Never played UO before? Here's a newbie-guide.

[The Shaker]

Here's a guide to all of you who are new to UO and never played the game before.
It will go through the absolute basics of UO.
It will, hopefully, be very helpful for you if you have no clue where to start when you logged on.
The game can be a bitch at first. But believe me - you will love it when you've got settled.


First: Read this guide on how to install UO and connect to the shard.

After that i strongly suggest to log onto our IRC-channel. There are lots of people there who can help you with questions you have.
IRC Server: irc.wildirc.net
Port: 6667 (Default)
Channel: #secondage
You can get IRC at http://www.mirc.com or use the java client here: http://www.uosecondage.com/chat.aspx


Game-mechanics.

UO is a skill-based game. You do not gain levels as you may be used to from other populair MMORPG's. You can gain up to 100 in each skill, and there are somewhere around 50 skills you can choose between.
You can only have 700 skillpoints on your char, so you will have to choose your skills wisely.
However, you can freely change from one skill to another even when your character is at 700 skillpoints.

The higher % you have in the skill you are using, the harder it is to gain. Gaining from 99->100 will be alot harder than it is to gain from 50->51 for example.

You can see what skills your character has got by doubleclick your character (this will bring up a picture of your character), then press "Skills".


Your character also got Stats. Stats are Strenght, Dexterity and Intelligence.
Stats goes up to 100 for each one, and you can have a maximum of 225 stats on your character.
For example, 100 STR, 100 DEX and 25 INT.

Strengt gives you hitpoints. For example, 70 str means you got 70 hitpoints. When your char takes damage from another player, or a monster, you will loose hitpoints.
Your character will slowly gain hitpoints after loosing it. You can also heal yourself with spells or bandages - or be healed by others.
Strength also determines how much your character can carry around with him.
You can see how much hitpoints you've got left by holding the mousebutton over your character, then press and drag. This will bring up a health-bar. H stands for hit-points. M for mana. S for stamina.
Doubleclick the healthbar and you will see your stats, together with some other more or less usefull information.

Dexterity determines how fast your character can swing a weapon when you are fighting. The more DEX, the faster you will swing. It also gives you stamina. 70 dex means you got 70 stamina. You will need stamina for running ingame.
Your character will passively gain stamina after loosing it. You will loose stamina by running if you are overweighted, or by being hit by certain weapons ingame (more on this later).

Intelligence gives you mana. Mana is used for casting spells. There are 64 spells ingame, divided into 8 circles. Different circles cost different amount of mana. For example, casting a level 6 spell, requires your character to have 20 mana. To have 20 mana, you will need 20 INT. Your character will loose 20 mana when casting the spell, but will gain it again passively.

There's a skill called meditation. Having this skill will make your character gain mana faster. Most mages have 100 meditation, to make sure they can cast spells without having to wait for mana.

Now we've gone through how the stats works. You have probably already understood that if you're going to be a warrior, you will need high STR and DEX.
If you're going for a mage-character, you will need high STR and INT.


When starting up, you will be in a town. Most likely Britain.
All towns are filled with NPC:s (Non Player Character).
Running up next to them, and say "Vendor buy" will show you a list of what you can buy from them. Different NPC:s for different stuff.
A mage-vendor will sell you reagents. A smith will sell you weapons - and so on.
You can also use "Vendor sell" to see if you are carrying anything they wanna buy.




Fighting.

A warrior will need a weapon-skill. There are 4 different weapon-skills ingame. Macefighting, Archery, Fencing and Swordmanship.
All weapons ingame will belong to one of these 4 groups.
For example: If you equip a halberd, and use it to fight a monster, your Swordmanship skill will go up. If you equip a quarter-staff, your macefighting skill will go up.
The more skill you have in the weapon-type you are using, the higher chance you have to hit the monster/player you are swinging at.
For example: If you equip a quarter-staff but have 0% in macefighting, you will miss alot. If you instead equip a halberd, and have 97% in swordmanship, you will hit alot.

