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First impressions, here we go!
*I absolutely love the restricted fast travel. Gate travel is possible but difficult, just the way it should be. This gives actual use and purpose to the roadways of Britannia and ships. This also opens up the possibility of inadvertent adventures en-route to whatever your destination may be.
*I really am enjoying the aesthetics so far. Maginicia used to be my least favorite town in regular ol’ UO. Here, it looks so much nicer (and the music is nicer). Gone are the ugly, screen-blocking jungles – thank the Virtues! When I get stronger, I look forward to seeing what is lurking in that cavern beneath the Magincia market…
*It’s like you reached into my brain and plucked out some of my ideas. On the last shard I played, it was rather barren in terms of decor. I always thought it would be awesome if Lord British had his Sandalwood box. Lo’ and behold, his Sandalwood box is here!
Further, I always thought that the Palace of Paroxymus (however you spell it) would make an awesome “underworld” type dungeon. Viola, here it is! Though in my vision, I had it as sort of a connector between several dungeons – you could gain access to this large region of the underworld through the bottom of despise, the bottom of wrong, and the bottom of Shame. But just seeing it used here is fantastic.
*The community thus far seems small – might just be the time of day I played, but the people I did meet are friendly and helpful! More coverage of this shard on places like Reddit might go a long way to bolstering the playerbase a bit.
*Skills and stats seem to gain pretty slowly. It’s not that fun to sit there and try to build up a character for hours and hours for a few 0.1 gains.
*Stamina seems to drain pretty fast while running (and even walking!) – this was alleviated when I got a horse, but still. Maybe decrease the use of stamina from normal walking?
*I got attacked by something called a wolf spider right when I walked up to the upper floor of Despise. I don’t know what that is and at this point I am too afraid to ask.
*The house system here is really awesome. I love the idea of living inside the town itself and making use of the buildings. Some of the designs are really nice. I have my eye on a couple of potential spots… Just need to do about 700 more NPC escorts until I have enough gold!
*There seems to be a lot of unfamiliar ingredients and resources. I found some obsidian on an ettin, not sure what its for. There is a guy who sells spices in town – for cooking I presume? I read something about hunger – is food required here? I have not yet felt the pangs of hunger.
*Lots of breweries! Britannians must sure love to drink!
*Graphical issues – the roadways sometimes are repetitive in their tile placement/texture. I assume this is a result of editing the map? Also, the mountains near the despise pass do not blend with the dirt or grass around it, so it looks extra janky.
*Not an impression, but a suggestion perhaps – An undead/necromancer type faction akin to the orcs and pirates (so another buy guy profession) that makes use of the undead spells and the really cool necromancer transformation spells (those were my favorite from AoS).
So, those are my first impressions based on playing for a few hours thus far! Overall I am very impressed and am enjoying it, and looking forward to playing some more!
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As an aside, if you need any help in the future with things, I would be happy to lend a hand. I would like to play for awhile here as a player to better learn the server, but I have GM’d on another freeshard before (so very familiar with Run UO GM commands), done lots of decor, done up a lot of RP events and so forth. Just letting you know 🙂Thanks for the hard work and keep it up!
Totally agree on the skill gains, maybe tweak them just a tad. I feel like GM magery (or even 70 magery) is a long… long way off.
I would rather get my skills in order quickly so I can then focus on the roleplay (and making the gold to start that tavern I’ve always wanted to run!)
Not sure why wolf spiders are in Despise, if memory serves they are supposed to be like elite super mobs that spawn outside that creepy spider boss in the underworld.
@BaelinStorm Thanks for the feedback!
As I mentioned, the shard is undergoing some updates, with the help and advice of Lokai and Nox. I started off with a vision, a very particular aesthetic, a love of pre-T2A UO, and a keen love of all things Ultima…and unfortunately, zero experience in programming, and not a lot of knowledge about UO past about 2000 or so, except the occasional foray into various freeshards. I learned a lot making this shard, but there are many thing s I did not consider, or maybe even know about. It was a bit rough in the beginning, but I think it is coming together, and will continue to work hard to improve it.
1. Currently gate travel is incredibly rare…rare enough to be nothing more than a novelty. I may ease up and make it a bit less so. We shall see how it develops. No recall and rare gate travel, was one of the first decisions I made when I decided to create this shard.
2. Thanks! New Magincia is one of my favorite new areas. I had fun creating it. I did realize recently that I did not vary the road tiles enough here. It is probably the most interactive of the towns, though I tried to add little features and easter eggs here and there to all of them, and hope to continue doing so.
3. I am so glad that you appreciate the sandalwood box! I added quite a few Ultima-related features, including a few conversational NPCs here and there. The goal was not to use quests and other static elements to create a RP/Ultima experience, but rather to try to create a general Ultima feeling to facilitate immersion and RP. I hope to continue in this direction.
Yes, the moment I saw the Palace of Paroxymus, I thought of the Underworld expedition from Ultima 5. Took a bit to replace the acid with water, but I am happy with the result. I also wanted to include a vast Underworld that connected all of the dungeons. I did create, and redesign a few dungeons, but ran out of steam (and new graphics for creatures that align with the shard’s aesthetic). I may work on this at a later date.
4. The community is small so far, but amazing. We shall see how it goes. I will advertise more when the shard is a bit more stable and balanced, and when more bugs have been worked out. If you know anyone who might enjoy it, please invite them to try it.
5. Skills were much slower before I turned off the anti-macro code. I also made it a bit faster, though it is still slightly slower than default RunUO. I will give this some thought.
6. Low stamina when walking and such probably means you need to eat.I will ctest it out. Thanks!
7. Wolf spiders are removed for now…but will reappear somewhere..:).
8. Thanks! Knives’ Town Houses is an amazing script. The scripter deserves major kudos for this one. I hope to flesh out the towns as well, and include a player government system.
9. Most of the ingredients do something. Many are for alchemy or withcraft. You can check out the Economics section of the Book of Lore to get a general idea. I am tweaking these, and hope to expand on them.
The spice merchant is for the cooking skill. I like to cook a bit myself, and tried to fashion a fairly realistic cooking system, as well as regional fare and cookbooks.
Food is required, and decreased stamina, but will not kill you. I created a hunger gump, but took it out aft the mass poisoning incident. I will test it, and hopefully replace it. I also hope to include occasional messages regarding hunger and thirst.
10. Yes, the breweries and wineries. I rather like my wine, so there may be some correlation…:). I hope to include a brewing/winemaking script at some point as well.
11. Most of the map has been left intact. I tried to change as many glitches as possible on the original, but probably missed a lot. I was reluctant at first to change the map, due to nostalgia and unfamiliarity with CenrtED (the map editing tool I used to modify the map and create all the houses and new ares). As I got better with it, I became more willing to modify the map. You can see this in certain early attempts (a few of the lighthouses, Terfin, New Magincia, Paws). I actually went back before release and redid the shoreline in Terfin, as it was terribly blocky.
12. I will consider the undead faction. I will be working on the orcs a bit in the future, making them more viable. I took out the pirates, and will instead make them a guild.
14. Thanks for the offer. I will definitely be looking for GMs amd will let you know.
Thanks you very much, dogancan! Sorry it took me so long to reply. I have been in transit for a while, and hard at work on the shard in between. I did not see this until now. We are working hard and hoping to reach beta in the next few months. It has improved a lot since release, but there is much to do.
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