Thank you for reading this new player guide. You might find some things here you already know, but probably most of these are custom to our shard. Take a look at the FAQ as that may answer many questions you may have. The Survival Guide is something else you should check out, it has quite a few very good tips. Make sure you read the rules in our codex before you get started. There's also a ton of information written on our forum, as well as important shard news and general chit chat - come join us!

Quick shard info

Account Info

You may have 5 characters on this shard. There is no skill cap. Only one account is allowed per person.

Player Vs. Player (PvP)

Excelsior is a No-PK (player killing) shard, and PvP is only possible in two locations: The PvP Dungeon and the PvP Arena Thunderdome PvP (See for more details). The Dungeon is accessible from Britain in Trammel, and the Arena is accessible from within the Dungeon. You may also PvP with guildmates in the privacy of your own homes, but doing so in public or in town is not appreciated. Warning: These PvP areas are free-for-all, and you can be attacked at any time.

Felucca

Felucca on Excelsior is different from the regular OSI shards.

1. It is under the same rules as Trammel, and players cannot be attacked by other players there.

2. You cannot mark any runes, and you cannot recall out of dungeons or T2A Lost Lands areas.

3. There are Custom Creatures, both good and evil.

4. Using the Recall spell to leave Felucca will leave you drained of all your mana for a period of time.

5. You may not log in with another character if you log out in Felucca. you must log back in on that character before you can log in with another character.

Some areas can be frustrating and result in death for newer or inexperienced players. There are very few resurrection points. Tread carefully, and make sure you're well prepared.

Client Assistants

There are a number of incredibly useful applications that are approved for use on Excelsior. These tools can assist you in a number of ways, but always be aware of the codex rules governing different types of unattended macroing. Failure to do so will not be pleasant for your experience, and we want everyone to have a good time (within the rules).

UO Auto Map

This excellent tool will help you get around, giving you a full map and personal location whether you're in Britannia, a dungeon, or lost at sea. It will also show you important locations. It is invaluable, especially when you make it to Felucca. Be sure to check the link for installation instructions.

Razor

This is another invaluable tool, and its versatility is hard to describe in few words. It will keep track of your skills, allow you to set hot keys and macros, dress and undress weapons and armor quickly, organize bags, sell items - the list goes on. It can seem a little daunting at first for players unfamiliar with it, but everything is easier for having it. Be sure to check the installation notes because you must install it in a specific way in order for it to work with Excelsior.

EasyUO

Another excellent assistant that works differently from Razor. Its strength is that user-submitted scripts can make your life so much easier. Not all of them are perfect, and many are not oriented to free shards, but you'll see it referenced at other places in this wiki and the forums and that's because it's a very nice tool to have. You must register on their website, but the forums are where you can find some excellent user-submitted scripts such as CyberPope's Lumberjacking and Mining Radars. Check the Excelsior forums for further discussion.

TeamSpeak

This application allows you to voice chat with other players, and Excelsior has its own custom channel! Chat with the whole shard, or keep it to your guild/party, whatever suits you.

Character Building

A few tips for before you log in, when you're trying to decide what kind of character to make.

Stat and Skill Caps

The stat cap for every character is is 300, and can be raised to 350 total with scrolls from the Harrower. The maximum you can have in a single stat is 125, but that can be raised by special scrolls as well. See here for more details on Stats. You begin with a 100.0 cap on individual skills, and higher individual caps (up to 120 with powerscrolls, and 130 with essences for FIGHTING SKILLS ONLY) are available through adventuring or barter. There is no limit on how many skills you can raise.

Skill Raising

Most non-harvesting skills can be trained through unattended macroing, so when choosing skills keep in mind what will require the most effort to raise. Choosing 'Hiding' instead of 'Magery' may be the most obvious wrong choice, but through a bit of careful planning you can get a good jump-start on your character build while leaving the easy skills to be trained in an automated or passive fashion.

Trainers

Skill trainers can be found throughout Britannia, and will generally train their relevant skills up to around 30 for .1 skill per gold (~300 gold). Some trainers are everywhere, while others (such as thief trainers) are more scarce. Either way, you'll find the price excellent and the trainers easy enough to find, so don't fail to take advantage of these (and keep them in mind when building your character). When you join the shard, you receive 5 free skill raises using any trainer. These apply to your account, not to your character, so keep that in mind, although you should quickly be able to render any concern over the cost irrelevant.

Skill Ball + 60

After you've made your character, you will have one +60 skill ball to work with. While it may seem like a good idea to use it as soon as you begin, if possible resist the temptation. Likely you'll choose something that will help you immediately, rather than something that will help you in the long term. If you wait until you get a 120 skill cap powerscroll, you can reach the true cap of an important skill with a lot less hassle - say, taking carpentry from 60 to 120, rather than taking a lesser skill from 0-60 or from 40-100. You must weigh the benefits of using it or saving it, but proper planning (and patience) when creating your character will allow you to take advantage of the greatest potential gain from this item.

