Devs? We're you aware how bad imbuing would kill the game

And I've gone through a set of weapons on my sampire. I would say either you don't do enough or you are playing something where you don't get hit that often.

Besides, previously- before imbuing, once you found the perfect piece or crafted it using a runic, you NEVER needed to replace it, thanks to POF.

I do not seek or want credibility from anybody on this or any other forum..I simply was stating my opinion in which I have already stated.. a bunch of those numbers and other things were a complete exaggeration...the fact of the matter is a crafter is somebody who what? Crafts things ie armor shields..essentially now there is no reason to be a pure crafter other then maybe getting a barbed kit once in a while and making a few mil..imbuing is NOT a crafting ability..hence the reason it is used with mysticism like eval to magery..now do 90% of people use imbuing on a crafter..yes but only because focus has a much better use in pvp then imbuing would and it has the same bonuses so it is just more logical..you do not "need" a PvM toon to be a tailor,smith,carpenter,tinker,fletcher(minus a few pesky special ore eles also can be avoided)
However with imbuing if you ever want to achieve the highest intensity you need special ingredients which for the most part can only be obtained in a dungeon so yes it is almost impractical to have a imbuing toon without a PvM toon..disagree agree Idc..ive stated my opinion flame as u may it changes nothing on how I feel or for that matter how u do..so in FINALITY...that's why imbuing has killed "crafting" not creating mods on armor but crafting...now Petra dude after a few more flames lets jut lock this thread..it's becoming quite redundant..


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Yes your right an interdepent linked economy is a huge part of imbuing which is a great thing if you ask me. You have stated your opinon and targeted it at the devs. You should send them emails if you don't want others to say that not only did we like this but we love this and have no idea what your talking about. I think most folks have been pretty nice to you over this but I would say the player base is overwhelmingly in favor of imbuing and what it brings to us all.

To be honest, isn't this post more about AOS itemization?

Imbuing and reforging brought balance to the game if you really think about it. Before imbuing, scripters and dupers had the monopoly on high end items since normal players can not compete through normal game play. Unless you are an established player with enough gold to pay the cheaters you could never catchup.

Now, players can have access to items that are comparable as long as he\she is willing to put in the time and gather the ingredients. The gap between the have and have not are closer because of imbuing. It at least allow new\returning players to be able to participate high level content in shorter period of time.

It also opened up more options when it comes to character development because it offers players ability to customize items to better suit different templates. It even provides possibility to explore new templates that were not possible before.

The absolute best Imbued items, start out as GM Exceptionally CRAFTED items. Particularly Exceptional Armor made by a Blacksmith/Tailor with GM Armslore. The only "crafting" there was after AoS launched, but before Imbuing was introduced, was a bunch of scripters blowing through the Barbed Kits they scripted for until the RNG favored them and they got a useable/sellable piece. If you're bitching about Imbuing requiring you to hunt down monsters for the ingredients, then wtf do you think Tailoring is? You have to kill creatures for their Leather. Collecting Barbed Leather tends to be beyond what most pure craftsman can do without the use of a PvM char.

Hyperbole is a near instant fail on U.Hall. If you have an argument, back it up with those annoying little things called "facts." Yes, I know, they can be scary and sometimes terribly incovnenient. If you don't have them, then whatever you are saying is opinion and nothing more.

Most people have imbuing on their crafter because it makes sense. Once you have made a piece of armor or a weapon, you then go about the process of refining it to fit a suit using Imbuing. You use resources for the Imbuing process to craft the enhancements.

You assertion that Imbuing isn't a crafting skill because the Devs decided to oddly pair Imbuing with Mysticism is complete and utter fail, especially since you go on to list that "90% of people use imbuing on a crafter". You gutted your own argument. Focus augmenting Mysticism has nothing to do with Imbuing. Nothing at all.

Crafters also take things that other people have made/ctafted and continue to build on them to turn them into slightly different or completely different things.

Uhm. Spaghetti logic is bad too.

