This is a very well written PvP-Guide written by one of the best PvPers in Burstfire UO History, Yin. If you wanna reach the top, reading this guide is one of the easier ways.


Sun Tzes art War.

"I heard Izanaki is a great PKer. Should i run for my life when i see him?
No, dont bother. When you see him, you are already dead."

Ni Hao, this is a second part of the long awaited Burstfire Player versus Player combat guide. Long awaited? You say, people did fought for years ( 2 years since last guide if exactly) by themself, and as they learn to walk and breath by themself, they will probaly not need an excursioin on this theme. Champions rised and falled, quited, got baned, returned, were beaten by a new generations, changed names, fought, fought, fought, died and won. We have a lot of own expirience, what is a point of explaining the thing everyone does anyway?

Then a question - what is that you like on BFUO the most? "PvP!", "Fair PvP?", "Sure!", but then - "What do you call FAIR?" - ganking a single player? beating an unexpirienced newbie? wining because of using some feuture others simply dont know?

PvP on BFUO always was a Challenge. One human against other human. No matter what people say to others, the goal was always wining. Being best. If not globaly, then at least agaist that particular enemy. And the price of being best practicaly never was fair.

We all talk about that PvP is all about skill. And everyone lies himself telling that.

At first point on Burstfire,

PvP was about Geting advantage against other players guaranting a wictory.

That advantage for different peopel could have been -

Knowledge - of effect of some weapons, timings of spells, recent changes in skills, e.t.c. Simple but scary example - now you can call PvP barely professional, barely, because most of the knowledge people get only from their friends, not having all the knowldege too, and only reason of more proffessional PvP comparing the old times is just that more people do fight actualy. It became more popular. As example - back then on MPZ and BFUO starts absolute MOST of the players practicaly didnt used pots, noone used scrolls, some people (OH GOD!) didnt knew of existene of LASTTARGET macro and clicked enemy hp bar at fight. You think now it is better? In some questions, howeverr generaly players still stay uneducated in important questions and the BETTER pvper simply becomes the one who know what to eat to get more HP, where to get dragon hearts for poison or what PC settings to use to lag less.

Fair? At some point. Peoples ignorance is their own failure, but still, unability of people to fight normaly, just because of not knowing how, have a negotive factor of them turning to using TACTICS giving advantage in combat.


As its been said "If you cant win fair - just win".

It always was so, x-walling, setting parafields in unseen areas ( wich however can be still considered as validate combat tactic), ganking, opening a gate to parafield, house traping, x-poting. And so we see players, that have no resources to equip a right character to fight or no knowledge and expirience to fight normal way turn to this extreme. And here we see the other side of the ignorance - players that think they are Good got traped and fooled. Wich is a big question of their own mentality and lack of expirience in such situations. (YES!)

And the third extreme is Cheating. People always try to get advantage in combat, often illegal, and other half exploiting BARELY legal feutures of the game. Most of the people dont even think they DO cheat doing what they do. The way of fighting it is concisious understanding of what actions are considered CHEATING and considering the risks. For a simple note. There is NOTHING atm that CANT be prowen. More things going serverside, and for the rest - the GM with a video recording is your nemesis. EVERYTHING could be prowen - from lighthack, using client hack tools or macro tools, no trees, to packet based exploits. Every safety is illusionar. But live with a fact that 50% of people around you still DO cheat one or another way. Just, because of the risk, advantages they got by that are misery. They will not fight better because of cheats, they will not kill you in one hit, they will not run faster (the effect of the newest speedhacks is only faster clientside graphics update, so they trick themself thinking they become faster). Nothing that gives them a REAL advantage against you and wich you cant do better. A simple rule. Skill is more then equipment. Bigger gun doesnt make you better shooter. So instead of trying to get a little more unfair advantage by the way of cheating, its more effective developing the strongest weapon - yourself.

Following guide will try to cover the most aspects of the changed PvP situation on this shard. In example of combat situation, different character builds and common used tactics. First part will be based on the current best build for open world PvP fights. Many would disagree. Your right. But from that build you could possibly learn something usefull for you, or at least will be ready for the new combat situations coming on you.


PvP CHARACTER BUILD: Pestilence

PvP did changed a lot on shard in last years, PvP builds become effective and forgotten (dex healers), features overpowered and fixed, weapons changed e.t.c.
By standart, commonly effective character stayed the standart tank mage, as explained in last PvP Guide. Effective, yes. But not the best anymore.

The main changes in BFUO PvP made were - Songs of War, Necromancy and Poisoning. Each of the skills overpowered on themself when they appeared, changed a lot, moaned a lot about, exploited, forgoten e.t.c. However, none of the skills ever found a real popularity even though of the great potential. They are lenght a part of BFUO pvp you cant take away, but you wish never were there.

Songs of War is the most understimated combat skill on shard. It is ULTRA effective, even though it was weakened a LOT since it first was introduced. Reason of it being not popular - people try to play as bards PURE, not being able to integrate it right in their normal tactic. 200 Skillpoints needed, wich is to much to sacrafice by a standart character build.

Necromancy - it was overpowered skill, short time. Since then people still use it sometimes, but they mistakely concentrate on summons and necromancy poison, with a constant made changes finding them uneffective to use. In fact, Necromancy is a great additional combat skill and you dont even need 100 of it, you DONT need summons you DONT need poison. Necromancy would be worth of taking just for its bless spell. But it also have a necromancy copy of magic arrow. Overpowered. Great. Super. And also extremely hard to use, requiring a lot of training, why the most people simply ignore it.

Poisoning - yeah, its lame. But it is a part of the game you cant take away anymore. Strong poisons should be made even MORE weaker, but the skill itself should stay. Geting deadly poisons is hard and geting free 100.0 skillpoints for this skill isnt easyer either, but actualy it is an effective skills even if you use a simple poisons. You dont need people deing from 3 hits. You need a little advantage in combat that will add to summary of your fight and maybe change the balance on your side. With a new fencing weapons added it suddenly become even more interesting.

