Five on Friday - September 5, 2008

The post-SA announcement, post-Publish 55 edition! Due to last-minute technical difficulties, the FoF is below the cut in its entirety.

"Will Stygian Abyss be accessible with the 2D client?"

I know we've answered this before, but until everyone who heard last year's version hears this year's version, it will continue to come up, so, YES! All Stygian Abyss content will be accessible by BOTH the 2D client and the new Stygian Abyss client.

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"Tell us more about Imbuing!"

We'll give you more and more detail in coming months, but here's a bit from Leurocian to keep you going:

"Imbuing will be done by skill activation. You will need a special object called a soul forge (more on this later) and you will need magical ingredients and the item to imbue to perform this skill. The higher your Imbuing skill, the greater the intensity you can imbue, etc. If balanced right, it should be difficult to master.

You can also unravel magical items with Imbuing and receive magical ingredients from these items. Doing so, destroys the item in the process. Other resources will also be required for Imbuing, but I'll save that teaser for later.

Items (such as artifacts) that can't normally be enhanced or recycled, etc. cannot be imbued or unraveled. And no, the current plan is to not replace Item Identification with Imbuing. Imbuing is a separate skill."

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"Does the Commodity Deed Box let you fill deeds as well as redeem them?"

Yes! The box behaves just like a bank box for the purposes of filling or redeeming commodity deeds.

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"How do I see the rewards on Test Center?"

We've added two gates on Test Center to allow folks to claim the new Vet Rewards on TC1. The gates are at Luna and at West Britain Bank - please follow the below steps to use them!

1. Enter the gate

2. Log out and log back in to get the reward popup and select your rewards

3. Re-enter gate and then use the rewards

Be aware that until we publish the clients, you'll get all kinds of cliloc errors with these. Please don't report them as bugs!

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"Are the new Vet Reward Braziers and Cacti really random? Can I redeed them?"

Currently they are both random and non-redeedable. This has not thus far been met with overwhelming approval from the community, so we are looking into changing it to be a normal deed where you can choose which style to get. However, this change will definitely NOT make it in to Publish 55, so if you are pining for one particular version of the braziers or cacti, hold off on using that Vet Reward for one more publish.

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"What does Swamp Dragon Barding actually do?"

There was a lively discussion about this one, so I dug up the code and gave it a look. Here's the rundown:

Swamp Dragon Barding (and the Paroxymus Swampie's natural protection) has no effect in PvP
Normal quality barding gives a 10% reduction in damage
Exceptional quality barding gives a 20% reduction in damage
The Paroxymus Swamp Dragon gives a 12% reduction in damage and its armor never wears out.
Crafted barding has durability and can break. When it breaks, you need to replace it before you get the effect again.

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"What's the status of Spring Cleaning?"

As of Publish 55, you will no longer be able to hand in items to get tickets. (The NPCs will be gone.) However, the collection box will still be there and you can turn in tickets and redeem points for rewards. We'll warn you before that goes away!

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Siege Perilous Players: A Question For You!

Now that Stygian Abyss has been announced and everyone's discussing the new skills and race, the question of character slots on Siege has come up once again. We know y'all have opinions, and we would love to know what they are - do you want more character slots on Siege? If yes, how many? Please send in Feedback and let us know how you feel!

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What's To Come:

Publish 55 is on Test Center - if you haven't yet, check out the (newly revised) notes here. There are a few things that, because of the nature of the change and/or TC1, we'll have to wait for Origin to look at properly - while you can collect seeds on TC1, they don't actually grow, and of course the Siege ROT changes will only be visible on Siege itself.

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Town Hall News:

The next Town Hall is next Saturday in Austin - if you're in the area, come out and join us! Check out the details here and please do RSVP.

We're aware of issues people seem to be having with the RSVP site - if it's not working for you (for this or any other Town Hall) just show up anyway! We only use the RSVP page to get an idea of how much food to order - there's no "list" or anything you need to be on.

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Fansite News

The shard is now listed above each event! I'm thrilled to be getting so many cool announcements - I would ask that you please remember to put FOF in the subject line of the email, though!

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[All Shards]

Only 5 more days to submit your Halloween Deco Entry!

What IS Halloween? What does Halloween make you think of? Vampire bats, ghosts and goblins, apple crisp mornings, fog shrouded nights? The howling of frightened dogs, as things from the deep creep out their darkened holes to find....you.

Show us the nightmares of Halloween - or that cute little marshmallow creepy crawly that any child would want in the goodie bag!

Halloween deco, a statement worth making. Especially when there's prizes involved. ;)

Send submissions to; uoweendecocontest08@googlemail.com

Please read the full rules, so you're entry is not disqualified. You can find the rules here

Voting starts on September 11th, with 3 rounds to find our ultimate Ultima Online deco kings and queens. As promised, here's the place to vote;

Hosted by UO Homes and Castles.

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[Baja]

UG.K Top Dragon Duel, Saturday, Sept. 13, 9 p.m. PST. Swamp Dragon Event and Greater Dragon Event. Entries by pre-registration only. Check out the details here.

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[Great Lakes]

Come One...Come All!

Every Saturday night at 8est on the Great Lakes Shard

Chickens, Cu’s, Squirrels, Mares and many more come to face off.

We have no entrance fee and give 100k to 1st place, in each class.

We have a bookie, for your betting needs, with a 10k max

Anyone can enter to see if their pet IS the best.

Since we are not going to Fel, you must join CFC for the evening.

So Please talk with your GM before hand.

Gates start at 7:50 at Brit bank

Dont forget about the battle royals at the end of the night...

Its a free for all of one class, such as Cu Sidhes or Chickens...

for more details click here!

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[Great Lakes]

Hello all,

Soon another Monday will come around and there will be games at the castle.

This Monday we will be playing Chest of Doom and Delight. "Doom" means our hostess dies and you win money. "Delight" everyone has fun. We have lots of prizes to give away.

Look for gates at West Brit and Luna banks or come visit us on Ice Island.

Will

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[Lake Superior]

Lake Superior Community's weekly event Schedule

Community Meet'n Greet

Date: Monday, September 8th

Time: 7:30PM Central

Location: Skara Brae Community Center - located next to the bank

Hosts: Airmid / Sabina Nikolai

Blood Dungeon hunt

Date: Tuesday, September 9th

Time: 8:00PM Central