Hello all, I wanted to make a short guide on communication crystals especially seeing as its nearing Halloween time and these crystals are great for spooky shenanigans. Communication crystals are a fun tool in Ultima Online that I don't think get enough use! First lets just chat about how to acquire these communication crystals! Getting the crystals is relatively simple you just need to take a visit to a local jewelers (Might I suggest Magincia? There are however jewelers in many towns you can try Papua/Jhelom/Brit/ and many other towns!) Find the jeweler and ask her to buy you'll get this screen: This part is important as communication crystals come in two flavors, the broadcast crystal and the receiver. The vendor doesn't tell you what is what so that's why this picture is here! That crystal that costs 6 gold is the receiver while the more expensive crystals are the broadcasters (the more expensive the broadcaster the more maximum charge it has they come in styles of 500/1000/2000 max charges. I'd go for the 2000 max charge crystal so you have to recharge them less!) From the jeweler you can also buy gems, You can use gems to recharge a gem! A gem will recharge 10 times the amount it costs to buy (I.E. a sapphire that costs 100 gold will recharge 1000 points) Now that we have a crystal lets try playing around with it! You'll first want to double click your broadcast crystal and link it to your receiver, each broadcast crystal can be linked to 10 different receivers. Be warned each time you speak the crystal will consume one charge for every receiver its linked to! This means you'll consume 10 charges if it is linked to 10 receivers! You'll want to activate the crystals now, just double click the crystal again and target itself. An active broadcaster is green, and an active receiver is just lit up. Both inactive crystals look like the one in the middle. Alright now to use these crystals! There's a lot of fun you can have with crystals, recently I bombed the Paws Tower with them to drive a certain grey wizard batty! As you can see crystals can be pretty fun! To use a crystal just talk while the broadcaster is active and it will send your message to all active receivers and consume some charge. As you can see the characters name is displayed as well but you can use this to your advantage! Want a spooky house? Name the broadcasting character a ghost or something else spooky! Anyway lets finish the guide out with some fun ideas for placing our receivers! 1) Put them in the back of your fortress main room while you deliver a speech in the front. This way everyone in the main foyer can hear your speech! 2) Put them on a different floor in your tower while you give a speech on an alternate floor, this way everyone in the tower can see your speech! 3) Hide them in a container like a drawer/chest. They will still broadcast text from a container! Bonus points if you name the broadcasting character a chest! This is also great for house bombing with crystals as your friends might have a harder time finding them hiding under other items in chests! Sadly if your crystal is in a container the crystal will say, Crystal: which can ruin the fun. (Just pretend it doesn't!) And that's it for the guide. Have some fun and drive each other batty with some communication crystals!
You can also operate gate bots using them. May want to throw that info into the guide. Information I know about how to use them comes from http://uorforum.com/threads/how-to-be-a-successful-pk.6871/
