+C economy

[Iltar]

Imps been good when you could clean gauntlet with them fast, especially with HBOH. Now imps are far from useful, because in gauntlet real problem is getting skull, not killing bosses fast. 70ed for goc every 3 weeks is not even worth time spent, though it is fun to do, especially for armor to use, instead of buying pieces. Also there is only 3 goc mobs for which imps are needed, and vets usually don't mind helping with killing these mobs as well as muthantiar. And you suggest new players to recall kill balrons, which you usually report? Or you want them to do it without script, really? OK unointed imps are not very expensive, but they don't solve problem of farming gold.
I don't want to 'complain', because this shard has very strong sides and gms have added lots of custom things. I'm just saying what I think: better ways of farming gold are needed for players of certain level. OK I only might miss citadel, because I disliked puzzles and never farmed it, maybe its good for gold. With old gauntlet you could make 23k every 7-15 minutes depending on type of pets AND it respawned instantly. Farming for dex gear/scrolls/even relayers was long, but possible back then.
I know some players spend months in doom collecting bones or levelling weapons - but for many that is too boring.

[Johnny Warren]

Imps been good when you could clean gauntlet with them fast, especially with HBOH. Now imps are far from useful, because in gauntlet real problem is getting skull, not killing bosses fast. 70ed for goc every 3 weeks is not even worth time spent, though it is fun to do, especially for armor to use, instead of buying pieces. Also there is only 3 goc mobs for which imps are needed, and vets usually don't mind helping with killing these mobs as well as muthantiar. And you suggest new players to recall kill balrons, which you usually report? Or you want them to do it without script, really? OK unointed imps are not very expensive, but they don't solve problem of farming gold.
I don't want to 'complain', because this shard has very strong sides and gms have added lots of custom things. I'm just saying what I think: better ways of farming gold are needed for players of certain level. OK I only might miss citadel, because I disliked puzzles and never farmed it, maybe its good for gold. With old gauntlet you could make 23k every 7-15 minutes depending on type of pets AND it respawned instantly. Farming for dex gear/scrolls/even relayers was long, but possible back then.
I know some players spend months in doom collecting bones or levelling weapons - but for many that is too boring.

Oh wow, I don't know what to say, you've got me on all fronts... hard to argue with that iron clad logic. Just so you realise it's not 3 weeks worth of gaming itme to get the GoC, you can knock out the whole quest in a few hours, just with the delays in between handing in pieces makes it take 3 weeks. If you aren't making your GoC each 3 weeks and selling it then that makes me glad, it makes the market easier for me, but telling newer players it is bad advice is just plain wrong. Don't let your jaded views on this lead to poor advice to newer players.I'm telling you a brand new player with little to no gear and a full pack of imps can farm gold at the best place with the rest of us and you're like... oooh nah, that seems a bit hard, they''ll either be reported or they will have to do it manually without a script. I suggest neither, use a script and legally kill them. I report people who AFK farm gold, not anyone who hunts balrons lol. Don't whine that it is too hard to make gold when I provide a solution. When I am farming bally's i regularly see newer to mid tier players using nobles and imps to farm balrons. You know what? They are ahead of the curve, they are making gold at a more efficient rate, the same rate Lion or myself can make gold. So if someone can farm gold with nothing but a 100% LRC suit (wouldn't want to waste lots of gold on those expensive regs) and a pack of imps at the same speed as someone who has multiple titan's and BC relayers I would suggest that there is not much of an issue with new players accessing the good hunting grounds and economy. And as to your last part about farming bones or leveling. If you aren't interested in playing a game where you sometimes have to complete repetitive action the ultima online may not be for you. I get that you don't like me because of previous disagreements around weapon stats, but it doesn't mean you should illogically lead others down the proverbial garden path simply for the sake of refuting me. As I said, it is much much easier for newer players to get a foothold nowadays than it was back in '09... Oh, and because I like you I'll let you know; citadel is actually pretty slow and poor for gold, so you haven't missed much, only the boss in there is worth it.

If the issue is with the cost of imps, replace that word with nobles in my previous posts. For a few hundred k gold you can fight well above your weight and in harder areas than grinding zombies and orcs for long enough to buy your first relayer deed or pair of batwings, or farming bones and selling leveled weapons, because that is so booooring they will likely quit before they get their first relayer..... When I started this shard back in '09 everyone whined about how OP pets were and asked for imps and nobles to be nerfed due to how hyper efficient they were. Since players have powered up with the all relayer route the usage of pets by the top tier players has certainly dropped. But that does not change the fact that the extensive taming system should be utilised as a stepping stone for newer players to access the mid game and farm gold at faster rates.

EDIT: If any newer players are reading this, I pay 50k gold per travesty keyset... I know one player has made at least 15-20mil selling me keysets... you could always go and farm for me for a while [pm john warren once you have 10 or more sets and I will buy them.