So the build using all aspects of the burrent PvP will be following:

140 STR (fluxed) - returning to this theme again, STR is only stat worth fluxing if you not play as a pure mage. You will need it at max. For a weight you can carry, but also for a reason that geting the maximum HP is one of the goals of this build. And for a note, HP less then 200 HP on your character means you are not ready for a combat smile.gif Seriously.

80 DEX - ok ok, we return to this theme again. Everyone say 90 DEX is MUST for the max combat speed and at least working healing. My counter arguments: how big is a role of h2h speed in your combat? specialy using fast fencing weapon? specialy being able to bless yourself in a second? First - as in this build we take songs of war, if your are prepared for combat you will have +10 additional dex due to courage of heroes. THIS BONUS CANT BE DISPELLED. So you actualy play as if you would have 90 dex. Only Healing need Base DEX. But we dont take healing on this character at all. HUUH?!! Later. 80 dex is MORE then enoth for a good h2h combat. Actualy at working build you will have around 120 useless dex, as it neither will be used for healing and have no effect on combat above 90. But geting less then 80 dex is not adviable. Actualy you could run even with 60, but as necromancy spellups arent that good and long as bard ones, best to have 80.


75 INT - bah. You always will wish to have like 999 of it, but actualy thats the ideal value, because: values abowe 75 INT only give advantage at start of the combat, so you can cast 2-3 spells more as pure mage as example. This advantages is totaly useless if enemy just MA spams you. Soon you both will be on 0 mana, and mana restoring speed on pure mage and warrior are the same - all your high int becoming useless. (wich leads, if you play as pure mage, make use of your high int in begin of fight, as example, specialy spellup max to have about 180 int and spam EQ scrolls). And taking less then 75 INT will lead to greater mana pots restoring your mana not fully, as we drink then not when our mana is on exactly 0, but on around 15-20 mana left. Leading to everyone having less then 75 base int having GREAT disadvantage in combat when beind fleedeminded.

Skills, total 1000.0

Tactics 100.0 100.0
Ressist magic 100.0 200.0
Magery 100.0 300.0
Mystic Lore 80.0 380.0
Songs of War 100.0 480.0
Musicanship 100.0 580.0
Fencing 100.0 680.0
Poisoning 100.0 780.0
Hiding 80.0 860.0
Necromancy 60.0 920.0
Creature Lore 20.0 940.0
Meditation 30.0 970.0
Wrestling 30.0 1000.0

Now you read thrue this and think - Yin is insane! We always knew that, but in this case its obvilious! Where is Assessment?! Where is Healing?!! 30 Meditation?!!

Ok ok, calm down. Step by step.

I dont take healing in this build because its pure PvP character - not for pvm, just for a fights. And at fights you usualy dont use healing skill except you are dex healer. You heal with bandages AFTER fight, when runed away or VERY rare when hiden from enemy using hiding skill, but generaly the thing looks so - you have no ability to use bandages at time of combat itself, nullifing their use as skill for combat character. You will have to carry on magery healing. In combat its more effective then bandages, dont need item to choose and with below tactics you shoudnt have a problems with mana also. Dont want to waste mana regs and pots whenever and fire elemtal hurts you? Your problem - if you want to be best at PvP, you have to take it at price of success.

As we dont take healing, the need in assessment disappears. Assessment is absolutly needed for healing, but how is it needed for PvP? At 100.0 and ONLY at 100.0 it gives you a chance of critical hit in h2h. Other then that Assessment is useless unless you have it for healing. Having less then 100.0 Assessment have no effect on your combat. But as we not orientate the char on pure h2h, we will leave it. Bye bye Assessment, try finding a new job by dex healers!

Meditation - taking it so, its not a combat skill, as you barely can use it in time of combat, and even macros, like in previous guide give only a minor effect. Meditation is nice, same as a nice rare colored chothes - it will not help you a bit in combat. Your only hope to restore mana at combat are Greater mana pots and Verite. Apart from that, you sure will have to restore your mana fast, as example between rounds on PvP or just runing form enemy to take a minute pause. At this case you can restore mana twice more effective then GM Meditation. How? You get a nice bard song restoring mana with lightning speed and also giving +10 intellect bonus. Only tip - once you sing it to end, you cant use it again till the INT bonus disappears - so if you want to restore mana with it - fizzle the song before it reaches the end by turning at war more or casting something. Voualia - you can use it again! And the best thing - you can use Meditation skill and the song at SAME TIME. Remembering the TV Advertisement "No ever was the shaving so easy as now!"

Ok, now by the list to other skills.

Tactics - this is an ABSOLUTE MUST on EVERY combat build. No matter if you are mage, warrior or thief - tactics is absolutly needed. First - it directly effects you h2h ability. Second it determines how heavyer armor you can carry, making your .status better. (Note, the paradox - i take shieldfighting on none of my combat chars, but its absolut requirement for a pure mage, as as he doesnt h2h, shield armor bonus and arm/disarm macro on spells do a great job!).

Ressist magic - most hard skill to raise ingame. Simply because its most hard to find anyone sparing it with you, and alone you have no chance to raise it. Always start a new created combat character with 50 ressist. Some people blame its not so effective as early, some people even concisiously dont take ressist in their builds. But this is wrong. Thouse people denie themself a great passive chance of SURVIVING and also make themself extremely valuable to tactics that usualy arent working very good on standart pvp builds (an ort, mana vampire e.t.c.). Once you will ressist FSes from 4 ppl ganking you, or 3 times in a raw will ressist poison - you will understand thouse poitns werent wasted.

Magery - no comments. Actualy, you can limit it with 80 magery and be able to use EQ and FS scrolls at combat as they arent fizzled by your low skill, but its best to take magery at 100.0 as it little, but still effects your casting ability in armor, .status.

