Newbie with a few questions

[Shandrel]

Hello all, i joined this shard a month ago out of curiosity, and i must say its a pretty nice shard!
Overall, i find the people helpful and nice, and the shard feels alive.

I havent played UO for 10+ years (i quit when the counselor program was canceled, which frustrated me greatly since i was one of them ). Im very rusted and a lot of things changed / were added. To help me out ive read the wiki, checked stratics and uo guide, read the forums, played quite a lot for the last month but i remain with a few unanswered questions, i hope someone will be nice enough to help me out!

1- Beehives. This question isnt about the nerf, so dont bother mentioning it! Can we move Beehives around? Is there a way to put them "to sleep" like we can do with growing plants? Im asking this because ill be offline for a few days soonish for a surgery and wouldnt like to see my bees dying when im back hehe.

2- Tailoring, Mining and Blacksmith PSs. How are they obtained? They arent listed in the smith/tailor BoD reward lists. Why? Crafting is what i prefer in this game, i would be very disappointed if we cant get our PSs with crafting.

3- ED vendor stone? Is there such a thing? I see people mention it in chat all the time but maybe im misunderstanding what they mean? I know of the token and gold vendor stones in trinsic but its the only ones ive seen so far.

4- Anyone selling seeds? So far i only found one vendor selling them, and they were way expensive (80k for 13 seeds, was only flowers too). Is there someone willing to sell me some seeds? They dont have to be flowers, all i need is a nice mix of colors and variety to get me started.

Thats all for now (its late so maybe i forgot about a few things hehe), for those who will try to help me out, thanks a bunch!

[Ilsanor]

Welcome to Excelsior.

1 Shortly - no and no. You can move hives by chopping them down with an axe (they turn back into a deed), but you must start all over. As for putting to sleep - no such option. But hives can survive being left unchecked for a few days (my 100k became 60-50k after a week) so they don't die that easily. Better option is to ask someone to take care of them for you - the hives won't produce anything when not taken care by the owner (anti-exploit feature), but the will bee good to go when you're back.

2 Crafting PSs are obtained from Master of Arts champions - Newbie, Crossroads, Forget/Cove and Marble. These drop *only* crafting scrolls, while other champs drop different scrolls (combat and misc) not crafting. You can of course buy them from players too.

3 ED vendor stones are located in Trinsic - go through the white portal that is right next to the reg/gold/token stones.

4 Sorry, can't help you here. But you might [pm Viola in-game. She's the shard's best horticulturist (plant-grower ), she might have some seeds to spare.

[Superduke]

About the beehives: +Coli mentioned in chat yesterday he is working on some tools.
One of those would allow us to chop down beehives while population is maintained. This would give us the opportunity to move beehives around without restarting all over.

Another tool he mentioned was a pet reset tool (if i remember correctly) to sync all beehives.

[Shandrel]

Thanks for the replies!

I guess when its time for the surgery (which can be in a while, waiting lists are pretty bad here), if the new bee tool isnt out yet, ill try to look for someone who wants to care for my bees.

The crafting PSs disappoint me, all of a sudden, BoDs just lost a lot of value for me lol. I know i could buy them off other players, which is probably what ill end up doing, but they are very expensive so its out of my reach for now.

About the ED vendor stones. Thats what that portal was about! For some reason i have a reflex to avoid stepping into portals if i dont know where they go, as if i fear of exploding or something lol. Anyways it was just out of curiosity, was just wondering what can be bought from those.

About the seeds, ill check with Viola if nobody else replies to me here, thanks for the advice.

I have another question which is a bit more technical: i tend to crash to desktop a lot, but only when im in towns like skara brae, brit, etc etc... the worst of all is the gargoyle city. I was crashing a lot in the newbie dungeon too, in the skele/lich room. I dont crash out in the field at all. Is it just me? I tried reinstalling twice, made sure im patched correctly but the CTDs still happen. Anything i can do to fix this? Im running W7 Ultimate.

