Excelsior

Hey all, i'm new here, downloading the client as we speak. I've played shards in the past but i had a RL friend suggest this one to me, he said the community is awesome, there's usually a good amount of players on (a min of 100 and usually 200+ he said) and that it's a great shard for casual players also.

Now all be it i love hack and slash just as much as the next guy, but sometimes i like to break off and crafting is really my forte. So basically Is it possible to craft and merchant without having to fight for drops that much? How often would a crafter have to go out and fight mobs for drops in order to succeed as a crafter?

not really a crafting shard but there are some cool craftables. like for instance bio engineering if you have the mega luck. or mobile forges. etc.. not a lot yet

if you want to play an crafter you can do this and i think you never need to go into dungeons to kill anything for crafting.
you can go outside and yes it often makes more sense to go out for example using gargoyle knifes, pickaxes or axes to get an elemental spawn with very usefull and sometimes very expensive crafting materials but there is no " YOU MUST GO OUT and kill "

you can max out all your crafting and harvesting skills without pve, doing bulk order deeds to get the powerscolls and the +skill gear.

i only see one problem. the money-factor. yes we are an server with a lot of player. i think i never logged in with under 100 player and often with more than 200. but there are a lot crafters and only a few charackters. there are only a few things you can make money with and you will get much more money with pve killing balrons or something like this.

but back to your question. yes you can play without killing monsters. you can max out all skills if you spend enough time into your bulk order deeds and many more time in harvesting. you can earn a lot money with beehives. maybee more with beehives than with your crafting but if you want to play a little bit roleplay as an friendly not fighting crafter you can do this. we have no skillcap on excelsior. you can max out all skills with only one char if you want. no twinks needed.

Hello,

I have been playing UO on and off since 98, and I will tell you there is not really room for a new a vendor mall This is a shard of tamers. I had never played a tamer before I joined but I am having fun doing it. If you want to make money in game as a vendor, selling your bods, bod rewards, ingots, and boards will actually net you way more than anything you will ever craft. This is a shard where you can really play and have fun, not chain yourself to a forge. Take it from me, the first skill I gmed here was mining I am use to being snooped and robbed so I always do it first as a new player Good luck and happy travels.

I got a few tips for you.
I started playing less than 2 months ago on this shard so its fresh in my memory! Im also more of a crafter, just like you.

First things first, go to the training room and max everything to 75 there (skills raise fast so it wont take long). You can be afk while doing this. Dont buy anything from the NPCs, use the donations bins instead. When you go to sleep, to work, etc, keep your toon online and continue punching the trainers while afk (we are allowed to do it), your str will raise that way, and you will need it when you start mining etc. You can GM all of the fighting skills in the first level of the newbie dungeon (mobs dont fight back in the first level, but they do in the 2nd).

I know, these are fighting skills, they have nothing to do with crafting right The reason for doing this is to be able to do the rats quest in the newbie dungeon (you can access this dungeon during your first 20 days only). You can do this quest every 30 mins or so. It gives a random amount of organics as a reward. Organics sell for around 150g each (use [exex to sell them). I wish i had found out about it sooner because i made a LOT of gold that way, could easilly have made twice that (you can expect to make hundreds of thousands of gold that way).

What the rats quest will allow you to do is to have enough gold to place your own house(s). I was able to place two 18x18's in the first 3 weeks! The houses are what you need in order to do your crafting.

Once you have your house(s), get started with your bees. You dont need to start them all at once (they take about 13 days before they go into full production so you need to have enough money during that time). I started with 11 first. Read the wiki about beekeeping. What bees will do for you, is to give you a steady amount of revenue (will replace the dungeon crawling that you arent interested about).

You wont make much money off crafting, but the bees will allow you to be comfortable with gold.

If you need any help figuring out some of the stuff i mentioned, feel free to PM me in game (im playing as Mike Holmes 90% of the time, hes my crafter!). To PM someone in game, type [pm <name>.

I hope you found this helpful

wow thanks for the tips everyone, i'm in the training room right now maxing everything i can, and reading the chats trying to get a feel for the community. Thanks for the heads up on bees and the rat dungeon. I do enjoy the occasional hack and slash, but it's nice to know it is possible to do ok as a crafter. This community has been nothing but helpful, making me want to stay here a while.

oh here's a tip:

there are only 2 yumi's that drop as loot. hanzo and the horselord. so there is sort of a market for yumi's crafted. hope this helps a little bit.