Popular UO Mechanics
UO game mechanics are a very interesting field of research. They can be as complex as quantum mechanics. I tell you anyone who thinks they know the uo game mechanics rules does not fully understand them.
I’m on a quest to define these rules, lay down some foundations of which the game is based on. So we can more easily understand what is working as intended and what is not. Only God knows the answer to the true game mechanics, and in this world that is Bleak. And luckily enough for us, he is still working for uo, watching over us.
Ill be posing a series of discussions on game mechanics to try and define and make sense of the rules. I used to enjoy editing the uoguide, however now I’m moving onto the holy grail of guides, the official uo wiki. Here is our issue, there have been unwritten game mechanics since day 1. For example, the delay between casting and hitting last target on most magery spells has always been there, but never written, then there have been publishes to change the unwritten rules (100 of date). Most of the information is out there somewhere, just not all in the right place. The ultimate dream would be for the information to be available in game. However I can understand that a thesis on magic arrow may be too much for a new player to take on. So for now I shall be happy to get the info on uo wiki. I was amazed when I read the necromancy page and saw formulas I never saw before, the blueprints to uo. I would like to duplicate this for all aspects of uo and game mechanics. People often say you learn something new everyday about uo, and for a 16 year vet, you may think this would no longer hold true. However true it does remain.
We’re going to first talk about damage in uo, I think many people will be surprised to know just how many types of damage there are.
(physical, fire, cold, poison, energy and chaos which is any of these at random) are just sub categories of kinetic damage (includes melee and ranged), and spell damage,
but there is also Direct damage.
So now we have separated the damages, we can now talk about the effects of one another.
Now each of these damages has different damage caps and further complicating things, pvm caps differ to pvp caps. And these caps are then further decided into item total caps and hard caps. Damage needs to be defined so we understand what we’re being hit with and why it hurts so much.
Generally we (the elite old guard) have a good understanding of damages and caps. But there are 1 or 2 odd things that happen that we treat as exceptions.
Let us talk about reflect physical damage. This property helps us identify and seperate damages in game. It’s al type of filter.
Some people say, why doesn’t rpd reflect this or that? And it’s not because it’s not working or “just because it doesn’t” it’s all to do with the damage type. Many pvpers will quickly realise how little things are reflected by rpd and scratch their head in confusion. So first let’s get one thing out of the way. Armour ignore, this hit does do physical damage, however the clue is in the title.
Most of the other time a warrior hits you with a physical weapon and it’s not reflected, it’s because it’s dealing “direct damage” as part of a special attack. (A small portion of the initial hit will be physical damage).
What about bleed, earthquake, bombard and chaos damage spells? well it appears that no non physical kinetic damage is reflected. So we shoul really call RPD, RPKD (reflect physical kinetic damage)
We have another tool to help us devise what damage is, attunement. Attunement works similar to rpd. Except it will catch AI, as it’s not armour. And it will catch all kinetic damage.
Will not catch bleed and chaos spells or earthquake, all good, all obeying the laws of Bleak. But wait, it catches bombard. But we know bombard is physical, we know bombard is not kinetic as it’s not reflected by rpkd. So what is it? This is an anomaly I am stuck on. An exception to a rule. Perhaps it’s a bug? Not one i’d wish to report.
We have to also accept in uo that to every rule there will be exceptions. Some bizarre ones at that. But many times the exceptions are there for reasons we do not understand. But when I can identify an unnecessary exception, I shall try to remove it by reporting it as a bug to simplify the rules.
You see when writing a simple spell description, you do not realise how much research needs to be done to simply describe a spell/buff/property. Everything needs to be put into a context or category. You cannot simply say that x gives +25% damage increase. This is meaningless, what damage? And does it go above the cap, and what cap?
I am sure in the upcoming weeks the bug section will become a little larger as we delve deep into the minutia of uo game mechanics.
I’m on a quest to define these rules, lay down some foundations of which the game is based on. So we can more easily understand what is working as intended and what is not. Only God knows the answer to the true game mechanics, and in this world that is Bleak. And luckily enough for us, he is still working for uo, watching over us.
