I agree with
@Yadd of Legends: Just start by crafting and imbuing.
Crafting:
Materials: Most of the time, you should craft your items using standard materials (i.e. iron ingots, regular boards, regular leather). I only use special materials when I'm planning a very low-end item (e.g. I use Ash wood to craft GM blackstaffs for clearing slimes since it gives a +10% Swing Speed Increase and it's going to break anyway.) If you want to add a property from a special material, you can always enhance later.
@CorwinXX gave some good advice above about enhancing and where it should come in the process.
Weapon Durability: Some items can be crafted with varying durability (e.g. black staff, broadsword, katana), whereas others have a constant durability (e.g. radiant scimitar, leafblade). If the weapon has varying durability, craft a bunch and try to pick the one with the highest durability. (You can craft items with 90+ durability. If you just picked the first one you crafted, you might have gotten 40 durability and burned 5 PoF charges just getting it to 90 durability. So, the extra 100 boards/ingots are well worth the trouble.)
Armor Resists: A crafter cannot craft an all 70's suit without imbuing/enhancing. So, the best crafted pieces are those than will minimize the number of imbues required to get to all 70's; the more imbues you save on resists, the more you'll have to use on adding properties. So, when crafting a suit, make the most expensive piece first (usually the chest piece since it requires the most materials) and look for resist profiles that minimize 1-2 resists (these will be the resists you'll later imbue). I look at the Delta Profile (DP): the difference between a piece of armor's resist profile and the non-exceptional version's resist profile.
For example, a non-exceptional Platemail Do has the following resist profile: 5/3/2/3/2. If I craft an exceptional Platemail Do that has a 10/11/7/4/3 resist profile, then the DP is (10/11/7/4/3) - (5/3/2/3/2) = 5/8/5/1/1. The double 1's shows this a decent piece for imbuing later.
- DP(0/0/8/8/4) would be the best piece I've ever seen, having two 0's.
- DP(5/9/5/0/1) is a fantastic piece since it has a 0 and a 1. (I often try to start my best suits here...)
- DP(1/9/2/2/6) is a good piece. It has a 1 and two 2's. (...but here is okay too)
- DP(5/2/7/3/7) is a bad piece.
- DP(5/5/5/5/5) is horrible because it has nothing below a 5.
Once you pick you main piece, start making your subsequent pieces to fit in with the main piece. So, If I know I've got a chest piece with DP(0/1/7/7/5), I won't likely need another piece with low physical resist. That means I may keep a pair of leggings with DP(1/7/3/6/3) for another suit, but I won't include it in this suit.
Note: If the armor is built for a sampire, aim for most pieces to have a 0 or 1 in the DP's fire resist. Sampires require 95 fire resist on their suit (since they lose 25 to necromancy's vampiric embrace): that is 15+ fire resist on each piece => a lot of imbuing fire resist.
That brings me to my final point: studded armor gets an extra +1 total resist per piece, and has max imbued fire resist of 19 (c.f.
http://www.uoguide.com/Armor). This means I pretty much always make studded leather armor for my sampire: I can imbue 19 fire resist on 4 pieces, and enhance with barbed leather and I'm already at 84 fire resist, with 2 pieces not even included. Woodland armor is great if you're making really high-end suits (It can be enhanced with heartwood which gives a random bonus property. I put a link below to
@Lynk's suit); however, I like enhancing with barbed/horned leather. (Review the enhancing bonuses on
ingots,
leather, and
boards for more details)
Imbuing:
Some helpful hints for saving money while imbuing:
- Imbue at the Queen's soulforge (if you have the loyalty) or else at the Royal City soul forge to leverage the success chance bonuses.
- Imbue properties that require relic fragment first, then those requiring enchanted essence, and finally the magical residue ones.
- When you fail while using special ingredients, you don't lose the special ingredients: You only lose the magic imbuing ingredient and some gems. So, sticking to rule #2 is more important than imbuing your special ingredient properties.
- The next most important factor for imbuing order is gem cost (diamonds > star sapphire >... > amber). Find the next most expensive property by comparing gem_cost*number_required*success_chance against each of your remaining properties. Rule of thumb: "Just imbue the property that requires most expensive gem next."
- You can get a great weapon without needing any special ingredients. I personally really like the radiant scimitars that @Lynk posted (http://stratics.com/community/threads/my-newest-sampire.239329/) They are relatively cheap to make and only require special ingredients for the slayer property. If you have a slayer talisman, you could just ignore the slayer property and add something else if you like.
Powder of Fortifying
PoF MUST be done before imbuing. That bears repeating: PoF MUST be done before imbuing! You don't have to PoF all your items; only those you want to keep for a while. When you do PoF an item, you can usually just add a few charges to it (4-5). Since my characters are still developing (and I'm broke), I have yet to PoF an item to 255; besides, I would outgrow the item long before it breaks (this is especially true with armor).
Rule of thumb: PoF the item according to the amount of time you plan to use it. If it's a uber piece, Pof it to 255. If it's a good piece, PoF it to ~150.
Finally, get smart about enhancing for durability. Dull Copper adds +100 durability to an item (heartwood has a chance to add +50). If you really like a metal item that's getting low on durability--one that you didn't already enhance--you can enhance it with Dull Copper to bring its durability back up. I use this on weapons a lot.
I hope this helps as you get started. Feel free to ask more and I'll do my best to help answer your questions.