Theres also a skill called tactics. This skill determines how hard you hit, and goes for all weapon-types. The higher tactics you have, the harder you will hit - no matter what weapon you are using.
Another thing that determines the damage is the the qualify of the weapon you're using. There are store-bought (bad quality) aswell as crafted by players with high crafting skill (good quality).
Also there are magical weapons.


Pressing alt+c when ingame will make your character go into war-mode. Your mouse-icon will switch from white to red, meaning you are in war-mode. When in war-mode, you can attack players or monsters by doubleclicking them.
Note that all towns have guard-zones. Within these guardzones you can not attack anyone that is blue. You can not do any criminal acts at all - doing so will result in guards killing you.
You can tell if someone/something is blue by clicking on him.

Besides the blue people, there are greys and reds.
Most creatures are grey, and they can freely be attacked. Players can also go grey, by doing something criminal. For example, stealing.
If you attack someone that is blue, outside of guardzone, you will go grey.

Then we have the reds. Usually known as Playerkillers.
If you kill more than 4 blues, you will go red. Reds can not enter towns, as guards will kill them on sight. Reds can freely be attacked by anyone, without going grey.
If you see a red - watch out!

Reds also have a punishment for killing blues, apart from the fact that anyone can freely attack them.
Each time you kill a blue, you will recieve a murder-count.
There are 2 types of murder-counts; long and short.
Lets take a look at the long:
When you have more than 4 long murder-counts, you become red. Long murder-counts decay at 40hour/count. So you need to be ingame for 40 hours for 1 long murdercound to decay.
If you kill someone after waiting 39 hours, the timer resets, and you will have to wait another 40 hours for 1 count to decay.

Now, lets take a look at the short:
When you have more than 4 short murder-counts, you have statloss. This means that if you resurrect your character, you will loose skills.
You can however die without loosing skills. Just make sure not to resurrect.
The short murder-counts decay at 8hour/count.
The timer will reset here aswell, if you kill someone before a count is gone.

Lets take a look at an example:
You kill 5 blues within 8 hours.
Each time you kill a new, the decay-timer will reset.
So after killing the fifth blue, you are at 5 murdercounts (both longs and shorts - you always gain 1 each for killing someone).
You are now red (for having 5 long terms), and also in statloss (for having 5 short terms).
If you wait 8 hours, you will be at 4 short terms, but still 5 long terms. You are now red, but are no longer in statloss.
If you kill someone again, you'll be at 6 long terms and 5 short terms. Still red, and once again in statloss.



All blue people can freely resurrect without losing any skillpoints. When you die, however, your belongings will be dropped to your corpse.
You can be resurrected by another player who can either use the spell "Resurrection" (8th circle spell, requiring 75+ magery and 50 mana) or using bandages.
There are also healers ingame, who are so called NPC (non player character).

It doesnt cost you anything to resurrect.
Note that you can not loot blue corpses without going grey. You can however loot grey and red corpses without going grey.


The most common way to heal yourself as a warrior is to use bandage.
To get bandages you will have to buy Bolt of cloths from a vendor. Then you will need to buy a scissor, and doubleclick the scissor and use it on the bolt. Repeat it on the new item you recieved, and you will end up with a bandage.
To be able to heal good with bandages, you will need the "Healing" and "Anatomy" skills. These will, as usuall, be gained by healing yourself (or others).



Banks.

Most towns have a bank, or two. Banks are being used to store your stuff that you dont want to carry around. Run up next to the bank and say "bank", will open up your bank-account.
Anything that is in the bank will not be lost if you die. Your bank-account and the things in it is unique for each char.
If you bank something in the town called "Britain", and then go to the town "Trinsic", you will still see your items there.


Banks can hold up to 125 items.



Spells.

