UO Second Age

Something has to be off... be it tactics or weapon skills i cannot believe the following is accurate.

I spent some time raising another archer this weekend.

100str 100dex,

trapped a order guard and this was what i found.
Archery 30-100 (about 8 hours)
Tactics 30-60????

Ok, dont need fencing but since it is the fastest i have the room to add it for now
Fencing 0-100 (I think about 5 hours)
Tactics 60-90???

2 skills to gm? still not gm warrior? This couldnt possibly be correct could it?

Night of afk macroing hit gm tacts sometime in the night.

Things i know.
Order guards most likely have 100 or higher in the weapon they are holding. Do they also have 100 wrestle?
So i understand that even at gm weapon skill im looking at a 50% hit percentage for tacts check... My OG's sword was gone about 8 hours in... are they gm wreslte to?

Player vs player skill gains are (i believe) 1/3 as fast as npcs. So a OG should still be the fastest method compared to hitting 100% of the time but 1/3 as fast for gains.

So what i feel is worth discussing.

1. GMing Archery in about 8 hours seems crazy, even against an OG
2. GMing 2 skills in 12-14 hours is even more insane.
3. Gming 2 skills and tacts only going to 90 seems crazy as well.

Something seems out of whack at a basic level. Shouldnt these skills be taking considerably longer? Everything i remember about tacts had it neck and neck with your weapon until about 90 when your weapon would pull away.

This morning i set up a macro for a tank against the same OG. (60 seconds hitting with a hammer, 60 seconds wreslte) Im am fully expecting to come home from work at gm mace/wreslt with 90+ tacts. That just doesnt seem right.-- : That is until matron reads this and goes and house kills me

Again, i know this has been brought up before but i figured it was worth mentioning again to at least discuss.

This is 100% guess... but my guess is that weapon skills only check for a gain upon a swing. So, you cannot gain when being hit if you're tabbed out.

Tactics, however, only checks for a gain upon a LANDED strike. So, against Order guards, you're missing quite a bit, even once the weapon is GMed, you're still missing half the time.

I'm not saying this is how it worked on the OSI servers; just that this is my guess as to how it works here.

If I remember correctly, I was typically at around 92 to 95 Tactics on OSI by the time I GMed a weapon. I seem to remember it lagging behind by a little, but I'm not sure how exactly.

It may actually be the case that it lagged behind by a little because the monsters I was hitting had a higher weapon skill than tactics. If that was the case, then it would seem that on OSI, the skill check for tactics happened whenever you SWUNG, not when you landed a hit.

In any case... I think they the weapons should gain a little slower and Tactics should raise at the same rate as the weapons, assuming the target has equal weapon and tactics skill.

Mikel123 wrote:This is 100% guess... but my guess is that weapon skills only check for a gain upon a swing. So, you cannot gain when being hit if you're tabbed out.

Tactics, however, only checks for a gain upon a LANDED strike. So, against Order guards, you're missing quite a bit, even once the weapon is GMed, you're still missing half the time.

you are right about this. Your weapon skill is only your chance to hit. It is measured against your opp.
Typically to spar with a player you fight a tabbed out gm (swords/mace/fence/archery) with their gm weapon equipped. This will get your wep to gm. THEN you have them equip a weapon they have 0.0 in and now your hit % will be 100%. You do this to top off tactics. (which is why im wondering if OG's have 100 wrestle or not)

As i mentioned. Hitting a OG 50% of the time should still be faster than hitting a player 100% of the time with skill gained slowed by 2/3rds.

Im not questioning any methods... i believe they are all accurate. Im questioning time consumption and tacts gain rate (compared to weps) over all in the combat system.

I was told this:

In order to gain weapon skill, the person you're hitting must be holding a weapon they're proficient in and be as proficient or more proficient than you to gain.

In order to gain tactics, you must simply hit them.

I GMed tactics very quickly. Grab an alt or a friend and give him a bow; it doesn't matter if their skill is 0 or 100, just don't give them any arrows! Now attack them (be sure you're healing them or they're healing themselves).

Since they're holding a bow, you'll hardly ever miss, and you'll get tactics gains through the roof.

When I GMed fencing, I think it left me at like 90 tactics. I then did the trick mentioned above to GM tactics in about 8 hours if I recall correctly.

zzyzx wrote:I was told this:

In order to gain weapon skill, the person you're hitting must be holding a weapon they're proficient in and be as proficient or more proficient than you to gain.

In order to gain tactics, you must simply hit them.

I GMed tactics very quickly. Grab an alt or a friend and give him a bow; it doesn't matter if their skill is 0 or 100, just don't give them any arrows! Now attack them (be sure you're healing them or they're healing themselves).

Since they're holding a bow, you'll hardly ever miss, and you'll get tactics gains through the roof.

When I GMed fencing, I think it left me at like 90 tactics. I then did the trick mentioned above to GM tactics in about 8 hours if I recall correctly.

