Planning a character's skills

B

BrotherX

Neophyte
So, I just found out about the skill cap. W... T... F?! :(

I want to be a full time treasure hunting, sword fighting, animal tamer. I wanna ride a horse (and later a polar bear thingy!) through wild country killing evil monsters with my band of bears, wolves, and jack rabbits. And! I wanna flog the crap that I find. :D

For this I need...
Fighting skills
1. Swordsmanship 50? (not sure what a higher swordsmanship level does)
2. Tactics 70 (they seem more important then swordsmanship)
3. Parrying 100 (I wanna doublehanded weapon!)
4. Anatomy 70
5. Healing 70

Animal skills
6. Animal Lore 50 (not exactly sure what this does)
7. Animal Taming 100 (I wanna Nightmare!)
8. Vetinary 70 (for poisonings)

Treasure Hunting
9. Cartography 60?
10. Lock picking 60?

I think that's 700 in total...

Is this all I need? Do my amounts look right? Cos I really don't want my skill levels to be used on useless things, at the moment my CAMPING skill is 40 for example and I needed cash last week so my fletching went up to 50... I'm just gonna start again and lock all but these 10 skills. :p

Cheers,
Brother X (but soon to be XI...)

***Ranting part...***

I don't really understand why there is a cap like this... Surely you should be able to train up to 60% in ALL skills, but only properly specialise (+60%) in 10? What if my treasure hunting tamer wants to take a summer off to dabble in a bit of smithing? Will I have to create a whole new player (Brother XII)? One who only does smithing and mining? Cos that kinda sucks... And there should DEFO be a "lock all skills" option...
 
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G

Gill

Master
you can set skills to lower as well no need to start all over but you aren't really going in the right direction you wont get all those abilities on one char. your fighting skill you want to be 100 for increased chance of hits Lock Picking you want at 100 to be able to pick higher end treasure chests. you are talking a few chars here. Parry is for using shields not two handed weps.
 
halygon

halygon

Grandmaster
BrotherX said:
So, I just found out about the skill cap. W... T... F?! :(

I want to be a full time treasure hunting, sword fighting, animal tamer. I wanna ride a horse (and later a polar bear thingy!) through wild country killing evil monsters with my band of bears, wolves, and jack rabbits. And! I wanna flog the crap that I find. :D

For this I need...
Fighting skills
1. Swordsmanship 50? (not sure what a higher swordsmanship level does)
2. Tactics 70 (they seem more important then swordsmanship)
3. Parrying 100 (I wanna doublehanded weapon!)
4. Anatomy 70
5. Healing 70

Animal skills
6. Animal Lore 50 (not exactly sure what this does)
7. Animal Taming 100 (I wanna Nightmare!)
8. Vetinary 70 (for poisonings)

Treasure Hunting
9. Cartography 50?
10. Lock picking 50?

Is this all I need? Do my amounts look right? Cos I really don't want my skill levels to be used on useless things, at the moment my CAMPING skill is 40 for example and I needed cash last week so my fletching went up to 50... I'm just gonna start again and lock all but these 10 skills. :p
Click to expand...
Well first, welcome to UO Forever. It's always great to see new to UO players.

So your character's skills...

You are allowed to have three (3) accounts with multiple characters on each - so keep this in mind for what I am about to say.

Of course you want to treasure hunt, tame animals, and melee fight - these are all fun things to do, however you cannot do all of these on one character. Each character (as you found out) have a skill cap of 700 points. This essentially means that you can have 7 maxed out skills (100 points each) or 8+ skills not maxed out. For simplicity and until you are well versed in the UO skills and mechanics, I recommend just sticking with seven (7) skills per character, because really, there are only a couple of instances where you would need more skills then that and those are preference only, not really required

The UOF Wiki will be helpful to assist you with learning/training skills and about the different mechanics that UO has. You can find the Wiki via the link at the top of this forum or via the URL: http://www.uoforum.com/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page

Lets start off with your first character's skills (or character template as it is called). For a swords melee character you will need the following skills:

Required Skills:
  • Swordsmanship (Affects Damage and Hit Chance -- Higher is better, pretty much you should always have 100)
  • Tactics (Provides a damage bonus to your melee skill - This bonus is needed to be able to deal decent damage -- should be raised to 100)
  • Anatomy (Works with healing to allow you to heal more health, cure poisons, and ressurrect players -- also gives a damage bonus to melee skills -- should be raised to 100)
  • Healing (Allows you to use bandages to heal yourself or another player. At 60 skill, you can cure poison and at 80 skill you can ressurrect players -- Should be raised to 100)
  • Resisting Spells (Allows you to take less damage from spells - Higher is better, pretty much every 25 points is -5% magic damage reduction to a total of -20% at 100)

Plus two more skills. Usually two of the following are used:
  • Magery (Allows you to cast spells (requires a spell book with the spells in it along with the reagents to cast the spells) - useful for traveling around, healing yourself while your bandage is being applied, and buffing your character - keep this at 100)
  • Parrying (Allows you to parry melee attacks when wearing a shield - higher skill is better (and needed) )
  • Lumberjacking (Gives a +35% damage increase when using axes at 100 LJ skill)
  • Poisoning (allows you to poison 1-handed weapons that poisons your enemy - also increases the chance to inflict poison with a weapon)
  • Provocation (Must be accompanied with musicianship) (Allows you to force two monsters to fight each other instead of you!)
  • Musicianship (Allows you to play an instrument properly so bard skills such as Provocation can actually be used)
That should give you a good start for your melee character - research the skills and see what will work best for you - there is no path that is 100% better than all others, so it is really preference.


