UO Second Age

As a player who is learning to play on this shard for a month or so now finding out about the rules and strategies of the game , the lack of experience has led to countless deaths and careless mistakes.
I know most people like to keep their combat secrets to themselves. But things I have noticed as I have observed in fleeing for my life or watching battles in the safety of the ghost realms are thus...
Alot of players like taking advantage of the weak wounded or unprepared. Such as when you are mining, engaged in combat with a monster, meditating in an unsecured spot, badly damaged, casting a healing spell with them popping out of hiding to hit you unarmed etc.
Many like to use potions especially exploding ones rather then magery which can leave you vulnerable. If they do cast it is with a prepped spell they probably had even before they even had you on screen, maybe even before they even knew you were there.
Stealing bandages, regs, and potions for healing is a good way to hinder your ability to continue the battle for long. Having a couple /few stacks of bandages two containers of regs and potions here and there helps prevent this. Also in fighting a theif hit and run tactics, or distant attacks are a safer bet then to stick it to them unless it's obvious you have the upperhand.
Staying mobile makes it harder to be targeted, don't stand still especially in the beginning. Once targeted, use last target hot key is all that is needed.
Posioned weapons or spells are a common tactic to use. Don't waste precious time with a cure spell or bandages if you are posioned. Cure potions are a must have. Try to keep a one handed weapon with an arm or disarm hotkey and if a sheild is used make sure to have one for the left hand as well.
Run only when there is chance of escape, or you need to prepare or heal yourself and then only briefly once engaged. If you don't lower their defenses and bring them down a bit it's over. If you are sure you can't stand your ground and you are in the position where you can escape... do. But as you do prepare yourself to engage them regardless. Recall spells are quick getaways, teleport can confuse or hasten direction and there are some beneficial spells that cost very little casting time. Try healing/amping your stats with potions, ready your bandages and turn to attack the aggressor and turn his world upside down. And if you die...so what. We all done it before.
I still consider myself a newbie, no I know I am. This might be good advice and then it might not be, I may very well have it all wrong. So for all those veterns out there who aren't afraid to teach a bit of their techniques to all the new or inexperienced players even if they may in time pose a threat to your very lives illfatingly turning into very adequate PKers/Pvpers whatever the case may be...please do.

very nice post, going on the offence changes the fight from an all out blown pk to a fight, giving u more time to leave if u desire so..ONLY thing to rember is you might lose the opportunity to report the murder if you die when you fight back so you have to chose the situation carefully as to if you think you will surive long enough to bail or if you wana run to get out of view to bail.

The thing's a Bard can't hope to defeat a red specced just for PVP.The only solution it's running.

I find a useful trick is to instead of using a disarm key when you have a spell loaded simply press the spell key again it'll disarm faster with no chance of the weird delay thing I sometimes get.

I've learned to do 3 things while playing my PvM bard:

1.) Force game window to 1000x900. Increased view = more time to prepare for the escape. I've tried larger resolutions but they seem to cause random crashes with UO, maybe its the draw distance, I don't know.

2.) Always have Magic Reflect up. 99% of the PKs I have come across already have ebolt or flamestrike precast so they already have the edge on you. This will save you if you're slow on the Recall, and you'll survive the lame flamestrike/hally/explosion pot combo. Costs 10g each cast, well worth the protection versus dying and losing everything you farmed and the downtime to rez, remount and restock.

3.) Precast Recall and keep it up. Seriously, cast Recall, run around your farming area looking for mobs. Find some mobs? Hit ESC to kill the precast, provoke them, then quickly cast Recall. Hit ESC, double-click the corpse, again cast Recall, and you can still loot the corpse without losing the precast (as long as you don't single-click any loot item.) See a red name pop up on the screen? Simply move the cursor over to your open bag and click your rune = safe getaway and they didn't even have a chance to target you.

I tend not to have problems on a bard, mine has wrestling and resist anyway, and if im barding dragons and a PK turns up, the dragons are getting provoked onto that sucker, then see who runs