Five on Friday Answers

MariahMariah Posts: 3,540Moderator
edited July 30 in Dev Feed
Every week, the team will review questions submitted in the Five on Friday Questions section of UO Discord and select a handful to answer publicly.
Each week those answers will be shared with the forum users here 
Five on Friday - July 25th, 2025

Topics this week include:

•  Luck and loot generation
• Rifted Crown drop rates
•  Hidden Easter eggs
• Test Center pet enhancements
•  Ninjitsu’s Death Strike mechanic

Hidden Chest Luck & Loot Generation
Question
PotatoLC: I would like to know when I need to put my luck ring on to get the benefit for the Riftborn purple chests in Mistas. Exactly when is the loot generated and luck checked? Is it when it is passively detected, revealed, picked, untrapped, or opened?
Thanks!

Answer
Parallax: Luck plays a determining factor when you actively reveal the chest, specifically when you use the Detect Hidden skill and the chest is successfully revealed.

Rifted Crown Drop Rates & Hues
Question
Tamer: Could you please clarify the drop rate chances for the rewards from the Rifted Crown champion encounter? Specifically, what are the chances of receiving a Void Obelisk, and once one drops, how is the hue determined? Are all hues equally likely, or are some rarer than others?

Answer
Parallax: The Void Obelisk is intended to be the rarest reward from the Rifted Crown Champion encounter, so you won’t see it drop very often. When one does drop, the hue is chosen from a weighted list, ranging from common to very rare. The void-colored hue (2071), in particular, is the rarest of them all.

Hidden Easter Eggs
Question
Sablestorm: Have there been any easter eggs in UO that the Dev Team secretly implemented, but haven't yet been found by the players?

Answer:
Kyronix: Yes – there are. I know of at least one that hasn't been discovered, and Parallax has certainly kept up the tradition of adding them. No – we're not going to give any hints. 

Test Center Pet Enhancements
Question
Imperior: Can we expand the pet testing capabilities on test center?
We can currently instabond pets and fast track training progress but lack similar gates or tools for applying power scrolls and setting skills to max without actually spending the hours or days to train them. Thoughts on expanding to allow for better testing and understanding with new and old pets alike? Especially as NL brings new pets to PROD.

Answer
Kyronix: Yes, expanding pet testing capability is something we can enhance for TC1. If you PM us a wishlist, we can see about adding it in Publish 122.

Death Strike Mechanics
Question
andre_uo: Ninjitsu Death Strike. Does this skill work the way the description says it does?

Answer
Bleak: The in-game description is a simplified version of how Death Strike actually works. The ability triggers after either five steps or three seconds, whichever comes first. If the target hasn’t moved, you can refresh the strike to add additional damage.

Damage is based primarily on your Ninjitsu skill and is capped at 60 for movement-based triggers and 30 for time-based triggers. Your average Hiding and Stealth skills modify the damage, scaling it between 30% and 100%, and using a ranged weapon applies a 50% damage reduction. Against other players, the strike is capped at 50 direct damage.

There’s also a tracking bonus—up to 20 extra damage if you’re actively tracking the target.

Comments

  • MariahMariah Posts: 3,540Moderator
    Five on Friday - August 8th, 2025
    Welcome to this week’s Five on Friday, where the Ultima Online development team answers select player-submitted questions from the community. Topics this week include:
    • Dispelling Food Buff Myths 
    • Focused Mage Viability 
    • New Legacy Seasons 
    • Server Line Removal
    • Party Loot Myths 

    Have a question of your own? Submit it in the ⁠five-on-friday-questions channel — but please make sure to read the pinned guidelines before posting. Thoughtful questions help us provide more useful answers for everyone!

    Food Buff Myth
    Question 
    Does eating food do anything? There is a persistent rumor that eating ordinary food affects various commonplace skill based checks in game. Can you confirm whether or not that's true, and if so, what sorts of activities does it affect? 
    Answer Parallax: This has been a long-standing UO urban legend! Eating food will restore stamina based on how full the food makes you, but other than that the only other thing food affects is your character's ability to eat more food! We've often talked about making your food level more relevant to character stats. Never know what might happen.

    PvP Focused Mage Viability
    Question 
    Focused mages need to be look at reverting. Any chance this could be on the table for the PvP love? Focused mages are too squishy in PvP and the Spell Damage Increase cap doesn't offer enough incentive to drop parry. Back in the day (pre-2015), you could play a pure mage with a 30% SDI cap (40% with GM Inscription) and hit hard, but after Publish 71, they slashed it to 25% (35% total). Then, Publish 97 made Parry break focus status if it’s over 30.0. So, you’re stuck choosing between a 5% extra SDI (25% vs. 20%) or Parry’s 35% block chance. Without Parry, you’re a sitting duck in group fights, it’s the reason everyone’s running Parry mages or hybrid dexer-mage builds to survive. 
    Answer Kyronix: A PvP publish is on our radar for 2026—this is the type of feedback we love to hear when scoping out what to address in that publish. We look forward to continued discussion on PvP topics and a more focused conversation as we move into the later part of this year.