Imbuing resources coming from mobs has nothing to do with the skill either, it has to do with the economy - what little of one UO has managed to keep.

You only have yourself to blame...

Imbuing hasn't killed UO, nor crafting, its enhanced it for damn near everyone.

Actually...no.

First, imbuing fails a lot at lower skill levels, much like a beginning cook will have more ruined dishes than successes. It takes time and effort to get where you can make a soufflé with your eyes closed and without it collapsing. Imbuing at 120 is like being good enough to make five dishes simultaneously. If you didn't burn at least one, it's skill but also a lot of luck. I'm sure you'll counter that there's no skill involved in repeatedly pushing buttons. Certainly, just like you don't have to work in swing angles and strength as a dexxer wields a weapon, or a mage needs to get the correct and balancing amounts of reagents when casting a spell.

Second, you ignore what it takes to imbue a suit. Anyone can imbue all 70s/MR1/+42 stats, much like anyone can make mac and cheese from a box. The latter is good enough for most palates, and the former is better than most pre-SA suits. But notwithstanding the time or expense it takes to put the ingredients together, it takes skill to imbue a perfect suit that doesn't waste room, and I'm not talking about imbuing skill. I have wowed friends with creations they didn't think had room, but I've grinded out dozens of barbed pieces to throw them into a spreadsheet, and working out the perfect combination to get one or two properties. This is like the lobster mac and cheese I love at a certain place, all made from scratch and extraordinarily well prepared.

Its not easy to imbue a high end suit. I high end suit will require dozens of each piece to be made to get the perfect combonation of crafted resist to augment any artifacts so minimize the amount of imbues on resist so you have room for more mods. Its not really an issue on the low end suits, but to say a imbuer can just churn out top notch suits with no effort is insane.

My issue with Imbuing is simple.

It's more powerful then roughly 90% of the artifacts available to you in the game, including the ones from Doom / Tokuno / High Sea's / Stygian Abyss / Peerless bosses. That's just not a good system, now what is the purpose of going to those places when you can just sit down and craft a guarenteed piece that will be better then what you wanted?

Maybe imbuing would be fine if the resources / powders of fort and everything else assosciated with it were not duped to the end of the world.

It's not hard to have a stash of pieces that you crafted and mix and match, it takes a little time but its not hard by any means. Just because something doesn't fit in the current build your going for doesn't mean it won't work in another.

Let me start off by saying I've been away since a few months after the launch of SA, so I could be way off the mark here... but isn't the first part of your issue a good thing? Shouldn't Legendary crafted items be better than artifacts? Isn't this what everyone complained about pre SA - 'bring back the days of GM crafted armour'? If you want to use a HoM or an Orni in your suit, sure, go ahead... but at least now you don't have to spend years and/or hundreds of millions to build a halfway decent suit around those arties.

And as to your comments about bosses... perhaps the purpose of going is the joy of a well-oiled group hunt, or the - still! - thrill of seeing that item pop into your pack (and hoping it's not a rubbish one lol). Perhaps it's the risk of taking in a new skillset character to see how well they do, now that you can easily throw a high resist, 100% lrc, maxed fc/fcr suit together without stripping another char. And besides, just because the rare drops aren't the be-all and end-all anymore, doesn't mean you can't still make a nice little packet out of them.

I'm in the process of getting Tailoring to 120 on my crafter, and will soon be using my 7th char slot to make a gargoyle artificer. Seems like the best time since the 'good old days' to be getting into crafting.

Just my 2gp.

The point is that a good 'chef' will have flexibility and an art to making something - something unique that other would have some difficulty replicating. Mac & Cheese is simple - add some ingredients, get the same result even for the slowest of human beings. Yes, you need 120 skill to imbue max props but then when you craft something you can create exactly the same thing each time - the only variability is the resists randomly given by the EX bonus. (Base resist and leather resist are known).

