Hey guys! New here - few questions.

[Aanallein]

Hey everybody just wanted to introduce myself real fast - played on Lake Superior as Hunter back in 1997 and switched to Asuka, also as Hunter, through 1999. Really like this server so far and the people on it. People have been extremely helpful (thanks BOOM II, Legion, and Skarlett in particular). I've also been nearly pk'd a few times already which was awesome and I've been boxed in by orcs and corp por'd by liches which is always a good time.

Quick questions I had -

Durability loss in PVM as a dexer seems about 20-40% worse than what I remember from 1999. Anybody else notice really fast durability loss on weapons and armor?

How available is housing space? I haven't seen much real estate available. What's the chances of me being able to place a bigger sized house (14x14 or larger)?

Any GM smith's around that can repair gear? I have bags of damaged items I could use repaired (see question 1 haha) but don't want to bother people. Better question would be - is there a location where smiths commonly hang out?

Thanks!

[mrbojangles]

First off, welcome to the shard! As for your questions;

1. Can't really speak to any difference in durability between here and OSI, if there is any difference it is unintentional, you could always do some research and make a case for era-accuracy, that's what this shard is all about. It should be noted that different monsters will destroy your armor at different rates, an earth elemental constantly pounding on you will obviously hurt your armor much faster than a gazer dropping spells on you.

2. The only guaranteed housing spots you'll find are for small houses. Larger house spots are all taken for the most part, although it's not totally uncommon to come across an empty spot that was left by a decayed house. But, larger houses can be bought for little markup over the price of the deed.

3. There are plenty of GM smiths, but you wont really find them hanging around public forges like in the old days, most crafters do their work in the security of their homes. The best way to get repairs is to ask in the IRC channel, usually there is someone listening and willing to help. Or you can pm me (omar|bojangles) in irc if you see me and I'd be glad to repair your gear free of charge.

[Wulver]

I also agree about the armor thing. While wrestling cats/dogs my armor didn't seem to hold up long at all. It was bone armor and some orc ringmail/helm.

[Ulfrigg]

The armor wont break that fast once you get to gm, since you wont get hit as often.

[MatronDeWinter]

Durability loss in PVM as a dexer seems about 20-40% worse than what I remember from 1999. Anybody else notice really fast durability loss on weapons and armor?

It has to be based on the quantity of hits you take, not the damage done. While training parry I fought birds. Enough to where I could just barely heal while in full GM plate, so their damage output was about that of an ogre lord. However, my armor would only last for about 2 minutes. Also keep in mind that in 1999 you were generally much slower than you are now, so you can engage more enemies and thus take more hits. I think this is a realistic interpretation of the T2A era as far as armor durability goes.


How available is housing space? I haven't seen much real estate available. What's the chances of me being able to place a bigger sized house (14x14 or larger)?

People will tell you otherwise, but housing is a huge pain. If you look really really hard, you might find a really poor spot to place a home. You can also search for idocs and try to place when they fall, but that's a much more involved method, especially if the house has loot in it, in which case, you can expect everyone to show up.

Fortunately, every idiot that has 15 houses is willing to part with one of them, sometimes for only 10k above the deed price. This really baffles me sometimes, especially for small/med housing. Why trouble yourself with refreshing it for such a low profit is beyond me, but everyone fancies themselves a "land baron" on uosa.


Any GM smith's around that can repair gear? I have bags of damaged items I could use repaired (see question 1 haha) but don't want to bother people. Better question would be - is there a location where smiths commonly hang out?

Short answer: no.

You might find someone in IRC willing to help you out. But as far as finding a "working" smith with any degree of frequency, well, don't count on it. Since there are so few players, gold is trivial to earn, and everyone can macro their own GM smith for practically nothing. Every once in a while a crafter will open a shop and have hours, or hang around a forge, but it never lasts long.

Thankfully, this is actually sort of good for you believe it or not. When a moderately new player makes a GM smith, they open a shop. Since there are quite frankly so many vendor shops, the prices have been driven down to basically profitless for GM-made goods (Compared to T2A where a GM smith was sure to be super-rich). So you will find GM weapons for sometimes 50-60gp. Just buy a whole new suit to replace your own. When you get to the point of wearing magic gear, you will probably have so much of that, repairing becomes a chore anyway, though, you WILL have a GM smith to do it.



That being said, there are some socio-eco-era inaccuracies caused by such a low (compared to 10,000+ T2A) population. But this server more than makes up for it with its tight knit community. IRC/Forum has basically replaced any in-game bartering-interaction, but that's no big deal. Every private server suffers from these problems, but UOSA is the absolute best by a large margin.

[Aanallein]

Awesome - thanks a lot guys. I'll contact somebody on IRC regarding the repairs and probably work through the forums on a house. Thanks again