How about you just fix the traps instead? Make them more dangerous and have it deal damage to someone regardless of range which would still hit the telekensis character. There was a shard I played where their traps were vicious. One would spam lightning down on you like 20+ times for well over 300 total damage and you needed someone there to heal you to survive it. Another one was poisonous darts that shot constantly and did similar damage to previous one. Of course these had different damage amounts per level and were easier to survive on lower levels but the high levels required help to live through. @Kyronix
Couple of questions I've posed elsewhere and am curious to see your (and anyone's) response...
What is the skill breakdown of your Treasure Hunter before, during, and after the entire Treasure Chest encounter?
Do you participate in Treasure Chest Encounters as a solo activity or in a group?
What items are you most after when it comes to Treasure Chest loot?
Were you to train Remove Trap, regardless of context, what do you feel the training time should feel close to - Cartography? Alchemy? Animal Taming (eep!)
Thanks for the replies!
I'll preface by saying I used a tamer/treasure hunter on Atlantic for years before moving to Cats. And when I moved shards, I made a new one who was a mystic/mage for a long time.
Recently I changed her to my old tamer template, with a few tweaks to accommodate that I'm still training up taming and training new pets.
Taming, lore, vet, mining, magery, eval and swapping carto/lockpicking so allow for the eval to help pets in training. When the pet is sufficiently trained and her skill is enough to control it, I can drop off eval and stop swapping.
Generally I solo, but I sometimes take a guildmate or two if they're bored, or a group of guildmates if it's required as part of an RP storyline.
SoTs, alacrities, skeleton keys, mana phasing orbs, maps, forged pardons (sort of, less now than before since the market nose dived), I appreciate the reagents for my scribe and alchemist, and a couple of the recipes.
Definitely not taming level training. I feel cartography or alchemy is a good baseline for training time. Though with some preparation, alacrities and some other tricks, it wouldn't be too hard to train.
If I am forced to use Remove Trap to Treasure Hunt, I'm done with TMaps. For a lone player, as so many of us are these days, some Level 6 TMaps are right on the brink of being too hard to be fun now and with a change such as needing Remove Trap and losing some other skill, that'd do it for me.
120 Magery 120 Eval 120 Med 100 Carto 100 P:icking 100 Mining balance goes into resist
Since AWs dispel on sight, anything over a 5 has an archer acct in attendance as well.
5 and below are solo.
Usually look for an occasional legendary, essences, regs, .gems. Cant give runed sashes away I guess VvV killed the pardons, a month after it came out with its own pardon, sales bottomed out and never came back. SDame with Tasty treats, the timing of sales decline would seem to indicate the pet training did away with the need for them. No idea what happened with the orbs, used to sell, now...bleh
Please dont make remove trap anything like training taming lol.
Would love to see Idoc stuff in a chest, more and different regs, more gems (all kinds, even the specials). Add PS to fel chests, and put pinks in trammel ruleset chests along with blues. Always nice to get a higher level, or same level map out of a chest.
As a side note, seems to me that Tok and Malas chests quality of loot isn't on par with the old world. I'm not talking legendary, per se, seems they lack a lot in the major magics and lesser artis as well. Might just be my luck tho.
In chests, champs, and trade riuns, code the useless stuff (taste ID, item ID, camping, blah blah blah) to quit spawning. Please
I know this turned into a thread mostly about tmaps, which I do not do, but lets not overlook MIBS and fishing in general.
Since you are talking about bring back real skill to the mix, how about some sort of bonus to a Legendary Fisher? Besides getting a rare fish to mount at your home, which has no worth to anyone but the person who caught it, and the title on your char, there is no reward to attaining that goal.
Getting a 120 from the fishmonger quests is insanely difficult and time consuming
Lets show some legendary fisher love! How about a bump, and a decent one at that, in getting an Ancient SOS when fishing them up via serpents or throwing in green nets and anchors, and in a chest you pull up from a regular MIB.
Also, when you reach 120 fishing you should never ever fish up plain footwear nor get an unnamed crab/lobster. For the crab/lobsters use a sliding scale from 100 to 120 skill so that even at GM fishing you see a lot less of the no names.
My treasure hunter is only 5-6 months old. I sacrificed a mule to split my thief off. So he is still a work in progress but I don't think I'll be changing him much until you change things. I do take him out at least once a week.
still working on (not all that hard) Archery 96 Tactics 96
toying with but haven't decided if I'll keep Chivalry 63 Bushido 57
The only change I make during the hunt is mining gloves (+5) and jacob's pickaxe +10 for the actual mining. Gives me 100 mining as I usually just eyeball the maps in EC.
I solo up to level 5 maps and the odd 6. For most level 6 and all 7s the wife brings her tamer along as well as anyone else who is around.
What loot items I'm after? Well at one time or another just about everything so I can't say I'd like anything dropped. Though I would like to see the number of different types of items go down. A possible 100 different items to check is way to many. If pushed I'd have to say my favourites are legendary, scrolls, recipes and of course the gold. I really like the idea of this level map for this type of loot.
As for how hard it should be to train Remove Trap that depends on what rewards you decide on. If it's just a couple of more items of the same "power" as the rest of the chest, Cartography. If it gives access to more powerful or special item then like taming.
