Excelsior

I keep hearing of people without pets doing 300 plus damage per hit with their weapons.
how do they pull this off? someone said it had something to do with bushido and chivalry, or maybe necromancy

i do admit im working on my mistvale armors and items. i have 125 str 125 dex 50 int base.

how are people pulling off this insane damage? i do maybe 60 per hit.

A good bow helps with some concentrated damage with the right chivalry spells (Consecrus Arma and Forul Solum) and some good hits on the bow (fireball and lightning) with the ability double shot you can get some pretty nice damage, but it cost a lot of mana.

Otherwise, you can have a aeo melee weapon(double axe, Halberd) and with the first ability Whirlwind attack + the chivalry spells and a couple of monster around you can make a good overall damage. In this case you must have a lot of dex and hp to resist.

the biggest factor in your damage are external: the resists of your target. you can increase your damage with chivalry, necro, gear, etc, but you will do much less damage to mobs that have high amount of every resist type.

For single hit damage:
-Consecrate Weapon makes your hits target the lowest resistance of the target
-Enemy of One can be used in two ways, as intended to make more damage to the target creature type, or to make you take more damage from the enemies, more on this in the second part of this post
-Damage Increase (caps at 100%) and Strength
-Hit Spell properties on your weapon, 2-3 different direct spells do stack up
-Evaluating Intelligence: To bump up that spell damage (Add in Intelligence if using Hit Harm)
-Spell Damage Increase, you can really start doing more damage by the spell hits than your base weapon damage once you get this up
-Weapon Abilities: Double Shot, Double Strike, Whirlwind and Crushing Blow can all increase your damage
-You could also opt for Discordance, but people tend to leave it once they reach better damage or start soloing creatures which can't be discorded

Overall damage:
-Same things than with single hit damage with few additions as follows:
-Enemy of One can be used to cause you take more damage to allow Reflect Physical Damage reflect more, this can be made even better by lowering your Defense Chance Increase and resistances to cause yourself take even more damage, thus reflecting more. Naturally this requires a very high HP to go with
-Hit Area Spells, same as with Hit Spells, but cannot benefit from Spell Damage Increase
-Momentum Strike if your weapon has no Whirlwind. Momentum Strike allows you to hit two targets with damage bonus on the second target.
-Counter Attack: If you parry, you'll retaliate without losing a normal hit. Works better with higher parry chance and more mobs around you

so we have two spell series that work well with good karma, chivalry and cleric, then we have necromancy that works better with negative karma.



for some reason after killing 3 blue named enemies in yoshimitsu mines, I literally seem to be stuck as sinister lord, even after killing countless monsters.

should i invest in necromancy? wich side has better damage boosts? chivalry or necromancy?
can the two co exist without messing up damages?

Chivalry spell duration is based on your karma. The higher the karma, the longer they last. You can still use Chivalry spells with very low karma, but be prepared to cast them a lot to keep the effects up.

Cleric prayers, while using Tithing points to cast, are not affected by your karma. The skill they're based on is Spirit Speak, which, interestingly, is the skill that boosts Necromancy spells.

And Necromancy, as said relies on Spirit Speak skill and always lowers your karma when cast. Necromancy is great for mages as it can boost their fire damage and allow their poisons to be cast one level higher. Necromancy also brings two more poison damage spells for the mage, however, for a fighter, Necromancy offers only a couple of good things and one mediocre one, in my opinion. The good skills are Vampiric Embrace, which allows you to leech life and immunity to be polymorphed (useful for example against Barracoon, but you cannot use Angelic Faith at the same time), and Curse Weapon, which gives you even greater leech life effect (I have this spell in my main script for when my hp is critical or I am mortally wounded). Where you cast Vampiric Embrace only after death (it lasts over log out) and I use Curse Weapon only under very specific occasions, it doesn't really drain my karma and what little it drains, I can easily gain back by killing few balrons. The mediocre Necromancy spell is Blood Oath, which gives you reflect damage. Similar to Clerical prayer Trial By Fire, but more potent. However it gets outdated when you reach higher level of Reflect Physical Damage.

I'd say that leveling up Necromancy is worth it later in the game so that you can benefit from the leech life it can offer via Vampiric Embrace and Curse Weapon, unless you're really wishing to become a mage, when Necromancy can help you by upgrading your damage and providing more poison damage sources, even though, most harder things in this game are usually immune to poison. Focusing on Chivalry to increase your own combat ability via Consecrate Weapon, Divine Fury and Enemy of One is a good route for those willing to move on from using pets and Cleric prayers do offer good support for your pets and also allow you to deal with the umm in Felucca.

