Inquiries of a solo player

[Shanks]

Figured i'd make this more formal than just the shoutbox.

Could we possibly change a few things considering the lack of population on the server? Maybe look towards lowering the AoA timer to 4-8 hours instead of the current 12-24

Changing the skill cap from 720 to 10x

Also changing the XML Spawn times to 30s to 1m 30s possibly?

Archived topic from AOV, old topic ID:6810, old post ID:39434

[Red Squirrel]

Come to think of it it would definitely be worth maybe looking into some changes we can make to make it easier to solo the shard. Also more fun stuff that does not require a group.

At this point I would not really be that opposed to more "extreme" things like higher skill caps. Perhaps through deeds that drop. Could make +5 ones fairly easy to obtain from killing champ spawn or something and have +10 and maybe up to +25 be harder. If I go that route I could make it unlimited really, so if you really work hard you could in theory max out all skills on a char.

I could play with the artifact timers too, in fact it's been so long I forget a lot of this stuff lol, so open to suggestions.

Coding for the shard is not really a full time thing anymore though, but changes that are easy enough to make/add I could definitely look at.

Archived topic from AOV, old topic ID:6810, old post ID:39435

[Death]

Figured i'd make this more formal than just the shoutbox.

Could we possibly change a few things considering the lack of population on the server? Maybe look towards lowering the AoA timer to 4-8 hours instead of the current 12-24

Changing the skill cap from 720 to 10x

Also changing the XML Spawn times to 30s to 1m 30s possibly?

I think lowering the AOA timers and making the spawn times quicker/slower would be do-able and beneficial to do.

The skill cap change is a bit iffy as 720 skill cap is the standard to keep templates balanced and to encourage making different character classes. Is there a reason in particular you wanted to increase the cap? Is it to get over the hump of creature/boss power or difficulty? Might be some alternatives that can be done instead.

Archived topic from AOV, old topic ID:6810, old post ID:39437

[Shanks]

Mostly to be able to build much easier to play templates in order to get over the power creep of most bosses on the server. Personally could probably get away with dualboxing and soloing most if not all things at 720 but for ease of play i think 10x would be very beneficial to just play 1 character and not spend so much time investing in multiple suits and characters. One other concern is that from what i remember Demitals were INSANE back in the day and im sure are still extremely hard to solo, maybe 10x could help that.

Archived topic from AOV, old topic ID:6810, old post ID:39441

[Death]

Mostly to be able to build much easier to play templates in order to get over the power creep of most bosses on the server. Personally could probably get away with dualboxing and soloing most if not all things at 720 but for ease of play i think 10x would be very beneficial to just play 1 character and not spend so much time investing in multiple suits and characters. One other concern is that from what i remember Demitals were INSANE back in the day and im sure are still extremely hard to solo, maybe 10x could help that.

That's fair, the essence of the shard has changed where it's not as likely to get large groups together for bosses, so it should be scaled accordingly.

Demitels can be brought down in power and health and instead of super strong attacks have a different mechanic in place to make them unique in battle (such as how the crystal demon summons crystals to block movement).

Archived topic from AOV, old topic ID:6810, old post ID:39442

[Shanks]

That does sounds pretty cool, if i remember correctly the blood one had some weird spawning mechanism as well no?

Archived topic from AOV, old topic ID:6810, old post ID:39449

[Death]

That does sounds pretty cool, if i remember correctly the blood one had some weird spawning mechanism as well no?

I think it was that elemental lord that needed the skull drop from the elemental champ spawn and you summoned it somewhere near dungeon Wrong. A couple of Demitel were in their own locations, like dark star was inside dungeon wisp at the end of the puzzle room.

Not sure where they are now, if they are even still spawning in the dark palace in Malas.

Archived topic from AOV, old topic ID:6810, old post ID:39451

[Red Squirrel]

Yeah think they're all in dark palace now. Original idea was to make it kinda like Harrower where you need skulls then summon demitel himself. Which oddly we never did so right now they are just rooms with normal spawners. Demitel was suppose to be ridiculously powerful.

I'm aiming towards kinda keeping that because those artifacts are probably the best on the shard, but with a twist that allows these bosses to be soloed. Basically instead of being hard to the point where you have no chance, they would be hard to a point that they just require some kind of strategy to get around the fact that they are so powerful. Definitely open to ideas there. More helper NPCs is one idea, those are fairly easy to add.

Quests that give special items that aid in fighting bosses alone would be another thing we could add. Or perhaps helper NPCs that require a quest to get access to. Like an NPC that will help you but only if you give it a certain item obtained via a quest.

The gaunt system is also kinda neat and decently expandable, I could use that for demitel as well.


As a totally separate thing, I always wanted to make some peerless bosses in the more old school dungeons as well. Destard etc. These peerless would be fairly easy bosses that would give basic rewards. I'm thinking skill limit increase scrolls could perhaps be obtained that way. They would be roughly equivalent to champ spawn champions but use the key system. could have quests for those too in each dungeon. Basically, something to bring those old school dungeons to life and have more reason to go to them. I would keep this trammel side only, since fel already has the regular champs for power scrolls. Actually I'm drawing a blank here, think tramel has those champs too, and I think we had them still drop the odd 105 power scroll, or maybe it's skill increase scrolls.... yeah another thing we need is to setup a wiki, it's pretty bad when I forget half the stuff we coded.

