Combat Considerations

**IMPORTANT INFO ABOUT COMBAT:**

If you are new to UOTopia, be sure to ask others for help on game-play mechanics and combat. We have a custom combat system in place in UOTopia with higher mob difficulties. You will need to assign hotkeys for bandages, spells, skills, and everything else you will use during a battle before adventuring out into the realm for combat-related action. Be sure to do this before fighting anything! Our custom combat system for PvM/PvP is designed to be faster paced. For example, a player who possesses over 300+ dexterity can use and apply bandages at nearly a 0.25 second cool-down rate!

Our HP/Mana/Stamina Regenerations for ALL players are set by default to be higher and much faster than you may be used to on other shards. This is designed to offset and balance our new custom combat system in both PvM/PvP alike.

Getting accustomed to our PvM/PvP system will take a little time, as many of you are used to simply playing UO in the old-fashioned slow-paced casual way. We are more of an on-the-edge/action RPG/ hack-n-slash approach to the style of game-play mechanics in UO

We believe that many of you if given time will learn to enjoy the custom combat we offer here in the realm of UOTopia, as it's very intriguing; it's interesting; nobody has a knowledge advantage really on how PvM & PvP work so it's a new learning experience for all types of players of UO, veteran or beginner.

Forget what you think you know about mobs/monsters. Our monsters have custom special abilities similar to weapon abilities players possess when using weapons in combat {i.e.: primary/secondary weapon ability attacks). The reason for this is to give all players a semi-more challenging approach to monsters and an increased artificial intelligence boost to NPC mobs/monsters. We also have implemented a "Realistic" factor in our combat system. This means simply, in real life imagine you were to get smacked by a giant ettin's hammer/club...Do you think you would feel the pain of that effect? Yes would probably be your answer; you prepare yourself for a painful, hefty amount of damage done to your player when facing a foe such as this for example. We hope this provides a little insight on how combat may be affected differently than what many are accustomed to. This is part of the reason we offer 1000.00 % Skill Cap and 1000 Stat Cap for players (10 x GM | or 8 120% with 40% skill cap leftover, for skills on any given character).

We have spent nearly two years developing our new custom combat system and approach to UO, and we believe if you play long enough, you will learn to love and enjoy it as much as we--the developers, testers, and current players--already do..

**CHAOS CONTROL**

To maximize enjoyment and increase effectiveness of group combat, let's first talk about the unique layout of UOTopia. Knowing the rule-set of the area you are hunting is essential,

*Trammel - Felucca Rule-Set*

*Felucca - Felucca Rule-Set*

*Ilshenar - Felucca Rule-Set*

*Malas - Felucca Rule-Set*

*Tokuno - Trammel Rule-Set*

*Ter-Mur - Trammel Rule-Set*

*Eodon - Trammel Rule-Set*

The Trammel Rule-Set automatically prevents the looting of any corpse by anyone other than the person who is recognized as the one who defeated the foe, until 5 real time minutes have passed. The Felucca Rule-Set does not have this safeguard and any corpse may be looted by anyone, although the looter will turn "gray" indicating a criminal activity has been committed if the corpse belonged to someone else. This gray flag will continue for 120 seconds after the criminal activity was committed provided no other criminal acts are performed.

**Consider this scenario: Three friends are hunting together during a Frost Creature ambush in Malas. They are not officially partied even though they consider themselves on a team, fighting together. Two of the players are casting and/or using weapons with AoE effects. The third player is also casting AoE spells, but also has a group of 3 squires as followers and they are using weapons with AoE effects as well. All three players have the auto-loot feature on UOSteam activated. It's chaos! The squires stop fighting the monster and try to kill the other 2 players instead. The players keep getting messages that they are attacking their friends or being attacked by their friends. No one is having fun and the hunt is ineffective.**

*So what went wrong? The players were being treated as individual players and not as a team since they were not partied. They were running around and auto-looting corpses that the game deemed as "not theirs" and thus flagged them as gray. Whenever an AoE spell or weapon was used, it targeted not only the monster, but also any character who was gray. The player with the squire followers turned gray from unintentionally auto-looting a corpse; the other 2 players' AoE attacks also stuck this gray player; the squires who were set to guard the player they were following retaliate to this attack by attacking the caster who inadvertently hit their leader.*

**How could these problems have been avoided?**

* The simplest way to ensure that this chaos doesn't occur is by taking the time to party up with all players who are helping you defeat a monster.
* If for some reason you are not able to party with another player, every person should make sure that their auto-loot function on UOSteam is turned off.
* Care should be taken when manually looting a corpse. making sure that it is indeed one you are entitled to loot because you are the recognized victor of the battle creating that corpse It is one of those times when enabling the prompt warning about being flagged criminal would be beneficial.
* Avoid using any spells or weapons with AoE effects when fighting in a group that is not in a party together.
* Hunt only in Trammel.where loot is automatically protected from unrightful looting.

*While all of these options are effective, I'm sure most will agree, partying up is the easiest way to have a fun and fruitful hunting adventure. Having fun and reaping great rewards for our courageous feats in battle...that's why we are all here. Right?*