Yeah, I know. Not a very exciting template conversation but it is one that is near and dear to my heart.
There was a time in my UO past when I would typically assign a single character slot on whatever shard I played the role of "Mule". Typically this character ended up being a mismatch of resource gathering and crafting skills with enough Magery to "get around" squeezed in there somewhere. The template was cramped but, looking back on it, made sense based on what was valuable at the time.
As time has moved on it has become increasingly difficult to manage a single "Mule" character and I started to change the way I think about the process, mostly due to the time I spent on Siege Perilous where my two accounts provided very little, precious "skill real estate". I decided that to be an effective Mule one should really choose either the "Resource Gatherer" or the "Crafter/Quester" role for a given character.
The difference is pretty straightforward, a Resource Gatherer is a character designed to provide every resource in the game that a Crafter/Quester might need whereby the Crafter/Quester would be devoted to burning resources up in Heartwood, BOD's, or simply creating the armor, weapons, jewelry, add-ons, etc my other characters need.
My template's currently go something like:
Crafter/Quester
120 Tailor
120 Blacksmith
100 Arms Lore
100 Tinkering
100 Carpentry
100 Fletching
80 Magery
This character should be able to do all Heartwood quests, collect and fill BOD's and craft anything that may be needed.
Resource Gatherer
110 Magery
110 Med
100 Mining
100 Lumberjack
100 Fishing
100 Alchemy
100 Cooking
This character can gather all potential resources including most/all leather types. Alchemy and Cooking can be viewed as either Craft or Resource, I view consumables as resources.
So what do you do? Any better ideas or missing components? Anyone else enjoy this type of template discussion?
XII