Useless Skills - What are they, and are they useless??

[Xaneth]

So I remember back in the day my first char Xaneth on Baja stepping out of the Ironwood Inn in Vesper.  It was a glorious time I had a sword and 100gp (didn't we start with just 100gp back then??) and I was ready for adventure.  About 3 mins later I was wandering the lands as a ghost without a clue.

UO Guide says the following about "Useless Skills"

Current Useless Skills


Begging:
Allows the collection of (very small amounts of) gold, and also some items (which are nearly identical to those that can be purchased from NPC vendors for tuppence). (Note: This one is half useless and half useful since Mondain's Legacy expansion. See Past Useless Skills below.)


Camping:
Allows you (and those nearby you) to log out instantly in areas where your character would otherwise remain for a couple of minutes. Cannot be used in certain areas (such as champion spawn zones), requires consumable resources, and is all but made completely redundant by the Hiding skill, player houses and inns.


Forensic Evaluation:
Allows you to determine who produced a given corpse. Pointless in that the poor soul who belongs to it can simply be resurrected then asked directly; assuming you have any interest in the matter.

Allows you to determine who's a member of the Thieves Guild. Pointless in that thievery from other players can only be performed in Felucca; an area where it is generally considered acceptable to kill anyone who invades your personal space regardless of their intentions.

Allows you to determine who picked a given chest. Pointless in that players do not need to lock containers due to the House Security system.


Taste Identification:
Used to identify potions. Pointless in that potions are usually labeled with their contents regardless of your skill level, and can be determined by color if not.

Can detect poison in foods. Pointless in that the Create Food spell is a ready source of uncontaminated goods, and characters do not currently need to eat.


Past Useless Skills

Begging:
Once had been primarily used for begging NPC vendors but now may go to the city of Heartwood to beg the elves for rare items and reversed image items instead of gold. It is especially useful for Halloween events.

Arms Lore:
Initially provided information on weapons and armor, but with Publish 44 imparts additional bonus properties to crafted weapons and armor.

Evaluating Intelligence:
Originally provided information on the target's Intelligence and available mana, but now imparts additional spell damage.

Item Identification:
Previously used to determine the properties of a given item, which are now displayed regardless of skill. Can now be used to determine the value of an item according to NPCs and the imbuing ingredients the Items will unravel into.

Spirit Speak:
Previously only allowed a character to understand what another dead player's ghost was saying (instead of 'OooOO oOOooOo ooo'), but with the introduction of Necromancy allows for health regeneration either from the character's mana or from corpses.

Okay So that's the "useless" skills according to UO Guide.  Of course the ones that are struck out have been improved, but that does leave a few that we might be able to do something with.

So the skill I want to discuss is Camping.  I was a Boy Scout for 8 years and really enjoyed it.  We went camping once a month all year round.  And it get's cold at Laurel Run camping in January!  Nothing like camping in a tent and waking up on a Saturday morning after a couple inches of snow and about 10 degrees!

As ya'll may or may not be aware of camping is a great skill to train with for stat adjustment especially if your at the skill cap.  It's one of few if not only skill that will raise all three stat points during training.  So my proposal is:

At every 20 points of camping you would get a bonus of +1 to each stat.  So at Legendary you would have a +6 to each of the stats.  I also propose that this be able to raise above the stat cap.  In other words camping would allow you to "over cap" each stat 6 points.  Right now the stat cap is 300 without a stat ball & 325 with a stat ball.  Each individual stat has a cap of 150 I believe therefore if you had a stat @ 150 and camping @ Legendary that stat would be 156.

Of course there are many benefits to this, but Camping does take a great deal of knowledge in all aspects of life and survivability as well.

Anyways what does everyone else think??  What about the other "useless" skills, what could we do with them??  Is this even possible??  Feel free to post comments and suggestions.    

Safe Travels,

[Amairgen]

I will be watching this thread because I believe past low value skills need some love.

By the way . . On UO-Traditions, TasteID combined with Poisoning gives a character 100% Poison Immunity.

[Morgomir]

For me poison immunity helps in a fight against big guys. Been worth the pain of getting 120 poison skill but only need 100 tasteid

[Xaneth]

Nov 15, 2021 7:45:03 GMT -8 Amairgen said:

By the way . . On UO-Traditions, TasteID combined with Poisoning gives a character 100% Poison Immunity.

