Why boats? They are primarily used for fishing, but they're not the worst way to travel around either. That's why boats. The Different Types of Boats Boats come in small, medium, and large sizes. Each size up is 1 tile longer than the previous. Which size is right for you? For those of you fishing on one account, a small boat will likely meet your needs. If you plan to have multiple pedestrians on board, though, look into getting a large ship, as the extra space allows you to maneuver without running into each other all the time. Each type of ship has a hold that you can place items in, but the maximum holding limits are the same for all boat sizes: 125 items / 400 stones. A small boat. A large boat. A ginormous boat. Not available in all marketing areas. Boats also come in two flavors: normal and dragon. The only difference between the two is that dragonboats have a nifty little figurehead on the prow of the ship. It will instill fear in your enemies, so remember to buy dragon! I'm frightened just looking at the below image! While it is a proven scientific fact that racing stripes can make a car go faster, dragon heads do not speed up boats. Boat Acquisition Boats are not sold by NPC shipwrights on UO:Renaissance. Instead, they are crafted by players. The easiest way to obtain a boat is to purchase one from another player. [BLATANT ADVERTISING ALERT]David Hasselhoff sells them in Yew, for example.[/BLATANT ADVERTISING ALERT] Alternatively, you can build your own boat through a combination of tinkering, tailoring, and carpentry skills. Why one would do that when they could simply purchase them for David Hasselhoff's incredibly low blowout prices is beyond me, but if you insist, you will need oak boards, iron ingots, and cloth. Rather than re-invent the wheel, here is a link to more information on boat crafting: Link: How to build your own boat Boat Deployment, Getting On, and Getting Off (giggity) To deploy a boat, double click the deed and place the ship in the water. When you deploy a boat, you will receive two keys. One appears in your backpack and the other appears in your bank box. Ship keys have the same look as house keys (golden key), but when you click on the key, it will say 'a ship key'. Do not lose either of these keys! There are two ways to get onto your boat. If you cast Recall on either of the keys, you will appear on your boat, directly behind the mast. Or you can use the gangplanks, which are located near the mast. They are rather difficult to see. In the below image, you can see the gangplank: Oops, wrong Gangplank Double click a gangplank to open it. Double click the gangplank again and your character will jump aboard. To disembark from your boat, open the gangplank near land and walk off the end of it. Your character will jump to shore. Note that you must walk, not run, off of the gangplank for this to work. You will not be able to disembark this way if you have the "always run" option turned on in UO. Packing Up You can also dry dock your boat. When you do this, the boat disappears out of the water and becomes a ship model in your inventory. You can then redeploy the boat by double-clicking the ship model, just like with a ship deed. Keep in mind that redeploying will give you a new set of keys. To pack up your boat: You must have your ship key in your inventory. You must first lower the anchor on your ship. You double click on your tillerman when standing on shore next to the boat. The ship's hold must be empty. The ship's deck must be clear. This includes hidden characters or player ghosts on-board. Who knew you were so strong? I mean, I know you have 100 STR and all, but still! You just lifted an entire boat out of the water! Boat Commands Seriously, does everyone else get this kind of sass from their tillerman? Or is it just me? While aboard your ship, you may issue commands to your tillerman: Raise Anchor, Hoist Anchor Raises the anchor. You can't move while the anchor is down, but you cannot pack up the boat while the anchor is up. Lower Anchor, Drop Anchor Drops the anchor. This will stop the boat if it is currently moving. Forward, Unfurl Sail Makes the boat move forward at full sailing speed. Back, Backward Moves the boat backwards at full sailing speed. Turn Left, Port Turns the boat left. Turn Right, Starboard Turns the boat right. Right, Drift Right Moves the boat in its right hand direction while maintaining facing. For FPS players, this is akin to strafing. Left, Drift Left Moves the boat in its left hand direction while maintaining facing. For FPS players, this is akin to strafing. Forward One / Back One / Left One / Right One Moves the boat in the designated direction one tile. Slow Forward / Slow Back / Slow Left / Slow Right Moves the boat in the designated direction at half speed. Stop, Furl Sail Stops the boat. Turn Around, Come About Makes the boat turn around 180 degrees instantly. Remove Name Removes the name of the boat While not a text command, if you double click your tillerman while you are aboard the ship, you may assign a name to the boat. You can type these commands out each time if you're a masochist. I personally bind the commands to my NumPad keys. You can also use the third party program UO Rudder to help navigate, available on the UOR download page. Link: Download UO Rudder Link: Guide to using UO Rudder (Disclaimer: Like several others, I've never been able to get this program to work in Windows 7. Best of luck!) Anyone on board the boat may issue commands to the tillerman, not just the owner. This includes unwanted guests. Speaking of unwanted guests... Boat Security Unlike house security, you cannot 'friend' characters to your boat. Also unlike house security, you do not get 'free' Detect Hidden skill on a boat. You also cannot use 'I ban thee' or 'remove thyself' on an intruder. Am I using enough 'quotation marks' for you yet? 