In the past, this guide would suggest updating to the very latest version of Ultima Online. This is no longer the case, as UOX3 now works best with certain specific versions of the UO client. Check UO client versions/expansions and compatibility with UOX3 for up-to-date information about what client version to use.
Then what you need to do, is/ download the latest version of UOX3. If there is an "All-In-One"-package available, download it. If not, download both the EXE and the entire DFN/Script package. Note that there might be newer versions of UOX3 available in the form of "experimental builds" that are made available in between the proper releases. Usually these are drop-in-replacements of UOX3.exe only. See the Experimental UOX3 builds from CVS forum-thread at UOX3.org for more details.
Now, when you unzip your UOX3.zip file(name of .zip may vary, another example is all-in-one.zip)you will
get a directory
called UOX3. Inside that directory there will be several more directories.
Here is a summary of what is in each Directory in the zip.
UOX3:
| The UOX3 directory contains all the files needed to run your UOX3 server
| successfully.
|
|--------------ACCOUNTS:
| The ACCOUNTS directory contains all user accounts for your shard.
|
|--------------ARCHIVES:
| All automatic backups of worldfile-saves are archived in here.
|
|--------------BOOKS:
| All books on your shard which players write in will be saved here.
|
|--------------DFNDATA:
| This is where all the "definition"-files are kept. They contain information on various
| aspects of your shard, which is easily customizable, like item/NPC-stats, HTML-templates,
| region-setup, and other assorted stuff.
|
|--------------DICTIONARIES:
| Contains files with language-specific system messages that can be translated into languages supported by the UO client.
|
|--------------DOCS:
| The UOX3 Docs! Various documents =P
|
|--------------HELP:
| Folder which contains help-files that area accessible from in-game.
|
|--------------HTML:
| This is where the Server Status page is saved, along with other HTML output files.
|
|--------------JS:
| This is where all the JavaScript files for UOX3 are located, and also where you put any
| custom JavaScript files you have acquired/written.
|
|--------------LOGS:
| All log-files for your server are saved here.
|
|--------------MSGBOARDS:
| This is where any posts from ingame bulletin boards are saved.
|
|--------------SHARED:
| The SHARED directory is where all the world-data is saved. All items & NPCs and characters that are added to your world will be saved in a file in this directory.
Alright, you're still with me? Good. Now, let's configure your shard and get it up and running.
1) Open the UOX.INI file, located in the root UOX3 folder, with your favourite text-editor (Notepad, Notepad++, Sublime Text, etc). There are a lot of settings available in this file (see UOX3 Server Settings for a full list), but for now we'll focus on the essentials. Locate the section called [play server list], which should look something like this:
[play server list]
{
SERVERLIST=Default UOX3 Server,127.0.0.1,2593
}
Instead of "Default UOX3 Server", enter the name you want to give your UOX3 shard.
Try to keep the shard-name short, anything above 30 characters probably won't show up in the server list anyway.
Next up is the IP-address. If you're running the UOX3 shard on the same computer as your UO Client, leave the IP-address (127.0.0.1) alone. It's the local ip of your computer, and will suffice. If, however, you plan to use the UOX3 shard on a LAN, or on the Internet, you must replace 127.0.0.1 with your LAN IP or your Internet IP.
Alternatively, add additional SERVERLIST= lines, and have one local login, one LAN login, and one Internet login.
2593 is the Port address your UOX3 server will be using. Using the default port address is recommended, but can be modified in the ini file.
2) Scroll down to the [directories] section. This is where you configure the various file-paths that UOX3 should use. By default, the only filepath you should have to change is the one that looks like this:
DATADIRECTORY=c:/program files/ultima online/
If you're running the UOX3 shard on a stand-alone computer, without the UO Client installed, point the DATADIRECTORY filepath to a directory on your computer's drive which contains (at minimum) the following UO Client data-files: Map0.mul, Statics0.mul, Staidx0.mul, Multi.mul, Multi.idx, Tiledata.mul (and alternatively, Verdata.mul).
If you're running the server on the same computer as your UO Client, point the DATADIRECTORY filepath to the directory where you installed Ultima Online. That may or may not be c:/program files/ultima online/, depending on what you specified when installing the client.
For a small speed-up when running both the Shard and Client on same computer, copy the above mentioned UO Client-data files into a folder of it's own, like...UOX3\DATA\, so they both read from separate sets of data-files.
3) Close UOX.INI and browse your way to UOX3\ACCOUNTS\ and open ACCOUNTS.ADM.
