Questions About Armor

[Endal]

I'm trying to put together a sampire suit and the big problem I am having is getting all 70s in resistance. I have a 120 Tailor, Blacksmith, Imbuer and 100 Carpentry and access to all of the various crafting materials (so I can craft stuff myself).

So for a Sampire Elf to have maxed stats, I need to get 70 / 95 / 70 / 70 / 75 and I haven't even got my first 70 yet in my crafted gear.

What is the best material and best version of armor to use to achieve this? Even if I'm not all the way at 95 in FR, I can live with that, but it would be nice if I could.

 

[Endal]

oh, what I don't have are the runic items (hammers/sewing kits/etc). Do I need those?

 

[kRUXCg7]

Do you want high end or just a basic suit?

 

[Endal]

Better is always better, the real goal is just to get my resistances maxed out. I can probably be short 2% in one thing (and just get the trash reward shoes). I really want to make a good suit for my character without having to keep remaking it (this is my third suit now... to be fair, the first couple were really cheap and the one I have now only cost about 400k, but still).

I want a suit that I can slap on and not have as many fears about fighting a few dragons or demons at once. I also heard that Sampires are the guys who can fight GDs 1-1 and win and that just sounds amazing to me. I want to be THAT guy.

 

[CorwinXX]

What artifacts are you going to use?

 

[Endal]

What artifacts are you going to use?

Really the only thing on my list that I'm fairly confident about is the Mace and Shield Glasses. I'm still somewhat new to the game so I'm not sure what all artifacts I will want to add in. I haven't got the gold for them yet, though, so I wanted to see if I could make a suit 100% out of crafted items.

 

[James [W^H]]

I'm trying to put together a sampire suit and the big problem I am having is getting all 70s in resistance. I have a 120 Tailor, Blacksmith, Imbuer and 100 Carpentry and access to all of the various crafting materials (so I can craft stuff myself).

So for a Sampire Elf to have maxed stats, I need to get 70 / 95 / 70 / 70 / 75 and I haven't even got my first 70 yet in my crafted gear.

What is the best material and best version of armor to use to achieve this? Even if I'm not all the way at 95 in FR, I can live with that, but it would be nice if I could.

What type of material are you using that you are not able to get your "first 70", and are you trying to get it without imbuing? You will need to build your suit out of base material, use runics for re-forging properties that can't be imbued and then enhance using the Forged Metal Tool if you want a high end suit. Each type of base material has pros and cons and to a certain extent, is a personal preference both in functionality and looks. If you are an Elf, then you can be open to most types of armor to choose from.

The basic steps are:
Craft base pieces
Re-forg properties
POF
Imbue
Enhance

 

[Endal]

I was planning on Studded Leather (16 points to the stats at base as opposed to 15 for everything else) but I'm really open to whatever. I don't know what the special properties of the various armor types are, but I do know the materials. (IE: Studded Leather gives an extra 2 points of LRC per piece). I have one slot on each armor piece that I can add on extra resistances, but I don't seem to be pulling it off. I bought somewhere around 30k regular leather to make the suit and I've farmed around 5k of the other types for enhancing(destroying) them. Then I will imbue up to 17% for the stats and I still don't seem to be hitting it somehow. I just feel like I'm missing something.

 

[DJAd]

I just finished making my new sampire suit. It was fairly easy to get fire resist right up to 95 as long as you enhance with horned after.

I used mace n shield glasses then 5x studded leather parts. 2 of the parts I reforged first to add 5 HCI. I then went for +8 stamina, +8 mana inc and +8 lmc on all parts. I was left with a few imbue slots to raise resists up and also add some HPI.

 

[James [W^H]]

Have you seen this on Material Bonuses?
http://uo2.stratics.com/items/magic-item-properties/material-bonuses

I think studded gives 3 points per piece which allows people to get 55 LMC. (8 x 5 = 40 + 15)

 

[DJAd]

(IE: Studded Leather gives an extra 2 points of LRC per piece).

