1998 Patch Notes

This is the page for patches to Ultima Online during 1998. All patch notes on or before October 13th 1998 are available at [1]. All updates after that that date were taken from the now defunct www.mengaxe.com web page. As such, the patch notes' formatting differs from their origonal formatting.

1998 Patch Notes

1/13/98

• Archery
  • The minimum range has been removed from all archery weapons.
  • The damage on all archery weapons has been increased.
  • The firing rate on regular bows has gone up substantially.
  • The firing rate on regular crossbows has gone up somewhat.
  • The range on bows has been increased.
• A new UO.CFG toggle has been added to help those who have slow draw times on their systems. You can add the following line in order to enable frame skipping:

FrameSkipping=on

This will make the client attempt to skip draw frames when the time spent drawing becomes too high. (You may notice an improvement in performance when in crowded areas). Note that this can also cause "stuttering" in the image if your video card simply cannot keep up. Valid text for the toggle is "FrameSkipping=[yes/no/on/off]".

• The incognito spell has been removed; it is still castable but it has no effect.
• Fire fields now affect the caster's notoriety when people walk into them.
• A weight problem when a portion of a stack of items was removed has been fixed.
• NPC and creature following in general, and particularly across server boundaries, should be much improved, with little to no delay.
• A problem which made shop pictures and text get out of synch was fixed.
• Houses can no longer be built on any solid dirt terrain, such as roads.
• Pack horses and pack llamas should have correct names in shops now.
• The words "animal" and "animals" are no longer valid keywords for training in animal taming. They are valid for animal lore, however. You can still use "tame" and "taming" for animal taming.
• Provocation on shopkeepers is not only illegal, but won't work anymore, and will call the guards.
• Pets purchased from animal trainers now gain their owner's notoriety immediately.
• Houses in illegal locations now decay away very quickly.
• We've heard that some suspect the reason they do not get to report bounties is that they right-click on the window (say, by trying to run) by accident. We've put in a message so you can tell if you did indeed do this, to try to narrow down the problem. If it turns out that this is indeed an issue, we'll see about making it not closeable by right-click.
• The notoriety effect of stealing has been tweaked somewhat so that it happens regardless of success or failure.
• The criminal flag duration is now 2 minutes.
• Vendors which have wandered will pop back to their home when the server comes up.
• Changes were made to help server load when dealing with large amounts of player houses.
• The delete key in writable books should work correctly now.
• Gameboards will have their pieces and locations wiped when in containers (you won't be able to play chess from inside a backpack anymore).
• Changing sound volume in the options window now plays a sound at the new volume.
• Delays on spellcasting will be put into place; the higher the spell circle, the longer the delay.
• Theft of items worn by specific types of NPCs will no longer be possible.
• A problem with pricing of stackable items was fixed.
• Various issues with vendors were fixed:
  • They can no longer be provoked.
  • Problems with moving an item from a vendor's inventory into a stack have been fixed.
  • Moving vended items into a trade window has been fixed.
  • An exploit that permitted theft of magical items from vendors has been fixed.
  • Problems with vendors and scrolls have been fixed.
  • Earthquake will no longer work on vendors.
• Guards will no longer be enticeable.
• A fix for timewarps is in testing.
• Ghosts no longer have footstep sounds.
• Two new UO.CFG options have been added that adjust the duration of player and NPC speech. BarkTimeModifier sets how long all speech remains on screen (default is 4 seconds) as a percentage. The default is 300% as long for speech (12 seconds). ScaleBarkTimes is a toggle to adjust whether or not the duration scales based on the length of the text displayed. The below are the defaults:

BarkTimeModifier=300

ScaleBarkTimes=no

• We've also gotten a new UO.CFG option to assist the colorblind. This will let you adjust the combat cursor color when in combat mode. The numbers are somewhat difficult to set, so you may wish to experiment. Two sample values:

CombatHueColor=31 will give a bright blue, 15 bit color 555 RGB

CombatHueColor=992 a bright green

• A fix was made to night sight potions.
• Shopkeepers will no longer buy locked containers.
• The mage hat that alters attributes will now have a unique name to make it different looking from regular mage hats.
• People with bounties on their heads will indeed die when killed and their head is claimed, instead of staying alive but badly wounded.
• Idle fidget animations will be reduced when large numbers of players are on screen.
• Problems with putting too many people in a house will be fixed.
• The skills window will show your skills with a decimal point, so you can track smaller changes.
• Doing damage (with a spell, or an attack) will cause hide and invisibility to stop, rendering you visible again.
• Field spells will now function properly with bounty hunting.
• Earthquake damage will be restored to its previous levels.
• Modifiers to damage based on armor type worn will be removed. Currently, differing attack types cause differing amounts of damage based on what sort of armor they hit. There is an error in this which has resulted in a particular outfit giving unnaturally superb protection, so we are removing the modifiers.
• Houses in invalid regions will decay away very quickly.
• A problem with magic scrolls sold by vendors will be fixed.
• People with bounties on their heads will only suffer stat loss (and loss of their head) once.

1/20/98

• All tame animals will now have "(tame)" above their names (whether they have been renamed or not).
• The friends list has been temporarily disabled because of a stability problem.
• The notoriety highlighting should now be accurate again.
• You will not be able to move with the resurrection window up.
• A bug with advancement in tactics and parrying has been fixed.
• We have isolated one possible cause of lag and have put in a fix.
• Dragons and drakes are now a lot more aggressive towards all humans.
• The delay before the first swing or shot will be much shorter; also, the time it takes to recover from movement in archery will also be much shorter (though the firing rate overall remains the same). You will not need to get new weapons for this change.
• Torches will now have a sound effect when they light.
• Lightsources are not on secret doors anymore.
• Teleporting with the bank window open will cause it to close.
• Magic:
  • It now takes full mana to use scrolls.
  • Area effect spell damages have been tweaked.
  • The magical aura around teleporters now disrupts field spells in such a way that prevents them from being cast. Curiously, this also affects dungeon entrances. ;)
  • There will be continuous animations during the spell casting delay.
  • The mage will be frozen in place whilst casting.
  • There will be a chance of the casting aborting if the mage is struck during his casting process. The chance is based on how much damage you took, and your ability at magery.
  • There will be an automatic 30 second time out on spell targeting.
  • NPCs and creatures now attempt to avoid damaging fields.
  • Spell damage has been revised. Spells of higher circle now offer clear advantages in greater damage, with the tradeoff of longer casting time. Along with this, mana costs for all circles have been revised.
  • It is now easier to resist spells, and some bugs have been fixed in the skill.
  • The light sources on fire fields, energy fields, and paralyze fields should be correct now.
  • Energy fields should animate correctly.
  • The fire field spell now affects notoriety only with the first victim.
  • The magic lock spell's ability has been tweaked.
• Skills
  • Inscription is now difficulty based. It becomes harder to inscribe spells which you yourself cannot cast reliably, so the skill is now partially dependent on your ability in magery.
  • The healing and vet skills have received an overhaul:
    • They now check line of sight and distance.
    • They are significantly more powerful.
• The algorithm for selecting which skills to atrophy will change from a random skill, to your least-used skills. Skills you acquire via learning by watching do not count as "used"! Expect them to melt away very quickly.
• A few problems with items saying they were no longer usable will be fixed (notably in traps).
• The problem with tinkering being unable to use items in containers will be fixed.
• Enticing shopkeepers will now make the message pop up over the right person.
• Advancement rates for magic resistance, wrestling, and bowyering/fletching have been altered.
• The advancement curve for all skills has been tweaked to emphasize the exponential curve:
  • Advancement in the lower points ranges (below 30%) is noticeably faster.
  • Advancement in the newbie-chosen skill range is faster, but you get diminishing returns pretty quickly. Around 50% advancement is the same as it is now.
  • Above 50% the exponential curve is steeper, and it is now much harder to reach the highest skill levels.
• The various "hello" words used to attract NPC attention have been disabled in favor of having to use either the NPC's name, or "guard" (in the case of guards), or one of the following in the case of shopkeepers, in every speech you wish them to hear. This was done at numerous players' request in order to reduce the amount of NPC interruption of conversations.
  • shopkeeper
  • shopkeep
  • merchant
  • vendor

