How to Learn Bushido and Ways to Train

Bushido Moves and How They Work

Honor and Perfection

There are a multitude of template suggestions out there, as well as possible templates. This part of the guide will examine skill combinations with Bushido and the relative good and bad side effects of either. Remember, this is just one persons view point as others can possibly have other relative view points that are just as valid based on their play experience, and remember;your play experience may very well be different from everyone else’s. If template questions pop up I will try to answer the question as best as possible or allow others with more experience to do so.

• Archery –
  Archery and Bushido can be good together, in fact a lot of archers make great use of Bushido. However, archery has one major drawback; parry does not work with it. This means that any parry based moves will never work for your archer, ever. However, this drawback comes with a few perks; the lack of needing parry gives you free skill points to cram into a template that is typical over-crowded, and as archery is a ranged attack, you have a bit more freedom on your item preferences since you will be less likely to be in melee. Remember, though, that moves like Momentum Strike require you to be near two opponents (that means right next to them) for it to work.
• Chivalry –
  Chivalry and Bushido almost seem to go hand-in-hand together, especially with the concerns of a very crowded template. One of the boons of chivalry is that it is highly effective at low skill, as most of the spells of chivalry are based more on your karma than on your actual skill, thus making chivalry a very cheap and effective skill to cram into tight template builds. 

  The drawback in chivalry is that you will need some magery based items to make it effective. Fast Cast, Faster Cast Recovery, and Mana Regeneration. This can make for some frustrating hunts in the decent suits and gear for your character to achieve the full effectiveness of this combo, though when it is achieved, it is quite powerful.

  Enemy of One combined with Perfection can produce some massive damage to enemy targets you are facing in PvE. You can even expect to level quite a number of foes this way.

  Consecrate Weapon lends to the fact you can really deliver some damage to the weakest resist of an enemy in a short amount of time.

  Divine Fury coupled with the samurai’s ability to parry, and you can pretty much never have to worry about stamina issues again.

• Magery –
  Magery and Bushido can work well together, but the drawback in this field is that you not only need warrior based gear for melee, but also magery based gear with Fast Cast, Faster Cast Recovery, Spell Channeling weapons and SDI to make it effective. Cramping in Evaluate Intelligence as well and you are looking at a very cramped template. More than likely, to be effective, your template will probably have to give up tactics, which means no weapon special moves, but other’s may have suggestions on that field to make it work.
• Necromancy –
  Necromancy seems to be a premiere skill for PvP, especially given the potent nature of some of the curses. However, necromancies drawback, again, is the simple fact that Bushido is a very cramped template, and you maybe looking at giving up tactics again to have an effective build, which means no weapon specials. Make no mistake, the forms and curses, utilized correctly, are very powerful. Any necromancer worth his salt will be able to utilize the skills and combos very effectively to delivering devastating impact damage in a short period of time. 

  Curse Weapon is good for the samurai with our ability to hit more accurately than most builds, with a good life stealing weapon you can probably keep yourself topped out in life, even through lethal poison.

  Wraith Form is good for regaining mana, also ontop of that add in the simple fact that Wraith Form can also recall 100% of the time as long as you have a mage book with recall and the regs to use it.

  Vampire Form is also looked at as a premiere ability, with the inherrant mana regneration and life drain attack.

  All other Necro spells are just gravy ontop of those effects.

• Pure Warrior –
  The pure warrior is the most handicapped concerning the changes made recently. To be the most successful with his build the pure warrior will most likely have to give up magic resist to gain tactics. Though there are a plethora of items that pretty much negate curses, and such, falling back and relying on those items can be just as costly as not having magic resistance to begin with. Basically put, the current system rules in the game for Ultima Online as they are right now, makes playing a pure samurai warrior past a one trick pony almost a moot point.
• Paladin Necro Samurai –
  Make no mistake, this is a powerful template combination, but it is definitely not a template for beginners. The requirements of balancing out the extremes of necro and chivalry are dificult, as chivalry is highly karma based in it’s powers, while necromancy produces massive negative effects on your karma. 