I thought it was extra 3% ?

 

[James [W^H]]

An example of a piece I just made in iron is:

Craft a piece with base resists of 8-8-3-8-8, reforg 5 DCI, POF, imbue Cold from 3 to 16, imbue 8 LMC, 8 SI, and 8 MI. I then enhanced with Agapite which is a plus 2-7-2-2-2, and ended up with a piece that was 10, 15, 18, 10,10. There is a lot of information on Stratics about what the base piece resists should be, but you have to take into account, what works for your individual suit. My full suit is the last post in this tread.
http://stratics.com/community/threads/is-this-sampire-template-viable.303010/

 

[Endal]

Have you seen this on Material Bonuses?
http://uo2.stratics.com/items/magic-item-properties/material-bonuses

I think studded gives 3 points per piece which allows people to get 55 LMC. (8 x 5 = 40 + 15)

Yeah, I saw that one (and was guessing on the 2%, couldn't remember if it was 10% bonus or 15%, heh). The big one I would like to see is if someone could make one out for THOSE bonuses. What armor sets (studded, chainmail, plate, etc) give for their bonuses. Mana hasn't really been an issue yet, but I also have never not had 55 LMC.

Nevermind, I found it: http://uo2.stratics.com/items/magic-item-properties/items-base-properties

 

[Endal]

I think the hardest part of all of this is that my craftsman is a Gargoyle (for the imbuing buff) and my sampire is an elf, so I can't try the gear on to make sure it will work. Kinda' frusterating I guess.

 

[James [W^H]]

I think the hardest part of all of this is that my craftsman is a Gargoyle (for the imbuing buff) and my sampire is an elf, so I can't try the gear on to make sure it will work. Kinda' frusterating I guess.

I'm not sure what you mean by this statement. Why can't your Elf put the piece on to try it?

 

[Endal]

Well, the Elf can try it on (of course) but the Gargoyle can't and he's the craftsman, so I will have to swap characters to make sure that the numbers are closing in. But I think I've gotten around that already.

I spent a few minutes and made an excel sheet with the armor values. I'm thinking that I'm going to go with the Horned Studded Leather which will give me minimums of 4/8/6/6/7 (+20% randomly from exceptional arms lore 100/tailor 120) and then with the Glasses I should be able to make physical work so long as I have an average of 9 in each of the slots. Fire Resistance is going to be a bit of a punk still... It's just a ton of math to get the numbers to slide in where they're supposed to be.

Aside from jewelry and the six armor slots, are there any other places where I can get some extra armor points? I'm going kinda' crazy here trying to make this all work out, heh.

 

[Endal]

Alright, I ran the numbers and found that it is physically possible... it's just likely to take me a while to have it all work out correctly. I was doing it all wrong before because I was trying to make it so that Fire Resistance was my highest attribute and then I imbued FR only to realize that it didn't enhance over, it just set it to how I set it.

That has me thinking, can I play with the numbers on an item at will (IE if I have 12 PR and I drop it down to 7, can I use the 5 points that I dropped out somewhere else without using up any imbuing charges?) I will have to give it a try when I get on later tonight if no one knows. It might make this whole process SUPER easy.

 

[James [W^H]]

That has me thinking, can I play with the numbers on an item at will (IE if I have 12 PR and I drop it down to 7, can I use the 5 points that I dropped out somewhere else without using up any imbuing charges?) I will have to give it a try when I get on later tonight if no one knows. It might make this whole process SUPER easy.

No, you can't play with the numbers like you suggest, but there is something to look out for on your pieces. Sometimes, when you reforge, besides getting the property your looking for, it will increase one of the resists. This counts as one of you five imbues and you can re-imbue that resist to another number without counting as another imbue. An example would be you get 5 DCI and Fire is kicked up to 16. If you go to imbue LMC, it will be your 3rd imbue. If you go to imbue Fire, it will be you 2nd imbue, because you can always "re-imbue" a property on the item up to 20 times.

