UOAlive Day 196: Vesper Artisan Tree

 

West Britain Tailors

Early this morning a mysterious figure clad in purple could be found sleepily stumbling around to various Britannian tailor NPCs, mumbling something about cotton, how ridiculously heavy it is, and the various conversion rates that takes one from gold pieces to cut cloth.

New Magincia Stone Exchange

Recently on Discord, Tr1age announced the addition of a cool tool to assist the playerbase in locating IDOCs and greatly worn houses. I'm personally a fan of this, as I'd hate for loot that other players would find useful to otherwise be lost into the pixel void. Snow and I haven't been keeping an eye on the houses for a while, so we've been missing out on some IDOCs. I intend to eventually keep a better eye on the IDOCs again, but currently my eyes are on a much sweeter prize:

45 large BODs, totaling around 5,500 turn-in points.

BODs. Glorious, glorious BODs. My life has become an eternal struggle to find the time and resources to feed my BOD addiction. If you find a small, purple-haired goblin kneeling over a mountain of green scrolls, desperately sewing cloth and leather into various armaments, screaming "my precious!" at any passersby who dare reach for those emerald goodies, hi, that's me.

I ended up getting the tree half way through level four with those forty-five BODs, I was absolutely sick of looking at any crafting menus or resource chests, though, so I found something much more enjoyable to do with my time.

<_<

UOAlive Day 194: Post-Festive UO Grinding

 

I managed to advance the tree to level five at 7:30 this morning. That meant it was time for even more resource grinding to prepare for the next tree!

 It appears an update has come to the ClassicUO client. Container gumps have been hued to match the color of the container. I'm a fan of this change - it's made screen management much easier when I'm sorting through and organizing multiple containers of goodies we've received over the holidays.

Before I got heavily into resource grinding, I took some time to hide a lot of the clutter and unsorted loot in the room I was trying to create when I lost my beloved nearly full Davies' Locker. I also did a little bit of basic planning and decorating across the rest of the castle.

The kitchen area is coming along better. I wish I knew where the daily rare curtains spawned so I could get more to use around the castle.

This is the color scheme I've settled on for the season in the majority of the castle. I figure I'll change out the colors and general decorations as time goes on to fit current events on the server or a relevant holiday.

The guild barracks has also been decorated in a more festive color scheme for the foreseeable future. I know the rest of the ground outside of the castle has returned to grass, but I'm not quite ready to give up on the snowy, cozy vibes the decorated parts of the castle have.

I tried something I haven't done a while and decorated the courtyard with blue plants. It's been so long since I last decorated with anything but plain plants I feel out of practice. I have no idea what's considered a good, decorated look within the game any more. This felt like enough given the limited stock I had of bright blue plants, so I'm personally happy with the results.

I also attempted to escort another lost reindeer, but this one suffered a macabre fate at the hands of a corrupted tree. The tree then proceeded to chase me across the island, and I found myself recalling away with my tail tucked between my legs.

After recalling away, I discovered that my Justice and Compassion needed some maintenance work. I took the time to do that before running back to my castle to mass convert cotton into cut cloth.

In the end, I was able to add almost 50k more cloth to the tailor resource box. I'm sure I'll have to convert some more cotton before the Artisan festival ends, but this should keep me out of trouble for a while.

After about six hours (please, don't judge me too harshly LOL) of mass crafting, I finished my night with 22 large BODs ready to turn in to the next hungry Artisan tree!

UOAlive Day 193: Trinsic Artisan Tree

 

Trinsic Artisan tree at level four

The Trinsic Artisan tree has begun. I managed to get the tree to level four with the large BODs I had pre-filled, but a little more grinding was required to get the tree to max level.

I've taken to buying up as much of the leather as I can find across NPCs and vendor search. I'm running through my leather faster than I can replace it through hiryu hunting! 

This picture is from the end of a mass small BOD turn in session. I've gotten up to 80 small bods, ranging between 10 points and 200 points in value, in a single mass BOD-filling session. As silly as it is, the logistics of figuring out how to streamline my process and bulk fill BODs and replenish resources is something I love doing in my free time. In high school I would spend my early weekend mornings mass filling BODs on OSI servers just because I loved building up a massive BOD collection and figuring out how to optimize filling them efficiently with the resources I had available. I'm sure there's some video from the late 2000's on my Analayla Youtube channel with a screenshot referencing my love of BODs.

To make a decision of where to prioritize my efforts (mass random small-BOD filling vs. concentrating on specific Large BODs) I would mark down every single empty large BOD I received during my most recent small BOD turn-in extravaganza using the in game chat system. This is me clearing my chat input so I can start fresh on another BOD-filling round. 

I didn't manage to get the tree to its maximum level today, but I hope to finish that tomorrow if the other crafters on the server aren't able to max out the tree while I sleep.

UOAlive Day 192: Christmas Artisan

 Today my Britannian adventures were short and sweet. I made sure to log in and claim my Skara goodies before the next tree started, then pre-filled a bunch more BODs since Tr1age let us know he adjusted the point requirements a bit to better fit the balance he's seeking on the server.

This tree is in Trinsic. I managed to catch it right as it spawned so I could throw in all of the large BODs I've been filling.

