Character Templates

A template is a starter build plus a progression storyline: which stats and skills to pick at character creation, where to start, what to hunt at each stage, what to collect, and where the money comes from. They exist so a brand-new player — human or AI — can always answer the question “what should I do next?”

The templates

Core builds (full stage-by-stage storylines)

Template	Core idea	Best first city
Warrior	Hit things, bandage, repeat. Cheapest to run, most forgiving.	Britain
Mage	Ranged damage and Recall mobility; reagents are the running cost.	Moonglow
Animal Tamer	Pets do the fighting. Slow start, richest endgame.	Skara Brae

There are also Blacksmith and Lumberjack crafting/gathering templates with the same stage structure.

Hybrid & control builds (seven-GM endgame builds)

These layer on the core builds above — read the Animal Tamer, Mage, and bard pages for the underlying mechanics. They’re presented as seven Grandmaster (100.0) skills summing to ~700 (our shard’s cap), the endgame question rather than a from-scratch storyline.

Template	Core idea
Bard Tamer	Tamer who debuffs with Discordance, so the pet hits harder and is hit less — PvM powerhouse.
PvP Tamer	Foot-fighting mage tamer built to keep casting while meleed and not get dismounted. PvP specifics unverified here.
Provocation Bard	The battlefield controller — turn monsters on each other, debuff, and loot the survivor. No pet needed.

The control archetype gets a long-form treatment in the essay The Control Game.

Mage variants (마사) & dexxer variants (seven-GM builds)

In the Korean UO community a mage was called 마사 (masa, from 마법사, “magus/mage”); these are the classic 마사 variants plus an axe-dexxer twist on the warrior. Like the hybrid builds above, they’re presented as seven Grandmaster (100.0) skills summing to ~700. The three mage variants build on the Mage template and PvP builds; the lumberjack warrior builds on the Warrior template.

Template	Core idea
Lumberjack Warrior	The “axer”: a melee warrior who takes Lumberjacking and wields an axe to swing for +20% damage at GM — and cuts wood on the side.
Alchemy Mage (알케미 마사)	A mage who throws explosion potions (“purples”) for an interrupt-proof burst alongside spells; Alchemy makes the potions hit harder.
Weapon/Halberd Mage (할바드 마사)	The war-mage: wields a heavy two-handed halberd, opens with a weapon hit/special, then casts. No shield (two-handed).
Stun Mage (스턴 마사)	Locks the target with a wrestling stun punch (needs Anatomy 80 + Wrestling 80) then dumps a spell combo in the window.

Crafting

A crafter (“mule”) is a dedicated non-combat producer. The 700-skill cap means no single character can fit every craft, so crafters specialize and players keep several mules.

Template	Core idea
Crafter (the Mule)	The non-combat producer — tools, suits, and potions; two example mule builds, BODs, and repairs.

Once you understand the build idea, see 7x GM Templates — the endgame question of which seven skills to Grandmaster (the 700-point cap = seven skills at 100), organized by what each build is for: dexxer, mage, tamer, bard, stealth archer, thief, crafter.

How to read a template page

Stages. Each page is split into Novice / Journeyman / Master stages keyed to the build’s core skill (roughly creation→60, 60–90, 90+). Each stage lists goals, hunting grounds, what to collect, and what the loot funds next.
Decision points. Explicit if/then bullets — “if X is true, do Y” — so you (or an agent) can branch without re-reading the whole page.
Creature stats are real. Hit-point ranges and tame difficulties come from this wiki’s bestiary (extracted from server source), not from era memory.

The shared hunting ladder

All three builds climb roughly the same ladder of hunting grounds; only the pace differs. Dungeon locations are on the dungeons page.

Rung	Where	Typical foes (hits)
1	Town outskirts and farms	giant rats (26–39), mongbats (4–6)
2	Britain graveyard	skeletons (34–48), zombies (28–42), ghouls (46–60)
3	Roads and camps	brigands, ettins (82–99), ogres (100–117)
4	Despise	ettins, ogres, earth elementals (76–93)
5	Shame / Covetous / Deceit / Wrong	earth and air elementals, harpies (58–72), liches (103–120), trolls (106–123)
6	Destard / Deceit depths / Khaldun (bring friends)	drakes (241–258), dragons (478–495), lich lords (250–303)

Era guides describe Despise as a lizardman dungeon; on this shard the dungeons page lists ettins, ogres, and earth elementals there, so the ladder above follows our data. Lizardmen (58–72 hits) do exist in the bestiary — treat any specific spawn-location claim as unverified.

Shard notes that change classic advice

Everyone starts with 1,000 gold and free choice of starting city — no New Haven funnel. See character creation.
Skill picks are 4 × up to 50.0, total exactly 120 — far ahead of the classic 3 × 50, so these templates start past the “tame chickens for a week” phase.
Starting cities are in Trammel; murderers are restricted to Felucca (server rules). Classic “bank every 200 gold or the PKs get it” paranoia only applies if you cross to Felucca for the better loot.
Young status (first 40 hours of game time) shields you from most monster aggression — use it to scout dungeons above your weight class.

New to the shard entirely? Read Getting Started first.