1. Imbued items can't be powdered after being imbued. As a result, you will typically powder any item that gets imbued to 255/255, before you imbue, unless it's deliberately made as a throw-away suit. Even jewelry, when imbued, gets durability 255/255. You can repair, but there's no way to get max resists back (as a result, weapons you take to fight things that damage it, such as the slimes at the first levels of Barracoon, need to either be Spell Channeling (which makes most weapons immune to the damage), or non-imbued.)
2. Imbuing weights each property differently, and there's a cap of 500% on jewelry & exceptionally made weapons/armor, 450% on non-exceptional stuff. Some are 1.0 weight, so that they cost what they say, others are 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 1.4, etc. (Example: Skills are 1.4 weight, meaning that 3 skills at 100% (+15 skill) take up 420% of the 500% on a jewelry piece, leaving only 80% to work with). And, of course, some properties can be higher on one item category than another (DI on weapons as opposed to jewelry, HCI/DCI on bows vs. being on melee weapons). And, if what you're imbuing has a property not able to be given via runic crafting, it typically counts as the more common version of the item (example, an item that has +5 skill counts as 140%/3 intensity and one property).
3. A few rare items have properties that either don't count toward properties, but those are mainly oversights (for example - by some miracle you have old juka bows you haven't applied gears to yet to turn into slayers, you can imbue them up to 450% intensity THEN use the gear - which if one of the properties you imbued was a slayer, will result in a double slayer bow).
4. Existing bonuses to resist for material, Exceptional quality (random resists), and the Arms Lore skill bonus to the Exceptional bonus, do NOT count as properties, or against the total cap for the item - BUT.....
5. Imbuing replaces any existing bonus of the same property. For Armor, that means that you can imbue a resist only up to its base amount+15. So, if you have horned leather sleeves with 16 fire resist (4 base, 3 from horned, 9 from exceptional/arms lore bonus), imbuing 15 fire would only raise it to 19 fire, AND take up 100% of the intensity (even though you only raised the property 20%). So, when imbuing resists on armor, ONLY imbue resists that are at or near the minimum value for the resist - preferably regular leather items BEFORE enhancing.
6. Similarly, since runics have 9 less exceptional random resists bonus, you typically don't want to imbue runic-made armor unless you are using the runic to get specific properties that cost Relic fragments and special materials that you currently can't afford, and resists are less an issue (after all, you can get up to 100 45-use spined kits, or 10-30 30-use horned kits, for what you'd pay for 5 relic fragments and 10 special ingredients).
Example items:
Leather Sleeves, Exceptional
a. resists are 10/10/4/5/5 = Cold would be the best choice for imbued resist (only one bonus point lost). Poison and energy would lose 2 points each. This would be a decent candidate for a 100 luck imbue (and your other chosen properties), then enhancement with spined leather for luck (as only the physical resist and luck would have enhancement checks). Still, you'd want to use one of the Forged Metal Tools for 100% success, or end up making several of these before not failing.
b. resists are 4/10/7/7/7 = only a candidate for a physical resist imbue (at least 4 of the exceptional points would be lost in each, compared to 2 in physical), but would benefit from either horned or barbed enhancement (whatever fits needs better) after imbuing the other 4 properties + physical.
c. Any exceptional piece with 2 of the resists at base, or 1 above base, should be held onto for future use, if not of current use to you. If you get something that's, say, 3/4/9/9/10 or 6/10/4/12/3, those are two items you can get 29 more resists on with just two imbues. As a result, there's likely to be some time in the future where you'll need such pieces for another suit, even if you don't need them now. for example, the 3/4/9/9/10 resist piece could be made 17/19/9/9/10 from imbuing, then enhanced to 19/20/11/12/14 after you add the other properties.
7. A reminder on Enhancing:
The formula for enhancing checks is
a. Each check is done separately, so if an item has 3 properties with 30% failure chance, that equates to 3 chances at 70% success, or 70%*70%*70% success, or only 34.3% chance of total success.
b. Note that all checks are rolled, making the chance to break much higher than it would seem.
c. The properties that factor into enhancement (only ones that count are ones that CHANGE during the enhancement. So the two in italics will not come into play when enhancing leather items)
- Each altered Resistance: Failure % = 20 + Current Resistance
- Durability: Failure % = 20 + ( Current Max. Durability / 40 )
- Lower Requirements: Failure % = 20 + ( Current Lower Requirements% / 4 )
- Luck (when enhancing with spined leather, gold or certain woods): Failure % = 30 + ( Current Luck / 2 )
Drop all decimals from the calculations.
8. Plate suits: There is a small market for Samurai Empire Plate Armor pieces made with a Valorite Runic, out of specific metals (Valorite, for those with strength to wear the armor even when cursed, Dull Copper or Gold for others, for the lower requirements). The reasons are as follows:
a. You get 5 properties at 85%-100% intensity
b. You get Mage Armor as a bonus 6th property when the armor is exceptional.
c. you don't look like a skulking Thief or mage in it.
d. you get 1 more resist per piece than the equivalent leather runic pieces.
e. It will have your name on it (of course, you'll also need a good blacksmith exceptional talisman worn and an Ancient Smith Hammer held to get to 100% exceptional)
Example (at GM arms lore):
an Exceptional Valorite Platemail Do will have
15 base resists, plus 13 from metal, plus 11 from Exceptional, for a total of 39 resists to start.
Any regeneration from the runic will be at maximum value.
Any LMC, HP, stam or mana increase will be at maximum or within 1 point.
Any runic resist bonuses or RPD will be at 13 or better.
Any LRC will be at least 17%.
Any luck will be 85+.
A gold piece would only have 32 total resists, BUT
Would have Lower Requirements 30%
and 40 more luck (if luck was one of the runic properties, that's a minimum of 125 luck, up to 140 max)
or 7-8 properties total.
In either case, you're talking the equivalent of 600-700% weighted intensity per piece. The hard part is getting the pieces to work together (especially since with 6+ properties, they can't be altered with imbuing). But, on the other hand, they can be kept in service forever, with use of powder (unlike imbued items).