Actually you want them to have 0 archery so you can land a HIT more often. (You use a bow when they have 0 archery so they can't wrestle and harm you).

Tactics are gained based upon landed hit and, from what I understand, the damage delivered.

So, OG for melee skills because they are >100 skill (hence the fast gains) and self heal.

But for Tactics, you want to hurt often, so get an alt with 100 str (hearding would be nice) and heal him/her (maybe with another alt) while you beat the crap out of them.

Your tactics gains should be pretty strong with this technique because you are hitting nearly every swing and doing damage. Just invest in bandages for your target. Have their macro do a self HP check and if its too low, have them stepback away from you till healed.

Remember, you must hit and do decent damage.

Don't forget hitting other players produces a huge penalty towards gaining combat skills.

Oops, my bad.

0 archery

Still the best way to gain tactics though

And yes, practice weapon skills against a Jhelom hireling and you'll GM it in about 16 hours.

I've been fighting very low end creatures with my newbie character for some time now, and I have 70 tactics and 70 fencing. They seem to be raising up neck and neck.

Ill rephrase my concerns as many people are heading off tangent and mentioning things i have already mentioned in my posts.

1. How long should it take (during this era) to go from 30-100 archery using the fastest non-exploited method available at the time.

2. How long should it take (during this era) to go from 0-100 fencing using the fastest non-exploited method available at the time.

3. What types of tacts gains should be seen with the above methods.

Im not concerned with methods... Im talking about (what i think is a very short amount of) time taken to gm weapon skills, and tactics trailing far behind your weapon skills... (so far that in my example i actually gm'd archery and fencing while tactics only went to 90)

Faust wrote:Don't forget hitting other players produces a huge penalty towards gaining combat skills.

Hire an actor and whack on him/her while an alt heals .

ok, here is a FYI.

OG's do not have 100 wreslte. so once you destroy their weapon they are a tactics speed machine

only downside is you cant gain any weapon skills above 70 on them then.

I came home and my macer/tank was still going (100 tacts, 70 wrestle, 70 mace)... picked up a new OG and the wrestle and mace are flying again

I'm aware that the weapons skills are both faster, and easier that OSI, even in comparison to other skills gain rates. Possibly gain on failure with weapons skills is the issue here; you will never gain tactics of a miss.

Already been said, but I think weapon skills are way to fast here, tactics seems about right though.

If we're looking at era accuracy here, then you might want to gain your weapon skills by hand, fighting bone knights.
Anything else will yield differing results. No one macroed melee skills on order guards in T2A..
I don't think anyone could accurately tell you how long it took to GM those skills, considering that most anyone would have taken more than one day to do so.

Archery will be slower to gain than fencing, considering that a regular bow is slower than most any fencing weapon. Also, I seem to vividly remember not being able to gain much tactics when using archery, unless the mob you were fighting was actually hitting you(in T2A).

My dad played a lot of archery.

Kraarug wrote:

zzyzx wrote:I was told this:

In order to gain weapon skill, the person you're hitting must be holding a weapon they're proficient in and be as proficient or more proficient than you to gain.

In order to gain tactics, you must simply hit them.

I GMed tactics very quickly. Grab an alt or a friend and give him a bow; it doesn't matter if their skill is 0 or 100, just don't give them any arrows! Now attack them (be sure you're healing them or they're healing themselves).

Since they're holding a bow, you'll hardly ever miss, and you'll get tactics gains through the roof.

When I GMed fencing, I think it left me at like 90 tactics. I then did the trick mentioned above to GM tactics in about 8 hours if I recall correctly.

Actually you want them to have 0 archery so you can land a HIT more often. (You use a bow when they have 0 archery so they can't wrestle and harm you).

Tactics are gained based upon landed hit and, from what I understand, the damage delivered.

So, OG for melee skills because they are >100 skill (hence the fast gains) and self heal.

But for Tactics, you want to hurt often, so get an alt with 100 str (hearding would be nice) and heal him/her (maybe with another alt) while you beat the crap out of them.

Your tactics gains should be pretty strong with this technique because you are hitting nearly every swing and doing damage. Just invest in bandages for your target. Have their macro do a self HP check and if its too low, have them stepback away from you till healed.

Remember, you must hit and do decent damage.

If it were damage based then you would use the most powerful weapon you could find, make the opponent unarmoured ,make him wear all those cursed items you found on your lockpicking spree...etc etc

From what I understand about tactics is you have to fight things much stronger then you are in order to gain...but maybe we should put it to a test.

(I am assuming the creature level is a factor or you'd GM tactics fighting orcs easy)

Fight a pet dragon...Fight an NPC on two chars with newbie weapon skill of choice with equal stats, record the variance in all melee skills. "make sure not to target the attack command on the newbie character!!!!"

But then again like all skills, it may very well have to do with obtaining gains for your skill level. Too little or too much you wont gain at all.

So try now putting two masters in tactics and try the npc and dragon thing...."or summoned daemons"

see any difference?