UO Second Age

Please bring back item guarding. It was the best. In particular making your horse guard a house door and owning people. This was one of my T2A favourites.

Patch note below:

3/18/98

- Getting or using a guarded item will now flag you criminal. (This includes using doors, for those who wish to guard their houses with pets/hirelings).

I agree, I hate how it makes YOU a criminal currently.

MatronDeWinter wrote:I agree, I hate how it makes YOU a criminal currently.

This makes sense though, how should it function?

Wait, how does this currently work on the shard? I'm not sure if it's correct or backwards right now. By the chatter in here it sounds like it may actually be backwards.

What happens in this scenario here when all mobiles have blue noto including the pet dog?

- Player A tells a pet dog to guard a hally lying on the ground.
- Player B comes up and takes the hally and the dog attacks Player B.

Who currently flags criminal on UOSA right now, Player A or B?

My first instinct answer was the dog, actually.

Player A flags criminal, it's been wrong for some time now. People should be single-clicking items (lich lord doors mainly) to be sure they are not guarded before using them.

Player B is suppose to flag criminal in this situation based on the current mechanical use of the command. This was the reason the GMs on production shards started to move all the doors inside of dungeons into the black areas. People were abusing this bug like crazy by having a pet guard one of the dungeon doors that had to be opened to pass through it. However, the 'guard' command is actually inaccurate at the moment after doing some research on it...

Here is a brief timeline of the command.

3/18/98 wrote: Changes to pet guarding:

• Pets will be immediately aggressive when a guarded object is used or taken.
• Guarded objects and people will have [guarded] over their head when looked at, and approaching them will give you a warning.
• You will not be able to guard items that are in towns.
• Items that are in towns will be considered not to be guarded when they are left there or if they move, when they walk there. The [guarded] tag will go away to indicate this. When they leave towns, the tag will be restored and all previous guarding will resume.
• It will no longer be possible to guard items in containers.
• You will not be able to guard living things other than players and other pets.
• Getting or using a guarded item will now flag you criminal. (This includes using doors, for those who wish to guard their houses with pets/hirelings).

Mar 28 1999 9:37AM CST wrote: For right now, pets are unable to guard corpses.

Sept. 22nd Publish Sep 22 1999 4:27PM CST wrote: Pets will only guard the following:

• The owner
• The corpse of the owner
• Items in the house of the owner
• Other pets of the owner

We should really be using this update since it's before our cutoff date...

I actually meant player A in the above post, I got mixed up somehow. Whomever commands the pet to guard the item, will turn criminal on UOSA when the item is taken.

Getting or using a guarded item will now flag you criminal. (This includes using doors, for those who wish to guard their houses with pets/hirelings).

Pretty much explains that.


The update was basically when guarding was removed and the game started moving in a more "player friendly" direction, (except for items in houses etc). So I guess the thing to do would be to correct the current mechanic, or remove the ability all together (except for houses and whatnot), which is a shame

Did any other factors play in deciding our cutoffdate, other than pre-casting and insta-hit?

Take a look at the patches around the target date and see for yourself if you think it's a good timeframe.

The date is probably based around the most popular part of the era that is a little over half way through it. Features like smelting/unraveling, boat recall/docking, potion kegs, runebooks, gm carpentry/tailor/tinker items(no gm staves before this patch), skill locks, co-owners, 800x600 client(definitely a good thing if we ever move to an original client), etc... the list goes on and on. There are some items in this list that I don't personally like but there are definitely a lot of people that do like them.

Sept. 22nd Publish Sep 22 1999 4:27PM CST wrote: Pets will only guard the following:

• The owner
• The corpse of the owner
• Items in the house of the owner
• Other pets of the owner

We should really be using this update since it's before our cutoff date...[/quote]

Dear Fausty,

This is correct.

Note: Items in the house of the owner

A house door is an item in the house of the owner.

i used to put a pouch or a bag full of stuff on the ground at xroads, noobs would open and a hidden summoned deamon would kill them

i was not taking kills for it

but you could see in the bottom left corner of the screen something like... a deamon is guard a bag, or a bag is guarded...

It's definitely not era accurate that the person who commands the pet to guard gets any criminal flag or death count at all. If you set your pets to guard your house door, the player who comes along and tries to break in gets the criminal flag. If your pets kill him, you do not get a murder count for it.

When break in bugs were rampant (I swear by just slithering between the door cracks), I used to keep 2 rows of grizzlies in front of my double doors and would love to log into a corpse or 2 there for me to loot. I never got a murder count for it, the corpses were always flagged criminal.

It doesn't make any sense that the person trying to break into your house or steal your things doesn't get the criminal flag.

Bigoud wrote:i used to put a pouch or a bag full of stuff on the ground at xroads, noobs would open and a hidden summoned deamon would kill them

i was not taking kills for it

but you could see in the bottom left corner of the screen something like... a deamon is guard a bag, or a bag is guarded...

Bring this back! Although maybe it should give murder counts if its not in your house.

This is all supposed to be working properly, looking into it.

You can only guard an item in your home
When the item is approached, the approacher should get a message that the item is guarded
It the item is taken or used by anyone who is not a friend of the pet, the taker/user will be criminal.

Thanks for posting this. It was my understanding that these mechanics were working. i recognize that we did have it backwards previously.

I did verify that this appears to be working correctly. You get the warning when approaching the object (in my test i used a house door), and if you use the door you become criminal.

If anyone has any information on situations in which this is not the case, please enter a bug report.