Mystic lore - only two reasons to take it. Flamestrike and Earthquake scrolls. Deneing yourself using EQ scrolls by taking less then 80 mystic lore is like cuting yourself one hand off. Not taking mystic lore at all, is like cuting both hands off and try to kick the enemy to death only with your bare legs. Possible, but you sure you want to get the gold on the invalide olimpics?

Songs of War, Musicanship - i love love love love love love this skills. Great at PvM and PvP, not very popular so no hundred clone chars runing around and utterly overpowered. Actualy you shoudnt need 100.0 of each, as you only need songs up to Screech of Wraith (as provocation you dont need at PvP, do you?), but below 100.0 of each skills musicanship will fizzle a lot. So dont be greedy and take both. Advantages of SoW: Spellup +10 Str, Dex, Int before the battle, that cant be dispelled. Fast mana restore. Great combat song that enemys dont have expirience to deal with, geting good dmg and by chance killing enemy even after shut doors. (I was jailed for that yes. And prowen innocent. smile.gif ) Also, it is great, as when you lack of mana and cant drink mana pot you always can switch on SoW not stoping your attack. And it have a little cheating ability combining it with necromancy skill, allowing ULTIMATE OVERPOWERED CHEATING LEGAL pvp tactic. Will explain that below.

Fencing - for a long time it was most useless combat skill on shard. It did no damage, especialy comparing to instakill sword weapons. Only usefull fencing weapon was skining knife - because it was the fastest weapon ingame, and when jeweled it dealed the same damage as any other fencing weapon (0) and drained enemy stamina in 1 second. However, fencing has a group of (wonderly) expirienced and good PvPers that faithfuly kept training this skill on their chars and hoping the things would turn to better someday. Things did. But most of that players didnt played long enoth to expirience it. Wich learns us - its more easyer to change character to current situation, then moaning and waiting until it will be changed, if ever. And so the magic day came - new weapons were introduced. Ugly, unbalanced, and cool. Still it didnt make the fencing popular ( however lajatang aka 2 handed skining knife is cool) - what made fencing popular was poisoning. Follow that line - all pvp that requires skill is MAGERY, therefor we dont rely on lucky 120 hp hit in enemy head, but better fs him few times. Therefor we need no slow weapon knocking once in 2 ice ages, we need no superior armor allowing h2h fight standing on one place. Your tactic should be hit & run. Your weapon is to fizzle enemy spells and drain his mana. You never EVER should h2h someone standing one one place or allow enemy to h2h you. Standart martial arts rule transfered in a game.

When enemy attacks you h2h - run and cast. When enemy casts - cast better. When enemy casts better then you - h2h.

My favourite weapon are wooden staves, forever. However, the situation shows that at current situation fencing weapons are more productive. Long spear or long trident successfuly replace staves, new weapons are great in speed for fizzling and for draining, and if in good materials like adamantium just great for pvp too. And... they can be poisoned!

You dont have to use deadly poison all the time. Just note - when enemy thinks that with that punny dagger of yours he will be poisoned and dead in 3 seconds, he barely will have a wish to h2h you actively - and thats your goal. Always use poisons, when have none, use even lesser ones. It might be near to useless, but it also a psihological effect making enemy panic even more.

SIDENOTE:
Other kind of weapons.
Blunt weapons - honestly, only good blunt weapon are staves. And their only real advantage is that composite staff costs less then adamantium katana or spear. Still its always a good choice.
Sword weapons - without questions BEST h2h weapon ingame overall, with just one "but". Most of blade weapons are single handed, therefor, with a good sword and shield you are monster at h2h, but that means that you are FORCED to use h2h, as you cant equip and unequip your weapon fast enoth. And atm, weapon being able to be equiped by macro anytime is absolute must. Blade weapons 2handed weapons are toooooo slow making them useless for standart pvp situations. Still, you might choose sword weapons and shields as example, and it could be great if you can h2h right. But. as history shows in a rebelion of red bandanas in China - bullet kills everyone, no matter how good ad h2h he is. And your bullet is Magery.

Poisoning - set in on 100.0 Simple because its pointless to have less.

Hiding - ok, hiding is one of the most usefull skills ingame. This is a skill that will save your life most often then you can imagine, and also gives a great advantage by right use. We take in this build 80.0 hiding, because its about the value needed not to fail by hiding attempts. Stealth is not realy worth wasting 200.0 skillpoints. The main use of hiding in combat is -

1) Escaping an enemy. You are loosing and you dont want to die - you hide and enemy runs not noticing you. In ideal. On practice you should always try to hide outside of enemy screen, else he useses detection or just runs to place he seen you hiding at and h2h you or finish the spell he started to cast before you hid. Still, in extreme situations even that is very usefull, as it gives you a little time, braking enemy attack and as example, giving you ability to drink another pot. But then, dont stay hiden and look how enemy comes at you. Use hiding to fizzle his original spell, and run to other position using hiding again. But in general - always try to hide out of enemy sight: out of screen, behind the house, e.t.c

2) Geting first spell. Theoreticaly you can fizzle with hiding EVERY spell, even magic arrow - we did tested it a lot and timings allow it good. On practice, its too risky using hiding all the time to fizzle spells, as usualy you dont react on enemy spell INSTANTLY or dont even know when exactly he started to cast and do you have time to hide or not. Therefor, best is to use hiding to interupt enemy attack and counterattack, when you sure you have enoth time. Because, when you at hiding, enemy cant cast on you, so you will always FIRST one casting a spell, geting an initiative - and this is very important. Always try to take a role of attacker. If you defend yourself - you already lost. Because if you attack first, enemy protects himself or fizzles your spell - he doesnt have time to counterattack unless he uses LOS very good to hide from your attack till its fizzled by itself. And once he fizzles your spell, you cast next one - before he starts counterattack. Initiative is a half of the win.

Best use for hiding the macro from the last guide, i will post it again here.

War/Peace, War/Peace, Use skill hiding, delay 12, move n, move s, move e, move w

This macro will turn you in peace mod allowing to use hiding, and automaticaly stop you when the time for hiding will come. Patented by Myself yincorporation for cowardy use only.

