Ultima Online Melee 1 to 100 Guide

Ultima Online Melee 1 to 100 Guide by Veeri

An easy way to attain GM in Sword and melee skills playing solo(when u don’t know too many ppl in-game or haven’t played for that very long). Made for newbies, by a newbie

A hunters guide, for newbies

Short summary:

In this guide Ill try and follow the steps i have done towards 100% in Bushido, Swordsmanship & Tactics, plus additional necessities. We’ll stay around Trammel and mostly in or around dungeons. Its written in the way I’ve done it and it worked fine for me. it’ll cover location, skill level and which skills to use and when. All shopnames and the likes is found on the Europa Shard.

The guide is written to read every chapter first before going into the location, just to make things easier, its in spoken language instead of facts alone.

Character Creation:

Start with average skill levels in Swordsmanship(or another melee skill of your choice ill cover sword in this guide) Tactics and Bushido. Choose Samurai as profession and you wont have to buy a “Book of Bushido” to be able to cast spells.
It is possible to start at a maxed skill but there are two things that neglects that from being very smart, first of all in Old Haven you get up to .5% skill gains very often up to 50% and you also can’t get the Instructor quests if you have 50% or above in a skill.

Tutorial:

Play through the tutorial and then visit the professions guide, he’ll direct you NE towards the samurai, get the following instructor quests:
Anatomy
Swordsmanship
Tactics
Bushido
Resisting Spells
Focus
Meditation
Parry
(don’t take chivalry… yet)

Location: Old Haven
Skill: 1-50(or 55)
1a

Carry that old katana(do not use a shield, that’ll give you a negative effect on your samurai parry) and travel eastwards towards Old Haven. This place is rather easy but start off with Zombies as they’re the easiest kill. Then combine with skeletons when you see fit enough around 40-45%. At first your bushido skill isnt really high enough for Lightning strike which’ll be your number one skill later on(50%), so do Confidence and Honorable Execution until your at skill level 50. Tactics will take a little bit longer but bare with me and you’ll get there in a few rows down.
Notice: If your weapon breaks down then you will probably not be able to repair it yourself(you’ll need a deed for that) so just sell the Worn Katana and buy one or two at the blacksmith NW in town.

1b

Once you’ve gotten up to fifty in sword and bushido you probably have a little cash so lets start with the chivalry for a little while. With the new rewards you’ve gotten this’ll be easy peasy for you. Go to the chivalry instructor up in the tower above the ankh, and start by buying a Book of Chivalry. Then youd want him to train you you can do it to 40 if you’d like or less nothing below 25% though(i think, id recommend 35% for cash saving). When you ask him to train you he’ll say “that’ll be 400gold tyvm” or somert, every 10gold will be 1% towards a maximum of 40%. For use of chivalry skills you’ll need to tithe gold at the ankh downstairs, every spell requires different amount of tithing points so put most of your gold here for now and return once you need to refill. You can see your current status if you open up the chivalry book.

So train up and grab that quest and lets be off towards the stables, you’ll find the at the SE entrance to town, buy a horse from the animal trainer there, this’ll save you alot of trouble running around slowly. Once you get to new have start casting Consecrate weapon and kill those Spectral things. this’ll give you time to Decurse yourself and you’ll get a little bit or spell resistance as well. Continue until you have 50% in chivalry and get your reward. At this time you can also use the bushido skill lightning-strike which’ll give you a nice to hit chance and higher critical chance rate, also from this moment on, now that You’re at 50% in bushido you need to start honoring your opponents(see below).

How to honor an opponent and why is this good for my character?(not working vs PCs)
First of all honoring your opponents as a samurai will get you a Perfection rating vs you current honored opponent, it’ll only work on one mob at a time and you’ll need to honor every target you ever fight, so one click wont honor everything. The perfection rating gives you a damage boost up to 100% for every combined strike you land. If you by a chance miss your target you’ll see the chatwindow say “you’ve lost some perfection” or “you’ve lost all perfection”. Keep fighting and once you’ve gotten good enough in your skills and start landing alot of combos you’ll start doing major damage. This is why Lightning Strike and items with “Hit Chance Increased(HCI) is so important, they’ll get you to land those crucial combos. Mastering the perfection will reward you with Life Stam and Mana once the creature or mob is killed, good for long fights.

Once in a while you’ll also get rewards for progressing in the Honor Virtue.

1c

So we’re at 50% in Chivalry and you’ve gotten your reward, ok soon leaving this boring place. But first we need to get a grip on that spell resistance. Go back into Old Haven and aggro all Spectral magic fighters you can find and if the building(NW) is occupied(as always….) just run around your aggroed mobs and let them cast spells on you. Remain within the city limits so you get that skill-boost, and do this until you puke or get to GM(100%), minimum 50% though for quest. This is optional for a while, so if You’re really not into continuing here for a while keep reading below instead, we wont fight magical things for a long long while anyways.

