notoriety penalty, and vice versa. Note that if you kill them a second time, you WILL suffer, since the shield vanishes when they die. You can do this even in towns, so you can, if you wish, choose to storm Blackthorn or British's castles.
• You must have the shield equipped to be considered a virtue guard! It won't vanish if you have it in your backpack, but it won't be conferring the benefits either.

Client changes (will require a client patch to be visible)

• A circle of transparency will allow you to see yourself behind buildings and other large obscuring objects, and manipulate items that are behind it.
• Set the UO.CFG option UseCircleTrans=yes to enable it. (There is not yet a macro key for it).
• This may affect your graphical performance, depending on your machine.
• When ghosted, there's some nifty partial coloring effects.
• You can now sit in all four directions by merely walking up to the chair, bench, log, or rock in the appropriate direction.
• The AllNames macro now brings up the names of all creatures, players, and NPCs, plus also corpses.
• You can now target the names of creatures and corpses, so you can hit AllNames, and then open your corpse behind a wall.
• There is now a scrolling tab and scroll bar on the server choice menu.
• The client title bar will display the server name.
• Bow and salute now work for GMs and counselors

Quests

• A fix was made to keep escorted NPCs from just wandering off.
• Unwarranted notoriety losses from doing fetch-and-carry and delivery quests have been fixed.
• You no longer double-click the escort NPC to get him to follow, since people were doing that to look at them. Instead, you must say "I will take thee."
• Excess prisoners and escortees now clean themselves up. (The excess nobles were because of this)

Ships and houses

• Ships are now movable with the plank extended.
• You can no longer use gate travel to break into houses.
• Ship planks are now locked upon creation.
• The gate travel breakin exploit is fixed.
• The recall breakin exploit is fixed.
• Masterless pets and hirelings no longer wander onto ships.

Server issues

• The delay on character deletion will now be seven days instead of one.
• Players will now receive a message if they reconnect from a lost connection.
• With much help from players, a cause of slowdown when crossing internal server boundaries was tracked down. This slowdown dated from the installation of the safety deposit boxes feature. If you closed your client or rebooted your machine during this slowdown, it caused "timewarps" on occasion. We have put in a fix for the slowdown--the cause of the timewarps is still unresolved.

Game mechanics

• Notoriety changes
  • If you are below dastardly, newbie items are no longer exempt from falling to your corpse.
• Spells
  • Beneficial spells case by good people on bad people will now lower notoriety slightly. The rule is, if your target highlight is red, it will result in a notoriety loss. There is a cap on loss that is based on the circle of the spell. Affected spells are:
    • heal
    • night sight
    • reactive armor
    • agility
    • cunning
    • cure
    • protect
    • strength
    • bless
    • arch cure
    • archprotect
    • greater heal
    • incognito
    • resurrect
    • invisibility
  • An across the board revision was done to spell damages.
  • The method by which area effect spells damage you has been changed to account for distance from the center of the effect.
  • All spells should now be cancelable.
  • The paralyze effect now cancels when you are attacked
  • Incognito was thoroughly went over to ensure that it could not be used to prevent notoriety changes.
  • When stepping into a gate that goes from a guard-protected region to an unguarded region, you are now given a confirmation window to ensure that you don't step into a trap.
  • Problems with chain lightning, earthquake, and fire field were fixed.
  • Spells cast by NPCs will now remove magic reflection from players, just as spells cast by other players do.
  • Recall now only recalls to empty locations.
  • The resurrect spell now asks the target whether or not they wish to be resurrected.
  • A trick that let you cast magic reflect on others has been fixed.
• Skills
  • Stat and skill advancement for fighting other players has been drastically reduced.
  • You can now spin flax into thread.
  • The big notoriety penalty for provoking guards is back.
  • The messages for item condition in armslore should all be correct now.
• Bounty hunting
  • When someone is killed by another player, they may choose to report the crime if
    • The victim is dishonorable or better notoriety
    • The victim is not as bad a murderer as the person who killed them
    • The victim is not currently flagged a criminal (two minutes since they committed a criminal act)
  • At death, a window will pop up giving the choice to report the crime or not. A player can choose to not report a killing if it was accidental, or if they feel it was especially well-roleplayed, or if it was part of a guild war, etc.
  • If a killer accumulates too many reports:
    • All of their goods in the bank will be confiscated on the spot.
    • The gold they may have had in the bank is added to the local bounty for their head.
    • The killer's notoriety falls instantly to Dread Lord. (It is not "stuck" there--you can still rise if you can manage it).
    • A bounty is posted on the closest bulletin board listing the killer's name, a physical description (hair color, hairstyle, skin color), a tally of kills, and the names of some of their victims.
  • Reports "age" out, but once a bounty is set on you, it remains even if you don't kill anyone else for a long time.
  • Every time you get reported after a bounty is set, your bank is cleaned out again, and a local bounty is reissued. This can result in the bounty price continuing to rise. Bounties are local, meaning that different cities may have different rewards and different kill tallies for a given outlaw.
  • The outlaw must be killed under the following circumstances:
    • The person who kills him must be a player (of course)
    • The person who kills him must have a lower tally of reported murders than the outlaw does.
    • The person who kills him must be above neutral notoriety.
  • When the outlaw is killed under the above circumstances
    • They lose 10% from all stats and skills on the spot, regardless of resurrection methods.
    • A head labelled with their name is automatically placed in the backpack of the bounty hunter.
  • The head must be returned to a guard whose beat is near the bulletin board where the bounty is posted. Since bounties are local, returning the head to the wrong city won't work. You can also choose to return it to any of the cities where a bounty is posted, choosing the best based on the reward offered. Also, some cities may have multiple "precincts" if they have multiple bulletin boards; find a guard near the board that has the bounty posted.
  • Only the bounty hunter can turn in the head.
  • The bounty hunter must be of better than neutral notoriety when the head is turned in.
  • Fake heads won't work.
  • The gold posted for the local reward will be given to the bounty hunter by the guard.
  • Bounties may remain posted in other cities even though the reward has been claimed, but a given bounty can only be claimed once in the world, unless the killer returns to their ways. This will likely result in a killer who has bounties in multiple cities getting killed over and over again by eager reward claimants, for no gain. Our advice is, don't end up with lots of bounties on your head. :)
• Combat
  • The type of damage no longer modifies the amount of damage taken by the player (so fire attacks no longer cause extra damage if you are wearing metal armor, etc.)
  • Fighting now checks invisibility and hiding.
  • All damage has been mathematically halved to slow down combat across the board. This takes place after damage absorption by armor.
  • The damage done by all types of bows has been increased.
  • The chance of damage to armor and weapons has been halved. (This went in over Thanksgiving).

