All-time Greatest Ultima Online Scams!

The old pure black dye tub for sale in a bag.. lol.



What are some of your favorites?

The vendor that sells locked boxes for 10k each with a 5k prize

All UO casinos for that matter.

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New patch came out over the weekend.
As a GM blacksmith I can now add more armor value to your set and change the color (if you want)... just pass it here and I'll do it for free.

Yes as I was saying, as a GM tinker I can create a secure keyring for your house key. Of course this is safe... if I scammed people, I'd go out of business.
I'm an honest crafter.

Yes, I'll gate you to Moonglow for 500 gold.
- thanks for the gold
*casts recall*
Oops!

I'm telling you that glacial staff plays music.
Yes! Seriously, why do you think everyone banksits with them? They can listen to any UO song they want. It even has a new version of Stones
I bet yours is turned off.
* give obscure directions nobody could follow *
This is odd... I bet your keyboard isn't set up to default... here, let me see it for a sec and I'll turn it on for you.

Yeah I'm the guy that makes those plat3d3wd and b0n3d3wd comics... anyway I could use an extra for my next one if you got a moment?
Cool! Put on your snazziest gear and come with me... we're going to do this one in the graveyard.
Okay great... now all you have to do is stand right there, don't move, and say "cheese".
*whack*

Can you help me set up pvp macros? I'll pay you with a rare fireworks wand.
Cool... I just need a moving target so run around a bit.
Oh before you do, set me as last target... it helps with my macros. (if they don't know how, teach them and check it works with bandage or something)
Sure... sure, I'll teach you what I'm doing when I'm done setting up. This is how you double cast like a pro.
* pretend to do awesome things *
Okay I'm all set. Here's that wand.
* hand lighting wand *
Just arm it, dbl click, and hit last target for the fireworks show.
* click *
guards

This one time on OSI Renaissance I was running around Britain bank in Trammel wearing my brand new shadow iron plate suit and this guy said "Hey if you come to my house I'll give you a lot of gold." and, being the child I was, thought "Awesome!" and agreed. A red moongate opens and I had no idea what that meant.

Wonton Soup is attacking you!


You are dead.



And I watched him loot every single piece of my newly purchased shadow iron platemail suit. My brother still heckles me about it to this day.

(In T2A in Delucia)

*random player asks for a gate to papua*

"I can gate you to papua!"

You then open a gate to....

*you see: a wyvern*
*you see: a wyvern*
*you see: a wyvern*
*you see: a wyvern*
*you see: a wyvern*
*you see: a wyvern*
*you see: a wyvern*
*you see: a wyvern*
*you see: a wyvern*

Right after UOR (the era, not this shard) began, I thought up a way to make some gold which we began to refer to as "The ole Chicken Sale".

Preface:

Houses initially belonged to basically whomever owned the key. After that, they added the option just before T2A to transfer a house. It was an instant transfer, no trade window. Everyone was super cautious to buy a house. Until finally... Just before UOR we got house trade window gumps. But unlike here, the land of 15 houses and 50 more that, you're um.. family, yeah, that's it, you're family member who rarely plays owns them... there was not a lot of house trading going on. Super rich player were likely the only ones who used the mechanic often. Most people that you would see simply did not have a house. A small house would command 500k and up, at least where I played, and that was a LOT of money back then.

The Sale:

A week prior start an alt character with a generic name. Good ones are from fantasy books like "Radagast" (sorry @Animal Control ) and whatnot. Get 50 magery and 50 taming, enough mana to recall, and put the rest in dex so you have plenty of stamina for walking. Equip them with a rune to the nearby inn, and some recall scrolls. Then get out your main character, which, of course is in the thieves guild and in an excellent disguise.

You tell everyone you're quitting UO for good. "I'm going to sell everything for gold and put the gold in ebay!". You could make a bit attention at the bank, sell some power weapons for 2k (like 20% of retail!) and people would be lining up to see what else you have. Toss some lesser, but still desirable items, on the ground as freebies. A plainly map, 100 reagents, etc.. Finally, you unveil to the audience that you finally unloaded all the junk in your bank, and now you're gonna go deed your house for the gold.

"Deed your house?!?! Are you crazy" they will reply. Okay, well maybe you will give it to someone for deed cost... or.....

