980124 - Today I had fun even while working. As you might have noticed, I now manufacture and market Sandralene's Island hopping kit. I went around to Occlo, Nu'jelm, Jhelom, Moonglow and Maginica to mark a number of runes. While I was in Jhelom, I visited the Performance Art Center. Naturally I felt I had to recite a couple of poems myself. I did an improvised cat-poem going something like this :

Cats, cats everywhere

What good is a cat?

I strangle them, and make armor from their hides

Miau!!!

Cats, cats everywhere

I spend all my money on milk

I feed my cats with milk and then I make armor out of them

Miau!!!

And so on, and so on, I must have spoken 20-30 verses like this. After a while a got a large audience of players. Naturally I was inscribing scrolls at the same time I was reciting. One in my audience starting to entice the cats to attack me, one after the other, and another healed me up as a strangled them... All in all it was a great piece of Performance Art at it's best, everybody was having a good time, and I actually improved my wrestling skill quite a bit. Improvised player events can be hilariously fun. Thank you all for participating!

980122 - Ehm, I stand corrected. On a large two story building, the only door that's involved in the rejuvenation process is the left one, the right one just sits there for viewing pleasure. You learn as you go along. Speaking about my main office, I think it must be situated pretty close (but thankfully not on top of) a respawn point, at one occasion when I delivered furniture there I could see a ratman and two orcs hovering outside the building. No doubt they were tracking me, but I was safe within the locked house of course. I didn't have time to go out to Vas Flam them silly at that particular moment, but it's good to know that such creatures might be around in case I feel bored with my business on occasion. One friend of mine even reports being killed by an ettin while trying to visit, a certain amount of caution is therefore to recommend potential guests, please note that the area is unguarded, and I might not be home at all. Give me call before planning to visit, so I might let you in quickly in case of emergencies.

Now, regarding business, we've got "Trinsic" prices on scrolls as a standard even in Vesper now. Previously the asking price was 20 gold pieces per level, but now everybody is charging 10 gold pieces plus 10 gold pieces per level. This makes high-level scrolls a bit less lucrative but there's still good money to be made. The worst part was that I had to remark my entire inventory of scrolls, and that was a hassle. My vendor is doing great however, collecting me 5-6 k per (real time) day, I will be setting up a second shop in Minoc, as soon as I can get the initial stock completed. Maybe I should design that shop as an open smithy? That ought to be popular in that town, don't you think?

Standing outside my city shop scribing is great for business. Not only can I sometimes persuade a potential customer to actually make a purchase; I also feel that the shop recognition-factor is improved if the customers actually can talk to the owner every now and then. The trademark is very important you know. Beside all this, a lot of persons seem to be relieved to be able to actually *talk* to another player in a nice manner for a change, I'm sure this helps out to make my shop popular. Now running one shop I can handle, and if I put in enough work I can probably run a second one as well. But after this I most likely will have to go "franchise", not only do I need a well known trademark for this, I got to make sure that the potential franchisee is of "the right stuff" - we'll just have to see about all that.

And of course today's funny news, and story of (my own) stupidity :) I was talking to a customer outside my house, and he wanted a special item I had in the bank. Off we went, and on the road we saw an ogre and some people fighting it. My customer went to fight it, and I stood watching. After a while I decided to chip in with an Energy Bolt - without checking if I was outside the town limit. Guess what - I wasn't :) Since I was carrying one of my house-keys I panicked and felt I had to insta-res. This proved unnecessary however, the persons who by now had killed the ogre, picked up and held every single item for me, and I got all of it back - even the gold. I like to take the opportunity so say Thank You Very Much to all of you - that was uncommonly nice in UO. I didn't take that large a hit on my stats and skills - actually I think it will be even better in the long run since this trimmed down some unwanted ones, and casting 30 more spells isn't that bad. Scribing I do under any circumstances, that's my living. But, dear lord, if anyone would like to call *me* stupid today - feel free, because it was quite clumsy not paying attention to town limits. Addendum: And then the server went down and when it came back up I was restored back to what I was before this incident - Tada !!!