For new loot items how about a bomb removal suit? I'm thinking of something similar to a "Sorcerer's" set but aimed at opening Treasure chests and only that. A full set giving + 40 or 50 to Remove Traps and high resits for those opps moments. The pieces only available in chests as an uncommon if not rare item.
Couple of questions I've posed elsewhere and am curious to see your (and anyone's) response...
What is the skill breakdown of your Treasure Hunter before, during, and after the entire Treasure Chest encounter?
Do you participate in Treasure Chest Encounters as a solo activity or in a group?
What items are you most after when it comes to Treasure Chest loot?
Were you to train Remove Trap, regardless of context, what do you feel the training time should feel close to - Cartography? Alchemy? Animal Taming (eep!)
Thanks for the replies!
You already know and commented about my template. Thanks by the way.
Remove Trap was the grindiest skill to train my thief on. I gave up after 72 points and used scrolls of transcendence to reach 100. If I had to add Remove Trap to another character I would skip the training and use a Mythic Character token and some scrolls to get to GM Remove Trap.
To make Remove Trap training easier how about having NPCs sell automatically self trapping training boxes for each skill level and thus remove the need to have carpentry and tinker skills to build, trap, and retrap the box. You can put a charge on the training box so that the player needs to buy new ones after say 100 attempts. On failure some non-lethal damage is done.
My Treasure hunter template is as follows: Cartography- 100 Focus- 20 Mining- 75 Magery- 90 real+25 jewels 115 Meditation- 30 real+15 jewels 45 Lockpicking- 100 Animal Taming- 120 Animal Lore- 120 Vet- 85 real+15 jewels 100 ------- Total skill 795 While wearing a 2,000 +/- luck suit
Note: I have an "extra" +10 Magery skill I can "move around".
I can solo (1 character) all of the maps 1-7 except Ilsh. My pets won't attack some of the stuff, and I am too lazy to use the "all guard me", attack, and invis method of doing so.
If you sell UO items for R.L. $$$, you need to quit playing UO , and get a BETTER R.L. JOB!
Couple of questions I've posed elsewhere and am curious to see your (and anyone's) response...
What is the skill breakdown of your Treasure Hunter before, during, and after the entire Treasure Chest encounter?
Do you participate in Treasure Chest Encounters as a solo activity or in a group?
What items are you most after when it comes to Treasure Chest loot?
Were you to train Remove Trap, regardless of context, what do you feel the training time should feel close to - Cartography? Alchemy? Animal Taming (eep!)
This one used to have GM Provocation back when that was a powerful skill. When the Great Bard Nerf hit around AoS, I gave up UO completely for 9 years because I couldn't treasure hunt. THB on Lake Superior, once 75 members strong, now consists almost entirely of me. The biggest problem was that I had neither the bard abilities nor the mana to dispatch an ancient wyrm. Treasure Hunting was no longer possible, so I left. Hence my concern the introduction of Remove Trap will again eliminate me from my favorite treasure hunting.
I retooled 2 years ago and came back. I don't soulstone, my skills constant throughout the hunt. I almost entirely solo treasure hunts because at 6:00am when I play for 20 minutes, groups are not possible so I can't do roof encounter or any major dungeon. Once I used to t-hunt for hire, but that was 11 years ago.
I'm not actually after anything in particular in the chest anymore. Forged pardons were already losing their luster when I came back. I look for any legendaries that maybe will sell on my vendor, and take the rest home to unravel for fragments. I completely clean loot the chest, I like fighting the MOBs. I wish there was something in the chest worth keeping, but 99% gets unraveled or tossed for points. I still like treasure hunting.
Training Remove Trap sounds daunting. I'm much older now, approaching 60, and don't feel like a grind like when I did lockpicking or cartography. Alchemy wasn't too bad to train. But I don't know where I'd put it. Probably I'd give up Spellweaving I suppose, except that Gift of Life is so darned handy if you die on a remote island. Can't give up Mysticism (or the related Focus) since it's now the RC that does the killing. I happily solo L7's with this.
Again, no swapping of skills. Since I completely loot chests, I ended up marking the location and recalling back and forth to drop off the loot, but that's not possible in Ilshenar. When the Taming changes came last year, I was able to train a beetle to a 5-slot and loot the chest into the beetle. This one isn't as proficient as the Spellweaver, but he's used almost exclusively in Ilshenar. L6 and L7's are a challenge since the beetle can only handle 1 MOB at a time, but I can still solo until that renegade changeling eats my lunch. If I had to pick up Remove Trap... I suppose I'd drop vet maybe, and bring in a 2nd account to res my beetle. Or maybe not t-hunt at all with this character anymore. Or maybe finally resort to using soulstones which I detest using in the middle of a treasure hunt. Feel like cheating.
I'm all in favor of making Remove Trap viable, just not on treasure chests. The trapped chest isn't even the interesting part of treasure hunting. I like timing the initial spawn, chasing the grubber, dry looting the chest, defeating the spawn. I don't even think the chest needs to be trapped, I'd still enjoy treasure hunting. I like the suggestion of making a Remove Trap kit with the skill as long as it isn't too time-consuming, something I can bring with me and remove the trap.
What is the skill breakdown of your Treasure Hunter before, during, and after the entire Treasure Chest encounter?
Do you participate in Treasure Chest Encounters as a solo activity or in a group?
What items are you most after when it comes to Treasure Chest loot?
Were you to train Remove Trap, regardless of context, what do you feel the training time should feel close to - Cartography? Alchemy? Animal Taming (eep!)
