Beginner's Guide to Purely Primitive
Part One

By: Milek D’Haine
November 2008

Getting the Right Client

If you are having any problems downloading from the page on the purely primitive website I suggest reading this forum thread for other websites available. http://forum.purelyprimitive.com/User/Discussion.aspx?id=135657

Configuring Razor

Make sure the UO Data Directory matches the path of your client

The server and port should be the same as written here.

For more information on razor go to http://www.runuo.com/razor/guide.php
 

Download UO Automap
If you don’t already have it make sure you get this useful tool it is invaluable in finding your way around and getting familiar with the landscape.  http://uo.stratics.com/uoam/

Character Creation

For the sake of keeping things as simple as possible this guide is going to be based on one path of character creation – The Warrior.

The Mage, Blacksmith, and Advanced are all viable
options.  But this guide is aimed not only at the true
beginner, but also someone who wants to be able to
start adventuring straight away.

It is in this author’s opinion that choosing Warrior
is the best option for hitting the ground running.

By all means disagree and write your own guide.




Character Appearance

The next screen you will see will have you
decide  a few elements of your characters
appearance.

You cannot choose elf, and  you don’t start
with these clothes anyway so don’t waste
time on choosing colours for them.

With regards to name, keep in mind it is
a fantasy setting.  Also having a name that
fits in with the NPCs can be an advantage
when out hunting.  You can’t be certain if
Henry is a player or an NPC, Fr3d da ki113r on the other hand stands out quite a bit.  Just something to keep in mind.

When you are happy with your appearance hit the green arrow in the bottom right corner of the screen.

 

Hello World 

If all goes according to plan you should look a little something like this.  And be standing outside of an Inn.  The city you start your life in is random when you choose a character template.  That is alright though, it means your first adventure will be getting to Britain.

Before we get into anything too complicated though it would probably be best if we get you familiar with a few basic things like setting up macros and hotkeys.  I find razor is easier to use to set up hotkeys than the UO program so I will be walking you through that.

Open up Razor, click the Macros tab and then click to create a new macro.

Name it Hiding Loop and click okay.

Click record and then go back to UO.

Open your skills scroll (alt-k normally does it) under actions click hiding and then come back to razor and hit stop.

Right click on hiding, select special constructs and click insert pause/wait.  In the top option enter the number 10000 and click okay.  Make sure the loop box is ticked and then hit play.  Your character should hide himself/herself every 10 seconds.  Hiding is a great skill to be training while running around the country side.

If you want you can add some other skills onto this macro as well or train something other than hiding.  But I’m just trying to keep things simple for now.

If your macro says anything other than UseSkill Hiding, Pause 10000 (or something like that) just right click on any other entries and click remove.  Problem solved.

 

Next lets make a hot key

Click the Hot Keys tab, scroll down to misc then select All Names, when it is highlighted on the select the keys you would like to bind it to.  I suggest ticking Alt and using the A key.  Leave the Pass to UO box unticked. If this box is unticked the alt-a command will not be registered by UO which will remove any chance of a doubled up macro etc. When you are happy with your key selection click the set button.  You can have a look at the razor guide (link provided at top of this guide) later to see what other neat stuff it can do.

Getting to Britain

Open up UO automap and find out where you are in relation to the nearest moongate.

Plan your journey to it as I’ve done in this picture and start heading towards it. 

Be careful as there can be some pretty big monsters along the way.  You don’t have to worry about skeletons, mongbats, or headless ones.  But if you see an Ogre, Ettin or anything else that seems big and hostile don’t stop just keep running towards that moongate.

It is important not to panic and remember that north is in the top right corner of your screen (alt-r to open your radar)

 

 

AMBUSHED!

So I got jumped by a Headless.  It didn’t take much for me to dispatch him. And as I stood over its corpse (if you check the options in Razor you can have it autopen new corpses) I see the spoils of my victory. 

After I took the gold I used my dagger on the corpse (double click dagger target corpse) and when I check the corpse again I found.

Some hides and some meat.  This could come in handy but hides are very heavy.  So open your backpack and double click your scissors to turn the hides into leather.

That way you can carry a lot more.

 

Moving right along

Feel free to hunt a few of the monsters in the area (Mongbats, Skeletons, Headless) but don’t venture too far from the moongate.  Periodically you should type “[myhunger” to see if you need to drink or eat anything (you started the game with all that food and apple juice for a reason).  Once you start to get hungry or you’ve killed a few critters follow my directions to the moongate go through and head to Britain (double click the gate or walk through it)

 

 

Now What?

Well now you are in Britain it is time to head to get yourself some supply and start hunting and making coin.

Follow the red line to The Mercantile Trading Company.  It is a great wee market place that generally will have everything you need before you go out adventuring. 