[Iltar]

I don't have aim to personally attack anyone, I'm just saying my opinion. I've done goc about 7-8 times and enjoyed it indeed. I know of course that 3 weeks is total time, real time spent is much less. So 70ed each 3 weeks I guess is not bad for the time spent, but it is not enough to be the main source of gold.
Concerning imps/bio, they are perhaps still good for players who like pets, but without gauntlet imps are much less useful. As for balrons I think now it's good time to post your script on forum so all(most) players could use it .
Now killing balrons or levelling weapons are probably fastest ways to farm gold, available to 90% of players of shard. But before, new players had choice to do gauntlet, which was good obviously, and gauntlet changes did affect balance.
OK it's all only my opinion, and gms decide what to do - maybe they have some other plans. I just say for me starting here was fun, now it would be less so. It's just one vote for more content and fixing gauntlet.

[Charon]

I'm quite perplexed by all of this, In what universe is it hard to gain gold here? I started out 4 yrs ago and was told I absolutely HAD to use pets I HAD TO! Razor or Steam were a must as well.

Just to prove people wrong, I didn't use pets or Razor/Steam I used what I learned from OSI shards and low n behold I was still able to kill things, gain some gold, get better equipment, kill tougher things, get more gold, get better equipment,
kill even tougher things. Weird.. I fought what I could handle and I was able to be successful. Who knew?

Ive never relied on pets to fight for me, I don't do Gauntlet, never really have. If you can't make the effort how can you be happy with what you got?

- You don't need mules, imps, nobles or any other uber pet here.
- You don't need to do Gauntlet
- Relayers are nice to get but not the be all end all, you can be successful without them.
- A mid range leveled Yumi/melee weap and you're good to go
- You don't need to be spoon fed.

Kill bloods, balrons, demons, ellys, loot gems, do an solo old school dungeon crawl, visit champs etc and quit making it out there is some magical mystery to making gold here.
This is basically 90% vanilla UO with some added content and it's AWESOME!!

P.s. I do use Steam now... you don't need it, but the auto looting is sure handy.

[Johnny Warren]

Exactly Charon... It is simple. People whine about it b3ing imbalanced but you certainly can make gold and gain wealth in a huge variety of ways. I was providing one method of going from a week old character to being able to hunt the bally spawns, but you can do it any old way. If you've signed up, seen that some items sell for a million or more gold and gone, "oh that's too much, the economy here is broke"... well uo probably is not the game for you. It does take time to accumulate wealth. If u want a game where you don't need to spend time to develop your character and become richer and more powerful go play street fighter, or super Mario bros or Tetris..

I think it's poor advice to tell people not to use uosteam though, will save your mouse buttons and rsi.

[Charon]

I wasn't saying don't use steam. I did say that along with other things I was told it isn't necessary to use it to be successful.

Back in the day I had to run naked to Moonglow farms to pick cotton and hurry back to town to sell it to npc tailors. Trying to avoid being pk'd in the process.
Suggesting new players start with 50k so they have a chance is pure crap. You start with basic gear like every one else and progress from there. Do some training and head to shame and deceit and earn some gold. Part of the fun in UO is developing your character.
Monsters are no tougher here than in OSI shards for Petes sake.

Just waiting for the request that all new players start with their choice of 4 120 scrolls, a level weapon deed and a maxed bonded mule.

[Melkor]

I feel like the economy could be better in terms of sales. Which comes down to new players. It's an old game so it is what it is, best we can do is vote and keep being a friendly community.

The question of progression now vs 10 years ago to me there is no question it's easier now, but the bar is also way higher now. When I started (in my opinion) this was a tamer shard. Oints were 10k each and good luck finding someone to sell you them anyways. The top dogs had a few relayers, no one even considered a full suit.

My advice to new players is get some GOC pieces for the mana, get max fc/fcr and some imprisoned pets. After that build for yourself what you like in the game.

[Charon]

I feel like the economy could be better in terms of sales. Which comes down to new players. It's an old game so it is what it is, best we can do is vote and keep being a friendly community.

The question of progression now vs 10 years ago to me there is no question it's easier now, but the bar is also way higher now. When I started (in my opinion) this was a tamer shard. Oints were 10k each and good luck finding someone to sell you them anyways. The top dogs had a few relayers, no one even considered a full suit.

My advice to new players is get some GOC pieces for the mana, get max fc/fcr and some imprisoned pets. After that build for yourself what you like in the game.

Agree, we need to keep the shard friendly, stop bashing each other, the GMs, and the shard in general. Help new players with tips, tricks, etc and not necessarily fit them out.
There are a lot of midrange players here, who can hold their own against the bulk of what the shard can throw at them,
and nice group of uber vets and mixture of new and newish players.
I'm not a fan of using pets to fight my battles, but if that's your thing then go hard.

