Stealing and Obtaining Hidden Chest Rares
UO devs are gonna need to revisit the gameplay for working up hidden chests.
I do have a 120 thief with jewels and armor. Needless to say, I don't steal much. I have been successful on 3 umbrascale effigy. I hit my 4th today but it turned into a fustercluck.
In Rock, which is already a messed up dungeon. At GM hiding/stealth I am constantly revealed. I run ninjitsu so a smoke bomb and I am back safe. The spawns are insane. I think there is some code to try to keep up with all the necro axers running around at lightspeed, so the dungeons get worse the more of the soldiers there are.
I just stay in shadows and pop chests and even if I was a warrior/lockpick the spawn respawns in less than a second and it covers all the my chests and button clicks. However, that is aggravating but not the reason for this post. This is about stealing to take a rare out of the chest. Essentially, the protocol is basically just saying the price for the rare is death, hopefully, 1 death as it is unlikely you can pay multiple deaths due to time and distance. If you are lucky enough to have a rare chest near the entrance and healer. If the chest is any deeper then you only have 1 shot.
My debacle came when I popped an effigy and the chest wasn't really far from the entrance so I could possibly have a few shots. Here are my attempts.
1st - I waited for some warriors to thin out around my chest but really as soon as they did the spawn began to come back. In fact, I could not see any ground in the area I was at to give you an idea that coming unhidden was gonna be a pretty quick death. But, if I get the effigy in my pack, I die, then I can stealth back to my body and get everything. Ready for my first shot... Activate steal... oh crap, must have a free hand. I carry a spellbook and a void wand. My fault. I die. Run back and get rezzed. Began the walk back. Revealed and killed, Run back to entrance and get rezzed. This time make it back to body.
2nd - I make it back to my body. Ok, drop my spellbook. I got a free hand. I won't make that mistake again. No biggie. Activate steal skill. oh crap, must have a free hand. Clearly, I should know this that you gotta have both hands free. However, I wasn't thinking as the error said you must have a free hand. Body temp rising. Unhidden and Die. Run back to entrance to get rezzed. Make it back to my body/chest.
3rd - Ok settle down. Drop everything including talisman. Not gonna have any problems this time. Activate steal, Come unhidden. CAN'T CLICK the effigy. Click my target reticle everywhere. Nothing. Black screen. Run back to entrance get rezzed. WTF. Lemme give it another shot. Maybe I panicked.
4th - Same as 3rd. COULD NOT click the effigy. Unhidden, die. Run back and get rezzed. Make my way back to body.
5th - The container type was a chest. So, I'm gonna give it 1 more shot but I guess the contents are LIKE out of sight. I'm gonna go to the front of the chest. Start walking around the chest and it disappears. Times up.
I'm hoping the reason why I couldn't click on the rare was because I was not standing directly in front of the chest. I'm also not sure what the crates do then as they don't have a front or back.
Maybe I should know all of this but I feel like these nuances are really NOT "playing the game".
I'm getting beat because of just shotty code and game design. I think most of the restrictions were to nerf thieves back in the felucca only days, but for playing hidden chest game those skill restrictions are just certain death in these events. I think even for semi-normal dungeon with a normal spawn then I could do some passive tactics to steer the hostiles from the chest to make a clearing. These umbrascale mobs AI seems to be that of a neglected house cat. Not only do I get a few monsters that just start following my stealthing character around even though I'm hidden but it feels like the umbrascale monsters are always putting their butthole in my face.
The good news is that UO will make hidden chests better as they already made the hidden notification system work much better, so hopefully they can brainstorm and come up with something to keep making the hidden chests gameplay better. I just don't think the steal skill to take something out of a chest is very logical. As a thief/lockpicking/remove trap character, every chest I uncover I already toy with insta-death. So, I am constantly feeling my heartbeat in my anus. When you are levels deep in a dungeon and over 1000 monsters are between you and entrance, 1 failed remove trap and you got to run all the way back to the entrance, rezz, then walk all the way back through all the hordes. My solution now is I put some lockpicks and smoke bombs at the entrance and when I pop restock chests I just put those on the ground. Point is, is that hidden chests are not easy so I understand the stealing factor may come from a difficulty viewpoint. Again, I don't think chests are that easy that we need to have a guarantee death as part of it to make it difficult.
I do have a 120 thief with jewels and armor. Needless to say, I don't steal much. I have been successful on 3 umbrascale effigy. I hit my 4th today but it turned into a fustercluck.
In Rock, which is already a messed up dungeon. At GM hiding/stealth I am constantly revealed. I run ninjitsu so a smoke bomb and I am back safe. The spawns are insane. I think there is some code to try to keep up with all the necro axers running around at lightspeed, so the dungeons get worse the more of the soldiers there are.
