Terath Keep era accuracy

[Gafron]

The lever over near the tightrope opened the doors to the room near the brazier one uses to get into the star room. That lever was the only way to open those doors, from the outside, to the best of my memory. Even GM lockpicking could not unlock the doors is my recollection. To open them from the inside one would use the lever inside the room. The doors stayed open for quite a while when either lever was used because I could use the tightrope lever to open them then run all the way back to the room before the doors would close. I did this frequently to get at the Matriarch inside.

In other threads it has been stated there was no moongate in the Star room. I do not recall either way about that, but at the moment one can mark a rune and gate or recall in and out of the Star room along the southern wall. I have no specific memory of this being so during the T2A era but believe it is not era accurate because it would have defeated the purpose of restricting magic travel to near the entrance of the dungeon. I do remember distinctly, trying to mark runes and recall out of most everywhere I could inside Terath, because of the pain in the rear of having to go all the way back to near the entrance when I had filled my pack with treasure. Other than the Star room anomaly, magic travel into and out of the keep seems to be the same as I remember it.

Terath Avengers are way too fast. I always hunted on foot in the keep and I was never able to be run down by mobs the way Avengers will now. They may have been faster than the other Teraths but they were not the speed demons they are now. To the best of my knowledge Balrons were some of the fastest mobs in the game, they were definetly faster than the Avengers, so their speed may be correct as it is now. I haven't spent too much time with the Balrons on UOSA because of the pk danger so I can not state for sure if their speed seems all that correct though. I have spent enough time with the Avengers currently to state they need to be slowed down. They are not accurate to the era as they are now.

UOSA is the only non OSI shard I have ever played UO on so I am not remembering things from other emulations. Also, I stopped playing UO, back in the day, just before the change came out limiting housing to one house per account. I practically lived in Terath keep and it was my favorite place to hunt in the game all the way from the beginning of T2A, when we could build box forts in the swamp and have tons of Teraths trying to get at us, all the way up to when I stopped playing and gave my millions away. Funny thing was I made most of my gold by selling bulk reags. Far more than I did by hunting mobs. I was Gafron of Catskills with the Brit xroads small vendor house making a fortune off of those to lazy to recall around and buy their reags.

Oh and thanks to Derrick for running this server. It's a great nostalgia trip.

[the bazookas]

Great post . Definitely corroborates the point made by EVeeee regarding avenger speeds. Interesting points regarding the recall spots in the star room and the levers; would be cool to see that implemented.

In the default RunUO distribution, it seems like the checks for marking runes is done in the Scripts\Spells\Base\SpellHelper.cs file-- there are lots of "Validators" as well as "rules". I initially thought that the change could be made in the Regions.xml file on the server, but it looks like the SpellHelper is where this fix should be made, specifically the coordinates in the TerathanKeep analogue of the "IsFeluccaWind" function need to be fixed.

Code: Select all

	//...
		private delegate bool TravelValidator( Map map, Point3D loc );

		private static TravelValidator[] m_Validators = new TravelValidator[]
			{
				new TravelValidator( IsFeluccaT2A ),
				new TravelValidator( IsIlshenar ),
				new TravelValidator( IsTrammelWind ),
				new TravelValidator( IsFeluccaWind ),
		//...

		private static bool[,] m_Rules = new bool[,]
			{
						/*T2A(Fel)		Ilshenar		Wind(Tram),	Wind(Fel),	Dungeons(Fel),	Solen(Tram),	Solen(Fel), CrystalCave(Malas),	Gauntlet(Malas),	Gauntlet(Ferry),	SafeZone,	Stronghold,		ChampionSpawn, Dungeons(Tokuno[Malas]), LampRoom(Doom),	GuardianRoom(Doom),	Heartwood,		MLDungeons */
/* Recall From */		{ false,		true,			true,			false,		false,			true,			false,		false,				false,				false,			true,		true,			false,			true,				false,				false,			false,			false },
/* Recall To */			{ false,	
			//...
			/* Mark In */			{ false,		false,			false,			false,		false,			false,			false,		false,				false,				false,			false,		false,			false,			false,				false,				false,			false,			false },
			//...
		public static bool IsWindLoc( Point3D loc )
		{
			int x = loc.X, y = loc.Y;

			return (x >= 5120 && y >= 0 && x < 5376 && y < 256);
		}

		public static bool IsFeluccaWind( Map map, Point3D loc )
		{
			return (map == Map.Felucca && IsWindLoc( loc ));
		}

Perhaps an appropriate set of coordinates for the star room specifically would be
x >= 5120 && y >= 1744 && x < 5173 && y < 1792

I'm not sure off-hand about how the levers could be implemented, but I'll look into it when I have a chance.

[Faust]

The levers would be easy.

The slow rising and closing gates at Lord British's castle and Hythloth level four here was coded by me. Those are a lot more complex than this particular instance. Probably would only take a couple minutes of actually coding. Would take more time just pulling up the solution, graphic id's, etc... than actually coding.

[EVeee]

As the bazookas said, I brought up the same exact subject only a short while ago in this thread:viewtopic.php?f=8&t=39796

It's long but feel free to read through and share your thoughts. Thanks for keeping this discussion alive.

[Kaivan]

I did a little research to corroborate the information about the lever in the keep, and found a newsgroup thread here that links to a website that has information regarding terathan keep itself. Unfortunately, the pictures for the website were not saved, but the text is, which confirms the lever information, and gives us a good idea of where you could and couldn't mark runes within the keep.

Regarding runes to the star room, a quick search on the newsgroups reveals that it was possible to mark runes to the star room well into UOR, typically because one or two tiles could be marked on (also, it was possible to teleport through the walls into the stars and mark a rune there).

