Please stop the BT loophole.

JollyJade

Petra_Fyde said:

Are there really bots that do captains? I know they did the lower spawn, till there were measures put in place to stop them, that's why I used to hunt in Fel. But I've never seen any at the captains. Are they real, or are the a figment of the imagination of conspiracy theorists?

Didn't the team just add a new housing rule to combat scripting? Or that also imagination of conpiracy theorists? 

Fortis

@Kyronix housing fix for multiples placement have been broken since january first big revert...you can have more than one house in decay mod and use them

PlayerSkillFTW

Yesterday, i got about 60 Minax Artifacts on my Macer/Paladin while hunting with 3-4 other people (downed 2 Lighthouses worth of Captains). They all got Artifacts too. Haven't seen Blackthorn's Captains this busy in a long time.

MissE

Well I have never see a 'bot' farmer doing captains.   I am liking the new changes and as for the title of this thread 'loophole'  is a bit much. 

It is no loophole when any player on any shard may part take in killing the stuff in the dungeon.   Just because some people think it is affecting their 'money'  take doesn't make it a loophole. It is still a hard fight to solo, sure some captains are easier than others but I wouldn't say any are a toddle.

Just the normal GREED coming out by those who are complaining imo.

monkgamer

this is my issue now. came back. shard barely active. need to solo to do end game but need yo do end game to get my powerscrolls etc.

making the game to being more solo friendly would help.

jadav

MissE said:

Well I have never see a 'bot' farmer doing captains.   I am liking the new changes and as for the title of this thread 'loophole'  is a bit much. 

It is no loophole when any player on any shard may part take in killing the stuff in the dungeon.   Just because some people think it is affecting their 'money'  take doesn't make it a loophole. It is still a hard fight to solo, sure some captains are easier than others but I wouldn't say any are a toddle.

Just the normal GREED coming out by those who are complaining imo.

I don't think you actually know what a loophole is.

The captains in BT dungeon was never meant to give out more than 1-3 arties pr kill.

Then there came an event, and our DEVs weren't clever enough to make 2 types on captains, so the captains you find at shrine battles, are the same as those in BT dungeon.

So they are not functioning as intended.

And that is exactly what a loophole is, no matter how you feel about it.

The market is getting flooded with cheap bt arties, and no im not hunting in BT dungeon, because its not worth my time, more gold to be had elsewhere

When they turn off the shrine battles, and captains turns back to normal, the damage has already been done, and BT dungeon will be a waste land again.

Violet

jadav said:

I don't think you actually know what a loophole is.

The captains in BT dungeon was never meant to give out more than 1-3 arties pr kill.

Then there came an event, and our DEVs weren't clever enough to make 2 types on captains, so the captains you find at shrine battles, are the same as those in BT dungeon.

So they are not functioning as intended.

Actually, do you know for a fact that this wasn't an intended change?  Do you have something from a Dev stating that this wasn't intended?

Because I am pretty sure I know of someone who did ask them back when this was on Baja/Origin/Izumo before WW release and got a response that it was an intended change.

There is no loophole. You've been buying up Blackthorns artifacts and now want Devs to change it back so you can make bank.  The motivation here seems pretty transparent.

PlayerSkillFTW

I led UWF on a Blackthorn's Dungeon hunt yesterday, we had like 12-15 members for it, and we were curb stomping the Captains. Downed a Lighthouse in like 20 minutes. Everyone was getting 1-3 Artifacts per Captain. The members loved it, especially the newer members. Most of the members had to log after an hour, but about 4-5 of us stayed down there for 4 hours. I myself got 200+ Minax Artifacts during that time, and several members were able to earn enough Minax Artifacts to buy 100 point rewards.

Blackthorn's Dungeon is now one of the favorite hunting spots for UWF.

