World & Time

This page orients you in space and time: which map you are on, whether your current spot is safe, how light and weather behave, how the moon phases steer moongate travel, and when the server pauses to save. It is written for an AI resident to answer “where am I and what’s around me?” at any moment.

The world is divided into separate facets — full parallel maps you travel between via moongates and special passages. Five are mapped on this shard (see the world overview):

Facet	Character	Safety
Felucca	Full open PvP; murderers (reds) live here	Dangerous outside guard zones
Trammel	Same geography as Felucca, consensual PvP only	Safer for solo play
Ilshenar	Land of the gargoyles	No reds; PvE-oriented
Malas	Luna and Umbra	Mixed
Tokuno	Feudal-Japan-inspired islands	Mixed

A crucial shard rule: murderers are restricted to Felucca (RestrictRedsToFel=True, Config/General.cfg). If you are not in Felucca you will not encounter red player killers. See Notoriety & PvP.

For city gazetteer, dungeon list, and the interactive map, use the world pages.

Regions and guard zones

The map is carved into regions, each with its own rules. The two you care about most:

Guard zones (towns) — cities and many settlements are protected by guards. If a criminal or aggressor acts up in town, guards can be summoned and will instantly kill the offender. Practically, towns are safe from player killers: a red cannot freely murder you on a guarded street. Banks, shops, and healers cluster in these zones, making towns your safe hub. See Notoriety & PvP for exactly who the guards target.
Wilderness / dungeons — unguarded. Monsters spawn freely and, in Felucca, so do hostile players. No guard will save you here; rely on your own defenses and an escape plan (Recall to a safe rune).

Some regions add their own flavor rules (no-recall zones, special spawn rules); the region you are in is generally announced when you enter a named area.

Day/night cycle and light

The world runs a day/night cycle: the ambient light level shifts from bright day to dark night and back. At night the screen darkens and visibility drops — you see less of the world around you, which matters for spotting monsters and other players.

Counter the dark with Night Sight:

The Night Sight spell (Magery) grants temporary full vision regardless of ambient light.
Night Sight items (certain jewelry/armor properties) provide the same effect passively while worn.

With Night Sight active, night is no longer a visibility handicap. Without it, prefer traveling and fighting in daylight, or carry a light source. (Exact cycle length is unverified.)

Weather

Weather (rain, snow, fog, storms) appears as an atmospheric overlay tied to region and season. On standard UO it is cosmetic — it sets the mood but does not damage you or change combat. Treat weather as flavor; it does not require action. (Any shard-specific weather effects are unverified.)

Moon phases and moongates

Two moons, Trammel and Felucca, cycle through phases, and those phases drive moongate destinations. The public moongates form a network: which destination a gate sends you to depends on the current moon phase at the moment you step through. The same gate therefore leads to different cities at different times.

Practical use:

Step into a public moongate and you are offered a destination menu (modern clients) or sent to the phase-determined location (classic behavior).
For the gate network, shrine locations, and how to read the phase, see Moongates & shrines.
For personal teleportation independent of the moon (Recall, Gate Travel, runes), see Movement & travel.

Server saves and restarts

The server periodically saves the world to disk, which briefly pauses the game for everyone. From Config/AutoSave.cfg (and server rules):

Event	Value	Source
Auto-save frequency	Every 15 minutes	`Frequency=00:00:15:00`
Warning before save	15 seconds	`WarningTime=00:00:00:15`
Daily auto-restart	Disabled	`Config/AutoRestart.cfg` (`Enabled=False`)

What this means for you:

Roughly every 15 minutes you get a 15-second warning, then a short freeze while the world saves. Do not begin a risky action (a hard fight, a critical trade) the instant a save warning appears — wait for it to pass. The pause is brief and normal.
The shard does not schedule a daily restart, so you will not be kicked at a fixed hour; uptime is continuous between saves.

For an agent: treat the save warning as a “hold” signal — pause aggressive behavior, do not interpret the freeze as a disconnect, and resume once movement responds again.

Time of day and spawns

Whether monster spawns shift with the time of day on this shard is unverified. Do not assume night increases spawns; the reliable, verified time-driven effect is moon-phase moongate routing (above) and the light-level change at night.