Alright blacksmiths, miners. The promised armor and mining patch has just been put in.

You can find the new mining and blacksmithing guideIN HERE.

All armors should now have their proper ARs, and shields as well.
All shields and Helmets now give the same AR for a given metal, to allow for more character variation without sacrificing protection.
All ores should now be mined at thier proper skills, and smelting should be back the way it was for all ores as well.
Blacksmithing skills to make and therefore failure chances should be back where they are supposed to be as well.
Chain/Ringmail have gotten a slightly adjustment across the board, and a few of the higher tier armors have slight adjustments.
You'll also notice a new metal, as well as armor craftable from it, that will be used in many upcomming craftables, not just the armor. However the armor will be quite sought after.

There is one more armor patch due out when we finish adding in the new materials and how to harvest them, but for now assume this is mostly how it will be, barring any huge bugs anyone finds or balance issues.

As always, thoughts and comments below, as well as bug report anything that is contradicting this information

coo

nice nice i shall enjoy it ^_^

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king of the run on sentence.

Great news..but why only one new ore added? :/

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http://brutalos-maximis.mybrute.com

Im assuming all these changes dont affect pre-patch armor?
All in all its pretty good changes but I can see that silver is only like 8 more AR (6 for chain), and I can see that being alot more in demand and expensive than myth, so I think you should give it a small AR boost, but we dont mages having uber armor so maybe a penalty as well, i was thinking the 50% weight increase like the old mythril.

Thorfin - the same reason we don't have 50 million colors of stangs. We are not a rainbow shard. We have what makes sense and what we can put to use. We aren't putting in more ores because we realistically do not have a NEED for more ores right now. Silver was because we have a definite lacking of a rare craft material for carpentry/tinkering that makes actual sense for decorations.

Venom - all pre-patch armor should be functioning correctly.
As for silver, the extra AR boost for silver is the point. Just like rose and blackrock ore are barely much extra armor over the next step down, those who want it and have the money can have it. I think the AR for silver will stay, maybe a slight increase, we'll see how it works out.

A note on shields: Currently they do NOT show the armor bonus, but it DOES affect the calculations to hit and for damage. I'm debating what i'm going to do about it, if any, right now. I kind of like the fact that shields don't show it as an ar boost, since a lot of things affect how effective a shield is, such as what it's against, how skilled the user is, etc.

Color of stangs don't really affect the game, who cares about color of mount. Me not for sure. I don't care if there are new colors really. But new ores = new armors, that's important for me, not colors. I know obsidian is not a rainbow shard, but that doesn't mean it has to stay in the same place for years(crafting)

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http://brutalos-maximis.mybrute.com

I agree with Bob, we dont need any more ores theres enough allready as it is. I wouldnt mind if there was even less of them.

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"Blessed be the noobs, for they shall inherit Obsidian" - Seer Thassius

question, u said b4 somewhere that all shields will have the same properties only varying due to there metal composition or w.e so which is fine but, a buckler takes less ore to make than a heater yet gives the same protection, so wouldn't that kinda be stupid for anyone to still make heaters?

and anther question, how can i make a bronze shield with iron -_- and i can't make a bronze shield with bronze ingots ????? that is kinda stupid, but ya and how come for the lower armor types why is the menus for what u make armor and crafts wit different among different metal types, iron gives like menus rusty gives menus and i think it was bronze that just lays everything u can make out in one looong row lol but ya, i had more to say but i forgot
......... o YA how come i can make rusty and bronze plate mail but i can't make iron plate mail, which is so stupid

EDIT= is black smithing gains bugged or something? because i went to 64 mining from 0 and smithed every ore i mined and i am at 64 mining and still at 50.5 mining thats 640 mining gains versus 3 bsing gains :/ and when it went back to t3a gains i didn't gain 1 bsing, so ya and i try bsing everything possible from bronze plate mail chests to bronze legs to gold legs and no gains and there probably higher difficulty then my actual skills would normally allow cuz i remember it was 60 bsing for plate mail, so ya thats the most difficult stuff i can smith and no gains at all and i didn't gain uses any of the current iron products u can BS
tinkering is the same way i smithed everything and only thing i can get gains from is pick axes which is kinda stupid seeing on the guide it says thats one of the most easy items to originally tinker

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king of the run on sentence.

chips LL wrote:question, u said b4 somewhere that all shields will have the same properties only varying due to there metal composition or w.e so which is fine but, a buckler takes less ore to make than a heater yet gives the same protection, so wouldn't that kinda be stupid for anyone to still make heaters?

My little bro chips makes a good point here!

I'm not sure if this was ever implemented but I think it makes sense for different styles of shields to provide different levels of protection from different weapons.

For example: a heater shield should obviously provide a better defense against arrows and bolts than, say, a much smaller buckler. However, both should conceivably provide the same level of defense against melee weps. There might even be a better shield for melee then heaters since, in theory at least, they would be able to more quickly block a close range attack whereas the bulky heater would be slower to position for a good parry. However, these same quick small shields would suffer vs. a swift arrow or bolt.