1/29/98

• Tags, like [frozen] and [invulnerable] will now appear over those who are affected in those ways.
• The "internal error" problem with shopkeepers should be fixed.
• A client crash in the trading window will be fixed.
• You can no longer open containers that are being traded to you. Instead, you must get your trading partner to open them for you. When they open a container they are offering to you in the trading window, it will open on your screen.
• Notoriety query will now trigger from targeting on speech and names.
• The advancement rate on tactics should be faster.
• The problem with certain skills (particularly anatomy, parrying, animal lore, alchemy, and others) atrophying faster than others will be resolved.
• A bug in magic resistance was fixed.
• All field spells now flag the caster as criminal for the duration of the field.
• Only keys in your inventory will be usable.
• Runes marked under houses will no longer work.
• Jhelom will gain a bulletin board.
• The problems with target highlighting should be resolved.
• You will no longer be able to teleport into Wind.
• You will no longer be able to recall while overloaded. This is because of three reasons. First, it was being abused by those who used recall as a way to travel between dungeons and the like, whilst too encumbered to move--particularly playerkillers. Second, it was a common way of cleaning a house that was broken into. Lastly, recalling across server boundaries whilst overloaded with large amounts of items made for slower crossing of the boundary, and thus server load and lag.
• The detect hidden skill will gain the ability to detect trapped items.
• The dungeon populations are being revamped to give each dungeon more of a 'theme.' Expect to see hellhounds, skeletal mages, skeletal warriors, new kinds of elementals, elder dragons, and much more.
• The inscribe delay has been reduced to 10 seconds.
• Some methods of breaking into houses were fixed.
• Mage shopkeepers now buy wands
• The mages of Britannia have reported that enchantment now appears on female armor as well as male armor.
• A new UO.CFG option has been added which lets you set whether or not you wish to have pathfinding available. If it is turned off, then double-right-clicking will do nothing.

AllowPathfind=yes

You can set it to yes, no, on, or off.

• Container capacity has been reduced by weight, and there is now also a container capacity limit based on number of items. If your container is full, you will just get a message saying you cannot put anything else in it. The maximum number of items in a container is now 400. A stack of items counts as only one item. Everything in nested containers does count! We realize that this change will require a change in the play style of many players, but it is necessary to provide you with better server performance. Our target is to eventually reduce to 100 items over the next few weeks. The weight limit is now 500 stones instead of 1000.
• Daemons are now more aggressive.
• Lanterns should now be sold.

2/6/98

• A fix for skill atrophy will ensure that the atrophy counter does not reset when crossing server boundaries. We are not sure that this will completely solve the problem with atrophy, and will continue to monitor the situation closely.
• The problem with magical items that affect stats causing permanent loss of those stats should be fixed. (Losing skills from magic items was fixed in a previous update).

2/12/98

Note that some items from the Test Center were not published with this update.

• The use of the TAB key in combat has become configurable. The UO.CFG option

HoldTabForCombat=(yes|on|no|off)

lets you choose which way it will operate. If the option is set to yes or on, then holding down the TAB key will keep you in combat mode, and releasing the key will return you to peace mode. If the option is off, then the TAB key will work exactly like a combat mode macro toggle: hit it once to enter combat mode, hit it again to exit.

• Your current target will remain highlighted in combat even if you move the mouse off.
• The resurrect spell will have a very small range--you must be standing next to the ghost to resurrect them. This is because of the number of house break-in tactics involving resurrection via tricky lines of sight.
• Recall changes in dungeons:
  • You can freely recall in and out of dungeons on the first level.
  • On the second level of dungeons, you can recall out with no problems, but gating in becomes difficult because of the mass of stone and earth preventing you from forming a clear mental picture of the destination.
  • Deeper into the dungeons, recall does not function at all.
• Stablemasters and animal trainers should be restocking now.
• A general pass on balancing weapons has been done to ensure that there is no "best weapon" in the game, and that each of the three weapons proficiencies is a competitive choice depending on your stats and tactics. Note that this only affects new weapons, not existing ones.
• An in-game guild system will allow players to form guilds, recruit members, set guild names and abbreviations (abbreviations to show with their name), and eventually wage war between guilds.
  • Deeds are sold at provisioners. Use the deed to place the stone.
    • You must be in a house or a boat.
    • There cannot be an existing guildstone there.
    • You cannot be in a guild already
    • You have to own the house or boat.
    • You will be prompted for a guild name. This name cannot conflict with any existing guild name.
    • A guildstone will appear where you were standing. It will have the name you specified.
    • The first person to use the stone will become the guildmaster.
  • Using the guildstone: double-click it. If you are not a member, you will be told you cannot use it. If you are an accepted candidate, you will automatically join the guild and be allowed in as a full member.
  • When you use the guildstone as a member, a menu will appear:
    • Recruit lets you sponsor someone for membership.
      • They can't be a member anywhere else
      • They have to be with you when you sponsor them
      • Only a dozen or so candidates can be on the list at a time
    • View roster lets you see current membership, 20 to a page.
    • View charter lets you see the clan's description and also launch to their website. Both of these must be entered by the GM.
    • Declare fealty lets you set who you are loyal to. The default is yourself. The person with the most people loyal (directly or indirectly) is automatically the leader of the guild.
    • Toggle abbreviation toggles whether or not people see the guild abbreviation above your name when they look at you. If there is no guild abbreviation, they see the full guild name.
    • Resign removes you from the guild. If resigning would leave the guild with no members, the guildstone vanishes and the guild is disbanded.
    • View candidates lets you see the list of people that are currently sponsored to the guild.
    • If you are the guild's leader, you also get one more option, access guildmaster functions, which opens another menu.
  • The guild leader menu:
    • Set guild name lets you change the guild name--if it matches an existing guild's name, it won't be allowed
    • Set guild abbreviation works similarly.
    • Set guild charter lets you enter a small amount of text for the guild's charter statement, and also enter a website. The default website is http://www.ultimaonline.com
    • Dismiss member lets you kick out a current member.
    • Declare war is currently inactive, and says so on the menu.
    • Accept candidate moves someone from the candidates list to the accepted list.
    • Refuse candidate removes someone from the candidates list.
    • Set guildmaster title lets you change it from "Guildmaster" to whatever you want. It will be reflected on all menus and in any messages that include the title.
    • Grant title will let you give a title to another guildmember.
    • Return to main menu returns to the main menu
  • Changes in guild name or abbreviation, membership standing, leader-granted title, or guilds being disbanded will notify all online members, and offline members will be notified when they log in. In addition, name changes and disbandings will also notify all online guilded players regardless of guild.
  • After selecting any option, you hit the CONTINUE button. The CANCEL button will exit you from the guildstone menu at any moment.
• We're expanding and extending the creature AI to make the simulated ecology both more visible and more fun.
• The tillerman now accepts the order "one <direction>" and "direction <one>" for more precise movement.
• All targeted spells now have ranges.
• Text wrapping in books should be fixed.
• Combat highlighting with people on horses should work properly.
• Snooping now has a skill delay.
• Female plate mail is now actually plate mail and requires ingots to make. Its stats have also been altered as well to better reflect its coverage of the equipment slots (not the body, it's still a competitive choicei for full body armor).
• Pack animals should display correctly in the shop window.
• Various optimizations were done to the server to increase performance.
• Banks will become available in Jhelom, Skara Brae, Minoc.
• Dungeons will be becoming darker.
• Music in dungeons should be better.
• A problem with magic items that modify stats and skills not returning your stats and skills to their original values should be fixed.
• Problems with items decaying in houses should be fixed. Note that if you stole items to furnish your house with, they will still decay!
• Vendors now die if the house they are associated with decays.
• There is now a limit of 2 vendors per house.
• The incognito spell will return, changed to instead alter your physical appearance and apparent name.
• Having both a chaos shield and a silver serpent shield will not be possible anymore; equipping one will automatically delete the other from your inventory or bankbox.
• The magic ritual for summoning creatures will now take longer.
• Looking at containers will tell you how much weight they are holding, and how many items are within.
• Gold in the bank will not count towards weight no matter how deeply nested in other containers it is.
• The messages for containers at capacity will be made clearer.
• You won't be able to use spinning wheels through walls.
• A bug in training when the cost was under 10gp was fixed.
• Using a bedroll in a campsite will now pop up a yes/no confirmation window for logging out.
• Various problems with unusable gates were fixed, and messages when failing to gate or recall were made clearer.
• House costs have been drastically increased.
• The radar view will reflect ambient light level, and thus will be darkened at night and in dungeons.