  Close Wounds is very susceptible to this,a s the amount healed by Close Wounds is affected by your karma level. If you end up bottoming out karma, you could very well be healing about as much as a mage heal spell or less.

  Cleanse by Fire is affected by Karma in the sense that the fire damage you take is decreased by higher karma, and increased by lower karma. The exact amount varies, but based on karma you can expect anywhere from 9 to 55 fire damage from this effect based on your karma.

  Remove Curse is also Karma based in the fact the higher your karma, the better chance you have of removing the curse. If you are negative karma, you pretty much almost have no chance to remove the curse.

  The duration of enemy of one, consecrate weapon, and divine fury also are affected by karma. If you have low karma, then the affects are very short, while with high karma they last for quite a bit longer.

• Spellweaving Samurai –
  I’ve not heard alot about this type of template, and my experience with spellweaving is actually quite limited. On one hand, the combination looks quite viable, however, in my experience with spellweaving and the pre-emptive nature of many of the spells in that set, it doesn’t seem like it would lend itself well to the samurai type of playstyle. However, that should not dissuade someone who is curious or thinks it might be a good combination. 

  Of note should be Gift of Renewal, Immolating Weapon, and Attune Weapon spells from Spellweaving. Gift of Renewal is a Heal Over Time effect, with an added bonus that it can attempt to cure poison, which most likely is similar to all other effects that can cure poison; the amount of skill in Spellweaving determines what level of poison this effect can attempt to cure. However, the drawback is that it seems to have a recharge effect in place till it can be cast again. The duration of this is based on your skill level as well.

  Immolating Weapon adds additional fire damage to your weapon attack for a few seconds based on your Spellweaving skill. This can be useful to add extra damage to your attacks in a given time period, and especially useful against those types of critters weak to fire damage.

  Attune Weapon is a protective spell that is auto cast on yourself. This spell will reduce all weapon based damage by 50% for a short duration. Fighting Peerless bosses this can probably prove to be quite useful, and these are starting spells to boot, so should be fairly easy to attain and use.

  Gift of Life would also be quite useful to pre-empt cast on yourself, or your pet Hiryu, if you use one. If you die while the spell is active you can auto res yourself, though there is a recharge on this.

  Word of Death is probably another spell that might prove useful on those Peerless boss fights, but since most Samurai spend their time in Melee, with the exception of archer samurai, this maybe rather dificult to pull off.

  I will note, Arcane Empowerment may also affect Bushido’s Confidence power, though I will state I am not sure at all on this since I have never attempted it. Arcane Empowerment basically increased the effectiveness of spell damage and healing, but since we do not do spell damage we are left with the healing aspect. If anyone tests this and finds that Arcane Empowerment does indeed affect Confidence send me a PM and I will edit this part of the FAQ accordingly.

• Alchemist Samurai –
  This template seems rather bizarre at first, but it actually has a sound approach. With the ability to create potions at a whim, provided you have the proper reagents and bottles handy, you also get an extra benefit in that your potions are more readily powerful than someone who does not possess alchemy. The drawback of such a template is you will rely more on your potions for healing and curing. This gives a slight benefit in that you will have a few skill points free to play around with in your template build. Just remember, to utilize many potions you will rely more on single handed weapons over two handed ones.
• Elf versus Human –
  Both have their flaws and their strengths, however in my personal opinion, the elf comes out far weaker to the human in these regards. An elf’s advantage is he has inherent night sight as well as additional base mana, however he lack’s in strength and the additional mana comes at the cost of the human’s inherent mana regneration from his bonus skills. 

  A human comes with the 20 bonus skills, of course, as well as additional carrying capacity. This ontop of the plethora of night sight items with the right properties you do want makes the slight mana boost of an elf seem paltry, especially given the nature humans have a natural mana regneration thanks to the invisible 20 skill points in focus and meditation. Personally, I would make a human samurai over an elven one, but personal taste is what it boils down to.