Also on the roof it has a collection of some rare items and a training dummy where you can work on some of your other combat skills.

I would suggest buying a Milk Bucket from Jake (25gp-50gp) which can be used on cows, sheep, or goats (only one type of milk in it at a time) and be used to fill empty bottles with milk which is a great way of keeping thirst away and your stamina full.  Gathering Milk while adventuring also reduces the number of trips you have to return to town and the number of jugs of water you have to lug around with you.

You can also buy a Cheeseform (25gp-50gp) off the same vendor.  When filled with milk a cheeseform will eventually form a nice big piece of cheese.  This can also help keep you out adventuring longer.  Neither the cheeseform nor the milk bucket ever seem to break so they are a good investment.

Have a look around the vendors, most things will be out of your price range but once you get a bit more coin this store stocks just about everything you will ever need.

If you feel like going out adventuring great, otherwise while you continue reading this guide and having a look at a few links it might be wise to record another macro on the roof of this building.

 

Dummies for Dummies

Head on up the stairs and through the doors into the large bedroom.  In the back right corner is a teleporter to the roof.

 

Make a new macro that looks a little something like this.  The skill choices are optional but I feel target all of your stats and give you useful skills.

Disarm your weapon and remove your gloves and hit play.  (Don’t forget to make sure it is on loop) Your character will just keep on slugging it out at the training dummy until you reach 25 skill in wrestling when that happens you can arm a dagger and do it all again.

Little macros like this are a great way to turn checking your emails/reading the Forums with character skill and stat gain.

How am I going to make a living?

Take another look at the map from the moongate to The MTC.  In the top left corner (east) of the map is a red circle.  Within that circle is a great wee hunting spot for new players looking to gather some resources.  There is a very high concentration of birds there.  Run around kill some birds and collect all the feathers and meat.  Return to town when you get full of feathers and meat and drop them off in the bank. When you get about 500 feathers you are in a position to sell them off for about 1500gp .

If you get bored of chasing birds you can head further north, and hunt the goats and deer that are up that way.  Collect the leather hides (don’t forget to use your scissors on the leather to make it lighter) you can probably sell these off for 10gp per hide.  It’s easier to sell resources like this in bulk though so I wouldn’t start offering them until you had 100 or you were in desperate need of cash.

For something a little bit more exciting you can head down into the sewers and take out some sewer rats, giant rats, bull frogs, and whatever else lives in the sewers these days (watch out for the slimes though, they poison you and cause massive damage to your weapons and armor.)  The rats carry gold as well as their hides and meat.  The sewers entrance can be found at the skull on the map.

And of course there is also Britain cemetery which is full of skeletons, restless dead, and zombies.  You shouldn’t have too much trouble with these provided you make sure you don’t get surrounded.  Make sure you have a hotkey for bandage self.  And that you always have a clear run back to town.  (Would be wise to keep an eye on your weight limit as the weapons and armor you pick up as loot can very quickly weigh you down.  Luckily there is a blacksmith very close by you can sell off most of the loot to. 

Some tips

Always start heading back to restock before you use your last piece of food or drink.  When your stamina hits zero and you don’t have any more water you are well and truly stuck there.

Make regular trips to the bank and don’t carry more than you need.  The less you carry the more loot you can hold and the more loot you can hold the longer you can stay out fighting.

Set yourself goals – be it skill / stat goals, money goals, adventuring goals… any goal will help you focus your character and keep your entertained. 

Don’t be to proud to run.  If a monster seems too tough for you its better to run sooner rather than later.  Anything is better than dying.  Stat and Skill loss is not very much fun, especially when it was avoidable. 

Check the farms around Britain (the brown rectangles on the map) most grow reagents (useless to you until you have atleast 30 magery) but many also have vegetables that you can pick and eat.  Free food is good food.

Whenever you are running around always try to be training a skill or two.

Make sure you are not in combat mode when in town (you do not want to get guard wacked for accidently swinging at someone)

What to do with your money

Once you have saved up about 1500-5000 gold.  You have a few decisions to make.  Spend or keep saving? If you choose spend what do you spend it on? And if you choose keep saving what are you going to do about your equipment (it wears out you know). 

I suggest use your first 600 spare gold to train animal taming and animal lore.

You can pay NPC characters to train you in a skill they know up to about 30-35 points of skill.  Generally speaking it is 1gp per 0.1 point so to get trained as much as you can in a skill will generally cost 350gp.  The easiest way to get an NPC to train you is to single click on them (this should open up a menu… if it doesn’t try holding down shift and clicking on them) if you are standing close enough a list of skills the NPC can train will be available.  Click the one you want and then drag and drop the gold they ask for on to them.

