UOAlive Day 15: Malas IDOC

 

A non customized castle near the southern lake in Malas went IDOC today. We switched off who kept an eye on the IDOC while we checked out pet spawns.

Tarantula spawn on UOAlive

We ended up finding a tarantula and tamed a few for the crew.

We also chitchatted with a few other players who decided to sit in on the IDOC. It appears there's a group of people who share information about IDOCs and help each other keep an eye on it, much like our group does.

I used this opportunity to train up my detect hidden, hiding, and tracking skills, since they're free on this server.

Ancient Wyrm extermination.

We tried to see if Toothless had spawned, but no luck. We killed several ancient wyrms just to be sure.

Friendly IDOC attendees on UOAlive

In the end we were able to get the scroll books and I got a few bard powerscrolls. Now I need to train my peacemaking and provocation again.

UOAlive Day 14: SOS's and Leather

 

More hiryu hunting. I've paid off Snow now so I'm just trying to get gold for insurance and buying reagents to train inscription and alchemy.

I grew bored of killing hiryus, so I started fishing up some SOSs to break up the monotony. I still haven't trained cartography, so treasure maps are out of reach.

I've been wanting to grab the daily rare hay for my castle stables, but the area the hay spawns in is locked behind some sort of dungeon Khaldun quest. I spent a couple of hours trying to run the quest but I seem to be missing something because I cannot progress the quest. According to ServUO forums, the quest works properly, but none of my searches online nor reading through the in game text have told me what I'm missing. I ended up dropping the quest and giving up.

I've also taken to killing creatures for leather in preparation for training my tailoring and filling BODs. I don't have a 120 tailoring powerscroll yet, so I need to work on that.

I finished off my day by fishing up more SOSs.

UOAlive Day 13: Busywork

 

Holiday themed castle on Ice Island UOAlive

On official OSI, I submitted a castle design to the first custom keep and castle contest in August 2018. That design ended up being chosen, and it's also an option for a premade custom castle on UOAlive. Snow found a Christmas themed build heavily influenced by my castle design, so she called me over to check it out. I like it and can't wait to see how the decorating continues!

I've thrown down an easy access chest on the steps of my Luna moongate house so I can easily drop off ore when I'm mining. I do want to pick up a fire beetle so I can smelt as I mine, but I don't have a tamer and I haven't gotten around to asking one of the crew to tame one for me.

West Britain Tailor's

In my free time, I've taken to picking cotton in the Skara and Brit fields and turning it into cloth. One 'round' of cotton picking tends to make about 15k cloth, so I'll have a decent stock to train my tailoring with and eventually craft decorations and furniture.

I've still been hunting hiryus in my free time. I've gotten several hiryu statues, which give me flashbacks to hunting because I've made the mistake of turning them on and throwing them on the floor of my Luna house.

This yellow hiryu was cool and I wouldn't have minded collecting it, but nobody was available with a tamer and I ended up leaving it.

UOAlive Day 12: How To Train Your Dragon

 

I made my first payment installation of 230k to the bank of Snow today.

Which means I had to hunt some more hiryus to build up enough gold to cover deaths that tend to happen on my adventures.

DONT's first big IDOC on UOAlive

We sat on our first big IDOC today. There were mainly a bunch of crafting materials, but none of us are complaining as that means we have less grinding to do to train our crafters. This was a keep just south of Umbra.

Special pet spawn on UOAlive

While we were waiting for the IDOC to fall, I spent some time exploring Eodon as there were a few creatures I wanted to try and kill to get some treasure maps. While running around, I sumbled across a message that insinuated one of the special pets that this server has is in the area. I rallied the crew and we endeavored to beat the waves to find out what spawns here.

Bane Dragon

Turns out it was a bane dragon, so we tamed that up and used Snow's Blackrock Stew recipe to craft some food for the dragon.

Purple fuzzy Toothless on UOAlive

Nick has been the one keeping an eye on the Toothless spawn, so when he found one we all rushed to help him tame it. I really like the purple hue on this guy. I really need to make my tamer so I can start taming and training pets.

We spent the rest of the evening hanging out and chitchatting while vetting a potential new person for the guild.

UOAlive Day 11: Granite Galore

 

Mining in the mountains northeast of Luna

I started working on my mining. Since it's a free skill, I've been working on it on my bard since she has the ability to protect herself on mining adventures. I also need to work on lumberjacking so I can build some supplies to work on my crafter.

Vesper colossus provoking on UOAlive

I've finally found something my bard excels at. There's an invasion going on in Vesper at the moment with various colossus creatures that drop granite. I decided to try and kill a few agapite ones to build up some agapite granite for some decorating plans I have, and I ended up staying for several hours just farming granite. I've found that provocation works wonderfully to prevent the armor ignore, stuns, damage reflection; and circumvent damage immunities. If you provoke the correct type of colossus onto another, they seem to die really quickly.

The special events and invasions on this server drop event tokens, which can be turned in for targeted rewards, and an occasional random power scroll deed. This is the only way to get higher end powerscrolls for skills that don't traditionally go above 100 on OSI.

Multi-colossus provoking on UOAlive

At one point I had 10 pairs fighting each other and I would occasionally step in to loot the gold and granite.

At one point I bit off more than I could chew and ended up in a death loop, so a friend joined me and helped me kill the mobs and collect the granite. I don't know if I'll end up with enough for all of the decorating I want to do with agapite granite, but I at least have a good head start.

I also got my first bit of decoration put in the castle: a wooden steed in the stable. I would love to get the castle fully furnished and decorated sooner rather than later, but it'll take time to acquire all of the stuff I want.

In the evening, I was able to set up an appointment with a Player Companion to claim my free Mythic Token reward for setting up a forum account and making sure I was set up in the server Discord. I'm probably going to end up using this token to get my crafter started. That way I can save on resources.

