PSA - Returning Players Upgrade Your Gear

With players returning to Utima Online after years away I thought it might be good to put a few words out on the information and history of equipment changes in the UO forums and include some useful links.

CHOOSING FROM CURRENT EQUIPMENT

If your Chareacter is combat oriented you will need armor. Armor grants five different resistances, Physical, Fire, Cold, Poison, and Electric. You want your characters armor to add up to at least 70 in all Resistances. Secondary values differ based on your profession. There are ways to go past 70 not covered here.
1) Almost all characters will find Defense Chance Increase, Lower Mana Cost and Damage Eater useful.
2) Weapon focused characters use armor with Hit Chance Increase, Dexterity and Stamina boosts and Stamina Regeneration.
3) Spell users may need Lower Reagent Cost, Intelligence, Mana Increase, Mana Regen boosts.

2016 to present - see Wiki article*
Items are randomly generated based on a ranking. Higher end items may still be undesirable if the properties are not favorable.
i. normal item / non-magical
ii. Minor magic Item (also exceptionally craft & normal items with special material bonuses)
iii. Lesser magic Item ( exceptionally crafted items with special materials used)
iv. Greater magic Item 
v. Major magic Item ( about equal are top Runic crafted items)
vi. Lesser Artifact (also capped Imbued Items & Barbed Tailor or Valorite Smith Runic)
vii. Greater Artifact 
viii. Major Artifact 
ix. Legendary Artifact

THE PAST

1997 to 2003 - UO release until Age of Shadows**
Armor and weapons use a completely different system now. Most equipment from this era is now junk.

2003 to 2009 - Age of Shadows** until Stygian Abyss***
High-end runic crafted items and Artifacts may still be useful. 

2009 to 2015 - Stygian Abyss***, Time of Legends
The Stygian Abyss release did two things that caused players to re-equip.
1) New properties like Damage Eaters, Splintering weapons were highly desirable.
2) New loot generation system which allowed random loot to exceed values possible from Runic crafting.
  The Imbuing system released with Stygian Abyss allowing crafters to pick properties rather than deal with the random items created through Runic crafting.
  Older rings and bracelets may be desirable as they do not have a Durability stat and require no Repairs. Newer jewerly must be regularly repaired by a Tinker.

* https://uo.com/wiki/ultima-online-wiki/a-summary-for-returning-players/weapons-armor-and-loot-revamps-2016/
** https://uo.com/wiki/ultima-online-wiki/technical/previous-publishes/2003-2/publish-17-1-age-of-shadows/
*** https://uo.com/wiki/ultima-online-wiki/technical/previous-publishes/2009-2/publish-60-8th-september-stygian-abyss/


I hope you found this information useful and remember the UO website wiki also contains other useful information for returning players:
https://uo.com/wiki/ultima-online-wiki/a-summary-for-returning-players/

You might find this page relevant too
https://uo.com/wiki/ultima-online-wiki/items/base-properties/armor-choice/

Thank you Mariah; and thank you for doing a great job on the wiki articles too!

New Haven Island PVE non-caster Training, 

Undead in Old Haven for skill 1-60. Boglings west of New Haven if you get bored.
Ettins south of New Haven for skill 60-80.  Boglings west of New Haven if you get bored or Humans south east of Old Haven.
Earth Elementals in New Haven Mine 80-GM.  Gold eles in Blackthorns Dungeon or Earth Eles there too if you want some Minax drops in the dungeon and are feeling adventurous.

nice writeup, however fair to mention that we saw "legendary" loot (and all in the ranking system) much earlier than 2016.  Initially limited to dungeon shame, which is why it was called "shame loot".

Initially when stygian abyss was released, we had splintering and eaters, but only on artifacts.  loot was still "old style".
first we got imbuing, then a couple years later reforging, which allowed those properties like damage eater to also come on craftables.''

then we got "shame loot" in 2011, legendaries existed, but were much less powerful.  this is when we saw the properties from reforging (like higher caps, eaters, etc) become available as pvm loot drops.

the re-vamp of despise introduced "ephemeral" loot, which was converted to "antique" when "shame loot" went global (and was made much more powerful), in publish 86, sept 2014. 

Very true Smoot, but more detail than I felt was needed.  I also have some legacy Stygian Abyss items with qualities that no longer spawn such as "unlucky". Players are unlikely to come accross such items unless there is a player vendor still stocked with them.

The purpose of the post is to give returning players a quick description of how their equipment when they stopped playing compares to equipment available now. There are already "what equipment should my character get" threads, so between this post and the wiki Mariah posted maybe we can help those players more efficiently. The post could have been much longer, but I decided Wiki links were better so those wishing to do more research could if they wished.

Very useful post!  Thank you, Thalon.

On a slightly related note, I saw a YouTube video last week.  It briefly mentioned the ability to shop from multiple vendors at once.  How does one do it?  I run the Stygian Abyss version, if that makes a difference. Being able to do that would be a big help in actually upgrading my gear. Hopefully the answer doesn't start, "first, build a GM+ tailor with imbuing".

You are welcome Rock. Also, Mariah wrote a wiki article on vendor searches:
https://uo.com/wiki/ultima-online-wiki/gameplay/npc-commercial-transactions/vendor-search/

*Likes this*

Great post for returning players. 
Could you also give a good idea where / how to get the better items nowadays?
A lot of returning players might have the time to hunt but not the resources needed to buy some of these new awesome items. 
I know from some vendor searches that an excellent Legendary Artifact could be in the mid to high 10's of millions (have even see a couple items I would LOVE to have at 100+ million) and even a good Artifact level item might be 5 million a piece. 

Thanks!

Zapp said:

Great post for returning players. 
Could you also give a good idea where / how to get the better items nowadays?
A lot of returning players might have the time to hunt but not the resources needed to buy some of these new awesome items. 
I know from some vendor searches that an excellent Legendary Artifact could be in the mid to high 10's of millions (have even see a couple items I would LOVE to have at 100+ million) and even a good Artifact level item might be 5 million a piece. 

Thanks!

No easy way to the top end loot Zap...other than gold . It has to do with the power of the monster you kill, your luck total and the random number generator. See these wiki articles:
https://uo.com/wiki/ultima-online-wiki/items/loot-generation/
https://uo.com/wiki/ultima-online-wiki/player/stats/luck/

End-game loot has always been a group event for me.  There are the old champion spawns and the Doom Gauntlet, though I haven't done either in years. These fights require a group of players, they were designed that way. If you have the Time of Legends hit Shadowguard. If you have High Seas, Stygian Abyss or Mondains Legacy kill the Peerless from those expansions.

As far as solo player content with legacy equipment....no idea. Try daemons, dragons. If you can kill those try ancient wyrms and greater dragons. Work your way up the hunting ladder and hope for a lucky loot drop.