Alright guys... This should be the most active category on the scriptuo site, new ideas, things people are working on and bleeding edge scripts that are relevant for whats going on in game today. As I get myself comfortable on these forms I'm realizing the community here is small (which is a plus when giving out info). Being a board lurker for years my philosophy was if you develop something really good or something that gives you an edge, the last thing you want to do is share it with all the leechers, a notable example would be TM's Heartwood script where people are running it without even changing the rails! But TM has encouraged me to post on the subject and he insists public release of scripts becomes addictive *rolls eyes*.
So in my classic long winded way I'm going to tell you everything you were wondering or wanted to know about the Begging skill. I've just spent 16 hours a day for the last 4 or 5 days searching, reading, learning and testing stuff regarding the Begging skill and I'm going to share with you my findings, tips tricks and lots of stuff that will get you ahead. If you're interested, read on... [Edit] this turned from a book into a novel, warning may cause strain on eyes
It comes as no surprise that one of the most useless skills in the game (Begging) has very little info on it. I've scoured google, Stratics, the UO site and a host of other UO related private website and came up with next to nothing. Very little information actually exists on this topic because the truth is no one actually give a *bleep*. Save for one week per year when people try trick or treating (ToT), last year I tried ToT'ing, talked to 5 npc's and I got hit for 65,000 damage! My body parts were blasted all over Skara and I said thats enough of that! Well this year is more of the same, getting blown up and candy no one can use but there is one notable exception, this year in addition to the lame rotten milk and cookies there are cool new Halloween decorations called "small web"(s). I'm not much of a decorator myself but in the XX number of years I played UO, something I've learned is people pay TOP dollar for stuff when it's hot and it first comes out, even if they know its going to be worthless in a week. So like every other event in the last few years I go hard during the first few days of an event to get as much junk as I can and sell it at insane prices. 2 Days ago I sold one of those little Vampire bats for 5 million lol, I've seen them as low as 45k lately.
Here's some more info you probably don't care about... For the Role Players out there working the skill naturally (according to their posts on Stratics), Begging can take a year up to 3 years to GM naturally through normal play... certainly not the kind of thing you macro overnight and wake up a GM so most people didn't even bother looking into making a beggar for the event. As I was scouring Stratics boards for info on Begging, I came across a post griping about a guy in Heartwood (Atlantic) who was running a script for begging, and auto dumping the loot all over the ground. I figured hey, someone else is trying to GM I could as well... The topic was lengthy as this person seemed to make it their personal vendetta to put a stop to this scripter. It's a funny article really, another person who doesn't understand scripting and thinks its up there with duping... If you're interested:
http://vboards.stratics.com/showthread.php?t=109980http://vboards.stratics.com/showthread.php?t=109986&highlight=beggingThis person even went to great lengths to post videos on Youtube of the person running around. From what I gathered tho this person confronted the alleged scripter and they were actually attended macroing which of course is no problem. Then their story seemed to change from unattended scripting to bypassing the skill delay. I looked at the video on Youtube and it did look a little faster than the 10s delay but it could have been the video, record speed, youtube chopping frames, or something else i cant even imagine right now!
What it did do was get me thinking if there was still a skill delay bypass in play for Begging. Previously there was the Honor trick, followed by a party trick, both of which have been stopped but I searched high and low for 2 days to see if I could find a delay that works with begging. (other timer defeating methods only worked with some skills). When the second post came on stratics about this scripter on my very own shard, I rushed out to the location pictured to see if I could find them myself and as luck would have it, there were not there when I arrived but they came along shortly after I did!! I tried to add the person to party, they wouldn't have it... asked to discuss outside of UO (obvious reasons) but for all they knew i was the guy harassing them lol. In the end I got the guy to come to a private house with me and we chatted for a couple hours. He was there from another shard, made a new char and he was attended macroing with no bugs or skill delays, he like me didn't know of any. Turns out the person harassing him paged a GM twice, the GM visited him both times, verified he was attended and sent him on his way with an apology... He lodged a counter "page" against the person who was following him around for harassment. In the end he was pretty cool so I gave him a mil, marked a book of runes to begging locations for him, gave him some recalls to help him get started and set him on his way lol. This was enough to wet my apatite to see if I could GM begging myself in a short period of time!
