[Bowcraft/Fletching] Heartwood runic fletching tool - what to make?

[Boogieman]

So I did a bit of late night training flecthing doing the Heartwood quests. Amazingly I pulled a heartwood runic fletching tool !

Now - I'm nowhere near GM so it will sit in the bank for a while. But what to make eventually, when time comes?

Should I go for bows that I'll have a high exceptional % on ?

Special recipe bows? As I understand the wood attributes doesn't get applied when crafting the recipe items - so just plain wood or...? All these recipies and wood attributes are still a bit confusing to me.

thanks

 

[Kellgory]

Congrats on getting a kit! As far as what to make, that depends on if these will be used by yourself or for sale, PVM or PVP. Most of my PVM bows were bows that I got from either doing peerless, strongbox quests, or doom and just enhancing them. I try to make PVP bows (composite, crossbow, heavy crossbow, and regular bows) using the kits and ash wood since it gives +10 to swing speed and hope for a 35-40 SS weap with good mods. I wouldn't use the kit to make the special ingredient bows (the ones that require peerless ingredients), nor use it when enhancing bows. You could also save it until SA comes out and see if there is any new bows, or just sell it and use the 12-18 mil to buy a good bow and armour.

Hopefully you will get another one by the time you hit GM, even if it is just a Yew kit, I've gotten some pretty good bows from them.

Also if you go to the test shard and use the right commands, you will get all runics (fletching, carp, blacksmith, and tailoring and each runic kit has 30,000 uses) as well as all the special woods, recipes, and ingredants (201 each of all ML gems peerless ingredients, mining gems, and lumberjacking items), so that you can try out everything. The only thing is that they only give you 500 of each wood type (next publish it will be increased), all the recipes come in one bag (joy), and if you want a talisman you have to get it the same way you would on a production shard.

 

[drawn]

go for broke and make Yumis- a 30+ ssi with double hit spell and balanced :bowdown: can do ALOT of damage with double shot in pvp.

 

[Rotgut Willy]

or just sell it and use the 12-18 mil

Whoa...

Ya'lls got too much golds!

In the 2 months I've been playing I think I've racked up a grand total of hmm... probably around 2 million. And it's all spent about as quickly as I can farm it. I can't imagine having the vast fortunes the average UO player seems to have at their disposal.

Back to topic though, I read there is about a 1/10000 chance of getting a Heartwood Runic. Is this still true?

 

[Kellgory]

Well considering the odds of getting one and the amount of time and resources, most PVPers would rather do/raid champ spawns and sell the scrolls and just buy the kit.

I would say that the 1/10,000 odds is a little high, maybe in the 1/5,000 to 1/7000 range. Considering that if your just making regular bows and never fail then at 7 boards a bow, you would ave 1 heartwood kit per 700,000 boards.

If you do plan on buring the kit, be sure to have GM fletching and GM armslore. I had burned half a kit once before I realized that I has solestoned off armslore for mining. D'oh.

 

[Boogieman]

You're right Kellgory - Test shard is of course the place to go. I didn't realize it was still running. It seems to be permanently on these days..?
Anyhow - I went there and did some crafting. That spawned some thoughts that I'd like to throw into this thread:

Given the difficulty of making some bows - even with a talisman (I still need to get a good one), my first conclusion was: Make something that you have at least 100% chance of producing in regular quality. Because even a failed attempt will cost one usage of the runic!

My next thought was - ok, the lightweight bow (recipe) seems like a good choice for burning a runic. You'll get the balanced attribute at the cost of a white pearl. That's kinda like adding one attribute before the runic. However - the success chance on the recipe bows is low. Several of the 15 charges will be lost with no result.

Another thought was: Ash seems to be choice of wood - with the 10% SSI and potential 50% SSI from the runic, you might hit the cap of 60% SSI - awesome!

Yew wood seems good too though. I actually made two bows on TC with HCI 30% !

Blood looks nice as well - but I hear the three highest types of wood are almost impossible to get.

Just for testing I made some longbows of might (recipe) from frostwood. One was exceptional quliaty and got 57% DI. Frostwood 12% + exceptional quality 50% + longbow of might 5%. With a 5% excep chance that was a lucky shot of course. However - I wouldn't go with frostwood, because you might make a bow where the 40% ice damage will be a disadvantage.

Now that I have tried it out on TC I don't know if I should rather sell it. I could probably buy the ingredients for all the top end recipe bows with the money from the runic AND buy some artifact gear as well...
I do love crafting though and am slightly addicted to runics. I'll wait for SA in any case.

 

[Kellgory]

I think the highest SSI you can get is 40%. The normal 30% plus the additional 10% for ash, or at least 40% was the highest that I've ever crafted.

Every once in a while they copy a production shard over to the test center. It would be nice if they did it a little more frequent and just rotate the shards. It was nice being able to tweak the char that you actually had as far as weaps and armour just to see how much better they could be if they had a different bow.