I managed to get the tree to stage three with all of the BODs I've pre-filled. I don't know when or if I'll be able to bring this tree to level five. Whenever I get a free moment to play UO, though, you bet your but I'll be working towards advancing this!

UOAlive Day 190: Holiday Slow Down

 

For a couple of days, the admins have activated snow across the land. The process isn't 100% smooth on ServUO, which is why this is only being done for a couple of days, but I enjoy the strong Christams vibes from the world now.

The admins also released a general roadmap for the future of UOAlive. One of the things they intend to implement is a rideable/trainable polar bear, something Snow suggested a few months back. Whenever this is implemented, I'm sure Snow and a few members of the crew will come back to the game for a bit to explore the new tameables.

I took another lot of small BODs over to the Three Stone Tavern. I don't know if they're actually being used for their intended purpose, or whether the players are grabbing the goods to turn in to tailors on their own crafters. It makes me feel good, however, so I'm choosing to continue offering this over the course of the Artisan Festival. 

This has become my prison for the past couple of weeks. I say prison, but I genuinely get a great deal of personal enjoyment from mass-filling BODs. On OSI I would spend every morning mass filling BODs simply because I could. I wouldn't even bother turning in the BODs. 

I've started approaching my mass small BOD turn-ins with a bit of strategy to try and fill out my BOD reward chest. If I'm going to set up a vendor, I may as well make sure it's stocked to the brim with a variety of options and backup stock.

UOAlive Day 188: Tr1age Made An Oopsie

 

I've begun a stash of lower tier Tailor BOD rewards. I'm realistically going to end up with far more than I could ever hope to use in my lifetime, so I think I'm going to end up adding a vendor at the Luna Moongate house for these goodies. I don't know what I'll price the goods at. I'm thinking a certain amount of gold pieces per point of reward. So if I decided on 5gp per point, a stack of 100 cloth from the 10 point reward tier would be 50 gp. I'm definitely going to go higher than that, but I want my prices to be fair while also not losing money.

I did some math on the gold I've been spending on cotton and I've mathed out a single piece of cut cloth to be 1.16 gold pieces. That's incredibly cheap, given how fast I'm going through the cloth, so I think I'm going to keep paying vendor rates for the cotton and hand process the goods into cut cloth.

At the beginning of the month the admins implemented a way for players to get otherwise no longer obtainable halloween decor items - random spawns in Britain, Zento, and Magincia.

Initially I didn't bother trying to find any of these items. A bunch of other players were nearly constantly running over the town and grabbing what they could find. Now that the initial rush for holiday decor has subsided, however, I've been able to stumble across a few handy decorative items for myself.

The tree cycled over to Skara Brae this evening, so I did my normal thing and ran off to complete the tree.

This tree only took about 10 large BODs to reach full maturity. I did have several higher-value BODs, so that greatly contributed to the difference in BOD usage.

I wouldn't be surprised if Tr1age bumps up the required points a bit. This is a bit fast, even for a solo crafter to fill.

After I finished with the Artisan Tree, I decided to do a little bit of customizing at my main castle. This involved removing a bunch of add-ons, as the house was giving me an error message pertaining to add-ons and preventing me from adding the room I intended to add.

Around this time, the daily 12 Days of Christmas gift was sent out, and I quickly relogged to claim the goodies. Since I was mass deeding a bunch of deeds and needed a way to keep them organized, I threw the deeds into my newly obtained Christmas gift box.

Unfortunately, Tr1age had messed up and sent out the wrong day of gifts. They caught it really early, and Tr1age's solution was to delete all of the relevant boxes and re-send the gifts out with the correct gifts.

The only issue was, he accidentally deleted all of my deeded add-ons!

Fortunately, Tr1age was immediate in teleporting over to me and replacing everything I remembered losing. Before leaving, he left me with a cute Christmas Hat. :)

The only issue was, I ended up axeing quite a few items in my desperate attempts to locate the offending add-on that was preventing me from customizing my house. I wasn't able to remember all of the items I lost in the moment, and ended up forgetting about several holiday themed trees, my nearly full Davies' Locker, a few veteran rewards, and a few other decorative deeded items. By that point I had already sent Tr1age on his way and didn't want to bother him, though.

I think I've decided I'm just going to suck up those losses and force myself to wait for my account to be old enough to claim my own Davies' Locker and replace all of the hundreds of lost SOSs and Treasure Maps in my own time. I replaced some of the other lost veteran items through my crafter account and re-bought whatever decorative trees I could, but I'm really feeling the loss of those Holly Jolly Christmas trees I had. They looked so cool with their train sets at the base!

To be clear: I know there would've been no issues if I had contacted Tr1age with the updated list of what else I remembered I lost. I just don't feel like it's worth the hassle of bothering him and really, it's not that big of a deal. Sure, I won't have a bunch of treasure maps to pull from when I'm bored any more. I can replenish that stock if I keep going on adventures, though.

The day ended with an invasion from Krampus in Luna. I didn't end up participating in the server shenanigans because I had other plans in the real world.