Anyway after much searching, inquiring and deep digging I've got the low down on this skill, scripting and the items...
Rule #1: more targets the better Begging is another target based skill, kinda like lock picking, the more boxes (targets) you have, the better off you are. I read on stratics once you fail on a target you can't gain on it again until you get a gain elsewhere. I'm not sure if I believe that entirely but new fresh targets always seem to increase your chances.
Rule #2: Begging range is 4 tiles When developing a script, Finditem XXX G_4 is what you're going to want for begging.
Reward Items available through begging:
MHG_ Small Web (NS) - ONLY Available To GM Beggars
LHG_ Small Web (EW) - ONLY Available To GM Beggars
ACG_ Pumpkin Pizza
WRD_ Murky Milk
SLI_ Mr. Plain's Cookies
NRD_ Creepy Cake
XPD_ Harvest Wine
FND_ Pixie Stick
CND_ Candy Corn
MGG_ A Giant Pumpkin Muffin
***Note, there was a rumor you didn't need to be GM to acquire the webs, there was some merit to this because on TC for a short time you could get them with lower than GM begging but that has since been corrected so
Yes you do need to be a GM Beggar to get the webs.You can beg from Yellow NPC's (Rep 7?) and some Blue NPC's (Rep 1) but the problem is if your script looks for #findrep = 1 that includes players. Also with the new changes (Falsehood) on NPC's this is a bit tricky but ill tell you more about that a little later.
I created 2 new characters with 50 Begging on different accounts. (More Webs The Better) Note: There is no NPC in New Haven to train begging or a special reward so its best to start a new char and select the full 50 pts. Oddly enough one gained skill much quicker than the other even though i started it slightly later. So this 1-3 year skill took me.... Ready for it? 40 hours! That's right folks, by the time your little munchkin is porking down the last of his Cheetos you could have a GM beggar and be pulling in the webs! I've got some on my vendor for 550k atm, So far I've gotten over 30... Now don't go thinking they are common... that's out of approximately 10,000 successful begs... I should note, the character I GM'ed begging on I started after my other who is STILL not GM yet and he has been going strong for 60+ hours. Currently the character I started first is at 99.2 and has been at it for an extra day! Both chars were in the same location begging on the same targets, both are new chars so I guess that's the magic of OSI's random number generator...
Here's how to do it, trust me you're going to like this. For me, it was in a large tower, on the main floor there is a back room that is doored. I used a mage character to go to Jhelom Pits in tram and 2 at a time hire fighters from the pits, gate them back to the house, lead them to the back room and dismiss them, keep the door closed to contain them. If they escape, rehire and lure them back in. I found it was handy to have some light monster spawn in my neighborhood, they locked onto the monster through the wall and didn't wander, this was important because want you get 50+ in the room, every time you open the door you face having them escape. Alternatively in a customizable house, make a small room with no doors 2x2 tiles minimum preferably 2x3 and place a teleporter inside the room... when you bring your targets in with the teleporter they cant escape! Back to rule one, the more the better so pack this sucker FULL of NPC's! I started with 70, yes 70! Near the end as I was gating in I was generating my own lag field... They stayed in that room for 2 server downs without leaving. Note
You should be able to round up about 65 NPC's from the pits in Tram, if you're ambitious (I was) you can hit up Jhelom pits in fel next. The thing I didn't like was the NPC's in fel didn't like to stack even in tram. While it seemed like the tram NPC's walked through them, the fel NPC's tried to occupy a free space. In the tower room with a door this posed a problem because once all the tiles were full, they wouldn't walk past any other npcs blocking the door... ie you cant get them in (without gating outside and hopping through).
As a side note, there has been a chance since when this first went live. Now NPC's in towns can be "stricken" by Falsehood, Cowardice, etc. It seems sometimes it will sweet through a town all at once and the server will convert all NPC's to a certain status.