Necromancy - about 60 of it should be enoth. Depending on your personal tactic, you can play with Meditation, Creature lore and wrestling values geting necromancy up to 100,0, but its not realy needed. All you need from Necromancy is lvl 1 necro magic arrow spell (requiring vulkanic ash) and necro bless, not even vengeance. First - necro bless is a must for precombat spellup. Second, Necro MA is needed for necro/sow combination explaned later.

Creature lore - about 20.0 or a bit less or more. Just because i like to look stylish and ride the nice stangs fiting my outfit. As steed bonuses arent realy great, it is your personal choice how much CL to take, and to take it at all or not.

Meditation - 30 meditation are only takenm because starting meditation lower then that skill value takes ages. Actualy, considering bards Lulles of Meditation song you can not take this skill at all, but if you want your mana restore even faster , 30 is just a right value. Just restoring mana turn in peace mode, use meditation and sing bard meditation song.

Wrestling - following, you use 2 handed weapon and use arm/disarm macro on your spells, you will be armed 40% of time (Because of client equip restriction. Lil advice for all using a hack - stop till its not too late) . For the rest 60% you will need wrestling to fizzle enemy spells. Dont be greedy - what great warrior is it that got killed in tavern drunken fight because he forgot his magic sword upstairs? Kung Fu makes you healthy, unless you are Jacky Chan. Then it makes you more rich instead.

Ok, finished with skills. Now we set macros. There are two kinds of standart key placement. Either you bind most of your macros at F1-f12 buttons and the rest on like, ctrl-1,2,3,4,5, shift f1-f5 e.t.c. Or you use alternative keybind, that is way more comfortable, but have a "little" minus that you will have to copy macro file in directory everytime you load a game, as uo have a problems saving macros binded to normal number and letters buttons, unless its combination with shift,alt or ctrl.

First standart settings:

Ctrl - A Next Target ( Most often, you will have to choose an enemy with this macro. Therefor its important to be able to fast to choose right enemy and stop clicking a button at right moment, to be able to attack first, without loosing a time)
Ctrl- S Next Target, Cast magic arrow, waitfortarget,lasttarget, arm/disarm left (if there is noone around besides your enemy, or you clicked most of other targets away with other macro, use this to choose him as target and attack with magic arrow without pause. Consider uo pvp just like CS - every millisecond of wich team take a position first decides on end of match.) NOTE: With a newer client you can choose enemy as target by simply double clicking him. Still using next target will stay the main way of targeting enemys, except there is big group of players, like on team PvP as example - where you simply should click your enemy.
Ctrl -F1 Magic Arrow (without last target e.t.c. simply starts a magic arrow with targeting cursor to choose enemy manualy. Needed at team PvPs, or its also a good idea, to run to the area where you expect to be attacked with ma cursor on to choose him fast).
F1 - magic arrow, waitfortarget,lasttarget,arm/disarm left ( A simple magic arrow macro. Probaly the button on your keyboard to be broken first, because of overuse.)
NOTE: add arm/disarm left to all your spell macro, if you lag a lot, you can add "delay 2" before arm/disarm. This will make you equip your weapon just after you cast a spell. However client restriction for using this macro is around 6 seconds, so the weapon will not always be at your hands. Still, this macro is an absolute must.
F2 - harm, waitfortarget,lasttarget,arm/disarm left
F3 - poison, waitfortarget,lasttarget,arm/disarm left
F4 - Flamestrike, waitfortarget, lasttarget, arm/disarm left ( OR you bind on that key Macro Magic macro that clicks on FS scroll in your bag and generate click on your last,target bind key, f12 as example)
F5 - War/Peace, War/Peace, Useskill Hiding, delay 12, move N, move S, move E, move W
F6 - Heal, waitfortarget, targetself, arm/disarm left
F8 - Earthquake, waitfortarget, lasttarget, arm/disarm left (see F4)
F9 - Cure, waitfortarget, targetself, arm/disarm left
F10 - Magic reflection, waitfortarget, arm/disarm left
Alt - f1 - Fleebemind, waitfortarget, lasttarget, arm/disarm left
Alt - f2 Paralize, waitfortarget, lasttarget, arm/disarm left
Alt - f3 Dispell, waitfortarget, lasttarget, arm/disarm left
Ctrl-Q Arm/disarm left, attack last ( this is macro to manualy equip weapon at combat. You should disarm weapon with that macro everytime you start client by new, to make it work. Attack last is made for cases when you arent at war mode and enemy isnt set on h2h target.)
F11 - Last object, waitfortarget, lasttarget (Very important macro used for FS and EQ scrolls, and also bard songs and necro spells.)

w,a,s,d - move SE, SW, NE and NW to manualy move character, as example when you try to drink a pot or target a bard instrument.

CTRL Y - open door, delay 2, open door (opens door for you to run in, and clothes it right after you)
All names and map you can set as you like smile.gif

One important theme: Drinking pots, using bard songs and necro spells by macro. This can be made legaly, by special autopilot macro ( i think was posted at macro topic in gen discussion, if wasnt removed yet) and by macro magic tool, wich i dont remember in a list of allowed programs, but wich is legal due to few requests to GMs if it was legal at forum topics. The reasons such feutures dont get you baned yet is simple - its a damn hassle setting them every time and everything should be set by new if you move your bag or items in them. Macro magic is better as it has dirrect trigger macro, where at Autopilot you cant bind macros on hotkeys and have to use inderect triggers ( will not explain here futher, as its been posted before). Apart from that we suppose that you drink pots and use items by manualy clicking on them.

Therefor, you need your pots and scrolls and items placed best to be used and accessed fast. As mentioned at last guide, best place would be right on the center of the screen, a bit abow and left from your character. It will take a bit of your sight, but will grant you best speed accessing your items. As the transparent gump i did for that was called illegal and not added on BFUO, you will have to fight with untransparent bag, but its a price needed to pay for that.