Lots of player made armor with a few arties is more than adequate for low/mid level players.
It was in the past year I got my 2 GOC pieces and relayers, up to that point it was player made gear and Jackals collar and ive done pretty well for myself.

New players IMO need to work for their gear, too often players have fitted them out and never saw them again.
Part of the appeal is to work for what you need, gives you a sense of satisfaction.

[Melkor]

I'm not a fan of using pets to fight my battles, but if that's your thing then go hard.

It's not my preference, I had my time with that. I think its a good way for a new player to get started though.

[Charon]

I'm not a fan of using pets to fight my battles, but if that's your thing then go hard.

It's not my preference, I had my time with that. I think its a good way for a new player to get started though.

Pets while they are handy tend to cause newer players to ignore the basics. Forgoing working their melee skills, building up their armor and weapons.
They can become over confident having the pets kill everything and if the pet dies they are woefully ill prepared to handle themselves, often dieing shortly afterwards, occasionally losing their gear in the process.
The mules/nobles/imps and even ointed up other pets contribute to taking away from what UO is about. It is about the community, working together, fighting together and defending eachother.
These pets allow younger players to solo pretty much everything and spend less time with the community.
We were never intended to be unstoppable we were meant to need each other to thrive, not a one person war machine surrounded by legions of pets.
It's that community working together that drives the UO economy.

[Muolke]

I'm not a fan of using pets to fight my battles, but if that's your thing then go hard.

It's not my preference, I had my time with that. I think its a good way for a new player to get started though.

Pets while they are handy tend to cause newer players to ignore the basics. Forgoing working their melee skills, building up their armor and weapons.
They can become over confident having the pets kill everything and if the pet dies they are woefully ill prepared to handle themselves, often dieing shortly afterwards, occasionally losing their gear in the process.
The mules/nobles/imps and even ointed up other pets contribute to taking away from what UO is about. It is about the community, working together, fighting together and defending eachother.
These pets allow younger players to solo pretty much everything and spend less time with the community.
We were never intended to be unstoppable we were meant to need each other to thrive, not a one person war machine surrounded by legions of pets.
It's that community working together that drives the UO economy.

I certainly understand what you're saying and agree with you in part I also disagree in part. If we were to rewind the clock 6-7-8 years ago there wouldn't be any issue with this because the whole sense of community and all was true. The problem is that back then you had an endless supply of new players joining every day and keeping the community thriving. Unfortunately that's not the case anymore. There's only a very small demographic that wants to play UO. So when we get new players we should do what we can to keep them. Does 50k gold sound like it's too much? They can't really buy anything other than a set of crafted armor with it anyways. You're not giving them the world, you're giving them a running start.

If in the past we kept 1 out of every 10 players that joined, today we need to keep 1 out of every 4 players because there just aren't that many new players joining and if they do...they log in a few times and they don't get any help to get going and eventually quit.

This is why we're even having the discussion about new players.

[NakkasuFR]

What Muolke said because at this point it’s about retention and not fairness to what we started with. Qbf you said there’s a learning curve and it would be good if there was help to alleviate that for new players. New players shouldn’t experience what we did back then. It’s fairly common for games to make things easier as time goes by. Look at world of Warcraft, it thrives, when I started every enemy npc was an elite and you had to spend countless hours grinding and grinding and grinding. Now it’s much simpler. Different game I know but the point is relevant, they do retention correctly.


Imps are bad advice because they’re only needed for a small amount of this game. A newish player who understands the game very well could earn some excellent gold but I’m not putting input for the vets, I can earn a mil a hour hunting. Though I do believe hunting shouldn’t be the only solution for others to earn gold and that’s without pets. You thanked others for not making goc, me too, it’s just not that great of equipment to have. Sure it’s good but there’s no point to a full suit when you have better temporary alternatives. If you’re not planning to make relayers then what’s the point at all. You even mentioned a 100% lrc suit with nobles can handle Barron’s so why get goc, it isn’t needed in that situation.

I may be bias but what stimulates this is paying 5k gold to resurrect from an ankh outside of a dungeon. I immediately thought about new players.

[Charon]

What Muolke said because at this point it’s about retention and not fairness to what we started with. Qbf you said there’s a learning curve and it would be good if there was help to alleviate that for new players. New players shouldn’t experience what we did back then. It’s fairly common for games to make things easier as time goes by. Look at world of Warcraft, it thrives, when I started every enemy npc was an elite and you had to spend countless hours grinding and grinding and grinding. Now it’s much simpler. Different game I know but the point is relevant, they do retention correctly.


