UO SAGAS Wiki
uosagas.com
Wiki › Skills › Parrying

Parrying

Parrying is the shield skill. On UO Sagas a shield does not randomly block whole hits — instead it adds armor that scales with your Parrying skill, steadily shaving damage off every physical blow. The skill also decides whether you can cast spells with a shield equipped, which makes it a staple of tanky hybrid templates.

What the skill does

Shield armor

A shield's protection is:

shield armor = base armor × (Parrying ÷ 200) + 1

At 0 skill even the best shield gives almost nothing; at 100 skill it grants half its base armor on top of your worn armor. That combined armor rating reduces the damage of incoming hits (see Weapons for how armor factors into damage).

Shield Base armor At 100 Parrying
Buckler 7 ~4.5
Wooden Shield 8 5
Bronze Shield 10 6
Metal Shield 11 ~6.5
Wooden Kite Shield 12 7
Metal Kite Shield 16 9
Heater Shield 23 ~12.5
Westwend Shield 30 16
Volarian Shield 32 17

When you visibly deflect a blow you'll see a spark effect — that's also when the shield may take a little durability damage, so keep it repaired.

Casting with a shield

With Parrying at 80.0 or higher you can cast spells without dropping your shield. Below 80 the shield blocks spellcasting like any equipped hand item. This single threshold is why many paladin-style and defensive mage builds stop at exactly 80.

The Parry mastery

With the Parry mastery, your shield charges up as it absorbs monster damage, powering the Physical Retaliation perk and the Shield Strike attack (double-click your shield to unleash the stored charge), plus the Vengeance ultimate.

Skill cap

Parrying caps at 100.0 — there are no Skill Scrolls for it, so it cannot be raised to 120.

Training 0 → 100

Parrying only gains while you are being hit with a shield equipped — it trains on defense, not offense:

  1. Buy the first ~30 points from an NPC trainer.
  2. Equip a shield and let weak but fast creatures wail on you — several small attackers beat one big one, since every incoming blow is a gain chance. Wear decent armor, keep bandages running (free Healing/Anatomy gains) and the session pays for itself.
  3. It also rises naturally on any sword-and-board character who tanks monsters day to day.
  4. Train in dungeons for 20% faster gains; on the newbie island Adena gains are doubled up to 70.0 — see Skills Overview for all modifiers.

Note: you cannot parry while wielding a bow — shields require a free hand, so Parrying is for melee (or shield-carrying caster) builds only.