Its really not as difficult as you suggest. Know the type of armor you are creating and resist of the material (barbed). Then craft and keep basic items with one or two particular resist higher so that when the suit is assembled it hits the max in say poison and energy. Then imbue the rest of the resists using the lowest pieces at that mod to get to 70 - then add your special stuff. Its not that hard and takes a little bit extra work but essentially if you tell me what suit you crafted for someone - i can guarantee I can copy it exactly - no variation. It may take me recycling a few dozen base pieces - but the max properties/numbers and choice of them work out exactly the same. Given this you can essentially order your gear to max your suit. It is almost the same as just 'adjusting' your armor stats from a menu.

Compare this to a game like Diablo III that is item based but uses primarily loot or random crafted goods with socketed gems. You can 'strive' for a particular build but no two suits are exactly alike and you must craft or farm to produce a suit even close to similar to someone elses. There is variability in the game.

UO has killed that with imbuing. Go sit at the bank. Most suits are the same 2-3 arties (Tinker legs, crimson, mr 2 robe, tangle etc) filled in with the same imubed armor (MR2, mana 8, stam 8 etc) that fills out the resists. The only real 'cost' to the suit is obtaining/buying the arties and obtaining/buying the ingredients to craft it. The value of the crafted item is no more than the ingredients used to craft it . Period.

That is my point. Imbuing has taken variability out of suit building and made happy meal suits. You plunk down your $$ or ingredients and get the exact same suit time after time.

The only case of variability is in using the forge tool to enhance with Heartwood that adds random properties to wood armor for elves. Outside of that pretty much everything is ordered. Yes you might burn a few dozen barbed gorgets till you get the base resist you need - but honestly - is that really much variability? The cost of 4 barb leather per gorget is hardly part of the equation.

I have eight houses whose storage is more valuable, and my time is more valuable than producing a lot of pieces and keeping them sorted. It's easier for me to buy 1000 barbed hides and produce pieces as needed for a new uber suit.

Only for the most maximized pieces, perhaps. I was able to make great things at 110, where percentages were nearly nil but doable. It all depends on how many times you're willing to fail. It takes a lot of imbuing successes post-120 to make up for the cost of residue and gems to train from 110 and 120.

You didn't do me the simple courtesy of reading what I wrote. Wow, man, you are a veritable genius for discovering how to align resists! The rest of us should bow to you!

Sheesh, keep on stating the obvious that any reasonably experienced imbuer knows. One more time: anyone can put together the same basic suit, or before you spew something again, a very good suit requiring millions worth of ingredients. It's putting that perfect suit together, getting those couple of extra properties or a combination that nobody else thought was possible, because for my own use I'd plan things with the utmost care. Your poor analogy of mac and cheese, your own example of something anyone can do, is not even to the level of some line chef who makes a pretty good new dish, let alone a chef with a Michelin star who combines and adds flavors nobody thought of before. There's no mere following directions here. It requires thought, creativity, and patience to experiment, until you envision the result so well that you balance it without any waste.

Had you been nicer about this, I might have given you a thing or two to consider beyond mere resists. The most I'll do is tell you that when I've shown my spreadsheets to friends, the first response is, "How did you do that?" It's all about not following the recipe everyone else knows, and inventing your own way that produces more.

And that is better how, pray tell? I always found Diablo and Diablo II extremely limited because of the lack of crafting systems. Hack and slash can retain a thinking person's interest for only so long, so I won't bother with III. Since you bring that up, the closest to UO was its earliest days, before smiths mined enough ingots to get high skill. We scrounged whatever magic armor we found, mixing and matching for optimal dex penalty.

You might have had a stronger argument had you omitted the second paragraph. Actually, you should have kept out the first too. You don't even realize that your complaint is about imbuing per se, but imbuing to complete the basic pieces that a lot of people have. Not being like everyone else, I don't use the same pieces over and over. Thus I craft very different suits for my unorthodox playstyle. And you unintentionally brought up something else: nobody, in UO or real life, crafts something without compensation for time, which is an expense like any other. My time spent to plan my own top suits makes them too valuable to sell them for what people are willing to pay.

This is a strawman. Variability in exceptional pieces isn't even the point, and you should have realized that.