2/27/98

• The harm spell (including on wands) will no longer ignore armor.
• A fix for timewarps has been put in place.
• Stats gained or lost from timewarps will return to their normal state.
• There are some changes to the raw materials of tailoring that go along with their new stackable nature:
  • A bolt of cloth will be 50 yards of cloth, cost around 50gp, and weigh 5 stones.
  • Folded cloth, cut cloth, etc, will now be one yard, cost around 1gp, and weigh 1/10th of a stone.
  • Both are stackable.
  • When tailoring on a bolt, any remaining yardage will be changed into a stack of folded cloth yards. An example: Tailor Joe makes a shirt that requires 8 cloth from a stack of 5 bolts. It will deduct the 8 from the 50 yards from one bolt. That remaining 42 yard will then be converted into cut cloth (ie. a stack of 42 yards of cut cloth). That will leave tailor Joe with 4 full bolts and a stack of cloth (42 yards).
• A server ranking system will go into place. You will be able to choose to display the available servers based on population or connection speed.
• Ghosts will no longer be affected by ambient light, and will thus be able to see even in the darkest dungeons.
• Problems with incognito causing client crashes when combined with polymorph should be fixed.
• Some line of sight fixes related to seeing through terrain were made.
• Some further server optimizations were done.
• There is now an hourglass cursor for some slow processes, such as logging in.
• A possible fix for timewarping was put in. If this doesn't work, it will help us narrow down the problem considerably.
• You can no longer create gate travel gates on top of moongates.
• The skill atrophy problems should be fully resolved.
• You should be able to copy player-written books with the inscribe skill again.
• The archery buttes in Yew should work now.
• The farmer's shop in Cove is now a provisioner's.
• The populations of creatureson the northern island of Jhelom should be improved.
• Numerous areas gained music.
• You can now say "news" to town criers to get a snippet of news.
• The "0 yards of cloth" bug should be fixed.
• Guildstone fixes:
  • The second and subsequent pages of roster for granting titles to others should be fixed now to display the correct page title.
  • There is a one-change-a-week limit on guild name and abbreviation titles. This is a real world week, not a game week.
  • A bug in guild abbreviation announcement was fixed.
• A bunch of skills gained sound effects.
• As part of the stackables change, a few items have gained streamlined interfaces. You can now use kindling in a stack in your backpack and it will automatically remove enough for a fire and place it at your feet. You can also use a stack of unlit torches in your backpack, and it will light one and move it directly to your hand, or if your hands are full, to your feet.
• In this update, if the stackables changes test out OK, we will be lowering the weight limit for a container to 400 stones, and lowering the item limit to 250 items per container. We anticipate continuing to lower this to a 100 item limit eventually.
• Numerous items have been made stackable, including many kinds of raw materials, spell scrolls, and various other types of items. A partial list includes:
  • food items
  • cloth
  • tinkering materials
  • kindling
  • bandages
  • magic scrolls and blank scrolls
  • torches, candles, and oil flasks
  • all reagents including "pagan" ones
  • empty potion bottles and empty vials
  • lockpicks and other miscellaneous items
• A new UO.CFG option has been added to let you manage your windows better. To get the confusion out of the way, OSI terms the various free-floating interface windows in the game "gumps." :)

OffsetGumps=yes|no|on|off

If you set this to on or yes, when you open a container window it will offset from the place where the last one opened. If you set it to off or no, then container windows will always open as they do now, all on top of one another.

• A similar toggle now exists for minimized windows:

AutoArrangeMinimized=yes|no|on|off

This toggle will turn on automatic arranging of minimized gumps to preset locations, rather than stacking them all in the corner.

• You will be able to open locked house doors without having to dig out your key, if you have it in your possession.
• Houses will no longer be allowed on furrowed cropland.
• Various NPC types which were killable in towns will no longer be.

3/18/98

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

4/13/98

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.

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.

6/11/98

• The new reputation system is in! Please check Bob Hanson's Reputation FAQ and the official FAQ for details on this new system.
• A new UO.CFG toggle has been added for those who do not wish to ever get the Resurrect With Penalties option:

AssumePlayAsGhost=yes

(You can also put in "on" instead of "yes" if you like).

• The Dispel and Mass Dispel spells will now dispel summoned creatures, including energy vortices and blade spirits.
• The "protection of Lord British's guards" will now read "town guards" in order to allay confusion about cities not under his rule.
• A small patch put the new reputation system's highlighting code in place. With this update, innocents appear blue, murderers red, criminals gray, fellow guildmates green, and opposing guilds orange on servers that are updated with the reputation system. At the moment, that is only Test Center.
• The new color highlighting is configurable via your UO.CFG file. The values entered are in RGB format, and can be entered in either decimal or hexadecimal format. The config lines and their default settings are:
  • HighlightColorInnocent=#0000FF
  • HighlightColorFriend=#00FF00
  • HighlightColorCanAttack=#808080
  • HighlightColorCriminal=#808080
  • HighlightColorEnemy=#FF8000
  • HighlightColorMurderer=#FF000
• Guild warfare is in place.
  • Guildmasters can now declare war against other guilds. When the war is mutually declared, a state of war exists. Note that the Declare War window only shows 150 guilds at a time. To get a different set of 150, simply cancel the window and reopen it.
  • Members of guilds you are at war with will appear orange.
  • Fellow guildmembers will appear green.
  • A new free-for-all warfare method exists: order and chaos guilds.
    • Order and Virtue guards as they currently exist go away.
    • Guildmasters can now declare their guild to be either order or chaos, if they meet the requirements.
    • You must be at the third tier of Fame (the level just below Lord) and not be a murderer, in order to join an order or chaos guild.
    • Any members who do not meet the requirements when a guild becomes an order or chaos guild will be kicked out of the guild automatically.
    • If you are a member of an order or chaos guild, and become a murderer, or lose enough fame to fall below the requirements (by dying or by atrophy), you'll be removed from the guild.
    • All members of order and chaos guilds will be forced to display their guild abbreviation at all times. In addition, their abbreviation will automatically be followed by "(Order)" or "(Chaos)".
    • If you are a member of an order or chaos guild, and do not have the special shield, you can simply say "order shield" or "chaos shield" to one of the guards of Lord British or Lord Blackthorn (you must ask the appropriate guard for the appropriate shield, of course).
    • The shields will no longr disappear immediately. They are also no longer required to be worn.
    • For highlighting purposes, all members of guilds of the opposing alignment will appear orange, and can be freely attacked. All members of guilds of the same alignment will appear green, and can also be freely attacked.
• Creature loot has been tweaked somewhat to give them packs again. *This means that thieves can once again steal from monsters.
• An exploit involving eating while fighting was fixed.
• Guilds without abbreviations now show [none] instead of the full guild name, to reduce spam on screen.
• Placement of new guildstones is now done where the player was standing when he double-clicked the deed, not where he was when the name was entered.
• KNOWN ISSUES:
• Killing cows lowers karma right now.
• Healing or otherwise casting a beneficial spell on someone with karma lower than you lowers your karma.
• People at karma level -4 are not able to buy and sell from shopkeepers.
• Giving food to NPCs does not currently affect karma.
• Taking an item from a fellow guildmember's corpse is considered looting and will flag you criminal.
• Performing an aggressive action against something under a fellow guildmember's control (such as a pet that is guarding) will flag you criminal.

6/19/98

• All guild functions were optimized to improve server performance.
• You will no longer be blocked for a week from changing your abbreviation or guild name if your change is denied.
• Guilds now use a text entry window instead of taking text from the regular prompt, in order to reduce accidental entry of conversation.

9/7/98

• Poisoning weapons will no longer pile up empty bottles at your feet.
• As a side effect of the above, the latest poisoning code went in as well. This means that problems with the success rate in making poisons are fixed.

9/16/98

A few very important items have been marked in bold on this list!

