Taste Identification

"Does this milk taste bad to you?"

Taste Identification (often abbreviated Taste ID or TID) is one of UO's "Useless Skills" — the skill that lets you identify the contents of an unknown potion, the level of an unknown potion keg, and detect whether food has been poisoned. There are few more perilous jobs in the world than that of "official taster," and Britannia's solution was to grant the official taster a skill that detects the poison before it does any damage. In practice, modern UO removes most of the fear: potions display their type on tooltip, kegs display their level on the tooltip, and food poisoning by Poisoning is rare in PvE outside specific encounters. Taste ID survives mostly for roleplay characters — a Royal Taster build, a paranoid food-snob roleplay, the courtly intrigue archetype.

Mechanics

To use Taste ID: 1. Click the blue gem next to Taste Identification on your skill list (or use a macro). 2. Target a potion, potion keg, or piece of food.

The skill is a one-shot, non-destructive read — you don't consume the potion or eat the food in the test. The targeting is fast, no animation delay, no resource cost.

Modern relevance — and why it's "Useless"

In modern UO, Taste ID's value is largely supplanted:

The skill remains the only way to detect food poisoning before consuming. For a roleplay-driven character — say, a Britannian noble's chef, a tavern-keeper, or a Court taster — Taste ID is genuine.

Training

Past 75: the workaround

The Satyr trick is the standard method for any "stuck" skill above 75 — Taste ID is one of several skills (alongside Begging, Camping, etc.) where past-75 gains break.

Producing poisoned food for training

Most efficient training food is poisoned fish steaks. Production:

1. GM Fishing to harvest fish; cut into fish steaks (or cook into fish steaks).
2. GM Poisoning to apply poison to the steaks. Use Lesser Poison for early TID training (Greater/Deadly poison creates poisoned-food kits that are harder to find unpoisoned-equivalent for variety).
3. Stack and lock down a chest of poisoned steaks.

Alternative: a friend (or alt-character) with Poisoning can produce the steaks. Buying poisoned-steaks from a vendor is rare but possible.

Stat-modifier interaction

Taste ID is one of UO's purely-mental skills. Its difficulty checks are governed by Intelligence: - Higher INT → faster training rolls. - A Taste ID training character benefits from soulstoning in 100 INT alongside the skill.

Roleplay applications

For dedicated roleplay characters, Taste ID can be coupled with these complementary builds:

See also

• Poisoning — produces the poisoned food TID detects
• Forensic_Eval — sister investigative skill
• Item_Identification — paired Useless Skill
• Cooking — produces the food in question
• Alchemy — produces the potions TID identifies
• Twisted_Weald — Satyr Discordance training site
• Scroll_of_Transcendence — past-75 skill gain method