Age of Valor :: Ultima Online Free Shard

Welcome to Age of Valor, an Ultima Online free shard. AoV is a fast developing AoS/SE/ML/Custom freeshard, featuring full blown content such as an advanced monster AI, ML peerless bosses, special moves, spellweaving, automated event system, non overpowered custom artifacts and much more! The server is not like many who are on some PC in a basement. AoV is in a world class data center on real server hardware and is on many redundant backbone connections. A large portion of our code is fully custom to us only. This is no cookie cutter shard. We take things seriously and do it right while bringing you only the best of what Ultima Online has to offer in a free shard.

If you want to get started right away configure razor to go to login.uovalor.com port 1337 and ensure you are running client version 7.0.18.0 (Patch 95) or equivalent.

News :: Jan 19 2012 12:51:58 pm - SOPA Protest
On January 18th, many websites including this one, and even the shard, went offline in protest of SOPA, a legislation which will allow the US government to shut down any site if they suspect any copyright infringement. When it comes to copyright, unlike murder, they do not need any kind of evidence. They will act without further investigating. If/when it passes, it will be a disaster. This is the first time in AOV's history that the server is offline for this long. The protest page got over 42,000 page views, so hopefully we contributed to getting the message across. All web services are now back online, and the shard is online.
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Jan 06 2012 8:41:10 pm - Jan 6 2012 - Client Crash, Summons, etc
* Fixed a client crashing issue. There may be more ways to cause it, so we are not 100% sure that it is fixed. Please report if you get lot of client crashes. These crashes normally occurred when monster looting, moving items around, etc... * Fixed issue with summons being weakened. This was an error with the anti AFK pet system being triggered when it should not have been. Please let me know if there are still issues but it should be ok now. Basically the stats were all ok, it's just they were taking more damage than they should. * Reaper Axes and Gargoyle Pickaxes are now available through the in-game donation store. More items will continue to be added over time. The Christmas event is wrapping up, the gift boxes are no longer spawning and the quest NPC in Luna has been removed. Santa's Village remains open for the completion of the final boss, which has been spawned as per the post in the event forum. Until we get around to fixing the gaunt spawner, a temporary gaunt has been setup where a boss spawns randomly in an arena. Gaunt itself can now be reached but has been walled off, a moongate there leads to this temporary arena.
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News :: Jan 01 2012 11:36:23 pm - Celebrating 5 years of Age of Valor
Age of Valor was originally started as a server to mess around on and since it did not really have a name, the founder, Red Squirrel, just randomly came up with "valor" to replace the default name in RunUO when connecting. Most people who participated were part of the Evil Pink Monkey's guild on the UO Demise server. Everyone was given admin access and started to build worlds on Green Acres, and overall just messed around with customized pets, weapons etc. At the time, the shard was hosted on a server in Red Squirrel’s basement on a 5mbps down 512kbps up connection. Only a few people could connect at a time before it got too laggy, but it was just a shard to mess around on, nothing serious. One day, Red Squirrel and Brunus Arkazza were messing around in Buccaneer's Den making a bunch of custom weapons, armor and other items by editing properties off their raw forms, without realizing these would some day become artifacts on a production shard. Artifacts of Assimilation were born. At the time, they were actually called Treasures of Felucca, to mimic Treasures of Tokuno. As Red started experimenting more with the code side of things, he ended up coding these artifacts as actual items that can drop, and created the drop system. Other misc changes were also made to the code. At this point, things became a bit more serious and Death also got involved on the development side and all sorts of other content was added/fixed. It was decided to launch this as a real shard and start attracting players. Everything was wiped so it could start over fresh, and Age of Valor was officially born. Proper development debuted on a lot of other systems, while also trying out new things. The exact official launch date of Age of Valor is unknown, but it is estimated to be around December 12, 2006. On January 22, 2007, the shard was moved to its first dedicated server in a data center. More bandwidth meant more people could play at once. This was a peak period for Age of Valor. It was common to see 30+ users online, and development was progressing rapidly over the next years. As things progressed, things were starting to be taken even more seriously as far as what kind of content was released, to ensure a balanced, but yet fun shard. As we celebrate our fifth year, we would like to thank all players who have shown their interest and support for the shard. For a short period of time, we have placed a gold crystalline statue in Luna. Double click this statue to receive a token to commemorate AOV's 5th anniversary and history. Note: Statue color is random from bronze, silver and gold. Here’s to another 5 years, and beyond! Red Squirrel and Death
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News :: Jan 01 2012 11:27:00 pm - AOV News January 2012