Thanks again for the help

[Ilsanor]

As for the crashes - be sure to have the client patched with the special auto patcher - the link is on a stone next to the globe thingie in TC. Also, there has been talk of Razor causing crashes - try running UO without it (if you use Razor at all) and see if it helps.

[Ironmonkey]

a few minutes ago Nyx wrote ingame that an co-owner of your house can take care of your bees BUT they only produce for you. so if another player (co-owner) take care of your bees they dont produce honey or wax but the population remain the same.

[Shandrel]

As for the crashes - be sure to have the client patched with the special auto patcher - the link is on a stone next to the globe thingie in TC. Also, there has been talk of Razor causing crashes - try running UO without it (if you use Razor at all) and see if it helps.

Yeah when i was troubleshooting, i found that patcher stone and used it, had high hopes it would fix my crashes but unfortunately, it didnt. I wasnt using Razor then so its not the problem either. Im out of ideas, maybe its a W7 thing? I do run the 64 version. I even tried to install the game in the 32bites program file, and also in the 64bites program files, i crash the same in both. Since it only happens in towns the game is still playable, but its a bit annoying to go there hehe.

a few minutes ago Nyx wrote ingame that an co-owner of your house can take care of your bees BUT they only produce for you. so if another player (co-owner) take care of your bees they dont produce honey or wax but the population remain the same.

Thats probably what ill end up doing. If all goes well ill be hospitalized only for 2 days so it shouldnt be too bad for the poor soul wanting to help me haha (oh! the clicking).

[Shandrel]

I have two more questions!

1- Where can we buy blowpipes, and mallet and chisels? I went to gargoyle city and couldnt find any NPC selling them (i found the books though). I also crash every 10 steps in that town so i would love to know exactly where i have to go in order to avoid some frustration hehe.

2- Are the stealable rares available on this shard? Im not talking about the dungeon rares, but rather the ones we steal in shops' containers, like dried herbs, wires, whips, horseshoes, etc etc

Thanks for the help

[Cygnus]

I have two more questions!

1- Where can we buy blowpipes, and mallet and chisels? I went to gargoyle city and couldnt find any NPC selling them (i found the books though). I also crash every 10 steps in that town so i would love to know exactly where i have to go in order to avoid some frustration hehe.

There are 2 vendors that sell either blowpipes or books. One is just up and behind the bank and the other is in the far back of the city.
As far as crashing every 10 steps, sounds like you may not be patched properly.

2- Are the stealable rares available on this shard? Im not talking about the dungeon rares, but rather the ones we steal in shops' containers, like dried herbs, wires, whips, horseshoes, etc etc

Thanks for the help

Not that I have ever seen.

[Danilo Thann]

Patched correctly, is one way to stop crashing.

Might be that your laptop needs a new Video Card, or a down grade.

If you are running any form of firewall or anti-virus that hogs a lot of CPU percentage, this could cause system/game crashes.

Lastly, there are options (video options I believe; since I'm only on the forums and not in game at moment) to help boost or lower certain video/graphic settings. Just find the options tab on your paper doll... check & take note of the default settings and start messing around with em. Be careful, no need to improve on your systems ability to crash in town; but often times when nothing else is working and there are few roads to travel, hit and miss troubleshooting is the best way IMO.

Best of luck to you.

As for things you have trouble finding... just PM me, or any Harper for that matter, in Game and we shall be of service... 'Baby Spendy' for instance is my guilds best shopper. She wouldn't have any trouble buying things for you from gargoyle city.

[Shandrel]

Thanks for the replies

TBH i doubt the crashes come from my system. Im not playing on a laptop. Its a quad core 2.4GHz with 4 gigs of ram. My vid card is a ATI radeon 6800 with 1 gig of ram. This system had no problem running Rift on full settings (while my 100's of firefox tabs are opened too hehe). I also run W7 Ultimate (64bits). I thought maybe that was the problem so i tried installing the game in the 32 bits prog files, and 64 bits, but i crash just the same in both.