Polaris

We have always hunted Blackthorns. Was very fun and challenging, the mobs need to be turned back on, whatever happens. But yes, I too have bought about 3 of the 150 luck / 5 DCI epaulets for under 14m now. Now most of my characters and even nephew has those. The market is already ruined for those guys, as well as crimson cinctures and the belts. Might as well give up, the Japanese figured this out before anyone. We knew from those forums, but haven't even bothered to go. We did buy ourselves 4 crimson cinctures and 4 epaulets for us however. All were under 15m each.

We will likely never farm Blackthorn dungeon again now, as the items have been devalued and also we have most of what we need. OP was correct, sadly. Blackthorn's was a legit way for casual players to make gold too, so this mistake wasn't good. Time for us to start doing DOOM finally I guess, I have not even been there since the changes. And all my chars need a Halo (or whatever it is called.)

Polaris

Petra_Fyde said:

Are there really bots that do captains? I know they did the lower spawn, till there were measures put in place to stop them, that's why I used to hunt in Fel. But I've never seen any at the captains. Are they real, or are the a figment of the imagination of conspiracy theorists?

From what it sounds, I am pretty sure people doing this sort of this were using a real mage in conjunction with multi-boxing.

When we go there, it's quite simple to trap them with our 2 mages... and they are easily taken down after being trapped. We use 2 RCs and blast with their weakest resistance (harm, ebolt, or flamestrike.)

I could imagine easily... that someone could trap them with 1 mage and then have their multi-boxing gargoyle/archer army standing 10 tiles away just waiting to switch accounts and get off 60-70 archer shots before the energy field traps vanish. I have saw people using archers as such at EM events myself. Each archer has a different slayer. I have also saw people using those at IDOCs in felucca. The multi-boxing was real, definitely. A few of the IDOCers would hire one of those guys in particular, and he would literally take 5 archers and kill anyone who came close while the other guys looted. That was a famous YT video of a few well known players that someone posted complaining. No idea if the video still exists, but.... multi-boxing was definitely real.

With that said, I think none of this is likely taking place. It is likely just people using 10 accounts... and doing x% of damage with each character. Each character gets 1-3 items as stated by someone. I am not sure how different this is from before, other than there are no mobs.... so it may be easier? It was limited to 2 items before I know. So not sure what is taking place down there, my wife tried to show me the forums, but they were in Japanese. Just sounds like it was a lot easier though, and 0 time loss due to mobs... and possibly more items. Something definitely happened, because I have scooped up the epaulets and crimson belts from VS, as I stated above....

Pawain

Thanks for the info.  We ran it tonight.  I took 2 toons we did 3 towns. Maybe 4 I lost count.  I turned in 186 items and made a Bone and 2 Plate suits.  Ill buy an epaulet for my other Archer.  Looks like I will get more suits of armor for mannequins.
  
Was lots of fun everybody stayed up way too late and was talking about what to say to their spouses.

Can you believe some player paid 14M for the items!    

PlayerSkillFTW

Polaris said:

We have always hunted Blackthorns. Was very fun and challenging, the mobs need to be turned back on, whatever happens. But yes, I too have bought about 3 of the 150 luck / 5 DCI epaulets for under 14m now. Now most of my characters and even nephew has those. The market is already ruined for those guys, as well as crimson cinctures and the belts. Might as well give up, the Japanese figured this out before anyone. We knew from those forums, but haven't even bothered to go. We did buy ourselves 4 crimson cinctures and 4 epaulets for us however. All were under 15m each.

We will likely never farm Blackthorn dungeon again now, as the items have been devalued and also we have most of what we need. OP was correct, sadly. Blackthorn's was a legit way for casual players to make gold too, so this mistake wasn't good. Time for us to start doing DOOM finally I guess, I have not even been there since the changes. And all my chars need a Halo (or whatever it is called.)

I was the one who led those previous Blackthorn Hunts, on Korivan. During the previous hunts, we'd spend an hour-1.5 hours downing a single lighthouse. Each Captain only gave 2 Minax Artifacts total, and i'm usually the one that ended up with them. So much so, that by the end of the hunt, i'd give away the Minax Artifacts that i had gotten, since i got the majority of them, and i could solo that place on my Macer/Paladin, Korbu.

