Play By Play - Ultima Online
By Brian • 1 September 2025
- Year
- 1997
- Platform
- PC
- Notes
- Despite our troubles, I still love it.
You might remember a post about Ultima Online I made back in December that mentioned my two characters that never make progress because I can never settle on a skillset for either one of them. Schneider was a crafter, then became an adventuring lumberjack, then transitioned to a more traditional ranger. His brother, Scholtz, started life as a samurai, then transitioned into a crafter making gear for Schneider, and I most recently started him on a lockpicking training program, but with no real plan. What’s going on with these guys? Will I ever make a firm decision and actually venture beyond the relative safety of New Haven, the newbie starting area? Let’s talk about Ultima Online, the [checks notes] nearly 28-year old MMO, and dissect the possibly terrible decisions I am currently making with my life by investing more time and enthusiasm into this relic.
I felt directionless. Schneider’s transition to ranger had gone well, but so what? Where was his personality or purpose? I’d rebuilt him into the same character I used to run in the 90s-00s: a mace/staff fighter with archery, with a few skill differences, but no motivation or no community around him. On the other hand, the adventuring lumberjack intrigued me—there’s some story behind that guy. The ranger is just a ranger, and while I’m sure he also has some kind of raison d’etre, he felt generic, I’ve just done it before, and I’d rather try something new.
Meanwhile, Scholtz existed solely to make gear for Schneider. I felt like I wasted a character slot. What can I do to make this guy interesting and fulfilling to play, rather than just watching numbers go up and dropping bags of gear on the floor of the inn so my other guy can pick them up and enjoy them?
I had to do something. I could feel my motivation to play slipping away, like always. That extremely hot or cold inkling to invest a lot of my time in Ultima Online started tipping towards cold. I think I struggle with purpose in sandbox-style games. Sure, there are a million things to do, but why do any of them? Raise these skills, go to these dungeons, and so on. But there’s no story or reason attached to any of these tasks, so why do them? This is where I get lost, and where I ultimately must create my own narrative to stay interested. In my Ultima Online heyday of 1998-2001, I had to join the roleplaying community to give myself a goal and purpose in the game. Otherwise, I was just doing things for the sake of doing them, which wasn’t very fulfilling. I don’t have time to join the roleplaying scene at this point in my life (if it still exists), so how to proceed?
The first thing I decided to do was abandon the idea of one character being dependent on another, in this case Scholtz serving as a crafter for Schneider. This is a common practice in MMOs—a primary character, and a secondary, a “mule,” used for gathering resources and/or crafting gear for the main character. I've kind of grown to hate this. It’s unfulfilling, and I think I might hate crafting in Ultima Online, anyway—a revelation 26 years in the making. As interesting as I have tried to make crafting be, it simply is not. It’s fun until I hit about 55 skill, at which point I have to make eight thousand katanas for each additional .1 skill gained in blacksmithing. I have endless respect for anyone who can “make number go up” at that slow of a pace without losing their minds. Also, there’s the added complication of transferring items from one character to another, which I usually do by leaving a bag in a nondescript locale, logging out as Scholtz, logging in as Schneider, and grabbing the bag before some other player can discover it. That has never been an issue. I have never lost a bag to another player, even during the game’s peak years, but it stresses me out every time.
Having made this decision, I got to work on making my guys more interesting. Ultimately, I decided I have played out the ranger character class in too many other games over the last few years, and began the bothersome task of converting Schneider back to an adventuring lumberjack. (Why is it that I never make it anywhere in this game again?) I thought it would be a hassle, but luckily, the only skill that really atrophied during that time was swordsmanship (the skill used for axe-fighting in UO)—Schneider's adept lumberjacking ability remained intact. No, I don't NEED lumberjacking since I won’t be collecting wood for crafting, but it's part of Schneider's character and provides a damage bonus when fighting with an axe. If he's going to lop off heads, he might as well be really good at it.
With the conversion back to lumberjack, I made the tough choice to drop archery (and some nominal skill in bowcrafting/fletching I used for making arrows) to focus those points in other areas. As much as I enjoy playing a hybrid, versatile character, archery and bowcrafting bit into Schneider's other skills a little too much to his detriment. He will still be effective—perhaps more so—without it.
And, not to worry! Where Schneider's abilities might stay a little more focused than I first thought, Scholtz's skillset is delightfully all over the place, so I’ll still have a crazy hybrid. I liked the idea of a dungeon crawler, a guy who moves around dangerous areas unseen, picks locks on treasure chests, and escapes with the goods, avoiding combat as much as possible. If he had some treasure-hunting skill, as well, that would be a plus, although based on how treasure hunting works in UO, I’m not sure he can get away with it without some kind of combat ability. We’ll see!
