Imbuing, building a training guide

[Petra Fyde]

I made a start, but it was a bit of a false start. I'll try again as soon as I can, but here's what I have so far:

0 - 25 I made daggers with a dull copper hammer and unravelled them 750 ingots, 5 hammers - returned resources: 492 magic residue - 16 daggers wouldn't unravel, my skill wasn't high enough.
25 - 27 imbue leather caps with 4% reflect physical damage (% success chance mid 60s appears to give least failures for gains return) This takes 1 residue and 2 citrine, therefore using the resources gained previously, 20 caps @2 leather each = 40 leather so far. I need to repeat this and see how much further I can gain before going up to 5% - I lost count of the residue and citrines used

( I actually started with 5% but when I got to 29 and started failing less I realised I should have started with 4% and re-set the skill to start over)

 

[Maplestone]

Given that both success and failure consume resources, is there an advantage to minimizing failures?

 

[Drawde2]

Although I don't know the specifics, I believe that you have the best chance of a skill gain at around 50% chance of success. Though it varies a bit with different skills.

 

[Petra Fyde]

Maplestone - yes, when you fail and lose resources you don't gain. At this level every success is rewarded with a gain, so least resources used per point gained.

Drawde2 - that assumption was what made me start with .5% rpd, but when I got to 64% success chance I stopped failing so often, therefore wasting less resources with nothing to show for it.

Today I will re-set my skill to 25 and start over from there...........and try to remember to keep careful track of resources used. RPD is the way to start I feel, it uses citrines, which are one of the least expensive gems to buy from the jewellery, if you don't hunt them and magic residue, which you just got a pretty good supply of by unravelling to get to 25. On a normal shard you could unravel low end monster loot, making it considerably less expensive to reach that point.
This also confirms that you are not able to unravel items that give enchanted essence at this skill level.

 

[Petra Fyde]

My findings so far - and btw, once you get out of the 20s, Drawde2 is right, mid 50s is the best for gains.

I'm using a gargoyle character, in a private house with a crafted soulforge (can't stand being in the crowd at the bank!)
No gains off fails.
0 - 25 unravel (492 residue obtained)
at 25 imbue except leather caps, reflect physical damage, 4%. cost 1 residue, 2 citrine.
at 26 getting from 25 - 26 I had 1 fail
at 27 - 1 fail
@ 27 move to 5% rpd - citrine cost goes up from 2 - 3. Choice here, imbue over the 4%, keeping the same items, or unravel to recover residue and make new items. Recommendation is unravel.
at 28 - 5 fails.
at 29 - 11 fails, 1 success without gain.
at 30 - 3 fails, 1 success without gain.
@ 30 move to 6% rpc - cost now 2 residue, 4 citrine.
at 31 6 fails
at 32 - 9 fails
at 33 - 4 fails, 3 success without gain.
@ 33 move to 7% rpd, cost remains 2 + 4.-
at 34 - 7 fails, 1 success without gain
at 35 - 8 fails, 1 success without gain
at 36 - 4 fails, 2 success without gain
at 37 - 6 fails, 4 success without gain.
at 38 - 6 fails, 3 success without gain
@38 move to 8% rpd cost now 2 + 5
at 39 - 9 fails, 6 success without gain
at 40 - 7 fail, 1 success without gain.
at 41 - 7 fails, 3 success without gain.
at 42 - 3 fails, 4 success without gain,
at 43 - 1 fail, 4 success without gain,
@43 move to 9% rpd, cost 3 + 6
at 44 - 5 fails 4 success no gain
at 45 - 13!! fails, 11 success no gain!

At this point - I have 200 residue, have used 1276 citrines and 476 pieces of regular leather.
Speculating further (I've had enough for now) move to 10% rpd at 48, then at 51 switch to hit dispel 2% on daggers.

And before anyone kindly points out that you can buy up to 40% from an artificer, I play Siege where you can't buy skills.

 

[Diggity]

good info Petra.

At higher levels, I think you will also have to contend with creating/finding magical items to use as a base for imbuing. To maintain the 50% (I think 40-60% is the range for optimal gains) success chance, the items you are imbuing will have to have increasing levels of total intensity as you gain skill.

