As the battle for Britannia’s future begins, major economic change sweeps Sosaria, while a much loved feature from classic Ultima Online returns…
Dynamic Vendor Economy
- In a major change to the NPC vendor economy, regular town shopkeepers across Sosaria have been given the freedom to set their own prices.
- Different vendors in the same town and even in the very same shop may offer vastly different prices, or one town may be full of rip-offs while there are huge discounts available in another, encouraging shoppers to hunt around far and wide for the best bargains.
- Many factors can impact how much a vendor may charge for their goods. For example, a vendor with positive karma is likely to offer a better deal, while those with negative karma are likely to be unscrupulous and attempt rip their customers off. Other factors can include the vendor’s fame (or lack thereof) and even the Sosarian time of day, with some shopkeepers charging less during their normal business hours than they do in the middle of the night.
- Real Estate Brokers, Architects, and Artifact Dealers are exceptions and will always have the same prices as one another.
- The other exceptions are all the vendors located in the Faction towns, as their prices are controlled by the tax rate set by Faction Commanders and Lord Blackthorn (see below). If a Faction Commander was to set the tax rate in a town to 0%, it would result in the price of all items sold in that town being “normal” (what they have been in non-faction towns up until this publish).
Power Hour
- Each character will now have a training Power Hour once every 24 real hours, during which their chance to gain skills is doubled.
- Use the [Powerhour command or see the message at each login to check how much time remains until that character’s next Power Hour.
- Power Hour has replaced the smaller dungeon bonus and the Guaranteed Gain System.
- Characters can now train skills up until 80 in the Jhelom Training Area, after which they must leave the town to continue training further. The message alerting players when they need to leave to continue training a will now only be displayed at exactly 80.0 skill to prevent it being spammed constantly from 80 up.
- Creatures can no longer gain skills while inside player owned houses. This includes tamed pets.
- Faction members now benefit from a 20% bonus to their chance to gain skills while inside a town that is under their Faction’s control. Characters won’t get this bonus if they are hidden/invisible.
Factions
- The four Factions have withdrawn from contesting the isolated Lost Lands as the war for Britannia’s future intensifies. They have also been forced to abandon further attempts to capture the capital city of Britain for the time being, as the large armies of both Order and Chaos stationed in such close proximity make securing the city nigh on impossible.
- Five Britannian towns have become the main focus of fierce Faction fighting due to their strategic locations, with Skara Brae once again rejoining the fray, along with the battle-scarred cities of Trinsic, Ocllo, Moonglow, and Yew.
- Faction elections now elect both a Commander and a Sheriff in Britannia. The winner of the election becomes the Commander, with second place becoming the Sheriff, unless only one position is vacant, in which case the election winner will fill the vacant position.
- Factions without leadership will now skip the days long election waiting period and will continue cycling through the campaign/voting process until someone runs for office and a Commander is elected.
- Commanders and Sheriffs perform completely different jobs. Commanders are responsible for managing both their Faction and the towns under their control, while Sheriffs may hire and lead troops into battle.
- Sheriffs can say “I am Sheriff” in any town to hire guards and check their upkeep. Faction guards may be placed in most towns by the Sheriff, including those not under their control and even in non-faction towns. The exceptions where guards cannot be placed are Britain, Wind, Jhelom, and Buc’s Den. This allows the Sheriff to lay claim to new towns (such as Minoc, Vesper, Cove, Nujel’m, etc…) by stationing guards where they wish, or even to launch attacks in towns held by enemy Factions.
- Sheriffs can give orders to guards by saying “orders” near them. After the guards respond and stand at attention, follow up with an order such as “follow”, “patrol”, or “attack”. Guards will only follow/obey for a limited distance and amount of time before returning to their original station. Sheriffs may also fire guards (only the ones they have hired) by saying “you are fired”.
- The upfront cost and ongoing wages for each guard the Sheriff hires is paid for by their Faction’s treasury. The Commander is responsible for managing their Faction’s treasury and ensuring the Sheriff has enough to pay their troops. Unpaid troops will quit on the spot and vanish.
