UO Second Age

I've been levelling my weapon skills, and I've noticed I get a lot of "Your Equipment has been severely damaged" messages a lot. The equipment is all brand new and GM made, and I didn't spend more than 20 minutes out fighting monsters before I saw it. Is this normal?

It's probably just a piece of your clothing (or maybe your weapon) that's about to "break", if you're 100% positive that it can't be your "brand new" armor or your weapon. Try using Arms Lore on your gear if you have to make sure.

I just switched it to my smithy alt on a different account, and arms lore says the GM shadow iron ore chest I just bought from a private vendor is "About to fall apart". Again I ask, does gear break that fast?

I'm pretty new to the shard, so I won't risk a definitive answer, but I went fighting Earth Elementals in Shame and Harpies in Covetous yesterday for well over an hour and I still have the same AR displayed on my status as I had when I first equipped my armor.

In my opinion, you got "scammed" into buying used armor labeled as brand new OR, maybe, you were fighting against something that uses maces, which could do a number on your armor, but I doubt that could explain it falling apart after only 20 minutes of use.

I'd recommend using Arms Lore on gear BEFORE buying it (as well as Item ID in the case of magic gear), if that's possible. I use a mule character as a bank/broker for all my other toons, with GM Arms Lore and GM Item ID.

That would make perfect sense...except this has happened to me with every chest armor I've had. This includes a store bought chest, a skeletal chest I picked up off a skeleton, another gm chest, and one my non-gm smith alt made. All crappy stuff for sure, but sme of it was brand new, and light use wore it out in a huge hurry. And it seems to just be my chest piece, very strange.

I believe ettins, orcs and ogres use macing weapons. If you're fighting them it's possible they broke your tunic down very quickly.

nightshark wrote:I believe ettins, orcs and ogres use macing weapons. If you're fighting them it's possible they broke your tunic down very quickly.

Yes, the Ettins that carry clubs damage your armour. Ettins without clubs don't. Sometimes Ratmen and Lizardmen carry maces.

The Body has a 44% chance of being hit, see the "Determine Hit Location" section on the Stratics Combat Page. Hence tunics/chest armour wear out quicker than other armour pieces.

If you have Parrying, your shield will take a lot of damage that would have otherwise hit your armour.

Your armour won't take any damage if you fight monsters that don't wield mace weapons, e.g. Harpies. (Edit: not true, see Mikel123s post further down)

Also, if you see a "Your Equipment has been severely damaged" message, recall out immediately. Your armour rating at this point will be abysmal. I take a note of what my AR is when my armour is at full repair. Then I keep an eye on my AR as I go. If I drop 5 AR points, I'm out. Time to go home and repair.

The more damaged armour is, the more difficult it is for a blacksmith to repair. Use Arms Lore to check armour/weapon condition. A newish blacksmith, with a skill in the high 50s will fail to repair an "It looks like it is about to fall apart" item. Probably can't even repair an "It looks somewhat badly damaged". At this point, all you can do is smelt it.

Thanks. With about 55-60 in my weapon skill, I'm looking at orcs being my best grinding location, so I may just bring some crappy chests in supply since they're all gonna get maced.

Although now that I got PKed and all my stuff taken, all that's on hold anyway. Haven't exactly had enough time to build up vast riches in the bank...

Zelek Uther wrote:Your armour won't take any damage if you fight monsters that don't wield mace weapons, e.g. Harpies.

Everything in your post is great info, except this. In fact, every weapon type, including fists, will damage armor. I've never tested arrows but I am fairly certain they would too. Macing weapons just have a bonus chance of damaging armor. Swords, fencing weapons, fists, and again I assume arrows, all have the same baseline chance as well.

Thanks for pointing that out Mikel, I didn't know that!

Z

Skyrender wrote:I've been levelling my weapon skills, and I've noticed I get a lot of "Your Equipment has been severely damaged" messages a lot. The equipment is all brand new and GM made, and I didn't spend more than 20 minutes out fighting monsters before I saw it. Is this normal?

Once you get your weapon skill to gm you will get hit less and the armor wont break as fast since the mobs will miss you more.