Crafting on one character, gathering on another?

[Rocklin]

Three weeks have passed since my return to Ultima Online, and I am beginning to get organized and work skills. I have a single crafter character with following skills at the moment:

100.4/120 Blackmithing
100.6/ 120 Tailoring
100 Bowcraft
100 Carpentry
100 Mining
90.1 Lumberjacking
85.5 Arms Lore
52.9 Magery

After reading the forum post on Mining, my interest was piqued about "extreme miners". It sounded like a cool idea to have a gatherer that could kick some rear end. I was thinking about moving the Lumberjacking and Mining to another character and taking up melee skills to fight elementals and gather resources. The only drawback that I can see is that my crafter would not be able to smelt and unravel his crafted items.

Any thoughts on this? Anything I might be missing by trying this out?

 

[Basara]

While the thing most people will hit on is the inability to salvage items, it's easier to keep mining with smithing and still have an effective combat character.

Lumberjacking really needs to be on your carpenter, though. if you LJ in Fel, you'll fill up a pack animal with only 36-40 swings' worth of colored wood types (36 human, 40 elf), if you leave the woods as log. That's a lot of time wasted in recalls to and from home (or the bank). Carpentry is required to turn colored woods into boards.

Suggest the following template for a combat miner:

100+ weapon skill (swap with 100 Arms lore when crafting)
120 Blacksmith
100 mining
90+ tactics (try to get to 100 for the additional DI)
Rest of the points spread between Healing, Chivalry, Anatomy & Parry*

Skills with + need to be this much minimum real skill.
* These skills can be all gotten into the 75-100 range with equipment. I recommend the Ancient Samurai Do (+10 parry), Dupre's shield (+5 parry), and if an elf, Stitcher's mittens (+10 Healing). High-multi-skill jewelry can handly the rest, and are typically cheap, from lacking layered bonuses you won't necessarily need (about the only ones useful to you would be HCI & DCI, and you can get DCI from other sources like fey leggings and the Aegis of grace). I personally have a human with this template, and use human-wearable Feys, Stormgrip (instead of the Stitchers), and the Trades glasses from the library to round out my template - and have 806 total skill points on the character, with nothing below 83 skill (and 120 macingskill, all real)

 

[Rocklin]

Thanks Basara, great point about Carp and LJ, didn't think about "log jam" hehe. I am working on the idea for two characters to handle my crafting needs. I don't need all the craft skills, just the ones I am interested in. I will update ya on my progress!

 

[Rocklin]

While the thing most people will hit on is the inability to salvage items, it's easier to keep mining with smithing and still have an effective combat character.

Lumberjacking really needs to be on your carpenter, though. if you LJ in Fel, you'll fill up a pack animal with only 36-40 swings' worth of colored wood types (36 human, 40 elf), if you leave the woods as log. That's a lot of time wasted in recalls to and from home (or the bank). Carpentry is required to turn colored woods into boards.

Suggest the following template for a combat miner:

100+ weapon skill (swap with 100 Arms lore when crafting)
120 Blacksmith
100 mining
90+ tactics (try to get to 100 for the additional DI)
Rest of the points spread between Healing, Chivalry, Anatomy & Parry*

Skills with + need to be this much minimum real skill.
* These skills can be all gotten into the 75-100 range with equipment. I recommend the Ancient Samurai Do (+10 parry), Dupre's shield (+5 parry), and if an elf, Stitcher's mittens (+10 Healing). High-multi-skill jewelry can handly the rest, and are typically cheap, from lacking layered bonuses you won't necessarily need (about the only ones useful to you would be HCI & DCI, and you can get DCI from other sources like fey leggings and the Aegis of grace). I personally have a human with this template, and use human-wearable Feys, Stormgrip (instead of the Stitchers), and the Trades glasses from the library to round out my template - and have 806 total skill points on the character, with nothing below 83 skill (and 120 macingskill, all real)

Would Archery work with this? Let me explain...

I have a character that has 120 Archery, 110 Tactics, 110 Anatomy, Healing, etc etc.

I am having a hard time finding a place for him. I was thinking perhaps I could make him my Smith/Miner and just run and fire on ele's when they spawn. Otherwise, I have to grind up a weapon skill and parry. I can see where running from something that is already in your face and perhaps (Paragon's) will move faster than you could escape. Just a thought though.

 

[Basara]

Yeah, it would - You choose Archery for the weapon skill, and as a result, no longer need parry at all. All you have to do is tweak your skills to leave 220 points open for Blacksmith & Mining. Make up any amounts you have to lower real skill with equipment (so long as you keep archery & tactics at at least 90 real). Scrounge up enough equipment with skill bonuses, and you might be able to split points between Chivalry & Bushido.

Say, as a start...
120 Archery
120 Smith
110 Tactics
110 Anatomy
100 Healing
100 mining
60 Chivalry

Then start finding things to add other skill points in to allow skills to be raised (Hunter's Headress, Dread Pirate Hat or Mark of the Travesty, maybe Arms of Tactical Excellence for the +12 Tactics, Stitchers Mittens if an elf, then factor in Jewelry). It's possible (especially if you're willing to lower Anatomy down to 100 - you only lose 5% DI that way) to get enough from equipment to get both bushido and Chivalry in the 65-75 range, by lowering other skills to get the points to go with the skill bonus equipment.

 

[Rocklin]

I am wondering why not just move Blacksmithy to a pure crafter? That I could keep Arms Lore on that character and simply have a combat miner. I understand smelting items I made would require me to log back and forth, but this way I could free up 100 more points for the combat character and still have Arms Lore on the crafter.

 

[Basara]

If you do that, and keep the mining on the combat character, buy a lot of salvage bags.

Make everything in salvage bags, and when one gets full of items to salvage (items or by weight), lock it down in the house.

Then, come back with the miner character to smelt, unlocking and picking up the bags, and salvage.

A bit more cumbersome, but workable - provided you have a few hundred free lockdowns in the house.

 

[Kallie Pigeon]

My blacksmith has
smithing 120
macing 100
anatomy 100
tactics 100
healing 100
mining 100
arms lore 100

I recall with a runebook and use potions (strength/agility/sometimes heal) to kill the higher elementals.

My bowcrafter is the wood chopper
fletching 100
lumberjack 100
swords 100
anatomy 100
tactics 100
healing 100
chivalry 80ish
He has to recall with the pack animals to dump off the colored wood but he has enough for a while. Making shafts from the regular wood can help to lower the weight or since he is a human he can use a carpentry tool to make wood out of regular logs. I haven't been chopping a lot of wood since the changes (not enough to have found any frostwood)