if imbuing has a chance of breaking my item, i'm probably not going to imbue

[Kojak]

just something for the developers to consider in their design decision making process

not worth risking a very good item just to make it slightly better - i'll just play it safe and most people who aren't dupers probably will too because they can't afford to lose tons of armor to make 1 uber piece unless they're cheating and it doesn't matter

 

[Hildebrand]

We don't know how this will work exactly as of yet.
I was thinking that we would be able to take a really "almost" good weap and steal it's 60 mana leech HLD 40, and pop it onto a stam leech 40, hit fireball 40 weapon. Therefore having a SWEET 60 ML, 40 HLD, SL 40, HFBall 40 weapon? Of course we'd ruin 100's of weapons trying it, but at least it's better to attempt it, rather than to smelt these.
Perhaps a chance of a weapon close to a Verite runic made weap would be about equal to the chance of getting a verite runic hammer. (If I relayed that understandably)
Thoughts?

 

[Kratos Aurion]

Imbuing (from my perspective) should be risk vs reward. Yes that does mean an item will have a chance at breaking.

I'll give you an example (has nothing to do with imbuing, but rather, enhancing)

About the time the new woods came out, I had a godly wooden shield. While I wanted it enhanced to improve its overall reliability as an item, what stopped me from enhancing was the thought of it breaking. Especially with bloodwood (second hardest wood to enhance with).

Was the risk worth the reward (the enhanced mods?) I couldn't weigh the options because the shield meant a lot to me. It was my first highend loot item I ever found. Was it worth risking for an enhancement? Eventually I decided nothing ventured nothing gained. I had a shard local attempt to enhance it. At first it was total silence. I felt dead to my self for being foolish to allow an item such as it do be destroyed. All of a sudden I see a trade window pop up and my eyes went wide. It succesfully enhanced.

*END OF EXAMPLE*

In my example which actually happened to me, I took into consideration two key questions.

1) will it improve my item enough to make the attempt worth it?
2) will the enhanced item be more useful/beneficial to me?

Now lets look at Imbuing from my perspective. Imbuing is nothing less of enhancing. You're taking an item and adding properties too that item. Through this process you're taking items and allowing them to be created into artifact (or higher) quality. With no risk, it allows for players to actively supply the game with a steady stream of highend creations.

While having no risk sounds good and dandy, it further increases the games problem of needing risk vs reward. People need a reason to be afraid to Imbue an item. Is the item really worth it? will it make me a better player? will the imbued outcome be worth the loss if it broke?

These are key elements of the risk vs reward system. Much like insurance when it was added to the game. It was implemented with little risk (3600gp deduction per death - based on 6 items) and the reward was you get to keep your stuff. Insurance has nothing to do with this thread so I won't continue the logic behind the reasoning I chose it.

But to my point. This game needs actual risk. It doesn't have to be risk in fel or risk in PvM. Risk can come in many forms like Imbuing. It would allow steady item flow into the game without over inflating the game with more highend quality items.

 

[Asahina Yajinden]

I just hope it's gonna be balanced.... imbuing that is....
look at the difference between wood vs ingot's vs leather during enhancement

ingots.. CON not worth enhancing imo ok great i can change the type of damage a weapon does by enhancing it w/ a diff ingot, or i can enhance it's durability by using dull copper, or use gold to add luck etc..... but i cant add any properties other than that.

PRO ....But i can use a special runic hammer 60 ASH to increase my chances of enhancing without breaking.

leather

CON no ancient 60 runic kit to increase my chances at enhancing.
i can only add to the resist's, or luck value of leather armor.

PRO ( is this really a pro? ) say i have a set of sleeves made of leather w/ 100 luck man reg 2, and 18 LRC if i am lucky ha ha i can end up with 140 luck by enhancing w/ spined leather.

Wood

Con bows can be enhanced w/ various woods to produce various enhancements yet again no 60 runic to increase the chance of success.

PRO i know that if i enhance w/ ash i can add SSI to this magical shortbow making it useful.

the point i'm trying to make is balance the three before you go adding a complete new skill into the mix.

 

[Viper09]

just something for the developers to consider in their design decision making process

not worth risking a very good item just to make it slightly better - i'll just play it safe and most people who aren't dupers probably will too because they can't afford to lose tons of armor to make 1 uber piece unless they're cheating and it doesn't matter

So, you wanting 0 risk in making a better item? Lol, sorry, but no. If there was no risk in enhancing the market would be flooded with really good items. Trust me, imbuing an item needs some risk involved otherwise it would just simply be a walk in the park.

 

[kelmo]

Don't be wienies! You can't win if you don't play....

