Publish Notes from 2002-01-16

Publish 15 Update 1

On January 16, 2002, the following was published:

• Updates to facilitate Week 1 of Scenario 3: Blackthorn’s Damnation

The Virtue of Sacrifice

Sacrifice is part of a philosophy within Ultima Online known as the Virtues, and is one of eight pursuits within the upcoming Virtue system.

The Virtue of Sacrifice has been described as:

“The courage to give of oneself in the name of love.”

Pursuit of Sacrifice will be designed to allow players to interact with “monsters” in a manner other than one of combat.

Sacrifice & Redemption

Characters that attain a level of Fame will be able to “sacrifice” their Fame in order to defeat certain monsters.

• Upon encountering a related, “redeemable” monster, players will be able to sacrifice their Fame to defeat the monster in the following manner:
  • Open up the Virtue gump.
  • Double-click the Sacrifice (teardrop) symbol
  • Target the monster
• The following is a list of monsters which may be redeemed with the sacrifice of one’s Fame:
  • Lich
  • Enslaved Gargoyle
  • Gargoyle Enforcer
  • (Regular) Demon
  • Succubus
  • Evil Mage
• You cannot target a redeemable monster if:
  • It has already taken more than 15% of its maximum hit points in damage.
  • You cannot see it (you must have line-of-sight).
  • You are invisible.
  • You are dead.
• Attempts to sacrifice Fame to anything other than the redeemable monsters will have no effect.
• Once a monster is redeemed, the following will occur:
  • The character’s Fame is set to “zero.”
  • The monster disappears in a cloud of particles
  • The character will gain a certain amount in Sacrifice, depending on how much Fame was lost in the redemption—the greater the Fame loss, the more Sacrifice is gained.
  • A given character can sacrifice his Fame only once per 24 hour period.

Virtuous Title & Abilities

When a character has achieved any number of Sacrifice points, he is considered to have achieved a certain step on the path of Sacrifice.

• When a player moves his cursor over the Sacrifice symbol, a title will be displayed, indicating the step currently achieved in Sacrifice for that character.
  • First step: Seeker of Sacrifice
  • Second step: Follower of Sacrifice
  • Third step: Knight of Sacrifice
• Players who progress any number of steps on the path of Sacrifice, but do not continue to actively pursue it, may discover that this Virtuous title reduces in steps over time.
• Gaining steps in Sacrifice will grant a character the ability to resurrect himself a number of times each week, equal to the steps achieved in Sacrifice. Players will be able to access this ability by clicking the Sacrifice symbol on their own Virtue gump.
  • First step: Self-resurrect one time per week
  • Second step: Self-resurrect two times per week
  • Third step: Self-resurrect three times per week
• There will be certain notable benefits & caveats of self-resurrecting:
  • Players will be able to instantly resurrect their characters which have achieved any number of steps on this path of Virtue.
  • Self-resurrecting characters will not suffer any stat or skill loss normally associated with “insta-resurrection.” However, effects such as Murderer-based stat-loss, Faction-based stat-loss, etc., will still apply.
  • Self-resurrected characters will only have 1 Hit Point and 1 Mana Point upon resurrection, just as if he was resurrected by a healer, friend, or shrine.
  • Characters which self-resurrect will instantly recover all the items they had on their corpse, except for any items which have been looted or decayed.
    • Self-resurrecting characters will not be able to recover items in this way if they move across a server boundary into another server region. Characters in this situation will receive a notice to his effect before allowing such a self-resurrection.
  • Characters will not be able to self-resurrect:
    • …within a “multi-object” (a house, boat, etc.).
    • …within a faction stronghold
    • …while flagged as a criminal or aggressor