When this happens in the town you rounded up your NPC's from, ALL of them even at your house will be affected, reset and go poof. The solution or work around to this is round up NPC's from a town that is not affected by the invasion. Cove is the best in my opinion because its full of NPC's. At any given time there appears to be approximately 4 NPC's in town for hire (I don't mean quest givers who you gate), click on them to get the context menu and "Hire" should appear as the bottom option. Alternatively you can just drop gold on them to auto-hire them. It seems Sailors, Fighters, Thieves and Beggars are all for hire. I wrote a little script to auto drop 20 gold on an NPC whos rep was 1 and had either of the 4 previously mentioned professions in the #property, then I just ran around and collected them. The same script also dismissed them (so i didnt have to look through 50 NPC's) once I arrived at my destination #charposx #charposy. The NPC's from cove have not disappeared and they have survived one server down, it appears they are not affected by the [Falsehood] status.
Something else to note about the [Falsehood] status, if you hire an NPC and he turns to that status while under your control, you cannot control him, give him orders, release him or anything. They end up stuck filling up your follower slots. Only thing I thought of was recall to somewhere with baddies, quickly log in and out so they popped up and let something else kill them.
Attrition is very low, you should expect to retain most if not all of your NPC's you lock in your house for days.
You should be getting the impression I no longer really play UO, I just script it, that's the fun for me and the challenge.
So you've got your room full of NPC's 10, 20, 50, 100 etc... Move your character to train begging on into the middle of the room so hes within 4 tiles of all NPC's (possible in the tower... that's 4 not including the tile your standing on). All you need on you is a scribe pen, that's it! Yes, that's right it does still work, even in Pub 56 THANK GOD!
Rule #3: Skill Delay Avoidance is still possible using the "Pen Trick" After a long chat with TM and a discussion about possible skill delay workarounds, he suggested I look up the one included in his hiding / stealth trainer. It took me a while to figure out exactly what was going on to the point I could repeat it manually but of course the hide skill is invoked and that's it whereas the begging is invoked then you must select a target. After a bit of time fooling around, I finally figured out how to skip the delay with Begging, Here is the series of events...
How to skip the skill delay with begging:Using a pen in your pack (does not get used up), make sure you have no scribe skill or at least no materials to scribe with. Prior to getting this to work, you must open the menu (use the pen), select a spell circle, select a spell and actually attempt to make a scroll. You should (hopefully) fail then the menu is set. We will be using the make last button for this to work and if you've not previously set what to make, this will not work. This only needs to be done once.
To skip the delay in begging, open the pen menu again and click the make last button.
IMPORTANT:You must invoke the begging skill BEFORE the menu opens again with the result of your attempt. Now you should have your #targcurs = 1 and your scribe menu open. If you invoke begging after the menu comes back with the result, you will need to wait out the 10s begging delay.
Now before targeting a target you must click make last on the scribe menu again, and like before, you must select your target while the menu temporarily disappears. If the menu returns before you target your begging subject, you will again have failed to skip the delay and must wait the 10s. This must be done quickly (depending on your comp / connection) so obviously this is the beauty of a script. If you've successfully skipped the skill, you're ready to try again immediately as soon as the scribe window is back. It looks like this:
Click Make Last - Invoke Begging - Click Make Last - Target - repeat...
Tricky? a little but not so bad. Try it out manually first so you know what you've got to program.
So you're in the middle of the room with 50+ NPC's and begging up a storm. Its wise to have a little bit of wait time sprinkled in, i know if i optimize too much my old laptop will crash the client on me. Just as a note, I ran a script to do this with very little problem. I will consider posting some of it or all in the near future but like most of my stuff it is hand written and Tailor made for my house etc so it's likely not applicable to you.
Just another consideration, you're going to be collecting gold from NPC's between 1 and 20 on each successful event and over time this can add up. You can lock down a pile on the floor or a secure and have your character drop the gold from time to time when #weight > #maxweight.
Hit play and off you go... with a little debugging you should have your guy begging every few seconds over tons of different targets. You should gain from 50 to 70 in just a few hours, it gets progressively harder of course but never really that bad. The 80's seem to be the worst for people on the boards and from what I observed. From time to time gate in new NPC's and I found that would often break any rut.
