Entering Britannia - A Guide for Absolute Beginners

I can very well remember my first steps in Ultima Online, but maybe I should better say: I can very well remember how I tried to make my first steps in the game. Back then I found the game mechanics very hard to understand, my character incredibly tough to handle and the handbook, although rather thick, did no give me an answer to the many questions. And, indeed, UO is much more complicated to play than any other RPG I ever played – but, be assured, you will soon get the hang of it. This guide tries to cover all important basics and is meant for “real” beginners, not people who have played UO before but are new to EndEffect - although those are of course very welcome to read on, too.

Entering Britannia - Character Creation

Once you connect to our server a screen showing a castle will pop up. There it will ask you for an account name and password. This is what we call the “login screen”, just for your future reference. The first step for you will be to chose an account name and password and enter it in the according blank fields – I am sure you figured that much already.

The values you enter will be automatically saved and your account will be created. If you, from then on, enter your account name and password you will be able to resume your game at any point you left it. For your own security I suggest choosing a password that is not easily guessable. Also, no member of staff will ever ask for your password, so please do not give it away!

Once you are done click on the green arrow on the right bottom of the screen. To shorten this: a green arrow means onwards while a red arrow means back to the last page. You will now be brought to a screen where it says Endeffect! This is the shard you are planning to play on, just move on.

You are now “Connecting” to the server. Depending on your internet connection and the server status this might take a while. If you cannot connect it is likely that the server might have crashed (although this does not happen often) – it is a good idea to ask in IRC if this is the case, then.

Once you connect you come to a screen with several options. There you can chose the profession for your character. The options “paladin” and “necromancer” will not work, as EndEffect currently does not support those options. Clicking on one of the icons will chose the profession. The “Advanced” button allows you to set skills and stats manually. If you are playing for the first time you may want to ignore this option, though. Please see the according essays for more detail, tips and tricks about the “science” of character creation. Right now, though, you may just want to start to play.

You are almost there! The next screen shows your character. You can alter different things, like hairstyle, haircolour, skincolour, gender, as well as the colour for your starting clothes. Do not forget to enter a name for you new online persona!

On you go! “Creating Character” – and soon your character will appear on some place in the lands of Britannia! Congratulations, your new character has been born!

Walking and Talking

Once you successfully logged in you will for sure notice a cursor, formed like a hand. This cursor can be easily moved around with your mouse. Now, you might want to make your first steps. Simply move the cursor into the direction you would like to go, then press the right mouse button and hold it. You will now start to move into the according direction. Now, you course it is not very handy to have to keep the right mouse button pressed all the time – while you are walking (read: while the right mouse button is pressed) press the left mouse button and release both buttons. You will now keep on moving until you shortly press the right mouse button again. The direction of the movement is regulated with your mouse, just move the cursor in the direction you would like to go.

Running works just the same like walking, with the little difference that you will have to move your cursor far away of your character while you are walking. As soon as you move your cursor closer to yourself again your character will walk instead of run again.

Now that you know how to move around you might soon find somebody you would like to interact with. Talking is in fact easy, just type in the text you would like to say and press “Enter”. Your text will now appear right above your head.

The Paperdoll

If you double-click on your character (or if you press ALT-P) your so called “Paperdoll” will open. The paperdoll gives you access to the various options – labeled by the blue buttons to the right.

The first button says “Help” and allows you to page for a Counselor. Counselors are helpful persons who dedicate their spare time to helping out players. As they are volunteers it might take a while until one arrives. Simply press the button and enter your problem, then lean back and relax.

“Options” will open your options menu. (Also: Alt-O) The options menu allows you to adjust several options, like “Sound and Music”, “Pop-up Help”, “Macros”, and so on. Simply click on the icons to the sides of the menu to access the different options, then adjust whatever you want. Not much behind it, really. :)

“Log Out” allows you to log out from the game. Your game will be automatically saved by the server during so called “worldsaves”, so you do not have to worry about that. Logging out will make you leave the game and bring you back to your login-screen.

The “Journal” (also accessible by pressing ALT-J) is a very handy tool, as it saves the conversation around you for some time. If you press the button your journal will pop up, you can scroll up and down and read up if you missed something.

“Skills” gives you access to your skill menu. Please read below for a more detailed information!

“Chat” is supposed to open the chat function. This option is barely used (read: never).

“Peace” allows you to toggle your war mode. (Also: ALT-C). See the section “Combat” for more information.

