Bard - mage or dexxer

Also, I decided on swords for my dexxer as it seems to be the skill with the most abundant, useful 1 handed weapons. I hate having to de-equip to drink a potion. Plus it has what I consider the best all around weapon, the katana.

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Your original thoughts were good, Mozz.

For the bard, don't break that last 100 points up. Hiding is fine. Disco is less appealing because you're kinda relying on mobs to beat each other down and disco may actually slow that down. It works to even them out, though, if you need that. You probably don't. Some people would put wrestling in there cause then you have the 5x mage and can feel like you're PvP capable. You might also consider inscription. Perhaps instead of resist as the inscription boosted magic reflect is really quite useful.

I think your battle-miner is right on but One can tell you about my bias there. If this character is really only battle-mining he doesn't actually need resist. But the GM magery will be very nice. At some point you may be sitting on a fat stack of ore (cause that's the point) and without a nearby forge and you'll want to gate it to the bank or wherever. Keep in mind that you're in complete control of when and where your prey will spawn so adding a bard skill isn't about surviving or being able to kill em, it's about how easy you want them to go down. But you could go with provo and move a little quicker with a tiny bit more danger and a bit more entertainment. I still like your original idea, though. That character can do other stuff without feeling all nerfy.

My pure dexxer is a macer, and I do love macing, but he usually runs in a group, so that crushing blow is useful to finish stuff/people off or set them up to be finished off by someone else.

I have a de-equip, re-equip hot key. But I am just too impatient. The nearly 3 second item delay for just drinking a potion really gets to me after a while. Specially when you go through all the shit only to receive the: “you must wait longer to drink another healing potion”. Goddamn, I get pissed just thinking about it.

Why?

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Well, when you are training LPing, and this is only doing it my way, you need Magery to gate you around. Meditation to NOT be waiting around. Hiding to, well, hide. Stealth to move around undetected. LPing, because well...yeah. I like music and provo to get out of sticky situations. And you will need cartography in there eventually. That's why I leave carto for last and drop stealth when GM LPing.

But yeah, that is only for a VERY specific t-mapper template, and again, it is my personal preference.

You can choose to have a t-map digger and complete the map with another character. That is equally as valid.

Thanks for all the help! I now just need to sell my business so I will have time to focus on building my characters! Going to take me a while, but I am enjoying the shard for sure. Look forward to adventuring with some of you.
I like to hunt some of the more dangerous spots and it is way harder solo on this shard than I remember it being. I think the power scroll thing made places like even lower level Destard far easier solo. I have not been brave enough to try yet. Looking forward to getting my skills up so I can participate in some "big game" hunting. I have killed a few solo thus far, but it is quite a struggle. How in the world do you kill an Ogre Lord Mage for example!
It has even felt good to be pk'ed a few times(sort of), lol.

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Oh, yeah, not sure if anyone already said it, but champs are active here, but no power scrolls. Just platinum as a reward.

To kill an ogre lord mage you get another ogre lord to dance with him. Then just whack at it at your heart's content!

I see. I have always put LP on my thief since 2000, probably not a good choice, but it's habit.

I am at 98.7 Provo and 100 Music, I get the old "You have no chance to incite this monster" or something to that effect. I guess I need GM Provo?

Nope. Some monsters are unprovokeable.

Unless it's changed you should be able to provo the Ogre Mage. Some of the guys topping the leaderboards are just bards. You probably want a slayer intrument, though. But Pirul's right. Some monsters are just plainly unprovocable and some are in theory but have an even higher barding difficulty than ogre mages. Sometimes in takes copious amounts of patience and luck.

Which ones are unprovokeable

I don't think anything that interferes with everyday hunting but some event mobs and a bunch of Khaldun spawn. There may be a list out there someplace.

http://www.uorenaissance.com/list/Creature/M

Here's some... their barding difficulty is listed on their personal attribute page.

Provocation on high end (loot) mobs had to be set high/not bardable to balance tamers leaving the non-tamer bards with no options... ain't that just swell? Gosh golly gee.

That looks like a list of everything. I meant that someone may have compiled a list of specifically un-bardable mobs. I just wanted to distinguish between things like the elder wyrm that have a barding difficulty so high that it's a waste to try and things that you can't even attempt like easter bunnies (and give you a corresponding system message.) Looking at a few of the ones that came to mind, some say "immune" in barding difficulty but zealots, for example, just have "---". So. . . make of that what you will. . . but that stuff's "un-bardable."

So balancing tamers and bards sets precedence over the balancing mages and dexxers? Is this from osi or uor?

*shrugs*

The mere introduction of animal taming into the Ultima world ruined it for me. Anything that "could have been" were it not for the existence of them tends to piss me off.


Bard immune, I totally get. Having challenges out there that are a direct resource war instead of a roll of the dice are appealing. However, I am very displeased with several worthwhile mob's level of barding difficulty that places them out of the reach of a non tamer.... as well as the mob's DPS and defensive skills being balanced against several dragons instead of individual player characters.

This isn't a pointing fingers at a dev thing... it's the way Ultima is and has evolved, because of a mistake.

Giving birth to tamers.