UO Second Age

Mike I don't doubt that macroing resist isn't the fastest way to GM and with Razor it takes very little effort, but like I said the cheaper thing to do is just hunt. May take you a while but hunting elementals and deamons on OSI got me very high resist. Can't remember what is it.

It's not cheaper to just hunt.

You might think it is, because sitting in front of a lich or something and just constantly healing would make it appear that you're only paying for healing reagents.

But time is money (or in this case, gold pieces!)

If you spend an hour fighting liches, and I spend 55 minutes killing Cyclops', and 5 minutes buying reagents and casting on myself, yes I will have spent more gp. But I will have more resist gains, in the same amount of time.

Efficiency by definition can only involve the relationship of two things. You said time, effort, and cost. Well, cost is time. It's ultimately the same unit.

This is the Guides forum, that's the only reason I'm picking on this. If someone wants to know the most efficient, quickest, easiest, and cheapest way to gain resist, it's simply earning gold as fast as possible (killing things, tailoring fancy shirts, lockpicking chests, whatever your character can do to earn gold the fastest) and buying reagents to cast on yourself.

Mikel123 wrote:It's not cheaper to just hunt.

You might think it is, because sitting in front of a lich or something and just constantly healing would make it appear that you're only paying for healing reagents.

But time is money (or in this case, gold pieces!)

If you spend an hour fighting liches, and I spend 55 minutes killing Cyclops', and 5 minutes buying reagents and casting on myself, yes I will have spent more gp. But I will have more resist gains, in the same amount of time.

Efficiency by definition can only involve the relationship of two things. You said time, effort, and cost. Well, cost is time. It's ultimately the same unit.

This is the Guides forum, that's the only reason I'm picking on this. If someone wants to know the most efficient, quickest, easiest, and cheapest way to gain resist, it's simply earning gold as fast as possible (killing things, tailoring fancy shirts, lockpicking chests, whatever your character can do to earn gold the fastest) and buying reagents to cast on yourself.

Mike you have taken my original post out of context and ran away with it. This maybe the guides forum but the OP didn't ask about how to GM, best method, etc. This isn't the official thread for gaining resist. I posted my reply as an alternative to macroing and without spending any money. In fact last time I looked hunting actually makes you money and if you can gain resist while doing so thats a plus.

Furthermore I didn't say anything about hunting magic casting monsters being more efficient but it is cheaper because you can hunt monsters and gain resist for free. It doesn't get any cheaper than free.

On OSI (post UO:R), I gained GM resist from monsters (since you couldn't macro).

The best spot to start is the bone mages in deciet. They have shitty eval so you can take on all of them at once, and they're weak so you can easily take them down when they run out of mana.

The intermediate stage was to lure liches into the room by the fire elementals. Once you had the liches and fire elementals in there, go around to the opposite side where the secret door is, and attack them all (to initiate casting). When they run out of mana, cast a firewall on them and go nuts casting.
Gold + resist.

The final stage was at trinsic river, with the left over LL's from the invasion. There were maybe 5-6 lich lords there and you could lure them to the side of the river, then teleport over. It's easy to die and you'll probably need a secondary account looping bandaids. I don't know if those LL's exist on this shard.

nightshark wrote:On OSI (post UO:R), I gained GM resist from monsters (since you couldn't macro).

The best spot to start is the bone mages in deciet. They have shitty eval so you can take on all of them at once, and they're weak so you can easily take them down when they run out of mana.

The intermediate stage was to lure liches into the room by the fire elementals. Once you had the liches and fire elementals in there, go around to the opposite side where the secret door is, and attack them all (to initiate casting). When they run out of mana, cast a firewall on them and go nuts casting.
Gold + resist.

The final stage was at trinsic river, with the left over LL's from the invasion. There were maybe 5-6 lich lords there and you could lure them to the side of the river, then teleport over. It's easy to die and you'll probably need a secondary account looping bandaids. I don't know if those LL's exist on this shard.

Good tips. We have LLs but I dont know about them being in that spot.

Personally for my PvMers I'll gain my resist through hunting.

Lazarus wrote:

nightshark wrote:On OSI (post UO:R), I gained GM resist from monsters (since you couldn't macro).

The best spot to start is the bone mages in deciet. They have shitty eval so you can take on all of them at once, and they're weak so you can easily take them down when they run out of mana.

The intermediate stage was to lure liches into the room by the fire elementals. Once you had the liches and fire elementals in there, go around to the opposite side where the secret door is, and attack them all (to initiate casting). When they run out of mana, cast a firewall on them and go nuts casting.
Gold + resist.

The final stage was at trinsic river, with the left over LL's from the invasion. There were maybe 5-6 lich lords there and you could lure them to the side of the river, then teleport over. It's easy to die and you'll probably need a secondary account looping bandaids. I don't know if those LL's exist on this shard.

Good tips. We have LLs but I dont know about them being in that spot.

Personally for my PvMers I'll gain my resist through hunting.

My dexer that I'm using as a gold farmer while I build my tank has gained 50-58 resist hunting liches.

The thing is, now that I've got enough gold to keep him equipped with silver axes, the liches generally die in 3-4 hits (less than 5 seconds), and I interrupt everything they cast. Have not been gaining much resist, but then again I've probably farmed less than 100k so far.