  Another drawback to elves is that alot of worn gear, esepcially head gear, kills a look for your elf, especially if you were going for a certain look and appearance, you could end up wearing the unsightly elven helm instead of the samurai one, or a circlet instead of a kasa.

• Gargoyle Samurai: (the following information is based on what is readily known about Gargoyles found on the Stygian Abyss site.)
  The gargoyle will soon be added to the UO client, and from the looks of what racial abilities that they will possess they will bring some interesting additions to the samurai profession. First up is their beserker state. That can be a handy trait to have for a samurai giving more speed and power, with the samurais ability to parry making up the defense deficit. Ontop of that the mystical insight can help lads to a lot of cramped templates when it comes to cramming in rudimentary things like recall power. The downside I see in the gargoyle is their need to have specific armor crafted for them. This could be difficult in terms of gear and equipment. One I am up in the air about (no pun intended) is flying. Not needing a mount is nice, but then again, not being able to mount on a hiryu can be a bit of a pain in the long run.

• Making Spells/Items Self Target
  Drag a spell or an item (such as bandages) to a hot bar location. Right click the spell or item to pull up the context menu. On the menu, at the bottom, you will see the menu item Target; select that. A new context menu will open, and you will have three choices;
• Self – Automatically uses the item or spell on yourself.
• Cursor – Calls up the classic cursor option thus allowing you to target first.
• Target – Automatically attempts to cast the spell or use the item on your target, the one you have highlighted with the circle.Select self from the menu and every time you push that action button, you will automatically use the spell or the item on yourself without having to retarget yourself or setting up a special macro.

  This can even work for Skills and Virtues, though Virtues seem to be damnably picky and not letting you use the target function. Only skills that have a Green button are useable however, so it’s not a good thing to clutter your bar with a bunch of brown skills.

• Creating a New Hot Bar
  Right click any action bar you have active to open the context menu. Select Create New Hot Bar. A new 12 slot hot bar will be placed on your game screen which you can drag anywhere on screen. You can adjust the size and even the angle of the bar by grabbing the little triangle in the lower right corner of the action bar down to as little as one box. If you wish to change the bar from vertical to horizontal, take the arrow and pull down on it instead and the bar will switch to vertical then.
• Binding a Hot Key
  To bind a hot key to a specific action spot on the action bar, to avoid clicking, right click the action bar to pull up the context menu. Select Assign Hotkey and a message box will appear that tells you either to push ESCAPE to cancel or to hit the key you wish to assign to the hot box. Note; in order to bind a key be sure that it isn’t already assigned to another action in game, such as the function keys, which are assigned to you and your party, respectively.
• Creating an Disarm/Arm Macro
  Creating a macro is pretty easy and straight forward in UOKR. Nothing simpler than just dragging and dropping a bunch of images onto the main area. First, you will want to open up the Main Menu, which can be done one of two ways; first you can hit escape, unless you have something targeted, this should call up the Main Menu immediately. If something is targeted, it will take a second push of Escape to call it up. The second way is to push the little house icon right next to your back pack on the tool bar. This will call up the Main Menu as well. 

  Next, Scroll down the menu and click on Macros/Actions option, this will open up the macro dialogue; two boxes, one is the macro list, the other is the actions list. Now, the macros list will probably be empty for you unless you already been experimenting. At the bottom you will see Create, click that now and a new dialogue box will open up.

  This new box is called edit macro; what we want to do is create a weapon disarm/arm macro. First, click the NO ICON SET box, and scroll through the list of icons. I suggest an icon that can help you easily identify the weapon you wish to arm. For instance, for my demon slayer weapon, I chose the 8th circle icon, Summon Daemon, as my icon. Where it says macro name, I chose to put in the spot Demon Slayer Blade, but you can choose to name it whatever you want or leave it as macro1, though a name makes it easier to identify.