The plan is this – go north of the red circle I drew on that map, tame any 5 creatures you can, use them to attack anything you can’t tame and skin and loot all casualties.  Replace any of your pets that died, and repeat, following the mountain north/east until you get to the swamps.  Then head south east until you hit the water and do the same thing all the way back to Britain or until you don’t have anymore room for loot.  Once you can tame timber wolves it might be time to head to Moonglow (via moongate) there are heaps of timberwolves that roam the island waiting to be tamed, as well as a relatively easy cemetery that you can use your pets to clear out. 

I also suggest investing in an Ax (any ax will do… you can always just keep an ax that you got as loot, infact I suggest you keep all axs you get as loot) start using the ax as a weapon until your lumberjacking approaches 50.  Then you can start chopping down trees while you are waiting for spawn.  Invest some money in training carpentry and you’ve got yourself a nice little money making scheme while waiting for monsters to show up.  (Quarter staffs have a return of about 8gp per log used to make them) Also once you get high enough skills in carpentry you can make house add-ons which sell for a pretty penny.  This method isn’t for everyone, but either way, you get a damage bonus from lumberjacking in combat if you use an ax.  So it’s a useful skill one way or the other.

After you get your lumberjacking up fletching is a great use for any logs you gather.  Turn those feathers and logs into arrows and either start training up your own archery or sell them off for up to 10gp per arrow.  Either way it’s a handy skill to use in your downtime while you are waiting for your stats to go up so you can hunt some bigger and better game. Also a great way to make more money so you can buy that flash piece of armor you always wanted.

Magery – What I did for magery was went to a Mage Guildmaster had him teach me everything he could, bought a spell book and the spell fire ball. And ran off to the fields of Britain to pick as much blackpearl as I could stand (Picking reagents is painful… literally) before going out hunting.  I combined this with animal taming/lore and was able to take down ettins without ever really feeling I was at risk.  Of course since then spells don’t really do as much damage to monsters anymore so this might not work out so well.  In any event though Magery is a great skill to have and raising it from 30 – 50 need not involve anything more than casting the odd fireball to finish off a fleeing monster or animal.

Cooking – Buy yourself 30+ skill in cooking, buy a skillet or 3 and start cooking yourself up all that meat you’ve been collecting (if you haven’t been selling it I hope you’ve been collecting it).  This is a great skill.  Everyone needs to eat.

Mining – Mining is a great way to increase your strength it can be a little bit mind numbing though but it is an excellent source of income if you can get the hang of it.  It doesn’t matter if every player mined there would still be a demand for ingots.  You could train blacksmithing as well if wanted… start making your own weapons and armor.  Not as much fun as adventuring though.

Tailoring – With cotton and flax slowing down their spawn cycle tailoring has slowed up a lot.  There is no longer enough cloth for everyone to tailor as much as they want.  It is still decent money if you want to get into the whole macro game.  You can also train it and use it to turn those hides you’ve been gathering into footwear which you can sell  to the cobbler while gaining skill to one day make armor.  Whether tailoring will continue to be the massive cash cow it has been in the past remains to be seen.

 

Alchemy  -  There is a serious lack of potions on the market at the moment, which is most likely to do with the lack of alchemists.  Sadly you need magery not alchemy to pick reagents, and this skill is very expensive to gain skill in if you don’t pick your own reagents.  Give it some thought though.  It’s a great skill.

Stealing – I would train this skill up to steal from NPCs and maybe become useful in a faction one day.  Snooping you can gain in just by looking into peoples/npcs/packhorses backpacks, stealing I would train in to cut down on the number of errors you would be bound to start off with.  A lot of wandering healers have a fair amount of gold as well as bandages and heal/cure potions.  They are hard to kill but easy to steal from.  As long as you aren’t within the guard zone NPCs do not attack you for robbing them.  They don’t even try to walk away from you.  It’s a pretty sweet deal.

Magic Resist – If you are planning on venturing very far away from Britain I would urge you to buy as much magic resistance as you can otherwise the first spell casting creature you come across is likely to have you seeing grey.

 

Part One Complete

That’s it for now.  I hope this helps .  I will be giving this a good read through and  a reedit shortly but I really wanted something to be up on the website as quickly as possible.

Other reading that could be helpful

Keep in mind that none of these are tailored for Purely Primitive but are still useful reading for the new player.

http://uo.stratics.com/content/guide/beginner22.rtf - a very comprehensive look at UO as it was in the early days.  As far as game play goes this is a very useful guide.

http://guidesarchive.ign.com/guides/10597/ - Primas Fast Track guide to the second age

http://uo.stratics.com/ – have a look around, the write up on the skills is useful for giving you an idea as to how to gain etc etc.  Most of the guides are actually dated enough that they apply at least loosely to Purely Primitive.  The atlas and m