Stealth.

Draconis

New Member
"Why do rogues prefer leather armor? Because It's made of hide"

In the beginning of Ultima Online, armor was very basic. So basic in fact, that you could calculate what kind of armor someone was wearing just by their AR level. Because of this, the stealth skill's success chance was determined by one's AR level and not by what the character was wearing. Since then, new materials to craft armor from became available which was the first wrench thrown into the stealth calculator to make it not only outdated, but incompetent. Secondly, skill scrolls came out which upped the maximum cap available, but skewed the stealth algorithm further now that 120 stealth was available. Lastly, doing away with blanket AR values in AoS and adding resistances and stats to gear made the entire old ways of calculating stealth worthless. Because of this, stealth has adapted to be what it is now, and is widely agreed to be much more acceptable in both functionality and reason. You can see on both uoguide as well as UO's official website, as well as any other outlet on stealth, that now the type/weight of the armor a character is wearing determines how difficult it is to stealth - which makes sense.

At 65 stealth, a player should be able to stealth 100% of the time wearing just clothing - this should translate to 0 AR for UOF, but considering there are magical spells and even special clothing that increases a player's AR, this is not the case. While players with 75 stealth should be able to wear medable armor - regardless of AR - and still stealth 100% of the time, at 80 stealth on UOF, a single point of AR can cause you to fail at a stealth check. That is correct, on UOF, your anniversary reward cloaks with +2 to AR will cause you to fail your stealth checks while naked except for a +2 AR cape even though you are quite professional at stealth to the point of earning a title for achieving 80 in the skill. This simply doesn't make sense.

After 65 in stealth, players are supposed to begin to put on armor to train it up to 95, at which point medable armor regardless of the AR has already reached a 100% success rate at 75. A full suit of studded leather - meditation resistant gear - has a 100% success rate at 105 regardless of AR value on the gear, and it progresses as such.

"Exact armor to skill level allowed can be found on the main Stratics page under Stealth, and at the UO Thief Forum.
***NOTE that it is the type of armor that matters, not the AR. This means work up from light armor, like leather, to heavy armor, like chain."

~UO Stratics.
"It has been suggested by some players that you will not fail stealth checks ... while wearing medable armor..."
~UOGuide
"...After training most characters will choose to wear leather or other medable armor, at 75 stealth skill or higher in such armor you will never fail to stealth,..."
~UO.COM

I would like to petition that UOF follows suit in adopting UO's better form of stealth that logically and statistically makes sense to allow people that want to rogue it out to be fully clothed and able to stealth 100% at 65, wear a full suit of leather armor without fear of failing to stealth at 75 skill, mostly studded armor at 100, while able to go full studded at 105, and so on. While I realize that there are third party programs that allow players to dawn and doff armor with a macro to circumvent this, it still doesn't feel right to me to have to do that being the RP nut that I am. If we as a Renaissance server are able to accept BODs, custom housing, meta pets, skill scrolls, etc, I think we should at least be open to having stealth work in it's better and revised form to include armor types instead of going off of just AR.
 

Draconis

New Member
Did a video to show that even suits of armor meant for people to stealth around in are unable to be worn and have the ability to stealth successfully at 100 hiding and 100 stealth. Even the most basic leather suit of armor - bought from an NPC vendor - will cause you to fail at stealth checks with max stealth and hiding. Please make it like the rest of UO where it's based on the material and how easy it is to move around in silently instead of based off of AR.

 

Draconis

New Member
On the UOForever Wiki page itself concerning talismans (https://www.uoforum.com/wiki/index.php/Meta_Talismans), the Shadow of the Rogue talisman - meant for sneaking - under the Tips, Tricks, and Templates section, first bullet, it states that "Leather bought from NPCs with slayer properties..", yet unfortunately, players can't even wear a full suit of NPC leather armor at 100 hiding and stealth and be able to stealth 100% as it would go over the 10 AR limit at GM stealth.
The last bullet in the same section says to "Use a Swamp Dragon to reduce damage taken", although players that are walking around in stealth aren't able to stealth with a mount to reduce their damage.

It even recommends skills for the stealth talisman with 1) Weapon Skill, 2) Tactics, 3) Anatomy, 4) Healing (the default four skills to use weapons and survive), 5) Resist, 6) Arms Lore (for added accuracy through the talisman), and leaves room for one more skill. Unfortunately, Stealth requires Hiding to be at 80 just to begin using it, and Stealth requires 80 skill just to successfully stealth 100% of the time with ZERO AR. The combination of 80 hiding and 80 stealth would already go over the skill cap limit of players with this recommended build.

If we fixed Stealth to be like current stealth and dropped Resist, players could stealth nude 100% of the time at 65, with medable armor like the default leather suggested at 75, and hiding at 100, which would leave some extra points for Arms Lore for some kind of extra accuracy.
 
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