Limo's Long Ass Dueling Guide
This site contains a dueling guide for the Ultima Online server Outlands. Outlands is the most popular and active UO server.
Please read Spooj’s 1v1 duel guide for basic dueling information.
This guide assumes you already understand 1v1 dueling basics such as standard spell combos and how the interrupt/cooldown or 'cycle' system works on Outlands. The intention is to help players who feel stuck after several hundred or even thousands of duels or multiple tournaments. For other dueling tactics, you can join the community Outlands Arena Discord and view topical channels with pinned notes, message me (extendedwheelbase) or (spooj_) for an invite.
This guide is a combination of technical advice, mentality and opinions. Skim and find the parts that stand out to you and apply what makes sense.
Cue 20th Century Fox Flute
I don’t really know why the fuck I took the time to do this besides the fact that whenever I try to help someone improve in dueling on Outlands, it often results in the same conversations, over and over, and I am tired of typing them. I decided to centralize all of the main things I have DMed with other duelers into one website that can easily just be linked to. I wouldn’t be surprised if this ultimately helped only 3 total players who actually take the time to learn, the Arena community is not exactly large.
When players do reach out for advice or share what they are struggling with, they are often assessing their matches and tournaments wrong in terms of understanding what actually happened in retrospect. I am guilty of that, too. Whether or not I am the “best” player to give advice is highly debatable (Spooj is a great option for hyper technical/timing advice), but after winning the most combined tournaments and Arena points on the server (as of when I'm writing this), partly just due to being more active than other great duelers, I have been forced to learn a few tips and examine stuff even beyond my own liking.
So… if you aren’t interested in improving in the Arena by any means or flat out dislike the mechanics on Outlands, then this is not for you. The meta could use an upgrade (discussed later on), but some of us still find it at least 51% fun. Dueling is not for everyone, and you may prefer a different era or mechanics all together. Do what you enjoy doing. Even the ones of us who actively duel here have a love & hate relationship with it.
One thing is for sure: Arena guarantees no endless kiting or arguing about numbers of players. … and it is a great way to earn a ton of potential gold only by PvPing.
For skilled duelers, there is a natural ability and most of this won’t be new. That ability was likely built over decades of playing UO on different servers, resulting in a general awareness of how spells and timing works to the point where thinking or analyzing stuff this deeply isn’t needed…but even still, bits and pieces might be of value.
This guide is mostly meant for the players that this stuff does not come natural to.
In my experience, I notice the players that don’t have those years of pre-built habits progress much faster through detailed explanations of how things work and guidance on what specifically to work on.
So I wrote all of this shit down.
Anyways, if you’re crazy and want to join the Arena circus, read on.