- The town management system available to Commanders has been improved and expanded. Commanders can manage a town under their Faction’s control by saying “I wish to access the city treasury”. The Faction guide on the Wiki will be updated with more on this soon but much is now explained in-game.
- Vendor prices in Faction towns are controlled by the Commander by setting the town’s tax rate. The higher the tax, the more income the town’s citizens can earn and the more vendors in the city will charge for items. Where a citizen’s income goes is determined by the town strategy set by the Commander, as well as the tithe rate they set on their Faction Stone at their HQ. The Faction tithe rate no longer applies to players, rather it sets how much of a town’s income is directed to it’s controlling Faction’s treasury and how much goes to the town’s own treasury.
- Lord Blackthorn has been advised on the finer points of Faction warfare and city management and will now take personal charge of towns that fall under Chaos’ control.
- Town Stones no longer sell items. Instead, they now display the Town Report when double clicked. This report can be viewed by anyone, even those not in a Faction.
- Faction guards have been weakened somewhat, mostly by reducing their ability to bandage themselves. Also note that Sheriffs are limited to hiring melee and archery guards. The more powerful mage and cavalry guards remain exclusive to town garrisons, and even then are only likely to appear in significant numbers in Trinsic if/when it’s economy can support them. Indeed, Trinsic is the only place where cavalry guards appear.
- There are now no guards inside Faction Strongholds, with their defence being left entirely to players.
- Any member of a Faction may now use the “message faction” keyword, which was previously only available to Commanders, with a limit of 2 messages per minute.
- As mentioned above, Faction members now benefit from a 20% bonus to their chance to gain skills while inside a town that is under their Faction’s control. Characters will not get the bonus while hidden.
Poisoning
- A character’s chance to inflict the poison on a weapon is now determined by their Poisoning skill level. The exception to this is Lesser Poison, which all characters have a 40% chance to inflict.
- For the first time on the shard players will now have a chance to inflict Lethal Poison. The chance to hit Lethal starts at 1% at 121 skill and increases up to 10% at 130 skill. This chance at Lethal is a bonus on top of the chance to inflict Deadly.
- The type of poison inflicted depends on what has been applied to the weapon. A weapon with Lesser Poison on it can only inflict Lesser, while a weapon with Greater can only inflict Greater, and so on, regardless of the wielder’s skill. The exception to this is Lethal (see above). Note that Lethal Poison cannot be crafted by Alchemists or purchased, only weapons with Deadly Poison applied to them have a chance to inflict Lethal.
- The chances to inflict poison with a melee weapon is as follows: 130 Poisoning = 10% chance at Lethal plus 75% at Deadly if Lethal fails; 90 Poisoning = 50% at Deadly, 100% at Greater; 60 Poisoning = 50% at Greater; 45 Poisoning = 100% at Regular; 0 Poisoning = 40% at Lesser
- Damage done by all levels of poison has been re-balanced. Lesser is now quite weak, while Lethal is, as the name suggests, quite lethal.
- Greater Cure Potions have been given a 25% chance to cure Lethal Poison.
Creature Self Healing
- A bug which was preventing some creatures from healing themselves with bandages has been fixed.
- Fresh spawns of the following creatures will now have the ability to heal themselves with bandages: Savage Riders, Juka Lords, Troglodytes, Orc Scouts, and Wild Tigers.
- Post-publish Wild Tigers are also able to heal their owners with bandages as well as themselves (only while unmounted).
- Creatures require 60 Healing skill to have a chance at curing themselves or their owner. Tigers require at least 80 Healing to have a chance at resurrecting a dead owner.
- Each time a creature heals itself or it’s owner it will consume 10 stamina.
New Sosaria Chat
- A new global chat system has been implemented, as the stock OSI global chat was being quite temperamental.
- The new chat has been kept quite simple on purpose. There are no “channels” or “rooms” and each character automatically enters the chat when they login.
- Use the [c or [chat commands followed by a message to talk in chat.
Shard Status Page
- The shard status page updates once every minute. See “Server Time” for the exact time at which the page was last updated.
- The “Online Today” number shows how many characters have logged into the shard within the last 24 hour period from when the status page last updated.