UOAlive Day 10: Castle Built

 

Zento Player Vendor area, Blessed hangout location, and Pet Resurrection location on UOAlive.

I've taken to leaving my two accounts logged in at Zento overnight for the double kudos. I started my second account 4 days after I started my main account, and I have a character on that second account, but I have yet to train any skills. I need to get around to making my third account, but I don't want to do so until I'm ready to work on training a tamer. I've been told that taking advantage of the young player status makes it really easy to train up animal taming plus easily get yourself a decent starter pet.

Since my fishing has hit 90, I've taken to fishing up SOSs in my free time for loot and skill gains.

The spawn location of Toothless on UOAlive

 One of the crew located what we believe to be the Toothless spawn, so we've taken to keeping an eye on the spawn area to see if he shows up.

Vibrant Green hiryu

I've still been hunting hiryus in my free time to get enough gold to commit my castle design, and the last hiryu color we've been searching for has spawned.

It's a shame that the lesser hiryus don't come in more interesting colors, as they can be trained up to be more powerful than hiryus and at this point with pet training in the game hiryus are little more than vanity mounts.

A work of art for a house near the Luna Moongate on UOAlive

I have a design set for my Luna moongate house, but the finished result will take about 350k gold and I've diverted my money and attention to the castle. The Luna plot is just my loot drop off point.So this will be an eyesore for a while.

Snow offered to lend me the 430k I needed to commit my castle. I decided to take her up on the offer since she gave very flexible repayment terms (whenever. But also she owns my soul now so that's whatever)

Sitting on my newly finished castle roof with a guildie while a representative from the Bank of Snow files the necessary paperwork in the background to officiate takeover of my soul as payment for her gold loan.

I ended up adding a stable area and some other finishing touches before committing my design. I'll probably make more adjustments as I decorate the castle, but this is a good starting point. We'll see how my plans and intentions for areas of the castle line up with reality.

UOAlive Day 9: Various Adventures Plus Gambling

 We ran Shadowguard several times today, adding in a few people who haven't participated in Shadowguard before. It was a fun multi hour event, and Balf ended up getting a Hawkwind's Robe.

Since so many of us were on at the same time, we decided to take a family photo. UO is the reason our group even exists, even though many of us no longer play the game, or have come and gone, or new, non-UO related friends have been added. It's definitely been a big nostalgic trip with all of us playing again for the first time in what is probably over a decade.

Since we had a bunch of special fishing nets, we decided to 1. try out a High Seas boat, and 2. kill some serpents, leviathans, and a few kraken. We managed to get a few treasure maps, but nothing else of particular note.

UOAlive's gambling building near West Brit Bank.

This server has a fun little gambling area near West Brit Bank, so a few of us tried our hand at gambling. No big winners, but many laughs were had.

The free lockpicking and remove trap training station at the Public Rune Library on UOAlive.

I decided to train my lockpicking up a bit. It's a free skill, and I know that Treasure Maps are a very time efficient way to earn a decent amount of gold, so I'm trying to prepare for doing treasure maps without burning myself out on the game by training too hard.

I killed some more hiryus and made a dent in the amount of gold I'll need to commit my house design. I think I'm at 600k needed now.

UOAlive Day 8: Even More Hiryus and a Dirt Plot

 

In a shocking turn of events, I was found killing more hiryus in my free time today.

Navrey rock attack.

We killed Navrey some more today. Snow was able to get a Tangle, which is nice.

Achievement system GUI on UOAlive. The achievement system allows you to earn Sovereigns through more than simple play time.

I finally managed to get to 1 million gold, which is the amount required for the castle plot. If you pick a prebuilt castle it'll cost more, but I wanted to design my own castle because I enjoy the process.

Extravagantly large beachfront clearing south of Trinsic.

I ended up picking a nice, secluded area south of Trinsic. At this point, I hopped into customization mode to work out my design and see how much more gold I would need to commit my design.

I should've pre-downloaded UOSteam. Customizing on ClassicUO is a slow pain in the butt, and the UI and response times are completely messed up on CUO. CUO also keeps the semi-transparent green floor visible even when you've placed tiles down, making it hard to see whether you've fully covered something. For some reason I stuck to it, however.

Custom castle design on UOAlive.

After about two hours, this is what I ended up with and I came up with a cost of around 1.3 million gold.

UOAlive Day 7: Hiryus, And A Couple Things

 

Taming a pink hiryu.

Since I've been spending so much time killing hiryus, I've been keeping an eye out for certain colored ones the crew wants. Today I managed to get a pink hiryu to spawn, so I helped Snow tame it.

Navrey annihilation.

We need some Tangles, so we ran Navrey a few times this morning. The ability to use the pillar rock assist to begin the encounter is really nice.

First DONT guild Shadowguard run!

We also ran Shadowguard. This was the first time most of us have ever done Shadowguard, so it was a fun experience trying out some new to us content together like we used to back in the day.

Shadowguard Fountain room complete.

The Fountain is my favorite room currently. 

We managed the run a few times before calling it quits.

We also ran Doom again to try and get a few arties. I wasn't paying too much attention to whether anybody got anything; I was just along for the ride.

Yellow hiryu.

Once we finished a few Doom runs there was a lull in activity so I went back to hiryu killing.

Lost Lands champion spawn massacre.

Another player offered to show us how a properly geared sampire can effectively solo almost any champ spawn. They were also gracious enough to give us all of the loot except for a specific scroll they were looking for, which we were eternally grateful for. We ended up running several champ spawns across a few locations before calling it a night.

Golden hiryu

I spent a couple of hours killing even more hiryus before hopping off for the night.