Thanks for the replies!
I haven't done treasure maps in quite a while because the loot wasn't worth my time. But I had: 110 Mysticism, Focus, Magery + GM Cartography, Lockpick, Mining + 90 Med. I only had mining because I use CC and am terrible at finding the exact location even using Davie's Locker. I kept that template all throughout the hunt. I was going to become a tamer instead of mystic after the taming update, but again why do it if the loot isn't worth it?
I did this solo mostly but we did group hunts for the frost drakes. Again, the loot in the chest isn't worth a group hunt.
I was doing it for items that can't be acquired any other way; mana phasing orbs and scrolls of alacrity. With the low drop rate and the wide variety of each drop, 18 different orbs and 58 different scrolls, it was a grind that I gave up on. I'm not saying it should be quick/easy drops. But it is discouraging.
Training remove trap should be quick. It can't really be trained in the field in an exciting way like eval int, anatomy, or tactics. Maybe it should raise with the speed of hiding or detect hidden. Both of those are similar skills that require more of a repetitive use to be useful. It isn't and I don't think will be an overpowered skill. So ideally, it will be a quick-ish skill to train.
Were you to train Remove Trap, regardless of context, what do you feel the training time should feel close to - Cartography? Alchemy? Animal Taming (eep!)
Thanks for the replies!
If it were a requirement for maps and the loot was bumped to Shadowguard quality, I would expect it to become extremely difficult.
As stands now, it should take no longer than focus.
Cartography is not required beyond initial decoding. Mining is not required due to advances in UI/Davie's Locker. Remove Trap is not required because of Telekenesis. Lockpicking (in some instances) isn't required.
What we are left with then? Where's the actual "Treasure Hunter" profession in this scenario? What distinguishes this particular template from one you can use to fight any other encounter in the game world?
Couple of questions I've posed elsewhere and am curious to see your (and anyone's) response...
What is the skill breakdown of your Treasure Hunter before, during, and after the entire Treasure Chest encounter?
Do you participate in Treasure Chest Encounters as a solo activity or in a group?
What items are you most after when it comes to Treasure Chest loot?
Were you to train Remove Trap, regardless of context, what do you feel the training time should feel close to - Cartography? Alchemy? Animal Taming (eep!)
120 Taming * 120 Lore 120 Vet 120 Magery 120 Eval 20 Hiding (elf character and I like to be able to get a hide off now and then) 100 Swapped between Cartography and Lockpicking
*At one point I did have mystic/focus in place of taming, but with the pet revamp having taming made more sense.
My maps are stored in a locker and I use Cartography to open them and put the coordinates into a spreadsheet. Then I stone Cartography and put on lockpicking for digging up the maps.
With this set up I can solo all the current level maps through use of a well trained pet and good slayer spell books. When I am in a hurry I put a second account on my second monitor and bring a 4x legendary bard to discord and provoke while running the bard mastery songs.
I have built my setup this way because getting other people to come along for the current map content is not much fun for anyone else. The monsters are not really challenging and the loot isn't up to par.
Now... you say what kind of "treasure hunter" is that? Its basically a mage/tamer who moves a couple other skills around. I say... EXACTLY! My treasure hunter isn't a lumberjack or a miner, he isn't a tailor or a cook, he is a monster bashing, guardian defeating, luck suit wearing adventurer who likes to dig up buried treasure and kill whatever was guarding it. I'm not in it for the 3 clicks it takes to use the cartography skill to decode a map. I'm not in it for the 2 times it takes to click to unlock the map with my skeleton key. I am in it for the fight and the treasure. Requiring more skills and more steps just to get to the fighting and treasure is just like one more step to actually fire a cannon or one more step to harvest a seed. Realistically, requiring more skills on my template just means more trips back and forth to a soulstone. This isn't fun. I'm not the only one either.
We have had so many examples of these types of things in UO development history. Some get fixed down the road, some don't. We have repair deeds now so that its easier to repair armor without the need for a craftsman to be present. We are re-doing the cannon firing process. We have garden beds to take care of growing plants. See the pattern in those things? Extra steps just for the sake of extra steps often ends up with just frustration and players asking for something to be simplified.
What I want from a T-map revamp is pretty simple:
1. A reliable way to get the level of map I want to hunt on the facet I want to hunt it. As others have said, the Miasma grind is SO boring, but its really the only good, reliable place to collect level 6 maps.
2. A loot table that properly matches the difficulty of the map, with a rare chance for something unique and valuable in today's UO economy.
3. At least 1 level of map that a group of UO players would find challenging and have a chance for desirable loot for everyone. Dividing up loot manually through dice rolling, etc. is rather a pain. Instanced loot is so very much easier. I realize this might not be doable for the chest itself, which is why I would really like to see some kind of drops from the guardians themselves.
- Ideally I would like to see 2 levels of high end maps... the first would be very difficult for a seasoned veteran like myself to be able to complete solo, but might be a challenge for a group of newer players. (don't laugh, they do exist I'm told) Comparable to what a level 7 maps is now. I would like for this level of map to have some of the "treasure" (including special items like mana orbs) to drop on the instanced corpses of the guardians. The second, and higher level, map I think should be comparable to the roof. A fairly difficult map to get, but would spawn guardians from the peerless level mobs... and at least 6 of them to start. This would be very, very difficult for a single player with a single account to complete, but would be a great group level activity. Let the peerless level guardians have the same chance to drop their normal special drops (i.e. if a Navrey spawns, it might drop a tangle, if a Lady M spawns she might have a hair dye or crimmy). This would make the treasure hunt not only a lot of fun, but people would actually want to come fight (and die) for a chance at the drops.