Let's get a blunt answer from you: why do you disdain imbuing as much as you prevent? Notwithstanding your claim of "recipes," it's added variety to the game by allowing players to customize gear for specific situations. Collecting ingredients and imbuing takes less time than the BOD grind with its resulting necessity of mixing and matching. This allows me to spend more time playing. Why are you so opposed?[/quote]

Tops it cost 20m for ingredients and kits..and that's if you want a reforged suit...I can use zero Artie's and compete at a high level so for 20mil or less I made

15% fire eater
15% cold eater
15% energy eater
15% kinetic eater...
100 lrc
40 lmc
75 dci
10 hci
14 mr
69/79/65/72
8 hpi
1 hp regen
2/6 casting
34 sdi
All at Max durability...
For less than 20mil

Edit: limited Artie's I do use HOTM mama orb
( cost more then 20m )
Including hat and orb but imbuing costs less than 20


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Why is it that many people seem to equate "hard" with "time-consuming"? Maybe because as others have pointed out, almost everything in the game is "easy" (i.e. push some buttons) it just takes differing amounts of time. The hard part is knowing when to hit certain buttons. And just because people don't have time to play for days and days or even weeks (my husband and I did a lot of looting pre imbuing days and hardly found anything truly great) does not mean they are lazy. I hardly have any time to play now, I have two young children. I am not lazy but I don't have endless amounts of time and I would prefer to spend my game time going after specialty monsters (like Lady M for a cincture) rather than grinding for gold or armour. Of course, since I returned I have spent a great deal of time looking into and training imbuing because it is an awesome skill and while not perfect is something that I think is a great improvement. In fact, I remember after returning, studying imbuing and going "wow, the devs really did a great job with this balancing so many different things". And in my studies I have found that there are a lot of people asking questions on the crafting forum about imbuing and only a few imbuers who are skilled enough (or have the time?) to put together truly AMAZING suits and the fact that those sell for a lot of money I think is a big clue that imbuing is not an "easy" button. If it was, those suits would be cheap. It is an "easy" button to decent gear and allows casual players like myself quicker access to more content while not being easy (but still possible) to make amazing suits.

I seem to remember a lot of people wishing they could go back to the days where GM crafted armour was the end-all and be-all of gear. Things were simpler then. It was very time consuming and complex to balance gear that was looted trying to make an uber suit after AOS. I remember lots of programs to help out with things like this. Imbuing has certainly made it easier for everyone to have great gear but it does also mean that crafted armour is once again useful and it hasn't made PvM useless. You still need that other loot for ingredients and there are still some arties that are highly sought after (e.g. crimson cincture and such pieces that cannot be crafted) and the new loot system in shame also gives pieces that cannot be crafted or at least not "easily" (i.e reforging is random and does require burning through runics though at a much more reasonable rate to get something useful)

I don't think imbuing has taken variability out of suit building at all. I think all the cookie cutter templates have taken out the variability. If everyone plays sampires or mages then everyone needs one of those two suit possibilities.

So where is teh high end suit you made?

Ability to craft any variety of suit at whim vs finding/creating/obtaining pieces to fit that desire is the difference. Playing any game should be more about the journey than the destination.

I always end up feeling like I am arguing with a PvPer that just wants to 'Set Armor=' to change up their gear.

It used to be you would find or make an LRC 20 LMC 7 Mana 4 piece of armor and FIND a way to fit its resists into your suit by switching out other pieces or craftineg a new set of gloves etc. Now you can craft a LRC 20 LMC 8 Mana 8 piece at will for about 200k in ingredients at any point in time. Basically all monster loot will NEVER be used for a suit (unless its Shame/Wrong loot with uncraftable mods) save for rings/braces.

It is easy mode for crafting and I was never a big fan. I was in favor of other ways of solving the problem of runic kits being 100% random. So instead they went to 100% predictable. Reforging was closer to what I had thought was a better way to solve the issue of full random generation but imbuing came first. Now its - reforge with low level runics for that one property you need - then imbue up the rest so really - again - imbuing has made armor too predictable and too easy to copy suits so everyone has the same armor if desired.

