Sosarian Cheater

The first thing I did when I started playing Ultima Online, on the very first day, on the very first minute, I cheated.

Something you should know about playing UO for the first time: It's a lot like being on a Boeing 747 when both pilots have simultaneous heart attacks and you were just looking for the bathroom and you misunderstood what the flight attendant was asking you because you were distracted by your backed-up colon and now flight control is screaming that you have to land the plane or hundreds of people are going to die.

The interface is completely absent until you learn the hot-keys. Your inventory is literally in a pile that you have to sift through to find what you want. All of your skills and stats have no description. There's no tutorial. No tips. If you're outside of town virtually anyone can kill you, and if you're inside town then anyone standing next to you might be a thief who's in the process of stealing your possessions.

Also. The sword you start with is a fake that hits about as hard as a whiffle ball bat covered in feathers.
I don't know what form of dark humor the developers favor, but it's only when you're in the middle of a life-or-death situation will you discover the true nature of your starting weapon.





"Hey!" Some dude riding a horse yelled at me, "You want to make some money?"

I had just dropped into the city of Trinsic, right outside of the Rusty Anchor Inn, and like I said: no tutorials. No tips. I didn't even know how to walk and someone was already propositioning me in front of a seedy, dock-side tavern.

After I figured out how to send a message I told the guy, "Sure!"

"Follow me," The man said and then he rode his horse up the steps and through the front door of the inn. The dude didn't just trot into the building, either. He galloped. He charged into that tavern on a horse going full speed.

(once I figured out how) I followed the man inside the Rusty Anchor Inn. He trotted past the innkeeper, clopped down the hall, and then rode his horse up the stairs to the second floor.

At this point I'm utterly confused. Just the fact that some guy randomly showed up to accost me before I even knew what the hell was going on had left me disoriented. That he was riding a horse through an inn seemed even more bizarre.

















We traveled down the hall to the very last room in the Inn.



Inside the room was a wizard wearing a dress.

The wizard didn't talk much. He never did. It's the man on the horse who explained that they wanted my body, or to be more specific, my four extra bodies.














What they're talking about is a simple exploit. Let me explain:

When you create a character, you don't come into the world naked and penniless. You start out with a hundred gold coins and some items, like spell reagents, and an impossibly shitty sword.
You also don't have just one character that you're limited to playing with. The game gives you five character slots, so you could, essentially, create five characters in just a few minutes.

That's five-hundred gold coins and a lot of spell reagents.

The catch is that you have to wait seven days before you can delete your old characters and make new ones, so you can only cheat the system out of so much money in a week.

Can you perform this trick on your own?
Yes, of course.
You just log in, drop your gold somewhere sneaky, like under a bush or behind a tree, then log out, log back in with your main character and collect your reward.

But did I know this at the time?
No, not at all.



The deal worked out that I'd get all the gold and my two business partners would get all the reagents, and it went without a hitch.

My first ten minutes in Sosaria and I was already a small-time crook.

Very small-time.

I'm pretty sure the administrators wouldn't actually give a shit.




But this was the beginning of UO for me. This was a defining moment.
I didn't go out and fight monsters. I didn't run up to better-armed players and beg them for loot. I didn't grab a pick-axe and start mining. The first thing I did in UO was fuck with it, which (in a way) prepared me for my veteran days of UO when, instead of dungeon-crawling or PvPing, I'd rely on exploits to steal a shit-load of loot from people.


Exploits and stealing in UO is a cool topic. I'll bring it up later, when I'm ready to draw another batch of stupid pictures.




Also, as long as I'm going over the wonders of playing UO for the first time, I guess I should mention that after I collected all that money I left the city of Trinsic and, just for the hell of it, I attacked a deer.

And it murdered me.