Another theme about macros - as you have to cast with smallest delay possible, macros like

magic arrow - last target, delay 2 - harm -last target could be GREAT, however, unlike Euro PvP and other shards, that kind of macros simply dont work on BFUO - because common spell timing is longer and higher lags. it could work when you test it, but totaly screw at real combat situation when harm will fizzle your own MA. But if you want to play on Euro PvP - this is a secret of wictory. Set all your combat macros to be double macros with minnimum possible delay and your enemy simply woudnt be able to cast anything BEFORE you.

It was a standart binds - alternative, best would be to set all you macro in 4 lines on

1234
qwer
asdf
yxcv

IT is MUCH more comfortable to play, but there is a minues that you either will have to copy your macro file at your char directory every time you log in, or bind the keys inderect in macro magic wich would lead to considerable slowing of reaction, so if you are up to those settings - prepare to copy file manualy.

Ok, enoth macro. BFUO pvp isnt programing competition ( or at least shoudnt be). Geting to preparations to combat.

What does it means? (umh, i repeat myself again) Right equipment, right spell up e.t.c.
One of the factors is maximum weight your character can hold - pm 140 str its about 280 weight he can carry without loosing stamina while runing. if at last guide i said we barely fit it - at this time we dont fit it at all as we have to carry more types of items, so you have to look at it very carefull. Playing as a bard, stamina is as important as mana (lie).

1) Armor. Ok, for all the professionals, this guide is not guided only on you, so i will have to write some info for newbies also. Just ignore it if you already know it.

Best armors for normal combat are Agapite / Shadow, Titanium, but realy realy BEST the king of armors - Verite. All of them give better (shadow) or worse (verite) armor values, allowing to fight without fear of being instakilled by h2h, but verite also gives a bonus making it most usefull armor ingame - mana. It restores your mana from time to time, and this little bonus is very often the thing that decides the flow of the fight.

Always look that you have normal magery status. Its dependable on your tactics skill, your magery skill and what armor you wear. You can check it by typing .status command ingame. Look for it to be NORMAL. It is absolute must for all pvpers, as else you willl fizzle your spells.

As noted at last guide - never run naked. Explosion scrolls, or even simple FS will work way stronger on you.

Best armor for this build will be, imho,

Verite female breastplate, verite arms. verite gorget, verite plate legs, valorite chain gloves ( restores stamina when you are drained to 0, so makes you not drink refresh pot at this critic situation, wich is important) - by choice, gorget can be changed on adamantium for better armor. Imho, this set is even better at PvP then any bloodrock trash. But, thats a question of personal show off and tactic smile.gif

2) Weapon. As told abowe. By fancing choices of weapons are big, just look that you use 2handed weapons. Jewel without questions should be amethist - aka mana drain. As its your main goal at h2hing enemy. Stamina drain will give you no advantage as you arent h2h orientated character anyway, and even so will be in disadvantage in pure h2h right. Diamond could only be placed on long spear, but still is not worth useint it.

For proffessional PvPers the same stays as was early - fast mana draining weapon that could even do damage is a dream come truth.

On pvp events you can confront some monsters like blackrock knicking weapons or skargard - but, they are quite useless in open world as you can simply awoid em, and how often you see people using them outside of arena anyway?

3) Reagents.

You could have max of 130 of each reagent, actualy tokeep the right weight, you will have to put yourself on diet leaving like 90 of each and 130 of nightshade and blackpearls.

Dont forget Necro reagents, but never take many of them at once. Just for about 3 spellups, and 30 Vulkanic ash.

4) Pots and Scrolls.

Now comes another important part. You will have to have a bag you ordently place your pots and scrolls being easy to click. Ammount of both is dependable on your financial situation and your current weight

In my case it looks like:
16 Greater mana pots
12 Cures
2 Translucency
4 Greater Str
4 Greater Permanence
3 Greater Refreshes
16 Flamestrike scrolls
10 Earthquake scrolls
1 Lion fish

Why so many? First, the tactic of this build is permanent offencive - wich means you will nead mana as air and will waste up to 8 mana pots at a fight. You shoudnt be greedy on mana - you have enoth of pots. Combining with verite armor and tactics that drain enemy mana it is one of your main advantages. Also - very often it happens that if both enemys are good, fights lest a lot ( 20 minutes is REALISTIC time of fight against enemy that can awoid your attacks and heal and doesnt escape to house)
- so often the one looses, who gots out of his pots. As most players dont care more then 4!! pots at onces, you will soon be at advanate just because he cant restore his mana or even cure smile.gif

Translucenlcys are needed for only one use - escaping a combat. You should use translucency, reflect and then recall. If you will not reflect, the chance of you being revealed and fizzled is very big. Else, you 100% got times to reflect, and even at worth case, you start casting recall before rewal is complete, giving you a bonus at that enemy will need to dispell your reflect first to fizzle your recall, while you can use los to keep that time safe.

FS scrolls are used more often then EQ scrolls. For an effective EQ attack you need 6 scrolls used at once, leaving your 4 for miscelanious use at combat - as example fizzle or reveal enemy.

Lion fish adds +10 str. It is easy to get, not like trash like angel pies e.t.c. Its cheap and usefull. And it adds +10 HP!


5) Misc.

Necro wand. You need only 1, as you not gona spellup in combat, you should do it before, and only spell you use active at fight should be necro ma.
3 tambolines fror bard songs. You should use this instruments because they have minimum weight. You can buy them from tinkers, as example abowe britain bank.
1 bard book

6) Before battle:
Make sure your arm/disarm macro works
Make sure your bard instruments are set right - courage of heroes, lulls of meditation and screech of wraith
Make sure your necro wand is set on right spell
Spell up - magic reflection, bless, reactive armor, protection, nightsite (sometimes its worth casting bless few times as it adds stats randomly - but you not always have time and mana, so mainyl use that on PvP events)
Use Greater Str
THEN use Greater Permanence
Sing bards Courage of Heroes.
Use necro bless.
Eat lion fish.
Heal your HP to max.
Use meditation and sing lulls of meditation.
Poison your weapon
Set FS scrolls, cure or bard instrument on last object by dclicking on them. (so you can be able to use it with f11 button in abowe macro as example)

By the end of procedure you should have about 208 Str /134 Dex/ 99 Int Dont get out of your house for a walk with a dog without that stats. I specialy didtnt added magicals, angel pies, roasted pigs or scar spirits e.t.c. Abowe are the things you can get easely and use at your every fight, not only on PvP.

