Ultima Online Wrestling - what is published about unarmed combat, and the three things that are not

For official shards · Combat skill · Str/Dex · goes to 120 with a Power Scroll · every figure sourced

Wrestling is the weapon skill that applies when your hands are empty. uo.com gives it two sentences on the Melee Fighting page — “while Wrestling is a combat skill it is most often used by mages. No weapons are used and both hands must be empty to give a chance of blocking an attack” — and that is the entire official write-up. There is no uo.com Wrestling page.

This page is short because the published material is thin, and it says where the gaps are rather than filling them. Three of the things a reader most wants — unarmed base damage, unarmed swing speed and the unarmed block formula — are not published by uo.com, so no number is given for them here.

Three things nobody publishes

Said plainly, and first, because it is the most useful thing here:

[!] Unarmed base damage is not published. uo.com gives no number or range for a bare-handed hit, or for how Wrestling skill scales it. The skill affects the damage you deal, but that is never quantified.
[!] Unarmed swing speed is not published. Every weapon in the game has a printed speed; fists do not. No base speed value for a wrestling attack is published.
[!] The unarmed block chance is not published. uo.com says both hands empty “give a chance of blocking an attack” and stops there — no formula, no percentage, no stated relationship to Wrestling skill. This is a different mechanic from Parry, whose three formulas are published, and [!] whether those formulas apply at all to a fully unarmed character is not stated either.

Everything below this point is published unless marked [!]. Nothing above it is.

What it does for defence

This is the reason most characters carry it. Wrestling is your weapon skill for defensive purposes when you are unarmed, checked against the attacker’s weapon skill exactly as any weapon skill would be. Unpublished figures put real numbers on it [!]:

120 Wrestling against 120 Swordsmanship — a 50% [!] chance to be hit.
A 20-point deficit — roughly 58% [!].

That is the whole argument for a mage taking Wrestling: eight percentage points [!] of incoming hits per twenty points of skill, on every swing anyone aims at you. The skill also affects how often you attack as well as the damage, though neither is given as a figure.

Disarm and Paralyzing Blow - the two moves that need no Tactics

Wrestling has two special moves, and they are unique in the game for not requiring any Tactics at all:

Move	Wrestling	Mana	What uo.com says it does
Disarm	70	20	“Allows you to disarm your foe”, leaving them unable to re-arm for 5 seconds.
Paralyzing Blow	90	30	“Leave the target stunned, unable to move, attack, or cast spells, for a few seconds.”

uo.com’s Special Moves page carries the note on both: the move “is exempt from the Tactics requirement when used as an Unarmed (wrestling) special move”. In short: Disarm at 70 skill, Paralyzing Blow at 90, and no Tactics needed for either.

That exemption is the entire reason the stun mage template exists. A caster can buy a hard stun for 90 points of Wrestling without also buying 60 points of Tactics that do nothing else for them.

[!] Paralyzing Blow’s duration when used unarmed is not published. uo.com gives only “a few seconds” in the general description.

Note also that Wrestling is not in the combined-skill mana discount pool for special moves — that list is the five weapon skills, Parry, Lumberjacking, Stealth, Poisoning, Bushido and Ninjitsu. A wrestler pays full price unless those other skills are on the template.

Both hands empty, and the spellbook question

uo.com is explicit that the block chance requires both hands empty. A mage can, however, equip a spellbook with item properties and still use Wrestling [!]; the older rule against holding a spellbook was removed.

[!] Those two statements are not necessarily in conflict — one is about the block chance, the other about using the skill — but nothing published reconciles them, and nothing states whether holding a spellbook forfeits the unarmed block. It is recorded here unresolved, because that is its actual published state.

The Champion - the Wrestling mastery

An easy one to get wrong: Wrestling sits in uo.com’s Warrior Specialities mastery group, with Bushido, Chivalry and Ninjitsu — not the weapon-skill group. So it gets Intuition, not Warrior’s Gifts. The title is The Champion, and it needs above 90 real skill.

Knockout (passive) — a “damage bonus to each hit based on mastery level”.
Rampage — 20 mana. Continuous hits grant hit point and stamina regeneration, casting focus, and swing speed increases. The casting focus is the notable part: it is the mastery that makes an unarmed caster harder to interrupt.
Fists of Fury — 20 mana. Three rapid hits within a 2-tile radius; the third deals direct damage based on mastery level.
Intuition (shared passive) — “mana is increased based on mastery level”. A caster benefit, not a warrior one.

[!] None of the four has a published per-level number — not Knockout’s damage bonus, not Rampage’s regeneration, casting focus or swing speed values, not Fists of Fury’s third-hit damage, not Intuition’s mana. [!] And unlike several other masteries, no PvP cap is published for any of them, which is not the same as there being none.

In PvP and in PvM

PvP. Paralyzing Blow at 90 with no Tactics is the classic stun-mage tool, and Disarm at 70 strips a weapon for five seconds. Underneath both sits the defensive number: skipping Wrestling on a caster means being hit far more often than 50% of the time by anyone with a trained weapon skill. Rampage’s casting focus and Intuition’s extra mana are both aimed at the same character.

PvM. Knockout’s flat damage bonus per hit and Fists of Fury’s three-hit burst make an unarmed build genuinely workable rather than a novelty, and Rampage’s regeneration on continuous hits is sustain for a long fight. The full melee damage stack still applies to a fist: Tactics ÷ 1.6, Anatomy ÷ 2, Strength × 0.3 and item Damage Increase — and Tactics improves whenever you hit an opponent with a weapon or a fist. [!] What it applies to is the unpublished unarmed base damage, so no worked number can be given.

Caps, training, and one piece of history

Wrestling has Power Scrolls: 105 / 110 / 115 / 120, against the 720 total skill cap. Primary stat Strength, secondary Dexterity. Professional title Wrestler.

There is a full route, unpublished [!], which is more than most skills get:

Range	Method
0–50	The instructor in New Haven, then the skill gain quest
50–65	Hire the 6gp [!] wrestling NPCs in the Jhelom pits
65–85	Hire the 8gp [!] wrestler NPCs
85–120	Summon Daemon, or a Golem with a Fishing Pole

One historical note: before Age of Shadows the wrestling specials needed supplementary skills — Arms Lore for Disarm and Anatomy for Paralyzing Blow — and carried 10-second cooldowns with stamina penalties. None of that applies now.

Where these come from

uo.com Melee Fighting · uo.com Melee Damage Increase · uo.com Special Moves · uo.com Skill Masteries · uo.com Parry · uo.com Skills, Stats & Attributes · uo.com Skill Titles · 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.

Every skill in the game

This is one of fifty-eight. The full skill list has all of them — what each does, its stats, where it caps, and which skills it works with.

The other 10 combat skills:
Anatomy · Archery · Fencing · Focus · Healing · Mace Fighting · Parry · Swordsmanship · Tactics · Throwing

The spell books

Magery · Necromancy · Chivalry · Bushido · Ninjitsu · Spellweaving · Mysticism