After coming home from a long trip, I usually have to refresh my vendors, and this was the case today too. The town crier was mumbling something about being nice to some Easter Bunny and get goodies. When I came back to the town square 5 minutes later, the bunny was gone already according to the medieval news broadcaster. Five minutes, now that's a reasonable time to even consider those stupid OSI quests (heavy sarcasm involved), I still don't get what it was all about, and to be honest I really don't care anymore. Now why do I keep getting that counselor application message on my screen every time I log on? Can't OSI find enough PK:ing lamers whose best qualification is to be able to identify the chaos shrine? This is really telltale in my opinion - they are looking for persons who, as they say, like to help others, and what do they ask for? The chaos shrine - now who goes to the chaos shrine? PK:ers, that's what - it's so hilariously stupid that I don't know whether to laugh or cry over it. Oh make no mistake, I've been to Chaos shrine too just to test out a rune I have to there, but it was a quick visit, the place is always swarming with Dread Lords.

980408 - My neighbor Lord Throx gave me a large order for scrolls today. More than a dozen 8th circle scrolls do take some time to inscribe, even for me. But when I put my mind to it I complete the orders fairly quickly. Shopping meanwhile was very boring, Vesper is sometimes totally depleted of anything interesting. When I was three-quarters finished with the order, I decided to take a lunch break and go to Wind, hoping to collect more of those fashionable crystal balls. I had not more than exited the teleporter when a liche was all over me. However, my judo tactics works nicely against liches. I flamestrike, he flamestrike, his flamestrike reflects back on him. I Corp Por, and that's all she wrote normally. This liche wasn't carrying a crystal ball unfortunately, but one of those nice small statues. It's a shame you can't take them with you, they would look so good in my parlor. Other than this liche I saw no other undead creature in Wind, not even a ghost. But another representative of the nether worlds stood lurking in a corner, moaning and groaning. The daemon Cthulluh stood looking at me in a corner of a cave, I filled the entire area with blade spirits, created a small bowl of popcorn, well a ham anyway, and sat down to watch the show. When the daemon was almost dead, I finished it off with a quick energy bolt, now that was one stupid daemon indeed. I enclose a small picture of me, the corpse and one of my trusted blade spirits in the cave. When I got back, I talked a bit with PhantomY, strangely enough he had just summoned a daemon with precisely the same name, those big pink creatures have a tendency to pop up where you least expected it. Jebu, the guild master of The Empire, and another neighbor of mine, told me about problems they have with an intruder in their main hall. I hope they can get him out somehow, having an unwanted person in your office is annoying. Anyway, here's today's picture.

980407 - I noticed that I had sold a lot of my runes today, so I had to take some time to manufacture new ones. Mass marking on a commercial scale is a somewhat slow business, mana regeneration is a very tedious process sometimes. The runes for the entrance teleporter to Wind seem to be particularly popular at the moment. However, I also had a few scrolls to write and put out a few more weapons. My vendors are always at the limit of what they can carry, either in weight or in items when I'm done refreshing them. Despite this my inscription fell again and refuses to rise no matter what I do, while my useless skills don't budge an inch. I wonder where I get all that cooking from, does it rise anytime you eat something or what? I shouldn't be surprised if it did, considering the general level of stupidity the programming of the game displays. Anyway, I also collected some furs to use as carpets in my tower, they look nice as decoration, and a grizzly bear generates no less than 3 of them. And, although I had a lot of work to do, I still had time to talk to my customers, some of them really do like to talk a lot. That's nice, in my opinion, as long as they don't overdo it, I like to talk to my customers but I sure like them to actually be a customer too, i.e. buy something from me, from time to time. Even though a lot of players obviously believe so, I'm not a counselor. Speaking of counselors, I saw something funny in a newsgroup a while ago. OSI seems to be looking for new counselors, and in that application they asked the prospective idio.. - eh - sorry counselor to describe the surrounding of the chaos shrine. Now there was a little guy writing a help message on UseNet (your newsgroups) pleading anyone to describe this to him so that he could become one of the esteemed (hah !) counselors. The fun thing was that the spelling and grammar of this plead, was such as Lord Beavis or one of his kewld00ds should have written it. I wonder if he got accepted, but I assume he did, regarding the general level of intelligence of the counselors...