There is also a downside to this. If it raises one of your resists above the max that can be imbued, it will lower the amount of weight that can be imbued on the piece. If you can live with this and benefit from the higher resist, then use it to your advantage. With HCI on a piece, you can still imbue 4 max properties usually.

Besides using a spreadsheet, which is a life saver, go to the top entry in the Craftsman Forum and get Zolaf's Imbuing calculator. This calculator will allow you to verify what you actually want to imbue on each piece. It also allows you to play with the weights and numbers.

 

[Obsidian]

Endal, the secret to suit building is a spreadsheet... or at least a plan on paper before you start. You can make a good starter sampire suit with just crafting and imbuing. I would advise holding off on enhancing with a guaranteed-enhance tool until you are ready for tha t step (as it also costs real money). Attached is a starter suit I built for one of my sampire's on Origin with studded leather. This uses almost no special imbuing ingredients and the 10 LMC per piece is 7 LMC imbued and 3 from the inherent bonus with studded leather. The only artie in 6 primary armor slots is a pair of mace and shield glasses. This is basic and by no means uber, but it will get you started as an example. The values in red are armor resists that were enhanced. Some require boura pelts. This also accounts for vamp form.

-OBSIDIAN-

 

[Obsidian]

Sorry, I meant this: The values in red are armor resists that were imbued (not enhanced).

 

[DJAd]

Yes you gotta get your suit into a spreadsheet.

Spoiler

 

[CorwinXX]

Really the only thing on my list that I'm fairly confident about is the Mace and Shield Glasses. I'm still somewhat new to the game so I'm not sure what all artifacts I will want to add in. I haven't got the gold for them yet, though, so I wanted to see if I could make a suit 100% out of crafted items.

Well, it's difficult to get all max without artifacts for misc slots. For example, if you use crimson you needn't 25 HPI on your armor, if you use corguls you needn't 15 DCI, and so on. So you need to know what artifacts will you use before you start crafting your armor.

Here is my second question:
Are you going to use Forget Metal of Artifacts for enhancing?

 

[Endal]

Well, it's difficult to get all max without artifacts for misc slots. For example, if you use crimson you needn't 25 HPI on your armor, if you use corguls you needn't 15 DCI, and so on. So you need to know what artifacts will you use before you start crafting your armor.

Here is my second question:
Are you going to use Forget Metal of Artifacts for enhancing?

Hrm... I'm starting to see that. I keep getting excited when I see things that have a few points here or there, but then when I pull them up in the vendors they end up being 40m each. I've got about 5m so far so that's all out of my reach. For right now I'm just using a regular sewing kit and making a ton of leather items, then when I get one that matches the spreadsheet that I made up (though I'm working on copying/improving DJAd's) I set it aside and Enhance/Destroy it. I've got four of the pieces already (cost me about 20k leather, but it's cheaper than other options) and I'm just working on getting a tunic that doesn't destroy (lost two so far).

I'm not sure what the item is on your second question, so let's just assume that I'm not (grins)

 

[Endal]

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Au0siiJZyVCqdHhXUkZLYlZzZWJIdUJxZTVSZm80UHc&usp=sharing

I'm pretty sure I have this done right. I just set the Imbuing resistances in the Baseline area and the Enhanced area gives me the final numbers. I've found a few ways to make this work fairly easily without needing to go super crazy. I'm going to have to go through several dozens of each item until I get them right... but I think that in the end that it will all turn out just about the same. Leather is cheap, too, so that's got a nice bonus to it.

 

[Endal]

Alright, so I ran the number and I think that I've got it worked out. It keeps the numbers a bit tight, but I think I can loosen them up a bit with some anniversary items (cloak/robe) and some trash reward items (fire shoes). The goal of this exercise was to see what all I would need with just the one artifact (Mace and Shield Glasses) to make it so that I can have a full resist suit while in Vampiric Embrace. These were the numbers that I ended up with along with the margin of error that I can have (bonus totals-19)... so it's not a whole lot.



