Causal play of UOForever

Talinos

Neophyte
Hey,

Just curious what people have to say on this. Is it possible to enjoy UOForever as a casual player?

I don't have the time to be really involved in guilds and playing constantly. Is this server enjoyable for casual type of players or does it cater exclusively to hardcore types?

From what it looks like the meta system requires a ridiculous time investment, far too long for anyone that isn't a UO addict.

Am I off base?
 

MANKRIK

Grandmaster
A lot of people play casually, some only for an hour or two a week. You might not be able to do a lot of the endgame type stuff (champs, etc) but there's still plenty to do. I play solo and usually for only a few hours a week at the moment with occasional breaks of several weeks and I still have fun.
 

Fattson

Grandmaster
Hey,

Just curious what people have to say on this. Is it possible to enjoy UOForever as a casual player?

I don't have the time to be really involved in guilds and playing constantly. Is this server enjoyable for casual type of players or does it cater exclusively to hardcore types?

From what it looks like the meta system requires a ridiculous time investment, far too long for anyone that isn't a UO addict.

Am I off base?

UOF caters to hardcore pvmers because they're the ones who get bored with standard content. There's plenty for you to do here.
 

wreckognize

Grandmaster
There definitely are perks for those who play 25 hours a day here, but there's still a ton of ways to get easy money if you don't.

I suggest hunting MotM (monster of the month.) Normally you can get a yard or two of cloth and maybe a spellbook even with minimal time investment. Might even get a relic, if you're really lucky, some of which are worth 8 figures.

The stealable system is gone now, it was a pretty good moneymaker for the average joe. Now it might be turned into another average joe meal ticket where all the old stealable rare items make a return in the form of mob drops.

You could also try your luck on the poker tables. Some people worry about other people grouping up in teams maybe even as big as 5, sharing information in teamspeak, so it might be a good strategy to go in with the minimum and not be afraid to lose it if you aren't one of those teaming sons of bitches.

If you've been around since the 90's then you probably know a few good scam techniques by now. Just don't use the forums and be careful not to scam anyone out of their donation items or coins. You can find the full list of all donation item on this shard by following the links in this thread. Also just because it's permitted doesn't mean you can do it non stop for a week with no consequences. In other words, avoid anything excessive and you're good to go. Probably wise to avoid scamming via IRC as well.

And if all else fails, and you really couldn't be bothered to try all that, you could always donate to the server and sell the coins or items you purchase. Keep in mind, if your end goal is gold when donating, it's best to sell the coins straight up rather than purchasing items and then trying to sell them. With the coins you have like 200 options right now, whereas if you're trying to sell one of the items you cut your market down to the one or two people who maybe want it. You'd be surprised how many people here don't understand that concept (pretty much everyone)

Note that every donation helps and as far as it goes for being put back into the shard, UO:F is legit. As you may have seen, some people here seem upset about the rate of content progression, but the reality is that they're mostly just upset with the promise of content that doesn't end up happening. It basically boils down to the developers setting unrealistic timeframes, which is definitely not the worst thing. IMO the rate of content progression here is pefect, ensuring all the new content has time to marinade.

And that's just the content aimed at making quick gold, there's still a ton more content for the average joe, like house decorating, statue collecting, plant growing, quests, conquests and plenty more. The only content you're getting cut out from if you only play a few hours a week is champs, bosses and RDAs, and that's mostly just stressful these days anyways with the $ guild lurking around. So I'm told anyways, personally I enjoy a good skirmish with those chaps.
 
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Darkarna

Grandmaster
There really is a lot of stuff to do as a solo/casual player, but like anything you will still run out of steam even playing a few hours a week. I think the issue is when you get yourself into a routine and becoming a slave to that routine.

Personally, all I run is a thief and you can pretty much be guaranteed you will find some action or something fun to do. Here is an hour or so worth of content that I experienced yesterday :

Logged on and ran to West Brit bank, did a few laps of the bank, snooped a few packs then had a few inspiring conversations *Self Slap*. From then, gated to my house to friend a fellow thief to my houses and someone else from the [TRIN] guild decided to follow. The thief I gated decided to steal something from the [TRIN] guy who then gave chase and somehow killed the thief *I pretty much failed in my attempts to heal the thief thus I contributed to his demise (Really sorry about this!)*. I decided to steal from the [TRIN] guy and forgot that I had no pots, forgot my blaze pouch for countering paralyse which was sitting in the bank and stole the wrong reagent. Obviously he did not take kindly to this and went a little loco. I had to back off, no point dying and checked my house for potions *failed again*. The conflict happened for a while longer and we went our separate ways.