Later I went out to hunt. There's not much in my normal hunting ground now that every monster is locked up in a house, but I found an ettin and a troll. The ettin had a nice bow, which will be my new standard weapon once my old one breaks on me. Other that that it was barren. So I decided to go to Wind. I have not more than entered through the teleporter when a liche was on top of me. It was waiting at the entrance - ouch. But I fought it and down it went. When a monster dies on the teleport circle it's tricky to get to its treasure, but fortunately a foot protruded out of the circle. It didn't have anything really interesting though, and the statue it was carrying couldn't be picked up, but I used the charge on it, since I was in need of healing. I then went to the garden in Wind where I practiced archery for a while and had a good time talking to other players. Outside Wind is normally fun liche killing, until you run into that "You are already casting a spell bug". Then you die real quick. Unfortunately the liche stole my bag of reagents. To make matters worse, another player managed to get the stupid liche guard killed, and my bag evaporated. It's annoying to loose your bag, I've said that before. Anyway, after being resurrected by another nice player, I picked up the rest of my belongings. Then I got home and gathered a new bag, after which I went out on some more, rather nice shopping. I really don't like that spell casting bug, magery is tricky enough anyway sometimes.

But I was a little angry about those liches, so I decided to go back to Wind. I met a nice gentleman there, Lord Maraxus, and together we rubbed out 3 liches, the undead lords don't laugh quite as hard when they are hit by several fast energy bolts in succession. Unfortunately Lord Maraxus bit the dust while fighting the last liche, since I targeted the wrong thing with my healing and got locked up by that same spell-casting bug again when I aborted. But as soon as the bug released me, I finished the liche off, and resurrected my escort, and he could collect all his equipment. I bought a couple of crystal balls from Certyl earlier today, and now I could add some more of those to my collection. They do look very fashionable. I hope Maraxus can get his shield back, since his Virtue Guard shield exploded when he died. He probably will have to go to Lord Blackthorn's castle to get another one. Those Chaos Shields do look quite nice, in my opinion they look better than the Order shield, but I suppose it's a matter of taste. I left all the other loot, beside the crystal balls, to Maraxus by the way, I already got a lot of scrolls which I made myself. I don't trust any liche to be as good scribe as me. Then I finally went home to rest and log out.

980406 - Shopping was not so good today. I didn't find anything useful to buy, except a staff of mana draining with a lot of charges. On the other hand I have raised my standard of quality, I only buy the best things nowadays, and those are a bit difficult to come by. Out on my hunting trip today I found Leafbeach. We decided to scout the area together. Unfortunately his client kept on crashing, so he missed when I killed an air elemental. Those are rather fast creatures, and like to cast spells on you, but of course it went down. While waiting for Leafbeach's computer to reboot I turned him invisible, just in case some nasty PK:er or monster should happen to find him. When he managed to get back in the game we went up to the Minoc spawning grounds. Naturally we found a PK:er, they are always there, this one was very imaginatively (*laugh*) named Dread Lord R.I.P. Interesting enough it seemed to be one of those "hiders" who probably will be messed up by the coming patch. Anyway everybody hid, including us, and we had our summoned creatures fight it out, until Leafbeach suddenly turned visible and walked away. I didn't know what he had in mind, so I recalled out too. It's a pity, you should plan beforehand who do what in such a battle, I get a bit confused when my friends uses strange tactics. But anyway we both got home to Vesper safely without a scratch. After this I went on some more shopping and filled up my vendors completely. Contrary to the PK:ers I do run a serious business, not on the side but as my main occupation.

However, shopping picked up a lot during the evening. I found several nice crossbows, not overly powerful but nice objects that will be handled by my vendor as soon as there are any room for them. Packing your vendor to the limit gives you all manners of logistic problems. On a sad note, my friend Bob Vila was giving up the game and came to say goodbye one last time. He was fed up with cheaters, and maybe he's right. OSI doesn't seem to do anything about them. I'm starting to consider how I will dismantle my entire operation once I quit the game, and that day might not be that far away now. I'm pretty tired of it too, the game doesn't improve at all unfortunately, and it seems that the best role players and my best friends are quitting. And I'll be darned if I try to run a quality shop for cheaters, PK:ers and newbies - that will never happen - I can assure you that. I'm just a bit curious where and how I'm going to dispose of everything I own. 5 houses, one of them a tower and another a 2nd story building, more than a hundred nice magical weapons, dozens and dozens of scrolls and a four-wheel cart load of other more or less useful objects (all fashionable of course). Not to mention those 150 000 gold pieces I have in my bank vault. Well, we will just have to see about that, just a word of advice - any kind of e-mail or ICQ-messages with the general contents "I will take it, me, me, me..." will result in quite the opposite.