'Good'. If you try to ban someone from your boat, you might as well be speaking a different language, as your tillerman will not understand. Deep Thought of the Day: The key to boat security is keeping your boat keys secured. Your only defense is to simply never let intruders get on board. That means you need to keep your keys secure and gangplanks closed. Once you're on board your new ship, lock the gangplank and put the key from your pack inside the ship's hold. (NOTE: each gangplank is considered its own lock) The key in your bank box should always stay in your bank box. Use it to Recall off of. You can also keep this key in a secure bag in a house. The key in your hold should (almost) always stay in your hold. The only time it should ever leave is for the five seconds it takes to refresh your boat. The gangplank should always stay locked. I once locked both of my boat keys onboard my ship. It's extremely embarrassing. Don't do this. Any extended time a ship key spends outside of secure areas is asking for trouble! Ship keys are easily stolen by thieves. And if a thief gets your key, your ship is basically gone forever. They can recall onto the ship, block the recall point so that you can't recall onto it yourself, and then pack up the ship. Then you're SOL, and you'll have to buy another boat from me. Erm, ahem, I mean from another player. The other point of entry onto your ship is the gangplank. If you use Recall to get on and off your ship, this isn't even a security issue. So use Recall. But if you despise magic and insist on using the gangplank, remember that anyone can jump on board and start issuing orders to a tillerman. Using the gangplank also opens you up to the possibility of forgetting to lock the gangplank afterwards. Anyone that drifts past your ship on the high seas is likely to check and see if your gangplanks are locked. Like houses, gangplanks can always be opened from the inside, even if the gangplanks are locked and you don't have a key. Even though this opens the gangplank, locked gangplanks cannot be 'jumped onto' by other players. It's a bit counter-intuitive, but it benefits the boat owner. Also be wary of where you park your ship. If you park near a cliff, players can actually walk directly onto a ship, bypassing the gangplank completely. Don't park near cliffs! Remember that packing up a boat requires a key. So if, despite all of this top-notch advice, your boat still somehow becomes stolen and you still have both of your keys, the would-be thief cannot pack it up. All they can do is take it for a joy ride. Let them have their fun for a couple hours, and then recall to it later on when they've gotten bored. Keeping Your Boat Fresh Deployed boats decay over time just like houses and will evaporate into thin air after 2 weeks if they are not refreshed. To refresh your boat, all you need to do is open the gangplank while holding a ship key. You do not need to unlock the gangplank to refresh the boat. Logging Out At Sea You can log out on your ship and log back in, provided the ship doesn't move while you're logged out. If it does, you will be teleported to the nearest body of land upon logging in. I have a hilarious tale of being disconnected and logging back in on the Isle of the Avatar as a newb, and then running for my life from Giant Spiders. Well, I guess that's the tale in its entirety right there, but trust me, it's funny. Miscellaneous Tidbits of Boat Related Information Currently items on boat decks follow normal item decay (subject to possibly change someday in the future) Useful things to have on your boat: Bank Rune House Rune Recall Reagents / Scrolls Spare weapons Bandages Sunscreen Ship deeds are not blessed. Ship models are blessed.
One question I had to all those Yew Boat vendors - why don't you sell freaking ship models instead of ship deeds ?! All it takes is quickly dipping the boat into water and you can sell something blessed Maybe that's a reason for people to buy boats from you ? And yes, that's a great guide. Thanks very much. I did actually learn one or two things from this guide even though I sail alot. The only thing I am still uncertain about is the safe spot on the large ship. There used to be a spot next to the mast on large ship that was safe from outside access (telekinesis, pickup) ...
You can't tell the size of the ship based off the ship model is the main reason I don't normally put the models up. But yea, fair point. Blessed much better than non-blessed. I'll do some testing with Telekenesis this weekend, that's a great idea on something to add to the guide.
Telekinesis seems busted on this shard, at least with respect to opening chests. I thought you should be able to open chests from across a room with Telekinesis, but that doesn't seem to work here. (You can't remove items from them, if they're too far away, of course). It was mostly useful if there's an IDOC house you can get into, with chests behind a table wall, so you could get a sneak preview and see what you wanted to go for. That said, I am eager to read how the spell may (or may not) work with boats!
Well just name your small boat "large ship" and dock it But that's a valid point. Didn't consider that. Buying a boat does require some faith then.
If you log out on a boat and the boat moves, then when you log in you will be transported to a nearest town dock. (From patch 43)
NOW (after the patch) it is to town docks. Used to be to the closest land mass (including castle courtyards).
Well then you had a 1/10'000 chance for some pleasant surprise. Last time I wanted to log in on a boat I was stuck in Nujelm Docks - like really stuck in place. Had to wait for the Physically Stuck timeout to get back to the bank box and res my other fisher while watching his corpse decay.
That's just weird. There is no water tile in the game to which the closest point of land is a castle courtyard, since all houses will have at least a 1-tile radius around them, which would be closer to the water than their courtyards.
Were you not able to plot a course with your boat at one time? would make it easy to line up mibs instead of running around for hours lol
You are able to, there's another guide on it somewhere but I can't remember where it was. All I know is you plot the course, drop the map on the tillerman, say "start" and he'll start, if you have to stop and want to restart, just say "continue"
So would you need cartography to plot a course on a map? Planning on having it on my fisherman but I haven't started it yet.
no cartography needed, just plot the course and give it to them. With cartography though, you can make sea charts which are essentially a larger map of your surrounding area and easier to use in certain spots
Great guide, thanks I am running UORudder on Win7 (logged on with an admin account). I noticed it doesn't work (It only sends the first letter of the command) if Razor (1.10.14.10) is set to "Use Smart Always on Top". It seems Razor is always stealing the focus and gets the key presses that should go to the UO client. With Smart Always on Top disabled, all good