Archived topic from AOV, old topic ID:6810, old post ID:39453

[Death]

Yeah think they're all in dark palace now. Original idea was to make it kinda like Harrower where you need skulls then summon demitel himself. Which oddly we never did so right now they are just rooms with normal spawners. Demitel was suppose to be ridiculously powerful.

I'm aiming towards kinda keeping that because those artifacts are probably the best on the shard, but with a twist that allows these bosses to be soloed. Basically instead of being hard to the point where you have no chance, they would be hard to a point that they just require some kind of strategy to get around the fact that they are so powerful. Definitely open to ideas there. More helper NPCs is one idea, those are fairly easy to add.

Quests that give special items that aid in fighting bosses alone would be another thing we could add. Or perhaps helper NPCs that require a quest to get access to. Like an NPC that will help you but only if you give it a certain item obtained via a quest.

The gaunt system is also kinda neat and decently expandable, I could use that for demitel as well.


As a totally separate thing, I always wanted to make some peerless bosses in the more old school dungeons as well. Destard etc. These peerless would be fairly easy bosses that would give basic rewards. I'm thinking skill limit increase scrolls could perhaps be obtained that way. They would be roughly equivalent to champ spawn champions but use the key system. could have quests for those too in each dungeon. Basically, something to bring those old school dungeons to life and have more reason to go to them. I would keep this trammel side only, since fel already has the regular champs for power scrolls. Actually I'm drawing a blank here, think tramel has those champs too, and I think we had them still drop the odd 105 power scroll, or maybe it's skill increase scrolls.... yeah another thing we need is to setup a wiki, it's pretty bad when I forget half the stuff we coded.

Ya, unfortunately that palace decayed because Brunus forgot to set no-decay on the houses . It was pretty awesome and majestic, as were most of the buildings he made. It would be neat to continue with the Demitel lore and eventually spawn him in game, not necessarily as something super hard to kill, but something with a great influence on the world when spawned.

Your peerless boss idea sounds similar to some of the ideas I had planned for dungeon revamps where you can obtain keys to enter an arena for a private/party boss fight. The bosses would be similar to peerless with their own loot goodies and special drops but they would have some sort of unique theme/mechanic to them to make them interesting outside of just dumping spells or high damage at you.

Archived topic from AOV, old topic ID:6810, old post ID:39454

[Red Squirrel]

I was just thinking about the spawn comment, is there a specific spawner you feel is too fast?

In general if I recall most of them fall into a "idle mode" where they only check every 10 minutes or so, they only ramp up if they get more activity. But it's possible we have specific spawners set faster that could be reduced. Spawners are actually a bit of a mess here as there's no real central management of them.

Archived topic from AOV, old topic ID:6810, old post ID:39463

[ggkthx]

My 2 cents for what it's worth.

Lower AoA timer I like a lot. Sometimes that's all I want to do and if I get lucky with a few chars and get one really quickly then it's like well, I guess I'm done with UO until tomorrow.
Other times, being really unlucky makes it seem like I do that all day just to get one so, shrug.

Personally I like the skill cap for balance reasons and it makes a sort of interesting challenge of making awesome templates with a restriction instead of here, have ALL the skills. That said, some small bump could be reasonable? 730-750 max.

I sort of wish there was some sort of stat veteran reward like there is with skill cap increase. Then again, I think my 'best' characters have max stats already and many of my others have at least some stat boost because the alternative to doing the Harrower on here was always cool and fun to do, and doable with a small group. A slight stat cap bump might be nice to make solo play a little easier/more fun. Dying solo sucks that much more cuz you don't have friends around to help.

Archived topic from AOV, old topic ID:6810, old post ID:39478

[Death]

My 2 cents for what it's worth.

Lower AoA timer I like a lot. Sometimes that's all I want to do and if I get lucky with a few chars and get one really quickly then it's like well, I guess I'm done with UO until tomorrow.
Other times, being really unlucky makes it seem like I do that all day just to get one so, shrug.

Personally I like the skill cap for balance reasons and it makes a sort of interesting challenge of making awesome templates with a restriction instead of here, have ALL the skills. That said, some small bump could be reasonable? 730-750 max.

I sort of wish there was some sort of stat veteran reward like there is with skill cap increase. Then again, I think my 'best' characters have max stats already and many of my others have at least some stat boost because the alternative to doing the Harrower on here was always cool and fun to do, and doable with a small group. A slight stat cap bump might be nice to make solo play a little easier/more fun. Dying solo sucks that much more cuz you don't have friends around to help.

If the skill cap is not currently 720, it should be at LEAST that. I don't see any harm in raising it slightly to 730.

Archived topic from AOV, old topic ID:6810, old post ID:39486