Back then, the hunt was more for the challenge of it, than the reward, since most members only got a small handful of Artifacts. I don't think a single member ever acquired enough Minax Artifacts from all of those hunts to get a decent prize. It was far more rewarding to solo or duo the place before. This Wednesday though, just about everyone who attended got at least 50 points. It's a lot more group friendly now.

PlayerSkillFTW

Pawain said:

Thanks for the info.  We ran it tonight.  I took 2 toons we did 3 towns. Maybe 4 I lost count.  I turned in 186 items and made a Bone and 2 Plate suits.  Ill buy an epaulet for my other Archer.  Looks like I will get more suits of armor for mannequins.
  
Was lots of fun everybody stayed up way too late and was talking about what to say to their spouses.

Can you believe some player paid 14M for the items!    

Even at only 14 Mill per Luck Epaullete, that's 140k per Minax Artifact, which you're guaranteed 1-3 per Captain. 140-420k per Captain. That's still incredibly profitable, especially if you're in a big group that can drop them fast.

Pawain

Yup I think most of our group had never been to that area and had never bought an item.  

Id say 6 got 50 + items.  Some replaced old stat less robes and were very happy.  
The returners are going to love this.  I predict a Blackthorns Weekend on LS!

Polaris

Pawain said:

Thanks for the info.  We ran it tonight.  I took 2 toons we did 3 towns. Maybe 4 I lost count.  I turned in 186 items and made a Bone and 2 Plate suits.  Ill buy an epaulet for my other Archer.  Looks like I will get more suits of armor for mannequins.
  
Was lots of fun everybody stayed up way too late and was talking about what to say to their spouses.

Can you believe some player paid 14M for the items!    

People are missing the point in that you will no longer be able to go here for a night and possibly make 40m. The epaulets and everything lost value by 50-75%. So yet another reason the "buyers" will be able to purchase all rare items with gold they buy from "that" site. Seems everything closes the door to honest players to make gold.... is the point. I never have to do dungeon BT again. We did it when it was challenging for fun, and have several great videos from the past of my family and me wrecking those towns with just 2 or 3 of us. We could pull 100 blackthorn items a night when it was challenging and you only got 2 per captain each. That's just wife and I on 1 char each.

I have no interest in going for a loophole to make gazillions of gold. We've been focusing on the tabards when we play. I didn't even login yesterday or the day before... lol. Of course I scooped up 4 epaulets at 14m each, that was just 1 tabard......

After the loophole goes away though, this has extremely hurt normal players ability to make gold. All that will be left is Shadowguard now, perhaps Doom. I haven't even went to Doom because everyone was talking about the scripters down there when it first came out. We never went.

@Pawain Glad I could help you out though. *Thumbs Up*  Could you imagine if everyone could speak and read Japanese for themselves? They figured this out on day 1 because.... they actually play the game and are super intelligent. It's the Americans that are the culprits in most schemes on UO. That's why Japanese players are leaving in droves for the past three years, we read about the American idocers going Japanese shards to IDOC and scripting all the time. It's never the reverse. Indeed, things like this are why most players leave in droves.... Hokuto used to be as big as Atlantic. Pacific used to rival Atlantic. Most shards becoming ghost towns now...... of course the greedy shard is still going, they cheat and are proud of it.

Garth_Grey

Polaris said:

Petra_Fyde said:

Are there really bots that do captains? I know they did the lower spawn, till there were measures put in place to stop them, that's why I used to hunt in Fel. But I've never seen any at the captains. Are they real, or are the a figment of the imagination of conspiracy theorists?

From what it sounds, I am pretty sure people doing this sort of this were using a real mage in conjunction with multi-boxing.

When we go there, it's quite simple to trap them with our 2 mages... and they are easily taken down after being trapped. We use 2 RCs and blast with their weakest resistance (harm, ebolt, or flamestrike.)

