Post: #4

(09-17-2012 02:12 PM)Skul Wrote:  Remove trap is useful if you ever decide to spawn trapped and locked chests in your dungeons (like on EA/OSI). Leaving magic trap and magic unlock for magically locked and magically trapped doors/containers only. Just a suggestion on that 1. Herding is terrible, only sense it would ever make is to 'amp up' the effect of other 'bard-like' skills, other than that it is truely useless. Forensics can be used to identify the killer of a corpse and to 'allow a bounty' for the head of the killer, not sure what other purpose is would serve. TasteID should be used for 'unknown edables', such as rare food types with special effects and magical potions not normally found at a vendor or created in via alchemy. ItemID should be used for magical items found in monster loot to determine what exactly IS magical about it, and to allow the player to equip the item only AFTER ID'ing the item found. Camping is good for what Extreme said, a tile radius to regenerate the health, mana, stamina of any player 'friend' of the creator of the campfire. Discordance is good for provocation, it should help the effect of how long a creature should be provoked. Peacemaking is good to 'calm' any monsters in the area around, like a 'peace' effect to help players make it through crowded monster areas without having to fight. Bards should have a song book, that requires certain musical instruments, the instruments should allow you to play certain songs while other instruments don't. Allowing you to create a 'rare' found instrument for the 'better songs'. The songs should be stored in the Bard Songbook, similar to a spellbook. Necromancy should be scripted and functional, I'm pretty sure a script is already posted here for it. Bushido, Ninjitsu and Chivalry should be fully functional, as listed on uo.stratics.com, all details are there for anyone to look at. I'm not sure about Spellweaving or Focus, I heard that they are 'enchancers' to 'better' other skills, I'm not sure though, stratics.com would have info. Animal Lore should be used with Tracking, Tracking is useful to allow players to find rare spawned rides and certain monsters/creatures in a big radius. Animal Lore should determine whether you 'can' track a creature or not. ArmsLore should determine the quality of your crafted armor/weapon. Begging is very useful for any new player, since sometimes a new player can run out of gold and feel 'hopeless', Begging is good to help them start up again if ever they do lose their way. The amount of begging a player has should determine how much gold a player can 'beg' for and a NPC should be able to determine whether a player is 'worthy' of cash or not, if a player has 'too much' gold then begging should always fail.

Just some ideas, none are really accurate, but at least it gives you an idea of what to do with these 'so called' useless skills

Actually a lot of those I plan to use similar to how you described. But, since my server is a full-redo of UO, some of them just don't fit the server's theme.

Here was my plans when some of the ones you mentioned:

Camping - I may go with the radius regen idea, if not, we're considering buffing it up and turning it into a "Survival" skill of some kind.
Taste ID - Just as you said, it'll go hand-in-hand with my cooking rewrite. It'll also be used to figure out Potion's effects.
Item ID - Actually, all our magic items come "Identified" so I was going to rewrite it to give information about the item. Like it's resource requirements, value, skillmake, etc. All based on how high the Item ID is.
Arms Lore - Same as ItemID, only for equipment. Additionally it'll tell player's the AR and Dam values.
Necromancy - Just going to run our custom necro spells we're writing down the line, nothing special.
Discordance, Bushido, Ninjitsu, Chivalry, Spellweaving and Focus - All removed and replaced with other skills.

Some of our new skills:

Attunement Skills, they level up alongside magery. But offer effect/damage boosts if you cast a spell that matches that attunement. They also only gain when you cast a spell within that attunement.
- Air Attunement
- Earth Attunement
- Fire Attunement
- Ice Attunement
- Arcane Attunement

- Fortitude - Skillgain chance every time you're hit, adds +1 ModAR every 10.0 skillpoints. Going to expand on it later.

- Foraging - Ability to collect sand, glass, dirt, rocks, leaves, etc. Including a bunch of random "goodies" based on skill and what you're collecting. (old ring in the dirt, birds nest in the leaves, shard of rare glass in the sand, etc)

- Artist - Pure-decorative craft skill for paintings, sculptures, clay items, etc.

- Bartering - Gain every time you buy/sell. Triggers a change in VENDORMARKUP when you buy/sell from a vendor. Higher skill = better prices.

- Axe Fighting - Because Axes aren't Swords, silly UO.

- Staff Fighting - Because staffs aren't Maces, silly UO.

Really, we don't mind removing an entire original skill if we can't find a good use for it. I have a custom skill tree gump and custom gain systems/messages. So I can add/remove as many skills as I want with no regard to the hardcoded limits.

Barding is also up in the air, I'm thinking of completely rewriting it and removing peacemaking and provocation as well. Making "Barding" basically work like Magery does by "casting" (playing) bard "Spells" (Songs). Nearly all of them beneficial buffs of some kind or another.

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