I went to my other house and an old friend had logged on to refresh houses, the other thief was there and I introduced them to each other. After a good 15 minutes worth of catching up, we all had to go AFK and thus ending the first 25-30 minutes of play time. A few hours later, real life was appeased and I logged back on. A quick recall to Britain bank, a couple of provocative snoops and I needed a change of scenery. Despise level one was the destination of choice so a quick sweep of the dungeon's easiest level did not bring anything worthwhile to the table *completely empty of players*. Time to visit the titans with a quick stop off at the Champ spawn. Entering the champ level of despise, many a titan had been slain by most likely, 'the dregs of society'. Following the breadcrumb trail of corpses no one was around, so once again it was time to move to another dungeon. I opened my rune book, first thoughts were to recall to ice dungeon and instead clicked the rune to deceit, the bard table. A couple of new players were calmly provoking zombies and a rotting corpse while a lich decided it was more interested in performing a lobotomy on myself. Being the 'nice' guy that I am, I lead the lich away from the table and rode off to level 2.

Deceit level 2 seemed completely devoid of living .. life.. but being an explorer at heart, I decided to investigate the level. A quick skip towards the old bone wall training spot and to my complete surprise, someone from [EQMS] was sitting next to the Bone Magi room, training alchemy. Of course, it was time to take a closer look and a quick snoop of his pack revealed all the ingredients of a training alchemist. Unfortunately, he was not AFK and decided to high tail out of there *can't blame the man*. Time to move to a new dungeon, we all know what happens when we upset precious training time of an [EQMS] member..

Ice dungeon was the next stop. A quick survey of the dungeon revealed a few people violating a couple of paragon White drakes. A quick snoop of their packs turned up nothing apart from a couple of piles of gold. They recalled, I moved over to the Lady Of The Snow and found a tamer beating down a snow harpy. A quick drive-by snoop revealed again, just gold. I couldn't leave this dungeon without stealing anything, so the tamers gold was placed on last target and a steady, unrevealing brush pass, netted 356 gold pieces. The guy followed me but my charcoal ethy llama must have put them off attacking, until a red turned up from Shadowlords and decided to try his luck. A quick trip to the ice daemons, the red decided his chances were not great and vanished *bloody coward!*

So, in just under 1 hour and 35 minutes of game time, I stole a few pearl and 356 gold pieces.The wealth however, came from the experience and interaction with other players. This is what makes UO so great, you can have a very long string of bad luck, but if you handle it right, you can turn it into a story.

So yes, there is plenty to do as a casual player.
 

SpyderBite

Expert
Hang out around the vendors outside of the guard zone. If you really want to have fun.. carry all your gold and unblessed shit in your backpack. Its what all the cool kids do. Trust me.
 

Ledz Epplin

Master
If you want to play casual, forget taming :) I play casual, don't have a tamer, have a nice 18x18, and plenty of gold and items, and have a good time.
 

Darkarna

Grandmaster
Would you like to see a magic trick? Here we have someone training the shady arts of stealth. Unfortunately, he is possessed and walks back and forward without saying a word...

BmBEALD.jpg


Ta-Daaaaaaaaaaaaaa....

4OWxddN.jpg


Just some more casual game-play, brought to you by a very casual player....

The above took around 10 minutes, well worth it..

*Bows*

EDIT: Just imagine what he will think when he gets back from doing the real life tango..
 
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Ludwig

Grandmaster
It depends on what you like to do and what casual really means but I think UOF makes casual UO enjoyment a reality. You can hunt in Destard or Hythloth and turn in crystals which actually have a shot at generating offline, direct-to-bank HUGE rewards if you are unable to devote 1-2 hours to a champ spawn.

Most guilds claim you need to be super active but once they know you're cool, it's very easy to be chill about it all. I think the #1 guild rule is: if you want to be taken seriously, you need to be in whatever Mumble/Skype situation they're running. Nothing wrong with being limited to alliance/guild chat but, again, your requests for backup and sensitive information will most likely go ignored and for good reason.

UO PvE can be quite casual since you can recall around to whatever spawns, kill a few mobs and log out. Leveling a meta, whether it be dexer, mage or tamer, is going to take a long, long, long, long time. These are considered very end game goals. You can do them casually but I don't think the idea is to try maxing everything in 24 hours. Besides, you'll need to cough up like 20-50 million to finish those metas, anyway. Or get lucky enough to pull the relics.
 

Garillo

Master
Casual is cool here. Razor makes it easy to macro up characters on a tight schedule. If you want to get into end-game content, join up with one of the larger guilds. The meta system *does* take a good amount of time, but that is top-tier end-game stuff.
 
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