I could imagine easily... that someone could trap them with 1 mage and then have their multi-boxing gargoyle/archer army standing 10 tiles away just waiting to switch accounts and get off 60-70 archer shots before the energy field traps vanish. I have saw people using archers as such at EM events myself. Each archer has a different slayer. I have also saw people using those at IDOCs in felucca. The multi-boxing was real, definitely. A few of the IDOCers would hire one of those guys in particular, and he would literally take 5 archers and kill anyone who came close while the other guys looted. That was a famous YT video of a few well known players that someone posted complaining. No idea if the video still exists, but.... multi-boxing was definitely real.

With that said, I think none of this is likely taking place. It is likely just people using 10 accounts... and doing x% of damage with each character. Each character gets 1-3 items as stated by someone. I am not sure how different this is from before, other than there are no mobs.... so it may be easier? It was limited to 2 items before I know. So not sure what is taking place down there, my wife tried to show me the forums, but they were in Japanese. Just sounds like it was a lot easier though, and 0 time loss due to mobs... and possibly more items. Something definitely happened, because I have scooped up the epaulets and crimson belts from VS, as I stated above....

Wow you sure do see a lot of stuff that others have never seen, you're quite the player.

Pawain

@Polaris ; First.  Blackthorns was not put into the game for making gold.  It was put into the game as an alternative to get the items. All players could kill something there.

Glad I could teach you something.

   Violet was called a Troll.

Lieutenant_Dan

I like the change.  Don't know how long it will last or if it will even go back since the dev's said the the shrine battles will be semi permanent and BT is supposed to last as long as the shrine battles.
If you haven't done so already i would suggest doing so if you need gear for new toons. 

I did take advantage of it and got some gear for future characters i want to make for other shards.  It's still a challenge in fact deadly if you're not careful so in no way are people botting it. 

Polaris

Pawain said:

@ Polaris  First.  Blackthorns was not put into the game for making gold.  It was put into the game as an alternative to get the items. All players could kill something there.

Glad I could teach you something.

   Violet was called a Troll.

You trolled me because I agreed with someone that the epaulets were indeed for sell for 14m. I have saw mace/shield helmets for 6-7m. Everything in the game is for sell, I am a rares collector. I go get items that players want like cameos and then make 140-300m. Then I buy rare items.... Currently we are getting tabards, we have our full set... I have my blue one with hawkwind stats for me, and 2 of the red ones for one of my museums. We have sold about 5 or 6 now that we have all the ones we wanted. With that profit from 1.... I chose to buy almost 4 epaulets and 4 mace/shield helmets.

I also bought them ALL from Japanese vendors, because those guys deserve it the most. Japanese players never even heard of someone trolling someone.... it's kind of sad. Were I to want gold, I would no longer go to Blackthorn dungeon is what I am saying..... we can just as easy run Shadowguard with 2 players quite easily... in about an hour and a half per run. Far more profitable for my rares collecting habits. Blackthorn dungeon just became a dungeon we will never run again because of this Loophole the OP mentioned.

Pawain

Polaris said:

Pawain said:

@ Polaris  First.  Blackthorns was not put into the game for making gold.  It was put into the game as an alternative to get the items. All players could kill something there.

Glad I could teach you something.

   Violet was called a Troll.

You trolled me because I agreed with someone that the epaulets were indeed for sell for 14m. I have saw mace/shield helmets for 6-7m. Everything in the game is for sell, I am a rares collector. I go get items that players want like cameos and then make 140-300m. Then I buy rare items.... Currently we are getting tabards, we have our full set... I have my blue one with hawkwind stats for me, and 2 of the red ones for one of my museums. We have sold about 5 or 6 now that we have all the ones we wanted. With that profit from 1.... I chose to buy almost 4 epaulets and 4 mace/shield helmets.