• Problems with fast weapon degradation on the Test Center are fixed.
• Tinkering now consumes resources on failure.
• The healing and veterinary skills now have the same karma effects as the healing spell.
• Vendors now check how full your backpack is before selling you items.
• Problems with the advancement of the following skills were fixed:
  • Healing
  • Magic resistance
  • Swordsmanship
  • Fencing
  • Mace Fighting
  • Magery
  • Inscription
  • Animal taming
  • Blacksmithing
  • Stealing
• A duping bug with cooking was fixed.
• Using spinning wheels now places the thread in your backpack instead of the ground.
• You are now revealed if you speak while hidden.
• Detect hidden is now difficulty-based. You learn faster from detecting better hiders.
• Several measures will be put in place against users of UOExtreme and UOPlugin.
  • You will no longer be able to see hidden and invisible people with it.
  • Bank box exploits will be fixed.
  • Stealing exploits will be fixed.
• The limit on number of items in a container will apply to bank boxes, including the number of stacks of gold. In other words, having many small stacks of gold in your bank box will take up space, and will fill up your bank box. Excess items may vanish! Be sure you have only the normal amount of items allowable for a container in your bankbox!
• The Greater Heal spell will work.
• Using bladed items on items no longer gives the message "that is not accessible"
• Polymorphing into human form does not set your skin to hue 0 (white)
• 22k balrons should no longer occur.
• The "already casting" spell bug should not recur.
• You can now instantly log off in houses if you have the key.
• Hiding now checks line of sight, so you can run to the other side of a wall or building and successfully hide.
• Amazingly fast atrophy of houses and items no longer occurs at server boot.
• All items will now have at least one unit of height, except for floors and carpets. This means that stacks of items in a single tile will stack up vertically, and excess items in the stack at the time of the update will vanish.
• All vendors not attached to houses should vanish.
• The limit of one vendor per house will be applied retroactively. This means that if you have more than one vendor per house, the older of the two will vanish.
• Healing revisions:
  • The amount you heal now ranges up to 80 points of healing, scaled based on a composite of your healing skill and your anatomy skill.
  • At 60 in both healing and anatomy, you cure poison when you heal.
  • At 80 in both, you can resurrect ghosts.
  • Healing criminals and murderers now applies a criminal flag to the healer.
  • A lengthy delay applies after healing.
  • The above apply also to the Veterinary skill, where applicable
• You can no longer drink potions when you hve bows or crossbows equipped, or indeed any other two-handed weapon. You can still do it if you have one hand free.
• Training dummies at certain locations no longer pile up infinitely
• Use of scissors now checks line of sight
• Single-clicking on scissors no longer deletes the scissors
• Herding no longer prompts you saying that the creature can follow you.
• Karma loss for cows is fixed.
• Detect hidden changes:
  • Radius of detection based on your skill level in it. The radius you can detect hidden in will now increase based on your skill, up to almost the full screen for a grandmaster.
  • Better hiders will be harder to find than poor ones.
  • Chance of detecting based on checking your skill vs the hidden person's hide skill. The better you are at the detect hidden skill, the better you will be at finding even the better hiders. You can expect to be totally unable to find a grandmaster hider if you are just a neophyte at the skill.
  • A "distance" effect making it harder to detect people farther from the center of your search area. The farther the hidden person is from the center of your search area, the harder it is to find them.
• Looting while hidden will result in becoming unhidden.
• Some monsters that were supposed to be casting spells will start to do so.
• Spellcasting creatures and NPCs will be smart enough to dispel summoned creatures and beings that are used in combat against them.
• It will no longer be possible to gate monsters. Only escorts, hirelings, pets, and summoned creatures.
• Vendors will gain a "dismiss" command so that their boss can fire them.
• Ordering a pet or hireling to become friends with inanimate objects is no longer possible.
• Escort NPCs will only respond to "I will take thee" if you are quite close to them.
• The problem with beggars talking to you from miles away is fixed.
• Vendors will now give a maximum of 50,000 each time you ask for their money. This solves the problem with stacks of gold getting "truncated" or "capped".
• Getting poisoned when hitting a creature, rather than when it hits you, should be fixed.
• Counselors will no longer be able to trigger speech triggers by yelling.
• Several exploits were fixed:
  • Carpentry exploit.
  • Stealing items in chessboards will not be possible.
  • An exploit involving duping arrows is fixed.
  • An exploit with scroll inscription has been fixed.
  • An exploit with provocation has been fixed.
  • An exploit with herding has been fixed.
  • Anatomy and evaluate intelligence will now check line of sight.
  • Stat increase from magic items exploit is fixed.
  • Exploits involving vended items outside of a vendor were fixed.
  • Possible exploits with bnk boxes were fixed.
  • Movement while the resurrection menu will be completely impossible. **This fixes house break-in problems.
  • Added a check so that the resurrector can not be dead.
  • You will no longer be able to learn skills as a ghost.
• The problem whereby people of karma tier -4 could not deal with shopkeepers is fixed.
• Casting beneficial spells on others can only result in gaining karma, never a loss of karma.
• Looting Fellow Guildmember's corpses will no longer flag you criminal.
• Similarly, all aggressive actions towards the controlled object of a fellow guildmember under the same conditions (same guild, but not an order or chaos guild), you can be flagged criminal. Most commonly this will involve attacking a guarding pet.
• Bankers will not do business with criminals
• Healers will not resurrect temporary criminals
• Corpses will dump contents into a bag instead of stacking items into the air when they decay
• A problem with scrolls not always being consumed when cast is fixed.
• Spell reflection should no longer cause the player with reflection to be flagged criminal.
• Guildstones will use one's actual name when incognito'ed.
• Ship claim tickets will be bankable, but only if the holds are empty.
• Containers should have labels of how many items and stones it is holding.
• Made mining delete ore if it could not fit in backpack (to avoid items in one place piling up and causing problems)
• Spam limiting is in place; it is based on both a server-side and a client-side check. If you try to spam, it will simply not be sent by the server, and your client will try to queue it up to send later.
• Dyes and dye tubs shouldn't be usable through walls anymore.

10/1/98

• Client patch : these items will require a client patch to be visible to you.
  • "Paperdoll lag" caused when sailing, hiding, and drinking potions should be resolved.
  • You will no longer be able to walk uo onto furs or vegetables.
  • Combat automove should be completely gone!
  • Chopping up corpses will now result in a pile of remains, which is a container. Within the remains will be the contents of the original corpse. This container acts exactly the same as the original corpse--looting it can still result in criminal flagging. Special thanks to the regulars at the Crossroads of Britannia Dev and Discussion boards, whose discussing of this problem led us to a solution.
• Guilds and player vs player combat:
  • The Fame requirement or joining and staying in order/chaos guilds will be removed.
  • All the glitches in fealty calculation in guildstones are believed to be ironed out. Incorrect GMs will be automatically deposed when fealty challenges occur.
  • You are no longer criminal flagged for looting the corpses of opponents in guild warfare.
• Learning skills by watching people who are using them will be removed.
• Problems with ghosts entering certain caves will be fixed.
• All references to mounts now use the word "mount" instead of "horse."
• The invisibility spell, broken last update, will function again.
• Game Masters will no longer be revealed for getting items out of corpses while invisible.
• Players who take items from their own corpse while hiding will no longer be revealed.
• GMs have gained the ability to tell who last changed a house sign; if your house's sign has been defaced, GMs will be able to determine the identity of the vandal. Special thanks to the rec.games.computer.ultima.online newsgroup for the suggestion of this feature!
• The text message for the armslore skill, broken last update, will be correct again.
• Excess messages were removed from the healing skill.
• Healing should be advancing properly now. The amount you advance is based on how wounded the individual you tried to heal was--the skill is now difficulty based, so the more health the target is down, the greater the chance of increase.
• Incidentally, the vet skill will behave the same way.
• Spell casting interruption should now be correct. In the last upadate, a change was made to it which we have determined was not well-balanced. It has therefore been reverted back out.
• Very tough llamas should no longer occur. (We know a lot of folks asked for them to stay this way as they were being used as house guards. We will see about adding something else to serve as house guards).
• Several more fixes were made to prevent abuse via third-party programs. In particular, a house-looting tactic will be fixed.
• Fishing poles will no longer vanish when used from the ground. This was a problem introduced with the last update.
• Explosion potions no longer set off other explosion potions. We regret that our earlier post seemed to indicate that the explosion potion was changed only at the request of the City of Oasis, without input from other player sources. Reports from the City of Oasis on Sonoma, which was suffering from terrorist bombs during their periodic Fight Nights, and subsequent support from other player commentary brought this issue to our attention. Please note that the explosion potions were never intended to be instant-kill tools. From now on, explosion potions will only detonate themselves.
• Escortees will now only respond to the word "destination," and will no longer spam you when you talk.
• The poisoning skill is fixed. Difficulty in making more powerful poisons will now work correctly. Many thanks to the players who wrote in with exact details of this problem.
• Using scissors on a bolt of cloth now leaves the remaining cloth in your backpack, instead of on the ground.
• Horses now eat fruit again.