I just stay in shadows and pop chests and even if I was a warrior/lockpick the spawn respawns in less than a second and it covers all the my chests and button clicks. However, that is aggravating but not the reason for this post. This is about stealing to take a rare out of the chest. Essentially, the protocol is basically just saying the price for the rare is death, hopefully, 1 death as it is unlikely you can pay multiple deaths due to time and distance. If you are lucky enough to have a rare chest near the entrance and healer. If the chest is any deeper then you only have 1 shot.
My debacle came when I popped an effigy and the chest wasn't really far from the entrance so I could possibly have a few shots. Here are my attempts.
1st - I waited for some warriors to thin out around my chest but really as soon as they did the spawn began to come back. In fact, I could not see any ground in the area I was at to give you an idea that coming unhidden was gonna be a pretty quick death. But, if I get the effigy in my pack, I die, then I can stealth back to my body and get everything. Ready for my first shot... Activate steal... oh crap, must have a free hand. I carry a spellbook and a void wand. My fault. I die. Run back and get rezzed. Began the walk back. Revealed and killed, Run back to entrance and get rezzed. This time make it back to body.
2nd - I make it back to my body. Ok, drop my spellbook. I got a free hand. I won't make that mistake again. No biggie. Activate steal skill. oh crap, must have a free hand. Clearly, I should know this that you gotta have both hands free. However, I wasn't thinking as the error said you must have a free hand. Body temp rising. Unhidden and Die. Run back to entrance to get rezzed. Make it back to my body/chest.
3rd - Ok settle down. Drop everything including talisman. Not gonna have any problems this time. Activate steal, Come unhidden. CAN'T CLICK the effigy. Click my target reticle everywhere. Nothing. Black screen. Run back to entrance get rezzed. WTF. Lemme give it another shot. Maybe I panicked.
4th - Same as 3rd. COULD NOT click the effigy. Unhidden, die. Run back and get rezzed. Make my way back to body.
5th - The container type was a chest. So, I'm gonna give it 1 more shot but I guess the contents are LIKE out of sight. I'm gonna go to the front of the chest. Start walking around the chest and it disappears. Times up.
I'm hoping the reason why I couldn't click on the rare was because I was not standing directly in front of the chest. I'm also not sure what the crates do then as they don't have a front or back.
Maybe I should know all of this but I feel like these nuances are really NOT "playing the game".
I'm getting beat because of just shotty code and game design. I think most of the restrictions were to nerf thieves back in the felucca only days, but for playing hidden chest game those skill restrictions are just certain death in these events. I think even for semi-normal dungeon with a normal spawn then I could do some passive tactics to steer the hostiles from the chest to make a clearing. These umbrascale mobs AI seems to be that of a neglected house cat. Not only do I get a few monsters that just start following my stealthing character around even though I'm hidden but it feels like the umbrascale monsters are always putting their butthole in my face.
The good news is that UO will make hidden chests better as they already made the hidden notification system work much better, so hopefully they can brainstorm and come up with something to keep making the hidden chests gameplay better. I just don't think the steal skill to take something out of a chest is very logical. As a thief/lockpicking/remove trap character, every chest I uncover I already toy with insta-death. So, I am constantly feeling my heartbeat in my anus. When you are levels deep in a dungeon and over 1000 monsters are between you and entrance, 1 failed remove trap and you got to run all the way back to the entrance, rezz, then walk all the way back through all the hordes. My solution now is I put some lockpicks and smoke bombs at the entrance and when I pop restock chests I just put those on the ground. Point is, is that hidden chests are not easy so I understand the stealing factor may come from a difficulty viewpoint. Again, I don't think chests are that easy that we need to have a guarantee death as part of it to make it difficult.
Comments
Have u ever used ur thief? How could u possibly not know ur hands needed to be empty unless u’ve never tried to steal? Could b completely wrong but the only way this could happen imho is if u just got back from a break & had forgotten the basics of the skill(see... I’m giving u a legit way out) or if u just used a stealing script to afk train the skill & never actually used the skill b4.
https://uo.com/wiki/ultima-online-wiki/skills/stealing/
Bro, thats not shotty code. Thats u being clueless for 50% of ur attempts. Makes perfect sense to me that Devs need to immed patch up thief coding so someone thats never used a thief before can get rare items on their 2nd, 3rd, or mayb 4th attempt at stealing.
Keep at it. Keep trying mayb not somewhere quite so lethal. In alil time you’ll get the basics and understand the whats-what. Then go after big ticket items u want... but atleast try ur skill somewhere so u know how it works.
1. A warning that a free hand is needed to steal but in fact 2 is shotty design. That's the facts. This may make sense to you when you play with yourself but I had 1 free hand so I thought I met the requirements.
2. The need to steal an item from a chest makes no sense when nearly the only survivability is to stay hidden but I was ok paying a life. I already pointed out that there are safer areas but during this event there are not many unless I just go to a dungeon that is not active. Again what's the purpose in that?