- “Total Characters” is the number of characters created by players since the shard launched.
- “Recently Online” contains the one hundred most recently online characters as determined by their last logout time, with a minimum delay of half an hour after logout before being displayed. Characters with 100 Hiding skill which are hidden when they logout will not show in the list.
- Each character’s “Total Gametime” stat is the total amount of time the character has spent online playing the game.
Misc Changes & Fixes
- A large bug relating to creature and NPC movement speed has been resolved. This bug was causing a speed check to be skipped, allowing many creatures to walk/run much faster than they should have been. The most noticeable difference for players will be the speed at which their pets follow them, as they will no longer “warp” after their master or follow them at “mounted player” speed. This will seem like they have been slowed down when in fact they are simply going at the speed they were before the bug existed (pub 47).
- A bug which was preventing the new scribe crafted slayer spellbooks from working has been resolved. Slayers (both super and mini) double the damage of a mage’s spells against specific creatures while the spellbook is equipped.
- Treasure Chest loot has been redone and boosted, while some bugs with them have also been resolved.
- A bug with followers being miscounted on login should now be fixed.
- The Sultanate of Nujel’m has opted to adopt an isolationist strategy in the hopes of staying out of the ongoing war between the Factions. As such, they have dispelled their Town Moongate, thus making their island nation unreachable via the other town gates.
- Paragon Elites will no longer be called Elites and will simply be refereed to as Paragons again to avoid confusion.
- Night Sight spells and potions have had their strength increased and the spell now scales properly relative to skill level.
- Neira, Barracon, and the Orc King are no longer immune to Discordance, although they will be quite hard to discord. The Orc King may be provoked using Provocation, while Barracon may be calmed using Peacemaking. The other spawn champions remain immune to bards.
- Vet bandage times can now be reduced by increasing the character’s Dexterity. Each 10 points of Dex over 30 takes 1 second off the bandage duration. The maximum duration starts at 7 seconds for those with below 30 Dex, which can then be reduced down to a minimum time of 2 seconds at 70 Dex or above.
- Plus many more minor fixes and improvements.
Publish Update 49.1 (15/9/22)
- Some skills have had their difficulty re-scaled so they can now be fully trained without the need for the inactive GGS (see above). The skills are: Spirit Speak, Meditation, Music, Discord, Peacemaking, Provocation, and Animal Lore.
- A bug relating to training in Jhelom has been resolved.
- The comma key has been temporarily disabled, please use the [c command to talk in Sosaria Chat instead.
- Phoenix, Pack Boura, and Saddlebag Horses/Llamas should now move at the right speed.
- A bug which could have been preventing the four bard skills being trained beyond 120 should now be resolved.
Publish Update 49.2 (20/9/22)
- The following creatures have had their movement speed increased slightly: Silvani, Dread Spiders, Nightmares, Unicorns, Ki-rins, Fire Steeds, Hell Steeds, Tigers (see below), Lions, Silver Serpents, Savage Riders, Ancient Unicorns, Dread Nightmares/Lady Minax, Pixies, and all the Faction War Mounts.
- Post-publish 49.2 Tigers now spawn with updated stats as follows. Str: 335-565, Dex: 85-165, Int: 55-125. Their movement speed has also been increased as mentioned above.
- Pre-publish 49.2 Tigers have been left as is, including their slightly slower movement speed and inability to heal.
- Lions have been boosted and now have the following stats. Str: 455-705, Dex: 125-225, Int: 55-95. They have also been given the ability to heal themselves and their owners and will now spawn with 20-50 Healing and 10-30 Anatomy.
- Scrolls can now be removed from unfinished Scroll Binding Deeds. Simply target the deed itself instead of a scroll to take all the scrolls out of it and start again.
- A missing CliLoc has been added to Potion Kegs to inform the player if they have no empty bottles to fill.
- Potion Kegs will now dispense Anti-Para Potions properly.
- Attacking a Spawn Champion will now house combat flag a character for 30 seconds. This only applies to the Champion itself and not the rest of their spawn.
- Minor adjustments to normal Mage AI. Creatures will now attempt to cast curses less often than before.