 

[Gheed]

just something for the developers to consider in their design decision making process

not worth risking a very good item just to make it slightly better - i'll just play it safe and most people who aren't dupers probably will too because they can't afford to lose tons of armor to make 1 uber piece unless they're cheating and it doesn't matter

So, you wanting 0 risk in making a better item? Lol, sorry, but no. If there was no risk in enhancing the market would be flooded with really good items. Trust me, imbuing an item needs some risk involved otherwise it would just simply be a walk in the park.

Well how about 100% gauraunteed success but at great cost? ....and you could still break the item.... Say.... now hear me out here.... a failed attempt would remove 100 total durability from the item. If the item was below 100 total durability it would break. So.... you have to keep using PoF on the item to keep the durability over 100. Then the RNG becomes tolerable.... cause eventually you will enhance. If you tried to cap out an item property, put odds of success at say 1/100 at GM skill. Thats alot of PoF to burn through to get that mod capped. And if you dont.... poof! Add in hard to get imbuing items (potentially lost on fail) and artifact level yum yums become very costly. Seems to be a decent PoF sink too.

 

[Sarphus]

Don't be wienies! You can't win if you don't play....

LOL

Roll the dice! Pull the trigger!

I don't know how it will work yet, but I think it will have something to do with consuming items to get mod resources and to apply those resources to new or existing items.

we'll see... hopefully all the wonky stuff gets worked out in beta.

 

[kelmo]

*sighs* Risk and reward? Ring a bell? It is a large part of many games... Poker, monopoly, jacks?

 

[Viper09]

Lets also not forget that if there is a real risk involved, the much greater the feeling of accomplishment is when you succeed

 

[kelmo]

Lets also not forget that if there is a real risk involved, the much greater the feeling of accomplishment is when you succeed

*chuckles* I see...

 

[Setnaffa]

I'd rather have one perfect weapon than 100 pretty good weapons. I'll imbue until my fingers bleed.

 

[Warrior of Time]

I see no diff. between enbueing and enhancing. Both add a property it didn't have. Seems like a play on words. If it is then it should share the same risk.

 

[GalenKnighthawke]

I'm nearly certain that Imbuing will involve a substantial risk of breaking the item(s) involved.

I'm also nearly certain that the items will be non-Pof-Able.

I'm ok with that I guess....We'd have several categories of items ingame. Different advantages and disadvantages.

One of the chief advantages of the AoS equipment system is variety. We may as well take full advantage of it.

-Galen's player

 

[Farsight]

As someone who just paid over a million gold for a ring that was only slightly better than the one I had, I would say that the risk of breakage is a good thing. The reward for a slightly better item in UO is VERY significant.

For example, think about the mage weapon spell channeling kryss. If it had FC -1, then the value drops a lot. Take out that FC penalty and everyone is falling over themselves to get that weapon.

So making weapons, or making them better should involve the chance of breaking.

But I'll wait until they actually come up with a plan for the skill before criticizing it.

 

[AesSedai]

- Nay, let them break.

Who luvs ya' baby.
You probably wont imbue; but I bet you will

On top of that: I hope that items will not be infinitely fortifiable..
Insurance is good but everlasting is not.. imho.

 

[hawkeye_pike]

Well, isn't it the same with item enhancing?

When you find a very good piece of armor on a monster and you decide to enhance it with barbed leather or valorite ore, the risk of losing the item is very high.

I actually think it should be this way. I collect good magical items and always take the risk losing them by enhancing them, because I rather have two VERY good items instead of a bag full of medium items. Thanks to insurance and powder of fortifying, this attitude makes absolutely sense.

(Example: I recently found a shield with 15% DCI, self-repair 4, spell channeling and no FC -1 on a monster. I took the chance and enhanced it with valorite. I was very lucky and succeeded, and now it has nice resist as well! Now, due to the resists, the shield is better than most artifact shields. I'd rather have lost the shield instead of keeping it with no resists.)

 

[Traveller]

just something for the developers to consider in their design decision making process

not worth risking a very good item just to make it slightly better - i'll just play it safe and most people who aren't dupers probably will too because they can't afford to lose tons of armor to make 1 uber piece unless they're cheating and it doesn't matter

Do you realize you have just given the devs a good reason to make items break with imbuing? I am sure the devs are aware that if imbuing does not break items people will just imbue non-stop uber items until they become all-max-properties. I seriously hope that devs have in mind to use imbuing to make average items easily available, instead of raising the bar of uber-items beyond the god level.

 

[Coppelia]

I'd rather have one perfect weapon than 100 pretty good weapons. I'll imbue until my fingers bleed.

I agree.