You'll see something similar to this on the first couple of lines (after the commented lines which are preceded by two forward slashes):
SECTION ACCOUNT 0
{
NAME admin
PASS admin
FLAGS 0x8000
PATH /uox3/accounts/admin/
TIMEBAN 0x0
LASTIP 127.0.0.1
CONTACT unknown
CHARACTER-1 0xffffffff [UNKNOWN]
CHARACTER-2 0xffffffff [UNKNOWN]
CHARACTER-3 0xffffffff [UNKNOWN]
CHARACTER-4 0xffffffff [UNKNOWN]
CHARACTER-5 0xffffffff [UNKNOWN]
}
This is ACCOUNT 0, which is the Admin account on your shard. By default the Username is "admin", and the password is "admin"; Change both the username and the password for this account immediately, to something else of your choice. Avoid passwords like "secret" or "god" or "sex". A password consisting of both numbers and letters is advisable.
"SECTION ACCOUNT 1" is the first normal user account in your ACCOUNTS.ADM file. By default it is setup with "guest1" as both the username and password. You can either keep this if you want to have a guest account on your shard which anyone can access, or you can change the username and password to reflect the login-details of the first normal player on your shard. Yourself.
It's wise to keep a normal player account for yourself in addition to the Admin account, in order to easily test stuff as a normal player. The Admin account is not really suitable for that, since Admins and GMs are privileged in many aspects of the game (No Line of Sight checks, no delays when casting spells, no reagents required, etc.)
There are two ways to add more accounts to your shard. One is to edit the ACCOUNTS.ADM file manually like we've just done. Copy the entire SECTION ACCOUNT 1 and paste it at the bottom of the file. Remember to change the account number from 1 to the next available account number. The changes you do will either go into effect when you start up your server, or - if the server is already running - when you reload the account-files from the server console menu.
The second way of adding new accounts is to open the file called NEWACCOUNTS.ADM (If it doesn't already exist, simply create a blank text file with this name). Now simply write the following to add a new account:
USER=bobby,whee123
Optionally, you can also specify any "flags" you want the account to have, as well as the e-mail address of the user who owns the account, like this:
USER=bobby,whee123,0x0,bob@bobland.com
For each new account
you wish to add, enter another USER= line. Remember to press ENTER after the last USER= line, or that line will not be read by UOX3! The new accounts you specify in NEWACCOUNTS.ADM will be automagically added to ACCOUNTS.ADM the next time you start up your UOX3 shard.
4) Okay, that's it for your UOX3 Shard itself. Now to start it up:
Either double-click the UOX3.EXE file in the root UOX3 folder, or run UOX3.EXE from a command prompt. The latter method is recommended, since when doing that the window will stay open if UOX3 should crash/fail to startup for any reason, allowing you to see any potential error messages. If you double-click the UOX3.EXE the window will simply close itself as soon as it encounters an error, making it impossible to see what's wrong.
If everything goes well, you should have encountered no errors during startup, and the UOX3 window should stay open, with these two lines showing at the bottom:
| Thread: CheckConsoleThread has started
Note that the UOX3-window needs to stay open, do not close it!
5) Only two things remain of the basic setup process - removing the encryption from the UO Client, and logging onto your shard for the first time!
Removing the encryption from the UO Client is necessary to allow the Client to communicate with UOX3, which doesn't support the encryption in the Client. There are several ways one can remove the encryption from the UO Client, we'll concentrate on one particular method; By using Razor.
Razor removes the encryption from your computer's memory during runtime, meaning it doesn't do any permanent modifications to your UO Client. So if you use the Client on the official UO servers as well, you can simply start up UO normally the next time you want to login to those servers.
Download the latest version of Razor from it's webpage at https://www.uorazor.com/. Then unzip, and install.
After downloading and installing Razor, start it up. You will be greeted by a welcome screen. Leave "Load Client:" on "2D Client (Auto Detect" unless you encounter a problem with auto-detecting the client, or you have multiple clients installed. Make sure the "Patch client encryption" flag is checked, then enter the IP and port of your UOX3 shard. If you're running the UO client on the same computer as your UOX3 shard, enter 127.0.0.1 as IP and 2593 as port.
Once you've completed the initial setup of Razor, click on the Okay button to launch the UO client. You should now be ready to log onto your UOX3 server by entering the username and password you specified in ACCOUNTS.ADM during the UOX3 setup process.
The first thing you'll notice after you've logged in, is that your world is completely empty of any Non-Player Characters (NPCs) as well as any decorative items. You can fix this by either populating and decorating your world manually, or by downloading premade world/spawn-files from the UOX3 Downloads-page at https://www.uox3.org.