Ethereal mounts vs Regular mounts

I'd see a dermatologist about that.

It's not the question though. Not on this thread.Create your own if you want to get into that.

My wife is a practitioner so I am in good hands, but thanks for the advice.

Not sure who you think I am

You’re a baby and take things too seriously.

That's rich coming from you.

Ethies need to be easier acquired to make more pvpers come here. THE PRICE OF ETHIES IS TO DAMN HIGH!!!!!

Being able to get res'd and mount an ethy to quickly return to your corpse and combat loot yourself to jump back into the battle is a huge benefit. Also escaping res killers faster helps as well.

On a side note I agree cheaper ethy's and blessed runebooks would keep new pvpers longer/bring more to UOR.

Yuck.

Definitely, these are two things I think about before venturing out and I'm a new player.

If I lose my runebook, it'll take a good amount of time to replace the book and rune spots. If we don't want to make blessed runebooks cheaper than maybe an easier way to copy the runebook itself.

I understand the cost is not too high for runebooks but there is a good amount of time lost replacing it and the spots we have marked.

It would be nice to have access to the ethereal mounts as well. Horses are 550 gold a ride if you don't have taming.

Thats about 1k gold per death just in horsey and book for a pvp battle, not counting any armor/weapons/reagents.

This is probably true.
I got my ethy inside 4 months, but acquiring it did become my sole purpose in game for a while.

It is a big shiny target to aim for as a new player.

Cheaper ethys... maybe a good thing. Although I'd be a little sad I paid for mine at the "old premium"

As for blessed rune book... it would make life easier, but its also quite easy to carry a few runes and leave some books in the bank/home/personal library.

Lastly; some of my most tricksy little steals would never have been possible without my ethy. PvP with an ethy is preferable, imo.

As a thief with all newbied clothing + ethy, if I do go down, Im just a few minutes away from being back up and running.

I'd buy one if they we'rent see through. If I could have a poop-brown horse in my backpack when I res, that would be great.

I think it's a matter of opinion really. What are the situations when you might want an etheral?

When you died and just need a new horse, sure it saves you 550gp. You only have to die 9091 times before this becomes profitable though. So if you are someone like @Jakob then maybe an etheral makes sense.


Suppose you are scouting around and suspect someone is up ahead for some reason (you certainly didn't use tracking to find out as it's broke). You could dismount a horse or an etheral and begin your stealth up to the suspected area. The downside is... if you're on a horse someone is going to notice it? It's doubtful anyone would care by the time they see the horse standing there. You're stealthing to them to accomplish some task anyway, so it's likely they will know you are there eventually anyway. I would say it doesn't matter in this case.

In that same situation, if you are planning on just watching someone and not interacting with them in any way - maybe you just want to secretly listen to the conversation going on between MikeK and the local Beer salesman.... Yeah an etheral works out great there. For a scout, it's a good thing.

What if you stealth up to someone, make a steal, PK them, or whatever and now the area is dangerous. Are you going to just hop on your etheral and ride into the sunset? No, it's mostly useless for this. If you have 5 seconds to mount the etheral, you could have simply gated/recalled away, or you would have had plenty of time to stealth away far enough such that detection is nearly impossible. If you're under attack, or wanting to make a getaway where 5 seconds matters, a real horse is beneficial because if you cannot stealth away and your spells are being disrupted, you stand some chance at least of making it to where you parked your horse and hopping on before they think to kill it. Once you're mounted, there's not really any reason you should die unless you are just very laggy.

You died in PVP, and want to get back into the action quickly... well you have to restock anyway, and it takes just 1 second to recall to a stable from your blessed runebook say claim X and recall once again. Real horses in the stable nearly always have the advantage here. The only exception might be if you are a dexer and they didn't loot your weapon and bandaids, or something like that. Regular horse wins here.

You are a PVMer... It doesn't matter at all here. Let's face it, 99% of you will be a tamer on a mare. But the remaining 1% have nothing to gain by having an etheral.

You hate playing the actual game and spend all your time in trammel events like AMIB's and stuff - In this case "maybe" an etheral is good? Does it even count as a follower towards your iron man trophy? I don't know the answer to this because this is lame, but if you spend your days in trammel, I guess look into this further.

Suppose you're a stealther and you manage to hide before pks come on screen, or a homeowner recalls in to their doorstep, or something like that so that you want to stealth and not be detected without any preparation. Well here an etheral comes in handy. But let's face it, this accounts for almost none of you. I would also say that in these types of players, simply being on foot 99% of the time is the way to go. (That's how I play). I find it makes a huge impact on the number of possibilities that are extended to me to stay on foot. I do keep an etheral, though, over the past few years I can think of only 1 time that I needed it. It was when I was murdering people in town, and someone on a ridable polar bear didn't die after a synced spellcast, so an etheral allowed me to get ressed outside of town and quickly run back into guard zone to finish them off before they came back from afk. That's it, that one time.


I'm not saying "don't get an etheral". But, if you don't have a blessed runebook, you should absolutely get that first. A blessed book is the best item in the game hands down, and you would be making quite literally a "trammy" decision skipping it to get an etheral horse first. This is not the year 2000 and an etheral does not signify your status as a UO vet, there is no account age requirement really, don't be a trammy. Make decisions that make sense for your situation. Only you know whether it makes sense to get an etheral horse over a blessed runebook, but if you pick a horse I would suspect you are lying to yourself 95% of the time.