@Kyronix so would Cart 100 / Lockpick 100 / Remove Trap 100 be what you would consider a start to a Treasure Hunter, that is only 300 skill points so far. What would be the draw back if you left off one of these skills.
Should Cart be required to stay on the toon while you goto the spot and dig up the chest Lockpick probably be required Remove trap could be tied to the spawn kind of like an alarm system and if you remove the trap/traps then less/no spawn or if you set it off then norm/more spawn depending on the level of the alarm system installed type of idea.
Also what would be the possibility of allowing T-Hunters to take the chest with them after unlocking and disarming it and killing all spawn.
Were you to train Remove Trap, regardless of context, what do you feel the training time should feel close to - Cartography? Alchemy? Animal Taming (eep!) --- I've trained half a dozen thunters. I can GM carto in 2 or 3 evenings buying, making and reselling maps to the NPC - it's one of the easiest skills to train. I can get lockpicking to 77.8 - enough to open L6 chests with skeleton keys - in 2 or 3 evenings breaking picks on paragon ettin, cyclops and titan or miasma chests. So I'd hope for a way to train remove trap in about 2 days, same as the others
Cart 100 Disco 120 Lockpick 100 Magery 120 Med 120 Music 120 Provo 120 Magery mastery 3, classic client, Davies Locker. Using these skills start to finish, no soulstones. I do any maps lvl 6/7 tram and fel. Sell or trash the others.
Love the idea of IDOC loot as treasure. Something different! No pirate in his right mind would bother hiding current treasure let alone wear most of it. I'm all for risk reward, but it needs to be a useful, long term reward. Old event items gets my +1 also.
One of the IDOC loot items could be tokens for IDOC'd soul stones that got trashed for the cleanup points. Prior ownership wiped out so they can be used again. if no soul stones got trashed then no tokens show up in the loot.
I solo Levels 1-6 regularly and the occasional 7 except Ilshenar and those nutso Renegade Changelings. 7's on the other facets are a tough encounter solo but offer a fun challenge for those days when I feel brave.
For maps below level 7, I think it is not a very interesting task for other folks to tag along. For the Level 6's and below, there's too much waiting for the THunter to find the chest, dig it up, unlock it, etc and then only the monsters to kill and deciding who gets to loot the chest. Not a great team effort needed and it's boring for most folks. Saying this, I really enjoy doing the 1-6 maps by myself as many of us THunters do, so please make this so we can continue to do those levels solo and save only the highest end levels for the groups to do.
Oh and please do not make us use the coordinates on the locker for finding the maps. This is one of the most fun parts for me, decoding and opening the map, comparing the game map to it and figuring out where it is, then recalling to the nearest spot I can find and then finding the exact location. You do need, however, to give the CC a decent map of the world, hint hint.
Cartography is not required beyond initial decoding. Mining is not required due to advances in UI/Davie's Locker. Remove Trap is not required because of Telekenesis. Lockpicking (in some instances) isn't required.
What we are left with then? Where's the actual "Treasure Hunter" profession in this scenario? What distinguishes this particular template from one you can use to fight any other encounter in the game world?
Have players expressed being unhappy with their current templates?
I have seen a lot discussion about loot, but little being unhappy not to carry say Lockpicking.
Go ahead, kill the T-Hunters for some highly cosmetical thoughts about dead skills. If I can't do them anymore without using a second account, I will put T-Hunting next to the Haven mines, Despise or everything Eodon except for Shadowguard.
Maybe I'm just playing this game wrong.
Just a troll who got told by lesser trolls (moderator classification)
Dead skills should either be removed or reworked in their own right, not foisted onto over-crowded templates that people worked hard on for years to fine tune them to their needs and play-style. Nobody asked for t-hunting to be revamped, but lots of people asked for the loot to be looked at. UO in the last few years has seen the number of really viable templates shrink considerably, we used to have so much diversity and now only a few templates really work. I used to enjoy playing all my characters, now I play mostly a mystic/SW/mage, my t-hunter or a Fisher for MIBs, my paladin hasn't been hunting in years, I dropped taming when the pet revamp looked too complicated and I just don't have time to work on my bard. Please don't make t-hunting go the same way as all those other templates that ended with Sampire or find a group.
What is the skill breakdown of your Treasure Hunter before, during, and after the entire Treasure Chest encounter?
Do you participate in Treasure Chest Encounters as a solo activity or in a group?
What items are you most after when it comes to Treasure Chest loot?
Were you to train Remove Trap, regardless of context, what do you feel the training time should feel close to - Cartography? Alchemy? Animal Taming (eep!)
Thanks for the replies!
My treasure hunter is always a treasure hunter, before during and after. I can, and have, done all levels solo with the exception of Ilshenar level 7s - my problem there is renegade changelings when they spawn as paragons (but then no one else wants to do those either ) I have also done them with others, but they tend to find standing around waiting for spawn a little boring after the initial guardians are dispatched.