10/13/98

• The Big Window feature from The Second Age will be given to all players in token of our appreciation, and as part of the celebration of Ultima Online's first year of existence.

Using the Big Window

• When in windowed mode, you can simply grab the window edges and resize your UO window to any size you like. Note that video performance at the larger sizes will depend on your hardware.
• You can use the Big Window in full screen as well. Just add one of the following lines to your UO.CFG file:

FullScreenRes=640x480

FullScreenRes=800x600

FullScreenRes=1024x768

When you enter full screen mode (either via the options menu or by hitting ALT-ENTER), you will go to the specified resolution. The area not taken up by the game play area will be left black.

• You will be able to drag any interface window out into the black area while running with Big Window.
• You can move the play area itself around in the black space by clicking and dragging on the gold braid surrounding it. You cannot, however, resize the play area, which is always 640x480 in size.
• All problems with the Big Window should be fixed. You must be sure to obtain the latest DirectX core and be sure that you are using the latest Microsoft certified drivers for your hardware. If you are using the Matrox Millenium II, the correct drivers can be found at ftp://ftp.matrox.com/pub/mga/mill2/win95/1677_381.exe.
  • Going into Big Window in 640x480 will not be possible.
  • ALT+TAB will no longer skew the video.
  • Permanent toolbars (such as ICQ and MS Office) will no longer affect the video.
  • A new UO.CFG toggle will be added for those who still have video problems when using the Big Window. You must add this line only while the client is not running! If you add it while the client is running, unpredictable results may occur!

allowWindowResize=on to turn it on

allowWindowResize=off to turn it off

As usual, yes, no, true and false also work.

• Paperdoll glitches should be resolved.
• Some draw ordering problems should be resolved.

Oct 28 1998 7:55PM

None of the fixes indicated below will require the use or application of a client side patch or similar utility.

• Some more fixes to prevent the use of third-party program exploits.
• Some fixes were made to the obscenity filter. Note that the obscenity filter no longer filters your own language, only that of others.
• Chopped corpses should highlight the same color as the original corpse.
• When a player corpse decays into remains, the controller info is removed (in other words, it is OK to loot corpses after they have decayed).
• Guildstones will no longer be able to be placed on ships. We were obliged to make this change because of the network problems involved in having guildstones move.
• A break-in method for towers was fixed.
• No creatures will produce furs anymore. All creatures that used to spawn fur now give hides instead.
• Hides will henceforth only spawn as one icon, not as two. This means that all hides will stack together.
• Stat advancement with all skills should be fully resolved, including advancement if you are at 0.0 skill.
• Healing skill advancement should be working correctly.
• The problems with objects vanishing when corpses are carved should be resolved.
• Remains will now take 15 minutes to decay.
• A method of deleting other players' vendors was fixed.

Nov 10 1998 12:24AM

• Server Updates:
• Crop growth in the Lost Lands should be slowed.
  • When a thief dies in town, items he stole within the last two minutes will be automatically placed in their owner's backpack. If the owner is not around to receive them, they will fall to the ground.
  • Pets and hirelings will move to attack when so ordered, and will move to attack when guarding something that is disturbed. They will no longer stand still all the time, but will loiter around the last place where they were given a command (unless they are following, of course).
  • Carving corpses will now always leave the results of carving on the corpse, where players can then grab it. This was done in order to limit the amount of stuff left laying on the ground after carving.
  • Several house break-in methods will be fixed.
• The new weapons scale
  • This is the first pass at balancing weapons. It is not intended to be a final balance for weapons, but rather a good starting point. We expect there to be individual weapons and possibly weapons proficiencies that will require further tweaks.
  • A retroactive weapons fixer will adjust weapons to fit the new weapons statistics going in. This code will attempt to transfer over your old weapons and adjust them to the correct weapons scale. It will fix one-hit weapons, "prepatch" weapons with outdated damage ratings, weapons with multiply applied magical bonuses, and similar problems. However, it may not function perfectly with all particular combinations of weapon abilities. In particular, exceptional quality weapons may lose some of their capability in the adjustment.
  • The first pass at weapons statistics will be in place. Key features here are that all three weapons proficiencies should be comparable in effectiveness in combat, but they will all require different tactics to use well. They will also prove to have different strengths against different types of opponents (eg, some weapon types will do better against heavy armor than others, and some will be more effective against mages, etc).
• Skill advancement changes
  • Again, these changes are expected to require additional tweaking. In particular, we'll need to keep an eye out for the advancement rate on stats, to determine whether they advance too fast or too slowly.
  • Skill atrophy was adjusted so that it picks the least-used skills more often.
  • Skill atrophy also was slowed so that it occurs less often. This was done to compensate for "seesawing" effects that were manifesting on the Test Center.
  • Stat atrophy will now only happen when you reach the stat cap.
  • The skill advancement curve has been tweaked so that it will taper off start around a skill level of 45 for the typical skill (it will vary depending on the skill).
  • Stat advancement will now occur regardless of your skill level. So even if you are already a grandmaster in a skill, your stats will continue to advance from use of the skill.
  • Stats also have a minimum chance to advance.
  • With the above changes, stat advancement has been slowed down.
  • It will be possible to reach 100 in any skill. Previously, some skills couldn't reach 100.
  • Holding a spellbook in your hands will prevent the learning of tactics or wrestling. Mages should make careful note of this, as the new skill advancement changes will result in problems for them otherwise!
• Individual skills
  • The healing skill now advances properly, including increased difficulty for curing poison and resurrecting, so that healers with a skill higher than 93 should now be able to advance by resurrecting people.
  • Tailors will now be able to craft surcoats, tunics, jester's suits, and leather caps. All but the leather caps will be dyeable.
  • Blacksmiths who are GMs or near GMs will be able to craft exceptional breastplates.
  • When a grandmaster blacksmith crafts an exceptional item, the item will have a "maker's mark"--its name will have "crafted by (name)" appended to it.
  • It will be possible to craft exceptional and below average quality bows, crossbows, and heavy crossbows. These will have differing damages just like exceptional quality smithed weapons do. In addition, they will have maker's marks if they are exceptional and are crafted by grandmaster bowyers.
  • Alchemy will no longer give "So and so continues grinding" messages to bystanders.
  • Provocation will now be considered a single act, as far as the reputation system is concerned, instead of "controlling" the creature for the long term. This means that actions taken by the creature after your provocation is complete will not affect your standing in the reputation system. (This also means that you will not gain karma and fame for creatures your provoked creatures kill. We will see about adding this back in eventually.)

Nov 11 1998 2:47PM

• Client Patch - Options menu
  • The switch for turning pop-up help on and off will work correctly and save.
  • A new option, "Translation" (on/off) is added to the menu.
  • The current option, "Automatic translation", will refer to whether translation is performed automatically, or when you click on the text.
  • All options should be available in German and Japanese as well.

Client updates Nov 19 1998 4:02PM

• Second Age players have received a client patch which will make the automatic translation feature function using default values even if UO.CFG lines are not present.
• Players who have not upgraded to Second Age have received a client patch which merely changes their LOGIN.CFG file to point to the login servers introduced with the Second Age. You should not notice any difference in play from this change.