  Now, naming and setting an icon is definitely not the last step. Next you will look over in the actions. Currently it’s set to All Actions, which is perfect, because the first two actions are the ones we want actually. In this case, they will be equip and unequip items. But they need to be placed in a specific order. First, take and drag unequip items into the first box. This will open a new dialogue, and in this dialogue you will want to choose the main hand and off hand slots and put an X mark in the box. This part of the macro tells that any current item, if applicable, you want disarmed and taken off immediately.

  Now, before you can put the equip item action into the macro you must first put in a delay. You can either scroll down the list or hit the left arrow right next to All Actions that will take you to a list called Other. Just below the Salute action, you will see Delay. Drag that into the second box next to equip. A dialogue will ask for an amount of time to delay. Leave it at 0, as that seems to work in my macros just fine.

  Now, comes the final part. Go back to the All Actions page, which can be reached by hitting the right arrow next to Other, if you swapped pages. Now, drag Equip Item to the third box in the macro, and a new dialogue will open. In this dialogue, you will want to drag your weapon into that slot. In this case, the demon slayer bladed staff of mine, since that’s what the macro is being named for. Hit the okay button, and it is done.

  At this point you can choose to either bind the macro to a key or drag it into a hot bar and click it from there. Anytime you use this macro, it will automatically disarm any weapon you are using and re-equip the weapon you want in this macro. You can basically make as many of these macros as you think you need, but remember that the item you wish to arm has to be in your pack if you want it to work.

  Also note, this macro can work for multiple items at a time as well. On the equip portion of the macro, for instance, you can enter both a sword and a shield. You can even take the macro further to have it change your clothes entirely, but that also requires a bit of editing of the unequip portion of the macro to.

• Counting Resources
  To count resources, all you have to do is drag a countable resource to your hot bar. Anything that can be counted normally (potions, reagents, gold, ingots, etc.) will automatically get counted here. Note, it’s always easier to make another hot bar to do this instead.
• Instant Looting
  To instantly loot an item in a monsters corpse, right click it. That’s it. You can also choose to place items on your mouse cursor directly in your inventory by hitting the inventory key while the item is still on your cursor. By default, this should be the ‘I’ key, but for instance I changed it to my ‘B’ key, so if I want to do that I will have to hit the ‘B’ key.

This portion of the Guide is a constant work in progress. I implore that any new questions that have answers be directed to me in PM, or a possible mod asking them politely to modify this portion of the Guide to include the answers to the FAQ as needed.