I especially like the 'special' items, though I'm not enamoured of surge shields or sashes of warding. Mostly I like SoAs, SoTs, Mana phasing orbs, skeleton keys, imbuing essences. As regards armour and weapons I'll take anything that will enhance the suit of one of my characters or that will unravel into relic fragments for similar purpose. I am not sufficiently competent at working out what is valuable to sell, so I don't do that.
Training - the only thing I hate about training any skill is the 'wait before you can do that again', especially if it's a long delay. I don't really see the purpose of that. I know where to find enough locked crates and barrels to train, but maybe you could lock and trap some of the boxes on other facets than tram & fel? in Royal City and Zento maybe?
My current template, including bonuses, is: Cartography - 100 Lockpick - 100 Mining - 100 (potentially RT) Magery - 100 (not scrolled, 15% from mage book) Mysticism - 120 Focus - 95 (10% Mystic's Memento) Also 40% LMC 28 MR on suit Spellweaving 115 (mastery vol 3)
Dead skills should either be removed or reworked in their own right, not foisted onto over-crowded templates that people worked hard on for years to fine tune them to their needs and play-style. Nobody asked for t-hunting to be revamped, but lots of people asked for the loot to be looked at.
Exactly this. I fear though the Devs have already decided to do "something".
Just a troll who got told by lesser trolls (moderator classification)
Please seriously consider 3 things... 1. Forced group play - the M of massively does not exist anymore... Your player base is if an older nature. The few I play with are almost 50 and don't play hours and hours on end. On Cats, the biggest group I see is on Wednesday sitting at the bank, next biggest group is a pk raid on a soloist doing a champion spawn, and finally some folks doing the rooftop(the win here was more than one drop and everyone had and equal chance). The Majority of t-hunters are solo players and I believe there are more soloist hunters than groups..The reason being is that it doesn't require a significant time preparation investment like gathering keys, completing rooms... And it scratches an itch of successfully completing something. So make a level 7 chest with all the great stuff that requires 3-4 people. Alot of excitement for 6 months.. interest wears off... and suddenly very little 7 maps being done... meanwhile all us soloists who have been doing chests for going on twenty years now, are locked out of some content... Which is ok I guess, but would just be disappointing, I know there will Granted there will be lower chests, but the highest should be challenging with a group ... Super difficult but at least doable as a soloist 2. Please do not get rid of the ability to hide at
Guardian spawn.. the guardian spawn and getting away is a challenge... if you miss your timing you are dead... just forcing a rez at the beginning, is just a dick move... No reason other than screwing with a character set for something other than taking punches from 3 wyrms. 3. Don't force remove trap on the chest... keep in mind telekinesis is a legitiment skill point requirement as a remove trap option... Just like remove trap... You have to have magery... It just folds well with recall and invis... Traps are not worthless, they all require skill points to undo... Magery is just more efficient in a tight template.. if you want to dust off old skills include a smaller takable chest that requires RT that you can take for working on later, or sell. Please consider these items when making the changes...
One of my favourite templates for a chilled evening.. RIP if it needs any other skill as hard requirement. (poor girl is not scrolled to 120 obviously)
Just a troll who got told by lesser trolls (moderator classification)
Maybe someone could make a poll to see how many people have a t-hunter and that's all the char does, I don't use mine for anything else and I thought that was the norm...I also don't do any switching of skills on a daily basis to enable my chars to do extra stuff. I use soul stones to store skills that might be of use in the future on another char, or ones I don't need any more that took a long time to train. I don't really like using them as I always have a concern that I will mess up and lose something.
@kryonix If you want to see a great high seas group event stop by this evening at the Catskills New Magencia docks for the weekly Wednesday whitenet Toss, 1930est.. quite a few participants... If in consideration for change, increasing the ancient scroll drop rate or increasing the scalis spawn from 25% would really help support this...
@ kryonix If you want to see a great high seas group event stop by this evening at the Catskills New Magencia docks for the weekly Wednesday whitenet Toss, 1930est.. quite a few participants... If in consideration for change, increasing the ancient scroll drop rate or increasing the scalis spawn from 25% would really help support this...
Comments
Recently I changed her to my old tamer template, with a few tweaks to accommodate that I'm still training up taming and training new pets.
Taming, lore, vet, mining, magery, eval and swapping carto/lockpicking so allow for the eval to help pets in training. When the pet is sufficiently trained and her skill is enough to control it, I can drop off eval and stop swapping.
Generally I solo, but I sometimes take a guildmate or two if they're bored, or a group of guildmates if it's required as part of an RP storyline.
SoTs, alacrities, skeleton keys, mana phasing orbs, maps, forged pardons (sort of, less now than before since the market nose dived), I appreciate the reagents for my scribe and alchemist, and a couple of the recipes.
Definitely not taming level training. I feel cartography or alchemy is a good baseline for training time. Though with some preparation, alacrities and some other tricks, it wouldn't be too hard to train.
120 Magery
120 Eval
120 Med
100 Carto
100 P:icking
100 Mining
balance goes into resist
Since AWs dispel on sight, anything over a 5 has an archer acct in attendance as well.
5 and below are solo.
Usually look for an occasional legendary, essences, regs, .gems.
Cant give runed sashes away
I guess VvV killed the pardons, a month after it came out with its own pardon, sales bottomed out and never came back.
SDame with Tasty treats, the timing of sales decline would seem to indicate the pet training did away with the need for them.
No idea what happened with the orbs, used to sell, now...bleh
Please dont make remove trap anything like training taming lol.
