Help me understand why my template is bad.

[Zijarih]

Hello everyone,
Firstly, thank you for your time in reading this.

First time playing UO ever, so the last 3 weeks I was getting used to the controls, UI, Macros, Scripts and such, and ofc I created a bunch of templates played it for a while and started over just to have a feel of the skills and the game in general. I can't play much (around 2h a day) so I know that I'll progress slowly and that's fine, Im just enjoying Outlands.

I eventually came up with a template to explore/farm beyond Shelter. I do know this is a bad template - specially for a new player, I just wanted more insight on why it is bad, how much can it hinder my initial experience with the game, and maybe improve this base-template and still enjoy the same (sort of) gameplay.

@Shelter > planned @700 skill points:
Magery: 80 > 100
S.Speak: 80 > 100
Wrestling: 80 > 100
Tactics: 80 > 100
Parrying: 80
Res.Spells: 80
Meditatio: 70
Focus: 70

Stats: 100 STR / 63 DEX / 62 INT (not sure abou DEX/INT ratio)

The idea is to punch (fistblade/martial manual) things alongside my summons and (almost) completely ignoring damaging spells - coz of rearming and cast time annoyance. Me and my summons would be buffed all the time with Bless + Arch Prot. and eventually Reactive Armor. Since Im just starting this would be the character that I'll farm my way into Parry/Wrestling Codices, Wizard's Grimmoire and Summoner's Tome, and later Aspects.
I just wanted to have all the cool spells from Magery, have easier (than Taming) to handle followers, and still be a sort of brawler.

From what I could research on wiki and other forum posts, I'll suffer with low damage output but will gain in sustain/toughness, and maybe this can help me hold on tight when reds shows up (or makes it easier to escape them).

I would really appreciate If people more experienced could talk me through If this template is just a complete mess and I should just roll over, or if this can be salvaged and still retain the ideas of gameplay said above.

Thanks again!

---EDIT---

Forgot to mention that Im experimenting with armor types because of mana regen. Im trying to balance acceptable mana regen penalty with highest AR possible. Inclined to use Bone or Chain.

 

[AreYouKidden]

Highly recommend you join us in discord, to get immediate help, and talk through the issues.

Reality it all depends on what's important to you for gameplay. But the reasons why the template doesn't work:

• You are a dexxer who doesn't do damage (no damage/SDI skills) or really have recovery (healing or alchemy)
  • magery on a dexxer for recovery with meditation means having to have lesser armors take more damage, which makes it harder to stay damage focused
  • that said, summons helps distribute damage
• You are a mage who doesn't do damage (no eval/SDI skills), and will have limited mana if you burn it on a summons and are wearing heavy armors
• You are a summoner who hasn't focused on summons damage (herding / necromancy)

What you are, is super tanky, and you'll likely be able to get away from PK's, but you'll never be able to fight them because you can't do damage, you are a jack of all playstyles, master of none, and UO/Outlands in particular thrives off of focusing down one laneway, and not branching off too much. Hybrids traditionally haven't done well here.

 

[doel]

there are many ingame activities, like dungeons crawling, boss fights, pvp, gathering, treasure maps, wilderness, sea content, etc. You want a different build for each of them. Best to look at it from the Aspect that is required. You will need 3 aspects at lvl 15 eventually. So if you pick an activity, then you pick the aspect and then you add the skills. PvE character can play without wrestling/resist. yes, you will get PKd a lot, but you can pve well, or wise versa, you can make a pvp char but you will lack pve damage. So pick an aspect and figure out which other 2 aspects you will level up later. There are echoes in game, you can have several builds on one character.

 

[Zijarih]

Thank you very much for answering guys!

Yeah, I guess while I've intended to prevent harassing from others, I've got harmed myself with this template. It makes sense from a balancing pov that too much hybridzation between PVP and PVM can't be viable.

Fun fact: proud of myself for kind of being protected against PKs with this template, I went to my first dungeon and to my surprise my first summoning cast failed and I got a sysmsg that I needed reagents, I thought pretty weird since I still had plenty of charges on my Spellstone. Looked on my backpack and where's my stone??

After searching it for a while and reading about Thieving, bound items and newbied items, I realized; when I created this character I've traded all his starting belongings to another character of mine to go naked test some things while dual clienting, that probably took off the newbie status on my spellstone and a thieve must have robbed me while I was roaming the world buying scrolls from player vendors. I can't even guess when/where the supposed thief got it. Got really pissed.. than laugh out loud afterwards, thinking "so this is Ultima huh?".

Well, I gues now Im baptized to UO Outlands lol.

I'll stick with the summoner starter template as a safer approach.

On an off-topic question: can a Wizard's Satchel equipped on my character's paperdoll (not on backpack) be snooped by a thief? And therefore my reagents be stolen?

 

[doel]

yes, everything that is not blessed can be stolen. you need to follow the quests at the shelter island dungeon entrance, then you will receive your starting kit. Alongside you get your skills to 80 and at this point you can mark runes and recall, as summoner required magery. You can open your atlas in backpack and see the locations of new player dungeons where you can make more gold for reagents. Since you have a rune tome from the quests, fill it out with some runes. Rune libraries are located near moongates, like Cambria, Prevelia, Outpost, maybe more. Mark runes and save time for traveling.