UO is too complicated for new players.
I have spent this weekend trying to understand Imbuing, Reinforcing, Statistics, Resistances and many new stats that have been added to items in the last decade that I have been gone.
An item can have https://www.uoguide.com/Item_Properties not including "eating"? properties and more. I used to be a 120 Blacksmith that could forge nice items if I was lucky enough to gather the right BoD's with my alt accounts. Now, I am expected to make a certain race crafter to make imbuments. One of which requires me to do a quest from XYZ to get a bottle to make an uncraftable potion to add + something to an item. UO was my first MMO and I have never seen a system this convoluted.
I have been asking questions here all week to try and grasp everything that has changed. It's too much. It makes me sad. I guess that's all I have to say.
Comments
Let’s think of it this way: there are three levels of crafting.
Level one: simple crafting. Your tailor, blacksmith, fletcher uses wood, ingots, whatever to make a single item. Goes no further than that. This is the BoD system. Make enough of one item and get points on a vendor for special stuff.
Level two: mixed crafting. This is when you use multiple crafting skills combined to make a simple item. For example, your smith makes double axe blanks and then imbues them to gave desirable mods. RNG had not yet entered the equation as what you produce is predictable every time. It may take you a few tries to get the mods you want to stick, and you’ll eat resources up, but you will get the item you intend. If you haven’t used it yet, try https://www.knuckleheads.dk/ as an online tool to plan mods on whatever you want to craft at this level.
Level three: RNG crafting. This is where crafting gets unpredictable. You are still combining multiple crafting skills, but are now mixing in random number generator elements into the craft. So, for example, you want a double axe, but intend the final weapon to be 100% fire damage. So you craft thirty simple double axes and then use runic hammers to try for 100% fire elemental damage. You burn a ton of charges on those runic hammers (which come from crafting level one blacksmithing BoDs) until you get one good 100% fire damage double axe. You then take that axe and combine it with imbuing the mods on it you want, and hey presto your final weapon.
The double axe is a simple example. Level three crafting can become so complex that you are using a paid store item on the piece you are crafting that prevents you from failing and losing the piece entirely. Or mixing color ore to juice up something’s luck or elemental damage, or adding armor refinements to tailored items to go beyond 70 resists.
But what to understand here is… you don’t need to do this. You can play the game just as well as the majority of everyone else with the first two levels. You can make money just fine doing BoDs for the first level of crafting. You mentioned something about being a gargoyle as necessary for imbuing. It’s not necessary, it just provides a 10% or so bonus to the chance of imbuing success for level two crafting. But that bonus is often not that important unless you are min/maxxing. You don’t have to go that far; it is your choice.
But what I do think is necessary to stress is that you can’t learn all this stuff in a single weekend. The only way to learn is to play the game for a good long while. I’ve been back for over five years and I still learn something new about UO every week. The very hardest thing I have learned, though, since being back is to stop trying to play the game like it was still 2000. It’s not an SNES game where the save file is still there waiting. I hope this framing helps clear some things up for you a bit. I also responded to you on discord, so feel free to dm me there if I can help explain anything else.
Never be afraid to challenge the status quo
The advice I give people is to take it slow and master one thing at a time until it all makes sense.
By all means do not feel bad or frustrated for not knowing everything. There's not a player in this game that knows everything. Maybe Petra but that's it.
Players who support group play should be cherished.
Ask questions here, plenty of posters will help you.
UO has to be complex it has kept many players attention for over 20 years.
UO never ends.
offer a lot of info. If you Google just about anything UO you’ll find links to go to. What I mean is, for example, if you Google “Ultima Online veteran rewards” or a zillion other things you might want info on, you’ll find lots of links that’ll lead you to information.
So end of the day - get out to dungeons and collect gear and ditch crafting. Its a lost skill. This is from a 20+ year crafter.
And I agree its way to complex compared to what it used to be. Kept adding without thinking about what they were adding.
And you are right - the new player is going to go pfft, and play something they can be better at in a day or two instead of spending weeks trying to read up on a poorly documented and convoluted system.
You paint a bleak picture of the game. I was going to go 100% crafting with three characters to do the job. Be curious to hear from others.