UO Second Age

I remember creating my chars with swordsmanship so I'd get the newbified weapon that came along with the skill. I also remember that many of my characters had different weapons: one had a cutlass, the other a katana and another one a longsword.

I remember that my thief had a newbified katana, and that I'd steal/attack greys at Bucc's when I was newly rezzed.
Oh the fun I had...

Anyone recall this, might even be the same rule with all fighting skill, you'd get a random one-handed weapon...

Didn't they once say "a practice weapon"?

Wonko the Sane wrote:Didn't they once say "a practice weapon"?

I'm not sure that was our era, but they did say that at some point.

"Practice weapon" was added later, can't really tell when... And at that point yes, you'd only get a stinking longword...

I'd have to do some research on this because for now, I only have vague memories. The only thing I'm sure of, is that my chars we're created between 1997 and 1999, and my thief had a newbified katana!

This is actually the opposite of what you're referring to. During T2A and pre-T2A, you would be given a [practice weapon] of a certain type when you received starting equipment for your skills. Starting some time in UOR, the equipment you were given was changed to include non-practice weapons that were still newbied. The following archive dates from stratics show the changes from the old starting equipment to the new starting equipment, although the amount of starting gold is not updated until well after its documented change. Most of these tables do not have patch notes to confirm the exact date of their change, however, given the date of known patches, the items on the table are updated within the expected 4 month period (also, note the actual "last modified" date at the bottom of each page):

February 7, 2001
August 4, 2001
October 7, 2001

Is there specific way to use "wayback"?
When I click on your links, it just loads the "wayback machine" and the pages auto-refreshes every 10 secs...??
I got it, nevermind

Here's the problem:
I only had one account, I created my thief BEFORE the thieves guild was implemented and I had a newbied katana...

That only means I created my char somewhere in 1997, before they implemented the practice weapon in 1998.


In any case, the starting equipment of UOSA is currently adequat and era accurate.

While I cannot be certain where you're remembering acquiring a katana on your thief, I can say that practice weapons have been in the game since the beginning. Two sources of information give very early records of practice weapons. One is a patch note that makes practice weapons actually stay with you upon death, starting in November 1997, less than two months after the game released:

11/5/97 patch notes wrote:Practice weapons now always stay with you when you die, just like spellbooks do.

The other is a newsgroup post from September 25, 1997, which specifically mentions practice weapons:

As it stand now, there is zero material benefit in attacking a
newbie character. They start with no gold and a practice weapon. At
best, you might get their shovel or hatchet.

I'm assuming "practice weapon" is refering to what we call "newbied weapon"
The last two sources only confirm that the starting weapon where now "newbied",

Only later did clicking on the item actually reavealed something like: " a longsword [Practice Weapon] ".

Again, this is not true. Here is a newsgroup post from the last days of beta (or the very first days that the game was out, depending on what source you follow for the release date) that specifically notes that weapons given to starting players carry the [practice weapon] tag:

I've been able to log on frequently now, have had a few good sessions in
a row, and there are some things that escape me - any help will be
greatly appreciated, and rewarded if you see me online.

1. How exactly does one train Archery using a training butte? Switching
to 'war' mode changes nothing, double clicking on it has no effect, and
when I single click on my bow in the paper doll window, it says in
brackets (practice weapon) - still nothing happens. What am I missing?

P.S. I'm not trying to call you out on this subject, its just that historical information about UO is part of understanding the evolution of the game, and I'd like to know and verify the accuracy of these things.

I'm all out of ideas on this...
I stand corrected altought my memory still doesn't aknowledge these details.

Thanks Kaivan

I know [practice weapon]s were still the norm right up until early 2000. Can't say exactly when they started. But I don't think there was any way to get a newbified katana prior to 2000. Is it not possible you just took the newbie katana from another character and put it on your thief after that date?

i have the orignal T2a retail disk as do many others, cant you just rip the .muls for images and look or was the names all server side?

jimm1432 wrote:i have the orignal T2a retail disk as do many others, cant you just rip the .muls for images and look or was the names all server side?

Name assignments are server side.

For the interest of the discussion, here is a table regarding the starting equipment, made over the course of a month or so. Original research, copied and pasted from Excel, formatting didn't carry over, deal with it

Alchemy 4 Bottles Mortar 6 x 4 types of regs
Anatomy 3 Bandages
Animal Lore shepards crook robe
Animal Taming (----NOTHING----)
Archery bow 25 arrows
Arms Lore a sword
Begging a gnarled staff
Blacksmithy sledge hammer half apron
Bowcraft 25 board 5 shaft 5 feather
Camping 5 kindling bedroll
Carpentry Half Apron 10 boards Carpentry tool
Cartography 4 maps (blank) sextant
Cooking 2 sack flour pitcher of water fish steak
Det Hid a cloak
Entice Music Instrument
Eval Int (----NOTHING----)
Fencing a long spear
Fishing fishing rod floppy hat
Forensic (----NOTHING----)
Healing scissors 5 bandages
Herding shepards crook
Hiding cloak
Inscription 2 books 2 scrolls
Item ID gnarled staff
Lockpicking 5 lockpicks cloak
Lumberjack an axe
Maces a mace
Magery Regs x6 Spellbook Spells
Meditation (----NOTHING----)
Mining pickaxe
Music Music Instrument
Parry wooden shield
Peace Music Instrument
Poison 2 poison potions
Provo Music Instrument
Resist (----NOTHING----)
Snooping 4 Lockpicks
Spirit Speak (----NOTHING----)
Stealing 4 lockpicks
Swords a longsword
Tactics (----NOTHING----)
Tailoring 40 cloth sewing kit
Taste ID (----NOTHING----)
Tinkering 15 Ingots 15 Board 2x Tinker Tools
Tracking Skinning Knife
Wrestling leather gloves
Veterinary 5 bandages scissors


-Bicchus Dicchus, shares his wisdom occasionally