PS. If you found that your karma is locked and you cannot raise it, visit an ankh and unlock your karma. Karma locks when you go below 0

A Yumi with 3 spells on it using double shot gives you the best single target DPS when you;
Cast Consecrate weapon (hit lowest resist)
Cast Enemy of one (do more DMG to that kind of target)
Cast Divine Fury (do more DMG over all)
Buff with STR potion and bless (adds about 10 base dmg for me in my Character staus)
Use discord to low the targets defense
Have High SDI on your gear (I only have like 180% but lighting will often do more dmg then the arrow it self)

on targets that cant be discorded I use a necro spell to lower their defense (Corps skin ) there is not really problem using chiv and necro together. On this shard you kill stuff so fast and mana regen leach means you can recast whatever spell over and over without the duration time penalty mattering.

I have a imp pack i don't use anymore because its more trouble then its worth now that I have good DPS. Ballys die in four shots and a round of gauntlet can easy be done solo in 8 min.

Halaber WW with a bunch of AOE is best (imo) for mass mobs targets I have one with 223% AOE on it and it can do thousands of DMG per swing (whole screen would turn red in ubris camp back in the day) a Halaber with WW that has 3 spells and life&mana leach is best in a lot of events where AOE is turned off.
I use the same spells and discord when i fight with my halaber.

Hope that helped.
Nick of Old

I think pretty much everything is covered here now, I didn't know about the corpse skin one, that's a nice trick for stuff you can't discord. Discord is very effective though, I would get it as high as you can as soon as possible as a lot of stuff can be discorded.

Angel form spell also increases your strength (also useful as it increases your dex) and anatomy skill, I think, which will add to your damage output.

ive been here goin on 5 yrs and to this day I have Never used a pet in any fight while I didn't just roll the char I play I do recommend new players use chiv and bush with the spells in proper order to get massive damage and yes discord is essential for most mobs but if ya cant use it on 1 then id say stay on the move and make them come to you but good gear stats and weps all come together to make you deadly I used a horse bow for a long time an was tking balrons in blood dung in 5-6hit avg 250-275 or more per hit now its better but still no pets needed

lilbear68 wrote:ive been here goin on 5 yrs and to this day I have Never used a pet in any fight while I didn't just roll the char I play I do recommend new players use chiv and bush with the spells in proper order to get massive damage and yes discord is essential for most mobs but if ya cant use it on 1 then id say stay on the move and make them come to you but good gear stats and weps all come together to make you deadly I used a horse bow for a long time an was tking balrons in blood dung in 5-6hit avg 250-275 or more per hit now its better but still no pets needed

I definitely agree that once you get to a certain point, pets are almost not used at all, but there are some places where they are still a must, for example in the GoC quest line, I don't know how you could face some of those nasties without pets. Also, in the karate belt quest, there is a particularly difficult dragon in the red belt part.

Earlier on in the game though they definitely accelerate you towards being able to afford the gear needed for the magic 220 dex. You can take down a lot of bosses and balrons etc. a lot quicker than you could without them.

nocturne7saint wrote:I keep hearing of people without pets doing 300 plus damage per hit with their weapons.
how do they pull this off? someone said it had something to do with bushido and chivalry, or maybe necromancy

i do admit im working on my mistvale armors and items. i have 125 str 125 dex 50 int base.

how are people pulling off this insane damage? i do maybe 60 per hit.

As you'll have seen from the replies, there are lots of factors that determine how hard you swing for, and it can take a long time to build yourself up to the point where you deal 300 damage per swing. There's no one thing that will get you to your magic number, you need to kind of understand everything, and then start to build it all up.

To me, it breaks down into 3 points: Your Weapon, Your Character, and Your Opponent.

Your Weapon:
Your weapon will have base damage stats. I'll use the double axe as an example, because that happens to be my weapon of choice. Its base damage is, I believe, 15-17. This number will be multiplied based on factors in the "Your Character" bit below. We'll call this Melee Damage

Get to know your weapon's abilities, because they will greatly affect the damage you can deal. For example, a Double Axe comes with Double Strike and Whirlwind. Whirlwind is obviously great for wiping out multiple foes at once, but in terms of dealing high single target damage, Double Strike can be absolutely incredible, if coupled with the right Hit Spells.

There are various Hit Spells, and people have their preferences (and different spells will affect different monsters in different ways) but you'll often see Hit Lightning, Hit Fireball, Hit Harm on weps. With every swing of your weapon you have a percentage chance of using those spells. So let's pretend it's Hit Lightning 50, Hit Fireball 50, and Hit Harm 50.

The way Double Strike works is, you get the chance of 2 hits in one swing (you're not guaranteed to hit either, that is based on your character's skills/hit chance stats) but for the purposes of this, let's say you get 2 hits on your one swing. The first hit will do its normal Melee Damage plus give you a 50% chance of Lightning, 50% chance of Fireball, and a 50% chance of Hit Harm. Then, in the same swing, the weapon will do 90% of its regular Melee Damage (the deal with Double Strike is that the second hit only deals 90% melee damage) and give you a 50% chance of Lightning, 50% chance of Fireball, and 50% chance of Hit Harm.

