Hello all -

I was inspired by my other thread today ("The three most useful items in UO") to comment on and request your input regarding the rarest, yet least useful items spawning today.

Here are a few of my thoughts:

Mark of Travesty (+10 Stealth +10 Stealing version):
Incredibly rare and difficult to get because 1) it comes from a peerless boss with a spawn rate of ~1% and 2) there are a large number of skill combinations. However, the burglar's bandana gives both of these skill bonuses, plus and additional +10 snooping and is far, far easier to acquire. Heck, I can't give these things away on a vendor.

Dread's Revenge
Also a peerless item, so see above. This item is exceptionally well-themed, but downright useless in almost any context. +20 fencing is superb, but the 100% hit poison feature makes it most undesirable for most PvM and all PvP.

Dread's Flute
Peerless, see above. Replenish charges is wonderous, but would it have been overpowering to give it 'exceptional' bonuses or to make it a random slayer or super slayer type?

Veteran Reward Clothing
I understand the drive for rare-colored pixels, but the 3% phys bonus is vastly underpowered given the current bonuses offered by the new runic system. Of course, you get these for free...

Spring Decor Reagent Statue
Difficult to find, expensive to buy - yet almost completely worthless. Nine spider's silk today? Swell. Sixteen mandrake yesterday. Neat. Problem is, I have to empty the statue every day. I understand the need to encourage more players to logon more often, but this is plain annoying... Furthermore, I submit that this is a bug since 1) you need 125 lockdowns to secure the statue 2) You can't actually use it to store anything and 3) the bandage fountain works just fine everyday, even if I don't log in. UOgamecodes.coom might do a brisk business selling spring decor tokens if they allowed the statue to amass reagents without player attention everyday.

Green Thorns and Vorpal Bunnies
Post AoS, it was important and valid to reduce the loot drops from Vorpal Bunnies. In the current Peerless environment, I wonder if the nerf still has relevance. I know for a fact that the green thorn timer needs to be removed. There is a built-in timer to this aspect of the game already: it takes NINE DAYS to grow a single thorn.

More as I think of them.

~M

Crystalline Ring
+20 Magery - sweet!
+20 Focus - wha...?
MR 3 - sweet!
HPR 5 - wha...?
Is there a more bipolar item in this game? Instead of making two different items useful to two professions (fighter and mage), the developers gave us one item of questionable utility to anyone. Sure, +20 magery is amazing, but who creates a mage item without at least one of the following: MR, LRC, LMC, FC, FCR...? Similarly, who creates a warrior item without one of: HCI, DCI, SSI, DI, HLD, HLA...?

~M

(Sorry - can't edit from work)

It was just pointed out to me that Crystalling Ring has some bangin' SDI (20%), so I withdraw *some* of my criticism of this, the Cybil of Peerless items.

~M

Crystalline ring rocks. You may not like it, but I have seen many templates NICELY incorporate this item into their suit. There is a reason it still sells for 16-18 million.;) It works very well for tank mages, necro/mage/dexxer templates and the like.

The hit poison spell on the dread's is useful at spawns, so I wouldn't totally write it off.

How about:

Helm of Insight- Super nice, MR, LMC, Intelligence bonus.....and non-meddable.....wtf????????

Holy knight's breastplate- I died 17 times to the Dark Father for this pos???

Gloves of the Pugilist- thanks for the +8 Dex bonus....now if you could have given more than 15 DI and 30 resists

Legacy of the Dread Lord- see holy knight's breastplate.

It's all part of the lottory. If you were gauranteed something nice/useful every time then it'd take the fun out of it.

I don't see anything wrong with deco items thrown in with useful items in the rarity section.

Quite the contrary my friend, I feel that most items are far too powerful for their commonness.

Most, sure, but certain ones are clearly sub-par compared to how difficult they are to obtain...

Pretty much every item set that's been released includes a few very useful and desireable items, and a ton of bulk rubbish that no one really wants or needs.

Ilshenar marties; there was the Violet Courage and Heart of The Lion which are decent, pretty much everything else ended up as curiosities that have little use. Well okay, Burglar's Bandana has its niche... Polar bear masks were a fad briefly.

ML marties: Totem of the Void, Soulseeker... can't even think of any other useful ones.

Doom arties: mentioned already, but the Breastplate, Bonecrusher, Frostbringer... need I go on? On the useful side you got your AoF and OotM and Hom... and I guess Spirit of the Totem and Hunter's Headdress...

Strangely enough, pretty much all of the Treasures of Tokuno bits are decent. Some more universal than others, but they all have their use for particular chars and situations.

How about the new ML recipe craftable weapons? With the exception of a few bows, I don't really see any of them as worth the trouble to gather the ingredients. And why are there no recipe weapons of older types? Not everyone goes around toting fruity elf blades.

Just about all ML armor set pieces: the suits aren't that uber since they take up most of your armor slots, you can get better properties on a suit built of arties/runic parts. Just a curiosity, stupidly rare to collect.

I guess phase "To Each their own" use be used here. Some of the items that were post here are minor arties. I get more use out of the minor the arties then I do with the major one.

Orni My view(noticed I said my view) the most over-rated item in the game. I argue this point on a daily basis with my friends. I am told I need it on my mage. Why? I am already at 100LRC, 8MR, 45LMC...it has no SDI. So why becasue of the 2/3? I am already at a 3/6 on my mage. I would rather have a 1/3 bracelet with SDI. I get more use out of the alchemist bauble then I do the orni.

Gloves of the Pugilist Very useful it my templates. I use them with my archer/tamer and my ABC archer.

Dread's Revenge very useful on my theif. I needed the 20 points in fencing. Now I only use it to inflect poison. But armored I am 110 in fencing.

I'd say everything is too overpowered when you can solo a paragon daemon or dragon

I often see people complain about how ridiculously easy or boring dungeons are. Believe me it was waaayyy different pre-AoS. Now we're in the race of overpowering. It shouldn't be possible to max out all the stats for your armor, it removes a lot of the interest to me.

Hmmm, that's probably why I don't hunt

*nods in agreement with Paidric*

I think that was somewhere around reason #437 why I quit.

I used to run around Fel in GM equipment every once in a while just to get a kick. Granted, I died a lot, but hey, it's extra special bragging rights when you can take someone down sans properties

You forgot alot of great marties...
1. Boomstick
2. Brightsight Lenses
3. Helm of Swiftness (people are using it)
4. Fey Leggings (this is used by pretty much every Sammy)
5. Bloodwood Spirit and Totem of Void : Used by everyone
6. The luck robes are used by everyone
7. Nights Kiss is a great dagger

Seriously, you guys are failing to realize how many great arties there are...

Great ones far outweight the bad.

By the way...Frostbringer is great for an archer to remove the DF's Revs