I also bought them ALL from Japanese vendors, because those guys deserve it the most. Japanese players never even heard of someone trolling someone.... it's kind of sad. Were I to want gold, I would no longer go to Blackthorn dungeon is what I am saying..... we can just as easy run Shadowguard with 2 players quite easily... in about an hour and a half per run. Far more profitable for my rares collecting habits. Blackthorn dungeon just became a dungeon we will never run again because of this Loophole the OP mentioned.

I did not know the prices were dropping. Sorry. They were expensive less than 2 months ago.

The EJ pack was half price. The Captains drop 1 or 3 items now and no other spawn. I was late to the party. Now I will enjoy it while it lasts.

Blackthorns Dungeon will now be a place where groups play and get a reward. No RNG involved.
New players, returning players,EJ players that cant use their bank have had a fun and rewarding experience.

Explain why this is a bad thing?

Because the value of the rewards dropped?  

Polaris

Sorry for the misunderstanding, I was wondering you are usually not one to say such things. Was my bad I've been in a sour mood definitely. Nah it's not all doom and gloom, it was just somewhere we thoroughly enjoyed farming for gold. We always got 4 items per captain... 2 for me and 2 for wife. There was never rng involved, but it was a lot more challenging when you were in one of the tiny cities and had to work your way through 16 waves of Reptalons, Hydras, and Dragons to topple the tower with the bosses jumping in on you at every turn. That is some of our greatest videos of the hardcore play involved in Ultima. Great memories for certain.

This is not bad, but the ways to make gold in Ultima were and are just extremely limited. I believe they wanted dungeon Blackthorn to be as hard as it was for a reason. And it was doable by just my wife... she would often farm it alone when I didn't want to play. At Shadowguard, she has to have me tank it... so BT dungeon becoming what it has definitely limits her ability to make gold in every way possible. I could possibly solo Shadowguard, but average players cannot. And everyone hates doing Shadowguard as well.... such a grind. It was just our favorite dungeon. With the amount of items that everyone has pulled now in the past month though..... it would be like killing blood elementals or liches at this point. Things I thoroughly enjoyed in the past, but are absolutely pointless now.

jadav

Pawain said:

Polaris said:

Pawain said:

@ Polaris  First.  Blackthorns was not put into the game for making gold.  It was put into the game as an alternative to get the items. All players could kill something there.

Glad I could teach you something.

   Violet was called a Troll.

You trolled me because I agreed with someone that the epaulets were indeed for sell for 14m. I have saw mace/shield helmets for 6-7m. Everything in the game is for sell, I am a rares collector. I go get items that players want like cameos and then make 140-300m. Then I buy rare items.... Currently we are getting tabards, we have our full set... I have my blue one with hawkwind stats for me, and 2 of the red ones for one of my museums. We have sold about 5 or 6 now that we have all the ones we wanted. With that profit from 1.... I chose to buy almost 4 epaulets and 4 mace/shield helmets.

I also bought them ALL from Japanese vendors, because those guys deserve it the most. Japanese players never even heard of someone trolling someone.... it's kind of sad. Were I to want gold, I would no longer go to Blackthorn dungeon is what I am saying..... we can just as easy run Shadowguard with 2 players quite easily... in about an hour and a half per run. Far more profitable for my rares collecting habits. Blackthorn dungeon just became a dungeon we will never run again because of this Loophole the OP mentioned.

I did not know the prices were dropping. Sorry. They were expensive less than 2 months ago.

The EJ pack was half price. The Captains drop 1 or 3 items now and no other spawn. I was late to the party. Now I will enjoy it while it lasts.

Blackthorns Dungeon will now be a place where groups play and get a reward. No RNG involved.
New players, returning players,EJ players that cant use their bank have had a fun and rewarding experience.

Explain why this is a bad thing?

Because the value of the rewards dropped?  

I have already explained why it is bad 5 times in this tread, any part you dont to understand ?

Pawain

jadav said:

Pawain said:

Polaris said:

Pawain said:

@ Polaris  First.  Blackthorns was not put into the game for making gold.  It was put into the game as an alternative to get the items. All players could kill something there.

Glad I could teach you something.

   Violet was called a Troll.