Server update Nov 23 1998 10:59AM

• EXPLOITS
  • Numerous loopholes used by third-party programs will be corrected. As we have stated before, we intend to continue moving aggressively to prevent these programs from having any utility. We don't wish to describe all of the fixes we made, so that exploiters have as little warning as possible, but one change in particular merits notice.
    • The "Fast last-target spellcasting" exploit will be corrected. This involved placing a small skill delay after completion of casting.
• SKILLS
  • We fixed a cause of the overly rapid stat advancement. Skills that affect more than one stat will no longer cause accelerated gain for all of the stats.
  • The magic resistance skill will no longer raise any stats. This was done because this skill causes involuntary stat gains when you are attacked with magic.
  • The last skills which had learn by watching still enabled will no longer have it enabled:
    • Begging
    • Evaluate Intelligence
    • Animal lore
    • Anatomy
  • Various cooking issues were addressed:
    • Problems with transferring liquid from bottle to bottle will be fixed.
    • Sweet dough will now be a different color.
    • It will now be possible to make cake. Before, mixing sweet dough and flour gave cake mix, but cooking it gave cookies, instead of cake.
  • Provocation will check vertical distance.
  • Tailoring gained a line-of-sight check.
  • You will not be able to shear sheep through walls.
• SPELLS
  • Players will be unhidden by speaking words of power when casting spells.
  • Casting blade spirits in player-built towers should be fixed.
  • The Dispel Field spell will be fixed.
  • Guild titles and abbreviations will no longer display when incognito.
• ITEMS
  • Armor will also go through the same sort of "retroactive fix" that was recently put in for weapons. This will eliminate "pre-patch" armor with excessive bonuses.
  • Lighting a torch within your backpack will automatically equip it.
  • A bug allowing you to combine ore and get around the regular container limits will be fixed.
  • You will be able to choose what color to dye your hair with hair dyes. This menu system is preliminary; a more complete menu will be installed with the next update that gives a wider range of color choices and more control over which color you get.
    • A menu will pop up letting you choose from blonde, red, black, gray, or brunette.
    • A random color is chosen from within that range.
    • Also, the dyes will be permanent, instead of wearing out.
  • The bug with incognito making hair dyes permanent was fixed as well.
  • The spyglass will now give the moon phases when double-clicked.
• MAP
  • Several Lost lands entrances will become impossible to teleport into.
  • Housing will not be allowed next to Lost Lands entrances.
  • Several map bugs will be corrected.
• CREATURES
  • The following creatures will become aggressive:
    • Ancient wyrms
    • Dragons
    • Giant silver serpents
    • Corpsers
    • Kraken
    • Swamp tentacles
    • Energy vortices and blade spirits will also be more aggressive.
  • The problem with dragons stopping breathing fire when reactive armor is cast on them will be fixed.
• HOUSING
  • These changes are all related to the upcoming transition to housing. We realize that there are still aspects of the plan which are controversial; however, we are proceeding with the aspects that received general approval.
    • Vendor packing up:
      • When the owner says "vendor" (or equivalent to keyword to the vendor) it checks to see if it is in a valid location.
      • Valid locations are inside houses owned by the owner (currently keyholder). Once ownership is complete, friends of a house will also be able to place vendors in a house.
      • If the vendor is not in a valid location, he turns into a deed in your backpack.
      • The deed does not weigh a ton, as it would if all the vendor's stuff were in there.
      • The deed does not affect the item limits on the backpack.
      • The deed is called "a deed for a vendor named (so n so)" so you can tell who you are moving.
      • The deed works like any vendor deed. To place him you just use the deed in a valid location.
    • The limit on vendors in a single building is now set up at 100.
    • Teleporting guildstones in invalid locations (meaning, guildstones in tents):
      • When the guildmaster double-clicks the stone, he receives a guild transportation stone.
      • This stone he can take to a valid location and teleport the guildstone there by using his transporter stone.
      • During this time, all guild members cannot access the stone.
    • Tent reimbursal
      • When doublclicking on a tent chest for the first time, the player (if they are the owner of the tent, determined by whether they have a valid key) will have all the chest contents placed in his bank as well as a sum gold of 10,000 gold.
      • The chest is then destroyed.
    • Housing lockdown.
      • Use of a house key on any item (not creature) within the house allows toggling lockdown state IF the owner is the person using the key.
      • In the initial implementation, any keyholder is an owner. Once ownership goes in, owners and friends will be able to do lockdown.
      • Targeting an item not already locked down will lock down the item if the following conditions are met:
        • The item is not adjacent to a door.
        • The total number of locked down items on the multiobj does not exceed the set maximum. The maximum depends on the size of the building. Here is a table. The numbers are somewhat approximate, because even though the buildings grouped together are extremely similar, they do vary slightly, and therefore may have one or two more or less lockdowns than described below.
          • Houses with approximately 25 lockdowns and 1 secure:
            • Stone and Plaster House
            • Field Stone House
            • Small Brick House
            • Wooden House
            • Wood and Plaster House
            • Thatched Roof Cottage
            • Blacksmith shop
            • Clothier shop
            • Miller shop
            • Pickpocket's Den
            • Weapon Training Hut
          • Houses with approximately 86 lockdowns and 4 secures:
            • Brick House
            • Bakery
            • Smithy
            • Tailor Shop
          • Houses with approximately 108 lockdowns and 5 secures:
            • 2 Story Wood and Plaster House
            • 2 Story Stone and Plaster House
          • Houses with approximately 244 lockdowns and 12 secures:
            • Tower
          • Houses with approximately 375 lockdowns and 19 secures:
            • Small Stone Keep
          • Houses with approximately 577 lockdowns and 29 secures:
            • Castle
      • Generic items cannot be locked down.
      • Items flagged as locked down cannot be chopped with axes.
      • Containers that are locked down may become secure. If they are secure, they can only be opened by a keyholder. Again, once ownership goes in, they will only be openable by the owner and friends of the house.
      • If the locked-down container count does not exceed the max number of secure containers for the building, the container is made secure. The maximum number of secure containers depends on the building's size.
      • Looking at a secure chest will tell you that it is "[secure]"
      • The locker is notified that he has created a new secure container, and told how many more his buildings can support.
      • If the max number of secure containers has been reached, the container is locked down, but a message is given that it is not a secure container because the building's capacity for secure containers has been reached.
      • Targeting a locked down item "unlocks" it so you can move it again. If it was a secure container, it ceases to be secure.
• GUILDS
  • Declaring peace will now properly give the name of the guild you declared peace with.

Encryption change Dec 2 1998 2:32PM

• A client patch was done to upgrade the encryption scheme used for client-server communications.

Housing Update Phase 2--Claim Process Begins Dec 8 1998 10:08AM

• MISCELLANEOUS
  • A textual bug in the anatomy skill will be fixed. It will no longer give human references to animals.
  • Reapers will be more aggressive.
  • Hair dye will give you an extensive menu of hair color choices. Simply double-click the hairdye, and a menu will appear with choices for color categories going down the side. The tab next to the color category will let you pull up a page of color samples for that color category. Select the one you want, and hit the OKAY button.
  • It will not be possible to steal from someone unless you have line of sight to them and can see them, even if you already have their backpack open.
  • Practice weapons will now be handled by the code that retroactively fixes weapons with non-standard abilities. Newbie weapons will automatically have newbie stats replaced on them every time they are equipped.
  • It will no longer be possible to chop up secure containers in houses. They must be unsecured first.
  • You will no longer be able to attack things that are offscreen, even if you still have their name on screen.
  • A variant ridable llama now exists for the Second Age lands. Llamas from Britannia will cease to be ridable.
  • Traps and the magic lock spell can no longer be placed on locked down containers. You can still place them on containers before they are locked down, however. This was done to prevent people from trapping containers to ambush the container's owners.
• HOUSING
  • All tents will be deleted when the server boots.
  • The new house menu will be in place. Double-clicking the sign will bring up a new interface window.
  • The claim process will begin! It will last for two weeks, during which time the following will be attached to the window:
    • The top claimant will be listed.
    • Claim priority is:
      • Placer of the house
      • Holder of the master key
      • Guildmaster of a guild within the house
      • Key Member of a guild within the house
      • Owner of a vendor attached to the house
    • It will look like: (Top Claimant: SoNSo, Placer).
    • If there's a tie, it'll be (Top Claimant, SoNSo, Keyholder; (tie) OtherGuy, Keyholder).
    • If you have not claimed a building and you can claim this building, a CLAIM button will be present. It will report back as to the success of the claim.
    • If you are the placer and also have a master key to the building, a new menu will appear which allows you to choose to simply turn the house back into a deed on the spot (since your claim is pretty much guaranteed to be uncontested,) or to be claimed as normal. This will not be possible, however, if there is a guildstone in the building. If you turn it into a deed, you can then go on to claim a different building. All of your items in the house will just fall to the ground.
    • If you have claimed this building in particular, an UNCLAIM button will be present. It will report back as to the success of the unclaim.
    • When the claim process ends, the top claim on the house will become the owner of the house. Houses that have ties, or are not claimed, will be deleted . This is because if the house remains in dispute for two weeks, we don't think that the issue can be resolved.
  • If you are not a keyholder, it'll be a brass sign with the house name on it.
  • If you are a keyholder, it'll be the new house ownership menu, with said brass sign mounted on it.
  • Clicking the INFO, FRIENDS, and OPTIONS tabs will change the appearance of the window.
    • The first page will be the INFO screen.
      • The owner of the house will be listed. This will show as "nobody" until owners exist-that won't be until after the claim process is complete.
      • The number of locked down items and maximum number of lockdowns available for the house will be listed.
      • The number of secure containers and maximum number of secure containers the house can hold will be listed.
      • The approximate number of visits by non-keyholders will be listed. This is so that public buildings can gauge their popularity.
      • A button will exist for changing the name. Clicking on this button gives you a text prompt for entering the new name. The new name will appear on the brass sign next time you use the sign. Other than that, changing names acts exactly as it used to.
    • The second page is the FRIENDS screen.
      • Friendship will work like guild membership does, once it is in place. You will be able to apply to be a friend of the house even without the owner present, and then be accepted even if you are not present. Four options with buttons will be listed for now. Use of all of these buttons will report that they are inoperative until ownership goes in. When ownership is installed, four more options will be on this window, for handling ejection from the building and managing the enemies list.
      • Display list of house friends
      • Add a friend
      • Remove a friend
      • Clear the friends list
    • The third page is the OPTIONS screen.
      • The menu lists these options, with buttons. All of them will report that they are inoperative until ownership goes in.
      • Change the house locks
      • Transfer ownership to another player
      • Demolish the house and get a deed back
      • Declare the building to be public
      • If the building is PUBLIC then the menu has different items on it, but of course, no buildings will be public until after the claim process is complete.

