UO Second Age

Liches always drop a magic wand or staff. At the moment they just drop "a gnarled staff", which is worthless.

Xarx wrote:Liches always drop a magic wand or staff. At the moment they just drop "a gnarled staff", which is worthless.

have brought this issue up at least twice

They didn't "always" drop one. They did in fact drop them more often than they do now. Gnarled staves always drop on liches even if they give a magic wand or gnarled staff. That is their weapon in hand.

I played since day one and never once saw "a gnarled staff" during t2a from a lich it was always a magic staff or wand. ID wands dropped a lot more than they do now also.

I have always remembered them dropping gnarled staves. There are two different loot sections during t2a. The items that are equipped on the character that drops on the corpse and the items that are inside the creatures backpack. I revamped the NPC's here recently that added lootpacks to NPC's. The large project is still pending on Derrick's side to get it implemented. Anyways, the gnarled staff is the equipped item the lich holds that drops to his corpse not inside his backpack.

If you look at the loot guide for Stratics '99 it lists that liches drop gnarled staves. This is also apparent in the Demo code for a lich. It has a gnarled staff listed in its equipment slots. Gnarled staves most definitely dropped on liches and lich lords. If you haven't noticed they are also carrying a staff that resembles one in their animation image.

GL must have been different. On GL they always had a magic staff or wand. Just one of either of the items.

On GL they never just dropped the "a gnarled staff".

I don't see how it could be any different in a logical perspective. If this was the case than they would have to have used two seperate source codes for something like this. Anytime they compiled the code they would have to create two seperate versions of it specifically for Great Lakes and the rest of the servers. Loot was distributed through the code into what are deemed "loot packs" the rest of the personal items are set in their equipped slots in the code. Lootpacks are generated randomly amongst different levels. Poor, meager, average, rich, and filthy rich.

This isn't the case for items placed in the world. Different decorations, spawns, and items placed in the world is completely different. These are merely items that are set in stone in the code that are placed in a world kind of like a puzzle on top of a flat surface. This is why different servers looked different in this aspect of Ultima Online.

Xarx wrote:they never just dropped the "a gnarled staff".

same on atlantic. was the fastest & most effective way to get lightning wands for pvp. i recall them dropping "a magic wand" 100% of the time

It had a 50/50 chance of being a magic wand or magic gnarled staff. I don't recall the drop ratio ever being 100%. I farmed liches and lich lords extensively during the clean up Brit ticket system, because of the great drop ratio for these items. All magic items gave spectacular points in this system. This was the main reason farming liches and lich lords was good for this. I know at times they didn't always drop the magic wand or magic gnarled staff. However, the drop ratio was extremely high compared to any other mob out there.