 

[Olahorand]

Instead of breaking, the items, on which enhancing or imbuing fails, should loose properties or get the value of selected properties reduced. So no total loss, but also annoying enough to hurt ...
*Salute*
Olahorand

 

[Littleblue]

I am going to hold off judgement until we get more info about the design of the Imbuing System to be released.

I am hoping that it consists of features/balances that we can all adjust to and hopefully use in some way or another.

 

[RavenWinterHawk]

just something for the developers to consider in their design decision making process

not worth risking a very good item just to make it slightly better - i'll just play it safe and most people who aren't dupers probably will too because they can't afford to lose tons of armor to make 1 uber piece unless they're cheating and it doesn't matter

Kojak if there is not risk to breaking then you might as well imbue everything as we wish.

NO risk. click imbue. click imbue. click imbue. click imbue. You have succeeded in imbuing your weapon.

Whats the point?

The other option without destruction is giving a limited amount of tries per item.

That would be fiasco in itself. Say each item gets 5 chances to imbue. Well if you fail them all, put it on a vendor, how would the player that buys it knows it cant be imbued?

I dont see another way.

 

[RavenWinterHawk]

Well, isn't it the same with item enhancing?

When you find a very good piece of armor on a monster and you decide to enhance it with barbed leather or valorite ore, the risk of losing the item is very high.

I actually think it should be this way. I collect good magical items and always take the risk losing them by enhancing them, because I rather have two VERY good items instead of a bag full of medium items. Thanks to insurance and powder of fortifying, this attitude makes absolutely sense.

(Example: I recently found a shield with 15% DCI, self-repair 4, spell channeling and no FC -1 on a monster. I took the chance and enhanced it with valorite. I was very lucky and succeeded, and now it has nice resist as well! Now, due to the resists, the shield is better than most artifact shields. I'd rather have lost the shield instead of keeping it with no resists.)

Who said pirates werent smart. Bingo.

 

[RavenWinterHawk]

I'm nearly certain that Imbuing will involve a substantial risk of breaking the item(s) involved.

I'm also nearly certain that the items will be non-Pof-Able.

I'm ok with that I guess....We'd have several categories of items ingame. Different advantages and disadvantages.

One of the chief advantages of the AoS equipment system is variety. We may as well take full advantage of it.

-Galen's player

I agree.
Id take it a step further. What could I possibly need to add to the uber weapons out there.

I think we are all thinking of imbuing as adding what already exists in game.

I hope its a bit more fun. Like imbuing new properties that are useful.

Maybe nightsite.
Maybe charges of some sort that get used up.
Maybe charges that can be summoned for attack and then cant be used till next day.
Maybe something like teleportation. In battle you get randomly teleported after striking your opponent. Or better yet teleport you opponent 10 tiles away.

Something creative. Is all Im saying.

 

[Sarphus]

There's a number of ways imbuing COULD work and we really don't have enough information to judge the design decisions for imbuing yet.

I think the overall goal of the imbuing system is to make all loot have some value simultaneously. Instead of making item drops immediately valuable (buffing the intensity of loot), I think they have chosen to allow you to turn those mediocre items into magical resources through this imbuing system.

So basically, when you get an item with a high intensity mods but the wrong mods you can unravel that item and hope you get a mod resource for one of the high intensity mods. Up to this point my deduction has covered one of the THREE things that the devs have said that imbuing does. The SA site says imbuing is the art of imbuing, enhancing and unraveling items. I just described how I think unraveling will work (randomly giving you a resource for one of the mods on the item you unraveled).

I think enhancing will work a lot like enchanting does in WoW. Basically, you can use your mod resources you got from unraveling items to attempt to add or possibly enhance a mod on an existing item. I think we will be limited to adding one mod to an item at a time and I think the mods we add could possibly have a lifecycle (their potency could decay over time or use).

It's possible that enhancing an item will only give you a portion of the total mod potency on the mod resource you attempt to apply. I think a good design for enhancing would only let you add one new mod to an item and only allow you to add that mod if the total mods on the item is < 4. In other words you would only be able to have a max of 5 mods on an item. You could also enhance existing mods using mod resorces of a higher potency level than the current potency level on the item you are enhancing.

Successful enhancing would increase the intensity of the mod you enhanced (whether added or buffed) by half the difference between the intensity of your mod resource and the intensity of the mod on your item (minimum of 1). The higher the total intensity of all mods on your item, the more likely you would fail the enhancement.

