Ultima Online Spirit Speak - every Necromancy formula it feeds, and the healing formula with a factor-of-ten variant

The Necromancy formulas it is written into

uo.com’s summary is that “spirit speak enhances the duration, or the damage potential, of the Necromancer’s spells”. What makes the skill unusually legible is that several of those enhancements are published as arithmetic rather than as adjectives:

Spell	How Spirit Speak enters, as published
Curse Weapon	Duration in Seconds = Caster’s Spirit Speak × 10 ÷ 34 + 1
Strangle	“The power of the effect is equal to the Caster’s Spirit Speak skill ÷ 10. The minimum power is 4.”
Vengeful Spirit	Duration in Seconds = ( Caster’s Spirit Speak × 80 ) ÷ 120 + 10
Wraith Form	Mana leech = Spirit Speak ÷ 5 — published as 20% at Grandmaster and 24% at 120
Animate Dead	The resulting undead form depends on “the caster’s necromancy and spirit speak skill”
Exorcism	“Requires 100 Spirit Speak” — a hard gate, not a scaling term
Summon Familiar	Each familiar has a paired Necromancy and Spirit Speak requirement

An unpublished list [!] adds Pain Spike, Corpse Skin, Blood Oath and Mind Rot as spells whose effectiveness depends on Spirit Speak, with Summon Familiar, Exorcism and Vengeful Spirit as spells that outright require it.

The Wraith Form line is the one to hold on to. 20% at Grandmaster, 24% at 120 — those are published endpoints, not derived ones, and they are the clearest published argument anywhere for scrolling this skill past 100.

[!] Beyond Strangle’s power formula, which Necromancy spells’ damage Spirit Speak scales is not published. uo.com says only “the duration, or the damage potential” in general terms.

Healing by channelling - and the factor of ten

The second function is a heal that has nothing to do with Healing or bandages. You channel energy either from a corpse or from yourself, and the rules for which are published:

• “The corpse must be within 3 tiles to be used, otherwise, the player will channel his own energy.” You do not choose — proximity chooses.
• “You will need at least 10 points of Mana in order to channel your own energy.”

The formulas are where it falls apart. [!] An unpublished version of uo.com’s maximum-healed formulas has the Spirit Speak term multiplied by 10 [!] — with both minimums written exactly the same. Only the uo.com rows are official.

Channelling from a corpse	Minimum healed	Maximum healed
uo.com	( Fame ÷ 500 ) + 1	Spirit Speak ÷ 20
Unpublished [!]	Fame ÷ 500 + 1	( Spirit Speak × 10 ) ÷ 20

Channelling from yourself	Maximum healed	Minimum healed
uo.com	( Spirit Speak ÷ 100 ) + 4	( Maximum ÷ 2 ) + 1
Unpublished [!]	( Spirit Speak × 10 ) ÷ 100 + 4	Max ÷ 2 + 1

This is almost certainly the skill value being expressed in different units — whole points against tenths — but uo.com does not state its units, and the fact that the minimums are written identically in both versions makes even that reading uncomfortable. No reconciliation is published, so none is made here. Do not compute a healing value from either formula.

What can be said without arithmetic is the structure, and the structure is the useful part:

• Corpse channelling scales on the corpse’s fame, not on your skill, in its minimum. A field full of high-fame corpses raises the floor on every channel.
• Self-channelling scales on your skill, and costs mana — at least 10.
• You cannot pick. Stand within 3 tiles of a corpse and you get the corpse version; step away and you get the self version.

Ghost speech at 100

uo.com: “At 100 skill a third, lesser, function is attained; the ability to see and hear ghosts.”

Without it a dead player’s speech reaches you as garbled text. At 100 Spirit Speak you read it plainly. uo.com calls this “lesser”, and in PvM it is; in a PvP fight, being the only living player who can understand what the dead are saying is a straightforward information advantage that lasts as long as the fight does.

100 is a busy number for this skill. It is also where Exorcism becomes castable, where the Vampire Bat familiar unlocks, and where Wraith Form’s mana leech reaches 20%.

The familiars, and the other thresholds

Summon Familiar gates on paired Necromancy and Spirit Speak values — both, not either:

Familiar	Necromancy	Spirit Speak
Horde Minion	30	30
Shadow Wisp	50	50
Dark Wolf	60	60
Death Adder	80	80
Vampire Bat	100	100

The Vampire Bat is the one worth the 100: “melee damage done by the bat converts to healing for the caster in an equal amount”. The Dark Wolf at 60/60 grants wolf taming abilities, which is the only published link between this skill and Animal Taming.