Someone posted a sampire suit and I was able to EXACTLY copy the suit. In a game like Diablo you could post your suit and I'd spend a year trying to replicate it exactly and likely never do so allowing some variability and EFFORT required to duplicate a suit. I might get 95% but I'd never have exactly the same suit.

If you really don't enjoy the effort to crafting and making things and just want the end result - then imbuing is for you. If you appreciate the art and time it takes to develop/build/craft/find a really good suit - then crafting is for you. For me it is about the journey and the effort to build something special.

Post imbuing/reforging there isn't a single suit in UO I"m impressed with. You can copy them all pretty much at will. Back before imbuing (even with runics) there were some pretty impressive suits. I mean, finding a 3/1 ring with 15 lrc was a feat! Today you craft one while you munch cheetoes and go on with life.

Hand carved statue or one poured from a mold. That is the difference.

I used to marvel at finding or crafting a a 'good' superslayer weapon that had maybe 1-2 useful mods. Now I craft a full set of superslayers with whatever mods I want up to the cap - anytime I want. I can make you the exact same set - no effort. There is no sense in accomplishment in that for me. Cookie cutter weapons. Everyone uses the same. Why not give us all store bought daggers then?

I have 2 pre-imbued suits that are such high mods they cannot be replicated with it. Possibly with reforging but not if you add any of the new mods in. Imbuing is nice to make medium items but its not a replacement for artifacts. To get a viable suit you have to combine the two.

Speaking from the point of view from a rather mythical UO being, a "new player" (started playing by the end of August, 2011), I have to say that imbuing helped me greatly to set foot on the game.
You all speak of high end suits and such, but where this makes a difference for people who are starting is low and middle end suits.
Thanks to imbuing, it's easy to hand a newbie a 100% lrc suit with 70 physical and some other decent resists. I was given one by a veteran a week after I started and suddenly I didn't have to carry reagents and could resist the mighty swings of a mongbat.
Thanks to that, I was able to start farming Shame level 1 and when I discovered Luna, I was able to spend my hard earned 200K gold (that was a lot of gold for me on that point) on an all 70s, 100% lrc, MR 6 suit, which made me thrilled.
Imbuing allowed starting players with meager resources to have at least half decent suits within their budget. I doubt that I would have lasted so far into the game if getting half decent armor that suited your skill set was too difficult and pricey.

Almost one year later, I have an imbuer and will always gladly provide a good middle end suit that fits their skill set for people who are starting on my shard of choice, because making one isn't hard.

I'd loveeeee to see screens of this suit


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Please show suit I too would like to see what is so great that cannot be replicated.

Hmm..I thought rings were made with tinker kits?? While I have only been playing a couple years i guess I still have stuff to learn. So you can make rings with a valorite hammer and get over 500 intesity?

BG

No rings are made by tinkering but if you use ML gems you can get rings with over 500 intensity. Its really really rare to get one that is usuable let alone better than imbued. I used ecru citrines for the possibility of getting 50ep

It's not hard take a screenshot of each piece of the suit, back up your claim please.

i spend alot of my time in uo running my vendors because its something i enjoy doing and ive noticed that several doom and stygian artys sell excellent still.So imo imbuing hasnt killed off the arty market but only certain ones actually sell and in all reality its been that way forever.Many of the artys are just worthless but hat of magi/orny/aof/tinker legs/berserker breastplate/lavalier/slither/crimmy/crystaline ring/ and several others still do quite well so there is defo still a market for artys u just have to hunt the right stuff and get lucky to get the right drops that sell well--kinda like always?