For Example, say you have HCI 10 (66% intensity) on an item and successfully enhance with an HCI 15 (100% intensity) resource. The system would look at the difference in intensity of 100% and 66% (34% difference) and divide by 2 (17%). This calculated value would be then added to the intensity of your mod, making it an 83% intensity mod. All this math would happen behind the scenes, but the end result would be that your HCI on your weapon would increase from 10 to 12. The only critical thing to watch out for in the math would be to make sure that the system knows that enhancing with a mod resource will increase the intensity. People would get grumpy if they enhanced their 10 HCI down to a 9 because of rounding

Another example... Say you have a weapon with 4 mods and you want to add HCI to the weapon using your 100% intensity HCI mod resource. Let's assume you succeed at enhancing the item. You would get half the intensity (rounded down) of the mod you applied, so you would have 7% HCI on your weapon after successfully applying the mod. You can then enhance that mod later by getting more HCI resources and successfully enhancing the mod furhter.

That leaves imbuing... I think imbuing will either be the ability to create new items with the mods you want (using mod resources) or it could be that imbuing could be just the ability to add mods to items (which was part of my description of enhancing). If imbuing is the ability to apply the full intensity of mods to an item, those items will have to have a forced life cycle.

IMO, some imbuing abilities should consume items and others should just consume resources. Unraveling should consume the item you're unraveling and give you a random mod resource. Imbuing should consume the mod resource whether you succeed or fail. Enhancing should also consume the mod resource whether you succeed or fail.

The only balancing factors as I see it will be to make sure that adding and enhancing mods on items becomes progressively harder (requiring higher imbuing skill and having higher fail rate) to the point that it restricts players from "capping out" full suits.

Another possibility is that mods that have been added on to items have a life cycle. In other words they decay over time, which requires you to get them re-applied in order to keep the item in peak form.

 

[GalenKnighthawke]

I find this to be a fair, educated, and probably very close to accurate guess about how the system's going to work.

-Galen's player

There's a number of ways imbuing COULD work and we really don't have enough information to judge the design decisions for imbuing yet.

I think the overall goal of the imbuing system is to make all loot have some value simultaneously. Instead of making item drops immediately valuable (buffing the intensity of loot), I think they have chosen to allow you to turn those mediocre items into magical resources through this imbuing system.

So basically, when you get an item with a high intensity mods but the wrong mods you can unravel that item and hope you get a mod resource for one of the high intensity mods. Up to this point my deduction has covered one of the THREE things that the devs have said that imbuing does. The SA site says imbuing is the art of imbuing, enhancing and unraveling items. I just described how I think unraveling will work (randomly giving you a resource for one of the mods on the item you unraveled).

I think enhancing will work a lot like enchanting does in WoW. Basically, you can use your mod resources you got from unraveling items to attempt to add or possibly enhance a mod on an existing item. I think we will be limited to adding one mod to an item at a time and I think the mods we add could possibly have a lifecycle (their potency could decay over time or use).

It's possible that enhancing an item will only give you a portion of the total mod potency on the mod resource you attempt to apply. I think a good design for enhancing would only let you add one new mod to an item and only allow you to add that mod if the total mods on the item is < 4. In other words you would only be able to have a max of 5 mods on an item. You could also enhance existing mods using mod resorces of a higher potency level than the current potency level on the item you are enhancing.

Successful enhancing would increase the intensity of the mod you enhanced (whether added or buffed) by half the difference between the intensity of your mod resource and the intensity of the mod on your item (minimum of 1). The higher the total intensity of all mods on your item, the more likely you would fail the enhancement.

For Example, say you have HCI 10 (66% intensity) on an item and successfully enhance with an HCI 15 (100% intensity) resource. The system would look at the difference in intensity of 100% and 66% (34% difference) and divide by 2 (17%). This calculated value would be then added to the intensity of your mod, making it an 83% intensity mod. All this math would happen behind the scenes, but the end result would be that your HCI on your weapon would increase from 10 to 12. The only critical thing to watch out for in the math would be to make sure that the system knows that enhancing with a mod resource will increase the intensity. People would get grumpy if they enhanced their 10 HCI down to a 9 because of rounding

Another example... Say you have a weapon with 4 mods and you want to add HCI to the weapon using your 100% intensity HCI mod resource. Let's assume you succeed at enhancing the item. You would get half the intensity (rounded down) of the mod you applied, so you would have 7% HCI on your weapon after successfully applying the mod. You can then enhance that mod later by getting more HCI resources and successfully enhancing the mod furhter.

That leaves imbuing... I think imbuing will either be the ability to create new items with the mods you want (using mod resources) or it could be that imbuing could be just the ability to add mods to items (which was part of my description of enhancing). If imbuing is the ability to apply the full intensity of mods to an item, those items will have to have a forced life cycle.