UOAlive Day 187: Small Day

 

The admins have made some changes to the holiday event stones. Instead of using Even Tokens, they pull from the same Sovereigns used in the UO Store. There is still a general event token stone that players can use, and most of the functionally useful items are on that stone, but this is an interesting choice.

Given some of the nerfs to Britcoin obtaining and costs, I'm curious if the admins will either adjust the Sovereign costs of these items, or adjust the Britcoin drop or conversion rate. I suppose time will tell.

I restocked the Three Stone Tavern pre-filled BODs and announced my exceptionally humble and giving actions in Discord before logging off for the day.

In the evening, I quickly logged on to claim the daily rewards Tr1age has been giving out to celebrate the holiday season. These gifts have been themed off of the "12 Days of Christmas" song and I've enjoyed seeing the creative ways Tr1age has represented each day of the song.

UOAlive Day 185: Quick Decorating Update

In the UOAlive Discord, a conversation was started about Laifem the Weaver's custom carpet tiles. In an effort to add to the conversation, I shared the two pictures above to illustrate that the carpet tiles are dyeable, allowing for a lot more choice in house color schemes. 

What I ended up with instead were a bunch of players, including one of the admins, who learned that you can craft beds with colored cloth to end up with colored sheets. Hurray for expanding the decorating possibilities for a group of players! 

I didn't end up filling any BODs today. After the past few days, I decided a break was needed.

UOAlive Day 184: Holiday Questing

 

Today I attempted to do a few of the custom holiday events on UOAlive. One of the quests has players escort reindeer to Santa on Ice Island.

Unfortunately, a bunch of powerful mobs spawn in the same area the reindeer spawn in. I originally attempted to escort a few reindeer on my bard, but the gingermen and corrupted Christmas trees kept one-shotting all the deer.

I brought my tamer and her cu to see if I could make any headway on the mobs, but that turned into a long battle of attrition. I ended up aborting my mission with the intention of letting the reindeer spawn in a safer location for my bard to handle.

Unfortunately, I forgot that the Witch/Witch Hunter event was still going on while traveling through Skara Brae to find a few NPCs, and I inadvertently started a witch spawn in Skara Brae.

The story of this event is long and convoluted, but in short I don't see it lasting long on this server. Some of the players I have mentioned previously had some choice complaints that drove the admins to cancel the event originally, and after heads had cooled down they made the decision to revisit the event. Unfortunately, I'm seeing a lot of the same attitudes that got the event cancelled in the first place.

Here's hoping I'm wrong, and the players get to enjoy the fruits of the admins' labour and efforts to bring us interesting content.

I went back to Ice Island later to try and locate some of the reindeer, but unfortunately they had all spawned inside a private castle that nobody could access. This has been a consistent issue on the server, but the admins have told players who report the issue to just wait until the game moves the reindeer or they respawn elsewhere. I can't say I disagree, as it's a hard to account for issue, but this has put me off attempting this quest again any time soon.

The Moonglow tree was about to expire this afternoon, so I took some time to gate over all of my characters to claim their gifts.

The next tree was Magincia, so as soon as four o'clock rolled around I scurried over to the new location and started throwing my large BODs at the elf.

I ended up taking the tree completely to max level with about 12 large BODs. That might be a bit much, but I'm not complaining. I've noticed that outside of the first tree, nobody has been contributing large BODs to the tree. A single person to carrying the rest of the server is going to get expensive, resource-wise.

I restocked the free pre-filled bods at the Three Stone Tavern before logging off for the night.

UOAlive Day 183: Moonglow Artisan BOD-ventures

 

An update was pushed out that cut down the grind for the Artisan tree, so I've been working on pre-filling as many large BODs as I can today.

Since I had a bunch of pre-filled small BODs and I was feeling generous, I decided to donate a bunch of pre-filled BODs to the Three Stone Tavern to allow newer or busier players to get their own chance at some Artisan goodies.

Evidently there were some issues with directly renaming the Kudos to Britcoins, so the admins have implemented a Kudos to Britcoin exchange and have informed the players that Kudos will be deleted/obsolete in February of next year. That's left plenty of time to convert the tokens.

I had over 15,000 Kudos across all my accounts, so I took the time to log in and condense all of my tokens onto my bard and convert the tokens to Sovereigns.

One of today's Magincia Tree gifts was a gorgeous tree I hope to find a use for before the season has passed. The real world has kept my Britannian activities limited lately, so I won't make any promises about completed decorations. This stuff will be good to have for future years, though.

UOAlive Day 182: Veteran Cotton Buying

West Britain holiday cheer!

 The admins have done a lovely job of adding some Christmas cheer to the player gathering spots on the server!

My main account is finally old enough to claim the rest of the crafting Veteran reward items, so I went ahead and grabbed those and threw them down in the castle. I don't 100% know where I'm going to put everything yet, but I definitely have plans. *cackles excitedly*

I've decided that there's no possible way I can keep up with my cloth usage via hand picking cotton, so I've taken to buying large stacks of cotton from tailors across Britannia and mass turning the cotton into cloth in between BOD sessions.

Luckily I have enough gold to warrant doing this. I can't imagine how a newer player could hope to participate in the Artisan Festival with how many resources it demands!