OH that makes a little more sense hehe! I was out exploring... I was eventally not even in a town at all haha! I was having fun... I was like "Hey even if I die it doesn't matter I am going to go explore and die a million times!"

-RMS Carpathia-

Hehe that was how I build my suit last night, until I got killed and didn't have time to go fight my zombie.

And those mazes are nice. The lava one, I've never gotten to the end. The random maze, I did a few times.

I have started a Shard of the Dead II page on UOGuide to detail the different aspects of the shard.

http://www.uoguide.com/Shard_of_the_Dead_II

There is also a page on Halloween 2006:

http://www.uoguide.com/Halloween_2006

Not to gripe but it doesn't seem as active as last year's as far as content. Last year we had costumes and organized events and the ophidian versus terathan gatherings but this year it's just sort of...run the mazes, then maybe mess around with the vampire faction system. *shrugs*

There aren't even any zombies anymore.

There are tons of Zombies in Zento, people just arn't spreading the plague enough.

This was a fun thing to do for about a hour or so, but after that it got boring for me. Good times though!

There are lots in Britt also

I just spent a couple minutes helping spread the plague throughout Britain. Some adventurers cleared out the Zombies around the healers, but I quiickly fixed that!

Man, I sure hope we have something like this on the production shards. Faction used to be so much fun and this reminds me alot of it. Balance or not, it will be alot of fun...

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Thanks for all the time you spent on this new aspect of Factions. Too bad you put it on a test shard for a holiday event instead of the rest of the shards where it could have pumped some life back in to factions.

I haven't participated in Factions in ages cause there was no purpose to it any more. If ideas like this were implemented in to the faction system I'd be back in the faction-action in a heart beat!!

Consider it, please.

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It's definately not ready for a production shard, but is immense fun on the shard of dead.
The only main drawback is non-participating players have a massive advantage, but then you can always get them to 50% life and watch them panic!

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Supreem EA VIP
UO Programmer

I would love to bring factions back to life on the production shards. Unfortunately, we are so busy with Kingdom Reborn that we dont have time to make something like this production worthy. This was just a little side project I did in my spare time. Atleast you can have fun with it while the SOTD is up!

Which, by the way, would be fun if we also had a werewolves stone....
CatHat UO Character/Environments Artist

Hehe -Well maybe next year if i offer to buy those amazing Dev weekend warriors pizza, and a few rounds of beer (or mountain dew) - maybe they'll consider it.
I think they did an fantastic job

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I agree non-participant involvment does ruin things somewhat.

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How are they non-participants if they are involved?
They aren't on either formal side of the war, but they are most definately participants.

Now... that isn't to say that something shouldn't be changed with the interaction between those declaring a side and those not declaring a side... I can't actually log in right now to join in on the fun to see what that is like so I can't really comment on weither the interaction between vampires/slayers and non-declared participants is how it should be or not.

People shouldn't be forced to pick a side though to be involved in a war... it should just be more risky and/or less rewarding (as far as physical rewards from the game mechanics go - any emotional rewards or rewards from players shouldn't be hindered by the game).

edit::
More risky if they choose to be involved in the war without declaring a side, that is - not if they choose to avoid it and not declare a side.

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Supreem EA UO Programmer

COLOR="Orange"]I have noticed the problem of blues getting in the way. In the next publish, if you are not a member of either faction, you will only do 50% damage to participants in the war. I also toned down the explosions that happen around the faction stones because they caused way too much lag. Enjoy! [/color]

I don't know how much longer this is planned to stay up, but you asked to post them so I will..

Ninja forms are usable while in a faction, allowing animal form getaways.
If you join a stone while in an animal form, you can cast animal form again to turn back to human after. Polymorph is also usable to turn yourself back into a human, once back in human form you can jump onto a horse and have the decisive advantage.
You can bug your character to prevent damage from either faction by joining the slayers, then running and joining the vampires. Vampire explosions from their stone will kill a character doing this.
With the 50% damage reduction for non-participants you can sign up to both and can't be killed by either side, make yourself human again, jump on a horse, and you now only take 50% damage from any other player.
Vampire Daggers and slayer crossbows can't be trashed, dropped or traded, so unless you use them you end up with a backpack full of them given enough time, and they seem to be prioritized when recieving a reward.

The tweaks in the last publish have almost totally eradicated people fighting who aren't on either side, which is great.


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