Ultima Online Play Guide

Ultima Online is more than just about combat - it is an entire world itself where players interact with each other and various NPCs including vendors and monsters.

Players can travel between the many towns, explore the wilderness, and delve into dungeons full of monsters.

Paperdoll

You can view your character by pressing Alt-P. This opens up your character's paperdoll wish shows what your character is wearing and holding.

Stats

Pressing Alt-S will open up your stats bar which shows your character's vital information including strength, dexterity, intelligence, hitpoints, stamina, and mana. Your hitpoints are directly based on your strength, stamina on dexterity, and mana on intelligence. Strength not only improves your hitpoints but increased your melee damage and carrying capacity as well. Your stamina determines how quickly you can attack with melee or ranged weapons. Stamina decreases when running, overloaded, or when taking damage. If your stamina reaches zero you will not be able to move momentarily until you ragain some stamina. Mana is the pool drawn from when you cast spells. The higher the circle of the spell the more mana is used.

Skills

Pressing Alt-K will bring up your skill list. Characters are free to learn any combination of skills they want (with the limitation of only a couple of skills the require another skill first). Each character is limited to 100.0 points in any one skill and 720.0 total skill points. As you use a skill you will increase in that skill, as long as you have room for it to increase. To help manage your skills each skill can be locked in one of three positions:

• Up - the skill will gain as normal when you use it.
• Down - the skill will only drop as other skills increase.
• Locked - the skill is locked to prevent it from changing.

Items

Players can acquire items as loot from monsters, buying from vendors, trading with other players, treasure chests, or even just laying around on the ground. As with most containers, your backpack can hold up to 125 items, however, your are limited to the amount of weight you can carry based on your character's strength. You can also have containers within containers, but still the outermost container is limited to 125 items total within it. To pick up an item on the ground or in another container, simply click on it and drag it to where you wish to place it. You can open your backpack by pressing Alt-I for Inventory.

Bank Boxes

Each character has their own bank box which only they can access. Your bank box can be accessed from any bank in any town. While having the 125 item limit, they can store unlimited weight. Your bank box is your only guaranteed secure place for storage.

Weapons and Armor

The weapons you start with are merely practice weapons and do very little damage. These are ideal for practicing against your friends with in order to increase your combat abilities. You will eventually need better weapons and armor which you can purchase from an NPC vendor, a player vendor, or from other players. Some weapons and armor are of better quality than others. Items stamped with the name of their maker are of the highest quality and inflict more damage. There are also items that are marked as being exceptional quality but just don't bear a maker's name. Magic items can also be found. These vary in effectiveness - some are even better than the best weapons made by players.

Magic Weapons

In order to learn the properties of magic weapons, you must identify them using either the item identification skill or a wand of identification on them. Even if not ID'd, they still function the same. Magic weapons can have up to three main magical properties:

• Durability - enhanced durabilities allow the weapon to last longer before requiring repairs. Each level of durability is better than the previous. Note that "indestructible" does not mean the weapon is truely indestructible, it's just the highest level of durability. Durability enhancements include:
  • Durable
  • Substantial
  • Massive
  • Fortified
  • Indestructible
• Accuracy - for melee weapons this enhances the character's tactics skill when wielded, or for ranged weapons this increases the character's archery skill. Accuracy enhancements include:
  • Accurate
  • Surpassingly Accurate
  • Eminently Accurate
  • Exceedingly Accurate
  • Supremely Accurate
• Damage - increases the amount of damage done by the weapon. Possible damage ranges include:
  • Ruin
  • Might
  • Force
  • Power
  • Vanquishing

Magic Armor

Magic armor can have up to two main enhancements, and like magic weapons, must be identified in order to see the exact properties. Also note that invulnerability armor does not truely make the wearer invulnerable. Armor properties include:

• Durability - similar to the magic weapon durability properties:
  • Durable
  • Substantial
  • Massive
  • Fortified
  • Indestructible
• Protection - amount of added protection, or armor rating (AR) granted by the piece of armor:
  • Defense
  • Guarding
  • Hardening
  • Fortification
  • Invulnerability

Combat

You can engage combat with another player or monster by pressing tab to enable war mode. While in war mode your cursor becomes red. Then by double-clicking a target you will attack them with whatever weapon you have armed yourself with. Mousing over a person or monster while in war mode will highlight them in one of five colors depending on their current reputation:

• Blue - Attacking this character will flag you as criminal. In town this means the guards can be called on you.
• Grey - This character is criminal and can be attacked freely. Note that a character that is grey to you is not necessarily grey to other people.
• Red - This character is a murderer! There might even be a reward out for their death.
• Green - This character is a member of your guild or an ally. Attacking them will not flag you as criminal.
• Orange - This character is a member of an enemy guild. Your guild at some point declared war on them. Attacking them will not flag you as criminal.

Houses

Players can buy house deeds and place their own house on vacant land. Houses generally need a nice flat space devoid of trees and bushes. They also cannot be placed in the vacinity of dungeon entrances or in towns. Houses have lockable doors and keys to go with them. Keep your house key safe, as anyone who gets ahold of the key can unlock your door. Items in a house can be locked down so that only an owner or co-owner can remove them. Containers can be secured whereas only owners and friends of the house can access them, even if someone else acquires the key to your house. Owners include the character who placed the house and all other characters on the same account. Friends can be added by accessing the house sign (double click on it). The sign can also be used to permanently ban people from the house. Interior doors can also be locked by using the master key to create new interior door keys. House deeds can be purchased from an NPC architect which are found in some towns.

Each house has a maximum lockdown limit as well as a maximum number of secure containers. Securing a container also subtracts 125 lockdowns from the available number. Housing is limited to one building per character with a total limit of 4,930 maximum lockdowns per account. This means you could place two large towers and a small tower, or a castle and a sandstone patio house, amongst many other possible combinations.

Account

A character must be at least five days old before they can be deleted.

Commands

The following is a list of text commands that can be issued in the game:

Skills

Skill list and details coming soon.