The numbers on the top are the plain leather numbers with the Enhanced numbers on the bottom. That way I would know what numbers I need before I enhance. Also, I switched over from Horned Leather to Barbed Leather. It was easier to get the Energy Bonus with it being so much of a higher benefit. I lose out a bit on the Fire Resist, so I need that higher in other places, but I think that I can manage with it. Tonight is my play night (event on Napa) so when that's all finished I'm going to take my sheet and get to work on crafting this gear.

NEW QUESTION
I had someone mention in-game that if i were to use one of the Runic Toolkits that I could get higher resists with what I make. Do those higher resists count against my imbuing costs, or are they free?

 

[Obsidian]

Yes, any mods above normal values created in crafting count toward your imbuing cap for intensity and the 5 mod limit per imbued items.

If you look at my example above, you will see each of the 5 imbued pieces have 5 mods which include imbued resists.

 

[Endal]

Well, after making my chart I was able to piece together four suits made of studded leather that will only need one slot each to give me 100% Resists as a sampire. The strange thing was, I only used about 1200 pieces of leather (and I got a lot of it back with my scissors). I Enhanced them all and ended up with two full suits, which is useful since I have a guildie who wanted to make a Sampire as well. The funny thing is that the numbers I posted above were VERY strict, and I ended up having a lot more elbow room than I thought I would (scored perfect 20s on almost every item)

Now I just need to finish getting it all fortified and then I will go ahead and imbue it all with the bonuses. I plan on doing all of that tonight after I help a guildie get his Spellweaving quest finished.

I've got a few questions, and if anyone wants to ICQ chat with me about them that's fine too (though I will likely repost here for anyone with the same questions).

The method given for crafting was 1) Craft base pieces (standard leather), 2) Re-forg properties, 3) POF, 4) Imbue, 5) Enhance
This confused the hell out of me. 1, 3, and 4 make sence, but I don't see what the purpose of Reforging is since it seems to just give you some random randoms, and why is 5 set to last when there is a good chance that it will destroy the item?
My pattern was 1) Craft bace pieces, 2) Enhance, 3) PoF, 4) Imbue
It saved me a TON of money I think (money I don't really have) and I didn't have to use a runic kit for the Reforging. I set Imbuing last (and I do it in order of cost, relics first and whatnot).

Now the question I have, is, what is the benefit of doing the crafting the way originally mentioned? (the five step method instead of my four)


My ICQ # is 645280391 if anyone wants to chat with me about this. THANKS!

 

[DJAd]

Ok this is what I do:

Craft base items from plain leather.

Reforge. Lets say 5 DCI onto studded leather with a spined runic.

POF

Imbue other mods

Enhance (using forged artifact tool)

Go out and whoop some ass.

 

[Endal]

GOTCHA! The forged artifact tool. That's $5 in the store though, isn't it? Or can you earn that as a reward?

With the Reforging, can you choose what you forge onto the item? The whole process is super confusing to me, I'm still a total noob, but I learn quickly.

 

[DJAd]

Ill give u a shout on ICQ later mate.

 

[Obsidian]

If you enhance after imbuing then you can get resists beyond the imbuing cap. But again, you have a only a small chance of succeeding without on of the enhance tools.

Yes, the enhance tools are available in a 5 and a 10 count version. They can only be purchased with real money which is why i recommend you wait until you have your ultimate suit setup. Keep improving your suit and test how the mods help you or not.

 

[CorwinXX]

Reforging are used to:
1. Add mod that can't be imbued (like 5 HCI, 5 DCI)
2. Add amount that is over imbue cap (like 150 luck, 10 SI)
3. Add mod that is expensive to imbue (like 2 MR, 8 LMC)

Reforging is optional.

