Seventh skill for a lumberjack

Hi folks,

My first char is almost done and pulling in gold to support the rest and I'm working on resurrecting my lumberjack from OSI.

The problem I have is picking a seventh skill to round out the build.

So far I've got these training:

Lumberjacking
Swordsmanship
Tactics
Anatomy
Healing
Resist Spells

My only hard rule for the last skill is no magery! Every other character I make will have it and I want to have this guy running as a pure warrior.

Archery is one option I'm considering to allow me to back off and heal whilst still doing damage.

Lockpicking is another that looks attractive as I'm already finding chests on my first char that magery can't open so having this function lets me get more loot.

I'm also wondering if parry or poison would be good as a seventh. They stop me benefitting from lumber but give different ways to fight. However I don't know if there are any mobs that will fall to a parry or poison swordsman that a lumberjack would struggle with.

Finally hiding. Since I can't recall at a moment's notice hiding seems like it would increase survivability.

I'd appreciate any insight you folks have, I'm looking for interesting ways to play without magery so any other skill suggestion would be welcome.

Thanks for reading.

I assume you will use this char mostly for PvM and not PvP?

First thing I would have suggested would be magery. I had a pure dexxer withouth magery and it was annoying as hell not being able to get around quickly. Especially as this was my first char. But I can accept that you like to play a pure warrior (perhaps think about getting at least 30 magery so that you can use recall scrolls without fizzling).

If your focus is on money making I would absolutely suggest:

- Mining

Sword/Lumber is a pretty effective template for a battle miner! And from what I read on this forum there is a quite a lot of money in battle mining! (Just search "battle miner" on this forum)

If you don't want to go down this road, archery seems to be a nice choice (although archery is not doing much damage on this shard). However I prefer hiding! I use it all the time! But of course hiding won't benefit you in terms of money making. It's more of a nice-to-have-skill.

Parry would be a good choice too, although - in my eyes - its better on a macer.

Hiding would be nice for quick escapes (as you said).

Mining would be good to make money (as @Kalvasflam said).

If you're going with no magery, you may want to log out quick and not be able to get back to town fast, so you might think about Camping, which would allow you to make a camp in the wilderness and log out.

I think that Archery would be a waste if you want a useful skill. As @Kalvasflam said, there's little damage from archers. If you're looking for another combat skill, you might think about Wrestling, so you'll at least be able to defend yourself if your axe breaks.

Hey there, only started a few days ago as well and my first character looks somewhat the same:

Lumberjacking
Swordsmanship
Tactics
Anatomy
Healing

But then i went with

musicianship
Provocation

This makes farming a whole lot easier in my opinion, and since you wont be tanking as much, you wont need resist spells as well.

If you insist on resist spells, personally i would go with parry, this way you are a proper tank and take very little damage and can stay in the fight very well.

It might be worth it to just go 50 lumberjacking for some damage bonus and go 50 hiding, as you said, to mitigate some of the downsides of no magery. (personally i went 50 lumberjacking and 50 magery)

Cheers and good luck!

In my opinion:

1.- Mining. Open up a new playstyle and make money at it!
2.- Hiding. Convenient.
.
.
.
3.- Lockpicking or Camping. Merely novelty skills, which although might prove conveninet in specific moments, will likely end up being much less fun/useful that the previous two.

Your weapon are axes. All axes are 2 handed. Can't hold a shield while you carry an axe. Parry is thus useless for this template.

Even if archery is a bit slower, it is very useful. Why be in such a hurry, specially if you fight somone with no mana left or a melee monster. Back of 2 tiles and be safe, heal and see him slowly die in agany while you ride around him in eights...

I have a char exactly like yours and my 7th skill is mining, no magery. I save Gorgoyle showels for him but he will not get them until Xmas. I have Archery on other chars. Maybe it is so that archery is best done from a boat really, not on a template like yours.

A wealth of info straight through. Thanks all, that's got me thinking some more.

At this stage it's a tie between mining, hiding and archery.

PvM would be the main thing. Being in the UK I don't think my ping is good enough to do PvP here. I'd love to join in but did find lumberjack Vs mage to be a bad matchup on OSI.

If I were to go mining then would resist be pointless? I'd like this char to be able to do as much content as possible and wonder if the loss of resist would take me away from fights I might win with it.

Resist would only be pointless if you decide to battle mine 100 % of the time. The golems don't cast therefore you wouldn't need any resist. If you plan to farm other (casting) mobs, resist will be very helpful.

Do you have a specific primary activity in mid with the character?

If you dungeon crawl solo with magery at zero, you're just running your very own PK telethon charity event. If you are aware of this... further specificity as to your overall plans with the character will help narrow the very wide scope of advice you've been given thus far.

The plan for this character is to be a pure warrior with a big axe. The goals I have for him are really just to have a character without magery who will try and explore as much of the world as possible and fight as many creature's as I can. Fun and nostalgia are what have driven his creation.

It's not a tight brief as his existence is to let me have my very first UO character alive and kicking on UO:R.

Fun and a life without magery is what I want from this guy. I've a peace dexxer now, a crafter in the works, a Provo or discord tamer will be next along with some sort of fisherman to round out my first account. They will all do better than this guy.

He will be eaten by PKs and have to traipse around the world or interact with others to get gated. He will have to watch his weight and come up with clever ways to get out of bad scrapes.

I think I've narrowed my choices to archery and hiding. Mining is a fantastic suggestion but I'll use another account for a battle miner. Hiding is looking best due to giving a potential way out of sticky situations although archery makes the guy a multi disciplined warrior and the RPer in me likes the thought of that.

Yeah, considering what you aim this char to be, drop mining and go for a fun skill like hiding!

I endorse dropping resist and picking up music and provo. That's my lj template and he's a beast.

@Rickenbacker I share you sentiments about a pure warrior w/o magery. Feels medieval to slay a foul beast with just steel. I have a char with your exact setup for the first 6 skills. The seventh skill I choose after serious thought was parry.

Here's why...
1. I can solo bigger game, especially game with fire breath. I run in with a heavy hitting axe to get fire breath damage down stepping back to heal up then toe to toe with a good shield and sword. This technique on OSI allowed me to solo dex an Ancient Wyrm. Someday I will take one down here.

2. Opens up weapon selection to axes and one-handed swords.

3. Killing packs of low end mobs in attempt to summon a mini-boss. For instance, I can parry a dozen Harpies without running around and then axe the head off of Gamayun when she pokes her head up.

^ this

Since you don't want Magery, I'd say go with Parrying or Archery. Parrying and using a broadsword or katana and shield would make you really resilient vs. monsters and the axes do great damage and concussive blows which is useful against magic creatures.

With Archery you could dice things up with your axe and nail them in the back with a bow for the kill shot without needing to chase things around.

You did mention a fisherman. I reommendate 3 fishermen, 1 on each account allow, then fishing gets less tidious.

Thanks everyone for the brilliant advice. Think I'll give parry a whirl to start and see how it plays out.

@Rickenbacker great profile picture! Love that game so much!

My top 3 favorite game of all times (right behind UO and U7).