IMO, some imbuing abilities should consume items and others should just consume resources. Unraveling should consume the item you're unraveling and give you a random mod resource. Imbuing should consume the mod resource whether you succeed or fail. Enhancing should also consume the mod resource whether you succeed or fail.

The only balancing factors as I see it will be to make sure that adding and enhancing mods on items becomes progressively harder (requiring higher imbuing skill and having higher fail rate) to the point that it restricts players from "capping out" full suits.

Another possibility is that mods that have been added on to items have a life cycle. In other words they decay over time, which requires you to get them re-applied in order to keep the item in peak form.

 

[Rix/\]

I think I seen somewhere where the skill requires materials you get from disimbuing a weapon and then useing those materials to imbue another. So maybe the only thing that you lose is the materials when trying to imbue another weapon. Of course you destroy the weapon you got the materials from.

I can compare it to another skill from another game, but I think you get the hint. Either way if it is the way I'm thinking I'm totaly excited about it. You wouldn't believe the gear I've broken over the years trying to enhance. I'm looking forward to mastering another craft breaking even more loot.

 

[Sarphus]

Well they've said that if it's balanced right it will be very challenging to master imbuing. I interpret this to mean that the skill will be difficulty based and you will literally not even be good enough to max mod an item until you have added medium-lvl mods to MANY items.

I don't think we'll be seeing GM imbuers on day 1 of SA...

Actually, I think GM imbuers will have a sellable trade and it will probably take a lot of time and money to make it to GM imbuer.

I think treasure hunting will be revitalized because treasure hunting is a great way to get a large quantity of non-artifact items.

I think it will actually make sense to use every item that drops on monster corpses. For a while at least. Once you get high enough imbuing you will probably only care about the medium to high-lvl items.

The item loot on boss monsters will actually be valuable even if the item itself is garbage...

imbuing sounds like it will be a revolutionary improvement to how UO does loot!

 

[Corrupted Goblin]

i think imbuing should only be placable on GM Crafted Items.

 

[Lord Kotan]

Imbuing (from my perspective) should be risk vs reward. Yes that does mean an item will have a chance at breaking.

Instead of having the item having a chance to break... I think you should have a chance to remove an item property... then a chance to add it to something else. If you fail, the item doesn't break, but the "extra property" might go poof.

 

[Basara]

I'd like to take breaking one step further:

Using the current system for enhancing:

1. Success combines the new property with the item
2. Normal failure: chance that the property enhancement ingredient is lost.
3. Catastrophic failure: Something definitely lost. 30% chance of losing the ingredient, 60% of the item being destroyed, 10% chance both are lost.

Also add the ability to "flush" a single property off an item. This will increase the chance of adding a property to the item later, and only has a miniscule chance of failure (say, a chance of accidentally destroying the item equal to the amount that the property would reduce the imbuement chance, if still present). So, if adding a 100% property to the item would have a 35% chance of catastrophic failure, but the cat. failure would be 33% if the property not present, then the chance of failure to remove (and throw away) an unwanted property would be 2%.

I'm also of the opinion that ALL minor artifacts (say 1-4 for most; a soul seeker might be an Artifact 5, and the Crimson an Artifact 10), ToT items, event items, etc. should have an artifact rarity number added to them. Then, do the following -

Items without an artifact number, or Artifact levels 1-6: Can be unraveled to get ingredients, or imbued.
Items with Artifact Number 7-9: cannot be unraveled, but can be imbued.
Artifacts 10-12: cannot be unraveled; most imbuements not allowed (only ones allowed would be Spell channeling for weapons & shields, Mage Armor for armor).

 

[Sarphus]

I agree that you should be able to remove specific mods from items, but I don't think you should be limited in how many mods you can remove.

Instead, any item that has had mods removed from it should be impossible to unravel. Obviously, if you get a random mod from an item when you unravel; people would just remove all the mods they don't want and unravel the item.

Allowing people to pick and choose what mods they want to have on items they are imbuing allows people to continually update their items as they wish.

If I remember right, the devs said something about you needing a "soul forge" to do imbuing. I'm assuming this forge is a piece of furniture that can be placed in houses. I think the soul forge should have interfaces that allow players to grant permission for what an imbuer can do to their item (assuming the person doing the imbuing is not the same as the owner of the item).

For example, Player A wants a mod removed from his sword. Player A places his sword on the soul forge. A gump opens for player A with a list of all mods on the item and permissions checkboxes beside each mod. Player A then toggles on the checkbox allowing a specific mod to be removed from his item. If player A closes the gump, his sword drops back into his inventory.

