First of all, thanks for the runic change...

I used to do t-maps for leather LRC and MR 2 armor, then compile LRC and Mana Regen suits and sell them off, plus I sold the rare occassional good piece of jewelry or weapon (very rare)...

So now that we can create LRC / MR suits with spined runic kits with relative ease, and craft uber weapons with bronze runic hammers, is the dev team planning on changing something to t-chests in some other way?...

Give me something. I don't care what. Brainstorm about it. Putting armor and weapons in a t-chest (or monster corpses for that matter) is a waste of my time now...

We've switched from relative balance (Start to Post Ren) to Monster Uber Loot with Crap Crafter stuff (ML Quest Item period to Pre Runic Change) to Crafted Uber stuff to Crap Monster Loot (Now)...

I guess this post is bigger than treasurehunting alone, but it's what I mainly do, so I'm fixating...

*prepares a sacrificial offering of a sheep in front of a Leurocian statue*

Regards,

Posted by LeBaiton on Stratics.

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DrMcguilicudy suggested

I like the trade in stuff. IE each chest would contain an item that is sorta useful, but you can trade in. Each chest would have so many point value, IE level 1's would have a small item to trade.

Trade a bunch in to get a better item, collect those items to get better items.

Vary the items all the time, don't let them rot like the Ilshenar Marties.

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Ozymandies came up with this idea


I agree with most of the ideas here about rare and unique items for t-chests.

Another idea: turn in the wands to get a Wand of Treasure Finding

bumps t-chest to next level, chest respawns with new guards (?)

level 7 chests with champion-like guardians.

OZ

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Having heard nothing back yet,LeBaiton , asked Leurocian directly

Leurocian,

What would be the best way for me to atleast get my concerns for t-hunting known to you? You've set your Stratics account to "not accept private messages". I can't see any other way besides bumping this thread up...

There are so little t-hunters left that it appears I won't be able to cause a bit of a stir regarding our skill. A lot of people I knew who regulary dug up t-chests say they have the skills soulstoned because the loot is bad and not worth the effort...

With the increase in skills which AW's received, hunting level 6 t-maps has become a drag, instead of a challenge. People see it as a drag because of the low chance of getting something nice from a chest...

It has gotten to the point where maps are tossed instead of kept and completed, and people giving up on t-hunting all together. How can we stop the constant decay of the skill I love?...

Please... reply...

Regards,

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Dermott of LS ; NMA explained how things started out

...

The biggest issue as I see it with Treasure/SOS chest loot.

When TMaps and SOSs were introduced, it was a time in the game when you had a CHANCE of getting A magic item off of any given creature. You MIGHT get lucky at times and get a second item, but generally you MIGHT get ONE and more often than not, it was gold, a few other random items, and that was it (I could go further back into early 1998 with the bag weirdness of nested bags and knowing when you got to the "final" one and so on but that's more for a history thread).

So when TMaps and SOSs came out, they added the dimension of being able to get a cache of magic items (some may be keepable, most weren't).

Since AOS, creature loot is now not entirely unlike a TMap chest in the first place and generally faster to obtain. Again, most of it isn't worth keeping, but the distribution of magic items has been thrown so wide open that the standard treasure chest simply isn't worth the effort compared to simply PvMing or crafting.

Thus why I believe that the days of the old style chest are pretty much done and they need to be swapped to a mix of themes which are chosen at random.

Basically the die rolls would go something like this:

Roll 0: Determine map Level
Roll 1: Choose Chest Theme
Roll 2: Determine Common Items
Roll 3: Determine Uncommon Items
Roll 4: Determine Possibility for Rare item(s)
Roll 5: Determine Rare Item(s)

The way monster loot works right now makes treasure maps and SOSs generally a pointless endeavor for a lot of people.

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Yenji Yasagari


You want to know what I would like added to treasure hunting?

You've dug up the secret cache of Sledge Ironhammer. (Found a catch of ingots, blacksmithing items, maybe NAMED items (arty quality), maybe a named hammer that gave aggy runic quality weapons and a +30 smithing bonus.)

Make it so this happens rarely. Every one in a hundred or so. Make it just like the doom system. The more chests you dig up, the better chance you have of finding a cache the next time around. After all, thats one less spot to dig if you don't find it, youll only have better chances.

As for regular loot. Bump it up to 50-100% intensity, like a shadow runic, minimum 2 mods max 5 mods. Would give us quite a bit of junk still, but even the junk would be usuable. Say, a 12 LRC sleeves piece with 1 MR, and no resists, would not be used by me, but maybe some noob might need it.

Opinions.

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A monster balance/loot pass (including treasure hunting/fishing/etc.) is definitely something I'd like to see us do sooner rather than later, and I know I'm not the only one on the team that wants to see this *looks at Jeremy especially*.

(no promises)

This particular topic has came up frequently this past week. I have proposed budgeting time for this, we'll see what we can do. We'll keep you posted. In the meantime, feel free to discuss your thoughts on this, and if you happen to come to the Jacksonville Townhall this weekend, talk to me in person

Patrick "Leurocian" Malott
Lead Designer, Ultima Online
EA Mythic

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LeBaiton responded to say

Awesome, thanks for the reply. If you and Jeremy both t-hunt or fish, then you'd both know that both skills have lacked content for ages. The very last update we've had was the slight loot bump and the adding of level 6 t-maps, and that was your change, during Marty implementation. I can't even remember how long ago that was...

I would urge you to lobby for not just a loot bump, but real content. There's so much stuff that could be done with both skills. Themes, deco, special items, things that are usefull for not only t-hunters but PvP'ing, like special fish having a way longer timer and stat boost, like they once had before AoS (short period)...

But ofcourse!... "Soon™" comes to mind...

I live in the Netherlands, I can't attend US town halls, but I would like to invite you to the t-hunting board and start a brainstorming session there. You know the inside outs on the t-hunting code, and the possibilities of the client...

Hoping to see you there!...

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Although there are no more dev's replies to post presently,there are some excellent posts from players.Far too many to post the entire thread over.

Do go take a look at them if you are able.

Were they do actually do something about treasure hunting and SOS maps then that would be awesome.

I think the whole important thing is to make treasure hunting worthwhile by giving it something unique or at least useful.

Personally I think spawning peerless ingredients in chests is a pretty nifty idea and then I am not talking about the items like "eye of the travesty" and such, but about the "common" ones like scourge, taints, etc.

I would like to see an improved chance at only fishing arties in the white net toss and slaying of a leviathan. Last 10 tosses yielded only 1 artifact... an enchanted titan's leg bone, identical to the ilshenar paragon drops. Do you know how long it takes to fish up 10 ASOSes? Bad luck on a bad reward isn't worth the time or effort.

A fair point indeed.
I always thought that in order to be a fisherman in UO you need to be either...
a) extremely dedicated
b) extremely bored
c) a scripter who is doing something far more devious than catching fish, yet appears to be fishing as a distraction.

d) still trying to get ghost anchor or seahorse, and guildmate needs pillows, only the oblong ones that are longer on the east-west orientation. e) trying fully trained new uber dragon on those leviathans. My dragon, Taurvantian (translates to forest walker in elvish) passed with flying colors!