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So imbuing made runic kits useless

J

jaashua

Guest
Aside from using low end runic hammer and fletching kits to create base weapons to imbue, all runic tools are useless. Which also makes BODs less interesting.

Anybody else think that this should be remedied? What are some ideas for fixing it? Did the devs mention anything when imbuing was introduced about plans for runic tools?
 

Viquire

Crazed Zealot
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
It is still the same crap shoot it always was. But if you plan ahead, you can now pretty consistently turn out four high end mod items with a little extra effort.
 

Ezekiel Zane

Grand Poobah
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
Pretty much true. I've been a long-time BOD collector with, at one time, 14 characters to collect BODs. I have almost 50 BRSKs that are so low-priced I don't sell them anymore. I sell plenty of Horned kits though.

Something needs to be done.
 

Ashlynn_L

Lore Master
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
Runic kits were always a suck idea so I'm glad Imbuing took their place even if I don't own an imbuer. Always drove me mad that I'd spend time acquiring a runic kit only to have it produce a pile of junk. They should have let crafters produce something useful from the start, rather than being a bunch of dice you roll.
 

Ender

Crazed Zealot
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
UNLEASHED
Not useless, you can get like 7 or 8 mods with valorite hammers still. It's just random, so you're not guaranteed something useful. But if you get lucky, you can get something WAY better than imbued items.
 

Mark Trail

Journeyman
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
Dumb Mods

Seems like the runic kits prefer to make the worst mods, luck and reflect physical damage. One of these ruins the whole piece. A simple fix would be to make all mods equally likely, or even to make luck and RPD less likely.
 

Nexus

Site Support
Administrator
Moderator
Professional
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
Wiki Moderator
UNLEASHED
I think both Imbuing and Runic Kits have their uses, and I'm loving the "Low Low Prices!" Barbed Kits have fallen too... I bought 10 the other day for like 4mil. While you can fine tailor your suit with Imbuing, I prefer outside Jewelry not to wear Imbued items on most my "finished" characters...

Why? because without any foreseen changes to the game I'll never have to replace his suit...other than Jewelry that I never imbue to Max intensity anyways....

Burning out Kits simply allows me to find that 1-2 really good pieces for my needs out of 2-3 kits per slot and unravel the rest for imbuing ingredients... It's a Win-Win for me, I get a few Relics, lots of the other Imbuing resources from the "junk" and I get a suit I'll never replace....

More than anything I think Imbuing has balanced "Runics" the prices have dropped so that even non-bod runners have a good chance of obtaining one, I mean seriously I don't feel the need to spend that much gold on a crap shoot, with a High end runic. I might get nothing I can use then again I might get something like the Gloves my Necro/Mage wears MR2 LRC 11% 5/21/21/21/10 resists.... In the case of those gloves the Kit I bought to make them was totally worth it, because I have a really good piece of armor and I'll not have to worry about replacing it as long as I have insurance...
 

Dermott of LS

UOEC Modder
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
...

DC runics are popular since they are cheap and can give that first mod needed on an item (especially one that uses Relic Frags)

Shadow maybe Copper: Pretty much useless

Bronze - Agapite: Useful for ML recipes to net Relic Frags

Verite/Valorite: Still good at making top end items, don't like the random roll you get, you can still unravel for a Frag or resmelt, your choice.
 
T

Tinsil

Guest
Imbuing made hunting have far less use.. Before at least you could wear a luck suit or get perfection (+luck) and hope to come across a usable jewel, but now there's just even less and less point to go out and kill monsters.

I understand the imbuing on armor though, essentially ALL of the high-end made armor was from obviously duped valorite hammers, and something needed to be done to remedy this a bit. I'm still not sure weapons and jewels should've been included though.
 

Ender

Crazed Zealot
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
UNLEASHED
Imbuing made hunting have far less use.. Before at least you could wear a luck suit or get perfection (+luck) and hope to come across a usable jewel, but now there's just even less and less point to go out and kill monsters.
You can still get a fairly decent number of relic fragments from monsters.
 
T

Tinsil

Guest
You can still get a fairly decent number of relic fragments from monsters.
It's nowhere near the reward it used to be, which wasn't much to begin with.

Most of the relic fragments are crafted through making special items with runic hammers and unraveling (runics main use now)..
 
S

Sevin0oo0

Guest
low end hammers were worthless before imbuing, which gave a little life back into them. I hate bods
 

Dermott of LS

UOEC Modder
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
...

Hunting for me has become about resources which fall into one of several catergories:

1. Gold and Gems (Gems being multi-purpose)
2. "Scrap" metal items for combining into junk BODs or resmelting into iron ingots
3. "Scrap" light items (3 or less stones in weight) for unravelling purposes
4. Imbueing ingredients
5. "Other Resources" such as ore and fertile dirt on ant lions, bandages on mummies, and so on
6. Special drops (usually event drops)

While hunting for that next weapon, armor or jewelry piece is no longer necessary, that hasn't made hunting completely worthless.
 

popps

Always Present
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
Aside from using low end runic hammer and fletching kits to create base weapons to imbue, all runic tools are useless. Which also makes BODs less interesting.

Anybody else think that this should be remedied? What are some ideas for fixing it? Did the devs mention anything when imbuing was introduced about plans for runic tools?


I am NOT in favour for revamping Bulk Order Deeds if before this, the ability to script them is not eradicated from the game.

As much as I would like BODs to be revamped I see it pointless if this is going to be yet another goodie to scripters.