Player B is an imbuer. He double clicks to soul forge (one player can place an item on soul forge at a time) and gets a gump showing the item on the soul forge and a button showing that he has permission to remove a mod from the item. Player B would then click the button to remove a mod from the item, accept a confirmation dialog and the mod is removed.

That's just a description of how imbuing could be done in a secure way. The devs may decide that it's better to just allow people to remove mods from items without having any skill in imbuing (much less coding involved and much less risk of introducing exploits).

 

[Rix/\]

Well they've said that if it's balanced right it will be very challenging to master imbuing. I interpret this to mean that the skill will be difficulty based and you will literally not even be good enough to max mod an item until you have added medium-lvl mods to MANY items.

I don't think we'll be seeing GM imbuers on day 1 of SA...

Actually, I think GM imbuers will have a sellable trade and it will probably take a lot of time and money to make it to GM imbuer.

I think treasure hunting will be revitalized because treasure hunting is a great way to get a large quantity of non-artifact items.

I think it will actually make sense to use every item that drops on monster corpses. For a while at least. Once you get high enough imbuing you will probably only care about the medium to high-lvl items.

The item loot on boss monsters will actually be valuable even if the item itself is garbage...

imbuing sounds like it will be a revolutionary improvement to how UO does loot!

good I hope it's hard as hell to train up, I'm not scared I WILL become GM...................... eventually, it's definatly giving me a reason to keep loggin on UO.

 

[Landicine]

Mediocre items are so plentiful that breaking a few of them for a chance at something better isn't a big deal. I'm constantly trying to enhance items despite the chance of breaking in hopes of getting better stuff. It should be the same with imbueing.

One should never enhance or imbue an item they can't afford to lose. However if there was no risk, every item would be added to as much as possible. I think that would be worst.

 

[Sarphus]

Mediocre items are so plentiful that breaking a few of them for a chance at something better isn't a big deal. I'm constantly trying to enhance items despite the chance of breaking in hopes of getting better stuff. It should be the same with imbueing.

One should never enhance or imbue an item they can't afford to lose. However if there was no risk, every item would be added to as much as possible. I think that would be worst.

I don't think imbuing is intended to be a system to make mediocre items better. I think it's a system to turn mediocre items into resources to be used to make your good items more useful to you.

The crux of the design for imbuing will be properly determining how difficult it should be to add mods to items. If the devs misjudge how difficult it will be to tailor an uber suit, they could always reduce item lifecycles to balance things. If they make it really easy to build max/mod suits they could make customized items uninsurable or make it so you have to re-apply imbuements to items periodically (meaning the mods you add to your items would have lifecycles).

 

[timbeOFbaja]

I don't think imbuing is intended to be a system to make mediocre items better. I think it's a system to turn mediocre items into resources to be used to make your good items more useful to you.

The crux of the design for imbuing will be properly determining how difficult it should be to add mods to items. If the devs misjudge how difficult it will be to tailor an uber suit, they could always reduce item lifecycles to balance things. If they make it really easy to build max/mod suits they could make customized items uninsurable or make it so you have to re-apply imbuements to items periodically (meaning the mods you add to your items would have lifecycles).

I disagree. I think it will be and should be a way of transfering propeties from good to good. I imagine "unraveling" artifacts to imbue other artifacts. So your cost will always be high. And what a gold sink and cleanup tool it could be.....destroying items that cost you millions in hopes of getting something in hopes of successfully imbuing.

In otherwords, rather than a scratcher lottery ticket this should be the high roller craps table.

 

[Sarphus]

I disagree. I think it will be and should be a way of transfering propeties from good to good. I imagine "unraveling" artifacts to imbue other artifacts. So your cost will always be high. And what a gold sink and cleanup tool it could be.....destroying items that cost you millions in hopes of getting something in hopes of successfully imbuing.

In otherwords, rather than a scratcher lottery ticket this should be the high roller craps table.

They've already said you won't be able to unravel or imbue artifacts, though. That's why I think imbuing will be part of a much more involved crafting system. I think the devs are taking UO crafting back to its roots (where it probably belongs)

 

[Kratos Aurion]

Your idea sounds plausible Sarphus. It actually sounds a lot like the system used in Guild Wars (same concept, different characteristics).

I'd like the system to work like this. (this is my interpratation of how I'd like to see Imbuing work)

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*I believe GM/Enhanced armor/weapons/loot should not be able to be unravelled, only unenhanced monster loot.*

Item#1 has 4 properties of mediocre - high intensity

You can salvage (remove) one of the properties 100% effectively, leaving the weapon a 40-50% chance to break afterwords. That means you always walk away with 1 property at choice (or random).