3. The point here is that you are right. I really didn't even get to make an attempt even though I activated the skill 4 times. That is the problem. First, I can agree that I don't have tons of experience stealing so the first couple of attempts is shared blame. However, I should have gotten a "both hands are needed to steal" error to better remind me. The next 2 attempts, are again shotty design or code. Why couldn't I click the statue? That is a bug or bad design. I noticed today not all chests I can even get to the front of because they face the wrong way. Will I just not be able to steal anything out of those if the chest is facing a wall? I assume the inability to click the target was due to that but I am not certain especially since some of the chest spawn facing walls. Of course, you can't explain that problem of not being able to click the item and when I want some of you guys' thoughts all I get is some ridicule and I'm not asking they "immed patch up thief coding" but it does need to be looked at and revisited. Perhaps, stealing from chests, players, npcs, or monsters could be slightly different in order to level survivability. If you think it is perfect the way it is then you haven't used it that much either so I'm not even sure why you are weighing in your thoughts. The little bit I've played and I've already run into issues then that is telling moreso from my inexperience.
Stealing is a dead skill for most shards. That is why they made the smugglers edge and all that crap and need it to steal from chests because it is virtually useless. I think most people just keep it stoned until they need it. Felucca on my shard is dead like the trees which is similar to many shards. I feel like most of that design was to nerf stealing in pvp areas a long time ago. So NO, I don't have tons of opportunities to use the skill and there is not much game for stealing from npcs/monsters so I did that a little but not enough to remember all the nuances of the skill. In fact, I already successfully got 3 effigies but 5,000 chests and hours of gameplay never require me to activate that skill. Again, shotty design.
Not bad. That is a great workaround if it works but that is my point. So, a drink invisi potion macro can be activated while the targeting cursor is active. That is my point that it is not a great system for hidden chest games. I may be able do make a manual macro as long as my steal target cursor stays active.
Stealing from chests is not great design to begin with. It makes no sense.
In order to do hidden chests you need hiding, stealth because most hidden chests are in dangerous areas. You need detect hidden, remove trap, and lockpicking which can all be done while hidden. I spent countless hours doing puzzle boxes to GM remove trap because triggering the trap is the worse. Why not have a puzzle to remove a rare? They can be easy but timed to make it difficult. Maybe just sliding pieces with an empty spot. Failure can make you become unhidden, hp damage, or lose the rare.
I mean, who am I stealing from when getting a rare from a chest? Maybe the word steal has a different meaning. Stealing would be like if I used the steal skill on chest that wasn't mine to turn it into mine... a chest uncovered by another player. Stealing should be used to steal. All I do is pop chests. I shouldn't need stealing.
I'm not really posting about revamping all of thievery. I am saying that UO could keep molding hidden chests.
Just wanted thoughts but all I got from the other numbnuts was thieving is good the way it is and a link to a page that really says nothing about stealing from hidden chests.
I never remotely suggested thieving skill was perfect but have & played a 120 thief enuff to know how the skill works. The link offered clearly says ‘Stealing requires both hands to be empty’ right at the top of the article. Again, this is something every thief toon knows if they have used the skill . Sorry u learned the hard way.
These are all things learned by actually playing a thief character in game over time. Hope it helps.
**In the future, mayb just ask for alil advice or help when ur coolheaded instead of suggesting ur probs are due to bad coding, poor design, or other issues when it’s clearly shown the toon type was rarely if ever played. Just my .02 cents bro
Really, I wasn’t saying thieving was necessarily poor design but hidden chests still has some bad design especially utilizing the steal skill.
Why does a character have to be a thief when hidden chests can be argued to be more of an offshoot of treasure hunting than that of taking someone elses property? Lockpicking already serves as the grey area into the moral dilemma of stealing.
Some t-hunters bridge the two but not all T-hunters are thieves.
That is the bad design I was referring to. The rest of my debacle was for amusement and I even suggested and shared in the blame for not knowing in my original post which was tldr but if you would have read it then your first post wouldn’t have been as snarky, condescending and immediately going into defense of the thieving skill/template also even suggesting rule breaking on my part.
I am not a thief but a treasure hunter. So you are not wrong about my experience as a thief but there are ways to have the skill without needing to play as a thief full time. That is game design too which you may feel is bad design if you think that a person has to be breaking the rules in order to be high skill.
As I was saying, even if I wanted to be a thief toon then that would be beyond boring atleast on my home shard. I feel like the devs are just grasping at ways to make it relevant.
Please accept my apologies as my original post was a bit of a rant and I should have been more direct that it wasn’t thieving code/design that even cared about but moreso why do I have to tote this skill on the rare chance I have to use while treasure hunting? A good point by TimSt that players who use thieves usually have macros that just take care of all the unequipping etc. I would use it so infrequently that I wouldn’t even remember the key command.