[Gafron]

Regarding runes to the star room, a quick search on the newsgroups reveals that it was possible to mark runes to the star room well into UOR, typically because one or two tiles could be marked on (also, it was possible to teleport through the walls into the stars and mark a rune there).

Yeah, the Star room I wasn't sure about. I guess that was just a bug OSI put on low priority considering the amount of more serious bugs UO was filled with. And really it is a minor thing. It makes it a little easier to hunt the bugs in and around the swamp room at the Star room entrance but considering you can recall into Terath at the other end of the long hall which usually has only a few drones in it, it just saves you a couple minutes low danger run.

The reason the levers controlling those doors sticks out so much for me is because when I first was exploring Terath I badly wanted to get at that Matriach behind them. I would stand at the doors with her and her attendants on the other side, they furiously wanting to get to me and me just as furiously wanting to get to them and those damn doors just wouldn't budge for either of us. I still don't know what made me use the tightrope lever one day then run all the way back to the doors to check but miracle of miracle they were open and it was easy Matriarch hunting from there. This was back in the day when mob pathfinding was so bad you could actually get them to hang on the small pillars down there. They would just stick there and not try to go around them at all. The pillars would even los them to where you could ebolt then take one step to the side and the mobs could not hit you with magic.

As for the Avengers speed, I have skimmed some of the other threads so I know there has been some discussion of this and I don't have any back in the day sources other than my memory, but the Avengers are way too fast as they are now. I spent the vast majority of my time in T2a hunting Terath solo and on foot and I could spend hours at a time in there killing from the long hall all the way to the tightrope room and back with no problem. The mobs were easy to hang on corners and block with field spells then FF, BS, EV. I don't remember for sure if the Avengers were somewhat faster than the other bugs, they may have been, but they were not lightning fast as they are now. From the small amount of hunting I have done solo and on foot in there on UOSA the Avengers are just deadly fast now. As they are I don't believe I will try much solo hunting, of the bugs, as the snakes are much easier and I dislike long ghost runs. Again I don't have verifiable sources for this but it just wasn't this way back in the day.

Again, thanks to Derrick and all the others responsible for this server and have a great day.

Just a PS to this, I just read the site you linked to Kaivan. It says you could not use the lever then run back fast enough to the doors and they be open. I have a very strong memory of being able to do this. I'm not sure if it was just for a short time in the era and OSI changed it or not so as to whether it was that way for the UOSA date being used for T2a I couldn't tell you. Anyway the most important thing is that the levers were used to open the doors. If they do not stay open long enough for a solo char to make it back from the tightrope that would be a minor issue at best and I think it is proper to go with hard info when availabel rather than just memory.

As for the Avenger speeds I find this statement from that site to be interesting, "Once in the fort, head WEST and then NORTH to a room with a ladder going down. Be careful, as there are usually lots of Terathan avengers waiting for you." I hunted as a pure mage with hiding back then. I did not have stealth so for moving thru areas with many mobs the best I could do was tele or run from one los area to the next and hide then wait for the next oppurtunity to repeat this till I got to a safer area. Inside the dungeon part of Terath in the tower entrance and around it there were always many bugs. There is no way I could have made my type of way thru these with the Avengers as fast as they are now. I just could not get to safe spots with the Avengers being los'ed to me so I could hide.

The other point I find interesting from this site is this quote, "You can recall out anywhere under the fort, you just cant gate or mark there." Again this may have been so suring a certain time frame of T2a, because I do remember having to go all the way back up the hallway torward the entrance to recall out with my loot during T2a. Again if the site's statement is correct I don't know if it coincided with the UOSA timeframe or not. Of course I wouild be in favor of recalling out anywhere but for era accuracy someone would need to find a date range this was so, I guess.

[Faust]

Gating people into the star room stranding them(especially ghosts) to grief was a bannable offense on Baja.

[EVeee]

P.S. Add to the list of creatures with incorrect speeds the Terathan Matriarch and the Silver Serpent. None of them had this nutso tele-walk.

The Silver Serpent was the fastest creature I ever encountered in T2A, but it did not tele-walk. I can't believe all these creatures now have super-speed that in fact none of these creatures really had in T2A... since this discussion started, no one has shown any real reason for the speed change, no proof backing it up; I can't even find references to the origin of this "tele-walk" thing anywhere. Google searches for 'ultima online' and tele-walk or telewalk return one page of results and they only point back to the secondage forums.

[Faust]

White Wyrms and EVs did.

[EVeee]

White Wyrms and EVs did.

I remember EVs moving ridiculously fast. I never encountered White Wyrms, so I accept that they moved like that. But there's the thing - even if your memory is hazy on a monster or two, or if you never saw it at all, you're bound to remember at least some of these cases. The list keeps getting bigger of the new tele-walkers - Balrons, Terathan Avengers, Terathan Matriarchs, Poison Elementals, Silver Serpents, and who knows what else I haven't run into since coming back to UOSA. I can't believe that anyone who played in T2A doesn't know something is grievously wrong here. Well.... I guess we just have to keep the topic alive and raise awareness.

[Faust]

RunUO groups monsters into categorized speeds by default and the variable can be overriden in the creature's personal script file on top of that too.

The top tier monsters are obviously grouped in the ultra fast category for many of these creatures. The only two that 'tele-walked' without a doubt were EVs and White Wyrms. I don't recall Balrons, Avengers, Poison Elementals, Silver Serps, etc... ever moving at the speed of those two creatures.

We know that many of these top tier creatures were modified with the ultra fast speed value after UOR and that is where a lot of the problems probably lie.