I realized it might have been an even smarter idea to try to advance to Great Lady first before purchasing something that big, since these get a discount at stores. This discount is not very impressive normally, but when you buy a *large* house, it suddenly begins to count for something. Ah well, chasing monsters around the countryside isn't my kind of fun anyway, and it probably would have detracted from my plan in the first place, who knows, what's done is done. And I'm darned proud of my mansion - in case you haven't noticed that yet. We all need our little ego-trips from time to time don't we? :)

980119 - Today was a very nice day in UO. I've finally figured out how to play and get the most out of it from my point of view. Instead of hiding inside my city house when inscribing scrolls, I stand outside chatting with my customers. Inscribing has such a long time-delay anyway. Of course some passersby, the teen-agers in their mid-teens mostly, sometimes complain when they hear me just talk to another player instead of running around the countryside hunting or PK:ing wildly. It's like playing Diablo once again, I was sometimes told in Diablo Retail SWE-1 "You're turning my favorite game into a chat-channel" by the very same type of persons. Of course I used to answer them "And you're turning my favorite chat-channel into a game!". That reply usually annoyed them to no end. The same principle is usable in UO; you just have to remember to be considerate enough not to stand in the Vesper City square and lag everybody down while you're talking. Enough young so called "lamers" hang around there anyway without me compounding the problem further. I actually improve my business by doing what I do, most of my clients are actually happy to talk to me while shopping, and I don't have to go anywhere when I add my scrolls to my vendor's inventory, which speeds up the process a bit.

Advertising my "Do-it-yourself transport kit" on the UO-Vault was not the most intelligent move I've ever made, I admit that. My mailbox was overflowing with mail today. While I love getting nice e-mail, the overwhelming response got me a bit worried. I've tried my best to answer each and every one of you, please bear with me while I try to keep up with all your mail, requests and inquires.

980118 - Shopped around in Nu'jelm today. Their shopping mall on the Far West of the island is great fun. Nobody ever seems to go there, there's even a tanner who occasionally spawns some hides. But since there are very few players, the NPCs' movement rate is very, very rapid. Every shopkeeper runs around the premises like they're having ants in their pants and catching them for selling or buying is as difficult as hunting monsters in the wild sometimes. Only difference is, of course, that very few of the shopkeepers try to kill you once you catch them. The architect in the mall seems to have those 2nd story buildings I want, but prices are still 49.5 k, not 42.5 k as they are when the prices are low. It seems a bit wasteful to throw away 7 k on nothing at all, but my bank-vault is getting very full and occasionally complains about the overload that it is experiencing.

Another thing that's overloaded from time to time is the Catskills server. When I was meeting Leafbeach in front of Vesper's bank, the lag was so bad that every single move took 30 seconds. After about 10 minutes of lag-hell, things seemed to get a little better. But a little better didn't mean good. It was quite difficult conducting a trade with him, especially when my bank-vault was screaming about overload at every turn, undoing the move I'd just performed. Ah well, I will buy that house now, I promise you. Tomorrow or the day after or so... Let's just see how my vendor performs, that's the determining factor right now. By the way, I went to Occlo to shop as well, and while being there, I marked half a dozen of runes for the mage shop to sell at my vendor. Occlo is quite a nice place to go for a mage - at least you can nearly always expect to be able to buy reagents and empty scrolls.

980117 - Today was a very uneventful day. Oh, I found a couple of weapons of force and another indestructible to sell, but those items seem to disappear from my vendor as quickly as I put them out, no matter what preposterous mark-up price-tag I put on them. My vendor seems to be beginning to charge me double salary, either she has gotten really greedy or I've encountered some kind of bug. I'm very reluctant to clean out my entire stock just to check that out, and since I can live with a daily charge of 63 instead of 31 gold pieces, I've decided to wait a bit. Maybe it's a new trick from OSI, or maybe it's just a bug as I said. Whatever it is, it might contribute to kill off all those mule vendors that only serve to hold large amount of reagents for their masters, not a bad situation if it does, another reason not report the suspected bug just yet.

I'm spending too much money on other things than saving up for my new house, had I stayed a little bit more focused I would have been able to buy it today. But as matters stands I might just have to put it on hold for a couple of more days. You won't have to worry though, I'll be making a full coverage of the event on my photo-page whenever the house comes up, sort of like what the tabloids do when visiting celebrities :) I also found out that the architect in Vesper has sold the two 2nd story buildings he had available. I probably must go to Britain to buy the deed itself, ah well, that's what my runes and my Recall spells are all for. And yes, of course, I *never* pass up an opportunity to show off to a beginning player with the Kal Xen spell. Must have given away half a dozen of those magical pets today, but as you all know, the pets I create don't stick around for more than a couple of minutes. A quick note to all of you, the pets I create seem to have my notoriety, don't go killing them unless you're taking the "Get to be a Dread Lord real quick" road.... and never order your pet to attack anyone while still in town, I know for certain one individual who will not try that again, unless he's even more stupid than I thought.

