Feedback on invasions and bug report

First, to the UO team, thanks for bringing back some great prior content that many may have missed!

It was good to see the UO team acted on feedback from re-activating the ToT event, including fixing the Serado spawn.

Here's some feedback/request for change for the invasion event:

1. The titans do not seem to have enough hit points relative to current pets/equipment/skills.  The titans are usually dead within 2 minutes, which leaves many players in the town missing the action due to the "titan search"!  Perhaps a fix is to increase the titan HP 5-10x?  Or have it spawn in a fixed location per city?
2. The generals/captains/etc that while alive hold Yumi or Composite bows, or repeating crossbows drop no Bane weapon loot.  Assuming this is because the UO creators do not want bane weapons to exist of these weapon types?  Perhaps a fix for this is to drop the standard bane bow in these situations.  Or allow composite, yumi, and repeating crossbows to drop with the bane property?
3. The logic around spellbook drops could use some adjustment.  It's leading to some very bad behavior in the game -- namely, a small set of players are singling out the mage generals, and they are all dead in the first few minutes of the invasion.  Given there appear to be only 3 books per mage dropping, and very few mages per invasion, this is leading to frustration for many players.  Here are some possible ways to adjust this:

• Remove the 3 book drop limit per mage NPC.  Base it on who gets looting rights.  This would seem to square this with how blackthorn captains have worked in the past.
• Add a chance for a mage book to drop from any general/captain/etc (with caps matching the level of the boss).
• Spawn more mage users over the course of the spawn.  (other creatures get spawned throughout, how about mages?).
• Add a trade-in NPC that allows say 5-10 invasion weapons to be traded in for a book.  The trade in could have a pure SDI book category or a randomly generated slayer book category.
• Not strictly invasion related:  the chances of crafting scrapper slayer books is so low, even with guaranteed improvement talisman -- can this be revisited?  Or perhaps some new recipe drops that allow existing spellbooks to be "upgraded"?

Thanks for considering these -- perhaps others will pile on with other suggestions/comments.

Since we have no idea what the next publish will be like, and they are not going to change this content, we just have to hope the next publish will be liked by all players and nobody will complain.  😂

Where are the Mage Generals?   I have yet to see one

They don't say mage on them.  They are the ones yielding Staffs.  If you are Drake on LS, run around at first and find them.  I've only yelled out that info in chat 50 times today...

Which client are people using to find the mages so easily?  Even with hooking up to the 55 inch TV it is hard for me to see what someone is carrying in the EC.

TimSt said:

Which client are people using to find the mages so easily?  Even with hooking up to the 55 inch TV it is hard for me to see what someone is carrying in the EC.

Same for me, I have to get out of war mode, click the General, look at their weapon and read what it is, then get back in war mode quickly (if I'm still alive) and in the meantime one of them has dismounted and disarmed me...........   By the time I find one it's mostly dead and by the time I help kill it, all the others have been killed already.   I enjoyed this invasion before but this time it's only a lesson in frustration.

It is not hard to look at the paperdoll of any of them and tell right off the bat which one is carrying a staff (you know the long stick), that is the MAGE.

ForeverFun said:

First, to the UO team, thanks for bringing back some great prior content that many may have missed!

It was good to see the UO team acted on feedback from re-activating the ToT event, including fixing the Serado spawn.

Here's some feedback/request for change for the invasion event:

1. The titans do not seem to have enough hit points relative to current pets/equipment/skills.  The titans are usually dead within 2 minutes, which leaves many players in the town missing the action due to the "titan search"!  Perhaps a fix is to increase the titan HP 5-10x?  Or have it spawn in a fixed location per city?

Make the Boss replicate more and more after so many players are present, maybe like a Ninjitsu skill mirror image. No one knows what is the real Boss.

1. The generals/captains/etc that while alive hold Yumi or Composite bows, or repeating crossbows drop no Bane weapon loot.  Assuming this is because the UO creators do not want bane weapons to exist of these weapon types?  Perhaps a fix for this is to drop the standard bane bow in these situations.  Or allow composite, yumi, and repeating crossbows to drop with the bane property?

Booby prize I gather, like the whip from the turn in Pirate. 