Greetings AOV, We hope everyone has had a safe and eventful new year so far. For those recovering with their morning coffee, reading the forums, we have shard news to bring to you. It is a tradition to have a new year's resolution so we have come up with some for the shard this year. Resolutions for the New Year One thing we think the shard needs to do, is to attract new players and make it easier to learn the game and get basic items to start off, earned through quests and basic character development. Also, we are looking to fix a lot of lingering bugs. Through new player quests, an extensive item identification system as well as guides and other communication/information systems (chat, mail, etc etc) we hope to accomplish this goal. In addition to helping new players connect easily to the shard and stay with the shard, we would like to focus on making the game feel more 'alive'. Throughout the years, Ultima has seen many great, and not so great implementations. In moving forward, many things have been left behind, unused, or forgotten. A lot of history exists in Ultima that has not yet been brought to light on AOV, and Ultima in general. In the future, we hope to bring back nostalgia from the old Ultima games (before the time of Ultima Online) as well as encourage exploring. Picture yourself walking through the woods in Britain, and spotting a traveling merchant who will sell his wares. Maybe further down the road, a maiden has been kidnapped by a group of brigands. Find yourself at the yew crossroads and maybe there's a bard there, playing a happy tune on her lute. Come back at night and maybe that same bard is now in the city of Yew, playing her music for the villagers who live there. Speaking of night, maybe a graveyard near Vesper is peaceful in the day, but loaded with undead at night, looking for fresh souls to take. We would like to remember that Ultima is more than a game, it's a virtual world. Much like a real world, it has people, animals, environments, time and seasons. Many things currently in the world of Ultima are static and predictable. We hope to make things a little more dynamic, adding small bits at a time. Ideas for New Systems Here are a few ideas that have built up over the years that we would like to explore in the new year. These are just ideas and have no guarantee that they will be implemented. They are in no particular order of implementation. Some of these ideas may grow and take off in the future while others may never see the light of day. Dynamic world Focus on building a world that is dynamic and to be explored. Tie back to the old days of Ultima to encourage player exploration: - Have NPCs change locations at certain times of the day. For example, a quest giver or merchant might be in a shop in Trinsic during the day, but head home at night. - Certain items may appear at certain times of the day. Nightshade can be harvested at night for example. - Community Events/Collections available to help build the world. - Random locations and timelines for quest NPCs - Have different traveling merchants, hawker of wares and wandering peddlers available throughout the land. - Town invasions by groups of orc, shadowlords, and other hostiles Improved Information System - Indexed dyes with a set name. For example, any use of hue 1167 in game would be known as "dryad green" once identified. - Use of the Item Identification skill to identify item attributes, hue, how to obtain and many other useful identifiers to create an item database in game that players and staff can use to find out about items. - Player mailboxes and town criers for shard news. - Page handling from game to forums Bard Revamp and Skill Revamping - Adding in barding difficulty to all mobiles. This changes the generic formula currently used to determine success and fail. - Update barding abilities for peacemaking, discordance and provocation. - Possibly adding in bard mastery system - Update all skills as many of them haven't been updated since SE/AOS. It's time to review them all and ensure they are working as intended. House Pets - Being able to set certain tameable creatures as a house pet. Creatures such as the squirrel, ferret, skittering hoppers. Essentially pets you probably wouldn't use to battle monsters with. - House pets are linked to a house, similar to vendors. In order to design or modify a house, a house pet would need to be removed. - Adding a house pet is done by saying "I wish to set/add a house pet" then targeting your tamed creature (that you are the owner of). House pets are bound by the house region. They are "blessed" like parrots are and are bound by the house region. You cannot take them outside of your house. - The number of pets a house can have depends on the size of the house. - House pets do not lose loyalty and don't 'need' to be fed. - House pets do not take up a players stable slots - House pets do not perform special abilities if any exist (Cold radiation, mountable, mounted abilities). - Releasing a house pet can be done. This essentially removes their count from the total house pet limit, sets them back to unblessed and requires follower slots to reclaim them. Once they are reclaimed, they can be put into a player's stable and would act like their tameable state before they were set as house pets. Dungeon Revamps and Arena Battles - Introduce new dungeon revamps to make each dungeon unique and encourage players to return to play in the dungeon. - Adding new arena battles. Basically these are a copy of a certain map or dungeon with a private boss battle. These are similar to peerless battles and would require some quest or quest key to activate. The difference is these may or may not be timed and will have certain specific rules attached (time limit, # of people in battle, different criterias) - Adding in unique puzzles to each dungeon with various types of dungeon specific rewards. - More quests specific to each dungeon. - Dungeon treasure chest system that works like a 'hot and cold' game. UOML Completion - Revamping of dungeons and mobiles, scaling to OSI - Adding of all quests - Adding missing craftables. - Deciding on strategy to implement all recipes with current craft system - Complete community collections and upgrades - Aquariums Talisman and Slayer changes - Fixing lesser slayers to do 3x damage where super slayers will do 2x damage - Possibly adding in new slayers such as plant and equine - Fixing existing talismans to use a new class that is more easily expandable with more control over properties - Having talisman drops the key component to many UOML and generic quest reward drops (Craftsman satchels, treasure bags, strongboxes). With the talisman expanding, it would be easier to add better talisman drops to harder quests. - Adding more killer and protection bonuses to talismans with increased rarity (Bosses are possible but very rare). Protection talisman bonuses hard capped at 60%. - Incremental talisman rarity. The closer to the max/cap a certain bonus, the rarer it would be to obtain. For example, trying to get a 30% bonus crafting talisman would be incredibly rare. - Better slayer entries and oppositions in scripts. If a mobile is demon, then fey would automatically be assumed as the opposition. Timeline and Pinpoint Spawners - Spawners set to date and time ranges. Some spawners will only spawn between certain real life OR britannia times (For example, a britannia day or night). - Some spawners might spawn at certain times of the year such as winter reapers in the winter or certain environmental effects for the spring/summer. - Pinpoint spawners would have an array of XYZ + map coordinates. Instead of spawning within a range, it would spawn with a waypoint that is tied to the mobile or item, at a random XYZ coordinate within the array list. Loyalty System - Players would be able to accumulate loyalty points with certain clans and races in the world (IE: ophidians, terathans, savages, orc, etc etc). Having different levels of loyalty to a group would allow players different advantages such as friendship, quests, use of certain items. - Some opposition groups (ophidians/terathans) would not be pair able with same loyalty (EX: You cannot be loyal to ophidians and terathans on the same char). Completed Virtue System - Implement OSI's honesty virtue - AOV Humility virtue involving community events. Different scenarios will exist with a large reward that all players can enjoy and humility points for players who help out. Examples may involve helping to rid a town of an invasion, build a bridge across water, provide more guards in an area. - AOV Sprituality virtue (To be determined) Collision System Expansions Expanding the collision system to affect more and have different elemental effects: - Physical: Shatters brittle things or can cause things to break such as stones, crystals, etc etc. - Fire: Causes things to burn, ignite or explode - Cold: Causes things to freeze such as water or other liquids. Cools down hot things, extinguish flame. - Poison: Causes living things to die or wither, such as strong vines or living walls. Can also have a lasting effect on areas. - Energy: Can activate or fry machinery. Can cause metallic items to conduct. AI System Expansions - Have all spells available to cast by monsters such as polymorph, forms, chivalry spells, summons of different difficulties, etc etc. PVP Everywhere System - Allow players to engage in a pvp everywhere system by will - Allow a player to intentionally add difficulty to their gameplay such as invoking original UO rules such as no insurance - Possibly tie the PVP Everywhere system into factions with different rules. Allow to conquer towns and certain landmarks or locations. Have different rules which only affect those from within the system. Pet Calculator and Pet Metamorphosis Introduce a pet calculator function in game that is auto-incorporated into the animal lore gump. This pet calculator is essentially using the formulas from the following popular pet rarity website: http://www.uocraft.com/taming/pet-power-calculator/ So when a player goes out to tame a creature, they would be able to see how close to the max the creature is (In terms of stars. A 1 star pet would be terrible whereas a 5 star pet would be truly rare). This would make it easier to know if a pet is good or bad. Pet Metamorphosis Exposing certain pets to different scenarios will allow you to upgrade them into a new version of said pet. This would help bring life back into lesser pets. For example, if you use a nightmare frequently, the pet owner will be given the option to put their pet under a metamorphosis after certain conditions are met. A pet that has gone under a metamorphosis can change stats, resists, abilities, hue, name, control slot, etc etc. For a bit more clarity, you could essentially have (Only an example): Nightmare: - Cauchemare: +5 all resists, strong multi-breath attack, increased wrestling cap, 3 control slots instead of 2 - Demon Horse: +10 physical resist, mass curse attack, increased magery cap, 3 control slots - Dreadmare: Increases stats and new mounted ability. Your pet would have a requirement in order to metamorphose into one of the new pets. For example, in order to obtain a dreadmare, the pet might be required to slay a large amount of fey and good karma creatures as well as taking on boss monsters. Property System This system is large scale but would improve many systems in the long run. This system would make it easier to apply bonuses and additional properties on items in different scenarios (loot, craft, etc etc). Right now it's more complex than it needs to be so having a system to auto manage properties and bonuses in every circumstance would help speed up development of important systems such as imbuing and crafting/recipes. AOV 5th Anniversary Age of Valor celebrates its 5th Anniversary this year. Five years ago, on December 23, 2005, AOV opened up for players to enjoy. It started off as a gathering place and turned into a shard of its own. Join us in celebrating our 5th year. We have placed a statue in luna which will reward players a commemorative statue for our 5th anniversary Note: Statue color is random from bronze, silver and gold.