Detect hidden and remove trap are probably 2 of the top five hardest skills and lockpicking wasn’t that great either relocking tinker crates and recalling to all the outposts and banks. I GMd all of them so if a toon had just those then a treasure hunter would have to leave behind some of the most valuable items in hidden chests without stealing. So, I did not care anything about GMing stealing. I got it high enough to get 120 with jewelry and armor but I am constantly having to use my soulstone for my old school T-hunter build which requires no stealing but needs lockpicking and remove trap. They fixed T-hunters needing mining. That didn't make sense either but it made even more sense then stealing only specific items out of an unlocked chest. I just wanted thoughts on that design and not the responses I got even though I still think stealing has some issues itself.
I should have never had those issues because I shouldn't even been required to use that skill and if you think stealing the rare is required then perhaps the mechanics to do so could be looked at when stealing an item from a hidden chest.
Ill definitely try the shadowjump trick.
In the future, you should read the message you are posting to. If it is tldr, then go find something else to do.
I mention all of that in my original post if you had bothered to read. You didn't have to conjecture. I was explicit about my experience with that toon type.
Also, no matter what you say, having a warning that says you must have a free hand to steal but requiring 2 is bad design. Imagine a new player, even if they read on the website and accidently attempted with while holding an item then they could be confused. My experience only made me say "oh crap my bad, dang it". I knew it, but since I rarely use it and in the heat of the dungeon just goofed. A new player may call a GM and probably be even confused on how to use potions. Not sure what you'd call that. That is bad design/coding where they just reused an error text for the potions i think.
Also, I was next to the chest, nothing between me and the item. That is clearly bad coding. Chests appearing in locations that can't be reached or chests facing walls so you can't even get in front. If the code can't work because I am not perfectly in front of chest or it thinks something is in the way then it needs to be scraped for a better method of getting rares out of hidden chests.
My aggravation was, again, that I never have to use stealing for anything else and then the rare instance when I do there are all these nuances that only a 120 thief real skill would know all the while I'm already in an extremely dangerous situation having to use a skill I don't ever have to use. I'm not even that worried about the effigy. To say, you need detect hidden, remove trap, lockpicking, hiding, stealth, ninjitsu and now also stealing to get an effigy then that rare should be worth way more. You could do all of it with a little detect hidden and GM magery and stealing but you'd never pop enough chests. You'd have to be beyond lucky so stealing on that template would seem like even more of a waste of a skill than on mine where I am popping 1000s of chests.
Just my opinion here, and I don't want to pile on, but I think a lot of your complaints fall into the "user error" bucket.
I see what you are saying about the both hands empty to steal, but to me once you know that (which you do now) it's user error to try to steal with something equipped. Don't get me wrong, I've definitely done that...but I'm also not saying it's bad coding. The rest of the stuff seems like it falls into the same category... if you are actually standing next to the chest you will be able to attempt to steal 100% of the time; now it's possible that you think you are next to the chest but you aren't (this happens with uneven terrain sometimes you look like you're next to something but you aren't) and without a screenshot we'll never know. It sounds like you were in the right spot at least once, so why didn't you go right back into that spot? Again that seems like user error to me.
Also as far as you saying you need X Y Z to get an effigy so they should be worth more... I'd think that argument actually hurts your case because that kind of tells you the difficulty of obtaining the item and that maybe it's a "you" problem rather than how it's setup problem. Typically, the easier something is to get (ie the more common it is) the less the value.
Personally, I would classify a rogue template as "skillful" one; where you need to think outside the box sometimes and take more risks because it is a more delicate template (ie it's not a sampire or tamer where you only need to use 2 macros); it takes some finesse to play a rogue. I don't know exactly how things went down for you (dungeon/facet/shard/your skills/etc), but first thing I would have done is to try luring the spawn away (while mounted) to have as little on screen as possible. Next I would run into the chest (ie stand next to it), invis, go on foot to cast 4 mirror images and re-mount before making a stealing attempt. Once I did attempt to steal (and target) I would immediately cast invis or chug a potion AND be ready to cast invis again. I think it also goes without saying that I'd have used an orange petal just in case I got poisoned too.
Again thinking outside the box and being more tactful with the template... on top of all of the above, you could also build honor virtue on your toon so you can hide/honor yourself (in a pinch only) so nothing attacks you for a minute or two.... this is also helpful when stealing from PvPers and trying to escape in a dungeon.
All in all... there is a learning curve when using a thief, but I don't think there is anything "broken" about it. As I've mentioned in other threads, the rogue template is a bit squishy so it's heavily dependent on items and how you use those items (and other things available to you). Generally speaking you need to know more about the mechanics of everything and how to leverage those things while also accepting there is less room for error like with other templates.