I want an ethereal dragon I can ride that breathes 40 damage fire breath at my target every 20 seconds.

Heeey!

@snap dragon I find that being able to run around on the ethy, tracking and locating marks, then hide->dismount->stealth approach said mark to be really good, for my playstyle anyway. Additionally to that, being able to stealth away from someone looking for you, or stealth past a sketchy situation, followed by mounting up in a safer area to be really beneficial. Again, this is part of my playstyle.

As for tracking; I've heard and seen a lot of mentions as to it being broken; could you elaborate on why this is the belief? I use it quite effectively to track players in towns, wilderness and dungeons. Although that being said I do get the benefit from Detect Hidden. It's quite nice to find someone afk in their home this way, or someone who has hidden / invis'd in a dungeon.

If you're referring to it being broken as to how it was in OSI, well, I agree. I had a Ranger type character that utilized 20.1 tracking for finding and fleeing from players. This was all that was needed at that time to track a player.
The 20.1 was balanced, in that you couldn't get away with all the combat skills plus hiding at 80 to get stealth, or other abilities that require 80 skill. You'd be limited to 79.9 due to the 0.1.

If it works for you, do it. I can see benefit of having etheral, but NOT more beneficial than having blessed runebook. If you are decide which one to get first, runebook is the way to go 100% of the time.

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Tracking works fine if you have patience to use it many times. It's good for scout or thieves, I still use it on my main character. I just had to GM it and still use it many times. Detect Hidden is pointless I think, if you use it, that player knows someone is around and the jig is up. If you just want to grief farmers that can hide, well then it's fun, or annoy other stealthers, sure. Otherwise there is no purpose for it that reveal can't do. I never have not been able to reveal someone using only the spell, unless they are way in a fortress courtyard or something and at that point, there no point in revealing them anyway if I already know they are there through tracking. If I really need to, I'll just get a detect hidden character.

That being said, I do have detect on my main character a papuan citizen, but not because I use it, just because it's basically required for tracking to work better.

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The 20.1 tracking on OSI was a lame exploit that was never fixed, because anything that helps trammelers, even if exploit, is considered a-okay by osi staff (and UOR staff), all huge trammelers. I am glad that is not a feature here on UOR. I agree, to track you should have some invested skill points, and I am fine with needing 100 tracking skill.

What I do not like about the UOR era tracking system is the arrow. It's pretty lame in general. The 20.1 thing worked because you always tracked eveyone in your possible radius, and your possible radius was determine by your track skill. So with 20.1 you could track generally around you, and once tracked that arrow would follow them even as they left that radius, a loooong way. This is stupid and defeats the purpose of tracking taking skill points, hence people in OSI UOR had 20.1

UOR double-down on this stupidity by instead of fixing the problems that let PKs with little skill find players down to the exact tile, they completely ruined the skill for anyone wanting to do real-time tracking. On UOR it requires 200 skill points (detect also) to get a pretty ok range and also have any chance in heck at finding a stealther, and even then the success chance is so small you must use it many times and still can't be certain if you have discovered everyone in your radius or not. Always a chance you did not. You might think this is good for thieves, and it kind of is... but a good thief should have no trouble escaping people even with the arrow-track. it's REALLY easy to not die in UO, unless you are terrible at the game. I play a main character with no resist or wrestle, no eval, no fighting skills at all, and I still do just super and even kill people with cheap tricks like traping them between an EV and a wall of stone, or gating PKs to town etc.

What I would like to see if T2A style tracking. In T2A tracking You need about 40 points to track a bit less than the screen you are on, and 50 tracked about 1.5 screens. This is good for seeing just what is ahead. if you want to some long range tracking, well... GM tracking, that's an option. Thieves already have it REALLY rough, usually fighting skills that can't compare to an unarmed bard, often no mount (or time to moutn etheral if under attack), lack resist and other defence, and to make it worse, they are usually some of the least equipped players out there with nothing but a couple of regs or bandages in their bag. (This is your guys problem, learn to properly stock yourself and stop accepting you will die an lose everything, if you were prepared, you won't). So it makes sense that it's only 50-100 skill points to also add tracking on top of that since it's helpful to "find players to interact with" which is my main use of it. Especially on freeshard you spend too much time checking the totally empty dungeons and running through forests with house after house, all empty blockers placed by lightshade. It's pathetic really. Tracking saves time, and provide useful service to what is already the most nerfed class.

Problem is PKs can then use tracking with 100 or less skill points. I was honestly ok with it. I deal a lot with PKs and it never bother me, they are often not clever enough to use track properly and it also distracts them so I have time to escape or whatever. But the farmers and some more casual players think they should be able to farm elder gazers, hit hide macro, then go eat a dinner at Applebees and come back still hidden and safe. Or they think once PK is on screen, they should be able to hide and have time to recall or something. This might be the case, but it's due to PKs poor play skills mostly.

If you move over to T2A style tracking that just reports "Someone is to the southeast" every 5 seconds, they might be able to track you down with 100 skill points, but if you're stealthing around, they wont get an exact pinpoint on your location and you can still dodge their reveal spells and whatnot. It also means PK off screen will know "ok, Jimmy Hand is down there somewhere", but they can't rush in to your exact location and kill you, you have a few second buffer while they triangulate your exact position by walking circles around you. It makes tracking a skill that required player-skill to use properly. It's leagues better. Unfortunately it will never be fixed now, as the trammel players are currently satisfied, and nothing gets un-nerfed unless it's something related to farming monsters.