Anyway, Scholtz naturally developed pretty decent hiding and stealth skills by my compulsive use of them as I walked him around town (ever the introvert, trying to go unnoticed by my fellow players), a good start for his profession change. In the meantime, without getting into a lot of minutiae (this post threatened to be about a dozen pages long if I did), I trained up the following skills:
- Lockpicking to weasel my way into chests
- Tinkering to create more lockpicks (it turns out crafting can be interesting when it directly benefits a character’s overall objective—Scholtz’s tinkering skill is around 77 and isn’t that boring, believe it or not)
- Mining to gather ore for tinkering (oh, this part is still pretty monotonous, though)
- Remove Trap so all those chests don’t blow up in my face when I open them
- Cartography to decipher treasure maps
Remove Trap required spending 200,000 gold, a sum of money that would have bought me a multi-level building back in 1999, on a training kit. It seemed a ludicrous amount of money (turns out inflation is real in virtual economies, as well), but it did raise Scholtz’s skill over 65 much faster than it would have via traditional means, so I can’t complain. I have to click this little joystick in the right directions to complete a circuit to disarm the trap. I wish I could use the arrow keys, but that does not appear to be an option. Once I get into a groove, the process moves a little more quickly. I hope the payoff for a high Remove Trap skill is worth it. This is a task best done while hanging out with my wife, listening to a ballgame, or doing something else to make the time pass pleasantly.
Shortly thereafter, I had a chance encounter. Another player, Ardrion Hittera of The Wheel of Time (a guild of some renown on the Atlantic shard, apparently), tailed me outside of town to ask about Scholtz’s jacket. I had an “Oh, this old thing?” moment because it was a Twilight Jacket, a quest reward from some point in time when I trained Scholtz’s ninjitsu skill to 50. I honestly don’t remember doing that—Scholtz has had a lot of job changes over the years. But, I like the jacket, so I keep wearing it. Anyway, it sparked a conversation about the skills I’m developing for Scholtz. I ran through my list and this idea of building a dungeon crawler/treasure hunter. Hittera departed briefly, then returned with a set of gear tailored to my needs, plus 200,000 gold—ha! Well, that worked out. The established players of Ultima Online want for nothing, and many seek out opportunities to help new players. Which, no, I’m not “new,” but I might as well be. I thanked Hittera profusely and we went our separate ways. Why am I hiding from the other players again? Maybe I’d get more free stuff if I put myself out there more often!
The encounter got me thinking—why didn’t I train ninjitsu? I’m doing this whole stealth thing, and I still had 50 skill points in it that have somehow never deteriorated. It’s a perfect fit and enables Scholtz to use items like smoke bombs and throwing stars for when he’s in a pinch. Back on the list it goes! If it’s not a good fit, I can dump it later, but for now, it seems useful and interesting!
With time and patience (and after breaking about 2,000 hand-crafted lockpicks), I worked Scholtz’s lockpicking up to the point where he could raid chests at the bandit camp southeast of New Haven. Not much loot, but it was a start. I can honestly say that in all my years playing Ultima Online, I never successfully picked a locked chest in the wild until this moment, and it was more thrilling than I’d care to admit.
So, I (once again) have my adventuring lumberjack. I have my stealth dungeon crawler/treasure hunter. Two brothers with distinct and interesting sets of skills. Now, what is their purpose in this world? Why are they doing what they're doing?
I took the ultimate nerdy turn and wrote backstories:
Schneider, The Adventuring Lumberjack
A lumberjack by trade, Schneider witnessed the once-healthy forests south of his hometown of Yew be ravaged by the orc industrial complex. Schneider approached the orcs peacefully, hoping to find a resolution, but they turned their forest-clearing tools on him, an encounter from which he barely escaped with his life.
Now, Schneider brings his lumberjacking experience to a new trade: combat. Under the tutelage of his instructors at New Haven, Schneider developed the skills needed to bring his vengeful axe to bear—no longer felling trees, but felling evil.
Combining his battle training with the calm, strength, and discipline learned from years spent in the woods, Schneider vows to quietly, but not peacefully, end the forces of darkness threatening his home.
Fortunately, he is not alone.
Scholtz, the Crafter-turned-Guerilla
Where Schneider excelled at resource-gathering, his brother Scholtz took those materials and transformed them into beautiful furniture and containers. While not as moved by the destruction of primeval forest as Schneider, Scholtz did not take kindly to his supply of resources drying up, nor to the deep psychological impact on his brother.
Using his business acumen and uncanny ability to sneak up on people even when he doesn’t want to, Scholtz joined his brother’s crusade, pilfering goods, disrupting supply lines, unearthing secret caches, and otherwise working in the shadows to upend the enemy’s industry and commerce. What other privileged information might Scholtz discover that he and his brother can use to further undermine their enemies and bring peace to Britannia once again?
Since all of these developments, Schneider has conducted multiple raids on the Yew orc fort, thinning their ranks and disrupting production. Meanwhile, Scholtz continues to improve his lockpicking and trap-removal skills, while also tracking down and digging up multiple enemy stashes (via the game’s treasure-hunting system). His next destination will be the dungeons, where he’ll relieve the opposition of more gold and plunder.
THIS is Ultima Online. I feel like I'm playing the game as it was intended for the first time since running with the Greater Yew Militia and the Sunset Knights in a past life. It took a while, but I found my own path, with context and purpose, rather than meandering in a huge world with nigh-unlimited options for skillsets and things to do. Now, with real objectives in mind, let’s see how far I can take these characters.
Thanks for reading, and see you next mission!