Would love to see Idoc stuff in a chest, more and different regs, more gems (all kinds, even the specials). Add PS to fel chests, and put pinks in trammel ruleset chests along with blues. Always nice to get a higher level, or same level map out of a chest.
As a side note, seems to me that Tok and Malas chests quality of loot isn't on par with the old world. I'm not talking legendary, per se, seems they lack a lot in the major magics and lesser artis as well. Might just be my luck tho.
In chests, champs, and trade riuns, code the useless stuff (taste ID, item ID, camping, blah blah blah) to quit spawning.
Please
Since you are talking about bring back real skill to the mix, how about some sort of bonus to a Legendary Fisher? Besides getting a rare fish to mount at your home, which has no worth to anyone but the person who caught it, and the title on your char, there is no reward to attaining that goal.
Getting a 120 from the fishmonger quests is insanely difficult and time consuming
Lets show some legendary fisher love! How about a bump, and a decent one at that, in getting an Ancient SOS when fishing them up via serpents or throwing in green nets and anchors, and in a chest you pull up from a regular MIB.
Also, when you reach 120 fishing you should never ever fish up plain footwear nor get an unnamed crab/lobster. For the crab/lobsters use a sliding scale from 100 to 120 skill so that even at GM fishing you see a lot less of the no names.
The first things that came to my head.
My treasure hunter is only 5-6 months old. I sacrificed a mule to split my thief off. So he is still a work in progress but I don't think I'll be changing him much until you change things. I do take him out at least once a week.
lock picking 100
cartography 100
mining 85
Magery 90
still working on (not all that hard)
Archery 96
Tactics 96
toying with but haven't decided if I'll keep
Chivalry 63
Bushido 57
The only change I make during the hunt is mining gloves (+5) and jacob's pickaxe +10 for the actual mining. Gives me 100 mining as I usually just eyeball the maps in EC.
I solo up to level 5 maps and the odd 6. For most level 6 and all 7s the wife brings her tamer along as well as anyone else who is around.
What loot items I'm after? Well at one time or another just about everything so I can't say I'd like anything dropped. Though I would like to see the number of different types of items go down. A possible 100 different items to check is way to many. If pushed I'd have to say my favourites are legendary, scrolls, recipes and of course the gold. I really like the idea of this level map for this type of loot.
As for how hard it should be to train Remove Trap that depends on what rewards you decide on. If it's just a couple of more items of the same "power" as the rest of the chest, Cartography. If it gives access to more powerful or special item then like taming.
For new loot items how about a bomb removal suit? I'm thinking of something similar to a "Sorcerer's" set but aimed at opening Treasure chests and only that. A full set giving + 40 or 50 to Remove Traps and high resits for those opps moments. The pieces only available in chests as an uncommon if not rare item.
You already know and commented about my template. Thanks by the way.
Remove Trap was the grindiest skill to train my thief on. I gave up after 72 points and used scrolls of transcendence to reach 100. If I had to add Remove Trap to another character I would skip the training and use a Mythic Character token and some scrolls to get to GM Remove Trap.
To make Remove Trap training easier how about having NPCs sell automatically self trapping training boxes for each skill level and thus remove the need to have carpentry and tinker skills to build, trap, and retrap the box. You can put a charge on the training box so that the player needs to buy new ones after say 100 attempts. On failure some non-lethal damage is done.
My Treasure hunter template is as follows:
Cartography- 100
Focus- 20
Mining- 75
Magery- 90 real+25 jewels 115
Meditation- 30 real+15 jewels 45
Lockpicking- 100
Animal Taming- 120
Animal Lore- 120
Vet- 85 real+15 jewels 100
-------
Total skill 795 While wearing a 2,000 +/- luck suit
Note: I have an "extra" +10 Magery skill I can "move around".
I can solo (1 character) all of the maps 1-7 except Ilsh. My pets won't attack some of the stuff, and I am too lazy to use the "all guard me", attack, and invis method of doing so.
Name: Sphyr
100 Cartography
120 Focus
100 Lockpicking
120 Magery
40 Meditation
120 Mysticism
120 Spellweaving
This one used to have GM Provocation back when that was a powerful skill. When the Great Bard Nerf hit around AoS, I gave up UO completely for 9 years because I couldn't treasure hunt. THB on Lake Superior, once 75 members strong, now consists almost entirely of me. The biggest problem was that I had neither the bard abilities nor the mana to dispatch an ancient wyrm. Treasure Hunting was no longer possible, so I left. Hence my concern the introduction of Remove Trap will again eliminate me from my favorite treasure hunting.
I retooled 2 years ago and came back. I don't soulstone, my skills constant throughout the hunt. I almost entirely solo treasure hunts because at 6:00am when I play for 20 minutes, groups are not possible so I can't do roof encounter or any major dungeon. Once I used to t-hunt for hire, but that was 11 years ago.
I'm not actually after anything in particular in the chest anymore. Forged pardons were already losing their luster when I came back. I look for any legendaries that maybe will sell on my vendor, and take the rest home to unravel for fragments. I completely clean loot the chest, I like fighting the MOBs. I wish there was something in the chest worth keeping, but 99% gets unraveled or tossed for points. I still like treasure hunting.