So, in theory, in one swing you could do 2x Melee Damage, 2x Lightning Spell Damage, 2x Fireball Spell Damage, and 2x Hit Harm Spell Damage. 8 hits in one swing (you could, of course, lower the percentages on your spell hits, and throw in Magic Arrow and give yourself a chance of 2x Magic Arrow, too). So - if you were lucky - you could get 8 hits in one swing (10 if using magic arrow).

How much damage each of those 8 swings does is down to Your Character's stats and Your Opponent's stats.

Your Character:

The amount of damage you deal is based on a few factors.

The first thing to understand is that there are 2 types of Damage Increase. There is a stat called "Damage Increase" and then there is a sort of behind-the-scenes damage increase which is calculated based on some of your character's other skills and stats. I'll explain this below.

Damage Increase Stat: There is a specific "Damage Increase" stat on your character (you'll find this stat on weapons/items and relayers), so you can build yourself up a suit that has lots of Damage Increase. However, this specific stat is capped at 100%. It does what it says - it increases your Melee Damage by 100%.

That other, covert, damage increase is on your character, is uncapped, and is based on the following:

Strength: This is calculated as (Strength x 0.3) + 5. So, your strength of 125 would be (125 x 0.3) + 5 = 42.5. (Note: UO seems to round down, so this would be 42 Melee Damage increase.)

Anatomy: This is calculated as (Anatomy Skill / 2) + 5. So if you get your Anatomy skill up to 130, that would represent a further Melee Damage increase bonus of 70.

Tactics: This is calculated as (Tactics Skill / 1.6) + 6.25. So, if you get your Tactics skill up to 130, that would be an additional 87 Melee Damage Increase

Lumberjacking: Using an axe? You get a Lumber damage increase bonus, if so. It's calculated as (Lumberjacking Skill / 5) + 10. So, get it up to 120 and your Melee Damage increase will go up by a further 34.

On top of the Melee Damage, you can also increase how much damage the Spell Hits are doing on each successful swing. This is affected by the below:

Spell Damage Increase: SDI is literally a percentage increase in the amount of damage your spells do, either cast with your magery skill or upon a successful weapon spell hit. This is uncapped, so my advice is, get this as high as you can when you're levelling weapons for use as relayers. If you level a normal wep, you can get 20 SDI, and some special items may go higher (e.g. The Jewel of Winter has 30 SDI).

So, I think the base damage for the Lightning spell is in the range 6.9 - 8. Your SDI skill will increase that. But it will also be increased by:

Evaluating Intelligence: Calculated as ((Evaluating Intelligence * 3) / 100) + 1. So 120 Eval Int = a multiplier of 4 (so, 400%)

Inscription: You'll get a further 10% spell damage increase bonus if you get to GM or higher in Inscription.

Intelligence: You get an extra percentage equal to 10% of your total intelligence. So your 50 Int would get you a further 5% spell damage bonus.

I'm pretty sure that's all of the "Your Character" stuff, so the last thing is...

Your Opponent:

Whoever you're fighting against will have various resistances - to Melee Damage and to Magic Damage - and everything I've described above will be calculated BEFORE the resistances of your opponent are taken into account. Something that's high in energy resist will be hurt less by your Hit Lightning, something with high Cold resist will be less damaged by your Hit Harm etc.

Skills like Discordance are fantastic for lowering the resists of your opponent, and thus ensuring you deal more damage. Likewise, Enemy of One makes you much more damaging against the one Monster Type you used it on.

Buffs:

Other posts in this thread have already listed these, but just know that spells like Consecrus Arma, Bless etc can give you a temporary buff which will increase your damage. Likewise, if you drink a Strength potion, it will change the result of the above-described Strength-to-Damage calculation, and so a Strength potion can also lead to an increase to your damage.

Once you understand all the other calculations I've described, you'll be able to work out how to deal the big damage.

What To Do Next:
There are some "quick wins" for you, here, to make yourself as damaging as possible, even before you get into the worry of dropping big money on stat scrolls, relayers etc.

1) Get your Anatomy skill as high as you can (Max 130)
2) Get your Tactics up as high as you can (Max 130)
3) Get your Lumber up as high as you can (Max 120)
4) Get your Evaluating Intelligence up as high as you can (Max 120)
5) Get your Inscription to 100
6) Get your Discordance up as high as you can (Max 120)
7) Get your Chivalry up as high as you can (Max is 120 with elixirs, but worry about going beyond GM later)

Get to know what Weapon Abilities you like, and get a wep to suit you.

You can start to think about getting your Strength and Intelligence up higher once you get more money and buy stat scrolls, but I'd definitely do all of the above asap.

SO LOOK - you'll see there is no quick way to get to the 300 HP Damage Per Swing goal. You have a lot of work to do, but it's a lot of fun getting there.