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Event :: Jan 01 2012 9:27:30 pm - The Grinch spotted in Santa's Village!
Santa's Village has been under constant attack all Christmas season, but the elves have been holding their own, while Santa managed to sneak in present runs regardless. It has been reported that while all this battle going on in the north pole has been happening, the Grinch has somehow showed up, or perhaps was always hiding in a corner since the initial invasion... he is now very powerful due to some black magic experimentation he has been working with. He must be located and killed! Beware, not only is he a demon knight, he is also a ninja, paladin, necromancer, mage, and knows every skill in the book! No one knows just how powerful he is, or if he perhaps has weaknesses, as no one has dared to try to take him yet!
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News :: Dec 27 2011 9:59:00 pm - Christmas Promotion - Double Donation Points!
As a Christmas gift to everyone, I am doubling donation points till January 7, 2012! This means when you donate, you will get double the donation points you would normally get. So donating $5 is like donating $10. Keep in mind that points can be used at any time, so you do not need to spend them right away. We do have plans to add more items to the store in the new year. Merry Christmas!
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Dec 21 2011 7:32:32 pm - Dec 21 2011 - Soulstones and misc fixes
* Fixed saving issue with house teleporters * Fixed issue with soulstone account binding. * Fixed issue with stealable artifact spawner saving. Note that we will need to manually go around and delete any bad spawns so you may still experience some issues till then. What was happening is they were all respawning at server restart and only the last one was valid as a stealable. Attempted to fix issue with gaunt but I need to rewrite the spawning system. It is broken beyond repair and it is just easier to rewrite it. I am hoping to fix this within the next month or so. Maybe before. I will be coding a system that is more modular so it can be used in various custom/non custom instances.
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News :: Dec 20 2011 10:55:34 pm - Gaunt closed until further notice
There is a serious issue with the gaunt spawners and I need to rewrite them from scratch. The way they are coded is very awkward and convoluted that there is no point in trying to fix them. I will write a new circular spawner system that will be more expandable so we can use it in other systems. I have no ETA for this. For now you can still collect skulls, you just can't ring the bell to get on the other side. Anyone currently in gaunt will remain there, but there is really no point as it's broken, best to just get out.
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News :: Dec 14 2011 5:46:37 pm - [Dec 14 2011] - LIVE SERVER OUTAGE TONIGHT [CANCELED]
The server will be going down tonight from 8:50PM ET to around 10:00PM Eastern Time for emergency power upgrades in the rack containing our server. During this time, the following services will not be available: - The live shard - DNS - Email - UO Gateway - Donations Because DNS will be down and we do not have a secondary setup (I've been wanting to do that) that means this site will also not work. Basically, everything will be down.
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Event :: Dec 05 2011 9:16:30 pm - Rats! Santa has gone missing!
It has been reported to us that Santa has gone missing while doing a test run with his sleigh! We are unsure of how or why, but it appears he has crashed. We can assure you he and his reindeer are ok as the sleigh is set to magically teleport them to a secure undisclosed location in the event of a crash. However, the magical gift holster of the sleigh is continuously producing gifts uncontrollably and these gifts need to be found! Legolas, a master elf archer who works at Santa's village has come to the Luna gate library and is asking everyone who can spare time to help! Go see Legolas at the gate library for more details. We have lost all communication with Santa's village, but last we heard, everything is going smooth there.... we just need to find all those gifts so they can be returned! update - Dec 25 2011 Santa Claus has returned to Santa's Village! He is very busy and may not be present all the time, but we can assure you he is safe and everything is going well. At least, almost everything. There is a slight inconvinience going on at Santa's village. Dark Elves are #occupying it and they need to be erradicated. They are all out of pepper spray, so you will need to bring your own weapons. Join in and help eradicate them! Santa's Village has now been opened to everyone, even those without the key.
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