Location: Despise Level 1 and 2
Skill: 50+
2a

Extra note/ Insurances
From now on you’ll most likely experience your first death at some point, so try to stay at a location where it’ll be easy for you to run in and grab your corpse. But a good way to help t his out is by insuring your armor and weapon, by insuring you’ll be left with your insured stuff in your backpack once You’re resurrected by a healer. Blessed items works in the same way but you don’t have to insure them. To insure click on your character and press “Toggle insurance” and open up your paperdoll, click on the items you wish to insure, 600gold per item, and then click toggle auto renewal so you don’t have to do this every time you die, although you’ll need to have money in your bank for this to work.

From New Haven you need to use the moongate to Britain, if you haven’t found it yet its located outside the SW entrance. Moongate -> Trammel -> Britain ZOOM welcome to the brittish forrests. You probably don’t have enough gold to buy a Runebook with locations yet so lets run towards Despise dungeon, it’ll take approximately around 5minutes just anyways.

From the moongate run towards Britain and exit the town from the NE exit above the blacksmith(buy 3 or 4 katanas to have in your backpack here). Follow this road until you find the cementary and runt more N and through the mountain path. Then follow the next mountain path and you’ll see a house with a shop filled with supplies. Behind the house is the entrance to Despise dungeon.

this’ll be a little bit more tricky than You’re used to in Old Haven, so lets be a little bit careful for starters, when you feel confident enough start a rampage through the dungeon.

Take the N stair leading upwards toward level 1 of the dungeon. Here you’ll find lizardmen in the millions, aggro one at a time and remember honor, lightning strike, confidence for parry heals and every so often your chivalry heal and consecrate that weapon!. Continue this until you hit around 65% in swordsmanship and you’ll be ready to take on a multiple amount of mobs.

2b

So you’re rampaging through level one and your bankaccount is most likely starting to build up, lets buy some better armour and weapons and most importantly a runebook with different locations! The best shop I found which most of the times is RAA Guild shop located SSE from Skara Brae harbor. Buy Spined armour which’ll add a little luck to you and try to find something with nice Physical resistance numbers. Here you’ll find a good runebook with most towns and dungeons as well, including despise shame etc which’ll save you ALOT of time running around. For a weapon you’ll want to have an Elven Machete or similar with a rather low swing speed but with Mana Leech, very important, this kind of weapon will have you fighting non-stop til your fingers hurt. Buy some Blacksmith Repair deeds too so you can start repairing the equipment you’ve just bought. Also buy 10 or so Cure potions for later dungeon use.
(this should total at around 40-60k gold)

Back to despise! Use your newly bought runebook and use your Chivalry skill Sacred Journey to transport to the entrance. This time well head downstairs towards level 2 to smash some Ettins and Earth Elementals.

Use the same tactic here and aggro one at a time, if you find it a difficult time here wait a while up at level 1 first instead. If you have the new armor and weapon this shouldn’t be too difficult and you’ll find yourself fighting off 2-5 mobs at the same time.

When, which’ll happen, you find yourself extremely bored head over to Covetous and smash some harpies at the entrance to get some kind of diversity. But don’t go further in!

Location: Shame Level 1 and maybe 2
Skill: Sword 75+
3a

Since your most likely familiar with the game by now and you’ve most likely checked out the map a couple of times finding Shame isnt that very hard. Its SSE from the village Yew or its most likely located in your runebook.

Here you’ll find Scorpions and Earth Elementals(tougher elementals than in despise so be warned). The Scorpions can, and will, poison you. Easy to kill though so if you get aggroed by a scorpion and an elemental kill off the scorpion first. If you get poisoned you wont be able to heal yourself with chivalry so use the Cure pots if you bought any.

Now you’ll spend quite alot of time here in this dungeon and skill gaining is going to get a little bit slower now, but keep at it and runebook to town to sell loot every so often and you’ll soon dingdong 85+ in sword.

By now you’ve probably noticed that your closing in on your skillcap and attribute caps, easily fixed though. Since you’ve probably tried some different skills like cartography lockpicking etc open the skills window and set all the skills not needed to point downwards. You’re now also efficient enough in healing yourself so put focus on down and let it slide back to 0%. When needed also put meditation down to around 35% then lock that skill.

