Truths about this Era - The Way it Was

[Zim]

No offense but that sounds like dread lord days to me... I got the purple box the day it came out.

Your logic makes no sense as well... Almost everyone and their mom made a dexxer first, and I primarily played one from the beginning, sparring days on end IN sheep fields with guildies collecting wool. I knew so many dexxers, that PVPED, but we all eventually made tank/mages after got crushed by cross healing and focus nukes. We also funded one of our players to become a mage, and hed make daemons for us to work resists from a boat from. The other problem was that there was so many players ATTEMPTING to make mages at the time, there were litterally spawn campers at all the reagent shops.

Your right on some accounts right when T2A came out like bandages, eval, anatomy, gains on attacks, but many of these things were added during the T2A era, and are remembered by the majority of people. You cant emulate peoples knowledge, but you can emulate the rule set.

[Artemis]

No offense but that sounds like dread lord days to me... I got the purple box the day it came out.

Your logic makes no sense as well... Almost everyone and their mom made a dexxer first, and I primarily played one from the beginning, sparring days on end IN sheep fields with guildies collecting wool. I knew so many dexxers, that PVPED, but we all eventually made tank/mages after got crushed by cross healing and focus nukes. We also funded one of our players to become a mage, and hed make daemons for us to work resists from a boat from. The other problem was that there was so many players ATTEMPTING to make mages at the time, there were litterally spawn campers at all the reagent shops.

Your right on some accounts right when T2A came out like bandages, eval, anatomy, gains on attacks, but many of these things were added during the T2A era, and are remembered by the majority of people. You cant emulate peoples knowledge, but you can emulate the rule set.

The transition from DreadLord days into T2A was just like described. Everyone starts out with melee skills. It was the only way to make money. A true dexxer pvper had GM resist as well as GM melee, GM healing, ect. skills. Few characters had such skills(the correct skills) and stats back then. The entire time I played, few months before T2A up until UO:R most were still complaining that tank mages where too strong thus the changes made that destroyed them. Or did you forget that part? Yet few seemed to know the dexxers owned them, cause few dexxers had the right stats and skills. I knew a lot of melee that Pvp but you could hardly call them good. I only saw a handful at best that could hold their own against a tank mage, but I played my dexxer I usually had the advantage. I was only convinced dexers where viable after I saw a few owning here and there. An Guilds? Im talking one on one not group garbage. I was strictly me(1) VS the many(2-5). Only a fool would waste time on group fighting, I was a total solo field vet. preying upon the many.)
In the field, at the spawns you would see mostly mages, dexers werent farming Lich lords, Daemons, and Ancient Wyrms.
In my cirlce you couldnt call them Dexers unless that had perfect stats an skills, they were simply melee till they were worthy.
And judging simply from your post if your 1st character didnt turn into a tank/mage then I already know those dexxers you speak off never had GM resist as they would need to GM magery to GET Gm resist.
No Gm resist proly no GM healing either cause they were both a mother fucking bitch to GM back then, meaning you probably never new the true power of a Dexxer either, thus how the myth of the invincible tank mage got perpetuated.

[Zim]

I was on Pacific, and apparently our server evolved much faster than yours, when T2A came out the server was packed to the brim with players, every starter town was to be avoided, and within a couple months you had mages and houses all over.

Read the post... I made a character as a tank/mage, I liked my warrior, but outside of towns, tank/mage ftw.

I never needed resist/magery on my warrior (Since Dexer to you apparently means godlike super pvper and not a character with high dexterity) because I mostly did Order/Chaos in town really, but I GMed healing by helping guildies and wasting my life away by healing them while being attacked by mass summoned daemons.

Outside of town, I was always in a group and on my mage so I really don't know, warriors in general were never a problem, we always synced our nukes and heals so it wasn't really an issue, even with pots a good sync trashes anyone, or at least hurts em enough to turn it into a chase.

And seriously must have magery to get resist? I remember a 3-4 month's in doing daemons and boats, guess I was in a good guild though, we had like 50ish active members on all the time. GsD if anyone was from pacific.