Grab some ale and read this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shield

I don’t want to sound disgruntled but it is starting to appear as if those responsible for scripting this fine shard are slowly drifting away from accurately depicting the real function of certain classes of items and making them merely cosmetic. Now, I will agree that the basic function of, say, a kite shield is to provide a means of displaying heraldry for identification purposes (i.e. “cosmetic”) but in reality there are very good reasons for why different shields are shaped the way they are.

I know you guys are probably starting to get burned out during the process of debugging this 4th Age of Obsidian. But please, PLEASE, don’t take away some of the aspects of what makes playing UO so much fun.

I can’t remember where I saw it but I know there was at one time a chart for how well different shields defended one’s character from different attacks. It looked something like this (These numbers are very arbitrary since I’m not sure exactly how they would actually work out in game. Also, I will depict just the heater shield for simplicities’ sake.):


...........................Missile....Blunt....Piercing....Slashing
Heater Shield:....(AR+2)......AR........(AR-2)........(AR+1)


(I'm too tired right now to do a proper 1337 455 html table right now, so bear with me and my funny period spacing. heh, heh... )

Hopefully, this will give everyone a general idea of what I’m trying to get at.

Thanks again to Mr. Chips for sparking a brain cell or two in my cranium. So, is Cyber crazy or am I on to something here? I look forward to the possible maelstrom of comments both good and bad.

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Speaking to you from the third eye of the society machine.

Shields are the same defense wise because we aren't using different types of defense or damage currently.

Thank you for pointing out the ignots required to make, I had missed adjusting that, i'll try to fix it here in a bit when i have time.

As for the shard acturately depicting the situation cybershaman, i have two things to say.

First off we're trying to get the shard into working order where everyone's happy, then we can start actually adding in new stuf and adjusting. If at that point we want to add complexities like different shields affect different weapon defenses differently, I will be more than happy to. But as for right now, the goal is to get most of the shard BACK the way it should be, close to where we had it in T3A, with a few alterations that were done on purpose.

Second off, i only did this adjustment because it was easy while i was working on the other stuff, and it turns otherwise worthless shields into something that's vaguely useful, even if it is only for looks. Basically it turns from everyone only using heater shields, to being able to use whatever they feel like. OMFG, more choices, let's bitch about it!
As i said, it was a quick fix i could do while i was working on it, and it let people use more stuff that they otherwise had no reason to.

Yes I would like more realism in the game, but there is a tradeoff. For example we aren't requiring you to eat food, because that would annoy way too many people, outside of the healing.

We'll work on adding more stuff in and tweaking systems once we get the shard back where 95% of the people can play happily, but until then, it's kind of low on priority.

Well then. All I have to say is...

Roger roger! Keep up the good work, sir!

Please always take what I have to say with a grain of salt.

I know, and I hope others realize this as well, that trying to balance this shard is a HUGE task. Your efforts are very appreciated. It shows when some "smart ass" like Cyber spews out a bunch of techno-bable which you then have a quick answer for.

In short, I'm not sure who I am: Wayne or Garth when they say, "We're not worthy! We're not worthy!"

Rock on, Obsidian.

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Speaking to you from the third eye of the society machine.

if you guys think about it..its like we got two "new" ores to work with seeing as how blood rock is working properly again.

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Ankhesenamun
Dedo Serenity
Fisherwmn
Ruby Estella
Enchantress

Well I'm liking it so far, at least the mining aspect. Not being able to mine anything higher than rusty at 65.0 mining was a bit depressing before the changes.

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Ultima avatar: The Famed JIZABOZ,GWAR Guildmeister

Everything works out pretty well the changes are good but some are still not so good...

I think:

-There are still too many fails when mining (Maybe to reduce afk macroing)
But sometimes for the rarer ores like verite i usually have to sit in the same spot and attempt 4 times to get one ore, and then another 2 or 3 to get the the last 2 ores from the vein.

-Some ores fail too much when you smelt them but i know this is already addressed. Mostly blackrock, and valorite just to mention it.

-Only getting 3 (I think I got 4 a few times) ores at max everytime you mine a spot kind of slows things down. I remember usually getting 6 iron at a time but this does not happen anymore, again this is probably made to reduce afk macroing i guess, so it serves some kind of purpose...

-Shovels and picks break way too fast, especially considering you usually have to sit around in one spot for a while. I think I went through about 6 shovels before I filled my pack with ores.

-Some of the prices for gems are messed up currently, im sure its not on purpose but ill make sure to mention that just in case it went by unnoticed, but the prices got reduced on shovels and picks so that is nice to balance out with how fast they break.

-I think blackrock and bloodrock are way to rare, but thats my personal belief. I think I might have seen one full blackrock set ever in like 4 years that was not duped...and it might have been anyway.

EDIT: I also noticed that you cant mine in spots with 2 or 3 ores lying around..it says "Try mining elsewhere"

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Nightmare: PvM Mage
Xero: Blackmith
Pants: Fisher

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