“Status” opens your status bar, you can also do this by moving your cursor over your character, left click and hold, then drag away. If you are leaving town you should always have your stat-bar open as it gives you information about your health, stamina and mana.

To the left of your character you can see a backpack. If you double-click the backpack this will open your “Inventory”. This is the place where all the stuff you carry with you is located. You can also open your inventory by pressing ALT-I.

To the right of your character are two scrolls. One should allow you to enter information about your character (currently not working), the other one gives you access to the party menu. You will certainly not need this option for now, as this, in fact, is rather advanced already.

You can of course also open the paperdolls of other players by double-clicking on their characters. You will not be able to open the options for them, though.

The Skill Menu

Your skill menu gives you access to all your skills. Simply click on the arrow to open the according section. You will notice that some skills have a little, blue crystal in front of them while others have none.

If you press the blue crystal you will be able to use the skill. Depending on the skill you will get a target cursor or some message on what to do next. “Usable” skills are for example Meditation, Provocation or Animal Taming. Skills without blue crystals in front of them are triggered automatically, for example fencing when you fight with a fencing weapon, or when you use some tool, for example tongs for smithing.

The number next to your skill is your skill in percent. No individual skill can go above 100%, and the overall number of skills cannot go over 700. On the bottom right your overall skill is listed, beyond that you can switch between “Real Skill” and “Show Caps”. Real Skill shows your skill without the influence of your statistics.

Using Items, Skills and Similar

You will often hear to “use” a certain item. “Using” something basically means double-clicking it. If you, for example, would like to use some bandages to heal yourself you would simply double-click on the bandages in your backpack and then, with the target cursor, target yourself.

The principal of using items always stays the same, so you could for example use a knife on the corpse of an animal to skin it. (Double-click the knife and target the animal).

The use of skills works just the same, unless it is a skill with a blue crystal in front of it (see above). For the various crafting skills you will need an according tool. If you then would like to use the skill you would simply double-click the tool, then target the material, and then chose the item to make.

Also, you can “use” mounts. If you double-click some horse you will mount it, if you double-click yourself you will unmount it again. Do not worry; although all this might sound a little complicating it is something that will soon feel very natural to you. 

Equipping Items - Getting Ready for the Challenge

As in every other RPG you can of course equip different items to your character. Be it a weapon, clothes or armour – there is quite a nice variety of different items available in Ultima Online.

Equipping something basically works via drag-and-drop. Open your paperdoll, then left-click and hold the item you would like to equip, then move the item to the according place on your paperdoll. Once it is in the right position you will see how your character equips the item, let go off the mouse button then and you have equipped the item. To un-equip something simply click and hold, and then drag the item away of your paperdoll again.

An example: You want to equip a katana. You would open your paperdoll and your inventory, click on the katana and drag it to the right hand of your character. Once positioned correctly you would let go off the mouse button – voila! – your character now has a sword equipped.

Sometimes it might be a bit tricky to get a hold of a certain item – please note that items will be highlighted yellow once the cursor is in the right position above them!

Criminals, Murderers, Town Guards and Safety

Once you play a while you will have to face different kind of players. Be careful, not every player wants your best – some might be thieves, and others might be murderers even. You can, of course, recognize them normally – this is what the colour of names indicates.

If you single-click on a character in game you will be able to see his name above his head (or if a person just enters your screen). Is this name gray the person is a criminal, most likely a thief – you might want to keep some distance to them. If you are out of town and see somebody with a red name, you better run – red indicates murderers, and you do not want to meet them unless you are skilled enough to survive the challenge. Purple names indicate members of staff.

Now, do not get frightened too much: as long as you are within the city limits you are relatively safe, as towns are protected by the town guards. You can call them by simply calling out “Guards”, and they will come to your rescue if something – or somebody – attacks you. This, of course, means also that if you are a thief or criminal you either have to be very careful or avoid towns.

Once you decide to leave the safety of the town for some adventure you should be aware that you are now at risk of losing some or all of your equipment, or even your life. Now, I hear the question – you do not have to carry around all your possession and jeopardize it with that! In every town there is a bank, and in this bank you can store your items safely, and nobody but you will be able to access it there.

To open your bank-box stand close to a banker and say “bank” (or any phrase that includes the word bank). Your bank-box will pop up, and you can just drag and drop items into and out of it.

If you plan to leave town make sure that you store all the items you do not need to survive in the wilds in your bank!