One more note about the NPC's, the best thing to do of course is cycle through them. I used an archaic method which really isn't as efficient as it could be but hey I'm not TM! I used the #finditem %NPC G_4 command each time, begged, ignored them one by one then when i went through them all #Finditem = -1, I just reset my ignore and started again. Of course you can be much more efficient, call #finditem once and cycle through the "index" results. This is much less intensive and would probably be more stable. Actually I wouldn't mind seeing a script that uses that "index" function of #finditem so I can learn how to use it myself. Very little info is given here:
http://wiki.easyuo.com/index.php/FindItemSo you've GM'ed the skill... and now you want the webs! Well guess what? Using the training method described above, you've already got yourself a ToT farm! You've got a large population, captive audience and you're in a place with immediate access to a secure (candy gets heavy). with a few VERY simple changes to your existing training script, remove the scribe pen stuff and change begging to "Trick or Treat" and you will cycle through your NPC's collecting candy from them over and over. If you attempt more than once every few minutes they will deny you but keep trying as their timer is only a couple of minutes.
NOTE: When training begging, you're inside the room, when begging from the NPC's you're outside the room they are contained in. Also realize if you're using a tower, when standing outside the room you wont be able to ToT from the NPC's along the furthest wall so a customizable house is more desirable for this rather than only being able to ToT from some of your captives.
Trick Or Treat Possible Outcomes:1) You get a treat or special item
2) You get denied
3) You get blown up by a 65,000 hit, body parts fly and just a backpack is left with your contents.
4) You get some bleed status which doesn't affect you
5) An evil twin appears and attacks you
6) You get polymorphed
Now theres something REALLY cool that happened by mistake while I was fooling around with this. When you Trick or Treat from OUTSIDE the room the NPC's are in, the evil twin who pops up and attacks you can't reach you and just vanishes! This is great considering your beggar is likely a new char and has no fighting skills. Polymorph really doesn't do anything and the second time you get polymorphed you just go back to normal anyway, besides you're going to die... a LOT so it doesn't matter, ignore it. The bleed thing is just graphics and sound from what I can tell so ignore it. The only thing that really affects you is getting blown up.
Here's how to overcome that:
You're going to want a second char (if your serious) as a healer, write a little script to detect a ghost and auto rez using your favorite method. Now something I discovered will happen is after getting blown up a few times, some "Torso"'s will begin to litter your floor along with legs, livers etc. The problem is you can't walk through Torso's and after a couple are around, you wont be able to rez a ghost on the same tile as a torso. So your rez script will also have to scan the ground for torso's and trash em (place a trash barrel).
On the other side of that coin, your ToT script should also monitor for ghost status, when #charghost = yes, make a sub to always stay in war mode... and when the rez gump comes up, click ok automatically. Next thing your script should do is scan the ground for the backpack representing your corpse, check its got "corpse" and #charname in the #property then dbl click it to collect your gear. Finally the ToT script should dump loot to a secure when you get close to overweight (or when you get something good).
In the end you should have a loot farm with candy galore. In < 24 hours I've received about 5000 stones of candy and roughly 100 items from 1 GM beggar and roughly 50 NPC's. For the record, selling some items for a profit is a little bit of a reward but I don't write this stuff to farm or exploit, its more for the sheer challenge of automating a process and overcoming the challenges. I enjoyed working out the kinks so if anyone out there is thinking about or working on something like this, hopefully the will find it helpful.
Voila! that's all there is to it! Yes, it's a lot and no I don't expect everyone to run out and dedicate a house and a couple accounts to farming ToT loot, but I thought I would describe the in's and out's of Begging and this Halloween stuff since it took me a while to figure it all out and I had a hard time finding any info at all! Looking back at my novel, it probably would have been more succinct if I just posted the code but I'm still not sold on handing out scripts to the scrip kiddies for Halloween. I would must prefer helping out people who code their own stuff, that and I'm sure the way I write is probably the least efficient method there is so theres an element of fear for judgment lol. (Yes I love GOTO lol)
For now, I'm going to consider myself the resident expert on Begging here so if you've got any questions, please let me know!
-K
P.S. Kudos to you if you actually read all of this lol! As you can see I never had a problem writing those 5000 word essays for school lol. TM, I'm still waiting on my massive intro award lol!
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