Ill be posing a series of discussions on game mechanics to try and define and make sense of the rules. I used to enjoy editing the uoguide, however now I’m moving onto the holy grail of guides, the official uo wiki. Here is our issue, there have been unwritten game mechanics since day 1. For example, the delay between casting and hitting last target on most magery spells has always been there, but never written, then there have been publishes to change the unwritten rules (100 of date). Most of the information is out there somewhere, just not all in the right place. The ultimate dream would be for the information to be available in game. However I can understand that a thesis on magic arrow may be too much for a new player to take on. So for now I shall be happy to get the info on uo wiki. I was amazed when I read the necromancy page and saw formulas I never saw before, the blueprints to uo. I would like to duplicate this for all aspects of uo and game mechanics. People often say you learn something new everyday about uo, and for a 16 year vet, you may think this would no longer hold true. However true it does remain.
We’re going to first talk about damage in uo, I think many people will be surprised to know just how many types of damage there are.
(physical, fire, cold, poison, energy and chaos which is any of these at random) are just sub categories of kinetic damage (includes melee and ranged), and spell damage,
but there is also Direct damage.
So now we have separated the damages, we can now talk about the effects of one another.
Now each of these damages has different damage caps and further complicating things, pvm caps differ to pvp caps. And these caps are then further decided into item total caps and hard caps. Damage needs to be defined so we understand what we’re being hit with and why it hurts so much.
Generally we (the elite old guard) have a good understanding of damages and caps. But there are 1 or 2 odd things that happen that we treat as exceptions.
Let us talk about reflect physical damage. This property helps us identify and seperate damages in game. It’s al type of filter.
Some people say, why doesn’t rpd reflect this or that? And it’s not because it’s not working or “just because it doesn’t” it’s all to do with the damage type. Many pvpers will quickly realise how little things are reflected by rpd and scratch their head in confusion. So first let’s get one thing out of the way. Armour ignore, this hit does do physical damage, however the clue is in the title.
Most of the other time a warrior hits you with a physical weapon and it’s not reflected, it’s because it’s dealing “direct damage” as part of a special attack. (A small portion of the initial hit will be physical damage).
What about bleed, earthquake, bombard and chaos damage spells? well it appears that no non physical kinetic damage is reflected. So we shoul really call RPD, RPKD (reflect physical kinetic damage)
We have another tool to help us devise what damage is, attunement. Attunement works similar to rpd. Except it will catch AI, as it’s not armour. And it will catch all kinetic damage.
Will not catch bleed and chaos spells or earthquake, all good, all obeying the laws of Bleak. But wait, it catches bombard. But we know bombard is physical, we know bombard is not kinetic as it’s not reflected by rpkd. So what is it? This is an anomaly I am stuck on. An exception to a rule. Perhaps it’s a bug? Not one i’d wish to report.
We have to also accept in uo that to every rule there will be exceptions. Some bizarre ones at that. But many times the exceptions are there for reasons we do not understand. But when I can identify an unnecessary exception, I shall try to remove it by reporting it as a bug to simplify the rules.
You see when writing a simple spell description, you do not realise how much research needs to be done to simply describe a spell/buff/property. Everything needs to be put into a context or category. You cannot simply say that x gives +25% damage increase. This is meaningless, what damage? And does it go above the cap, and what cap?
I am sure in the upcoming weeks the bug section will become a little larger as we delve deep into the minutia of uo game mechanics.
I tell you the truth, tis better to do 10 damage on the right target than 100 damage on the wrong target.
Breaking in the young since 2002
Comments
Are you sure they are going to let you edit the official uo.wiki?
omg.
Good luck everyone involved!
And grats if you pull off some of this as well.
ICQ# 478 633 659
corpse skin 30
evil omen necro/spirit speak skill dependant 50-70
mind rot 40
pain spike 20
poison strike 50
strangle 60
wither N/A
word of death 100
all magery spells = circle x 10, EG first level spells have a pool of 10.
meteor/chain lightning/EQ/mass curse NA
hit spell NA
netherbolt 10
purge magic: mysticism/focus/imbue skill dependant 20-60 (plus a chance to purge the spell anyway)
sleep 30
mass sleep NA
bombard 60
spell plague 70
hail storm na
nether cyclone NA
Jokes aside, nice post.