Non-Player-Characters (NPCs) - Buying and Selling

NPCs generally are characters (people, shopkeepers or even monsters) that are not controlled by a living person. They have a certain amount of AI (Artificial Intelligence) and depending on what kind of person or creature the NPC is, it will act accordingly.

Monsters, for example, will attack you when you are in the wilds, town-NPCs react to certain phrases (like for example: What’s the time?), guards will pop up when you shout “Guards!” (see above), and a healer will resurrect you when you are dead.

Most important for you are certainly the shopkeepers. Shopkeepers are the NPCs found in the various shops, like for example an armourer, a provisioner, a mage and so on. Depending on their shop those NPC will offer you their goods and most of the time also pay for some of yours.

If you want to buy something simply go to the shop of your choice (for example a mage-shop), stand close to a shopkeeper and say: “Vendor buy”. (Or something that contains this phrase). A menu will pop up where you can scroll up and down, displaying the available goods, the quantity, the price and the gold available. Simply double-click on the items you would like to purchase, and use the + and – icons to set the amount you would like to buy. Once you are done check the box, and the items are yours!

Often people get confused when they try to purchase something more expensive and the vendor tells them that they do not have enough money, although the needed amount is in their backpacks. The reason for this is simple: if you want to purchase something expensive you do not have to carry all the money around (it is heavy after all and could be stolen), but the vendor will withdraw the money directly from your bank box. Please make sure that the money is on the top-level of your bank-box! (This means: it is not in any sub-container).

Selling items works basically the same way. Just go to some shop, say: “Vendor buy!” (or anything that contains the phrase), and almost the same menu as described above will pop up, containing the items the shopkeeper would like to purchase.

Please note that not all shopkeepers will buy everything! A mage, for example, will not buy gems (these are bought by jewelers and provisioners), and a tailor has no need for metal. Besides that basically everything can be sold, so especially when you start to play you might want to keep things you find to sell them to some NPC or player.

Leaving Town - Combat

Wow, I guess now it is time to leave the safety of the town for the first time – let’s go and find some weak critter we can slaughter merciless! As you are not too strong yet I would suggest to first test your skills on smaller animals like rabbits and work your way up the food chain. Graveyards can be found close to almost every town, and as graveyards are spooky places lots of undead can be found there. Skeletons and Zombies are not too strong, so those might be a good choice too if you are a bit more advanced.

Whether you play a mage or a fighter of any kind combat will be quite different. Fighters have to get close to their enemies to harm them, while mages certainly are better off if they keep a more or less safe distance.

If you are a warrior (and found some target, kekeke) the first thing you will have to do is to switch to war-mode. You can do so by either pressing ALT-C, or pressing the “Peace” button in your paperdoll. You are now ready to attack! Simply double-click your target, and get close to it. You will now hit it automatically – but be aware of your health, because your enemy will strike back! If you left-click and hold on your target, and then drag your mouse away you will pull out the health-bar of the creature. Once your foe runs out of health it will die – congratulations, you have been victorious!

For mages it is not necessary to toggle to war-mode. Just get your spellbook, find the spell you would like to cast and then target your enemy. A very good spell to start with is “Poison”, as this one will gradually take health of the target. Be careful and do not get too close to your enemy – mages are very vulnerable in a close fight! Please also be aware that starting as a mage is not that easy after all – you will need reagents for your spells, and the spells of the first two or three circles are rather weak. Mages are wonderful to play with, but a young mage is certainly a bigger task to play than a young warrior.

If you meet a monster in the wilds it will attack you. You will get a message that it is attacking you, and you then can decide if you want to run or take the challenge and fight it. And – do not worry, if you die the game is not over! Be aware though that you will probably lose some of your hard-earned stuff if you die.

Leaving Town - Collecting Ressources

Of course there are not only fighters and mages in Ultima Online – if you decided to play some sort of crafter you will have to go and gather resources sooner or later. The most popular resources needed are ore and wood.

To collect ore simply find a mine or a mountain, then use a shovel or pickaxe (read: double-click it) on the floor, and you will start to collect ore. You can smelt ore at a forge (found at every smith-shop), simply use the ore on the forge. (Double-click and target the forge).

For wood equip an axe, find some tree, double-click your axe and target the tree. You will now whack the hell out of the poor tree, and eventually gather some logs you can use to craft things if you are a carpenter.