Stat distribution

Strength: In addition to the amount of weight you can carry, and the requirement for equipping armor and weapons, strength also determines your character's Hit Points. The number of HP you will have can be calculated by dividing your strength in half and adding 50. You can also equip items to raise your strength or HP. Please note that raising your HP alone does not affect your strength.

Dexterity: Dexterity determines the amount of stamina your character has. Stamina relates to your attack speed, how quickly you are able to perform certain actions, and how quickly you will heal naturally, among other things. Your stamina will be equal to your dexterity, unless you have an item equipped that boosts it.

Intelligence: Intelligence determines how much mana you will have to cast spells, your spell damage, and your ability to cast certain spells. Raising your intelligence will boost your mana, and you can equip items to raise your intelligence or MP. Please note that raising your MP alone will not affect your intelligence.

Unlike many shards, stat gain in Excelsior occurs roughly once every 15 minutes, assuming you are using a skill. The stat raised is determined by the skill used. Because of this, you may want to set your stat distribution more evenly when creating a character. Placing all of your stat points into one stat may leave you struggling for a longer period of time than necessary to create a viable character build. See Stats Guide to figure out which skills you may want to work on to raise particular stats.

Skill balls

Also, keep in mind that for a small gold fee, you can raise most skills up to around 30 at the proper NPCs. You may have up to 5 characters. Your additional characters will have one skill ball a piece that can only be used by that specific character. You will also start with a Young Player Ticket, a check for roughly 10k gold, a Pet Bonding Deed, a 30% LRC helmet and 5 free skills to raise from NPCs (please note that's 5 skills total for your entire account, not for each character).

Starting

Your Inventory

Every character will start with the normal staples for their chosen skills in their inventory. If this is your first character, you will also have a check for 10k gold,

Starting point

When you first log in with your new character, you'll be standing in the Excelsior Town Center. To your character's left is a red portal; This is your teleporter to every major location, and you'd do well to familiarize yourself with its contents. But first, look to the south of your character - that blue portal leads to the New Player Donation Room. So head through that portal, and check the

You start out at Town Center. Walk on over to that little red shield on the floor, it's a teleporter! Take that to Britain and check out the 3 stones and Ankh (a cross with a circular head) directly West from the teleporter.

Red Stone - you can resurrect your dead Pet (only bonded pets can be resurrected, and you must have their ghost with you).
Blue Stone - "pet summoning stone". Occasionally you may be forced to leave your pet behind to flee monsters, or you recalled and they did not go with you. This stone will retrieve your pet, or its ghost if it died, for a price, which will be taken automatically from your bank. (60k gold)
Grey Stone - Corpse retrieval stone. It will give you your last corpse back (but only your last one), this service also comes at a price! (20k gold) **If you die multiple times without getting your corpse back, you will have to find the first corpse that has all of your items still on it. So if you know you have no chance of surviving the trip back, retrieve your corpse the first time you die. To quickly gather your items and equipment from your corpse, double-click it. As a side note, it's a great idea to train your hiding and stealth skills early on, this way if you die you can stealth back to your body worry-free!
Ankh - You can resurrect yourself and tithe gold for Chivalry and Cleric spells. You can also lock/unlock your karma. When your karma is locked, you can no longer gain positive karma, but you can still lose karma.

Young Player status

While you have Young status, monsters will not attack you unless you attack them first or wander into a dungeon. Because of this, you may wish to explore the shard to discover where dangerous areas are, so that you may either avoid them until you are stronger, or try your luck with one monster while others ignore you. Since you will start out with a mount, you will be able to move quickly around the shard. Just remember, if you have a pet commanded to guard you, it may choose to attack creatures and be killed. If at any time you get lost, you will be able to teleport immediately to Haven as long as you have Young status. To do this, open your Paperdoll and click the Help button. Click the arrow next to "Young Player Haven Transport" at the top to be teleported.

Your young status will remain until you have outgrown it by any of the following criteria:

Your account is more than 14 days old,
You have played for more than 40 hours,
You reach 1000 total skill,
You renounce your status by saying "I renounce my young player status"

The Rat Quest

There is a quest available for new players that has the potential to bring in lots of dough. Please see Joe the Apprentice (The Rat Quest)

The Excelsior Town Center

At the town center (also referred to as "TC") you can find a large number of player vendors.

There's a blue and yellow gate near the Excelsior Halls world teleporter, which leads to the Newbie Donation room. There are five boxes in this room with different sets of items in each. Please read the books on the desk for more information. Remember to only take what you need for the sake of other new players!

