Fixed: healing gains

[BlackFoot]

prolly gone over a bunch a time already
but when i trained healing on osi you had to cure poisons to gain anywhere past 65ish and you ahd to rez ghsots to gain anywhere past 85ish,
i gmed a few healers now just healing melle hits while sparring
dont think that would have ever gmed you during era

[RawToxic]

I hate to say it but you are 100% correct. I even have proof. Here is an excerpt from the Professions: The Healer document found on uo.stratics.com on Oct 13th, 1999 that I found on http://www.archive.org using the wayback machine. We are so lucky that stratics was a part of that service back then.

This topic is actually what my next defect post was going to be about. Thanks for bringing it up.

The large part of the text was given as a reference... The important parts are bolded and italicized.

Now, lets work up your healing a little... there are several ways of proceeding...

With a partner: If you can find a friend to train with, you can raise skill fairly quickly. Find a quiet place, and spar. Fight naked... else your clothing may be destroyed by this punishment. When one of you gets low on health, heal. You will eventually find an amount of damage where you sometimes fail to heal (you get the message "You apply the bandages, but they barely seem to help.") You want to aim for this point. Lower than that, and you will fail too much. Higher than that, and it will be too easy to heal, and you will not gain skill. Along the way, you will also gain tactics and weapon skill, as well as some strength and dexterity. The downside is that unless you join a guild, you may be flagged criminal, and are attackable.
Alone: Find a high ledge you can fall off of. There is a guard tower on the southern end of Britain, and cliffs near the archery range in northeast Britain that are pretty good for this purpose. Another spot is in the guarded area in Delucia, it is between the healers and the inn at the water. Just walk towards the water and you fall down to the shore. Slightly more risky (out of guard range), there are cliffs just south of the Trinsic moongate... Whereever you choose, jump off of the cliff repeatedly until you are reduced to 0 hp, then heal. Fear not, You will not die. Just as above, you will find a 'sweet spot' to aim for. This method is quite boring, and only raises your healing.
With some effort: Find a busy healer shop, I recommend the ones in Papua and Delucia... they have dangerous areas nearby, and generate many ghosts. Wait for a ghost to get resurrected, then say something like "I will heal thee" (I recommend creating a macro for it) and apply bandages. This method is less boring, and much more fulfilling than the previous two - you said you wanted to be a healer, might as well practice the art. Only your healing goes up, but you can practice your hiding or anatomy while you wait for patients, and you become known to the locals. Also, people often bring you gifts for helping them out, and you can really use the support!
Skill gain is relative to the amount of damage you actually heal, not how much you could have... If you could heal 40 points of damage, but the patient was only damaged 20 points, only 20 points counts towards gain... The third method above is the best, in my opinion, as you will run into many (dead) warriors with 90 - 100 strength.

One point of note: bandaging your own wounds takes 15 seconds, while healing another takes only 5 seconds. Working with others is definitely more efficient than working alone.

This will raise your Healing skill from 50 to 55-65. Somewhere in this range, you will stop gaining skill, and need to start curing poison. There are two paths to choose from now:

The fast way: Keep your Anatomy low. Buy some nightshade, and have an alchemist turn it into Lesser Poisons. Poison yourself, and attempt to cure yourself until it wears off... This is really boring, but effective: you can raise your Healing skill to 75-80 with this method.

The fun way: Raise your Anatomy to 60+. Now you can actually go adventuring, and cure poison. Go adventuring in Despise... you'll be poisoned in no time. *grin*

Remember that you cannot successfully cure until you have 60+ in both Anatomy and Healing. The second method is so dramatically slower, that I suggest raising your Healing skill to at least 70 before you try it. Realize, though, that once you raise your Anatomy high enough to cure, method one is much less effective.

Just as above, curing yourself takes 18 seconds, while curing another takes only 6 seconds.

Now it is time to begin your real career as a healer - resurrecting the fallen. Raise your Anatomy to 80+, and seek out ghosts. Resurrecting a ghost takes 10 seconds, and just like healing and curing only costs a single bandage. This is a good time to work on weapons skills (and perhaps Hiding), as the more dangerous locations produce more patients to work on. Once your Anatomy and Healing are above 81 or so, you will begin successfully resurrecting. Resurrect every ghost you see, or find a partner ghost to practice on. The road to grandmaster is a long one, but it is well worth it.

[Faust]

I agree with this also. On Baja there was a tile that would poison you inside the green pukey looking pit near the poison elemental spawn on the third level of Deceit where people would macro it. I don't believe all servers had this though.

[platy]

this tile was also on catskills, although i thought it was all the green tiles on the ground which would poison you?

[RawToxic]

Tiles like those, the stealth gaining tiles in Magincia, the detect hidden tile in the lower crate room of the West Brit training compound, and others like it were all shard specific as setup by the GM's who staffed them. That was back when the gm's were allowed to help make the game fun before all the cry babies made the game get nerfed. I'm so glad environments like this exist today.

[RawToxic]

Sorry, I don't mean to double post but I just realized something.

The one problem I see at Derrick being able to implement this kind of change is determining the specific point at which the cures and rezes are required to start gaining at higher skill levels. There was always unsureness with players back in the day. This was not clearly lined out in the source document but shown that the author was unsure. I have the answer. This issue actually leads me to another ERA issue that has to do with the same source issue.

Let me start by explaining the other issue first. Here goes.. Stay with me...

Your professional skill title will be displayed on your paper doll for the skill is the highest skill on your skill list based on real skill points. (Real skill points means that Stat Bonuses are not added to the final skill total displayed on your skill list.) As you progress in that skill, your professional skill title is updated on your paperdoll, i.e. Neophyte, Journeyman, Expert, Master, etc). Back in old T2A times on OSI, your professional skill title did not advance on your paper doll until your were +1.3 points in that skill past the 10 point range for that title. For instance, if you had 79.9 Lumberjacking and it was your highest skill, you would display Expert Lumberjack on your paper doll until you reached 81.3 real skill points. This was the case for all professional title levels except for GM which chimed in directly at 100.0 since it could not progress any higher.