Bla bla bla bla bla... when does it comes to a point? A fight!

"No time to make decisions
You got a mission to fulfull
Make a kill
Your reward is a thrill"

Ready, steady, GO!!! No WAIT! You forget to pass the theoretical exam on being allowed to fight on BFUO. Test 1:

What do you do when you see an enemy? "Cast MA!" FALSE! You target him first. And how you do it? In following i will try to separate and show the skills needed on BFUO PvP and how to train them.

1) Targeting an enemy. Many people think that PvP on BFUO is like revolver duels on wild west - you should aim and shoot faster then enemy to be a winer. The practice shows that, like at wild west, to survive you needed 1) Never sit with a back to door. 2) Find when your enemy doenst awaits you and shoot him at his back while hes playing cards.

So, the VERY important skill is ability to target enemy fast. First variant: You are attacker. You go to the area where you know you will encounter an enemy. Best tactic is casting invis, before runing to the area, so exactly at the moment you see the enemy and he sees you, you will stop and got invised. So he doesnt have time to choose you on target, or at least, even if he does, he cant cast at you, and you can safely choose him on target and even cast a first offencive spells. However smart enemys after such trick just run away and relogin at their house. But where did you seen smart PvPers on BFUO? Works perfectly on BB as example. Simpler way is using a hiding skill for that, start using it before entering any dangerous area ( dungeon as example), and initiative will be on your side (unliess you get in parafield smile.gif ). Thats not totaly fair, but those enemys dont await you to become ready for a fight also.

But skill is not knowledge of the tricks. There are hell lots of combat situations, and sometimes you only have half second to choose enemy already casting FS on you to survive. For that you need 2 abilities - choosing an enemy fast using next target macro and simply targeting him with a mouse.

Both abilities should be trained. Nothing comes by itself. If you think you dont need it and you are cool, try to get like 6-7 animals, rename one to TARGET as example, run out of area, run back and try to target TARGET with next target macro. How long will it take? Are you doing it slowly or missing the right target starting the circle again? It is not so easy as it seems. You should be able to choose a right target from all the unneeded ones in less then second. Wich means being able to click next target macro like 8 times at second with 0% failure rate, meaning not missing the right target. THATS called a skill and proud of yourself you can go at bb when mastered it. And die for sure. Because theres is a lot more to learn.

Take it clear: it is an EXERSISE and you should do that regulary, and once reached the right failure quote and speed, repeat from time to time. You will need to plan your playing time to waste some time sparing with friends and training some aspects of the game - it could become boring, but thats the way if you want to be GOOD fighter.

Other aspect of this exersise is choosing an enemy with a moust. Start MA macro that opens a targeting cursor, go at place where different monsters are, graveyard as example, go away, choose a monster from what was there and you dont see, run back and target him. This skill is mainly needed for Team PvPs. On BB you can mainly survive with next target macro. On team PvPs ONLY with manual targeting - as switching thrue like 12 players on screen is uneffective, as you have to switch targets often.

2) Movement. Yeah, yeah. On your birth you learned to breath, walk, run. And now we brake your legs and learn you doing all of that from the start. For successfull combat a good LOS and orientation in landscape are needed. However there is no use of good LOS if you cant pass between two trees hiting your head at one and then other without pause. FIght your own clumsiness.

First - think about what mouse sensitivity you should use? Generaly, high mouse sensitivity is bad for UO. You never have to click somewhere at the far edge of screen - all you need is rotating your mouse cursor 2 centimeters 360° around your character. Try with different mouse settings, and find the ones that suits you best - so that mouse cursor is not moved anywhere except the place you need. Dont forget to turn mouse acceleration off in UO options. It might be a good idea turning it of at all. Also, for the notebook users - touchpad is better then mouse. Far better. You cant play CS with it, but UO - perfectly. Because with touchpad you need minimum of hand movement, with minimum strength applyed, maximum accuracy because of best control, and least failure rate.

Exersise one - just get to the forest near your town and for exactly 10 minutes if you do only that exersise, and for 5 if combining with other move trainings, run in the forest. Without a goal. Just run without pause. You should be able to run for long time without bumping in trees, stones e.t.c not pausing your combat. There is another exersise in the forest, but first you should master that. It will become boring. Your hand might hurt - you continue doing it. Because when you fight someone, bump at tree and so cant escape enemy los - it is like 30% of why people loose at combat (it is also 50% of why people think other people do speedhack smile.gif ).

NOTE: Its VERY advicable, before going at fight, for a minute just run in a forest, simulating so called "shadow fight". That refreshes reflexes and coordination. Like at every sport you never should fight "cold".

Once the abowe is mastered, make the training harder. Your goal now will be runing from tree to tree, randomly stoping at the N,W,S,E sides of the trees. Simulating the situation when you hide from enemy los behind the tree. Your goal is runin fast, changing direction and stoping EXATLY at the point you wanted behind the tree. Also not so easy as it seems. Try playing an old chields game - run around a guildstone, so it will be smoothly, not hiting the corners, and then STOP on a signal or just randomly. Main thing - you should stop exactly at the point you planed. This is very important. Good PvPers movement is NEVER always run. It is instead run STOP, change direction, STOP e.t.c. Because when you simply run - you actualy dont control the situation and cant talk about your good LOS - only about luck.

