Gear Update 2011 2

So recently there was this silly rapture thing that was supposed to happen/happened "spiritually". As luck would have it, a certain item went up for sale that same day and after looking at things, I did only what a person like me could do.

I bought a hat with 666 luck on the day of the rapture.

The uncursing and blessing was work I had to do after the buy, but meh. I'm pretty happy with it. The Str isn't that great, but since I'm a mage that really doesn't matter. The nearly perfect Int, nice Dex, and SDI that oddly matches my ring exactly makes it all the pretty enough for me. It does, of course, complicate things for me, stat-wise.

It has 5% less LRC than my crafted hat, which means I have to wear a 15% LRC Merlin robe to compensate. It also puts me at 160% SDI; for those keeping not great at math, that's 35% over cap. This isn't such a bad thing on it's own, but since I have items with less than that amount it means I'm wasting slots.

Namely, I'm wasting slots on my ring. I keep it because it's the +8 Spell Resist ring that I crafted and love so dearly because I managed to get five solid properties on it without blowing the damn thing up, but as it turns out I'm now not benefiting from three of its five properties: FC, FCR, and SDI.

Replacing it is troublesome because, as I hinted, it is really hard to spellcraft things. Nevermind the part where I've been playing for two years and have only found a handful of blank +8 or better Spell Resist jewelry pieces at all. I do have another blank +8, but I just don't have it in me right now to try Spell Crafting it/blowing it up on the second property I try to add.

I would really like to replace the ring, though. If I made another right now, I would aim for Str, Int, LRC (25%+, 30% ideally), Cold resist, and Energy resist. That way I could dump my ninja belt for Tangle without any real loss and swap back to the +10 Int Merlin Robe. That would get me to 294 Int, which is oddly round and fits with +6 Int spellbooks nicely. Getting perfect Int on some of my jewelry/armor would also get me 6+ Int as well (I think I'm about 12 points total away from perfect Int gear).


As it stands, I'm artifact'd out, yo. If it's not jewerlry or a book, it's artifact: Undead hat, Undead gloves, Undead chest, Undead legs, Elysium arms, Sacrifice shoes, Merlin Robe, and My Book talisman. Okay, so there is the crafted ninja belt still. That won't last much longer.


Currently: 280 Str, 274 Int, 113 Dex, 229 HP, 131 Stam, 336 Mana.
160% SDI, 7/8 FC/FCR, 110% LRC, 60% LMC, 83% DCI, 1366 Luck.

Yes, we can!

For once, I have brought about positive change in the world! It's a fake world, true enough, but it counts. I haven't had much time for UO lately thanks to classes, but I do still frequent the boards so one day recently, in a fit of procrastination, I posted on the boards that bards needed to be fixed by adding the 160 barding difficulty cap. I wasn't as nice as I should've been about it, but eh, I was in an argumentative mood and I've posted about poor bards before so I didn't expect anything to come of it.

Imagine my surprise when it was done. Like nothing. Like instantly. Mind = Blown.

This is effing magical. All that time and touble (and money) that went into getting my Discordance to 120 is now completely effing worth it. Despite being 115/120, I now have a 15% (25% Slayer) chance to Discord anything that can be Discorded. Sure, at that point it's "only" a 14% cut to skills and resists, but as you might recall from my posts about dealing with Ancient Dragons, cutting something from 85% resist to 70% resist is a pretty big difference. Now those 85% resist creatures are going to be 56% resist creatures versus Fire and Poison and 71% versus Energy. That's a massive difference, especially when things have thousands of HP.

Even better, Discord doesn't wear off unless you break line of sight for more than 11 seconds. This also means lower Resising Spells, which means longer Corpse Skins in general, potentially raises the value of many Necro spells like Pain Spike, and makes Curse more viable. My "Super Curse" macro may see a lot more use in the future.

I'm going to need more hotkeys for Slayer Instruments. Also Blessed Bags.

Even better, or worse depending on your point of view, anyone with 120/120 Peacemaking, a Kenshin Cloak, and a Slayer instrument will have a 60% chance of Peacemaking a 160 BD target, 50% with an exceptional instrument. That's clearly a massive advantage and is tempting me towards giving in and just using the stupid cloak.

Farming gold just got a whole lot easier. If we're lucky, some of those boss creatures won't be bard immune either. I wonder how much time one could save killing Slasher with him at 56% Fire resist and 14% lower skills...