However, this was not the most peculiar thing I found today. When I was at Occlo buying reagents, I identified a wand that was for sale there. It turned out to be a wand of Mana Drain with no less than 148 charges (!). Needless to say, I bought it, it did only cost me 33 gold, so it's only slightly more than 0.2 gold pieces per charge. A very good deal I would say, though I admit I've never seen a magic item with so many charges. I also found a large pile of discarded magical war forks. It seems many people just throw them away, since they can't be sold to NPCs. But they are fairly powerful as fencing weapons go, and throwing away a war fork of force is very wasteful indeed. Naturally I picked them up, I like being able to pick up reasonably valuable items for free. Maybe that's why the bankers reply "130 000 gold pieces" to my balance inquires. It's a nice thing to have, a lot of gold in the bank if it should come to a crisis situation, and it's fun asking for balance inside a bank, it always creates a reaction (of some kind) from the other players present. A person playing on Sonoma told me he had obtained an interesting item from a PK:er, a pre-weapons patch halberd of vanquishing. He also told me that he had been offered 200 000 gold pieces for the same weapon. Now that's a little overpriced if you ask me, some players don't seem to know how to value an item. And besides, what fun is it paying the value of a mage-tower for a single weapon, which can be stolen or looted from you. It's better having the gold in a bank box. Only bad OSI programming can take that away...

980404 - Today I went down to have a look at Lord Blackthorn's castle. It was a nice surprise, though it's much smaller than Lord British's big one, it's much more well planned and looks a lot nicer. Since the rune I have to the place takes me inside the castle gates, I couldn't get out into town unfortunately. I don't know why they bother to keep the gates locked, it's just annoying, and the high and mighty lords are never home anyway. But as I said, the castle was really nice, I would like a structure like that. Unfortunately you can't have necessary things like beds in a player owned house, I wonder why, it's quite a mystery to me. I wouldn't mind being able to buy one of those large statues as well. Other than this trip I had to look after my shop. I closed down my operation in Minoc, anticipating the one-house-per-character patch, but my open smithy is there of course. It doesn't really matter, I make enough money from my operation in Vesper. It's a pity you can't move a vendor around, otherwise Trianon would have been relocated to my tower. I actually consider putting up a vendor at my tower, if for no other purpose then for holding some of my objects I have for sale but which I cannot currently fit into any other vendor. I don't understand why my inscribing is stuck at 99.8, I've tried every trick in the book to make it rise again, including scribing a full spell book, a score of 8th circle scrolls, and visiting and double-clicking the shrines - nothing helps. The only result so far has been that other important skills have dropped for me, at the same time my cooking skill is fixed at 45. I've never cooked anything in my entire life, this is a ridiculous situation. After talking to other players, I realize that some of them are also affected with these kinds of anomalies - a.k.a. bugs. Why are there so many bugs in the game?

980403 - When I refreshed my houses today I noticed my Main Office had been broken into. I hate it when some cheater breaks in and steals my furniture, since I'm neither lumberjack nor a carpenter I have trouble replacing them. Oh they didn't take my book cases, you see these lamers are so stupid they don't know how to fit a book case into a back pack - which, by way, is very possible indeed if you know how. But these cheaters don't know anything, except to use that gate spell of course - probably as a scroll. The really sad part is, that OSI helps muddying the waters by claiming that "houses can be broken into, it's part of the game", but on every legitimate (if there is such a thing) thief, there go 500 cheaters. Everything OSI does seems to be to cater to cheaters. And they got support by the moronic imbeciles at the so called "House of Commons" - a bunch of java script freaks and halfwits. I bet they don't even have one single PhD between them, probably not even a MSc. I'd say my Real LifeÔ household furniture has more education than them, no doubt the game is getting worse when OSI keeps listening to the same small group of people with same stupid ideas. C'mon, we've heard their childish notions for a while now, wouldn't it be nice to try to improve the role playing aspect for a change? I guess not though. The upside of the robbery is that they took all my exploding boxes. 15 of them if I remember correctly. All of them very empty and all of them very exploding, now how's that for a Christmas present opening? I met Lagsalot again today, due to a situation, that I haven't told you about here, we haven't talked for a while. But we did again today, it was nice to see that he had calmed down a bit. Oh, it was all his fault, no doubt about it. Men, they're so silly sometimes. Anyway I'm happy that we can talk with each other again. But let's back to the preposterous changes that OSI is suggesting right now, you can't hide in combat anymore. Oh they clarified it by saying, "you can run away and hide". Yes very easy to do for me with a high dexterity, but a newbie character is now dead meat even faster. It seems once again that OSI wants to turn UO into a Quake game, and promoting PvP-ing, backed by the idiots at the "House of Commons". But let's face it, even if I don't like games like Quake in the first place, it's certainly a lot better as a PvP ground than UO. Actually UO seems to loose any kind of quality it once had. And they still haven't fixed that guild stone bug...