Another exersise, that should be made separate - entering and leaving houses. Best example tavern at BB. Just practice open door macro, that you would enter and leave the building smoothly, with door always closing behind you.

And the last but not least, moving with WASD buttons. First make sure at your windows settings the delay between keaboard repeative signs is at MINIMUM, so that you will actualy run faster by holding the direction keys, elese, it will first move one step, and after second only start to move. Check it! You should be able to switch between mouse movement and keyboard movement fast - first because you need your character to continue moving when you move mouse when want to drink a pot as example, second, because the keyboard walking gives maxximum control of the movement. That is barely needed openworld, but at least, you have ABSOLUTLY NO CHANCE wining llama racing if you try to pass the trap ways with a mouse instead of using keyboard walk. smile.gif


3) Line of Sight. The most important thing in whole universe. In Ultima Online universe at least.

First exersise is strange, because it requires no los at all. Fighting on whole OPEN are, with no trees, no houses e.t.c. A clear field - there are some at northern britain as example or swamps near LB town are best to train it. How do you fight at the area where you cant hide behind something? Easy. You run out of enemy sight.
Best is to have a training fight with a friend at such area, but you can simply summon a demon as example, and try to run at screen you see him at, and run out of his sight. However, for full effect you NEED partner. You both cast offencive spells on each other. Best harms and paralize. When enemy casts on you, your goal is fizzling with MAs, runing away so his spell fizzles because of distance, casting reflect on yourself - and runing back to point you suppose he are hitting combat spell like 10 times per second. Because you need to start casting BEFORE you see him as distance of spell is LONGER then the screen you see.

That escape by distance and ability to cast when you dont see a player is VITAL for you. Also note for the future: fighting someone, NEVER wait for him to be at your sight - you should start clicking spell macro before you see him. Just when hes too far away continue clicking while runing to him.


Another part of the exersise is fighting at the forest. Not right actualy. Your friend runs after you casting harms and YOU just run doing nothing. Your goal is survie as long as possible. So the only thing you can do is using LOS to hide from his spells. Dont take a chance and run 3 screens away if its possible. The goal is training your LOS, and preparing for another exersise posted below.

4) Spellcasting.

Actualy, PvP on BFUO is technicaly very easy. You need only 2 things to use magery successfuly. 1) Knowing what to cast and how to counter a spells. Meaning having a ready reaction for any spell enemy cast. 2) Casting faster then the enemy.

We will start from punkt 2. Spelltimings. Thouse should be at your blood. Standart rule at combat, starting casting a spell - harm, poison, FS, you NEVER should run after enemy. You should keep distance so that he doesnt run out of the screen, but at time while spell is preparing to be cast you, should be not no his lost - blocked by tree or something - so that he woudnt be able to fizzle you. Only return at LOS a half second before the spell must make damage. For training that, simply choose a target, zombie as example, start casting poison, get away, and return after MAXIMUM time possible, just fast enoth to poison him. If you run out and stand half second before he got poisoned - you do it wrong. When your spell fizzles because you came out too later - it is better, because from that time you can train a right moment when you can return to enemy LOS to hit successful cast.

Another IMPORTANT exersise,, is being able to cast without pause. ON practice it means, you should hit a spellmacro button before the Powerwords abowe your head disappear. You should train following combinations.

Magic arrow - whatever (poison or fs as example, doesnt matter . MA time does.)
Harm - whatever
Poison - whatever

Many people do blame thier lag, when infact, they simply cant use full speed of casting. At first you will fizzle as example ma-harm combination, but actualy, its quite easy to get a feeling when you can start casting new spell, before the other is finished. And it is one of the MOST usefull skills at PvP.

One more rule for you spell speeds are from faster to lowest ma-harm-eq-poison-reflect-fs

Wich means as example, you can fizzle FS with any spell below. It is a slowest one. So, one more needed skill is being able to reflect enemy FS. Wich means, purely training your reaction. WHENEVER enemy starts casting FS and you arent poisoned, you should INSTANTLY start casting magic reflect, unless you didnt seen the start of FS, as example, enemy started casting it from out of screen, then you should simply fizzle it or hide from los. My god. like 3rd of fights on every shard i fought recently, i won simply because the enemys hurting themself with their own FS. Somehow, people are very slow at mind, and seeing me casting reflect at some reason think they will hit me faster. Only few expirienced players after few failed attempts actualy noted that its smarter to interrupt own attack at such case. Thats works on BFUO, that works on euro PvP, that works on Abyss and wherever - its the most overpowered of the standart things. You can PRINCIPIALY reflect EVERY fs enemy EVER casts on you (as i told, with exception of wich you didnt seen starting to cast). Thats monstrous. But this needs practice. Best way, surely, training with a friend. At all, if you want to be good PvPer, you should not simply go at bb and await you become cool at one step, but best find a guild or some friends with a same goal and train with them. It turns out helly fun as the practice of Slayers guild showed. Else, for a "lonely wolfes", you can set a UO Loop or UO AUutopilot macro making your characte say Kal Vas Flam from time to time, and try to cast reflect as fast as possible. But thats just as pointless as mas... you know.

Another rule following from abowe spell line - EQ fizzle everything. Even harm attacks. Because you dont need LOS to cast EQ. It is best way to interupt enemy harm spam, FS or poison if you see no way.

Harm is case in itself. You shoudnt try to stop poison with harm, as unlike reflect, its too risky, but you never should try to stop HARM spam with MA as its pointless as trying to remove fire with alkohol. MA fizzles harm,so what? Enemy takes no damage and simply continues spaming. Poisoning enemy harming you is also risky. Best way to stop harm spam is either using los and startin harm spam from your side - as enemy attempts to cast anything are diminished by the fact you started casting early and fizzled his last spell. Or use explained abowe combination of ma-harm where you start hiting harm button before MA powerwords disappear, and then start harm attack casting next harm before lasts powerwords will disappear also. In general - EQ and Harm Spam are BEST ways to exchange Hunter/Hunter roles and brake enemy attack. And harm spam simly nerves enemy (as any kind of spam) wich is not last also smile.gif

Poison - like it or not, but standart PvP tactic on BFUO always was the same. MA enemy - Poison enemy - Repoison enemy - FS Spam. So the actual goal of any fight is double poisoning enemy, meaning he cant use cure pot and then FSing him to death. So sad.