• Does Archery Work with Bushido?
  This is a trick question. Yes, Archery works with Bushido, however specific Bushido moves will not work without parry skill. In this case, Counter Attack and Evasion both will not work without parry, and the secondary aspects of Confidence will not either. Momentum Strike also will require the archer to be next to two opponents to get it to work effectively and the parry stipulation of a failed honorable execution will not work with archery either. The reason these do not work with archery is because you cannot ever parry with a bow, and the likelihood of this changing is pretty low.
• Can Bushido Attacks/Stances fail to execute?
  Yes, they can. Just because you have the pre-requisite skill value does not mean they will automatically work. There are tell tale sound effects that let you know when the Attack/Stance has fired off. If you do not hear any of these, then the action failed to happen. The amount of skill necessary to have 100% chance of success at an Attack/Stance is roughly 40 skill over the minimum to use.
• Why do I need more Bushido than the amount necessary to have 100% success if I just want X move?
  Good question. Do you really need high Bushido if all you are after is that one move or stance? No. However, Bushido is much like any other skill in the game, it not only decides the chance of success, it decides the over-all effectiveness of your attacks and stances. It also effects your passive abilities such as parry, whirlwind, and Perfection. Basically put, the greater your knowledge of Bushido, the greater the effect it has.
• Why can’t I use my Lesser Hiryu anymore/it’s failing to bond to me?
  Lesser Hiryu code was changed. For a long time, anyone could command and bond a Lesser Hiryu without any Bushido or taming skill, they just couldn’t ride it. However, a recent changed now makes it a requirement that you either having taming or a minimum of 90 Bushido skill in order to command and bond a Lesser Hiryu.
• I can’t use my weapon specials anymore, what happened?
  A recent change put in a requirement of 70 Tactics for the primary weapon special and 90 Tactics for the secondary weapon special, on-top of other requirements. This change was mostly aimed at PvP balances, however, it has damaged a lot of valid templates that are too cramped to fit in Tactics normally.
• I am a Paladin/Samurai, and damage doesn’t seem to increase from perfection.
  Damage is capped at 300% from DI based enhancements. A slayer weapon against the appropriate type of critters will give you a 200% damage increase. Enemy of One itself will give another 50% increase. That’s 250%. Damage increase from weapons and jewerly can easily add an additional 50% at this point to. The result is basically just too easy to cap damage with the samurai/paladin build.
• If I don’t get the Perfection damage bonus, what good is Perfection then?
  Two reasons to still attempt to Achieve Perfection; First, your level of Perfection acts as a sort of luck towards your target. The higher your perfection the greater luck value for that target only, you get, thus the increased chance of better loot. Secondly, Perfection levels also restore heaps of lost health, mana, and stamina versus your target. Especially tough fights, like certain Paragons, it would be wise to be able to restore what was lost to you.
• Why is my parry crap when I use a shield?
  Because samurai do not use shields, plain and simple. Though some will try to point out the fan as such a thing, the reality of that weapon was it was used to communicate troop movement in battle, and also used to parry incoming attacks. It is also a weapon in UO, thus those who wish to fall back on the fan can do so. However if you want a mind set to reason it, think of it this way, hiding behind a shield is cowardly, and it would insult a samurai’s honor to be considered a coward, thus the reason why shields hurt a samurais parry chances instead of helping it.
• Does Human inherent +20 skill effect my chance to parry with a shield?
  No, it has no effect on your inherent chances to parry with a shield, as long as you do not have any real Bushido skill.
• Does Bushido skill jewelry effect my chances to parry with a shield?
  Yes, it does. Skill jewelry, for all intents and purposes, acts as real skill, thus if you are carrying 30 points of Bushido skill jewelry, then the system thinks you have 30 real skill of Bushido. This will negatively impact your parry chances with a shield, so suggest finding other jewelry if you plan on playing with a sword and board.
• If Lightning Strike gives 50% Hit Chance Increase, and the cap is 45%, why do I need Hit Chance Increase Items?
  Overflow; plain and simple. Despite having a high inherent accuracy, things like hit lower attack will lower that chance tremendously, and having overflow can help negate some of that effect. Furthermore, relying solely on Lightning Strike, though a powerful attack, is relying solely on luck and is not going to be 100% when other moves, such as Concussion Blow or Armor Ignore maybe more useful, and more reliable when you need an instant burst of damage.
• How come I don’t get Perfection in PvP?
  A while back ago, they changed the honor code to be unable to honor targets in PvP situations. You can honor yourself and get the 25% damage increase from that, but you cna not honor another player and get Perfection in PvP. It was basically stated as a balance change.
• Lightning Strike doesn’t seem to hit hard at all in PvP.
  Again, another change for the sake of PvP balancing. This change came before the Perfection nerf for PvP, and Lightning Strike damage was capped at 35 maximum. Honestly, this rule should be lightened up, since many attacks and other weapons outshine Lightning Strike in this regard now, especially since Samurai can no longer get the Perfection bonus in PvP.
• Why do I randomly get the dismounted debuff when my Lesser Hiryu is fighting?
  A code was recently introduced that acts as if you had used a dismount yourself if your pet uses a dismount move on your target. This is mostly a PvP change, however, the Lesser Hiryu’s chance of dismounting was drastically nerfed to only 20% chance.
• If I have X Bushido value, can I still parry if I don’t have parry skill?
  Anything multiplied by 0 is still going to be 0. That’s a fundamental fact of mathematics. The only time this might not be true is in the situation when you have 100 or greater skill in Bushido. At that point you are given a base of 5% chance to block. Anything less than 100 skill and you have a 0% chance to block. 