Anyways I'm done here, I just realized this chat could go forever, its just memories vs memories, guess the general opinion of everyone is all that matters in the end ^_^

[Artemis]

Maybe you should try actually watching some of the vids still on WTFMAN.com.
The couple vids there showing dexers owning mages an was set in this era. If a VID proving me right isnt enough I dont know what is.
Under the Flash movies section
Dex Monkey vid
Commando vid

The dex monkey vid might actually show the exact patch # that made dexxer fighters good.

[randale]

Does anyone when exactly young player status was implemented and the res with penalties option was removed? My user manual said res with penalities was an option but it never gave it to me.

[Derrick]

Does anyone when exactly young player status was implemented and the res with penalties option was removed? My user manual said res with penalities was an option but it never gave it to me.

Fall or Winter 1999 I think. It was pretty late.

[Kaivan]

Well, I think I should shed some light onto this subject.

Ok, Ive been thru 3 other shards all trying to do this same Era over the last 6-7 years. Allow me to enlighten you all.
The title should read "The sad truth . ." LOL

-When trying to cast with a weapon in your hand you would simply not be allowed to cast your, weapon NEVER unequipped automatically. I blame razor and other programs for this massive inconsistency.

During T2A, you are correct that auto un-equip would not occur. However, during UOR, when precasting was re-enabled, you would auto un-equip. Much of what you see on current T2A freeshards, is a bleedover of the UOR version of insta-hit onto the T2A version and vice versa.

-Yes you actually could equip your weapon while casting BUT EVERYTIME YOU DID IT it caused a bug that prevent you from casting until you logged off and logged back on. Sometimes the weapon would actually get stuck in your hands an you would not be able to unequip it, and when you logged off and logged back on the weapon would automatically be un-equipped in your backpack. Even if you managed to unequip your weapon after equipping it during casting you would keep getting the message your hands are full you cannot cast, ect. until you logged off and logged back on. The only way to effectively interrupt your own casting and not screw yourself was to use a trapped pouch.) Which I came up with that idea while macroing 8th level summons and having a Pk recall in next to me.

There is no information which indicates that when you equip during casting, you become bugged on any resources that are available. Back checking with the only source that we do have available to check that mechanic, the T2A Demo, no bug occurs when you attempt to equip during casting.

-No Spells did damage(not even field spells) in town during this era, but you could gain resist from casting on yourself an yet take no damage, but the resist gains were much, MUCH slower in town than outside town as a result.

During the early portion of T2A, you could still gain resist in towns despite the fact that spells did no damage, however when the Thieves Guild patch went in, that ability dissapeared.

-Dexxers owned tankmages for breakfast lunch and dinner, it was just so few ever tried dexxers because since the begginning of the game everyone used magery. They knew you could move around the world with it, heal, and damage with magery so everyone used it. For many gaining magery an resist was a mystery, no one new jack for the longest time. No one knew effective ways to gain resist, cause back in the day gaining it was near impossible other than exploits. It was all about learning the game, so few people even knew there was a stat cap, a skill cap, what every skill even did until more than a year after the game was released an even then few got good enough to find out 1st hand. Resist An magery was such a bitch to raise the skill and to raise cash for, that most ONLY had melee weapon skills so they could make money without cost(reagents, arrows) so they could use all profits to use to gain magery. An you only had need for 5 skills, Magery, Resist, Melee skill, Tactics, and Hidding. There was no stealth, no meditation, no Eval bonus, no Anatomy bonus, healing skill sucked much ass and Dex fighting didnt exist. When those skills an dex fighting got patched in so few wanted to risk losing that magery that took your left nut to raise. Hidding was uber powerful BEFORE stealth. Stealth fucking suck donkey dick compared to old hidding skill ability.
Everyone had magery, resist, Archery, melee skill, tactics, hidding, and wrestling because there were no skill locks, people didnt choose to take wrestling to keep from getting hit during casting, lol. They couldnt prevent wrestling from gaining when getting hit while casting because of no skill locks so they were forced to take wrestling to keep their other skills from atrophy from default wrestling gains. Wresling and resist were the sole purpose of skill locks being implemented, those 2 skills could not be effectively "turned off" an caused constant unwanted skill atrophy.