You don't want to spend too much time quitting, you did quit after-all. So just have an impromptu auction right there at the WBB (or wherever). You can bring the people conveniently just outside of town where the house is so they can see it if you want (you don't need to own the house), but many people jump at chance to have ANY house for 200k. Get the auction going back at the bank: "50k, no 60k! 100k, 200k!" Get a reasonable, but still much less than it's value bid as the winner and you're all set!

When the winner has been declared, toss out some more cheap freebie items, and tell them to give you a moment to log onto the owner. Most cities have a inn closer to the bank than any house, so just have them tag along while you go log out there. Maybe trade ICQ number if you want to be harassed later.

Log in your "Radagast" alt that is someplace else, and recall otherwise travel to house. Tame the first starling, cat, or "chicken" (where I got name for this).

Now what you do is bring your pet about 12 tiles away from the house sign. You might even take a few more sheep or something and put them there as well, make it look natural, but still within 12 tile of the sign, and kind of "out of the way". I suggest behind a small house. Have them all stay, then pull the bar for one. Give the "a chicken transfer" command, so you can transfer just that one (and not the sheep and other animals). Now click carefully into the HP bar for the ole' chick and type a new name "a small house" but do not press enter.

Here's the part where you run back to the inn to meet your friend. After a trip to bank to get the check, tell him a fun story about how you will spend your new cash after you ebay it the gold on the walk back to house. When you get to the house, fumble around a bit "in the house sign menu". You know, you're not very experienced at this stuff! He might even give you some pointers on how to do it. If that is so, then maybe you can roleplay a way to cancel the trade, and a bit later find the second highest bidder to try again. We don't want anyone TOO experienced or someone who already owns a house right? We're giving it away so cheap for new-player charity and brevity.

Eventually when you're both positioned under the sign, and enough time has passed that surely the names of incoming players/mobiles has faded away, click in the chickens HP bar carefully, you don't want to accidentally target it, to get the text prompt again. Then give it an "Enter", securing it's new name which wont show unless your friend uses all names AND notices it. Quickly target your new friend as he patiently awaits the transfer.

Francine The Wizard would like to trade you a scroll titled "a small house deed", do you accept?

You stalled enough he is worried something is wrong, and he doesn't want to miss out on this deal of a liferime, so he quickly put the check into the trade window and checks the box. Before he changes his mind, quickly check your own trade accept box. You'll know it's successful when you're both greeted with a lovely sound:


♫ ♫ baaaawwwwwkkk bawk bawk bawk bawkk ♫ ♫


The chicken will promptly forget it's "stay" command and run over to it's new owner who will likely be very confused, or very angry.


Now's a good time for you to recall straight to that inn you logged out at, put check in a bag and hide it behind a wall, log in the main character, change your name and disguise and retrieve it. Then log back out and delete your chicken salesman for good.

We use to keep a tamed horse inside the bank and claim to sell ethys n sneak a a horse transfer n sell it as an ethy.
Second favorite was putting blank deeds on vendors n naming them clothing bless deeds n selling them

Guy on OSI back in the day (about 13.5, while 8x8 was still a thing before guaranteed gains) I met a few times used to sell a 'bug' with fishing that would give you as many MIB/SOS as you wanted. He tried to scam me over a few weeks when we bumped into each other, but I just stringed him along to see his routine. He used to say stuff like "I can force the refresh of the 8x8 resource block" "You can game the serpent with a MIB system to get one almost every serpent" "You missed an epic weekend dude, we had a boat with 4 of us all doing it and we could hardly kill all the serpents - it was crazy" "they could patch it any time, you better make your mind up" etc.

To top it off he had a box in his bank with 120ish MIBs that he would show to people who got sucked in and just say "im too lazy to go fish them all up".

Basically he'd charge 3ish mil for the bug, but you could 'bargain' him down to 900k if you said it was excessive or whatever. I know he got a few people, but they wouldn't owe up to it cause they were all embarrassed.

Best thing about the whole scam - you can't report him cause you're trying to exploit a bug

Hey, if you found that in Skara it's mine! I just dropped it to carry stuff to my house.


My oldest brother (whom I watched playing UO as a kid) was asked if he wanted to see this stranger's house. Wow, a house, sure! We had some friends over watching too, they asked: "But what if it's just a trick? Maybe he'll kill you?" My brother went: "Naah, I don't think so, this is fine." The house turns out to be a small tower and my brother follows the owner all the way to the top and stays there enjoying the view. The owner goes downstairs, disappears, and all of a sudden a red PK turns up, and that was the end of my brother's toon, Sir Bone! We all thought it was incredibly fun!