Training Remove Trap sounds daunting. I'm much older now, approaching 60, and don't feel like a grind like when I did lockpicking or cartography. Alchemy wasn't too bad to train. But I don't know where I'd put it. Probably I'd give up Spellweaving I suppose, except that Gift of Life is so darned handy if you die on a remote island. Can't give up Mysticism (or the related Focus) since it's now the RC that does the killing. I happily solo L7's with this.
I have another treasure hunter:
Name: Thraso
120 Animal Lore
120 Animal Taming
100 Cartography
100 Lockpicking
100 Magery
100 Meditation
80 Veterinary
Again, no swapping of skills. Since I completely loot chests, I ended up marking the location and recalling back and forth to drop off the loot, but that's not possible in Ilshenar. When the Taming changes came last year, I was able to train a beetle to a 5-slot and loot the chest into the beetle. This one isn't as proficient as the Spellweaver, but he's used almost exclusively in Ilshenar. L6 and L7's are a challenge since the beetle can only handle 1 MOB at a time, but I can still solo until that renegade changeling eats my lunch. If I had to pick up Remove Trap... I suppose I'd drop vet maybe, and bring in a 2nd account to res my beetle. Or maybe not t-hunt at all with this character anymore. Or maybe finally resort to using soulstones which I detest using in the middle of a treasure hunt. Feel like cheating.
I'm all in favor of making Remove Trap viable, just not on treasure chests. The trapped chest isn't even the interesting part of treasure hunting. I like timing the initial spawn, chasing the grubber, dry looting the chest, defeating the spawn. I don't even think the chest needs to be trapped, I'd still enjoy treasure hunting. I like the suggestion of making a Remove Trap kit with the skill as long as it isn't too time-consuming, something I can bring with me and remove the trap.
Sphyr
Treasure Hunters of Britannia
Lake Superior
If it were a requirement for maps and the loot was bumped to Shadowguard quality, I would expect it to become extremely difficult.
As stands now, it should take no longer than focus.
So here is mine:
120 Taming *
120 Lore
120 Vet
120 Magery
120 Eval
20 Hiding (elf character and I like to be able to get a hide off now and then)
100 Swapped between Cartography and Lockpicking
*At one point I did have mystic/focus in place of taming, but with the pet revamp having taming made more sense.
My maps are stored in a locker and I use Cartography to open them and put the coordinates into a spreadsheet. Then I stone Cartography and put on lockpicking for digging up the maps.
With this set up I can solo all the current level maps through use of a well trained pet and good slayer spell books. When I am in a hurry I put a second account on my second monitor and bring a 4x legendary bard to discord and provoke while running the bard mastery songs.
I have built my setup this way because getting other people to come along for the current map content is not much fun for anyone else. The monsters are not really challenging and the loot isn't up to par.
Now... you say what kind of "treasure hunter" is that? Its basically a mage/tamer who moves a couple other skills around. I say... EXACTLY! My treasure hunter isn't a lumberjack or a miner, he isn't a tailor or a cook, he is a monster bashing, guardian defeating, luck suit wearing adventurer who likes to dig up buried treasure and kill whatever was guarding it. I'm not in it for the 3 clicks it takes to use the cartography skill to decode a map. I'm not in it for the 2 times it takes to click to unlock the map with my skeleton key. I am in it for the fight and the treasure. Requiring more skills and more steps just to get to the fighting and treasure is just like one more step to actually fire a cannon or one more step to harvest a seed. Realistically, requiring more skills on my template just means more trips back and forth to a soulstone. This isn't fun. I'm not the only one either.
We have had so many examples of these types of things in UO development history. Some get fixed down the road, some don't. We have repair deeds now so that its easier to repair armor without the need for a craftsman to be present. We are re-doing the cannon firing process. We have garden beds to take care of growing plants. See the pattern in those things? Extra steps just for the sake of extra steps often ends up with just frustration and players asking for something to be simplified.
What I want from a T-map revamp is pretty simple:
1. A reliable way to get the level of map I want to hunt on the facet I want to hunt it. As others have said, the Miasma grind is SO boring, but its really the only good, reliable place to collect level 6 maps.
2. A loot table that properly matches the difficulty of the map, with a rare chance for something unique and valuable in today's UO economy.
3. At least 1 level of map that a group of UO players would find challenging and have a chance for desirable loot for everyone. Dividing up loot manually through dice rolling, etc. is rather a pain. Instanced loot is so very much easier. I realize this might not be doable for the chest itself, which is why I would really like to see some kind of drops from the guardians themselves.
- Ideally I would like to see 2 levels of high end maps... the first would be very difficult for a seasoned veteran like myself to be able to complete solo, but might be a challenge for a group of newer players. (don't laugh, they do exist I'm told) Comparable to what a level 7 maps is now. I would like for this level of map to have some of the "treasure" (including special items like mana orbs) to drop on the instanced corpses of the guardians. The second, and higher level, map I think should be comparable to the roof. A fairly difficult map to get, but would spawn guardians from the peerless level mobs... and at least 6 of them to start. This would be very, very difficult for a single player with a single account to complete, but would be a great group level activity. Let the peerless level guardians have the same chance to drop their normal special drops (i.e. if a Navrey spawns, it might drop a tangle, if a Lady M spawns she might have a hair dye or crimmy). This would make the treasure hunt not only a lot of fun, but people would actually want to come fight (and die) for a chance at the drops.
