What am I doing now? lol As far as trading goes, I've never had a bad experience as buyer or seller here. I generally let the buyer pick the bank, because anything I sell will stay in the bank until the transfer, and it helps to reveal before you make a transaction then immediately bank anything. I don't worry about established names here, but I'm a little more guarded when it comes to obvious alt accounts with no picture and joined that week and nearly zero posts haha. Most here value their reputation and know that if they purposely screwed someone over they'd be blackballed and ostracized by the rest of the community. The mechanics will usually protect you anyway, trade window and all that stuff. Just immediately bank what you purchase, have your backpack open and at the ready for when that item comes in and bank it.
Well... Tips and tricks. A cool one is /whois username. type that on irc and it'll give you some kind of modified IP address. You can use this to spot people using multiple IRC accounts who talk to themselves to push a narrative or shitpost. I've caught someone doing that before and it pretty much adds them to the untrusty list. OR, you can use it to store the IP address of people that are enemies/untrustworthy so you know to check their usernames IP address. Alot of people have registered nicknames on IRC too, I don't know how to check that though. There is a work around if your tech savy with fake IP addresses, but im sure not that many people use it. When I first joined Lightshade used that on me and we started talking about where i live, which he has been too before. When you have conversations about real life that adds to the legitimacy.. My guild TnT uses Discord which is a text and voice program that helps us communicate. When you hear someones voice then its harder for them to screw you over. For example, If you know their voice they can't join on a fake account and pretend to be someone else if you know what they're voice sounds like. The other thing too is don't trust anyone in this game with anything your not willing to lose. For example, Sir Billy gave Fuji Flu a house under the premise he was joining the guild and would keep the house there to use. When Fuji Flu uprooted it, he gained a 60k house deed which TnT doesn't really care about. its 60k. its nothing. But it was an immediate test of whether or not we could trust him champing, running taming quest etc. IF he had stuck in the guild he would have made alot more just farming with us... Hell I just won a 2million mask of the wilds from TNT on a dice roll last weekend. We popped three of them after running two taming quest back to back. With the way I have my house set up, where i afk my chars and the valuables I keep inside it, I have no one friended to my house. If I lost the stuff in my house I would be genuinely upset. So I don't trust anyone to be friended to my house, no matter how well i know them. TLDR- Yes you should trust people, but no, don't trust anyone with things your not willing to lose.
I actually use a vualt house no one gets access to and then a main house I friend friends to. That way you can keep your valuables safe and still maintain friendships.
Sound policy. Playing UO with this frame of mind will open up a lot of opportunty to meet people whom you may have otherwise never met. Huzzah!
Trust... such a fragile thing. It can take weeks to form a bond, even the use of peculiar meat can be necessary. Then in an instant.. it's lost.