If you succeed removing one property and the item remains, you can attempt to remove another property with only an 80% chance success rate, and if fails, deletes the property, and then the weapon has another 40-50% chance to break.

If the item still remains in contact, then you can go ahead and attempt to remove the third property (out of four) with a 60% chance to succeed at removing it effectively. If it fails, the property is deleted from the weapon and it then goes through a 40-50% chance at actually breaking the weapon.

This process is repeated so on so on until the item actually breaks or has all of its properties effectively removed through success or failure.

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Once you have your desired properties salvaged from mediocre/highend items. You can begin to attempt to Imbue them onto another item. Each item can be Imbued up to (1) time and enhanced (1) time. So theoretically, in this process you can take an enhanced or GM crafted item and still Imbue it vice versa.

Items cannot be Imbued with over the maximum # of item properties.

You take Item#2 which you're going to attempt to add properties too. The intensity of the property determines the failure rate you have at succeeding with adding it.

For instance, you try to add 60% Hit Mana Leech to a gm/enhanced weapon that has 35% mana leech. The property you're adding has 60% intensity which means you have a 60% chance of failing, and a 40% chance at succeeding at Imbuing the item. If you succeed, the new property value for the Mana Leech will be 60%. If you fail, the Imbuing resource you used will break (I don't know if the system will favor weapon breakage or not so I'll leave that concept out of this proposed theory/idea).

Again this is my interpratation of the system of how I would like to see it work. While it may or may not be similar to the way it will work, I'm still satisified that this system is being implemented into the game.

 

[Righteous]

What I am hoping Imbuing will be is that we unravel none enhanced items, let’s say the following two items:

Chain Shirt
LRC 18
Resist Physical 16
Resist Fire 5
Resist Cold 14
Resist Poison 16
Resist Energy 6
Total Resists 57

Leather Tunic
MR 2
HPR 2
Resist Physical 8
Resist Fire 18
Resist cold 8
Resist Poison 9
Resist Energy 14
Total Resists 57

I unravel both and get the individual properties as items (maybe minus the base properties that will be added back in once I choose what type of armor I am creating). I put the following into a vessel along with some Barbed Leather and some eye of newt.

LRC 18
MR 2
HPR 2
Resist Physical 16
Resist Fire 18
Resist Cold 14
Resist Poison 16
Resist Energy 14

And I do a little dance and have the small possibility to get the following really good item out of the vessel. Please note during the imbuing process the Barbed Leather bonus is added.

Barbed Leather Tunic
LRC 18
MR 2
HPR2
Resist Physical 18
Resist Fire 19
Resist Cold 16
Resist Poison 19
Resist Energy 18
Total Resist 90

Let’s say I barely fail I would lose some of the barbed leather and maybe the special ingredient.

I catastrophically fail I would lose the barbed leather, special ingredient and one or two of the things I am trying to combine IE physical resist 16 and MR 2and if I wanted to try again I would need to add those components again from something else I unraveled.

Righteous

 

[timbeOFbaja]

Here's my problem. The system you guys are describing would lead to an enormous influx of uber gear. Especially if runic crafted goods can be unravelled and imbued. I bought and sold 30 barbed kits the past couple weeks and have over 100 horned kit LBODS and most of the smalls for them....enough to ensure everybody on the shard is running around with all 70's, 40LMC, 12MR, 100LRC gear. That's why I think this needs to be tied to a loot system ala artifacts. Makes it more controllable, more rare, and would be a gem of an opportunity to get people back into seldom frequented areas.

I'd have artifact-like drops. Special items that could be unravelled. I'd make them much more frequent on high level mobs but would have them drop on lizardmen and harpies too. Maybe give the mobs carrying them a unique hue or title or something....similar to paragons except on the mainland.

I haven't thought about it enough. I'm just trying to think of something that won't be as easily exploited. I think you underestimate the amount of gold and runic kits ready to be plunked down on these kinds of endeavors.

 

[Kratos Aurion]

With my proposal, it wouldn't cause an overflow or influx. I don't believe you should be able to unravel GM or already enhanced items but you CAN Imbue a GM or Enhanced item (1) time (see my above proposal).

I firmly believe that Imbuing should be limited to 1 property of your choice of unravelled resources. Just like enhancing, you pick a metal. When you Imbue, you pick the property you want to attempt to add. It can fail or succeed.

If you fail, you can reattempt to Imbue a new property. I didn't conclude if a piece of armor or a weapon would break in my proposal.

 

[Basara]

Resists should be set up that if you unravel for a resist, you don't get any of the bonuses for exceptional quality, material, or base amount.

