Gauntlet

[Aerith]

Where do i even begin? 12 years ive been playing on freeshards, 5 different ones. I started playing on here over a week ago and everything seems ok, i guess, never any staff online, but eh, guild helps me when needed.

So today i figured id go play in the gauntlet for a bit, bought 3 skulls for over 120k, used one to get in, 1 to buy a ticket and started my way round. Killed 5 bosses and im standing there killing the Dark Father when my pet dies. As it dies, i get teleported out of gauntlet and into the waiting area, without my pet. So i opened a help request, zero response as theres never any staff around.

Now im sitting at britbank, with a dead pet in gauntlet and no idea what to do.

Can i ask, who thought this custom Gauntlet was a good idea? Ive played on freeshards for well over a decade and this is easily the worst custom feature i have ever seen, by far, on any freeshard and ive seen some TERRIBLE stuff. What is the point of it? Youre basically saying to any newer player, unless you can kill everything in 22 minutes (where this number comes from ill never know), then stay out. Its for rich people to get richer. Oh and heaven forbid your pet dies in there and it doesnt teleport out with you.

I wasted 90k to get in there, now i either gotta wait days for a staff to show up or spend another 90k to go in and get my pet back.

Whoever designed this gauntlet feature while drooling over their keyboard thought it was a great idea needs punching in the throat.

Absolute joke.

[Eless]

There should be a pet recovery stone somewhere near Britt bank, you can use it to, well, recover your pet.
If you're a new player there is also a similar stone in the newbie dungeon, I think it's free or almost free to use.

[Iltar]

These problems with pets that you had are described in wiki, or can be explained by any other player, and I often answer to such questions in world chat. There are pet summoning stones and pet summoning balls. So would be better if GMs worked on improving shard rather than answer such trivial page requests.
Time limit in gauntlet should not be problem if you take several pets, which is not hard. Probably it is added to prevent players sitting there for long time blocking gauntlet. Though I indeed dislike how gauntlet is made now to require skulls for each run. It makes it like roulette because even with 50 skulls (which is very expensive for new player) no guarantee that good arti will be load. But if you lucky, then BC/SOT can be sold for very high price now, which will payoff for all skulls and make really good profit. Anyway no sense to go there with just 3 skulls. Also gauntlet is too easy for middle players and becomes boring after hundreds and thousands runs.

[+Colibri]

Hey, first about first impressions. Saying that anyone needs punching in the throat is uncalled for, also that part about whoever made this was drooling at the keyboard is not appropriate. If you want some place to dump your bad mood, keep searching elsewhere.
We dont have a 24/7 staff presence (this is not an emergency dispatch center), and you sent your ticket during the low hours (7am shard time). Still, i replied in an hour.

We had a lot of issues regarding the old gauntlet, that's why we designed this queue system. It's built with components that allow in-game scripting (xmlspawner), and it has its limitations, but it's designed to teleport your pets with you (as long as they are within an 8 tile range)... overall not a problem if your pets are with you, I think you probably left your dead pet to stay at a different spot and when your timer ran out, you got teleported along with the pets nearby, but not the one that was left behind.
Anyway, the gauntlet is on the todo list for an overhaul, it's quite a priority (along with a ton of other things).

[Aerith]

I was just incredibly frustrated, Gauntlet is like a 2nd home to me in UO, i love the place and to see it messed with and customised in such a bad way was very sad to see. Then my pet dying and not being teleported because i couldnt finish it in 22 minutes was just the icing on the cake.

Still dont really understand why it was customised in the first place? I mean if it was to slow down the relentless farming of it and maintain a somewhat healthy economy of artifacts, it failed. Nothing has value except 3 items. Only other reason is dexxers going in and killing stuff quickly before tamers can drag their pets around, but thats one of the flaws of using pets.

Back on OSI when i used pets, i used to go to room 1, skip 2, goto 3, skip 4, goto 5 then i could do the dark father if there was dexxers around, then id switch it up and maybe do room 2 and skip 3 then do room 4. Just so i knew i was waiting at the door for when it unlocked and i had a chance of an artifact. I understand its a family shard but treating everyone like babies with silly systems really isnt the way to go in my opinion.

I look forward to the new update to it and thanks for responding!

[+Colibri]

Yeah, I understand your frustration at the moment, just please remember that it's not ok to say things like that.

This system is up for many years, and what you describe I think was the reason we made a queue and ability to basically go solo. Dark father has double the drop chance, some people camped in the central area and as soon as the dark father spawned attacked it with full force, before others could even get to it.

[Charon]

Basically what +C said,

Lets break this down...
New player 1 week or so old
Has an army of pets
Soloing Gauntlet
Complains about setup?
There is usually a reason for any rule to exist either in life or in a game. Chance are its to create a balance or prevent a exploitation.

You have exactly zero clout and NOTHING to complain about, maybe a set back is what you needed to put things in perspective.

[PaPa]

Well as a vet player I see nothing wrong with gauntlet actually its a fast easy way to get rich. so it may take a while to get a stack of gold skulls from farming or buying, but if you spend a few 4 hour you might just get a nice artifact and be able to sell it for a few 100 ed's. lets say your real fast and can do a round in 10 min that makes 6 rounds a hour or if your slow and it takes 20min a round you can do 3 a hour. so lets say you go down there with 20 skulls if you buy them at 50k x 20 that's 1mil at 20min a round that 3 a hour that's about 7 hours of hunting you should be able to hunt up 1 of the expensive artifacts so it is good money but don't expect to go with a few skulls and do a few rounds and think your going to pull out an expensive artifact. now if you can do 1 round every 10 min that 6 rounds you do per hour so your chance of getting an expensive artifact twice as fast . so no matter what you think the advantages are its all about how fast you can kill.

[Iltar]

What I dislike is gauntlet is that it is too easy for anyone who can spend millions for skulls.
OK theoretically new player with mules can save 5mil, buy 100 skulls, do 100 runs and will have decent chance to get valuable artifact. But 5 mil is very very hard to get for new player(thats nearly a price of 220 dex suit), and he as well can easily loose all these 100 golden skulls getting only couple of taskmasters. And collecting 1000 bones in doom for each skull is too long. I heard some do it, but can't imagine how boring it for anyone to kill and loot those small easy mobs.
New player can as well check titan hammer chests, because gauntlet is very random.
I think for the challenge of mobs in gauntlet, skull should cost 100 daemon bones, not 1k, as one of ways to make it more balanced and require effort/time investment instead of just gold to do. Or could increase strength of gauntlet mobs, that would be good too, alternatively or additionally to changing skull price.

[Nick]

If I remember correctly the current situation is supposed to be temporary and if and when the coding gets done gaunt will go back to the 1 scull to cross requirement only, with infinite instances of gauntlet when you cross for people/parties. Problem was greifing, by kill stealing, greifing by loot stealing, Greifing by deliberately not killing a boss to occupy guntlent, greifing by using scripts to automate the whole process and AFK collect arties.

Current system is not Ideal but It does deal well with greifers. When I was new in 2010 I quickly got a pack of mules and would run in circles until my packs were full of gold and I hoped I got some arties to sell it was a better system particularly for new ppl, sadly we didn't really have greifers back then that wanted to abuse the rules here to deliberately aggravate others. Griefers are the same reason we have the current lady mel spawn system, I used to sit on the at Tree branch and kill her for hours upon hours got my whole imp pack that way; if someone showed up I killed her one more time then it was the other persons turn.