LOL! using barbed kits was as simple as clicking and hoping for the right mods! if you had the gold eventually you would get exactly what you wanted by buring 100 barbed its this is true..... Crafting the high end suits and items can take days and days to get them right still... my last "imbued suit" i had to craft nearly 3000 pieces to get exactly what I wanted, also you STILL have to burn runic kits if you want the best gear look up reforging then post again... I am not saying I am a better crafter than anyone but it has taken me months and months of research and trial and error to learn what I now know, if you think all it takes to make those items is 120 imbue then think again... on average I spend 2-4 hours working out suit pieces and mods then I spend anywhere up to 4 days crafting the right base pieces, my sampire has more purpose now as he gathers my imbuing ingreds and it cost either real life cash or millions of gold to get the forged tools to enhance the pieces.

I am guessing you either can't be bothered working imbue so you can craft great items or are disgruntled that you have to pay the price for the high end gear.... other than that I don't understand why after several years you would post this....

So your saying because it takes a lifetime (4 days) for you to create the perfect suit the system is fine?

Meaning you like wasting a lot time trying to assemble something before you can go out and enjoy the game. We already knew that. But going out and fighting monsters, or picking my own brain to design a new combination of gear, is the journey for the vast majority of UO players. I don't need to spend a week traveling that leaves me only a day at a vacation spot. That seems to be your cup of tea, though.

Do you mind lightening up with the strawmen? I will not be responsible for the degeneration of this thread.

Of course anyone can make that piece. It's an extremely basic trio of properties. Now talk about an entire suit, not just 7.5% of the imbuing.

Easy mode? You hadn't played UO for long before AoS, clearly. Since you didn't know, UO had its cookie-cutter days. Pre-AoS, the only slayers were silver. Go back even further, to the beginning, and people used the same old viking swords and heater shields, or halberds, provided you were lucky enough to build strength to where you could hold them. Strength was bugged for a long time and difficult to gain, and individual characters' stats maxed at anywhere from 210s to 238 (the highest I ever heard of). The same gear was used against orcs, ettins, drakes or balrons. Everyone, even mages, tended to wear the same full plate with a robe. I had a couple of RP guildmates who wanted to be knights but instead played priests, because we did PvP, and robes were a practical way of hiding the strength of your armor against PKs. Armor became the same unvaried sets of leather suits, archer suits and occasional full plate suits once dex penalties were introduced -- far more "cookie cutter" than you think it is today.

It was a waste of housing space and time to keep and sort hundreds of semi-valuable pieces, trying to combine them into something usable. What's so great about your concept of a "journey" that means most of game time is spent gearing up instead of playing?

You were able to duplicate the suit because there's only one basic sampire template. Now, I've never made a sampire suit for myself because I don't have a true sampire. My hybrid therefore uses something different that I've yet to see elsewhere. You might be able to come close, but not to squeeze in everything I did for very specific purposes, nor would you be able to come up with it by yourself. Where's your mac and cheese analogy now? In the culinary arts, it would be like tasting a dish to identify every last ingredient used, in perfect proportions, with the precise methods of preparation. It takes a very good chef in real life, and I'm not the only one in UO who makes combinations previously not conceived.

You again extol Diablo's system. Why don't you go play that, then, instead of making the rest of us conform to the game you want UO to be?

If you don't like imbuing, then clearly UO isn't the game for you. Do you need us to give you the link to Blizzard's site? DLTDHYOTWO.

You keep talking about Imbuing and crafting as if they're two separate things. Imbuing is very much a subset of crafting. What else would it be? Its introduction is the very thing that made many of us dust off our smiths and tailors. It made PoF not merely desirable, but sought after like never before.

So there we have the reason: you found a nice 1/3 ring early in AoS, maybe had an all 70s suit with 100% LRC, and now your advantage is gone. That's incredibly selfish, you know.

Even your definition of "pretty much" does not mean "always." You really insult a lot of us who spend time customizing very specific suits, painstakingly rearranging properties before we actually make the items, for the very point I keep making that you ignore. You really should start reading what other people write, instead of making up what you wish they said.

Well, thank you for that example. Because I have never tried to duplicate anyone else's suit, ever.

