UO Second Age

It just so happens that I had decided to create an archer recently. Halfway through macroing with a blade spirit in my house, the new patch was implemented which took away the ability to cast a BS or EV in a house. In my ever growing quest to be as lazy as possible, I HAD to find a way to AFK macro archery to get me to GM. Although this may not be the easiest or cheapest way to GM archery (used 4 boats, see pic), it is quite effective and relatively safe with the proper precautions. There is a bit of setup involved but this is how I did it:

The caster:

In the picture, this is the guy on the horse. There is a bag at his feet with BS regs. The macro is as follows:

-Restock BS regs from the bag at your feet
-Cast Blade Spirits
-Wait for Target
-Absolute Target (will elaborate shortly)
-Pause 1 second
-If (SysMessage "reagents") <----this is for if your restock agent fails to restock all 3 of the necessary regs, which happened to me a couple times
-Pause 1 second
-Else
-Pause 120 seconds
-End If
-LOOP

For this macro, I noticed that fallen (missed) arrows seem to block the casting of the blade spirit, so my absolute target is the tile adjacent to the mast (in my macro, the spot where you recall to if you recall off of the key).

The archer:

In the picture, the guy with the bow (duh). There is another bag at his feet with arrows (4000 arrows = 400 stones). The macro is as follows:

-Exec: Target Closest Murderer
-Exec: Attack Last Target
-Restock arrows from pouch (I restocked 10 at a time to be sure I'm never our of arrows when attacking the BS)
-LOOP

I did notice that on a rare occasion, the archer would shoot quickly enough after the blade spirit spawned that a missed arrows would fall in the casting spot, which would require me to board the boat and move it.

The benefit of this macro is that the missed arrows are on the boat, so they will not decay. The other boats block would-be grievers from looting the missed arrows while you are AFK.

The risks:

The serpent in the picture was one tile beyond its range to fireball me, and stuck where it sits so I was safe, but you may not always be so lucky. In addition to serpents, you may find the occasional water elem has found you, which you would be wise to kill. When the BS disappears, if the elem is attacking the archer, he will auto defend and thus give the elem the ability to cast.

The safety here could be improved with even more boats, but I recognize that getting even 4 boats can be enough of a task so do as you see fit.

Pirates/PK's/Grievers. One thing to mention is to NEVER keep the key to your boats on your character. Pirates are a crafty bunch and, from what I've heard, could cast telekinesis on your corpse and recall off of the key. I kept all 4 keys in the hold of the large boat so I could grab them when needed.

Set this all up in an area of low spawn and low traffic and you're good to go. Not only did I GM my archer here, but both of my brothers wanted to create archers and I took them both from 30 to GM without a hitch. Perhaps I got lucky, but we never died throughout the whole process, because of the precautions we took. But, even if we had been killed by monster or player, the restock agents and keeping the keys in the hold would have kept our losses very minimal.

You will notice a pile of arrows in front of my characters. This is the "rest" of my arrows I used for macroing. Since the pouch can only hold 4k at a time, I would have to restock the pouch every so often.

Here is the pic:

Or just shoot an order guard, lol.

This method allows you to yell Arrrr and wear pirate like outfits.

Haters! I tried the order guard thing for a bit after the change and gains just seemed much slower. I was so happy before with the BS I decided I needed to find a way to make that work again. Thus the above post. Now quit yer hatin'!

thats because order guards are quite high skill. If you don't mind healing more frequently, use an npc with less skills.

Like Eo suggests, just shoot a fighter/paladin and keep another account to heal. I've heard bears work well because they have high AR, but then you need a vet...

aye, and you can have scavenger on for arrows for the healer, feeding them back into your archers restock box.

I appreciate the input guys. I know there are, historically, two schools of thought on gaining archery. It was BS vs. Order Guard. Since BS was essentially taken away, I wanted to show that it was not gone. We just have to modify it some. I, personally, am on the side of using blade spirits to gain archery because it has shown to get quicker gains in my experience. Plus using an npc always has the risk of killing it as your skill gets higher and having to go through the hassle of getting another one can be a pain. If you're smart you won't kill it (even less of a risk because of the high hp of order guards).

Bottom line was I wanted to show that the BS method could still be done. Hopefully someone will benefit from my post.

One way I did it once was parked myself at that one-tile square just north of delucia on the hill, then lured all the orcs, bulls, cows and stuff from nearby. The macro kept randomly targeting greys, so they all got attacked and stuck around, also they healed between shots. I didn't pick up any arrows, tho, and every so often I had to send in a rescue mage to rez and/or restock due to PKs and thieves. Some fun PVP came out of it, though.

Is there a purpose for bows here besides on fishers..

No insta hit

or just use these boats:

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