On this server, professional skill titles advance at 30.0, 40.0, 50.0, etc and not at 31.3, 41.3, 51.3, and so on like they should to be ERA accurate.

The reason that everyone was unsure where the range you had to start curing and resing was because of the +1.3 requirement and the and stat bonus skill points. Some people only gained to a certain point but others gained more because they had extra stat bonuses to the skill.

So, I believe that because of this, the skill level points for Curing should be 61.3 and Ressing should be 81.3. However, if this change it made, I believe the other change should be made regarding the professional skill title advancement on this server to also be ERA accurate since it follows the same rules.

If needed, I'll try to find evidence on the web that skill exists if any to support these claims, but I swear to you this is all true. I pay attention to stupid crap like this and that was one of the first differences I noticed when coming to this shard was that professional skill titles were advancing earlier than they should be.

Is anyone still with me?

[Red]

I totally remember the 61.3/81.3 thing, although I didn't think that was a static number. The number was how much bonus skill your stats gave. Back then, you had no "show real" button. All of the displayed skills had the stat bonuses already added to them, so you needed 60 "real" healing/anat to cure.

[RawToxic]

True.. The atrophy buttons weren't added to UO until right before the UOR release and the show real skill button was added later. I just think it is weird that it was always at the 1.3 level that the professional titles changed.

It was very strange. I'm glad someone else remembers too. I was beginning to doubt myself. HOwever, I played since original OSI uo beta and my 8-10 year ago memory sort of bleeds together sometimes. GO Lake Superior! LOL

[Divvet]

just curious, with how nurfed healing is atm, would there be any point in raising it if these changes were made?
sorry if i am wrong, i havnt used healing on the field yet, its just what i have read on the forums that i get the healing - crap thing from.

[Derrick]

There's been no change to the usefullness of healing, the way the skill gain is made has changed, but it actually shouldn't effect the difficulty, cost or length of time to gain, only the method by which it is done.

[Slade]

I am 95% sure that curing was 60.1 base skill requirement, and rez was 80.1 requirement. Once you hit those thresholds, you could do that for gains. It was a big deal, because you could then spend 1 nightshade and 1 bandage for a decent chance at skillgain. Or for the cheap bastards, you found poison tiles and just ran over those to lesser poison yourself.

Either that, or it was 61.0 and 81.0. But there was a 1 involved, and it was VERY soon after the 60/80 mark. This I am sure of.


Keep in mind that regardless of whether or not the "real skill" button was available during T2A, that doesn't mean the 80.1 and 60.1 figures are not correct.

[Maleficia]

True.. The atrophy buttons weren't added to UO until right before the UOR release and the show real skill button was added later. I just think it is weird that it was always at the 1.3 level that the professional titles changed.

This is a little off base. In Pub 1 published Nov. 23 1999, was the implementation of skill management. The T2A window was not that large in the overall scope of the game, but it was clearly in it. Also from the same patch:
1. Bank Box Weight Limit Removal
2. Potion Kegs
3. Rune Books
4. Potion Kegs
There is a quite a lot in this publish that shaped the strength of T2A before the descent began. This was the best publish the game had in my opinion and was 6 months before UO:R.

[Xukluk Tuguznal]

Not to rehash this. But, Healing being difficulty based would mean the gains would be better. But, not that you could only gain that way. Unless I missed something..

10/1/98

Client patch : these items will require a client patch to be visible to you.
"Paperdoll lag" caused when sailing, hiding, and drinking potions should be resolved.
You will no longer be able to walk uo onto furs or vegetables.
Combat automove should be completely gone!
Chopping up corpses will now result in a pile of remains, which is a container. Within the remains will be the contents of the original corpse. This container acts exactly the same as the original corpse--looting it can still result in criminal flagging. Special thanks to the regulars at the Crossroads of Britannia Dev and Discussion boards, whose discussing of this problem led us to a solution.
Guilds and player vs player combat:
The Fame requirement or joining and staying in order/chaos guilds will be removed.
All the glitches in fealty calculation in guildstones are believed to be ironed out. Incorrect GMs will be automatically deposed when fealty challenges occur.
You are no longer criminal flagged for looting the corpses of opponents in guild warfare.
Learning skills by watching people who are using them will be removed.
Problems with ghosts entering certain caves will be fixed.
All references to mounts now use the word "mount" instead of "horse."
The invisibility spell, broken last update, will function again.
Game Masters will no longer be revealed for getting items out of corpses while invisible.
Players who take items from their own corpse while hiding will no longer be revealed.
GMs have gained the ability to tell who last changed a house sign; if your house's sign has been defaced, GMs will be able to determine the identity of the vandal. Special thanks to the rec.games.computer.ultima.online newsgroup for the suggestion of this feature!
The text message for the armslore skill, broken last update, will be correct again.
Excess messages were removed from the healing skill.
Healing should be advancing properly now. The amount you advance is based on how wounded the individual you tried to heal was--the skill is now difficulty based, so the more health the target is down, the greater the chance of increase

[RawToxic]

The way I understand this is that you can still gain skill from attempting regular heals. However, you will not gain as fast as curing or resing at higher levels. I was playing my poisoner last night fighting orcs and was gaining healing in the 70's without having to cure. It's just really slow.

[Ronk]

Right. Curing and ressing is more difficult than healing. But you can GM from healing alone. It just requires healing more damage.

This is why old macro guides suggested finding a hill that injured yourself and walk up and drop off until you were at 1 health...then heal yourself.