The rest of the published thresholds:

Value	What it is
3 tiles	Corpse range for channelling; beyond it you channel yourself instead
10 mana	Minimum to channel your own energy — a resource threshold, not a skill one
Power 4	Strangle’s floor, below which Spirit Speak ÷ 10 does not reduce it further
100	Ghost speech, Exorcism, the Vampire Bat, and 20% Wraith Form mana leech
120	24% Wraith Form mana leech

In PvP

• Wraith Form mana leech is the headline. Spirit Speak ÷ 5 — 20% at Grandmaster, 24% at 120 — leeched from the target’s actual mana pool. uo.com adds the caveat that matters: “if the targets mana pool is empty then you leech nothing.” Against a drained opponent it stops paying, which is exactly when you most want it to.
• Curse Weapon duration is a straight Spirit Speak function, and the spell returns 50% of weapon damage as hit points. Longer duration means a longer window where every swing heals you.
• Strangle power is Spirit Speak ÷ 10 with a floor of 4, and Strangle does more damage as the target’s stamina drops — so it pairs with anything that drains stamina.
• Vengeful Spirit’s lifespan is entirely yours to set. ( Spirit Speak × 80 ) ÷ 120 + 10 seconds. The revenant lives exactly as long as your skill says.
• Exorcism at 100 is a champion-spawn tool: it relocates player ghosts around the caster to a shrine, works only inside a champion spawn region, and spares players who still have a corpse on the same subserver.
• Ghost speech at 100 — you read the dead, and nobody else does.
• The self-heal is usable in combat, at a cost of at least 10 mana. [!] Whether the channel has a cast time, a cooldown, or can be interrupted is not stated on uo.com’s wiki. A uo.com forum thread title points at interruption under Protection; a thread title is not a mechanics source and nothing is asserted from it here.

In PvM

• Corpse channelling is the PvM-native mode, and it gets better the more things you have killed. Minimum healed is ( Fame ÷ 500 ) + 1, so high-fame corpses raise the floor — and in PvM the ground is covered in them. Range 3 tiles.
• Animate Dead quality depends on it. The undead you raise takes a form dependent on “the original creature’s fame and body and the caster’s necromancy and spirit speak skill”, up to 3 at once. Low Spirit Speak means worse pets from the same corpses.
• Familiars are gated on it in pairs, topping out at the Vampire Bat, whose damage converts to healing for you.
• Curse Weapon is the melee necromancer’s sustain — a long window of 50% life drain on every hit, and the length of that window is this skill.
• Wraith Form keeps the casting going through a long fight, which is what makes it a farming form rather than just a PvP one.

No mastery of its own - but the Necromancy mastery runs on it

Spirit Speak has no Skill Mastery. It is not on uo.com’s list of the nineteen. But it is load-bearing for someone else’s: both Necromancy mastery abilities scale on it.

• Command Undead — success “based on necromancy skill, spirit speak skill, mastery level, and creature barding difficulty”. Requires 2 follower slots.
• Conduit — reduced spell strength “based on necromancy skill, spirit speak skill, and mastery level”.

So a necromancer’s mastery is partly a Spirit Speak mastery, and since masteries count real skill only — uo.com excludes item bonuses explicitly — a Spirit Speak ring will not carry either ability even though it will carry Curse Weapon’s duration.

[!] No per-level numbers are published for either ability.

Caps, stats and training

Spirit Speak has Power Scrolls — listed on uo.com as “Spiritspeak” — from champion spawns, +5 / +10 / +15 / +20 to a 120 cap, non-cumulative, against the 720 total skill cap. Primary stat Intelligence, secondary Strength.

Unusually, scrolling past 100 is published as meaningful rather than assumed: Wraith Form’s leech is stated at 20% at Grandmaster and 24% at 120, and Curse Weapon, Strangle and Vengeful Spirit all carry a linear Spirit Speak term that keeps paying past 100. Most skills cannot show you that. This one can.

It sits in jewellery Group 2 for the Skill Bonus property, with Wrestling, Provocation, Tactics and Animal Taming — one skill per group per piece, a second overwriting the first.

Training. Spirit Speak is one of the four skills on uo.com’s default “necromancer” new-character template, alongside Necromancy, Meditation and Swordsmanship. uo.com: “The NPCs in the Necromancy Hall will be glad to train several of your skills a little higher, up to 40, for a modest fee” — and it specifically advises buying training in both Necromancy and Spirit Speak.

Above that, the method is one line and it is the right one: cast Curse Weapon over and over, with the gear and mana regeneration to keep it going. That works because Curse Weapon is the cheapest Spirit Speak-scaled spell in the book — 7 mana, 0 Necromancy minimum — so you can spam it from the first minute. There is also an accelerated-gain quest: uo.com notes “the reward from the medium’s spirit speak quest is a bag of necromancy reagents.”

[!] No numeric gain rates or skill-range training table is published for Spirit Speak.

What is not published

• [!] Any reconciliation of the two healing maximum formulas, which differ by a factor of ten — or the units uo.com’s version is using.
• [!] Whether the healing channel has a cast time or cooldown, and whether it can be interrupted.
• [!] Whether corpse channelling consumes or destroys the corpse.
• [!] Which Necromancy spells’ damage Spirit Speak scales, beyond Strangle’s power formula.
• [!] Any relationship between Spirit Speak and Healing, Anatomy or Forensic Evaluation. They are separate systems and nothing published connects them — do not conflate the channel heal with bandages.
• [!] Whether Spirit Speak affects anything at all outside Necromancy.
• [!] Per-level numbers for Command Undead or Conduit.
• [!] Any Spirit Speak Skill Mastery. There is none.

Where these come from

uo.com Necromancy and Spirit Speak · uo.com Skill Masteries · uo.com Scrolls of Power · uo.com Skills, Stats & Attributes · uo.com Imbuing · uo.com Skill Gain Systems. Everything here is from uo.com or the game itself; anything uo.com does not publish is marked [!] as unpublished where it appears.