Guide Writing Contest - November 2013 Edition

Bust out your paint, photoshop, and video editing skills UOR citizens!

It's the November Edition of Gideon's Guide Writing Contest!!​

Get your guide a trophy and be awesome!
1st Place in a Guide Contest
2nd Place in a Guide Contest
3rd Place in a Guide Contest
Honorable Mention in a Guide Contest

Prizes!
The top 3 winners will get to pick their prizes from the prize room.
If there are a lot of contestants, then there will be more winners.

Prizes are on display at Gideon's Tavern - Yew Bank!


Prize Donations!
Prizes can be donated either publicly or anonymously.
I will indicated public donations with a book on the display.
Left over prizes will be used to support the next round of the contest.
Big thanks to the following Donors:
- Basoosh

Examples of some recent amazing player created guides:
Basoosh's Boat Guide - viewtopic.php?f=18&t=3020
Markos' Champ Guide - viewtopic.php?f=18&t=3026
Cynic's Peace Dexxer Guide - viewtopic.php?f=18&t=2897&p=18606#p18606

Contest Rules!
- Last date to submit is November 30th at Midnight PST.
- Multiple Submissions Encouraged but guides will be judged individually so quality is still more important than quantity.
- Guides will be judged on the quality of presentation and craftsmanship of the guide, not the topic.
- Guides can be on topics already covered or new topics!
- Please don't steal/borrow material without permission!

Guide Ideas and skills without guides!
- Stealth, Stealing, and the Dark Arts
- Success at Shard Events
- Earning Platinum Fast!
- CTF: How to not get pwnd
- Anatomy
- Animal Lore
- Begging
- Cooking
- Forensic Evaluation
- Herding
- Hiding
- Remove Trap
- Resisting Spells
- Snooping
- Spirit Speak
- Taste ID
- Tracking
- Veterinary

Past Guide Contests!
October 2013 - viewtopic.php?f=18&t=2825
August/September 2013 - viewtopic.php?f=18&t=2336

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I put this together, mostly for personal reference. Not much, but hopefully it helps someone!

viewtopic.php?f=18&t=3060

This is still obviously a work in progress, but I thought I'd post the link on the contest so i don't forget.

The Mail System for Dummies (by Atraxi)
viewtopic.php?f=18&t=3066

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BODs for fun and profit:
viewtopic.php?f=18&t=3087

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Bump, someone beat my lame guide!

viewtopic.php?f=18&t=3276

Over the years i have gmed many a smith and have worked out an optimal guide to reduce the ingot cost using a gm miner. As guildmaster of United Blacksmiths of Britania on Pacific shard, I shared this knowledge and it has been used for years. I have seen the guide on here and it isn't quite as efficient so now I will share it with you. Remember this should not be attempted till you gm mining as you will resmelt ever item you make. This guide is designed for maximum gain at least amount of cost in total ingots to gm.

50-55: Maul
55-65: Cutlass
65-70: Scimitar
70-72: Broadsword
72-81: Kryss
81-83: Katana
83-93: Short Spear
93-98: Spear
98-GM: Plate Gloves

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What are you talking about? That guide is awesome. Do you know how long it took me to figure out how to do that from vague descriptions about using Razor's display/counters function?

Anyway, here's my entry for the contest: Barding for Dummies

Regards,
Wil

just a note i know my guide isn't flash or pretty but i went more for effective than stylish

Howdy,

What do you make from 30 to 50? Put it a different way: when building a crafter is it always better for blacksmithy to be the second 50-point skill or does it make more sense to dump the 50 in tinkering, carpentry or one of the others and build the blacksmithing skill fro 30?

Regards,
Wil

Yes always start with 50 blacksmithing if you plan to be a blacksmith. Tinkering is much less resource intensive.

Soooooooooooo

Who won?

1st Place: Wil - Barding for Dummies


2nd Place: Corruption - House Addons Guide


Co-2nd Place: Dalavar- BOD's for fun and for profit


3rd Place: Atraxi - The Mail System for Dummies


Honorable Mention: Wise - How to get an Item's Hue


Honorable Mention: Garrion - Smithing Build Order

Gonna be honest... this is lame. You're getting staff-supported prizes and are clearly biased.

Last month I write a bard guide, and I place 4th out of 4. This month Wil writes a bard guide and wins first prize. And his and mine are exactly the same.

This month I write a lengthy guide on the BOD system, spending hours on it to crunch numbers for people, update it for all requests, and don't even get "honorable mention", while Wise spends 3 minutes on "how to find a hue" and does?

Staff-supported prizes should not be given out at the discretion of players who clearly have petty grudges.

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What staff items? He is giving out his own hard earned pixels so that people get involved in the community and do positive things that help each other.

By the way the honorable mention is just for laughs, I obviously won't be getting anything, and even if I won first place I would just redonate my prize bacause I was doing it for fun and to help a person who asked and had trouble with just a written explanation.

For what its worth I think your guide is awesome, when I feel slighted, I get motivated. Make another even better one

By the way if you read the forums a lot (of course every player has their own free time so not everyone can read everything) you would have seen a not-so-friendly exchange of ideas between Wil, Gideon and myself which clearly indicates that favoritism was not in play because Wil got first place. And no one likes Atraxi and he won too

EDIT:

I am gladly relinquishing my honorable mention to Dalavar because his guide was way waaay better than mine and I am sure will provide a lot more information and usefulness. I for one thought his was the most useful this month as it dealt with a very important aspect of the game that before hand, had very little information.

EDIT2:

By most useful I mean I learnt more new information and my game experience was improved thanks to it.

Wise, "honorable mention" means a lot to me; making guides is, literally, my favorite thing to do on UO Freeshards. I couldn't care less about Gideon's cash prizes. What he does with his stuff is completely up to him, and it's great that he spends some of it on the betterment of the shard.

Take a look at Basoosh's marble tower near Yew to see what I mean. There are trophies and special desks given to the winners, by the staff. It is a general philosophy of mine that staff items/prizes should never be given out in player-run events, which is something I actually expressed in the past about this very contest. It seems like most people here disagree, including the head honcho. But I felt like reiterating that.

I handled this poorly. I should have just kept my mouth shut and stopped submitting guides (which I'll do anyways). It's just my opinion that any time staff and players cross streams, to use the Ghostbusters parlance, people are going to get angry and feel slighted. I just think it's a bad idea. It's all the more ironic that I said this last month, and today it's me in this position.