As mentioned, there are 64 spells divited into 8 circles. To cast the spell you will first need the mana needed. You will also need a spellbook with the spell in it. You can buy an emtpy spellbook at a mage-vendor.
Then you will need to fill it with spells, by dragging scrolls into it.
For example, dragging a scroll with "Greater Heal" into your spellbook will give you the spell Greater Heal. Srolls can be obtained via mage-vendors (not all scrolls, however), or via other players or as loot on monsters.
After dragging the greater heal scroll into your book, you can now cast it.
Pressing alt+b will open up your spellbook. There you can see which spells you've got in it.


Casting spell will cost you reagents. There are 8 reagents ingame. Greater heal require Mandrake Root, Ginseng, Garlic and Spider Silk. Cast it once, and you loose 1 of each of these reagents. So you will have to carry quite alot of reagents with you. You can buy reagents at a mage-vendor.

To successfully cast the spell, you will however also need the skill magery. The higher circle you try to cast, the higher magery you will need.
Greater Heal is a 4th circle spell, and you will need somewhere around 40-50% magery to cast it. If you have 40%, you will 'fizzle' alot. Fizzle will cost you regs, but your spell will still fail.
You gain magery by casting all kinds of spells.

There is also a skill called Resisting Spells. This will make your character take less damage when someone cast a spell at you. Monsters or players.
The more resisting spells you have, the less hit-points you will loose when someone cast at you.
This skill is gained by having spells cast at you.

A very populair spell is "Recall". Its a 4th circle spell that will let you travel around the world quickly.
You cast it, then click a rune that you've "marked" and you'll be teleported to the place where you maked it.
Mark is a 6th circle spells and you use it on empty runes (buy them from mage-vendors) to mark the rune.



Houses.

If your bank is full, you might want to buy a house to store your stuff.
You buy it from NPC's, and then you get a deed. Go out of town, and find somewhere where you want to place the house. Doubleclick the deed and you're ready to place it.
You will then get 2 keys.
Make sure to bank the keys, so noone can steal them or loot them if you die. You need the keys when you open the doors to your house.

You can make your house public if you want to. This will give you an option so start a vendor.
Vendor-deeds can be bought from NPC:s in town. Double-click the deed while you are in your house, and a vendor will pop up.
On this vendor, you can sell items to other players.

Read more on house-rules here and here.





Creating your character.
Now you should have learnt the absolute basics of the game and should be ready to create your first char.

Start up UO, preferable by using Razor, and enter your desired username and password.
This will create an account, so be sure to remember this information as you will use it everytime you log on from now on.

You can have 5 characters / account.

In the character-creation screen you can choose 3 skills in the game that you will start with (up to 50%). All other skills will be at 0%.
You can also pick stats up to 65.

There are many different towns you can start in. Most people choose Britain as their starting town. Its the biggest city and you will find anything you need here.

A good and easy way to get started is to buy a weapon from the smith npc in britain, using your starting money you get.
Run north to the britain graveyard, and fight the monsters there. When they die, doubleclick their corpse and get their loot (gold).
Use your first gold to buy a better weapon or some armor/shield. And some bandages so you can heal yourself.

After this you might be ready for some harder monsters. These can be found in different dungeons. Despise and Wrong are 2 very newbie-friendly dungeons.





Note that this is just a guide to learn the basics of UO. The game is about freedom. Meaning its impossible to explain everything in it.
Now when you know the basics, the best way to learn the game is by just running around and trying things.
There's tons of stuff to do ingame.
Some players prefer to hunt for rares. Some players prefer to fight monters. Some prefers to fight other players. Some just want to hang around with their guild-mates. Some want to do treasure-hunts - and some like to fish.
Some like to craft stuff using crafting-skills (blacksmithy, for example).


Good luck!

[Daolin]

The guide looks pretty detailed. I'd try to format and space things more in order to make it easier to read. Perhaps see how you can reduce parts imo

[The Shaker]

Thanks.

I've tried to format it some more to make it easier to read.

However the idea was to have it pretty detailed with pretty much everything you need to know as a newbie - making it somewhat long and perhaps a bit much to read.

Basically i've put together all the questions im being asked ingame from new uo-players.