In the end, macroing resist will by far be the most efficient method and I really don't see any point in gaining it from monsters (unless they are opposed to macroing, in which event, more power to them). I won't bother gaining it on my PvMer unless I decide to use him in PvP at some stage (I hate playing dexers though).

Skills are very easy on this shard compared to OSI. People opposed my suggestion that you did not gain from fails during T2A (quoting the demo, which is pre-T2A and I'm nearly certain used a different skill gain system). If it's any kind of proof that you did not gain from fails during T2A, I had a dexer that I used for hunting liches during T2A. He started with 50 resist and never went over 52, despite hunting liches for well over 1M worth of gold. I suspect the character was occasionally gaining from a resisted 3rd circle, which had a very low chance of success (hence, barely any gains). I pretty much never saw the "you feel yourself resisting magical energy!" until UO:R where I actually went out of my way to gain resist and 7x.

Lazarus wrote:Furthermore I didn't say anything about hunting magic casting monsters being more efficient but it is cheaper because you can hunt monsters and gain resist for free. It doesn't get any cheaper than free.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opportunity_cost

Also, regarding killing liches quicker... monsters don't get disrupted when casting. I don't even think they have a spell delay. A timer elapses, and when it's up they immediately release their spell.

Mikel123 wrote:

Lazarus wrote:Furthermore I didn't say anything about hunting magic casting monsters being more efficient but it is cheaper because you can hunt monsters and gain resist for free. It doesn't get any cheaper than free.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opportunity_cost

Also, regarding killing liches quicker... monsters don't get disrupted when casting. I don't even think they have a spell delay. A timer elapses, and when it's up they immediately release their spell.

This was the case on OSI, in fact I used to use firewalls on liches/lich lords while I was gaining resist off them, so they'd be easy to kill after they ran out of mana. But I have noticed on RunUO shards - UOSA included, that monsters will rarely get off 4th circle+ spells on me while I am using fast weapons. They seem to cast it a lot more when I'm hit for stamina loss - and swinging more slowly (leading me to believe they are being interrupted).

I could be wrong about that. It might just be because I'm killing them so quickly that I'm rarely hit with anything.

Also, liches and magic-casters in general, have some era-accurate behaviors here that many people don't remember:

They don't cast spells until you attack them (physically, or double-clicking in war mode from across the room) or they physically swing at you themselves. And since liches have like 10.0 wrestling and you hit them nearly every time, you've already got them down on health and are pounding away before they even have a CHANCE of casting on you. Once this engagement happens, sometimes they cast right away and sometimes they take a while. I think they have a constantly-running timer loop, so how soon after engagement it takes them to cast on you is just up to luck and where they are in their cycle.

Balrons and Ancient Wyrms and a few other casters behave a little differently, casting on you almost as soon as they go aggressive to you.

You know what, I'm not entirely sure about the mechanics of my post above. I know it's accurate in terms of the behavior as we see it, but I'm not 100% sure on my assumptions about the underlying mechanics.

Mikel123 wrote:Also, liches and magic-casters in general, have some era-accurate behaviors here that many people don't remember:

They don't cast spells until you attack them (physically, or double-clicking in war mode from across the room) or they physically swing at you themselves. And since liches have like 10.0 wrestling and you hit them nearly every time, you've already got them down on health and are pounding away before they even have a CHANCE of casting on you. Once this engagement happens, sometimes they cast right away and sometimes they take a while. I think they have a constantly-running timer loop, so how soon after engagement it takes them to cast on you is just up to luck and where they are in their cycle.

Balrons and Ancient Wyrms and a few other casters behave a little differently, casting on you almost as soon as they go aggressive to you.

I am aware of this behavior (hence why I posted "attack them to initiate casting"). It's the only RunUO shard I've ever seen that has replicated that.

Not so much a 'where' thing but 'how'. I'm casting FS on myself and not gaining. I have 57 resist atm.

OMGCAPSLOCK wrote:Not so much a 'where' thing but 'how'. I'm casting FS on myself and not gaining. I have 57 resist atm.

FS is too high to gain from. If I'm not mistaken you have to have a chance to actually resist the spell to gain skill from it so cast lightning bolt on yourself. You are wasting regs.

double post

OMGCAPSLOCK wrote:Not so much a 'where' thing but 'how'. I'm casting FS on myself and not gaining. I have 57 resist atm.

If you do it at the same time as magery, you should have 90 something resist by the time you GM magery. You should be at 55 resist from firewalls before you even start training magery, granted you have a secondary character to bandage yourself 30 (npc bought) - 55 resist seriously takes about 20 minutes and you will get some INT gains as well.

Something like
50-62 magery/55-65 resist = 1000 lightning regs
62-80ish magery/65-82ish resist = 2000? ebolt regs
85-GM magery/82-90ish resist = 4000? FS regs.

cant remember the exact numbers, I'll pay close attention on my next character. You should be over 90 resist by the time you hit GM magery. 90-GM resist takes maybe 5-6k FS regs. Resist slows down a LOT after 90.

Total cost estimate:
7000 gold lightning regs
14000 eb
57000 FS
= around 80k