I'll have to comment on this in a listed format since you covered quite a few things here.

• Assuming that dexxers were much better than tank mages was a matter of personal opinion. While the game's mechanics of that time, and the limitations of most people's connections at that time favored mages, each playstyle was largely dependent on the skill of the individual behind the character.
• In terms of gaining, and understanding magery and resist, these skills were far from mysteries. An example of such, is the guide to magery which can be found on the archives. The last modification time marked at the bottom of the page is from 2/18/99, only 4 and a half months after T2A came out. The understanding for resist was even quicker. The archived resist page, and the resist chart mention the changes to resist that were still on the test center, meaning that there was a clear understanding of how that skill worked before it was even oficially released.
• In terms of skill and stat caps/gains, the stratics archives also show that the information was known for a good deal of time (in fact if you actually read the stat cap page off of the stratics website, you get an idea of how certain skills gained, the fact that different skills gained at different rates, and a description by DD himself for what is believed to be the RoT system that was used on Siege Perilous).
• While it is true that during the beginning of T2A there were none of the newer skills (or they simply didn't have an effect), for the majority of T2A (starting in about April to May of 99), the game's system for what is considered "T2A" was in place, and stayed in place for nearly the entire duration of T2A.
• Skill locks weren't put into place solely because of Wrestling and Resist. Up until the time of the skill locks, there were many skills that were considered "learn on sight" skills, that were popular griefing mechanics used by players. Overall, it is simply conjecture to assume that no one valued resist and wrestling on their characters and fully intend for their characters to have the skills.

-Dexxers used plate as the introduction of GM made items, GM plate was VERY popular.

Plate was generally considered a popular tool for dexxers during early T2A because your swing speed was based on dexterity, and not on stamina. When the swing speed calculation was changed, plate armor fell out of use for dexxers, and also for mages due to the lack of meditation. Also, the "GM" bonus was simply a marker's mark and was a mid to late T2A addition. It had no effect on armor whatsoever, and was purely a cosmetic change. Plate armor was abandoned as the preferred armor for dexxers long before that patch.

-Townies had no magery or resist since spells did no damage in town, hence the name townies cause they were only effective in town, meaning 2 more skill slots freed up

You are absolutely correct on this.

-no one used stealth, it was only useful in color wars on Abyss/Test servers

This is not entirely true. Many people used stealth on several character templates to do dungeon crawls, break into houses, and generally move around un-detected.

-Meditation almost single handedly changed the game into skillful play, before this skill there were no duels as anyone today knows them. Spell interrupts arrived with this skill as before everyone would conserve ALL mana for strickly big damage and/or healing in fights an never even considered interrupting casting other than with lucky melee swings. An honestly few even knew casting could be interrupted with well timed spells for even a while AFTER this skill was implemented. Before this skill any fight would last less than 2 min guarenteed.

Of course the hidding change was also a huge factor in fighting survivability as well.

Much of what you are suggesting and talking about is part of the early portion of UO, however no one here who has had any T2A experience would say that spell interruption was the way the game was played at the time, and the meditation skill was an early addition to T2A. Also, in terms of understanding the disruption system, the system existed for more than a year before meditation went in. As with other mechanics, it was undoubtely pulled apart to understand it more effectively within a few weeks of it's introduction.

-Pure mages had never existed until much later expansions where introduced. Magery was so weak on low skill levels an so expensive to raise that magery alone was never even an option for this era. Not to mention insanely hard and a mystery to raise. There were so few effective skills(but those few where overpoweringly effective) for this era that most characters eventually used the same skills and stats. The only skills for magery in this era was magery and resist, no other skills augmented magery ability.