Manipulable game items

• The message you get when you try to open a spellbook that is not in your pack has changed.
• Silver weapons now do double damage against undead.
• Wands changes:
  • They must be equipped to be used
  • The are all cancelable now
  • They all obey line of sight
• Magic items that identify now take charges, and will obey line of sight. This will break all existing magic items of identification as they will appear to be out of charges.
• Magic items are no longer destroyed when they run out of magical energy.
• The explosion potion now does fire damage.
• The explosion potion's damage in towns is reduced.
• Shrines now ask the ghost whether or not they wish to be resurrected.
• Scissors now also update the cloth yardage.
• The "scrambled" bulletin board post titles will be fixed.

NPCs and creatures

• Fixes were put in to alleviate the "spawn point" overcrowding, which turned out to actually be habitat overcrowding. Creatures should be more evenly distributed now.
• NPC spellcasters, and dragons and drakes, will now only attack things in a smaller radius using their special attacks.
• NPC spellcasting has been slowed.
• Stable masters will no longer accept summoned creatures for stabling.
• Harbormasters should be staying put on the docks.
• Harbormasters will no longer drydock ships that are too far away from them.
• Summoned guards now clean themselves up much faster.
• Pack horses and pack llamas can now be purchased.
  • They are exactly like any other pet in all respects: they need fed, you can name them, and they obey the same commands.
  • Doubleclicking them when not in combat mode opens their pack. This pack's capacity depends on the strength of the pack animal and the normal limitations of the pack capacity.
  • An overloaded animal will tire and slow down.
• Cloaks will be a lot less common in corpses.
• Brigands are now always of low notoriety.
• Brigands in camps are no longer hirable.
• All healers will be either Great lords or Dread Lords, so that you can easily identify whether they can resurrect you (no more, "hmm, this one is gray...")
• Harbormasters are now guildmasters of the Maritime Guild.
• Healers now ask the target whether or not they wish to be resurrected.
• You can now use the banks from twice as far away.
• Animal handlers are much tougher now.

Map changes

Some inaccessible parts of dungeons will no longer spawn creatures.

• Fixes were done to teleporters in Despise.
• Skara Brae now has a bulletin board.

Special hidden cool features

• Don't be shocked if your chaos and order shields are confiscated, it is in a good cause. :)
• Rumor has it that a long lost city has appeared again.
• You didn't think we were going to tell you more here?