So? I had a fantastic poison elemental slayer with 100% fire, long since unraveled because it was outclassed. That happens with every game, and it's happened a few times in UO with each overhaul of item properties. It opened the door to new challenges of harder spawns and boss monsters. Have you never considered that? Or do you want to revert back nearly 15 years, when you'd cast poison and hide behind a rock it couldn't get around?

Actually, my friends and I are quite varied in what we use. With my unorthodox style, I design my gear to complement what everyone else has. I'd tell you more, but as I said before, if you'd only been nicer about this...

Years ago, I had a popular vendor near a PvP hotspot. I couldn't keep up with crafting the same old exceptional leather suits, which didn't require mixing and matching, as pre-AoS only had a single armor rating. Before armor differences were introduced, everyone went to Hythloth 3 as a mage in full plate. Cast EVs, escape back into the teleporter room, then using the telepads to jump in and e-bolt the balron when it was weak. For all your complaints about "cookie cutter" imbuing, it was actually the case before. Now there's variety because imbuing allows me to make just the combination of weapon and armor I want.

You've now been fisked again. Try again next time when you can rebut what I've posted, instead of quoting one thing I posted and babbling at length. Good heavens, man, stop complaining about what the vast majority of players like. Since you have no sense of accomplishment in UO, it's time for you to move on to something you like.

I've been trying to convince my best friend to come back after a few years of WoW, and imbuing has always been my strongest argument. No more wasted time trying to put things together.

Ha, he probably doesn't have it. He doesn't seem to mind using a system he complains so much about, to the extent he has to start a thread.

Each crafting overhaul always has complainers who think it's become too easy. Some blacksmiths complained that Powder of Fortification would ruin crafting, because weapons could last forever. Actually it gave more incentive to continue crafting with runics, because people still replaced items with something better.

So basically instead of playing the game you sit in your house all day using spreadsheets to piece together a suit, winner.

IMO, the argument Theo makes only supports the advantage that people who have hours and hours a day to devote to UO had/have over the casual player. Runics have always had the potential to exceed imbuing, especially now with reforging. Add that to the item potential under the new loot system and imbuing seems fairly basic. The type of high end suit that you could put together is way up there. What imbuing does is close the gap for the casual player. For the cost/effort of the materials, which still requires some effort just not as much as runics, the casual players suit is decent enough to enjoy playing. As someone else pointed out in a previous post, suits that seem to be the same seems to be more a matter of standard templates and suit basics. Is it any wonder that mages run with LRC, LMC, MR, and mana increase?

Everyone keeps saying how imbuing makes "basic" suits..show me some uber pieces with reforging that cant be imbued...that are 255 durability and can be repaired?

And I'm not talking spine kit imbued 1 or 2 mods cause that's easy


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Cazador, I think in one of your posts from the last week or so you mentioned you had recently returned to UO. I'm guessing you might have missed out on all the promotional materials a lot of the rest of us got to read as the Stygian Abyss expansion was being refined and polished. Things such as this page regarding the imbuing skill from the special website that EA set up to provide teasers about the expansion:

Mythic Entertainment | Ultima Online - Play the 14-Day Free Trial!

I'd like to point out in particular the sentence that says, "Imbuing will give player characters a robust and fulfilling crafting and resource gathering system." Also the sentence that reads, "For artificers, constructing magical items is an extension of themselves, akin to an artist aspiring to paint her magnum opus."

I think it's pretty clear from this page that Leurocian, the developer that I think was most responsible for adding imbuing to the game, looked at imbuing as a crafting skill.

I think it is a pretty well established fact that the caps placed on imbuing for both mods, single item intensity, and total item weight can be well exceeded with runics. If you disagree with that, then I suggest you read up on runic crafting and reforging a little.

A few days? Hasn't the debate over crafted verse looted been going since AoS?

It's only an issue for a few people who can't let it go for some unknown reason.

Imbuing made the game so much better for the majority of the players and removed the power from the BoD scripters.

How do you know what the majority is thinking?

I will say I believe that Imbuing could be a good addition for Siege. It just simply does not belong on any other server.

Ok let me correct it. The MAJORITY of the people in this thread and that I talk to daily in the game LOVE imbuing and Reforging.