I'm finally managing to get those 6th circle spells to go off at a somewhat reliable rate. As you know, I think that Summon Creature spell is great fun, but combined with Invisibility things start to get really interesting. I haven't tried out all the combinations I can squeeze out of these two spells, but rest assured I'm working on it. My scribing is actually better than my casting; I have no trouble scribing 6th circle. If I only could get smart enough to start scribing 7th, I'll be even happier. Oh yes, I've forgotten to tell you, my spell-book's full now. I finally managed to get hold on that Summon Air Elemental and that elusive Resurrection I've been seeking high and low for. My experience with my vendor so far can be summed up with - "scrolls are good". I do sell other items as well, but single scrolls are my bread and butter objects, especially Mark and Recall scrolls, the market for the latter types seems inexhaustible. It's so convenient that I practice a lot of inscribing to supply the market. I've always felt scrolls are better than spells. They *never* fail once inscribed, and when you've cast a spell what have you got - a neat effect perhaps, if you scribe a scroll you have a commodity, and commodities mean cash. Speaking about magic, I've been thinking about giving away a nice little gift to customers who buy expensive things from me. I've put together some promotion packages consisting of a Recall scroll and a rune marked for my vendor's location, a sort of come-back-soon gift.

Last, and maybe least, I met another newbie who had gone out in the forest and become PK:ed, from the description he gave me somebody must have cast a Lightning spell at him. He asked me for money, but I couldn't give him very much gold, I *still* do not carry cash walking around in Vesper. There are two places your cash can be if you stay in town - in your bank account or in a thief's backpack. Since I could give very little gold, I gave him a nice Fireball scroll that I'd just written instead, and a magical pet of mine. He really enjoyed the pet; those magic creatures are quite a success amongst newbies. Since we talked for quite a while, I managed to conjure up two snow leopards and a polar bear for his pleasure, one creature after the other as the previous one expired, giving me a nice opportunity to practice magic and show-off at the same time. I still think it's sad though, those stupid morons who are not above killing a beginner taking his first few steps in the woods. The idea I had about dressing up as a newbie myself as a PK-bait starts to appeal to me, PK:ers who attack beginners are usually not very competent, and I'm beginning to feel quite confident in *my* humble magic, especially since I always carry one or two bail-out Recall scroll and an appropriate rune whenever I leave Vesper.

980113 - Today I've been taking care of business, in more ways than one. First of all, a poor newbie, Melissa, was chased by a shade all the way into town. Thanks to my Healing and Reactive Armor spells, and the heroic aid of another newbie warrior, Palwyn, she managed to hold her own quite well, nevertheless. But wouldn't you know it, I ran out of reagents, and just as I got back from the bank, some moron guard-killed the creature. And just as we were winning :( When a monster is guard-killed, it leaves no corpse and no treasure, I wish that people would mind their own affairs sometimes. I gave both the newbies a simple scroll and a low-tech magical weapon each as a "thank you for the fun anyway". I wanted that shade to go real bad since it for some reason hovered on my doorstep for quite a while, but it would have been funnier for the newbies if they could loot it afterwards. And to annoy me even further, the *guard* seemed to like it too staying on my porch for a while, ah well. By the way I found one of those quill and ink sets that only shopkeepers have, some unsuccessful thief must have tried to swipe it, and it was just lying there on the armory floor, almost hidden by the counter. It pays to be attentive, that quill looks very nice on my desk now, right next to that large candle (not one of those small you get when you begin) I found on the tavern floor the other night.

I've managed to get some work done in the tailor-shop as well; my cash balance in the bank reads nearly 30 k now. Whenever a newbie learns that balance command at the bank, and hears the banker to say "You have 126 gold pieces on your account", I quickly macro three of my *own* "balance" commands changing the tellers reply to "You have 28 700 gold pieces on your account". The confusion it creates is hilarious to watch. Back to tailoring, as you know I sometimes conjure an odd animal and makes it follow another seamstress around, but don't worry, I *always* give the other person command of the animal first, not everybody wants to have an alligator or a snow leopard as a pet. Today was a very good day to work by the way, there was very little competition, and what little there was sure was unskilled. I know the type, the skull-cappers as I call them nowadays. I've also worked hard on processing special orders from my customers. I just completed a nice set of each and every spell from circle 1 to 4, 32 scrolls, plus a spell book all very neatly gift wrapped in a fine box. That sure looks nice in my bank vault now, I'm just waiting for the client to pick up her goods. I also like to say thank you to Zeus who obviously travel the world a lot and who gave me a marked rune to Nu'jelm for the price of some reagents only. Nu'jelm's nice, nobody ever goes there - you can have the entire town to yourself, and that's pretty convenient when you want to create clothes.

I'll be back with more news at the situation warrants. Until next time - stay safe from PK:ers

Even a tailor can walk around semi-nude in UO

/Sincerely