However, despite all the idiots in and around the game, I still make a healthy profit from my business. I just got my third pile of gold in my bank vault. I must put all those piles in a separate bag - I'm beginning to experience problems with seeing my non-gold things in my bank box. Of course that's a nice problem to have. I also had the opportunity to speak to a PK:er inside Vesper today too, he was not a full fledged Dread Lord yet and could therefore prance around in town like nothing had happened. He was seriously asking me to sell him reagents for some recall spells for 1 gold piece each. Since this aroused my curiosity, I found out from him that that was the normal price he paid his PK:er friends for reagents. Now don't tell me that PK:ing and bug exploiting (i.e. house looting) is not profitable enough. I've said it before today, but it's well worth repeating, OSI are not handling these issues in a proper manner at all. Even the idea of all items dissolving upon death would be a much better way to curtail the too prolific PK hysteria that's going on. But I suppose the Quake rejects are winning this discussion... *sighs*.

Very much later Throx picked up Browyn's order. Unfortunately my joy over being a Grand Master mage turned out to be short-lived. I dropped 0.2 points in inscribing, while processing 30 8th circle scrolls and a full spell book. I'm certain it's some kind of bug. I still write equally well at 99.8 as at 100.0 of course, but it doesn't look so nice unfortunately. I also handled an order for a World Travel kit, 14 cities plus some other choice locations; a very nice set altogether. Furthermore I sold that long sword of vanquishing at a nice price, now my bank account once again reads 6 figures, and that is of course a fashion statement in itself. I spent some 500 gold on cutlery, which look very nice in the dining room of my tower, sometimes my purchases get a bit irrational when I'm on a shopping spree. But I really like those oddities, like tableware, tarot decks or by all means my brazier. They all add to the impressive interior look of my tower. That is of course until some bug exploiter breaks in and steals it all, but for the moment it sure looks fashionable.

980401 - The first of April is a strange day, you expect people trying to fool you and trick you at every turn. Just like normal in Vesper, in other words. When going out on my hunting trip today I found not only one but two harpies - yes - I like killing those. One of the things you can obtain from them is their many feathers. I had a large amount of those already, and since I'm not a fletcher, and since I'm too lazy to go down and sell hundreds of them one by one, well five by five in any case, they have just accumulated in one of my drawers. But today one of my customers asked me for feathers. I was more than willing to sell all of them at a bargain price of 1 gold piece each, this saved me time and him money. A good deal is when everybody's happy. Every day I sell a few of my Island hopping kits, my scrolls and runes vendor is packed with money. I had to manufacture a few more sets and also mark a number of single runes. I also sold a complete town kit to SatansKing - all 14 towns plus my shop plus 2 Recall and one Gate scroll, all nicely gift-wrapped, for only 1500. I also got an order for 30 Recall scrolls from another customer, which I completed. Needless to say, I was seriously short of mana for a good part of the day, which time I spent shopping. Most of my shopping today was ordinary until I visited the weapons dealer in Vesper. There were only 3 magical weapons there. The first one was an accurate durable katana of force. I bought that. The second one was a massive silver surpassingly accurate maul of power. That one also went into my shopping basket. The last item was a durable long sword of vanquishing. Can you guess who bought that one really fast? The whole set of 3 weapons only did cost me 120 gold. I know it's 1st of April, but the joke must be on the guy who sold these weapons for 60 gold to the NPC trader. You bet that these items will have a different asking price when I resell them. Why don't you ask me if you think you can afford it - but don't waste my time - I know what these weapons are worth.

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