3b 85+

If You’re feeling cocky enough and you have the equipment to do so, venture down to level 2 in shame, but first! Back to old haven and redo the resisting spells grind all the way to 100% at least to 90% or those air elementals are going to give you a REALLY hard time.

you’ve probably found the moongate-like portal down to level 2 by now so go through it and head over the NE bridge and take the south path through the valley. This is much more difficult than You’re used to so stay CLOSE to the bridge and don’t go further in or you’ll most likely die and get pissed. Head through the valley like 20meters or so and you’ll find yourself in a room with some locked chests, this is the first spawningpool of the Dull Copper Elementals, these guys run alot alot alot faster than anything else so far. So aggro one at a time and run and heal if You’re having troubles. If by any chance you get aggroed by two air elementals id just put my tail between my legs and run, not worth that small chance of dying anyways.

So you tried it and got tired of those blasted magical mobs? No worries, i did too. Go back to level one and grind those earths until you get totally bored or You’re closing to 87-88 in swordsmanship.

Location: Outside of Wind Dungeon
Skill: Sword 88+
4a

So the time has come to close into 100% in skill. Try to find good armour before doing this, you’ve probably found Luna by now, if not your runebook should have it, or your local Rune-Library(player house with bizillions of runebooks in it). Ive used Tabibitos Runic Library which is located close to Makoto-Jima Tokuna Islands Moongate. From the gate go two or three houses outside the walls to the North and you’ll find it. Travel to Luna and start that shopping! You want to find armor which’ll get you to at least 60% in physical resist, if you have cash for it buy a full set of 70% resists(needed at last location)

Take the rune to Wind dungeon and you’ll wind up outside of the entrance, you cant enter yet(and frankly i dunno when u can cause i haven’t been there yet), but you’ve probably noticed the maze surrounding this place, welcome to one of your final hunting grounds.

Here you’ll find Solen Infiltrators, nasty bugs but good for skillgaining. Like before start off by aggroing one at a time and if more aggro you, and these will aggro you more easy than the creeps before, use a hit and run tactic to heal yourself. These guys drops nice weapons sometimes if your luck is high enough and make sure to loot the jewels and cash from every one, this’ll make you rich in no-time, i made at least 500k before moving on from this place. Make sure to loot those mushrooms as well they’re good to make sending bags for later use(wont cover it here in the guide, search Ant Quest on the wikipedia guide).

This grind can and will get boring but keep up and once you hit 95% in sword/bushido and at least 92% in tactics head back to Old Haven and GM in Resisting Spells before moving onto the next and FINAL location.

Location: Close to Honesty Moongate in Ilshenar
Skill: Sword 95+
4a

Your feeling powerful, confident and you probably think you can take over the world by now! Not likely… im afraid. Before even trying to find this place buy the following ML mini Arty “The Soul Seeker” this is a repond slayer which means it’ll double the damage count on all humanoid mobs. Cost is around 200-350k depending on how many thats on sale at the given time. Finduo has a good page for the luna district. Also max out your resists to 70%, not resisting spells, but if you check your character sheet you’ll see your Fire Phys Energy etc resists there. Fire and Energy is most important along with physical to max out.
Ok so You’re well equipped, lets go grandmaster those skills!

Take the following route
Moongate -> Ilshenar -> Honesty
you’ll pop out in front of Imps gazers… alot of them. Start running due NEE (right from the moongate) through the mountain and then south over the bridge, its a 10second run so you cant miss it. Once over the bridge you’ll find your old despise friends the Ettins. These are alot more tough than the once You’re used to, but not tough enough for good skill gains. One thing to note here though is that if you, or another player kills enough of a given type of mob ie Ettins, a “Paragon” mob of that type will spawn. These paragons are ALOT more difficult than the regular ones, if you’ve played WOW or some other game its similar to the Champions or Elites of those games. Now Ettin paragons you ought to be able to take on but don’t even try Cyclops and Titans yet. Paragons also run extremely fast so if you find yourself face to face with a titan or cyclops paragon, aggro him and kite him towards some place where you wont be hunting to leave you alone with your skillgain.

Go a through the ettin forrest to the south and you’ll find a cave there, head through and You’re at the final location! This is a bit tough so use that aggro-one-at-a-time tactic. What you want is the Cyclop warriors, but stay close to the NE wall so you don’t get multiple pulls(2 you can handle quite easy though). Every once in a while a titan will pop, if You’re up for it and you actually did the Resist Spells to GM kite him into the cave so you’ll be left alone cause he’ll take a little time to actually kill. Hes a tough mob which will make you have to use some heals now every once in a while and he will heal himself alot too. But anyways… You’re pretty much set for business congratulations(after 10+ hours here… hehe) You’re the newest Grandmaster Samurai! Now get out there and earn some cash to buy powerscrolls, houses rewards arties anything! The game just started