    New Legacy Season Timing
    Question 
    New Legacy will be ending soon with the Shattering. When will it end and when will the new season start? 
     Answer: Parallax: Our next publish to New Legacy is slated for later this month. That will begin the event that will ultimately lead to the shattering. The process of transferring off will begin this fall, and the new season is slated for next year.

    Server Line Removal
    Question Are we going to delete server lines? They shouldn't exist in the game anymore.   
    Answer Bleak: This is baked into the fundamental architecture of the production shards and can't be changed.

    Party Loot Myths
    Question To party or not? Many people feel being in a party lowers their drop odds. As a bard who counts on buffing and healing this is bad. Can you dispel this myth? 
     Answer Parallax: Generally speaking, being in a party won't impact your drop rates on encounters that use the top-contributor drop mechanic, where damage taken, damage dealt, and damage healed are factored into the drop chance.

  • MariahMariah Posts: 3,540Moderator
    Five on Friday - August 22nd, 2025
    Welcome to this week’s Five on Friday, where the Ultima Online development team answers select player-submitted questions from the community.  
    Topics this week include: 
       
    • House Co-Owner Limits
    • New Legacy Antiquities 
    • Vendor Search Improvements
    • Necromancy Spells
    • Auction Safe Container Restrictions 

    Have a question of your own? Submit it in the ⁠five-on-friday-questions channel — but please make sure to read the pinned guidelines before posting. Thoughtful questions help us provide more useful answers for everyone!

    House Co-Owner Limits
    Question A while back, a change was made whereby the co-owner status applied to all characters on the account and not just the one officially on the list. While this has been great, the number of co-owners you are allowed to have is still inadequate for many. Is there any possibility of increasing the number of co-owners allowed on a house? 
    Answer Kyronix: There is likely some wiggle room for us to bump up the number of allowable co-owners. However, we would need to fully examine this change, considering housing is involved, we tend to be extra careful!

    New Legacy Antiquities
    Question What colors do the antiquities come in on New Legacy? Are there any fun things about the antiquities we don't know yet?
     Answer Parallax: Antiquities come in 22 common hues and 1 rare hue, making for a total of 23 possible colors to collect! As for fun things with antiquities; when I was originally implementing the system, I toyed with the idea that you could “rent” the display area of the Vesper Museum with a "generous donation" of gold, and have your own personal collection displayed for 24 hours. In this version, all antiquities on display would be ones your House discovered. This didn’t make it into Season 1, but it's something we could look at adding in Season 2 if there’s enough interest!

    Vendor Search Improvements
    Question After the new Classic client update, could we sick Bleak on vendor search to make it faster and more reliable, and add some QOL buttons to the gump? IE: Powerscrolls, Alacrity, Transcendence, Recipes? 
    Answer: Bleak: We already have some performance upgrades in the works for vendor search, including hardware improvements. Once those are in place, we’ll look at adding quality-of-life options to the vendor search interface, such as quick buttons for Powerscrolls, Alacrity, Transcendence, and Recipes.

    Necromancy Spells
    Question Why can we attempt Necromancy spells such as Strangle even though we are below the minimum skill? Also, Evil Omen doesn’t seem to do anything despite its description.
    Answer Parallax: Evil Omen increases the potency of the next attack the target receives. It either applies a 25% boost to the next source of damage, or a 50% reduction to the effectiveness of the Resisting Spells skill if the attack is a non-damaging debuff. 

    Importantly, the effect isn't limited to just the caster’s follow-up attack; it applies to the next attack from anyone, which can sometimes make it seem like it didn’t work. For example, if you cast Evil Omen intending to follow with Flamestrike, but another player attacks the target first, their attack will benefit from Evil Omen and consume the effect before your spell hits.

    Auction Safe Container Restrictions
    Question 
    What is the theory behind not allowing containers to be sold on auction safes? As title reads, can you help us understand why containers cannot be sold on auction safes? Is this due to in-game coding mechanics? Is there another balance or game concerning issue the developers have considered here? 
    Answer Bleak: This was a design decision made when the system was first implemented. The main concern was how certain containers function in the game and the potential conflicts that could arise from combining them with the auction safe system. I also remember the team jokingly referring to the idea as "Storage Wars" at the time.


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