Mini-update for some claim process fixes Dec 10 1998 1:02PM

• Master keys that are contained in a vendor deed will now allow players to claim.
• When a murderer redeeds their house, the house deed is placed into their backpack and not their bank box.
• The ability to have multiple house menus up and make the claims on multiple houses will not be possible. Players who have attempted to claim multiple houses this way must unclaim all houses they have done this on and claim the one house they truly want. If you do not do this, we cannot guarantee which house you will get ownership on.

Mini-update: moving guildstones Dec 15 1998 10:45AM

When the servers come back up for maintenance they will have a mini-update on them.

• This update gives Guildmasters the ability to move, or teleport, their guildstones once a week. This ability will be permanent. Selecting this option will give the Guildmaster a teleportation stone that they may take to the target house and then use it to teleport the guildstone to that location. As before, guildmembers will not be able to access their guildstone until it has been teleported. We added this ability so that players, who will not be the owner of the house where their guildstones are currently, will have the opportunity to move that guildstone to a house of which they have a higher claim, instead of losing access to the guildstone once ownership is implemented. The one guildstone per house rule is still in effect as well as the valid location checks. Valid locations are defined as the inside of a house that you own, which currently is defined by having a key.
• This update also ensures that teleported guildstones attach correctly to the target house. This means that in any house that currently has more than one guildstone, all guildstones other than the first one placed will automatically start the teleportation process as they violate the one guildstone/house rule. This move does count towards the “one move per week” limitation so choose your destination carefully.
• When you are picking a location to teleport your guildstone, the location is designated by where your character stands. There is no "ghosted" image for you to pre-position the placement of the guildstone.
• WARNING: As this ability is limited to once a week, Guildmasters will only be able to move the guildstone ONCE, before ownership goes in. Choose wisely and remember you have to give up claim on one house to get claim on another. Game Masters will not be able to move your guildstones as we have given this ability to you the player.

Small client update--translation and stacking items Dec 17 1998 3:15PM

• Some items that previously were surfaces will no longer have surfaces (eg you cannot walk on them or climb them).
• Small updates were made to the translation software.