So the actual fight does look like that:
You see an enemy, you target him, you cast MA to remove possible reflect from him, you spam fleebemind till hes cursed, you both try to poison each other, once one is poisoned - start castin poison again, even before hes cured, so even if he uses a pot or cures with spell he doesnt have time to fizzle your spell. Actualy, once poisoned you can simply run after enemy casting poison without pause amd waiting for a right moment. Else, after two poisons start FS attack. Thats all.

Sure there are aspects like h2hing, archery, necro, barding e.t.c But abowe is all that is being said about standart fight. About other, you only should be ready for that.
H2H - when enemy clearly tryes to h2h you, awoid it by all means and start massive spell attack - FS spam as example, hes most vulnerable at the moment.
If enemy suddenly stands on a place, he either crashed or wants to shoot at you with a bow or crossbow. At such case, swiftly switch on h2h weapon, run to him and hit him ONCE runing again on distance or out of LOS. That will not make him able to shoot on you. Dont stay near him and try to h2h - it might be what he just awaits. One hit landed or one missed swing is all what you need. Actualy you ONLY neared him to make distance unallowed for a bow. Doesnt mean you are forced to h2h.
Necro spells are fizzled just like magery spells, there is nothing new about it.
Bards... there are actualy only two options - start FS spam or EQ spam. Poison is uneffective as bard can drink pot continue singing, and poison will not fizzle his song anyway. Same applyes on harms. You can hurt bard, but he will just contnue singing hurting you even harder while beign able to h2h, shoot or necro you at same time. Or heal himself smile.gif But dont think its so overpowered, a FS would shut the mouth of any bard if you have expirience with timings. Unless he uses following tactic:

Ultimate cheating overpowered wining technique, designed by Master Yin.
What is a problem of bard direct damage song? That he cant cast, therefor cant fizzle the spells cast on him. Myth. Bard CAN cast. Necromancy spells. Therefor, bard singing his song and casting necro MA fizzling your spells is ultimative killing machine only stopable by EQ spam. Scary? Whats best, this tactic is legal, all you need for that is after starting singing a song dclick necro staff and spam last object - last target without pause. Combination of MA spam with FS damage. Hopefuly at THIS moment you see that PvP is more then a common knowledge? You should learn it. Train it. Practice it. Knowing half of the thing, you know NOTHING.

When enemy hides - best way is to use EQ scrolls again: you see how usefull thouse understimated things are. Detecting an enemy is useless, as expirience pvper woudnt hide for long anyway, but use a chance on start initiative attack at you. Having detection is only usefull for gankers searching for a victim to tripple FS, and you arent like that. Are you?

So, clearing the situation at fight one on one:
Enemy casts FS - You cast reflect
Enemy casts EQ - You escape screen and heal, no other actualy possibility, only plus he probaly will waste all his mana on it so you will have short time to heal.
Enemy casts Poison - 1) Fizzle with ma 2) Fizzle h2h 3) Start casting your own poison or FS hiding from enemy LOS. (At this situation best is to fizzle his spell, in general , if you not sure whose spell will land first - fizzle both spells his and yours either then hoping on luck. If you dont have attack initiative, you cant be sure about success of your spell, so in this case use variant 1 mainly.)
Enemy spams harms - 1) Start counterattack with ma-harn-harn-harm-... combination 2) Counter his spam with EQ and start your own attack with poison as example.
Enemy casts paralize - start casting reflect and get out of his LOS. Unlike FS, paralize will not paralize its caster when reflected, so best use it as a chance to set reflect on yourself so it will be harder for enemy to fizzle your next poison or FS.
Enemy H2hs you - run away and poison and FS spam
Enemy sings bard songs on you - FS spam
Enemy poisoned you - if you have abowe 26 mana, drink cure pot and cast MA spam for about 5 seconds, for you to be sure you can use next pot - then drink gmana and counterattack. If you have less then 26 mana, drink gmana and either h2h an enemy while you cant drink cure pot, or run from LOS and try to cure yourself with a spell. One more possibility is attacking enemy with bard song at time you cant use pot.
You lost about 1 3rd of your HP, you attack - either risk continue attack or ineraupt for 2 heal spells (not GREATER heals as they take longer to cast)
Enemy landed FS on you - if you have mana - massive counterattack, if you can drink pot, then EQ spam and then drink gmana and massive harm spam or counterattack, if enemy seems to retreat after EQ spam, dont chase, but better use a chance to get out of screen, reflect and heal.
You are on about 30 HP - use translucency, greater heal, reflect, and greater heal again if enemy didnt found you yet.
Enemy runs away - PERFECT moment to use bard songs. You can finish him sometimes even thrue the locked housedoors.
Enemy drains your stamina so you cant move - wait for valorite gloves to regenerate, else if drained second time, use refresh pot and start FS spam so enemy will HAVE to switch on magery.
Enemy drained your mana - bard direct damage songs.

You know how it goes
You follow your knowes
And you try to revert the blows

Thats quite everything needed to be said. Just note, that all of that is related to open world PvP. 1on1 at arena is a different kind of fight having practicaly no relation to this one. At arena fights far more accents are set on h2h, draining and healing.

Now as the main guide is finished, lets look at other themes.

A little note on players mentality:

Decide what you want. PvP skill and fair fights, or loot and ganks/traps e.t.c. If first - stay blue. Blue newbies are no good enemys for a skilled player. There always are enoth reds to kill. Duel. Not backstab. If you want a fair duel - you always will get one. Theres no reason to be unkind to people even if you loose. As you cant loose. Your death isnt a loss - its expirience that you use to make yourself stronger.