980331 - So what do you do if you get too annoyed over PK:ers? Gather some people and go kill them, of course. Lord Zeus and me went down to Orc Fort to have a look, usually plenty of PK:ers there. Now to be honest, he was intended to do most of the fighting while I supply defensive magic backup. There were no PK:ers there at all unfortunately. Hardly any orcs or anything else either. While killing what little there was, we met up with a gentleman who reported that a PK:er had been seen at Wrong. When we gated there, with several more prospective Antis in tow, we met nothing but even more Antis. But suddenly a few ghosts came up from the dungeon. After being resurrected they confirmed the existence of a PK:er down there. I didn't see any of them unfortunately, Zeus and some other persons scared them off very quickly, while I was busy trying to resurrect one of the ghosts at the entrance. Zeus and me went down below and killed some ettins, ogres and trolls, the respawn rate was very nice, when suddenly a Real LifeÔ emergency occurred and I had to leave. I hope Zeus got back in one piece. However, I'm not so worried, he seems to be capable of taking care of himself very well indeed, especially when wearing that Order Shield and a crossbow. After resolving the crises, I noticed that I had some work to do on my shop, so I went about business as usual. Still it was a nice and fun excursion, although a little shorter than what I had intended.

Less fun was the fact my guild stone collapsed altogether. It did cost me 15 k to replace it. OSI can't seem to get anything right, this is totally outrageous, this is a known bug and still they don't do anything about it. The level of intelligence of the programmers seems to have sunk below zero, didn't think it was possible but the state of the program right now is proof enough. I fear the day they try to institute the new, much more complicated, notoriety system, I bet I log on as a Dread Lady one of these days. Worst thing is, you can't get any help on normal European playing hours, it is really bad that you have to pay for it. I hope I get accepted into the Everquest beta test, at least that beta testing is free of charge. Oh yes of course I bug-reported the guild stone incident, but I suppose that the only response I can expect will be one of those pre-fabricated mass-messages saying "We cannot do anything about that". No I bet they can't, that's the most sorry part of the whole thing, they can't even clean up what they mess up themselves. Most probably they are too focused on running their own PK characters, or creating stupid events for each other... Let's face it, OSI is a company which is, like the famous Gary Larson's "Wonker Wieners", riddled with incompetence. (In case you haven't seen that cartoon you are missing out on something).

980329 - I do sell a lot of scrolls. I was sold out on my island hopping kits too today, had to manufacture two more. I also had to re-supply a few weapons, I like being able to offer a good variety to affordable prices. Yes, those weapons I sell with the vendors are very good price, you can even pick up a multi-enchanted weapon of might for 100-200 gold dependant on quality. From time to time I even put out a vanilla force weapon, also very reasonably priced. On my hunting trip today I met Orm. We looked around the terrain a bit, checking out all the monsters locked in houses, until we found a cluster that actually was outside. I managed to get two orcs to follow me, while Orm engaged an ettin. After dispatching the two orcs, I went back to Orm. He still fought with the ettin. The reason it had taken him so long was that he had tangled with an orc mage too, darned, I wanted to fight that orc mage. Anyway, the ettin went down soon afterwards. Mystere came out from a house to say hello, and we also talked for a while. He had had to kill some thieves in his house the other night and since one of the thieves had been blue, he was now reading red, but I know him, he's a nice person anyway. I also saw two stupid bards in a house where they had boxed in 3 orcs, whom they were fighting and provoking. The bards were named Dread Lord Adam and Dread Lady Eve. Since there wasn't anybody else in the area, Orm had left to chop trees, I quaked the entire area before leaving. The graphics when you earthquake is nice, and I've never liked bards anyway, especially the Dread type. I didn't kill them of course, but I must have scared them a lot, since they immediately went into hiding fairly hurt. I could see into the house very well since there was a tower close by. It wouldn't have helped them to hide if I had decided to quake some more, but to me it's enough scaring them. And besides, I can go there and cast earthquake at them again at some other occasion. Speaking of magery, now I'm getting real close to be a Grand Master mage, it's a matter of days now I think.

