Hi, new player here

[Xtal]

I've always seen this shard around, but never bothered to try it out. Is there still an active community? It seems so hard to find a server outside of a few big ones that have any active players on them. Also, how is skill gain? Look forward to seeing you all in game.

[moonsongtx]

Welcome to what most of us consider the best shard out there. To answer your question on how busy it is... right now there is over 150 players on. Now granted not all are actively playing but since everyone was logged out a few hours ago all of those have logged on in the past few hours. On Saturday, we had over 230 players logged in and most of them were playing actively

Skills here are interesting here because there is no overall cap. Meaning you can GM every one of the skills available on one character. Many of the fighting skills can be gotten to 75 on the player trainers very easily (and I suggest that once you start on training on one, alt out of the game to your browser and research the WIKI and Codex for this shard.

This shard is a lot of fun! Welcome to Excelsior!

[Xtal]

Cool, just reading the other threads on here about fixing that virtual memory problem when using Razor and UO Steam.

[Tredin]

Several of the harder skills to raise have shortcuts to speed up skill gains as well. A couple of examples are the lockpicking room in the haven thieves guild. Using Blazes Lockpicking script found on the forums you can get to 95 skill in a couple of hours there. You can also raise animal taming by crafting pet dyes, for about 200k you can raise it high enough to tame most of the stronger critters here without having to run around and find things to tame to raise it.

[Nunja]

Get yourself a really cheap 100% Lower Reagent Cost suit.
One so bad that it isn't suitable for leaving town in. Should be dirt cheap.
Or maybe you can find pieces in the new player donation chests.

That'll save you a bunch of cash when training..