Again, you seem to confuse pre-T2A and early T2A with the majority of T2A. Meditation was added on 2/2/99, T2A came out on 10/1/98, and UOR came out on 4/14/00. Meditation was part of T2A for over a full year, while it didn't exist for only 4 months of T2A's existence.

-This era was full of bugs and rampant, blatant cheating of a scale like nothing Ive seen in all the games Ive played since. Within 5 mins of my 1st time playing this game I was macroing even before macro programs existed. I abused numerous bugs to GM magery, archery, resist, gain strength stats on multiple characters, was jailed numerous times and had one account banned only to start a new account simply because I knew of great bugs that would allow new characters to be made almost effortlessly. All the while seeing other players struggle just to survive.

Yes, there were several bugs during this era, many of which were fixed in era.

-You could never cast a spell with an item in your hand unless it was a wand you were using or your spellbook. Only around UO:R I believe the glacial staff was the only item I know that allowed you cast with it equiped.

No one is really suggesting that you could do so. Even into and on to the end of UOR, you couldn't effectively cast a "spell" (in the sense of a spell from a spellbook) without first being unequipped or holding only a runebook/spellbook.

-Exp,Ebolt,Hally hit- the myth the legend. Truth be told if your resist was 70 or lower(as what most people had at the time) and you had less than 90 hps you were dead meat on the spot. Few people had that high a hps too, which was a major factor in making people think it was more powerful than it actually was. High resist before Eval bonus was godly, after eval bonus high resist took a beatin', so again a give an take. Spells did a bit more, but by that time more poeple had higher hps and higher resist. And a halberd being a 40 point wrecking machine? LOL, try 15-80 dmg stompage from GM made halberds with GM anatomy, 100 str , GM tactics, if your target was naked, but the damage was always so erratic you couldn't rely on it.

Spell damage was lowered across the board with the introduction of Eval (again, the whole early T2A versus late T2A deal). Overall, resist was made into a more effective skill, encouraging mages to pick up Eval (otherwise why pick up a support skill when you can simply broaden your options). Halberds never intentionally did any damage greater than about 55 damage, 80 is far beyond the possible calculation for any weapon under the combat system associated with T2A.

-Having tutorials on how to gain skills? Bad idea, learning that shit is half of what this era was about. An while you were stumbling around figuring it out you got into fights an learned who was figuring it out faster.)

It isn't unusual that tutorials exist. Stratics was opened very near the beginning of T2A, and it provided basic tutorials for how to play the game and get started.

Maybe you should try actually watching some of the vids still on WTFMAN.com.
The couple vids there showing dexers owning mages an was set in this era. If a VID proving me right isnt enough I dont know what is.
Under the Flash movies section
Dex Monkey vid
Commando vid

The dex monkey vid might actually show the exact patch # that made dexxer fighters good.

I think it's important to elaborate on the fairly hypocritical statements made within that video. First off, the video claims that dexxers are a class that don't take skill. While I personally withold my judgement as to how much skill any one particular class requires, I will say that claiming that a particular class is skilless is a very byast opinion. As for dexxers "owning" mages, a bit of back story is needed to explain exactly what this video is really showing.

In short, during the first few month's of UO's existence, there was an issue with the weapon system that was in place. The issue was that the weapon system that was in use was creating some out of range values for magical weapons (the early UO magical weapon scale and combat system were much different from the current one). Until a more effective system could be created - which eventually became the one we know today - on 2/12/98, all weaponry had a "balancing" pass done to them. This pass was intended to make each weapon skill competitive, and to decrease the overall damage that the "better" weapons did. This also attempted to provide a temporary fix to the instant kill weapons that were floating around at the time (which didn't really work) and effectively nerfed dexxers fighting capability. At the beginning of T2A, on 11/10/98, the new weapon scale was released (including the new magic weapon scale, and combat mechanics). The new scale increased the damage of weapons across the board to make them have the effective output that was intended for them. Finally, when the bonus to anatomy was added in on 2/2/99, the new combat system which existed from that time to the end of UOR was in place.