Or maybe just a matter of a few scrolls from the 8th circle... Suddenly my inscription started to rise almost one tenth of a point per two scrolls. The result is shown below, I was actually not even aware of it, since I had kept my paper doll open (though in minimized form) for a while, until someone asked me how I had become a GM mage. It looks nice, doesn't it? I'm still not a combat mage, two archer PK:ers was chasing a victim down at Orc Fort, for a second I was considering trying to help, but when the person they were chasing managed to recall away, then so did I. I think this PK:ing is getting out of hand, doesn't seem you can go anywhere nowadays without running in to PK:ers at least twice per trip. It seems to me that this UO project is a failure, it has degenerated into some stupid Quake match, there seem to be few reasons playing any longer, maybe I'll advance to Great Lady and (ugh!) Virtue Guard and quit. Oh, against my principles I've accepted a young woman, Vanessa, into my guild, she asked me nicely, maybe she can take over my 2nd story building if I can't keep it? Anyway, here's the picture I promised you.

980328 - Haven't had that much time playing the last days. I've refreshed my shops and houses but that's about it. Today I went to Wind, lots of bigger creatures to be seen there, a drake, a daemon and a liche. The latter met its untimely demise actually killing itself on my spell reflection. In my normal hunting ground, there was very little to be found, only a Dread Lady hiding outside her house. I was a bit too late with my Fire Fields, she ran in and hid. PK:ers are mostly cowards, met a few of them at Orc Fort as well. Reports had it that there were three of them, I saw only two, Lord Tor and Lord Pestilence. When they tried to flush me out of hiding with their Fire Fields, I recalled home, at the same moment the Fire Field was materializing. Don't like fighting at such uneven odds. But PK:ers do of course, all they're good for, mostly they are wimps who break easily if you can take them on one-on-one. I found an interesting object, which actually ended up with my vendor in Vesper, a supremely accurate crossbow. Now you probably realize that such an item does not come cheaply, but if it' not already sold you can go and have a look at it, Dulcie is carrying it in her bags. To show to you I really went to Wind, enjoying myself, I enclose a small picture of the liche and me. I do look a bit unfashionable in plate armor and a robe though, but it helps somewhat when fighting big creatures or PK:ers.

I sold a tremendous amount of scrolls today, could hardly keep up with demand no matter how many scrolls I wrote. On the other hand that intense scribing is pretty good for my inscribing skill, now I'm only half a point away from Grand Master, that's nice. Pondering the special delivery I managed to put together for a client a few days ago, I became curious whether these items would sell with the vendor, I'm considering putting one or two out and see if they sell. Since the items are rather heavy I will probably have to put them with the scroll vendor, my weapons vendor has serious problems holding all the weapons I put out. I notice that the clients who request to look at my special weapons are a varied lot, some of them know almost as much about magical weaponry as I do myself, those are fun to talk with. And then there are those who know absolutely nothing at all, but somehow they learned that something called "vanquishing" is good and everything else "sux". It's quite interesting telling this type of clients what such a weapon would sell for, it's a pity your little avatar can't show surprise...