As an example, try training imbuing at 94.8 skill. This is around the threshold you will need to cross to be able to unravel relic fragments. I think you will have to use something other than exceptional caps for your attempts.

Then try imbuing at 110+ skill. Again, I think you will also have to bump up the intensity of the items you use for your skill gain attempts.

Compare the items you use at <50 skill to the ones you use at 94.8 and at 110+. Also note the extreme slowdown in skill gain at the higher levels unless you are very lucky. Imbuing could be very tough to gain to usable levels.

ps If I were on siege, I'd soulstone all my skills (if that works) and reroll with 50 imbuing to start. Will still be a long road, but every little bit helps.

 

[Amber Moon]

Actually, great information guys. Keep it coming and Thank You!

 

[Petra Fyde]

I've done some jumping about without spending all the time making and keeping track of resources, but.
as I speculated, at 51 go to daggers and imbue hit dispel, 2% - switch to 4% at 55, 6% at 58, then for ever 2 points of gains go up a dispel % till at 84 you're imbuing 40% hit dispel - don't unravel these daggers
at 85 add 2% hit energy area (resources residue + amethyst) - or any of the other area effect spells.
again work your way up the percentages, till at 107 you imbue 40% -
daggers should then have 40% hit dispel and 40% hit energy area - now for the first time you need enchanted essence. Add a third property, a resist, I added energy resist, which needs essence + amethyst.
at 108 add 1% energy resist.

I'm out of time now, but I think you can see, you don't need special gems for a while yet. There's another property you can add in first, nor have I used any relic fragments.

 

[Maplestone]

Also remember that you don't have to start from scratch - you can pick up random loot and imbue it with an inexpensive property. As long as the percentage chance of success is more than 0 and less than 100, you should be able to get gains - the closer to 50%, the better.

 

[Diggity]

The problem I have with trying to use the same item for imbuing skill gain is that there is a limit of 10 successful imbues per item. Once that limit is reached, I get a diminished chance to gain skill message. Once I get that message, I've never gained any skill on successive attempts. So I don't see saving items for later is going to work for me.

I also noticed you can rotate minimum hit fire/energy/cold etc imbues til 10 successful imbues. This lets me stay at 1 residue/gem per attempt while training. Not sure if this is intended or not.

 

[Petra Fyde]

Maplestone that's what I was looking for, the 50s spot, when chance exceeded 64% I switched up to the the next intensity.
at 51 I imbued hit dispel at 2% it took 6 failures and 16 successes to get to 52.
at 55 I went to 4% - 16 failures and 20 successes to 56
at 58 I went to 6% - 39 fails and 34 successes to 59
The ratio of fails to successes was staying within previous parameters regarding ratios, but the numbers were getting much higher, I really don't want to spend the time to power game it right to 120 on test shard, but I believe my speculative hunt and peck would work out. In more detail, it went like this:

@60 imbue 8%; @62 - 10%; @64 - 12%; @66 - 14%, @68 - 16%; @70 - 18%; @72 - 20%; @74 - 22%; @76 - 24%; @77 - 26%; @78 - 28%; @79 - 30%; @80 - 32%; @81 - 34%; @82 - 36%; @83 - 38%; @84 - 40%;
@85 add 2nd property 2% hit (energy) area; @89 - 4%; @90 - 6%; @91 - 10%; @92 - 12%; @93 - 14%; @95 - 16%; @97 - 18%; @98 - 22%; @99 - 24%; @100 - 26%; @101 - 28%; @102 - 30%; @103 - 32%; @104 - 34%; @105 - 35%; @106 - 38%; @107 - 40%;
@108 add 3rd property - Resist (any) 1%


I think I've proved that you don't need the expensive mining gems etc to train it, though you will go through a shed load of the older gems. The hit area property and the resist property can be any, I chose energy, but you could go through the set of those depending which gem you had available. When I come to training it for real I'll probably not train more than 5 points in a day, by which time I'll be more than willing to switch chars and go bash something that will give me more gems, and of course, more items that I can unravel for the other resources.