Housing Update Phase 3 Dec 21 1998 1:48PM

• HOUSING
  • Excess houses are deleted.
    • All unclaimed houses are deleted when the server comes up.
    • All houses with claim ties are deleted.
    • Houses with ties that are both the same person are not deleted.
    • The no build period ends.
  • Vendors return to normal.
    • You can place vendors again.
    • They can only be placed in public houses.
    • Vendors gain a new command, "replace," which will dismiss the vendor and create a fresh vendor deed in your backpack. This command only works if the vendor has no inventory. Any vendors bugged during the deeding period can be cleaned up this way.
  • You can place guildstones again.
  • You can place houses again.
  • Tents still cannot be placed.
  • Old building "shop" types can be placed, but the ovens, forges, etc, no longer appear in them.
  • Architects are around, and they sell deeds again.
    • The old building types that were shop specific are no longer for sale.
    • Tents are no longer for sale.
  • Guild deeds may be purchased again.
  • Vendor deeds may be purchased again.
  • Placement of houses enforces a space limit around the newly placed house.
    • There must be a completely clear 1 tile space all the way around the building.
    • There must be a 5 tile space in the front and back of the house wherein there are no "dynamic" objects. This means that trees and underbrush are OK, but another house is not.
  • Houses are now owned by the top claimant, or the placer of a new house. The old concept of keyholders becomes obsolete.
  • The top claims are automatically made into owners when the server comes up and when players log in.
  • The player is flagged as owning a house.
  • The house is flagged as being owned.
  • People flagged as house owners are not able to place new buildings.
  • Friend of the house is defined as
    • Being the house's owner
    • Being on the house's explicit friends list
    • Being a character on the same account as the owner, unless you own a house yourself
  • Functions which previously depended on holding a key will now generally depend on being a friend of the house.
  • Vendors will only be eligible to remain in the house if you are a friend, and will pack up automatically if their owner visits them and is not a friend.
  • Only the owner of the house will be able to lock down items. A key is still used an interface, but the action will only succeed if you are the owner of the house.
  • Only friends of the house will be able to rename locked down runes.
  • Owners and friends of the house are able to refresh the house by using the front door.
  • Friends of the house (including owners) may defend the house:
    • They may exercise "Texas Law."
    • They may attack non-friends in the house without penalty under the rep system.
    • This only applies to private buildings.
    • They can use keywords to ban and eject people.
    • Saying "I ban thee" will bring up a targeting cursor to ban someone.
    • Saying "Remove thyself" will bring up a targeting cursor to eject someone.
    • The functionality of banning and ejecting is the same as if it were selected from the house menu.
    • Logging into a house will automatically eject you outside the door if you are not a friend of the house.
  • House signs gain a new interface.
    • Looking at the sign
      • will give the house name
      • will put (under guard protection) in the case of a public house that is guarded.
    • Double-clicking the sign will bring up a brass plaque with the house name on it.
    • The name of the house will be centered on the sign both horizontally and vertically.
      • Overly long words will linebreak in the middle.
      • Overly long names will truncate after five lines.
    • The sign may be used from inside or outside the house.
    • If the user of the sign is a friend of the house, the brass sign will have a window attached to it with more options.
      • The gump will have an OKAY button that closes the gump. This button also makes the house sign be whatever the currently selected sign type is.
      • The gump will have three tabs, named INFO, FRIENDS, and OPTIONS. Clicking on the tabs between the pages will change the page.
        • The INFO tab will be the front page, and it will have the following:
          • The owner of the house.
          • The number of locked down items, out of the maximum available on the house.
          • The number of secure containers, out of the maximum available on the house.
          • A button to change the house's name.
          • Pressing this button will prompt you to type in a new name.
          • You can cancel typing in a new name by hitting ESCAPE.
          • Having entered a new name, it will become the name of the house.
          • This option may be used by any friend of the house.
          • If the building is public, it will list the number of "visits" the house has had. This is a highly approximate number.
        • The FRIENDS tab will have the following:
          • List friends will list all the friends of the house.
            • If there are many friends, the gump should allow paging through them with left and right buttons on the gray bar at the bottom.
            • An OKAY button should take you back to the front page of the house sign gump.
            • Any house friend may access this list.
          • Clear friends will remove all the friends of the house. Only the house owner may use this button.
          • Add a friend will bring up a targeting cursor to allow you to add a new friend.
            • Only house owners may use this option.
            • There is a limit of 50 friends.
          • Remove a friend will list all the friends of the house with checkboxes so you can choose one to remove.
            • Only the house owner may access this command.
            • If there are many friends, the gump should allow paging through them with left and right buttons on the gray bar.
            • Paging back and forth should not affect which box is currently selected.
            • A "remove now!" button will remove the friend from the list, and redisplay the list with the new friends list.
            • An OKAY button will return to the house sign menu without removing anyone.
          • Ban works exactly as "add a friend" does, except it bans.
            • Any house friend may use this command.
            • Banning will also eject the character from the house, to three tiles from the door.
            • You cannot ban a friend of the house.
            • A message explaining what happened is given to the victim.
            • There is a limit of 50 bans.
          • Eject will bring up a targeting cursor and allow you to target someone.
            • Any house friend may use this command.
            • The targeted individual will be sent outside the house, 3 tiles from the door.
            • The ejected character must be a player.
            • Friends of the house may not be ejected.
            • A message explaining what happened is given to the victim.
          • List bans will list all the people banned from the house.
            • Any house friend may use this command.
            • If there are many bans, the window allows paging through them.
            • The OKAY button will return to the house menu.
          • Lift a ban will list all the people banned from the house, with checkboxes next to them.
            • Any friend of the house may use this command.
            • If there are many bans, you can page through them.
            • The OKAY button will return to the house menu without affecting the ban list.
            • The "remove now!" button will lift the ban, and redisplay the list.
            • Paging back and forth will not affect which box is selected.
        • The OPTIONS tab will have the following:
          • Transfer ownership will let you transfer ownership to another player by bringing up a targeting cursor.
            • The user must be outside the house when the option is selected.
            • Only the house owner may use this option.
            • The target must not own a house
            • The friends list is cleared off the house when ownership is transferred.
            • The ban list is cleared when ownership is transferred.
            • The locks are automatically changed when ownership is transferred.
            • New master keys are given to the new owner (one in the bank and one in the backpack).
            • The ownership of the house is removed from the old owner.
            • Ownership of the house is assigned to the new owner.
          • Demolish house will allow demolishing the house back into a deed.
            • Only the owner may use this option.
            • The option will pull up an "are you sure" gump making it clear that this will delete guilds and vendors.
            • The house will be destroyed.
            • Ownership will be removed from the player.
            • A deed for that type of house will be placed in the bank unless the person is a murderer, in which case it will go in the backpack.
          • Change locks will allow changing of the house locks.
            • Only the owner may use this option.
            • The front door will be deleted and replaced with a new door (thus making old keys useless).
            • New master keys will be given to the owner (one in the bank and one in the backpack).
            • This option does work if the house is public, but since the door is unlockable, it has no real effect.
          • Declare building public
            • Only the house owner may do this.
            • This choice only appears for private houses.
            • Makes the door always openable and unlockable.
            • Makes the building eligible for vendor placement.
          • Declare building private
            • Only the house owner may do this.
            • This choice only appears for public houses.
            • This option will fail with a message if there are vendors in the house.
            • Relocks the front door.
            • Resets the sign to the standard house sign type.
            • Removes the guard region if any.
          • Toggle guard protection.
            • This option is disabled while we assess it for game balance impact.
            • Guards are not aggressive towards murderers, but only towards aggressors.
            • Guards are only aggressive towards aggressors.
            • The victim must be standing on the house.
            • The victim must call the guards.
          • Change house sign will allow you to select a new sign for the house.
            • This option may be used by any friend of the house.
            • This option only appears for public houses.
            • It will bring up a page with sign choices.
            • You can flip between two pages of choices by hitting the more choices button.
            • The selected sign will stay selected regardless of paging.
            • The new sign will take effect when the OKAY button is hit on any page of the gump.
        • Right-clicking will close the window, as usual.
• CRAFTING
  • Carpentry changes:
    • Gains a new category of items called "House Additions".
      • Blacksmithing additions require a level of the blacksmith skill, wood, and iron.
        • Small Forge
        • Big Forge (facing East)
        • Big Forge (facing South)
        • Anvil (facing East)
        • Anvil (facing South)
      • Training dummies require a level of tailoring skill, wood, and cloth.
        • Training Dummy (facing East)
        • Training Dummy (facing South)
        • Pickpocket Dummy (facing East)
        • Pickpocket Dummy (facing South)
      • Cooking add-ons require a level of tinkering skill, wood, and iron.
        • Stone Oven (facing East)
        • Stone Oven (facing South)
        • Flour Mill (facing East)
        • Flour Mill (facing South)
      • Tailoring add-ons require a level of tailoring, wood, and cloth.
        • Spinning Wheel (facing South)
        • Spinning Wheel (facing East)
        • Loom (facing East)
        • Loom (facing South)
      • Mystical add-ons require a level of magery, wood, and iron.
        • Pentagram
        • Abbatoir
    • Crafting the item will generate a deed.
    • Double-clicking the deed will give you a ghosted image of the item to place.
    • These items may only be placed in a house.
    • You must be a friend of the house to place them.
    • These items are not allowed to be adjacent to doors.
    • Items when placed are immovable.
    • Items when placed are usable, if they have uses.
    • All add-ons may be chopped with an axe by the owner of the house, and will destroy all pieces of the object.
    • Carpentry becomes difficulty-based. You will not be able to craft certain items until you reach a certain skill level.
  • Tinkering changes:
    • The range for traps on chests will be three paces.
    • Traps will only damage those who opened the chest.
• MISCELLANEOUS
  • Guild changes:
    • Warfare:
      • Changing guild types should no longer mess up color highlighting for your current wars.
      • Current messed up color highlighting should clean itself up automatically by setting the sides to being at peace.
    • Monsters will pick up and destroy items that block them as follows:
      • The item must be moveable.
      • The creature cannot be a pet.
      • The item cannot be locked down.
      • The item must be impassable.
      • Monsters can destroy an item anytime.
      • Human NPCs must be attacking someone to destroy an item.
      • Animals must be attacking someone to destroy an item.
      • The creatures will destroy stacked items one at a time.
  • Numerous map fixes were made.
  • The help menu will point to the correct URL for sending email to Origin.
  • Giant frogs will no longer cost you karma to kill.

Holiday Gifts! Dec 23 1998 9:37AM

Holiday gifts -- Happy Holidays from the UO Team!

• Using the holiday tickets
  • In your backpack is a ticket that has instructions on using it. A serial number is also on the ticket.
  • Someone on the shard will also have the ticket with the same serial number. Finding the person with the other half of the ticket with the matching serial number will allow access to the Christmas gifts.
  • To activate the ticket, double clicking the ticket will bring up a targeting cursor. Simply target the other ticket with the matching serial number. This will take a bit of trust on both players behalf, as one will need to hold both tickets in their pack.
  • Remember, the tickets only work for the person the ticket initially came with. So, stealing Christmas tickets will do you no good :)
  • Please do not page a GM about finding the player with the other half of the ticket. The Gamemasters have no method of tracking this, and we would like to leave this social activity with the players.
  • The ticket has a serial number. There are MANY duplicate serial numbers, so finding a match should not be hard.
  • Targeting a ticket that does not match in the serial number will result in a message saying sorry.
  • Targetting a ticket with a matching serial number will bring up a prize menu for the players whose tickets are matched.
  • Choosing a black dye tub will generate a black dye tub in your backpack, and delete the ticket.
  • Choosing a hairstyle deed will generate a hair style deed in your backpack, and delete the ticket.
    • When double-clicked, the deed will give a list of available hairstyles, including "bald".
    • Making a selection will change your hairstyle to the new sort, preserving hair color.
    • If you used to be bald then your hair will come out white.
  • Choosing ranger armor will generate a random piece of deep green studded leather armor with "ranger armor" appended to the name of the object, and delete the ticket.
  • Choosing a spyglass will generate a spyglass in the backpack, and delete the ticket.
  • Choosing a fireworks wand will generate a fireworks wand in the backpack and delete the ticket.
  • Choosing a holiday tree will generate a deed for a holiday tree in the backpack, and delete the ticket.
    • Double-clicking the deed will generate a Christmas tree.
    • Lights on the tree should blink on and off.
    • Double-clicking the foliage of the tree will collapse it back into a deed if you are the person who placed the tree. Otherwise, it does nothing.
    • The tree can only be placed in a house you have the owner of, or near it (like, at the distance vendors were allowed before)
  • Canceling the menu will still allow the other ticket holder to choose, but a message will appear notifying you that now you'll need to find another matching ticket.
• Miscellaneous
  • Whenever a friend of the house uses the house sign, it will give them a message in the lower left corner, saying "Welcome back to the house, friend." This is because of confusion players had as to whether their alternate characters were friends or not.
  • The "vendor replace" command was tweaked so that when you replace the vendor, any gold you have not collected goes into your bank. If you are a murderer, it goes into your backpack.
  • The placement rules for houses were tweaked slightly so that the five tile "yard" in front and back is not quite as sensitive to small objects.

Mini-update on all shards Dec 31 1998 12:55AM

• Christmas trees will now only be placeable inside a house.
• Craftable items no longer allowed on boats.
• The "vendor replace" command was removed.
• Finally Serpent Pillars coming and going have been disabled.