980325 - This morning's hunting trip led me to Covetous. I saw plenty of PK:ers there today, very strange, there usually aren't any at this time of the day. Anyway, they don't come so often down to level 2 and that's where I spent my practicing today. Level 2 seems to spawn an awful lot of reagents, pearls, silk and ash was strewn around the place, for me to pick up and use. The amount of reagents made me stay for quite a while, not until I my supply was almost depleted did I try to recall home. It didn't work. In the process of rearranging my items when departing from Vesper, I accidentally took an unmarked rune with me, not very good planning. So I had to run past all the PK:ers at Level 1 again, fortunately most of them were busy with monsters, so I got back unharmed. I didn't find very interesting items though, the monsters were not carrying things that I would like to sell in my shop, so a provisioner got it all at a bargain price. North of Vesper, the situation with monsters locked into buildings is getting quite out of hand, some of the houses now hold a dozen monsters each, no wonder that the number of wandering creatures are dwindling. This must be corrected, houses and spawning points can't coincide, OSI just has to move either a little. And for those cases where people are actively collecting hordes of monsters, well why don't they make humanoids prone to open the front door when someone passes outside? Even if the door is locked, it is usable from the inside, why can't humanoid monsters use it? Don't tell me a liche (I actually saw one in one of the houses) can't open a normal door. Nah, this is all just bad planning and bad programming unfortunately.

Later I found out that one of the persons attacking me in Covetous today was actually an acquaintance who didn't recognize me when I was wearing a plate helmet. I'm sorry, but it's long since forbidden to dye your armor, otherwise I would wear an armor all in yellow and brown. Not one of those golden plate mails though, they are just too gaudy. Shopping was nice today, I picked up a supremely accurate crossbow and a wand of mana draining with 57 charges for mere pocket change, my resale price will be a tad bit higher though I think. I also met a young woman, MAE, who wanted a complete set of 1st, 2nd and 3rd circle scrolls. It's fortunate that I still have those around even after taking them out from my vendor, she got a good price on the set though, those items are just dust-collectors otherwise. A lot of persons ask me for those Energy Vortex scrolls, I don't sell them, people who want them are sure candidates for being NPK:s, don't like those more than regular PK:s, not one bit...

I went out on a long hunting trip today, but found very little indeed. Nearly all the monsters seem to be locked up in houses nowadays, I even got so far as the watch tower west of Covetous from which I jumped down and sprained an ankle - never got hurt before jumping - I must be more careful in the future. The largest monster I saw was a lizard man, other than that the trip was mostly target practice on different animals, very uninteresting. I managed to raise my inscription to an even 99, only a single lousy point to go, well I think I'll be writing a lot of resurrection scrolls, they sure sell well. I also found a variety of interesting weapons to upgrade my weapon department with, and I saw a tame dragon while visiting Occlo. Haven't seen tamed dragons for a long time, not since the patch that ended the easy dragon taming. But it sure looks impressive when someone actually manage to tame one and walk around with it, I have heard that they eat voraciously though, sounds like a very expensive pet.

980323 - Connection seems to be particularly bad at the moment. When I was out on my hunting trip, I was disconnected from the game 3 times. The third time was quite fatal, a harpy and a skeleton ate me. After logging back on, saying many not so nice words, I decided that this time I wouldn't give up my bag of reagents. I rushed as a ghost to a nearby healer, hid a while to heal, and returned to my corpse. The monsters were still there of course, and started to chase me. I ran around with them in my death robe, intending to just come back to pick up the reagents bag and start shooting. I found everything I've been carrying in a neat pile, except the bag, and although I managed to shake the harpy, the skeleton closed in on me. I equipped my bow and started fire away and soon enough the undead slept once more. Then I found the harpy again. It tried to attack me but got stuck between two trees. Of course it was easy to dispatch the foul bird with my bow since it couldn't get anywhere, least of all to me. After searching the harpy, wouldn't you know, there it was - my bag of reagents. I've never seen a monster steal my reagents before, very surprising. However, this incident, and several more monsters I dispatched earlier, has now granted me the title of Noble Lady, looks nice indeed, but also displays to the world my Master Mage status, it's a double-edged sword indeed. The shopkeepers in town sure are nice to me now though, but I heard that a new notoriety system is coming so this status might not last for long. Anybody else out there that had a problem with his or her "gumps", it seems like we have another bug here. If I, for instance, leave the status bar up when I log out, it has disappeared when I log back on, and I cannot bring it up visible again unless I click and drag on myself. There are several other graphical bugs introduced with this new set of patches - isn't it lovely? The client crash-rate seem to have increased again too.