While it might be caused by a problem with patching, i dont know what else i would need to do. When i first started playing i installed the game and followed the instructions on the site. After a couple days of playing i found a stone in TC that directs to a patch app download (which i didnt have, the globe wasnt rotating either). I was hopeful installing the app and running it would solve my problem, but it didnt! The globe is rotating now though lol.

I also seriously doubt my crashes are caused by my firewall or antivirus, because i only crash in towns, i dont think these apps would be that specifc lol. I can spend hours mining, dungeon crawling, shopping at player malls, running around in the field without a single crash. The minute i port to a town and walk around to go to a shop, i can expect to crash once or twice on the way. Gargoyle city is worse for some reason!

I have to admit i didnt try to play with the settings much, because i took it for granted that my system was overkill for UO. Ill give it a try.

Thanks for the offer about shopping! I was lucky, i finally found the blowpipes a couple days ago, everytime i went there before, they must have been sold out and its why i couldnt find them. If i need something else ill make sure to follow your advice! (unless i somehow managed to fix my crashes lol).

About the shop's stealables, i know some must be available, because ive seen whips, ropes and dried herbs in player homes. Though, i havent seen anyone with horseshoes, forged metal or wires, etc. If anyone could answer me about where to find them, it would be great! Maybe only in Fel? (everytime i looked, all the crates/containers in trammel shops are always unlocked and empty... but i havent looked a lot, because i crash in towns so i avoid heh).

[Elyril]

that might BE the problem... older software doesn't always play well with new hardware

About the stealables, i asked in [c and was told they come from, i believe, felucca wrong. However the mobs have been replaced... no juka warriors... and no pets allowed. so its rough

[Ilsanor]

Crashes - might be the multi core CPU. Some older games were not built for such hardware and will experience various problems when used on it. Try disabling 3 of the cores (if you don't know how to, but willing to try - instructions on google, as always) and see if it helps. If not, it might be some other piece of hardware as they are only partially backwards compatible. UO might be using a function that was commonplace back in '97, but is unsupported in 2011. As a fan of oldschool (pre-2000) games I've run into that problem too many times.

Fel Wrong is a challenge even for high level players (relayers and stuff) or experienced groups, so I'd advise to give it a wide berth for now. I *think* there are more places to get deco stealables. I'm sure Yomotsu Mines are one of them (sculptures and wall fans I believe) and I heard Fan Dancer's Dojo has some too. Some deco pieces are rewards from BODs (carpentry and BS mostly), some are auction/raffle pieces (mostly the 'complicated', multi piece stuff - fireplace (with mentioned dried herbs) is one of those. Best choice would be to ask around more. I'm sure you'll get answers as to the locations of the items you seek... eventually.

[Ironmonkey]

hmm. i have an multi core cpu too and no crashes.

i use an system with

MSI 770 C45
AMD Athlon II 630
4x2GB A-Data 1333
Sapphire HD 5770
Samsung 2433BW

Ubuntu
WinXP 32-bit ( for Ultima Online only )
Win 7 64-bit

[Shandrel]

Yeah i bet my problem is related to some sort of incompatibility. I faced the same kind of problem when i got nostalgic, waiting for D3 to be released... so i decided to play D2 a little, but it was a no go. Its totally incompatible with W7, you crash just after 2 secs so its unplayable.

At least UO is playable, with player housing its easy to avoid towns, so i sell my honey and get my BoDs from NPCs placed in homes. The downside of this is by avoiding towns, i dont meet with a lot of people though lol.

I dont have an old computer laying around to do some testing about this (gave my old one to my bro) so ill just live with it for now, until i can put my hand on some old machine. I could also try to use Ubuntu like Ironmonkey, but im too lazy, its chronic and hopeless lol

About Fel, i havent really went there yet, as i label it as a more advanced area. My chars arent anywhere near advanced when it comes to fighting skills, i spend way more time with crafting. My thief is coming along well though so ill definitely want to go have a look in Fel eventually. Ill find a way to get to the stealables thats for sure hehe. Its much more rewarding to get them by yourself instead of buying them off another player imo