The daggers I made right at the start that I couldn't unravel were mostly slayers, I thought they might come in handy for trying to imbue more properties on when I got to the last few points.

[edit] The final push: @ 109 - 2%; @ 111 - 3%; @ 112 - 4%; @ 113 - 5%; @ 115 - 6%; @ 116 - 7%; @ 117 - 8% ;@ 118 - 9%; @ 119 - 10%; @ 120 - 11%.
Resources used (without quantities) Magic residue, enchanted essence, citrine, amber, amethyst (this could have been any of the other gems relating to area effect or resist)
No mining gems, no lumber resources, no relic fragments.
[edit]

Seems to me, as a good source of gems, might be a good idea if folk dusted off their treasure hunters and mib fishers.

 

[cheerful]

You 120'd imbuing in 2 days?

 

[Petra Fyde]

heheh, no, I 'cherry picked' by setting the skill and finding the level of imbuing that gave me that 50 - 64% success chance, which is the gaining spot.

I wanted to find out whether it was possible to train it without the expensive resources, and to do it in a way that I could prove my claim, I believe I've done that.

I don't want to try to power game the skill on test center, I don't have that amount of time to dedicate to it, too many other calls on my time. Someone gave me a fan site to look after

 

[Maplestone]

Seems to me, as a good source of gems, might be a good idea if folk dusted off their treasure hunters and mib fishers.

Or visit jewelers ... I'm suspicious it's still more efficient to farm for gold and buy the gems 500 at a time.

Also, miners have the ability to learn how to mine for normal gems now and can get them at a good rate.

 

[RichDC]

I don't want to try to power game the skill on test center, I don't have that amount of time to dedicate to it, too many other calls on my time. Someone gave me a fan site to look after

Fantastic job on both stratics and this guide!

Soon you can get this guide on stratics

Ok thats the niceness over

*Cracks Whip*

BACK TO WORK WHENCH!

 

[Petra Fyde]

Remember, Maplestone, that gems are one of the resources that will go up in price for every 1000 bought, if too many people start buying them from jewellers they'll go the way of the arrows, cloth and bottles with prices soaring.

RichDC. I am neither a Whench nor a Wench. While it's a viable guide, there may be a better way of doing it, if you're prepared to go to essence instead of residue earlier. I've done what I set out to do, shot the 'it will cost a fortune' doom and gloom faction down in flames. A better guide will no doubt come from one of the more dedicated crafters.

 

[Maplestone]

True, but I'm thinking that since the starting price is in the 75-200 range per gem, it will take a lot, lot longer to double in price than 10gp arrows. That said, I'll probably use adventure-earned gems too.

(I admire what you're doing for people here ... I've done just a minimum of imbuing gain testing because I'm nervous about just burning out from all the clicking when I get back to my home shard)

 

[Fink]

Petra: you rock.

 

[RichDC]

RichDC. I am neither a Whench nor a Wench.

You know i was joking right?

 

[Petra Fyde]

yup, which is why I put in the spelling correction

So................

When do I get your contribution to the site update?

 

[Lynk]

Most impressive Petra...

 

[Godiva_DF]

Thank you Petra for an amazing thread. I am so looking forward to start imbueing.

Since I could only take part for a couple of days in the open beta I still got some questions left.

The daggers you used from 51 did you just normally craft them or did you use a runic hammer?

If you had plenty of parasitic plants would you recommend imbueing hit dispel to high intensities?

 

[Petra Fyde]

The daggers I used were just gm crafted.
I wouldn't use parasitic plants for training, I might need them later for items I actually want to keep .
The key elements in the training really are: imbue armor to 51, I chose hit dispel as the first weapon property, not only because the ingredients were cheaper and easier to come by, but also because of the range of the property, 2 - 40% While adding the area effect property first would have allowed for different gems, I would have hit 90% intensity limit on lower end ingredients earlier. Actually, I'm not totally sure if that's 90% or 80%. Maybe someone can confirm that for me?

 

[Maplestone]

I'm fairly sure 90% was the limit (so you could get 44% hit dispel without special ingredients)

 

[Endrik]

Wow, Very helpful! Thanks for all your hard work!