You're opinion which is clearly the minority.

I think for many people imbuing is appealing because it allows you to make decent stuff without having to devote a huge chunk of your time, gold, and yes, even RL cash to the BOD system and the Heartwood quest system.

If you're willing to put in the work to train the skill and to gather imbuing resources and perhaps jewelry to imbue additional properties on, you can make perfectly acceptable suits and weapons. I much prefer that to any of these alternatives:

• Spending almost all my game time gathering resources to fill BODs or do Heartwood quests, having an army of BOD runners, and hoping for years and years to get a runic kit from BODs or quests, and then hoping to get something decent out of it.
• Spending real life money to buy sufficient amounts of gold to be able buy from a player-run vendor or an online shop massive amounts of BOD-filling resources, or to buy runic tools that were probably duped. And then, after making such an outlay, still not knowing if I'd end up with something useful.
• Spending real life money to buy enough gold to be able to purchase high-end and high-priced crafted pieces and artifacts from player-run vendors.

I really believe that these changes over the last couple of years--(1) imbuing, (2) reforging, (3) BOD bribery, (4) changes to the BOD system to make runic tools drop a little more often, and (5) the addition of faction artifacts--were made by the devs to make it easier for an aging population of players struggling to deal with a lousy economy that has forced many of them to cut back on accounts and other game-related expenses to be able to acquire "okay" suits without having to support gold sellers and dupers and resource scripters, i.e., to make the business of crafting gear a whole lot more "honest" than it had gotten to be before the SA expansion came in. That's not to say that some players don't still buy gold or buy imbuing resources from brokers. However, I think for many players imbuing eliminated the moral dilemma that some players faced when wanting to better their gear: Should I bite the bullet and use real life money to get stuff, knowing most of it's probably duped, or should I resort to scripting to be able to do massive amounts of BODs "myself," or do I just do without the better suit or hope to get it somehow after years and years of going to Doom/doing peerless and years of years of farming gold myself and paying another player to buy arties and other items that were probably duped? I think imbuing also opened up some new avenues for players who enjoy running a crafter's shop who were struggling to do it honestly and were always in jeopardy of being put out of business because they couldn't compete with the guys who were scripting and maybe duping as well.

Don't know if this makes sense or not, but that's just how I see many of the crafting changes that have been made in the last couple of years. It's really unfortunate, in my mind, that after SA came out, EA cut staff and we had several years of mediocre "boosters"/theme packs and system-related issues that turned away existing players and did little to draw back old players and attract new ones. SA was a great addition and I really wish things had turned out differently so more people had really stuck around longer to see it used to its full potential by more players.

It makes perfect sense and beautifully illustrated how Imbuing saved us from having to either buy duped/scripted resources and items or spend godly amounts of time trying to aquire the stuff ourselves.

Which makes me question the entire point of this thread since really the only game that was killed by Imbuing was the scripter's game. You know the game where they script runics, resources, etc and sell it to other players who could never accomplish a fraction of what was needed to have top end gear.

Very nicely done Tina

One of the biggest problems in UO is there are all of these systems and none of them are harmonized.

Blacksmithing used to be a community builder, a desirable profession, and now it is a near waste of a skill because so many dynamics have changed. What happened to being a respected crafter?

Not just in skills but look in all aspects of the game, there are many wasteful systems. What is the purpose of Ilshenar or Tokuno? Wastelands. It was a bad idea to duplicate Britannia in the first place, but that goes too far back in time. What is left is a game full of wastelands, and with it wasted systems. This is the truth of the matter.

I agree with the other poster, Selunora, because imbuing is just that: a convenient filler for areas of the game that are now lacking due to poorly implemented systems.

After the devs finish toying with fishing and pet arenas they should look at ways to harmonize some of the old systems and bring some truth back to ULTIMA Online.

Or rename the game to something like Worlds Online, sell Garriot back the name to his franchise so he can just start fresh like he'd probably like to do.

Just a dose of truth.