Should Cart be required to stay on the toon while you goto the spot and dig up the chest
Lockpick probably be required
Remove trap could be tied to the spawn kind of like an alarm system and if you remove the trap/traps then less/no spawn or if you set it off then norm/more spawn depending on the level of the alarm system installed type of idea.
Also what would be the possibility of allowing T-Hunters to take the chest with them after unlocking and disarming it and killing all spawn.
---
I've trained half a dozen thunters. I can GM carto in 2 or 3 evenings buying, making and reselling maps to the NPC - it's one of the easiest skills to train. I can get lockpicking to 77.8 - enough to open L6 chests with skeleton keys - in 2 or 3 evenings breaking picks on paragon ettin, cyclops and titan or miasma chests. So I'd hope for a way to train remove trap in about 2 days, same as the others
Cart 100
Disco 120
Lockpick 100
Magery 120
Med 120
Music 120
Provo 120
Magery mastery 3, classic client, Davies Locker. Using these skills start to finish, no soulstones. I do any maps lvl 6/7 tram and fel. Sell or trash the others.
Love the idea of IDOC loot as treasure. Something different! No pirate in his right mind would bother hiding current treasure let alone wear most of it. I'm all for risk reward, but it needs to be a useful, long term reward. Old event items gets my +1 also.
One of the IDOC loot items could be tokens for IDOC'd soul stones that got trashed for the cleanup points. Prior ownership wiped out so they can be used again. if no soul stones got trashed then no tokens show up in the loot.
They mostly are inch perfect planned in terms of skill points. Making a new skill a requirement will just kill those templates.
Yes, you will kill the profession as others pointed out! Let's make T-Hunting another area where only one or two templates work
I have seen a lot discussion about loot, but little being unhappy not to carry say Lockpicking.
Go ahead, kill the T-Hunters for some highly cosmetical thoughts about dead skills. If I can't do them anymore without using a second account, I will put T-Hunting next to the Haven mines, Despise or everything Eodon except for Shadowguard.
Maybe I'm just playing this game wrong.
UO in the last few years has seen the number of really viable templates shrink considerably, we used to have so much diversity and now only a few templates really work. I used to enjoy playing all my characters, now I play mostly a mystic/SW/mage, my t-hunter or a Fisher for MIBs, my paladin hasn't been hunting in years, I dropped taming when the pet revamp looked too complicated and I just don't have time to work on my bard. Please don't make t-hunting go the same way as all those other templates that ended with Sampire or find a group.
I can, and have, done all levels solo with the exception of Ilshenar level 7s - my problem there is renegade changelings when they spawn as paragons (but then no one else wants to do those either ) I have also done them with others, but they tend to find standing around waiting for spawn a little boring after the initial guardians are dispatched.
I especially like the 'special' items, though I'm not enamoured of surge shields or sashes of warding. Mostly I like SoAs, SoTs, Mana phasing orbs, skeleton keys, imbuing essences. As regards armour and weapons I'll take anything that will enhance the suit of one of my characters or that will unravel into relic fragments for similar purpose. I am not sufficiently competent at working out what is valuable to sell, so I don't do that.
Training - the only thing I hate about training any skill is the 'wait before you can do that again', especially if it's a long delay. I don't really see the purpose of that. I know where to find enough locked crates and barrels to train, but maybe you could lock and trap some of the boxes on other facets than tram & fel? in Royal City and Zento maybe?
My current template, including bonuses, is:
Cartography - 100
Lockpick - 100
Mining - 100 (potentially RT)
Magery - 100 (not scrolled, 15% from mage book)
Mysticism - 120
Focus - 95 (10% Mystic's Memento) Also 40% LMC 28 MR on suit
Spellweaving 115 (mastery vol 3)
1. Forced group play - the M of massively does not exist anymore... Your player base is if an older nature. The few I play with are almost 50 and don't play hours and hours on end. On Cats, the biggest group I see is on Wednesday sitting at the bank, next biggest group is a pk raid on a soloist doing a champion spawn, and finally some folks doing the rooftop(the win here was more than one drop and everyone had and equal chance). The Majority of t-hunters are solo players and I believe there are more soloist hunters than groups..The reason being is that it doesn't require a significant time preparation investment like gathering keys, completing rooms... And it scratches an itch of successfully completing something. So make a level 7 chest with all the great stuff that requires 3-4 people. Alot of excitement for 6 months.. interest wears off... and suddenly very little 7 maps being done... meanwhile all us soloists who have been doing chests for going on twenty years now, are locked out of some content... Which is ok I guess, but would just be disappointing, I know there will Granted there will be lower chests, but the highest should be challenging with a group ... Super difficult but at least doable as a soloist
2. Please do not get rid of the ability to hide at
3. Don't force remove trap on the chest... keep in mind telekinesis is a legitiment skill point requirement as a remove trap option... Just like remove trap... You have to have magery... It just folds well with recall and invis... Traps are not worthless, they all require skill points to undo... Magery is just more efficient in a tight template.. if you want to dust off old skills include a smaller takable chest that requires RT that you can take for working on later, or sell.
Please consider these items when making the changes...
If you want to see a great high seas group event stop by this evening at the Catskills New Magencia docks for the weekly Wednesday whitenet Toss, 1930est.. quite a few participants... If in consideration for change, increasing the ancient scroll drop rate or increasing the scalis spawn from 25% would really help support this...
for
Treasure Hunters
for
Treasure Hunters