Imps are bad advice because they’re only needed for a small amount of this game. A newish player who understands the game very well could earn some excellent gold but I’m not putting input for the vets, I can earn a mil a hour hunting. Though I do believe hunting shouldn’t be the only solution for others to earn gold and that’s without pets. You thanked others for not making goc, me too, it’s just not that great of equipment to have. Sure it’s good but there’s no point to a full suit when you have better temporary alternatives. If you’re not planning to make relayers then what’s the point at all. You even mentioned a 100% lrc suit with nobles can handle Barron’s so why get goc, it isn’t needed in that situation.

I may be bias but what stimulates this is paying 5k gold to resurrect from an ankh outside of a dungeon. I immediately thought about new players.

There is very little learning curve for the bulk of the new players, its not like people are coming along thinking
"oh gee what's this game all about?" Many have played endless hours on OSI or another shard and know what to kill and where to hunt. The trick here is how to use the various new methods to gain skills, after that its Vanilla UO.
Lets not kid ourselves, new players are not NEW to UO they are new to Excelsior. They may need a few refreshers as they could have been away for years.
50k ya isn't a big deal, but why stop at 50k, why not 100k? Gives them pile of cash to instantly put into the economy?
Why not a million, lets give all new players a million and give the economy a real push?
Here's why...
The instant you join the game the first thing on your mind isn't what can I buy, its how can I not die?
They need some basic gear and pointed in the direction of the training halls. From that point they already know what to kill
and where to find it. Giving them 50k and dropping them in TC where everything so far out of their price range you might as well give them the million.

We are spoon fed here as it is, we have very little actual skill grinding, we are severely overpowered compared to the spawn in Vanilla dungeons. If you think the new players are really that put out, then they need to be given gm in all skills and let them fend for themselves after that or is that too much?
Cuz really this game isn't that hard, we all knew that basics we when got here.

[NakkasuFR]

What Muolke said because at this point it’s about retention and not fairness to what we started with. Qbf you said there’s a learning curve and it would be good if there was help to alleviate that for new players. New players shouldn’t experience what we did back then. It’s fairly common for games to make things easier as time goes by. Look at world of Warcraft, it thrives, when I started every enemy npc was an elite and you had to spend countless hours grinding and grinding and grinding. Now it’s much simpler. Different game I know but the point is relevant, they do retention correctly.


Imps are bad advice because they’re only needed for a small amount of this game. A newish player who understands the game very well could earn some excellent gold but I’m not putting input for the vets, I can earn a mil a hour hunting. Though I do believe hunting shouldn’t be the only solution for others to earn gold and that’s without pets. You thanked others for not making goc, me too, it’s just not that great of equipment to have. Sure it’s good but there’s no point to a full suit when you have better temporary alternatives. If you’re not planning to make relayers then what’s the point at all. You even mentioned a 100% lrc suit with nobles can handle Barron’s so why get goc, it isn’t needed in that situation.

I may be bias but what stimulates this is paying 5k gold to resurrect from an ankh outside of a dungeon. I immediately thought about new players.

There is very little learning curve for the bulk of the new players, its not like people are coming along thinking
"oh gee what's this game all about?" Many have played endless hours on OSI or another shard and know what to kill and where to hunt. The trick here is how to use the various new methods to gain skills, after that its Vanilla UO.
Lets not kid ourselves, new players are not NEW to UO they are new to Excelsior. They may need a few refreshers as they could have been away for years.
50k ya isn't a big deal, but why stop at 50k, why not 100k? Gives them pile of cash to instantly put into the economy?
Why not a million, lets give all new players a million and give the economy a real push?
Here's why...
The instant you join the game the first thing on your mind isn't what can I buy, its how can I not die?
They need some basic gear and pointed in the direction of the training halls. From that point they already know what to kill
and where to find it. Giving them 50k and dropping them in TC where everything so far out of their price range you might as well give them the million.

We are spoon fed here as it is, we have very little actual skill grinding, we are severely overpowered compared to the spawn in Vanilla dungeons. If you think the new players are really that put out, then they need to be given gm in all skills and let them fend for themselves after that or is that too much?
Cuz really this game isn't that hard, we all knew that basics we when got here.

In all your experience you don't feel that uoex main gold earning option is hunting? you believe that all other options of earning are even across the board or at only a slight disadvantage? if we go based on equivelant effort

[Charon]

Hunting is probably the main way to make gold, crafting is right up there too. Crafters also need to be able to fend off badies as well requiring them to have melee skills and or pets, possibly both as they advance and have to deal with ellys.
Do crafters need some extra love? Nope. Players choose to play how they do, if you choose to make money from fishing or picking locks or making potions that's your choice.
If you choose to be a magic user and use weapons only when absolutely necessary should those players be given some extra perk, loot bonus etc... no, they chose that path, they live with the consequences.

My point is part of the game is developing your character, making goals and achieving them and moving on to the next goal and achieving that too. Some of those goals require gold to achieve, hunting helps you gain skill and and gold at the same time while refamiliarizing yourself with Britannia.
How is that a bad thing?