Okay so I did not know this... I had heard that 120 Poisoning gave you poison immunity, but didn't know it was contingent on Taste ID being GM.  Now this is the sort of thing that I like to see.  So it looks like we don't really need to do anything with Taste ID.

I'll be honest and Begging I would have no clue, I'm not sure if it still works on the Elves now that they are not in Heartwood, but if it does, then maybe just double check what can be gotten and update the loot table if needed.

Forensic Evaluation is kinda odd.  My thought was something like whoever has the skill would perhaps be a better killer / healer.  Studying a dead corpse could possibly yield information about how it died what might have been done to prevent it's death.  Therefore maybe a +6% to damage & healing @ 120 basically the same +1% every 20 skill pts.  Now granted this is not going to matter to someone like yhaguen who's got a God tier Sampire character.  It would help more along the lines of folks that are just starting out.  

That's my stab at Forensic Eval!

Safe Travels,

[Amairgen]

I am open to ideas on Forensic Evaluation and Begging as well as adding something to Snooping (because snooping here is really not used).

Makes sense to me that Forensic Evaluation could be an assist to Healing . . maybe somewhat similar to how Legendary Veterinarian works here.
Maybe Begging could reduce the amount NPCs charge and Snooping could improve chest drops . . *just thinking out loud*

Open to ideas that make sense.

[Xaneth]

Nov 15, 2021 16:24:24 GMT -8 Amairgen said:

I am open to ideas on Forensic Evaluation and Begging as well as adding something to Snooping (because snooping here is really not used).

Makes sense to me that Forensic Evaluation could be an assist to Healing . . maybe somewhat similar to how Legendary Veterinarian works here.
Maybe Begging could reduce the amount NPCs charge and Snooping could improve chest drops . . *just thinking out loud*

Open to ideas that make sense.

Okay... so  brain storming it is... I like the Begging idea... maybe 120 begging could reduce prices that you buy from NPC vendors by like 20%.  That sounds cool... but I wouldn't make it apply to Player Vendors but yeah that would be cool.

Snooping chests @ 120 to raise the chest level by one would be sweet!  And if it applied to Treasure chests dug up that would be very useful!  You'd have to unlock the chest... disarm the chest! and then you could snoop it to raise it one level.  If you didn't disarm and just set the trap off then you wouldn't be able to snoop it to raise the level.  So basically you tie snooping to reveal hidden to be able to raise the chest by 1 level.

Something like that...

Safe Travels,

[Tauriel]

Just being curious . . .

Peregrine doesn't use the Remove Trap skill after digging up T-Chests because I don't see a real need for it. Does anyone else use it for T-Maps?

Does this skill offer any hidden benefit or reason to use it that I perhaps don't know about?

[Xaneth]

Nov 15, 2021 22:52:05 GMT -8 Tauriel said:

Just being curious . . .

Peregrine doesn't use the Remove Trap skill after digging up T-Chests because I don't see a real need for it. Does anyone else use it for T-Maps?

Does this skill offer any hidden benefit or reason to use it that I perhaps don't know about?

Well actually no... I do have Detect Hidden on Midnight and Remove Traps but I do not have Snooping so that I would need to change my template.  But with 1200 skill points and most all templates in UO based off of 720 pts there hopefully wouldn't be any trouble to add Snooping to a T-Hunter's repertoire.

My scenario of Unlocking... Remove Traps... Snoop... was so that Snooping would be kinda linked to another skill that at Legendary would be worth it to actually change templates around to have Snooping & Remove Trap.  I'm pretty sure that most folks would enjoy that.  Just think, no more level one chests!

Now I will say that if you set the trap off then the chest would NOT raise in level or at least that's what I would do so that it's not a guarantee to raise a chest without RT & Snooping.  But that's whatever folks decide & this is just my take on it.  So we'll just have to wait and see what other folks come up with.


I did find this in the Remove Traps section of UO Guide, but I don't know if it works like this on UO Traditions:

Using

To use the Remove Trap skill:



Click the blue gem next to the skill on your Skill List.

Target the item that you wish to disarm.

