UO Second Age

Faust wrote:The demo is a time capsule of July 1998 with precise 100% accuracy up to that point in time.

We know failures gained in skill during the late t2a and early UOR era due to obvious bugs that existed at that time.

These known facts tell us a couple things about this topic already. First, skill gain on failures didn't exist in July 1998. Second, it's probably unlikely that two "ninja" patches went in and out during a timespan of a year from that point in time to the end of the t2a days in early '00 before the UOR era was published.

That there tells us that the possibility of this existing during our target date is next to none.

Faust,

The entire T2A upgrade from the Demo to T2A is a 'ninja patch'.

Like I've said before, find the patch note that introduced rideable llamas and giant toads. How about the patch note that talks about the ways to the new lands?

Please tell me what that has to do with anything related to this when there are many articles and screenshots that prove these items existed to begin with?

Hopefully you will discontinue this "the demo isn't accurate" crusade because it's never going to get you anywhere son.

burger queen wrote:This isn't exactly the place, but is there a legal way to get the demo without buying a new T2A disc? Mine's long gone

http://download.joinuo.com/UODemo.zip

This will only work if an era client has been installed, such as our recomended 5.0.8.3 client.

Derrick wrote:

burger queen wrote:This isn't exactly the place, but is there a legal way to get the demo without buying a new T2A disc? Mine's long gone

http://download.joinuo.com/UODemo.zip

This will only work if an era client has been installed, such as our recomended 5.0.8.3 client.

Thanks, but...dead link D:

burger queen wrote:Thanks, but...dead link D:

Fixxed.

Agree with Faust here...I have my UO secondage manual which has all those creatures and more clearly illustrated in section 11, pages 1 - 20. Tells you habitat and diet, size and whether they are magical or not. The demo is a concise source for many things... Its a benchmark which can give us clear clues by not only what is in it, but by what is not in it. Along with patchnotes, its a very good tool. Skill gain from fails is clearly existent in the demo, and there were no changes to remove and then replace them within target sub-era as per wiki patch notes. We must therefore conclude that fail gains did exist and they should remain in the shard.

Faust wrote:Please tell me what that has to do with anything related to this when there are many articles and screenshots that prove these items existed to begin with?

Hopefully you will discontinue this "the demo isn't accurate" crusade because it's never going to get you anywhere son.

I'm not saying that gaining from fails in T2A isn't accurate. I know it gaining from fails is correct.

I'm saying that your talk of 'ninja patches' like they didn't exist because all changes were documented in patch notes is a fallacy.

My point about there being no T2A patches is a valid statement that hopefully will stop you from your usual rhetoric. That's all hijo.

/lesson

There were ninja patches... and this has been stated from me several times in the past. However, resorting to a "ninja patch" in every one of your arguments when you run out of ammo gets a bit ridiculous. A ninja patch can only be concluded through a several pieces of information to support such a claim.

"Oh, it must have been a ninja patch since I know for a fact that it existed!"

No, not going to happen for anyone with some sense...

I think you are the one that brought up the idea of 'ninja patches' in this thread.

They probably should not be brought up to support or, like in your case, belittle someone's argument.

"So if you could go ahead and try to remember to do that from now on, that'd be great. All right! "

My post was directed towards those that use this general argument as a last resort.

Necro bump because of demo testing. viewtopic.php?f=8&t=60634

It does not seem possible to gain herding from failure in the demo. I will be testing other skills to see if there is a pattern.

Some examples of skill gain in the demo:

• More testing required, but I was still gaining arms lore on every attempt at 25 skill. This was not influenced by stats. The gains were clearly not normal gains, as I was gaining multiple points per attempt (eg 0.3 skill per use).
• The "free gains" you get from early skill gain are not limited to 0.1-0.3. They can be higher.
• You gain combat skills passively when someone swings at you. It seems the skill check takes place not only on the attacker, but the defender.
• Did not gain a single point of strength macroing herding up to 40.
• Not sure if this is already in here, but using a training dummy uses up stamina. However you are never limited by stamina when it comes to making the next swing.
• Musicianship gained all the way to 40, gaining multiple points at a time, almost every time. It appears still possible to gain musicianship at 45 from failing. I will check more difficulty based and non-difficulty based skills to see if there is any difference between gains from failure.

nightshark wrote:[*] You gain combat skills passively when someone swings at you. It seems the skill check takes place not only on the attacker, but the defender.

That is because skills could be learned from "watching" up until late '98.

10/1/98 wrote: Learning skills by watching people who are using them will be removed.

Faust wrote:

nightshark wrote:[*] You gain combat skills passively when someone swings at you. It seems the skill check takes place not only on the attacker, but the defender.

That is because skills could be learned from "watching" up until late '98.

I figured as much - but not only that but you do gain from your opponent swinging at you.

For example if you are using swords, and a macer swings at you, you have a chance to gain swords. An actual skill check takes place, rather than what RunUO does which is just compare the skill levels of the attacker and defender. Not that it means much, but I played from around June '99 and don't recall ever gaining melee in that manner.

I seemed entirely unable to gain melee skills at 95 from fighting skeletons (even though I was still missing them), though really I didn't do a whole lot of testing with melee. The multiplayer demo server I was using went down again so I'm at a standstill unless someone still has access to the demo.

nightshark wrote:I figured as much - but not only that but you do gain from your opponent swinging at you.

For example if you are using swords, and a macer swings at you, you have a chance to gain swords. An actual skill check takes place, rather than what RunUO does which is just compare the skill levels of the attacker and defender. Not that it means much, but I played from around June '99 and don't recall ever gaining melee in that manner.

This is an early UO feature that wasn't concretely documented anywhere, and was removed during the very beginning of T2A. The "feature" - as best as we can tell - was that you as the person who was being attacked would have a chance to gain in the skill of the weapon you were holding, if you were missed by your opponent (effectively you "successfully" dodged the attack). One problem (and perhaps the problem) they were having with this is that it allowed you to essentially gain archery for free, since simply holding an archery weapon made the check against it, and allowed you to gain the skill. Obviously, this didn't really make any sense.

Unfortunately, this isn't something that is documented in the patch notes, but there are a few scattered newsgroup postings about it not only happening, but the fact that it was removed. The threads are somewhat difficult to track down, so I'll provide links when I can find them, but I do have at least two threads talking about the problem. The first documents the problem:

On Thu, 05 Nov 1998 22:05:06 +0100, Marc <Mar...@munich.netsurf.de>
wrote:

>What about the bug with archery being raised without using up arrows?

Is that a bug? When someone attacks you it checks your weapon skill
to determine whether you are hit or not. So whether you have any
arrows or not, you're holding a bow, and that's the skill that gets
checked, so it might increase.

Same thing works if you stand half a screen away from someone with no
weapon equippped while they shoot you with arrows. You gain wrestling
without ever hitting them.

The second points out that it isn't around anymore:

The wat it is now, if you can make sure you never auto-defend, you will
never gain skill. As soon as someone targets you (monsters too) just tab
out of combat. Your character wont swing back, and you wont gain skill. It
used to be if something swung on you and missed, you got skill. Now do to
the non-existant arrow bug removal, you don't get anything on a dodge.

I've kept my wrestling down to 25 and I am at ... 95 something magic. So it
works. I get hit alot... but I have 65 extra skill points.

Driakos.