Let's check out a tamer template:

Required Skills:
  • Animal Taming (Get this as High as possible as it is what allows you to tame AND control mobs/pets)
  • Animal Lore (Get this as high as possible as it is required to help you control pets along with Animal Taming - also provides more healing power to the veterinary skill)
  • Veterinary (Allows you to use a bandage on a tamed pet to heal, cure of poisons, or resurrect it (if it is bonded) - requires Animal Lore to cure, resurrect, or heal the most damage)
  • Magery (You need this at 100. Other than be your source of healing, curing, and buffing - it is also you way to deal damage and defend yourself via direct damage spells. BUT MOST IMPORTANTLY - it allows you to cast Gate Traveling to transport your pets who are not bonded.)
  • Meditation (Higher is better - put it at 100. This allows you to passively (or actively if activated) regenerate mana, which is what is used to cast spells.
Plus Two (2) optional skills. The commons ones are:
  • Evaluating Intelligence (Increases the damage done by magery spells upon your enemy - required if you are going to use magery to deal damage)
  • Wrestling (Allows you to cast spells non-interrupted from melee 50% of the time at 100 skill. This is very useful to cast a spell while be attacked by a monster.)
  • Resisting Spells (Allows you to take less damage from spells - Higher is better, pretty much every 25 points is -5% magic damage reduction to a total of -20% at 100)
  • Provocation (Must be accompanied with musicianship) (Allows you to force two monsters to fight each other instead of you!)
  • Musicianship (Allows you to play an instrument properly so bard skills such as Provocation can actually be used)
There's your tamer. Most folks go with Provo/Music or they go with Eval Int/Resist.


Now finally, your treasure hunter. A treasure hunter character is probably the hardest to decide upon because they are a jack of all trades sort of character. I will list what skills are typical and you can select 7 of them to train to 100. I will highlight in yellow the skills that are commonly taken up.

  • Magery (To cast magery spells)
  • Meditation (This allows you to passively (or actively if activated) regenerate mana, which is what is used to cast spells.
  • Lockpicking (Required to unlock treasure chests)
  • Cartography (Allows you to decode treasure maps to find their location)
  • Fishing (Allows you to fish the seas and find Messages in a Bottle (MiBs) which are essentially a treasure map for the ocean
  • Provocation (Must be accompanied with musicianship) (Allows you to force two monsters to fight each other instead of you!)
  • Musicianship (Allows you to play an instrument properly so bard skills such as Provocation can actually be used)
  • Hiding (Allows you to hide from monsters and players)
  • Stealth (Requires Hiding! Allows you to move around after hiding)
  • Detect Hidden (Allows you to reveal hidden objects such as traps or players hiding)
  • Remove Trap (Requires Detect Hidden - Allows you to remove traps from treasure chests while hidden)
  • Resisting Spells (Allows you to take less damage from spells - Higher is better, pretty much every 25 points is -5% magic damage reduction to a total of -20% at 100)
 
B

BrotherX

Neophyte
Oh lord...

First off, a sincere thanks Halygon for all that info, it was really appreciated even if it did confirm my fear that I can't be a tresure hunting, sword fighting, tamer. :(

But honestly, I hate specialising in one area; I get enough of that at work... :(

I understand now that this is an MMOR, so you're not really supposed to be self sufficient; I suppose the idea is to adventure with a group with each member specalising in one area... Whilst I liked running into random young players in the country side and saving them from air elementals and stuff, I don't really wanna be apart of a group etc I like being on my own-some... :p

So I think I'll just continue like this... Screw specialising.

Maybe when I get tired of killing weak monsters, with weak swords, alongside weak animals I'll start a mage char and join some magicians guild or something... :/

(Seriously though, anyone ever read the Fitz and Fool books by Robin Hobb? I kinda wanted to be that guy; sword fighting assassin with a wolf and horse!)
 
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The Real Keith

The Real Keith

Adept
Do not let the veterans fool you, you can do and be whatever you want in Ultima Online. The actual proficiency of your character depends on your skills, but if you're just having fun you can tame yourself a wolf at low skills, wield a sword and hunt down treasure. The difficulty of the maps and damage that you do is all dependent on those skills. You're able to create plenty of characters, so why not trial and error?
 
B

BrotherX

Neophyte
Keith, you're a star :)

I'm a GM sword master with a rideable wolfy thing and panthers now :D Gonna work on my healing now.
 
jamison1987

jamison1987

Master
Brother X, trust me when I say a skull cap is a very good thing. This shard knows what they are doing.. What you can do is. Make a stealth tmapper and make a tamer with swordsmanship. I'd go the route of a provo tamer tho. Most skills ur gonna want to take to gm. Lore must be gm if u want a nightmare.
Pm me if u need help



"Naked & Fearless. ...and my fear is naked!" - MJK
 
GluttonySDS

GluttonySDS

Grandmaster
To be honest... i think you'll have more success if instead of trying to have a jack of all trades character you make a few characters that are more specialized.

That being said, it all depends on what your goals are, if you just want to have some fun and try things out, go for it -- you wont mess up your character if you decide you want to switch skills as, unlike other shards, skill gain is not affected by the order you train your skills.
 
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