If you are successful in your attempt, the trap is disarmed and you can then attempt to pick the lock of the container. If, however, your fingers slip and you fail to disarm the trap, there is a chance it may be set off. Traps that are set off often reset themselves, requiring another Remove Trap attempt.



This skill is quite risky and you would be wise to practice it with caution. Wearing gloves can hinder your ability to disarm traps, as the delicate inner works of certain traps require a fine touch.



For those in search of Treasure Chests made available by digging at the location of a Treasure Map this skill is a necessity. After lockpicking such a chest any attempt to open it will only show a message indicating that Remove Trap skill should be used on it. This can be done from any adjacent space to the chest and will show another message indicating that you are manipulating the chest's trap mechanism. On a failure the chest will spawn one dark-blue-shaded, loot-less guardian of the appropriate type for the level of the chest, which must be defeated before another attempt may be made. The character will also simultaneously take a leveled amount of damage meaning that each failed attempt is doubly dangerous.

Like I said I don't think it works like this, but I don't know.  Also...

Remove Trap was changed in Publish 105 and no longer requires Detect Hidden

So again I can't say for sure how our Shard deals with T-map chests.  But I'm guessing that since you don't have Remove Traps that our shard does it differently.


Safe Travels,

[Tracina]

I do a lot of maps, it's one of my favorite past times. I have always used telekinesis to un-trap the chest in lieu of remove trap.

I do like Xaneth's idea of the chests. Even though I use telekinesis to open chests, I see his point. Using telekinesis makes the trap go off, remove trap doesn't which would make more sense. Telekinesis to provide no bonus, but use remove trap and snooping to gain some sort of bonus. We would just need to figure a way to be able to train remove trap effectively, trying to gain off of t-maps would take an eternity. then there is the question of where 120 power scrolls would come from. I can't see a lv 6 chest being disarmed by a GM remove trap - although a lv 6 map can be found and unlocked with GM skill... so maybe so...

I really like the idea of Forensic eval as part of a healing bonus.

[Xaneth]

Well I trained Remove trap at the Gypsy camp on the Isle of Arete up to GM and it was fairly easy.  My thing is when looking to upgrade skills is... what are you gaining?  Something needs to offset that gain somewhat.  That's why the suggestion of Remove Trap in conjunction with Snooping to boost the level of the chest by 1 rank, though the risk of setting the trap off which would nullify the possibility of raising the chest level.  Therefore you'd most likely never want to use Telekinesis on chests.  Also this requires folks to decide if adding Remove Trap & Snooping to their template is worth it.  

There would essentially be no more level 1 chests due to the snooping combined w/Remove Trap... and all level 5 chests would be upgraded to level 6 chests.  Not sure if that's the highest??

On the Forensic Eval it just makes sense that if you study how something died... then you might discover a better way to kill the subject and also more ways to keep the subject alive.  So to me that equates to Forensic Evaluation along with Anatomy and you should get some type of bonus to damage & healing with both @ 120.  Now as to how much I don't know cause really there are things that are killing my Drow Dragon in 2 hits....  lol so I'm not sure the purposed +6% to dmg & healing would do much unless maybe it too was allowed to over cap.  

There are a few problems with this sort of thing... at the same time it does help newer folks to the shard.  God tier Sampire characters don't have a need for something like this.  Newer folks with new accounts & character's could benefit from something like this.

If nothing else at least the "pairing" of the skills seems logical.  And I'm not touching Begging!



Safe Travels,

[Tracina]

Nov 15, 2021 7:45:03 GMT -8 Amairgen said:

I will be watching this thread because I believe past low value skills need some love.

By the way . . On UO-Traditions, TasteID combined with Poisoning gives a character 100% Poison Immunity.

So, in order to be 100% immune to poison, I need 100 poisoning and 100 Taste ID or do I need 120 of each?  Or is it 120 Poisoning, 100 Taste ID or Vice Versa?

I'm going to drop music and peace as I never really use those.  Being 100% Immune to poison will help considerably.  

[Amairgen]

For Poison Immunity you need 120 Poison and 100 Taste ID. It may seem like a lot of skill points to spend (especially for a warrior type) but it is nice not dealing with curing and if you are a necro or mage you will have a benefit added to your poisoning spells.