Where do I even begin?

So I've returned to UO after 15 years, delighted to have my original account. What a true blast of nostalgia it was to log in on my old house plot on Chesapeak. Right down to the runebooks with all the places and friends I used to know. It was like opening a time capsul. The first thing I did was place down my house again, out in the middle of nowhere near the hedge maze, and next... all I could do was wander.

I have sooooooo many questions, as you could imagine. Here are just a few.


How is it my mage feels so wimpy now? I remember soloing on the same dungeon levels as Tamers and bards. I used a pure mage build for pvp and pvm. All of what you'd expect with resist, wrestling, inscription, and spellweaving as the odd one out of a 7xgm template. This I know now to be far less effective, and the general idea is that gear plays a much, much larger role than it did before I left in 2005.

However, I am getting decimated by what now seem to be considered lower tier monsters. I can't even seem to be able to hold my own in spawn areas on the first floor of what were the easiest dungeons. This is even with an arctic ogre lord as a follower, who gets torn apart like a tissue for some reason.



Where is everyone? I was happy to get my original house plot. Before I left, it was nearly impossible to find open land to even build a small house, but I quickly realized that isn't the case now. Just by wandering around the wilderness for a few minutes I came across countless places to build pretty much whatever you wanted or could afford.



I'm pretty excited to play again. Any kind of pointers, knowledge, experiences you could share will help point me in some direction again. As of now, I am completely lost, and I love it.

I also have 5 other characters on the same shard with various other skills maxed out, or nearly so. Like archery, necromancy, hiding and stealth, the musical skills, the treasure hunting skills, poisoning, alchemy, chivalry, the ninja one, tinkering, carpentry, fletching... probably others. Just not taming. Never taming.

just joking, most of the people I remember playing with back then were tamers. We all had such great times. Anyways, thanks for your time. Hope to come across the Chesapeak community again, and the UO community as a whole.


Vincent of Chesapeak

Welcome back !

Where are all the people is the question all the returning players ask themselves. 

Well alot migrated to Atlantic shard after the stygian abyss expansion I beleive (up to today still I see players leaving their home shards for Atlantic), leaving the other shards with a rather small community on most of them and slowly emptying out of players and items... 

Atlantic is a great shard for population don't get me wrong but it's also a festival of lag , with a vendor search that doesn't even work. 

So you can choose to stay and play on Chessapeak and see maybe 5 players daily, or go to Atlantic and play with hundred of players, there are no medium sized shards anymore sadly,

ahhh, that's what I was worried about.

So everyone is just starting over on Atlantic or transfering somehow?

That's something to think about for sure.

1st off - Welcome back, we missed ya 🙂

I play Atlantic but I always have since 1997. Atl takes alotta heat & some is well deserved yet most seems 2 me 2 b haters hatin’. So, I’ll refrain from talking shard stuffs.

As for u gettin Pwned by stuff easily slapped down b4... soooo much has changed. My 1st guess would b ur armor. Armor from ur era has been way outclassed & ur gear prob provides abt as much protection as a wet paper bag. On most shards u should b able to find playable starting gear on the cheap that will greatly increase ur survivability.

Mages bread n butter is blasting off spells quickly before taking that club or flamestrike to the face. On that note, make sure to have ur 2FC 6FCR caps and armor w +MR is a must. Casting Focus would b new to u & may want to look into that as well. Take a look at some threads concerning gear if u haven’t. It could really help. Also, I forget when the synergy between evaluate intelligence & magery was introduced but EI is a damage modifier for magery so unless ur some weird hybrid template... having both is a must.

Depending on which dungeons u explored, many have been revamped w newer mini bosses so even the 1st lvl can rip u a new one. Ogre Lords can b nice but again it depends on what ur fighting in terms of their survivability. Having a casting focus of 5 or 6 (6 being the strongest) greatly increases all weaving spells n makes weaving followers much stronger.

The learning curve for UO has been steep for a long time and sadly it’s only gotten worse. It’s going to be like a whole new game for u except the fond memories of the past teasing u abt what ur currently unable to do. Don’t let it get ya down bro. In no time u’ll b back w a can of whoop ass for the monsters that currently are picking through your corpse. Best wishes adventurer !

I'm in that group that returned (technically I never left, just didn't play for years) and stayed on my home shard and don't regret it.  Lake Superior community is smaller, but I just don't like the idea of packing up and moving.  My home is here.  And it's easy to find a group in General Chat, but I also can play solo when I feel like it since the dungeons are overcamped.

I'm certain it's your armor.  Old armor doesn't have the 70s resist you need.  My mage overcaps so I can cast protection which let's me continue casting without interruption.  I also either carry a mage weapon which let's me add damage and provide defensive skill (I have a couple of -0 mage weapons that act like I have 120 macing skill).  And if I'm not toe-to-toe, I switch to a spellbook with Spell Damage Increase (SDI) for added output.  

So those were the main things I had to upgrade - 70's resist armor, mage weapon, and SDI spellbook.

very informative replies. Thanks.

so this content has been added through a series of expansions. Does a returning player need to purchase these expansions and add ons from the store to have access to this content? Or are they automatically accessible through subscription/gametime keys? I noticed there is a f2p option now with limited content. I am a retail account for the time being.

Curious to this because I've tried equipping gear that states in its description a certain expansion is required to equip (stygian abyss was that one I believe). When viewing account status, it says I have the expansion enabled, yet I'm still unable to equip the item. Perhaps that's quest related, or I didn't have the right skills or stats. Most of the best gear was player created when I played, which may still be the case now. Just another thing in an endless sea of questions.

So, I browse the UO store and I see a bunch of things, expansions, add ons I don't have. Very confusing after coming from mmos that basically auto update their content.


A lot of this I'll have to learn on my own, which I gleefully await. That also being the perfect way to link up with the shard's community.

Welcome back! As Marge said shout out in generalchat! There are usually a lot of people on, especially in the evenings.

Yep! I'll direct issues to the general community on chesapeak. That particular armor piece was turtle armor. It required Time of Legends to equip. I just updated to that. So we have what appears to be an improved questing system, new map areas, revamped dungeons and gear, a server wide chat, skill masteries (this I am pretty curious about), multiple skill revamps and a few brand new ones for me...

wow

ok. I may switch to crafting for a while until someone shows me the ropes haha. Poor Vinny.

*cough*  Time of Legends should be free now...  *cough*