UO Second Age

Hey everyone. Just downloaded UOSA and am excited to start! I played OSI (Great Lakes) back in '98-'99 (-ish) and had a lot of fun then. Getting back into it now, this looked too good to pass up!

Could use some advice on skills if anyone's willing. Won't start a character until I know what skills I'll be using, but was thinking something like this:

(Bard/Archer)
100 Archery
100 Tactics
100 Provo
100 Music
80 Anatony
80 Heal
70 Magery
70 Hiding/Resist?

Thanks in advance. See you guys in game!

Sup!

Template looks good, but I highly suggest not going archery. Its not great in this era and its also quite cumbersome due to the upkeep up arrows. Running with swords, fencing, or macing is way better IMHO.

edit:
I'd suggest -
100 swords/mace/fencing
100 Tactics
100 Provo
100 Music
80 Anatomy
100 Heal
70 Magery
50 Hiding

RECALL is 100% at 70.1 magery. Thats basically all u'll need to get around/escape from the gank squads with ur bard. Also healing Failure is determined by your healing skill and # of hits taken while healings. you dont wanna fail so get it to 100 imo.

edit: recall 100% at 70.1 my bad.

Bard is a great first character, easy to fire up the training and can get to work with basically no cost to start. One of my first guys was a bard/swordsman. Spent a long time fighting in dungeons with him and it works well.

If you can stomach going straight into magery/taming its the most efficient PvM template you can do. Just takes a bit of grit and knowledge - the latter of which can be attained through searching the forums.

Last advice: try not to rage out when you get ganked out there, its a tough world! good luck :]

Thanks! I read the wiki and saw the 70.1 for 100% on 4th circle spells. For your magery/taming suggestion, would you just swap Provo/music with taming/lore? And final question: is there a certain weapon skill that's preferred for pvm? If I'm hard or tamer should I'd almost want a 2H weapon or else I'd think I'm missing a shield (and parry, lol)

Barding is the fun way to go for new players. Skip shields, you don't need those either. If I were to give you the most general advice, I'd say go swordsmanship in your template instead of archery. Use a halberd on stuff that you provoked against other mobs to just speed it up. Its actually pretty damn fun honestly.


A taming template would look like this:

taming
animal lore
magery
meditation
wrestling
hiding
resist(?)

You don't have healing/anat on a tamer, or a weapon skill because your tames do everything for you. Dragons and white wyrms destroy things without a problem.

Check out my 'guide' to help a completely naked player get money and fund himself for whatever path he should choose:

viewtopic.php?f=42&t=45914

This would take you on another tangent though. I made this so people could be independent and not have to beg others for a few thousand gold to get started. Honestly, barding is a fun way to go but its very possible to head straight into tamer if you got the drive.

Hello, fellow Great Lakes player! <3

Welcome -Weapon_X-

egg has give you some good advise for starting out here. You've chosen the best
this era shard there is. There are lots of guide for everything UOSA, so search the forums.

There are a bunch of people here that help new players get a foot hold so just ask.
If there is something you need shoot me a pm anytime.
Good luck!

This is the best part of his advise so heed it.

eggmona wrote:Last advice: try not to rage out when you get ganked out there, its a tough world! good luck :]

I have multiple characters locked at 62.9 shown magery, and have never failed a recall. I'm quite confident this is the key number, as this is what you stop gaining from 4th circle spells at, which should technically mean it's when you have exceeded the skill level that there is a chance at failure at. It equals 56.4 real skill points at 100 intelligence.

A bard with healing is definitely the way to go starting out Bandages are very cheap and easy to farm, and barding is completely free with newbied instrument (from starting with some provocation skill). Definitely start with 50 magery, and then either 49 healing & 1 provo, or 49 provo, and 1 healing (newbied sissors ftw!). I would choose 49 healing just because provo is easier to macro, even though it's really slow.

Good luck!

Hello, -Weapon_X-,

Archery is a great skill to supplement Provocation: if you melee provoked mobs you will create aggro when you strike and (at least sometimes) get hit; at range, the mob turns in your direction but then gets drawn back to the provocation fight; although firing rates can be slow, target-switching is quick and painless, so it is easy to control kills; if you're using Bladespirits, you won't want to be in melee range at all or, if using Energy Vortex, it's best to not be close, at all; you still have something to fight with if you are out on a boat ...

With Archery, you probably will not need (much) Healing, nor will ever want to wear heavy armour.

The template you've offered, however, contains skills that are not synergised: you have significant investment in Magery, but in neither Evaluate Int nor Meditation; similarly, you have relatively-high Hiding, but no Stealth (indeed, not enough Hiding to develop any Stealth); Bards, particularly Archer Bards, have minimal need for Healing (which you could cover with highish Magery, anyway), so you have little use for high Anatomy, either ... In short, I am suggesting that you could pare-away significant stacks of not-useful redundancies, and replace with planned, useful, synergies.

Please see this thread: Skill Complexes.

Otherwise, I have compiled 3 pages of templates (more than 30 templates, if you consider all listed variants) that are suitable for PvM play, under my guildpage; while 2 or 3 are 'role-playing' flavour, the rest are not. You need to be logged-in to your forum-account to view, here are those pages,

Professions of Virtue, look at Bard;
Professions of Pride, look at Dyschord (Jester);
Other Professions, look at Skald & Harper, but also Gypsy (and, to synergise with eggmona's guide, Forester)

eggmona's guide provides great insight on how to 'hit the ground running', here at UOSA: I definitely endorse the suggestion of starting-up a character on a second account, running training macros through Razor, while your first character starts building capital.

Feel free to PM me if you have any questions. Good luck!

SS

All great advice! Definitely got enough going to get a bard started here... I appreciate all the help, thanks!

For taming, I'd do hiding only while training it to gm. After that I'd drop it for something like eval. I'd rather have eval and heal up incase some people try to come in and grief.