You trolled me because I agreed with someone that the epaulets were indeed for sell for 14m. I have saw mace/shield helmets for 6-7m. Everything in the game is for sell, I am a rares collector. I go get items that players want like cameos and then make 140-300m. Then I buy rare items.... Currently we are getting tabards, we have our full set... I have my blue one with hawkwind stats for me, and 2 of the red ones for one of my museums. We have sold about 5 or 6 now that we have all the ones we wanted. With that profit from 1.... I chose to buy almost 4 epaulets and 4 mace/shield helmets.

I also bought them ALL from Japanese vendors, because those guys deserve it the most. Japanese players never even heard of someone trolling someone.... it's kind of sad. Were I to want gold, I would no longer go to Blackthorn dungeon is what I am saying..... we can just as easy run Shadowguard with 2 players quite easily... in about an hour and a half per run. Far more profitable for my rares collecting habits. Blackthorn dungeon just became a dungeon we will never run again because of this Loophole the OP mentioned.

I did not know the prices were dropping. Sorry. They were expensive less than 2 months ago.

The EJ pack was half price. The Captains drop 1 or 3 items now and no other spawn. I was late to the party. Now I will enjoy it while it lasts.

Blackthorns Dungeon will now be a place where groups play and get a reward. No RNG involved.
New players, returning players,EJ players that cant use their bank have had a fun and rewarding experience.

Explain why this is a bad thing?

Because the value of the rewards dropped?  

I have already explained why it is bad 5 times in this tread, any part you dont to understand ?

I just do not agree. 

The Devs gave incentive to play there. We went again tonight.  Fewer and fewer will need to pay a ridiculous price for those items.  More and more casual players will be able to get them by playing in the dungeon.

You kinda made this domino by telling us about it.

Polaris

We went tonight for the first time and pulled about 450 in about 2 hours with 2 players. It's truly sad I must admit.... this was one of my favorite dungeons. No one even really knows how to do it, people are dying left and right... people are pulling things they shouldn't, some people are using 3 or 4 characters. I can tell they are using 3-4 chars b/c they will start fighting, then an archer standing still gets pulled just in range to "shoot." Truly hilarious down there right now......

Our favorite dungeon to farm in is destroyed... and will be worthless forever more. Thanks to all who participated....... I just figured we may as well join in on the fun and get about 20 epaulets also.

Mariah

A number of posts, flagged by multiple users, have been removed.

Pawain

People complained about scripters being there.  Now anyone can get the items.

I was afraid they would ruin it by changing the Mobs there when the event is over. Now it does not matter what they put there.  I just hope we can still get Gold ingots.  I would get them as I needed them.

@Mariah ; would I know if some of mine were removed by popular demand?  Did you PM the posters?   

jadav

Mariah said:

A number of posts, flagged by multiple users, have been removed.

I would like to know, why my posts got removed.

I did not break any rules on this forum.

Hippo

Good to see strangers healing and rezzing each other with no one worrying that they must be the top damager to get a drop! Enjoying my new eps and other BT gear rewards

JollyJade

jadav said:

Mariah said:

A number of posts, flagged by multiple users, have been removed.

I would like to know, why my posts got removed.

I did not break any rules on this forum.

They stopped telling which rules you supposedly broke a while ago and just default to #1 now. They also still haven't updated the ToS on this page and expect every new forum user to know all past newsletters. It's not very professional..

jadav

JollyJade said:

jadav said:

Mariah said:

A number of posts, flagged by multiple users, have been removed.

I would like to know, why my posts got removed.

I did not break any rules on this forum.

They stopped telling which rules you supposedly broke a while ago and just default to #1 now. They also still haven't updated the ToS on this page and expect every new forum user to know all past newsletters. It's not very professional..

Easier for them just to silence us, why bother taking the debate, when they screw up ?

Same reason why the uo staff left stratics, they weren't in control, i really hate that American attitude.

This message will properly get deleted also.

I just hope the staff got the very clear message.