Making Money and Loot

Money, as in real life, makes the world of Britannia go round. Money is something you definitely want – and be it only to buy better equipment or luxury goods like horses and houses – and there are several ways to get it.

The “safe” method of making money is certainly crafting items and selling them, alternatively you can also sell the raw goods. This will grant you a steady income, and of course this income will increase once you managed to attain master or grandmaster level in your chosen crafting skill.

The more common method to gain money, though, is to go “hunting”. Either to dungeons, in the wilds or on graveyards – monster carry loot in form of items you can sell your money. Once you defeated a monster double-click on its corpse, a box with a skull on top will open up. In there is the “loot” of the monster: maybe some gold-coins, food, gems, weapons…there are lots of different variations.

Now simply hover your cursor around the item you would like to take (remember, the item will highlight yellow once the cursor is in the correct position) and drag it either on your character or into your inventory. The same way you can pick up items from the ground, of course.

Making money is not the easiest thing, so do not get discouraged if you do not gather that much in the beginning! We all started with very little, just enough to pay for our daily needs, but with your increasing skill and experience your income will increase as well, allowing you to buy all those nifty little things you always wanted 

Death, Resurrection, Healers and Health

Once your hitpoints reach 0 you will die. Death in UO is quite a common thing – and luckily it is not permanent thing. When you die you can be resurrected, and that is a true relief – because if you are a bit like me you are going to die often! :)

Let’s imagine the worst case scenario - you are dead. You will hear some creepy music and your screen will go black, informing you that you are dead, from then on you are a ghost, and as it is in real life the ghost-world is gray. Now, don’t get desperate – there are several options to get you back to life again!

Most commonly certainly are the NPC healers – found in the healer-shops in every town, or wandering around in the wilderness. Simply go close to them and switch to war-mode, and they will resurrect you. If they do not for some reason (assuming that you are not gray or red), try to say something – that most of the time helps.

Players, either very good healers or rather advanced mages, can resurrect others with either bandages or a magic spell. If somebody is able to resurrect you he will most probably do so! Please keep in mind though, that as long as you are a ghost and not in war-mode nobody will be able to see you. Also, others will not understand what you are saying, as everything what you say appears like OOOooOOOoOoOO to others.

Once you are alive again get back to your corpse quickly. If you are lucky enough, the items in your corpse will still be there. Just go along and loot your corpse, and keep in mind that in your current state you are very vulnerable!

As a sidenote: you will need food to survive. Make sure to eat something every now and then, otherwise you will starve! Food can bought in taverns, at the baker’s, the provisoner’s or the butcher’s shop.

Other than by physical attacks and hunger your health can be affected by poison. Poison comes in weaker and stronger forms, the weakest form normally simply wears off after some time. All other forms need to be cured, though! To cure yourself you could swallow a cure potion or two, skilled healers also can cure poison with their bandages, and mages got a magic spell to cure poisons.

Logging Out

I was often asked in the past how one would go about to save the progress of the game. The answer to that is quite simple: You do not have to save your game at all! Every once in a while you will notice a message like “World is now Saving”. This is what we call a world-save, be prepared for a little lag. During that world-saves the server collects all data and saves it, including your items, location and character progress.

This, in other words, means that the server does your work and saves your game for you. So, if you lose connection do not be afraid to lose something! It is all there and secure!

Sometimes a little “Time-Warp” will happen. This usually is caused by a server crash or a similar technical problem – the data collected since the last worldsave will be lost. This results in a “time-warp”, resetting your game to an earlier state. Time-Warps can be annoying, although they do not happen too often, but normally not too much gaming-progress will be lost.

If you log out your character will be online a little longer – this means that it will be very vulnerable! For a safe log-out use taverns and inns, or hide your character by either using the hiding skill or a magical spell.

Once you log in again you will be at the exact position where you left the game – ready for a new adventure!

Way to go!

I hope that this guide provided you with the most essential information of the game-mechanics of Ultima Online. There are of course many more things to explore that could not be covered in this rough overview! Please feel free to have a look around on our webpage, visit our forums and join us in IRC! Players as well as staff will be very happy to answer all your questions – so do not hesitate to ask for help if you are in need of a hand!

Other than that I wish you a wonderful start with Ultima Online, I hope that you will enjoy the game and our shard as much as I do!

Copyright (C) 2001-2005 H. Martin Strobl. All content owned by their respective authors. Ultima Online is Copyright (C) Electronic Arts.
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