I had a request for a special item, or rather set of items, today. It was something completely outside my normal line of business, and at first I was inclined to say no. But then I realized it was possible to turn the package into a beautiful fashion statement, and make it an interesting item for me to try to get hold of for the client. So I spent a lot of time finding all the pieces and putting them together in a very neat way, I'm sure the customer will like the design, besides of course that he will be getting what he asked for. On my second hunting trip, I met Pitr the scribe. Together we faced nefarious beasts and vanquished them - no, not really, we killed a lot of animals though. The biggest thing we saw was an ogre who went down real quick. I also managed to manufacture a lot of nice pieces of armor for Pitr from the hides of the animals we killed. After Pitr left, I found an orc lord, he didn't have anything interesting to loot - boots of night eyes are not that great from my point of view. But at least I got him to admit that my energy bolts hurt, and that's something to be proud of, maybe.

980322 - I'll start with the bad news today, I was PK:ed. How did it happen you might ask, well, I honestly don't know. I got disconnected and couldn't log back on for five minutes, and when I finally did, I was dead. This happened right in front of Covetous, not the best place in the world to get disconnected on. I don't even know who killed me, they were long gone when I came back, and my journal was of course erased by logging back on. How do I know I was PK:ed and not monster killed then? Well, I got the option of reporting the one who murdered me, and so I did. Unfortunately this doesn't tell me who it was. Ah well, the only valuable thing I lost was my bag of reagents, and that can be replaced easily. After walking back to Vesper to resurrect, I went out again to hunt, not much out there today unfortunately, all the monsters seem to be locked up in houses. Oh I managed to convince an evil healer to give me his robe and sandals, after which I did walk around the terrain looking just like a healer myself. Of course my Lady title is a dead giveaway to anyone who cares to look. And it sure looks weird when a "healer" whips up a bow and starts killing animals around her. I scared at least one newbie that way. Back shopping I've found a new market to exploit, this market is just so darned good, I will not tell anybody else about it until I've managed to take the full advantage of it. Let's just say I managed to buy weapons worth at least 5 000, if not more, for a couple of hundred gold pieces. Yes I bet you would like to know, but I'm not telling, no use asking me.

It seems that my inscribing is stuck again, this time only a point and a half from my goal. Someone told me it might have to do with my much lower magery, so I practiced summoning elementals for a while today. Sometimes I do manage to conjure one, but most of the time I fail, I do need to practice a lot. It looks very nice though when I walk around the city with a fire elemental; usually named "Bob", in tow, especially nighttime. It's much more of a fashion statement having your own fire elemental to light up your path, than to use In Lor. It's also nice to repeatedly command Bob to sing. He makes funny noises them. He also makes a funny noise whenever a guard detects him and subsequently eliminates him - poof - Sosarian justice at its best. Other than this, nothing out of the ordinary happened. Oh yes, something has happened, yesterday, that's very special to me, but since I'm still thinking about it, I'm not going to write it here, not yet anyway, eventually you will all be aware of what it is I'm thinking about. Let me just give you this small clue, it's something really nice. *Smiles*.

Business was very good. I sold a lot of scrolls and weapons; even a few specials. It's very nice being able to take a client to the bank and tell him what I have, and, after describing 3 or 4 weapons, make him say, "wow - you really do have it all". But, no, I don't have everything, wish I did, I assure you that my specials are well worth inquiring about. I might not sell one to you; especially not if your notoriety is worse than neutral, but it never hurts to ask. One thing I can't stand, though, is people using a hide macro while talking to me; it's very rude. I usually ask them to turn it off. I ask two times nicely and one time not so nice, and if they still persist then I'm gone. Kal Ort Por. That's all there is to it.

I'll be back with more news at the situation warrants. Until next time - stay safe from PK:ers

Even a tailor can walk around semi-nude in UO

/Sincerely