There are two ways to enhance:
1. Pre imbue enhancing
2. Post imbue enhancing

Pre imbue enhancing:
1. craft from normal material
2. (optional) reforge
3. enhance
4. pof
5. imbue

Post imbue enhancing:
1. craft from normal material
2. (optional) reforge
3. pof
4. imbue
5. enhance using Forged Metal of Artifacts

When you imbue a resist on a piece that is already enhanced you loose material bonus in this resists.
When you enhance after imbuing you must use Forged Metal of Artifacts that is expensive.

Example:
You crafted a platemail gorget 8-9-7-4-7

1. Pre imbue enhancing
- enhance it with agapite: 10-16-9-6-9
- imbue max poison res: 10-16-9-17-9

2. Post imbue enhancing
- imbue max poison res: 8-9-7-17-7
- enhance it with agapite: 10-16-9-19-9

 

[Endal]

Thank you so much for this, Corwin. Those numbers were exactly what I was looking for when I started this thread. I recently found this same information out on Test Center (yay test). It's been a great deal of help to me everyone here and my gear is coming along nicely.

I do think that the two point difference is nice and all, but not really a game changer. It can cost the $5 or $10 it is for the post enhancing, or you can just burn through an extra 2k leather for 10k in game (I am going for the cheap method myself, the two points aren't THAT important).

I should be going through and crafting this soon, I just realized I'm out of imbuing reagents so I need to go farming (yay...). I will do that tonight and see if I can get the suit finished by tomorrow night. It would be awesome to have my Sampire out and about and doing that Sampire thing.

 

[James [W^H]]

Endal, What is your finished template going to have for stats, skills, LMC, HCI, DCI, DI, etc.?

 

[kRUXCg7]

Nice new avatar-picture, Endal!

 

[Endal]

So... I got rid of the goggles and just threw in a regular helm to get me started, I made sure that the helm wasn't modified. This is for a totally different suit of armor now where I am wearing full Plate Armor as well as a Chainmail Coif. I'm enhancing with Valorite and the shield is Lord Blackthorn's Exemplar.

Let me know if you guys have any suggestions for this guy. I will likely swap out SSI for a Super Slayer mod on a few weapons.

Final stats are:

Physical - 70​

Fire - 95​

Cold - 70​

Poison - 70​

Energy 75​

Strength Bonus - 16​

Dexterity Bonus - 16​

Hit Point Increase - 30​

Stamina Increase - 42​

Mana Increase - 42​

Lower Mana Cost - 42 (40)​

Damage Increase - 90​

Swing Speed Increase - 30​

Hit Chance Increase - 30​

Defense Chance Increase - 30​

Hit Lower Defense - 40​

Hit Mana Leech - 90​

Hit Stamina Leech - 50​

​

 

[James [W^H]]

Endal, The properties imbued onto the ring and bracelet add up to 560 weight. How were you able to do that?

 

[Endal]

Oh, my math may be wrong. I'll have to adjust that.

 

[James [W^H]]

Endal, I have not had time to go over your figures thoroughly, but I can see several problems with the information that you show in your spreadsheet. Hit Points don't apply on a 1 for 1 basis, i.e. (strength/2) + 50. You only need 25 Hit Points to max out. As you add SSI to a weapon, HML drops, even if you start with a reforged 100 HML weapon. DCI and HCI should be 45/45. Can you please explain how you got such uniform resists on the pieces of armor.

 

[CorwinXX]

It will take few months of non-stop crafting to get few 5-3-x-x-x exceptional platemail pieces.
Crafting bonus is 20 with GM Arms Lore (and even higher on SP-rules shards).

 

[Endal]

No-no. there is a HUGE margin of error allowed on those pieces, that's just the optimal pieces. I already have the suit put together, I just need to go ahead and get the materials to imbue it together and this suit will be on my back. Though I do think that I should get the DCI/HIC together.

thanks for the info about SSI/HML, I'm still throwing the numbers together to get this whole thing rocking the way I want it to.