Overall, the "dex monkey" video on wtfman, is simply a video which shows their disagreement with the patch which un-nerfed the dexxer class, which came with a multitude of other balance changes that shifted some of the power from particular classes to other classes.

[LudKrud]

Holy crap......

Im glad I didnt say anything stupid or uninformed.....

[Zim]

Holy crap......

Im glad I didnt say anything stupid or uniformed.....

^^^^

Seriously!

[Deja vu]

would an archer mage work well?

thinking of using a heavy cross bow instead of a halbred.

[Kaivan]

Insta-hit didn't work for Archery weapons during T2A. I wouldn't plan on switching over.

[Artemis]

I remember finding stratics after playing for about a year. And some of what they posted on their site at the time was incorrect. Probably because they weren't keeping up with patches. They used to have a list of spells to cast to gain resist, an how many of each it took to get to what skill level, and what skill level to start casting a different spell, etc.
I had the same problem with some of the bugs sites that used to exist strictly for UO, they would have old bugs posted that no longer worked an they never updated their sites. UO shack an a few others had passworded entry for those that would share bugs, they could then gain access to other peoples info on bugs, but only if you shared a current good unknown bug.
At the time I had also tried to figure out how my GM halberd had done 80+ damage using stratics equation with little success. And I fully agree Halberds didn't intentionally do 80-ish damage, but it did happen sometimes.
As for magery and resist being mysteries, many weren't sure if you could gain resist in town when magery did no damage. So that was a mystery. I could gain resist from firefields till only 66-67 resist but for some reason a single magic arrow would make me gain on 95.1 resist? That is STILL a mystery, lol. Resist was ass backwards, magery had a few of its own, like could I gain only using scrolls w/ no regs? etc. Which you could never gain magery on fizzles on OSI, but some player run shards allow you to gain on fizzle so you could have 0 magery, get an eight level spell. scroll and fizzle your way to 20-30 magery off one scroll. Not necessarily mysteries of how to just raise, but how to raise it the fastest and I have yet to see a player run shard that can even come close to this odd skill gains in magery an resist that actually existed back then. They've always been way too easy, I think a lot if has to do with a bit too easy skill gain but more importantly way too easy to make lots of money.

A lot of what I posted was to help people understand why templates were like they were. A lot of it was a totally different reason than most think. And when dealing with a game that was constantly changing with patches it might be a good idea to set an exact date/patch of the UO world you are shooting for because a lot of gameplay changed occurred during T2a era.(pre-casting, thieving) Some of it I liked, some I didnt. Precasting was early T2a, which I mostly tend to reference. Usually I would refer to this Era as Pre-Ren, Pre-UO:R.
Pre-Renaissance

[alatar]

I remember finding stratics after playing for about a year. And some of what they posted on their site at the time was incorrect. Probably because they weren't keeping up with patches. They used to have a list of spells to cast to gain resist, an how many of each it took to get to what skill level, and what skill level to start casting a different spell, etc.
I had the same problem with some of the bugs sites that used to exist strictly for UO, they would have old bugs posted that no longer worked an they never updated their sites. UO shack an a few others had passworded entry for those that would share bugs, they could then gain access to other peoples info on bugs, but only if you shared a current good unknown bug.
At the time I had also tried to figure out how my GM halberd had done 80+ damage using stratics equation with little success. And I fully agree Halberds didn't intentionally do 80-ish damage, but it did happen sometimes.
As for magery and resist being mysteries, many weren't sure if you could gain resist in town when magery did no damage. So that was a mystery. I could gain resist from firefields till only 66-67 resist but for some reason a single magic arrow would make me gain on 95.1 resist? That is STILL a mystery, lol. Resist was ass backwards, magery had a few of its own, like could I gain only using scrolls w/ no regs? etc. Which you could never gain magery on fizzles on OSI, but some player run shards allow you to gain on fizzle so you could have 0 magery, get an eight level spell. scroll and fizzle your way to 20-30 magery off one scroll. Not necessarily mysteries of how to just raise, but how to raise it the fastest and I have yet to see a player run shard that can even come close to this odd skill gains in magery an resist that actually existed back then. They've always been way too easy, I think a lot if has to do with a bit too easy skill gain but more importantly way too easy to make lots of money.