Trinsic

The vendor stones can be found here, right in front of the bank by the teleporter.

Reagent Vending Machine (red stone) sells bulk reagents for magery, necromancy and druid spells.
Vendor Stone (golden) sells the more expensive/custom items you can purchase with gold. It also sells the Trash-4-tokens bag, and the Token ledger should you misplace or loose your originals.
Token-Stone (turquoise) sells rewards which you can buy with tokens. Tokens are gathered by killing monsters, and turning in Bulk Order Deeds. You can also get them by trashing items using your Trash-4-Tokens Bag. Keep your token ledger in your top-level backpack, or in a blessed item bag (which is purchasable with tokens from this stone) at all times, so you can receive tokens.
Excelsior Dollar Reward Gate (white gate near other stones) This gate leads to the 'Excelsior Dollar Reward Stone's', which sell special items that you can purchase with ED's (Excelsior Dollars).
UO Excelsior Websites (blue stones, found in multiple locations) opens a list of UOEx's website, Wiki, Forum, etc.
The Vote stone (yellow and gold table ,with twin stones) is used to vote for this shard on the UO Gateway, thus keeping it as it should be recognized as. As one of the better if not best Free UO Shards. Voting also keeps the EX shard in the top 5-10, and brings us newer players to join in and maintain the fun. So keep voting and if we are lucky, more friends will join us here.

New Player Hub

Training Room

From the World Teleporter, click Custom -> Training Room

This is our training room, with trainers inside, which you can gain your fighting skills from. The training room is a special area, where you cannot be damaged. However, your equipment will still wear out normally with continued use, therefore you are advised not to wear anything that can take durability damage, or use weapons you plan to fight with later; unless you are able to obtain repair deeds.

You can train your skills up to 75 skill points here, and are allowed to train while AFK. Your Pets can also train here, but may not be left unattended. Leaving pets unattended can result in a simple warning or the loss of said pet permanently. Pets may become wild and attack other players (while they can't hurt anyone in the training room, it is still considered a nuisance), this is the reason they are not allowed to be trained unattended, so follow the rules, its just that simple.

There's also a Yellow Gate that leads you to our Newbie Dungeon. The monsters aren't the easiest in existence, but they won't attack you. You can kill them and they won't attack back. They will, however, attack your pets.

Echees

These squirrel-like creatures don't take any pet slots, but you can only have one of them - if you have two they will kill each other instantly. If it is alive and the owner is alive, it heals the owner (echees cannot resurrect players), depending on how experienced the owner is (based on Points). Points = str*5 + dex*5 + int*5 + total skills*10 . It will heal only if you have under 3000 skill points, and the less points you have, the more it will heal and even restore your mana. The restoration will not happen instantly, but will cause your health to increase quicker. Echees are non-breedable, and already come as lvl 40 with a set of ability points you can distribute.

Tokens and Excelsior Dollars

Tokens: They look like turquoise gold coins, a token check looks like a turquoise check. You get tokens by killing monsters - the harder the monster, the more tokens it will give. To receive tokens from kills, your token ledger MUST BE in your backpack. You can also get tokens by trashing items. But do not put tokens, token checks, or your token ledger in your TrashForTokens backpack. You cannot get more tokens by trashing tokens. You can spend your tokens on special items and deeds that can be purchased at the Token Stone in Trinsic.

Excelsior Dollars (ED's): These look like white scrolls. If you hover your mouse over them, it should display " : Genuine : ". You can primarily get them with a donation, however you can also get them in events and by buying them from fellow players. You can use them for donation rewards, and there are also certain player services that require an amount of ED.

Advice

1. Remember the names of the people you talk to about important things. For example, staff members or other players that are causing problems.

2. Remember the exact date/time Type [time to get the exact server time. This way we can find what was going on very easily.

3. Take screenshots There are things that cannot be logged or described with words... if you feel like taking a screenshot, do it. It might also be good laughing material. :) To take a screenshot, hit Prt Scrn (Print Screen) on your keyboard. Then paste it into any image editing program, like Paint.

4. If you die and believe you were PK'd, contact a staff member On 18th May 2006 we implemented a system that logs certain ways of player killing, that can be done even in Trammel rules. Just don't get yourself killed again until a staff member investigates and takes notes on the matter.

5. Insure your items, bond your pets You never know when you might get disconnected in game, or when the server might be disconnected... Many unpleasant things can happen st random times, so it is advised that you insure your valuable items and bond pets that are precious to you. Staff will try to restore as much as they can if there is a server problem, but are not held responsible for items you lose on your own. DO note: Events can be lag filled, and there may be several corpses stacked on top of yours at any time during a battle. The corpse stone can only do so much, and multiple deaths during an event can lead to lose of uninsured items.

New Players Guide

Contents