  It should also be noted that human character’s may also not have to contend with this issue as deeply, as they get an invisible +20 skill points. Therefor you would place all the formulas above with 20 skill parry.

• If I have X parry skill, can I still parry with only a weapon and without bushido?
  Yes, you can. If you look in the above post on Parrying, you will see a value called Legacy Parry Chance. This value describes the chance for someone using a weapon without a shield, and no bushido skills, ability to block an attack with weapon alone. Again, this might not be true for human characters, however, who get an invisible +20 bushido skill, so that maybe taking into the equation on block chance with weapon alone.
• Does Perfection give luck bonus or not?
  This has been hotly debated since the first time Jeremy stated that Perfection luck bonus was turned off. However, Jeremy ate her words when she stated in the August 17th, 2007 Five on Friday that her and the team were in error and that Perfection was indeed giving bonus luck.
• What’s with the difference in Steps of Perfection based on skill?
  I honestly don’t know. I’ve been testing and working with Bushido ever since Samurai Empire came out, and this was a new thing to me as pointed out to me by Fisher King in the older Samurai FAQ (before the new forums). I tested it myself just recently, and this change is indeed the case. However, I must also stress another factor that it is quite possible that I may have been in error, despite my talking wtih Leurocian when comprising the original fact and this may have always been the case. However, I will also digress that this may have also been an undocumented change as well.
• Can I use a UBWS weapon I don’t have skill in to use Evasion?
  No, you can not. To combat PvP twinking, this change was put in a long time ago. If you are using a weapon that you have no skill in but has Use Best Weapon Skill as a modifier, and especially those mages who try to use Mage Weapons, Evasion will not work with it. I believe this goes for all parry based skills using those weapons as well.
• Does using a shield on my Bushido only (no parry) character ruin my DCI chance?
  I have no idea where this came from, but lately I have been seeing alot of people getting confused on this notion. Defence Chance Increase is not even in the same ballpark as parrying. Plain and simple. Defense Chance Increase affects the initial Hit/Miss calculations when comparing weapon versus weapon skill, not your parry chances. When parrying is taken into account, in other words blocking, that is figured after the hit/miss calculation is done as a seperate check. So short answer, no wearing a shield on your samurai will not affect your Defense Chance Increase, though it will gimp the crap out of your parry.
• How much will Defense Chance Increase affect Bushido Stances?
  First, as in the previous Question, Defense Chance Increase has no affect on your parry. Zero, Zilch, Nada. Parry is a seperate check from the Hit/Miss calculation performed by the system when attacks are performed. What DCI affects is your defense based value of your weapon skill versus their weapon skill. At equal skill, you and your opponent have a 50/50 base chance of hitting or missing. If you have 25% DCI, you would get (50 * 1.25 = 62.5) chance of them missing you. 

  Now, how this affects things like parry. Higher DCI means that your stances are less likely to occur. Stances like counter attack, which rely on the parry check, would see less use. However this is not a bad thing actually. Parry’s intent is to be there when a melee attack bypasses your primary defenses and that becomes your secondary defense. The armor you are wearing, the resistance, is your tertiary defense, and basically the final step before damage is applied.

  So basically, in short, the higher DCI you have, the less useful powers like Counter Attack are, and the secondary effects of Confidence. However, Evasion and the primary effect of confidence is still quite useful.

Written by Ravenspyre. August 2007. Last edit September 2008.
Copied to Stratics and Edited by Stupid Miner. June 2009.
Last Edit: January 2010.