1. The logic around spellbook drops could use some adjustment.  It's leading to some very bad behavior in the game -- namely, a small set of players are singling out the mage generals, and they are all dead in the first few minutes of the invasion.  Given there appear to be only 3 books per mage dropping, and very few mages per invasion, this is leading to frustration for many players.  Here are some possible ways to adjust this:

• Remove the 3 book drop limit per mage NPC.  Base it on who gets looting rights.  This would seem to square this with how blackthorn captains have worked in the past.
• Add a chance for a mage book to drop from any general/captain/etc (with caps matching the level of the boss).
• Spawn more mage users over the course of the spawn.  (other creatures get spawned throughout, how about mages?).
• Add a trade-in NPC that allows say 5-10 invasion weapons to be traded in for a book.  The trade in could have a pure SDI book category or a randomly generated slayer book category.
• Not strictly invasion related:  the chances of crafting scrapper slayer books is so low, even with guaranteed improvement talisman -- can this be revisited?  Or perhaps some new recipe drops that allow existing spellbooks to be "upgraded"?

I agree.

Thanks for considering these -- perhaps others will pile on with other suggestions/comments.

Its either not enough people to clear useless spawn, or too many people attacking a few mage general. Only consolation for clearing the spawn is to hope something good drop after killing the boss.

As I said in the other Thread "Loot Rules" at https://forum.uo.com/discussion/comment/41495/#Comment_41495 , I think that personally the mechanics to award drops should be changed for FUTURE content so that TIME spent working a spawn (regardless whether it is low Monsters or High Monsters) was to be the meter by which drops would be awarded to participant and NOT this thing of the "top damagers" which only favours those players which all scrolled up Templates in high end gear and Artifacts or all scrolled up pets doing tons of DPS (Damage Per Second) which only kills the chances of nwe or returning players to compete and participate, not to mention the issue of these uber Damaging Templates coming, getting all of the goodies in 5-10 minutes and then leave other players to have to work hours to clean up the trash spawn all for nothing or for very little .....

I sure hope that @Bleak and @Kyronix and all the UO Developers will want to modify, for FUTURE game content, the way that drops will be awarded in UO so that these thing will no longer happen and TIME spent working the new content, regardless from the toughness of the Monsters tackled, will be what will tell whether a player will get a drop and its quality.

At least, that is the way I see it.

popps said:

 I think that personally the mechanics to award drops should be changed for FUTURE content so that TIME spent working a spawn (regardless whether it is low Monsters or High Monsters) was to be the meter by which drops would be awarded to participant and NOT this thing of the "top damagers" which only favours those players which all scrolled up .........

Other than Britain, Moonglow also had an invasion without any soldiers. We spent hours to clear the spawn, no invasion, went to bed. While a bunch just waited for us to clear, and waited for Moonglow bugs to clear, and have a free spin of 50SDI lottery. Wow.

Seth said:

Get the real bugs solved first... now my shard Vesper invasion spawns cleared, no cultist around, but also no boss. The Town Crier says it is still going on. We ran like 10 rounds and its a huge place, but could not find anything.

Maybe if cannot quality assure all the bugs, perhaps exclude vesper and trinsic from the invasion city because it is really huge place.

And as usual... GM always popped up on the ball when we are macroing but urgent situations like this, they are not as responsive as 10 years ago. How do we apply for GM job 🙂

Vesper has a couple islands that you have to take a row boat too.there may have been some on them. Also make sure to check across the bridge from above the bank. follow the water east past the tailor shop... usually after that, then the frost dragons start to appear. And they sometimes spawn on top of the water. 

Trinsic, some of the captains, etc will spawn inside the walls. The only way to kill them is to use spellweaving spell or to page a GM to move them. And there is one spot that you have to teleport down to. 

We had Lythos spawn in a wall in Trinsic.  He was near a corner so he rolled in the wall and around the corner. Was pretty funny.
GM brought him out in less than 5 mins.

We did go on the boat to hunt around and inside Vesper, but they should not allow the spawn the go out too far. We often see soldier's jumped back to some default spot, which I think is unnecessary. They just need to stop the the spawn from going out of certain zone (like in champ spawn).

As long as GM comes quickly to resolve the Trinsic wall issue, I think its fine. But shouldn't the Trinsic city be renovated to remove those unreachable wall area...

The Governor of Trinsic brought up the need for wall maintenance walls to the King in our meeting this month.