Hah, yeah! I remember buying my Sandstone Patio back in the day for 2.5 million. This is the one thing where this server really shows the difference in playerbase to "primetime" osi. I was a bit confused when i first started looking for houses, how low the prices here are/were. In the end, I was even able to plant down a brand new 2-story villa off a deed. ^^

The first one I ever saw, and this so long as ago that this would actually work (though even back then not often): "You see there is a bug in the game. I mean, of course, this may be the buggiest game ever. No surprise there. What you have to do is put on an orc helm, tab in and out and then in one more time, and the double click me. I know we're in town and I'm blue, but it's a bug, OK?"

This is a profiling campaign by the F.B.OSI.

We're all on a watch list now.

I also recall two more from the very earliest days:

Under the old notoriety system, you would be guardwhacked for attacking a gray player...even if you attacked them out town, they ran in town, and you were still out of town. You could make some serious golds, relatively speaking, by just stealing at the guardzone and running for the protection of the guards. The best loot came from those foolish enough to attack you.

The other was stealing from people in town but having a player dressed as a guard follow you around. Everytime you died, the "guard" looted you and no one was the wiser on where their goods went.

.

Along time ago when you mounted a horse, you mounted it onto whatever tile it was standing on. Plenty of people would "secure" their house by locking down tables and some would do them staggered. I would block all open spaces except for the open space on the other side of tables. Summon creature until i got a horse, mount it and end up on the other side and loot my lil heart away. After having looted a house that belonged to the biggest guild on Baja at the time, they were able to complain and influence change so that you have to mount where your char is standing.

Another was during the trinsic invasions, there was an evil powerful npc named Malabelle. Realllllly hard to kill. I made a copy of her on an extra slot, named and the same. Made my way to Trinsic where everyone was and would start spouting things like "THOU SHALL PARISH" and similiar. I had at least 40 people following me around believing it was the npc just waiting for me to start casting spells and turn grey or red, whatever Malabelle was. My dad was standing behind me just saying "oh lord, what have i done" referring to having introduced UO to me.

I have since longed for another trinsic invasion. Watching everyone get together to kill Juo'nar (a badass lich) was pretty cool.

Thanks for sharing dood. A version of the horse mounting story happened on this server a couple times. Players would res their other account on the other side of a table wall (a wall designed with a vertex that shares standing space with the public and private side of the wall.). So they stand on the outside but res their ghost on the inside and then loot.

I am a baja native- what guild did you loot on baja?

I can totally see that happening during the trinsic invasion. The first night of the invasion scores of guilds put on plate armor and set up on the battlements of trinsic. They made sandbag walls with bags of flour and stood behind them with their bows ready. I remember plate guys unloading off boats, all wearing their guild colors on their sashes, kilts, and boots. I 'fought' Juo'nar too. He chased me into the trinsic stables and earthquaked me when I invised. I remember Mallabele standing on top of buildings and talking down to us as undead spawned and funneled in surrounding everyone. That trinsic invasion was the best moment in UO history. There is some recorded history on stratics that I tried linking to Telamon suggesting he run the campaign on baja as well. It would have fun to see its conclusion be a duel between Juo'nar and uors own gandalf (Jupiter.)

I would love it if Telemon brought the Trinsic Invasion back to life on UoR. Nostalgia would probably hit me hard on that one.

It's been so long since I played Baja and I was pretty young. I feel like it was KoR or KoD or something to that effect. It definitely wasn't one of their bigger properties, it was a brick house and from what I remember probably a dump and run house. One of their members saw my char "Mini Me" during one of my loot runs and I was banned from their house, guild and pretty much put a kill on sight on me after that. I honestly didn't realize it was one of their guild houses, I was kind of oblivious about those things back then. But I probably wouldn't have looted them if I had known. They were a guild similar to PS here. It would feel like kicking a puppy if I looted a PS house. And I like puppies.

100,000,000% (see what I did there?) Thee most fun in game event on OSI I ever attended.

Not to side track the post but when this invasion happened on Sonoma my brother and I followed Jou'Nar around and kept shouting "HOW CAN WE SERVE YOU MASTER???" The Seer in control actually instructed us to find him "souls" for sacrifice... We ran around all of Trinsic trying to lure people to him and since the guards were inactive for the event we proceeded to murder them. Jou'Nar didn't attack us the whole time

I would give anything to relive that event again... (even now, so many years later I still bank mainly in Trinsic because of this).