Prepping for an Ultima Online Outlands Playthrough
Nostalgia is hitting me hard. The first MMORPG game I ever played when I was a young teen was the original Ultima Online. I remember being enchanted by the prospect of playing with hundreds and thousands of other players in a role-playing game world, and I have been hooked on MMORPG games ever since. It has been nearly 30 years since I played Ultima Online, and now I am prepping for my chance of a playthrough on an Ultima Online private server called Ultima Online Outlands. I have heard great things about this server from members of my stream community and have seen some of my friends stream it as well who have enjoyed playing it, so last night I downloaded the game and went through some early gameplay off stream.
Ultima Online is a sandbox MMORPG, and outlands the private server adds a whole lot more sand to that sandbox by continually updating the game with their own development by adding new places to explore, new monsters to kill and treasures to collect, and even adding new skills during their many updates. Due to their approach, coming back to Ultima Online through Outlands is like playing a whole new game. They have modernized a lot of the pain points of the original Ultima Online and added some quality-of-life features that make the game much more approachable than before. While I was still overwhelmed yesterday with the UI and some other elements of the tutorial island, I quickly began to remember why I loved Ultima Online so much back in the day.
Once you create your account, download the client, and create your first character, you are spawned into the new player area and the first thing you must do is either select a premade template of your starting skills, or choose to customize your character on your own by picking your own skills. Because I had a conversation during one of my streams with someone who was playing outlands already, I had worked out my own build as a melee combatant and chose the following 8 starting skills as follows:
1). Fencing 60/100
2). Tactics 60/100
3). Parrying 60/100
4). Anatomy 60/100
5). Healing 60/100
6). Focus 60/100
7). Chivalry 60/100
8). Arms Lore 60/100
In Ultima Online Outlands, you start at around 480 out of a total of 700 (the cap can apparently be raised to 720 through gameplay later on) skill points upon character creation, which is much different than the original Ultima Online where you either start out with nothing or much less. This makes it a much easier time to jump into the action right away in UO Outlands, and we did this by going to a newbie dungeon in the tutorial area right off the bat. By choosing the above skills, we were provided by the game with the necessary weapons and healing items to allow us to start leveling up immediately.
Before we started leveling however, we did something very important to ensure that our character would only level up the skills we wanted. In Ultima Online, the skill interface allows you to dictate which skills you can increase, which skills you can decrease, and which skills you want to stay capped at their current skill level. Because I want to have my character be a pure 700/700 character, I set every skill I choose above with the up arrow to increase their skill levels except for Arms Lore, which I set the down arrow to decrease its skill level. Every other skill was at 0, so I capped them at 0 so I don't accidentally level a skill I don't want to. Additionally, our attribute points of strength, dexterity, and intelligence work the same way. I ended up setting strength and dexterity with the up arrow to increase those stats and intelligence with the down arrow to decrease that stat. I believe the max cap is 100 per attribute, so once I hit the strength and dexterity cap at 100, I ended up capping them there and then switching the intelligence to increase up to the max it can go.
With our 2 handed spear equipped and my bandages at the ready, we went ahead and braved the newbie dungeon. Initially, I died pretty quickly two times while I was getting acclimated again to how combat works in Ultima Online Outlands, but once I got the hang of it, I quickly started entering a flow state and destroying the mobs and healing myself in the process. The progression while you are leveling a skill has always been top notch in Ultima Online, and the dopamine was flowing as I saw my skills raising in quick succession up to the cap of 80 that the new player dungeon limited our skill growth too. I was able to level all skills to 80 except for parrying which was left around 67 skill for the next time I play, but I am trying to acquire some armor first so I can simply allow the creatures in the dungeons to attack me for parrying skill gains without taking too much damage in the process. To get all other skills to 80 took maybe a couple of hours tops, and each creature dropped coins and other loot that I will be able to bring to the mainland of the game once I am through with the tutorial island.
As mentioned in previous blog posts, I actually have a few games on the horizon that I will be playing before Ultima Online Outlands, namely Camelot Unchained which launches on June 2nd and potentially the new Everquest 2 server of Wuoshi which launches on June 9th. Should Camelot Unchained not grab me like I anticipate it won't, then we can try to start up a playthrough of Ultima Online Outlands during this week before the new server of Everquest 2 begins and then come back to it again if Everquest 2 doesn't hold our attention as well. Today also marks the last day of the Joyous Journeys 50% XP buff in World of Warcraft Mists of Pandaria Classic, so I plan to give it one more big push today to hopefully get to level 60 with my Gnome Monk.
Gaming is back in my life in a big way, but I appreciate the fact that I am taking it in stride this time. I am prioritizing my health and fitness above gaming to ensure that I do this well before I start my day in gaming by taking my morning walk and gym time first thing. I complete my other errands as well before all else, and only then, when everything is done, I can enjoy my gaming experiences. Looking forward to this upcoming month of June and I hope everyone has a great start to the day and month!
Until next time,
Blackboa