So, if an armor has 23 fire resist, with 3 coming from base, 6 from excceptional quality, and 3 from material, you only get the 11% that was directly from a magical property as the "Unraveled ingredient" - which of course would allow you to unravel the property from a sword or jewelry, to add to an armor piece (and replacing any magical/runic bonus for that property the target already had).

 

[timbeOFbaja]

I still see that being too abused. Most particularly in regards to spell channeling. Even a shadow runic hammer can create a mage weapon with SC and -FC1. Any low level piece of loot with FC1 would make that shadow runic crafted mage weapon a very nice piece. Now imagine a bronze crafted mage weapon with SC and no -FC1. Add FC1 from a drop and you've got probably the best mage weapon in the game and you could make hundreds of these in a day or two. That's just one example.

I really do think this whole imbuing thing needs to be separate. It needs to be new properties or it needs to be new drops that can be unravelled.

 

[Sarphus]

Well the imbuing system is described as having 3 parts "imbue, enhance, and unravel " (direct quote from the SA webpage).

I think we confuse ourselves, cause I think we're using the words imbuing and enhancing interchangeably. It's really too early to tell what imbuing will be, but I can't help but think about it. This system has potential to be one of the coolest systems ever introduced into UO and I'm obsessed.

The more I think about it, imbuing could very well be a way to move the mods from an item of one type to an item of another type.

Enhancing could be a way to add a mod(s) to items

unraveling I believe will be an ability to consume an item and turn one random mod on that item into a resource to be used during the enhancing process.

The reason I think imbuing will have something to do with moving the mods from one item to another is that the devs said something about being able to transfer mods to your gargoyle's armor or something like that.

About enhancing... I can see justification for limiting enhancing to only allow the addition of one mod to an existing item to avoid the creation of permanent 5x max mod items. I think that stopping at a system of enhancing items with a custom mod will not create a sustainable system, though for the same reasons that buffing treasure chest loot isn't a sustainable solution. Increasing the level you can enhance items to just raises the bar on what makes an item good.

What I would like to see is a system where you can build items with custom mods, but have the mods need to be recharged/re-applied periodically. I think there's plenty of potential for the devs to build a sustainable system that allows people to build powerful items, but requires people to maintain those items. Players could still get the old-style items, but it would be much faster for a player to build a powerful item using this new imbuing skill with the only sticking point being that they would have to maintain that item.

Also, it would be really cool if we can make custom jewlery. If the devs allow us to make custom jewlery, they need to be very careful to limit or prevent the addition of +skill mods. If players can build jewlery with 5x max +skill mods, they could effectively build a 4x 120 bard by only investing 360 real skill points (SERIOUS balance issue) and so on. Of course, it may not be as big of an issue as it appears if that player would also have to locate all 4 + 15 skill mods to keep the jewlery refreshed lol

 

[Sarphus]

Resists should be set up that if you unravel for a resist, you don't get any of the bonuses for exceptional quality, material, or base amount.

So, if an armor has 23 fire resist, with 3 coming from base, 6 from excceptional quality, and 3 from material, you only get the 11% that was directly from a magical property as the "Unraveled ingredient" - which of course would allow you to unravel the property from a sword or jewelry, to add to an armor piece (and replacing any magical/runic bonus for that property the target already had).

I agree. Allowing imbuing to pull enhancements made from other crafting skills would create the potential for item buffing loops where players enhance items, unravel them, imbue them, enhance, unravel and so on.

 

[Sarphus]

I still see that being too abused. Most particularly in regards to spell channeling. Even a shadow runic hammer can create a mage weapon with SC and -FC1. Any low level piece of loot with FC1 would make that shadow runic crafted mage weapon a very nice piece. Now imagine a bronze crafted mage weapon with SC and no -FC1. Add FC1 from a drop and you've got probably the best mage weapon in the game and you could make hundreds of these in a day or two. That's just one example.

I really do think this whole imbuing thing needs to be separate. It needs to be new properties or it needs to be new drops that can be unravelled.

SC always has a penalty of -1 FC. When you see SC and no cast penalty it is because the item also has an FC 1 mod on it.

I agree with you that there's another potential abuse here, but I think that abuse could be addressed by having the system use a weighted average to determine how difficult adding each specific mod is. Mods that are either there or aren't there should be hard to apply.

It should be extremely difficult to make an item with
FC 1
Mage weapon -20
SC
DCI 15

And it should be impossible for people who don't have the highest possible imbuing skill.

 

[timbeOFbaja]

Since we have a lot of SC FC1 items in the game and because you used to be able to, and might still be able to, craft items with runic hammers than had stacked FC and come out Mage Wep + SC + FC1, I'm assuming the cap on FC is at least 2.