A lot of what I posted was to help people understand why templates were like they were. A lot of it was a totally different reason than most think. And when dealing with a game that was constantly changing with patches it might be a good idea to set an exact date/patch of the UO world you are shooting for because a lot of gameplay changed occurred during T2a era.(pre-casting, thieving) Some of it I liked, some I didnt. Precasting was early T2a, which I mostly tend to reference. Usually I would refer to this Era as Pre-Ren, Pre-UO:R.
Pre-Renaissance

quit posting this nonsense.. everything you post is highly rediculous

[Kaivan]

I remember finding stratics after playing for about a year. And some of what they posted on their site at the time was incorrect. Probably because they weren't keeping up with patches. They used to have a list of spells to cast to gain resist, an how many of each it took to get to what skill level, and what skill level to start casting a different spell, etc.
I had the same problem with some of the bugs sites that used to exist strictly for UO, they would have old bugs posted that no longer worked an they never updated their sites. UO shack an a few others had passworded entry for those that would share bugs, they could then gain access to other peoples info on bugs, but only if you shared a current good unknown bug.
At the time I had also tried to figure out how my GM halberd had done 80+ damage using stratics equation with little success. And I fully agree Halberds didn't intentionally do 80-ish damage, but it did happen sometimes.
As for magery and resist being mysteries, many weren't sure if you could gain resist in town when magery did no damage. So that was a mystery. I could gain resist from firefields till only 66-67 resist but for some reason a single magic arrow would make me gain on 95.1 resist? That is STILL a mystery, lol. Resist was ass backwards, magery had a few of its own, like could I gain only using scrolls w/ no regs? etc. Which you could never gain magery on fizzles on OSI, but some player run shards allow you to gain on fizzle so you could have 0 magery, get an eight level spell. scroll and fizzle your way to 20-30 magery off one scroll. Not necessarily mysteries of how to just raise, but how to raise it the fastest and I have yet to see a player run shard that can even come close to this odd skill gains in magery an resist that actually existed back then. They've always been way too easy, I think a lot if has to do with a bit too easy skill gain but more importantly way too easy to make lots of money.

A lot of what I posted was to help people understand why templates were like they were. A lot of it was a totally different reason than most think. And when dealing with a game that was constantly changing with patches it might be a good idea to set an exact date/patch of the UO world you are shooting for because a lot of gameplay changed occurred during T2a era.(pre-casting, thieving) Some of it I liked, some I didnt. Precasting was early T2a, which I mostly tend to reference. Usually I would refer to this Era as Pre-Ren, Pre-UO:R.
Pre-Renaissance

Your frame of reference in terms of time seems to be very far from correct. Much of what you said about how things worked is either entirely wrong for the era, is entirely explainable, or only existed during a particular portion of the era, and not when you said it did.

Here is, again as a list, a run down of responses to much of what you spoke about:

• The resist chart that you spoke of is still available here, on the stratics archives.
• Much of the information from the stratics archives is not taken as gospel (such as cast times, which are incorrect on every archive page) unless another version of the stratics archives can verify the existence, or lack thereof, of a particular change.
• The 80+ damage halberd hits were part of the old combat system that existed prior to T2A. That system, which is the system where tactics actually determined hit/miss (and the reason for the magic item naming scheme we have now), had an exponential damage system associated with it in terms of magical or exceptional weaponry. That system yeilded 1 hit kill weapons when paired with high combat skill, and magical or exceptional bonuses. That system dissapeared 1 month after T2A came out, and as such, a system like that has no place here.
• The skill gain system during T2A changed substantially from the beginning, however it was always possible to gain on a failure ( I even have some information that shows that you couldn't gain from successes on some skills). The difference between skills is that some skills were difficulty based (such as tactics and weapon skills and magery), while others weren't for all or part of T2A (such as stealing, poisoning, and fishing).
• The mystery of resist gains in guard zone is no mystery at all. Its quite obvious you could, otherwise a patch noting the change to gaining resist wouldn't have been necessary.
• To understand how the power of a spell determing resist gains or not, I would suggest that you read the explanation that DD gives on skill gains on the skill and stat page of the stratics archives. If you understand how the system works, then you can understand how such an unusual event can take place.
• The difficulty of skill gain is purely a choice of server owners. A server owner could make it hundereds of times more difficult to gain skill than it was on OSI, or they could make it as easy as using the skill a single time.
• No one is disagreeing that some aspects of the templates of T2A were chosen by force, but for many people, it was a conscious decision to actually go down that road in the first place.
• Pre-casting was not part of early T2A. Pre-casting was part of the changes which brought about mid-T2A, and existed for nearly a year before being taken out.

[Artemis]

Your frame of reference in terms of time seems to be very far from correct. Much of what you said about how things worked is either entirely wrong for the era, is entirely explainable, or only existed during a particular portion of the era, and not when you said it did.

Here is, again as a list, a run down of responses to much of what you spoke about:

• The resist chart that you spoke of is still available here, on the stratics archives.
• The 80+ damage halberd hits were part of the old combat system that existed prior to T2A. That system, which is the system where tactics actually determined hit/miss (and the reason for the magic item naming scheme we have now), had an exponential damage system associated with it in terms of magical or exceptional weaponry. That system yeilded 1 hit kill weapons when paired with high combat skill, and magical or exceptional bonuses. That system dissapeared 1 month after T2A came out, and as such, a system like that has no place here.
• Pre-casting was not part of early T2A. Pre-casting was part of the changes which brought about mid-T2A, and existed for nearly a year before being taken out.

I remember it perfectly, that instant hit patch was Feb 99. An I could even go over how I discovered instant hit combos, what led me to discover them. I even remember my char stats and skill in Dec 98, and how Jan 99 I decided I been killed by too much by cheating and started actively cheating myself.
The 80+ dmg hally hit was a part of the an old combat system, that came DURING and instant hit combo, I wasnt hunting rats when it happened, I killed my friend with it in front of a large group an we all said wtf, most stating that had to be a vanquishing halberd, which I didn't confirm or deny. The combat system was a lot more buggy than people realize, no charts you can find will get this set correctly and faithfully.

And you are mistaken about Tactics determining hit/miss, I have the Prima guide sold the same time this game was released('97) with all the original equations for combat spelled out better than stratics. Tactics never determined hit or miss, it was always attackers weapon ability VS defenders weapon ability determining hit and miss.
And the reason for One hit kill weapons wasnt the combat system, it was the old magic weapons system. Ruin +5 dmg, might+10, force+15, power+20, vanq+25. Heavy X bows 56 max dmg +20% str dmg bonus+ 25 magic damage
56+12+25=93 dmg, which few had 90+ hps back then.
When they changed the magic weapons tables, they couldnt change current weapons that had already been looted/already in players inventories and banks, so older magic weapons had a high $$$ value amongst players and were called "Pre-Patch weapons" because they still had the old magic damage bonuses on them. There was a trick to tell if a paticular magic weapon was pre-patch or not. Pre-Patched weapons were very MUCH a part, a small part of T2a era until they all gradually decayed out of existence.
People thinking tactics determining hit/miss was also a common misconception when people 1st started out in this era.

Im not trying to be an ass, I just have a good fucking memory
And I just have a problem with these player run shards were everyone has million gold running around with 100str, 25 dex, 100 int, x7 GM and calling it T2a and wondering why they aren't having much fun. People should be struggling and its the stats, skills gains, and easy loot preventing the true "old feeling" from being there. Its too fucking easy, an then its "just oh, well you will never get that feeling again". You might say im a bit bitter from getting dick teased by 3 other shards claiming they were going in the right direction when they didnt have a clue