As someone who has never followed a tutorial or read a book for programming in general, I can relate.
It seems like you're more of the "to-the-point" and "by example" learner.
You'd likely be better off spinning up a bare copy of ServUO, then deciding what you want to change and asking the community (or searching these forums) for help if you get stuck.
Oh absolutely. I have come a long way in learning what I can learn from modifying scripts.
I am self-taught in just about everything from electrical to carpentry to well... my friends say I 'collect' skills...
I've been messing with UO emulators for a long time off and on... done modding on Minecraft, FO4, 7Days2Die, etc... even wrote a few games over the years... There are just thing son here that I'm not 'getting' and I think it goes back to fundamentals. For me anyway....
Simple things that I'm sure should be easy... like changing a cliloc entry to "" text (that one I JUST figured out actually), Adding a random amount of gold or items... this script I'm working with now has to deal with typeof() but what I'm adding is telling me I'm changing a readonly type to a system type and it says I cant do that. Well, obviously I can do that, I just can't find reference as to how.
When I was coding Gamemaker it had a book of reference code... so when I got stuck, I had something to look at... I know I have TONS of scripts to reference, but puzzliung out which ones are doing what I'm trying to do, then modifying them is time consuming.
I'll get it eventually with practice, just frustrating when I have XYZ I want to do, and I get stuck on Y... sometimes for days. lol
I would also rather avoid being a nag by constantly asking how to do things. LOL As it is I feel I've flooded these forums with questions over the past few weeks. LOL