No thanks.

Stop the ability to script first, and then we can talk about making Bulk Order Deeds meaningfull again.

That's as I see it.
 
T

Tinsil

Guest
While hunting for that next weapon, armor or jewelry piece is no longer necessary, that hasn't made hunting completely worthless.
The things you named are very low yield for gold except for special items.

I was referring to finding things like 25 ep 10 hci 14 dci 22 di 1 fc jewels and such, which used to go for a killing and were rare, it costs like 1.5 mil MAYBE to imbue such a piece.

It certainly cut down on reasons to hunt for me, where I have enough gold and was just looking for oddities and rare pieces I could find, not needing things to smelt or break down into ingredients which aren't worht much and can be gotten easier other ways.
 

Dermott of LS

UOEC Modder
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
...

If the monsters dropped 3 or 4 1 million gold checks would that be better?

While I do grab the gold off of monsters, I hunt mainly for utility with other skills and systems, not for what I can turn over.

If I want the quick cash, I'll fill out the PoF BODs I have on hand as well as ones for the more useful runics, or spend some time farming ratmen in the Abyss for imbue ingredients.

It's all a matter of perspective really.
 

GalenKnighthawke

Grand Poobah
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
The experience of most players I've spoken to, and most (but not all) whose posts I have happened to read, is that Imbuing and traditional crafting (for want of a better term) complement one another pretty well.

Also, not everyone wants Imbued stuff; for my two secondary characters, for example, I try to avoid Imbued armor. So I still buy up pretty good amounts of non-Imbued armor. I also buy up decent non-Imbued weapons, thinking that one day I may find myself wanting a weapon that doesn't have to wear out.

-Galen's player
 

Madrid

Slightly Crazed
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
What they need to do is introduce a New Runic System giving us a menu option virtualy idenical to what is on the imbueing menu. We should have the option to place what properties we want on a given weapon/item/armor when crafting with runics. Not this random bull**** we've had for the past years. Who the hell is going to put a resist on a weapon or FC1. How many useless MODs to we see get placed upon items that are crafted runics. It's an effin' joke.

A menu similiar to Imbueing is what is needed to give runics some value again. Allowing only perhaps Verite and Valorite Hammers to exceed the 500 Cap.

It's pretty assinied that a Legendary Blacksmith has no clue what he will craft when he's using a runic hammer.

Also the Exceptional Default DI needs to be removed. I want a base 500 Weapon open with 5 Mods. I don't want exceptional 500 where one of the mods (Damage Increase) has been forced down my throat.

Our friggin' Smiths should know what the hell it is their making.
 
K

Kasumi_Chan

Guest
I used like 40 DC runic hammers to make crap just to unravel for skill gains to 70 and the loads of magic residue to work the skill after that.
 
J

jaashua

Guest
I am NOT in favour for revamping Bulk Order Deeds if before this, the ability to script them is not eradicated from the game.

As much as I would like BODs to be revamped I see it pointless if this is going to be yet another goodie to scripters.

No thanks.

Stop the ability to script first, and then we can talk about making Bulk Order Deeds meaningfull again.

That's as I see it.
That's a fair enough point of view. Maybe we can view imbuing as a remedy for a system that was crooked from the start.

Still, rather than just let the BOD system sit around as useless or remove it from the game, there might be a way to make it interesting without giving a huge edge to the scripters again.
 

Dermott of LS

UOEC Modder
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
...

The BOD system is what it is. The best fix they made was to give 100+ crafters better pulls and to allow you to turn in a deed to get a new one (which means once you get up a decent supply of "deeds to do", you don't need to script BOD pulls, just fill and turn in.

The Smithing BOD system is fairly well useful with good mining tools (yes some people still mine), Powder of Fort (even more necessary with Imbuing), and the runics (which while their purpose has changed, their usefulness has not).

The concept of UO in terms of items and crafting has changed. It's no longer the simple loot and equip or make and equip with a minimum of skills or actions, now you have to consider how something is useful in different ways.

Example: You loot a bunch of iron items, all of them are "junk" nowadays. Obviously if you've been playing years you know that you don;t need to ID them and that you probably won'tactually use them. You have 3 choices: 1. Smelt into ingots, 2. Use to fill junk BODs (granted this is only useful if you're willing to devote the time and storage to do this), or 3. Unravel into Residue/Essence.

Imbuing plays off of the Smithing BOD system MUCH more than the Tailoring one though it seems, but the systems aren't useless if you know how to play them.
 

Viquire

Crazed Zealot
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
Before we engage in the revamping of crafting systems I would really really like for materials and their bonuses to get a thorough going over. The system is very weighted towards one set of materials.

Further, Id like to see recipes for non elven gear, maybe that could get worked in to a revamp somehow.
 

Ender

Crazed Zealot
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
UNLEASHED
What they need to do is introduce a New Runic System giving us a menu option virtualy idenical to what is on the imbueing menu. We should have the option to place what properties we want on a given weapon/item/armor when crafting with runics. Not this random bull**** we've had for the past years. Who the hell is going to put a resist on a weapon or FC1. How many useless MODs to we see get placed upon items that are crafted runics. It's an effin' joke.

A menu similiar to Imbueing is what is needed to give runics some value again. Allowing only perhaps Verite and Valorite Hammers to exceed the 500 Cap.

It's pretty assinied that a Legendary Blacksmith has no clue what he will craft when he's using a runic hammer.

Also the Exceptional Default DI needs to be removed. I want a base 500 Weapon open with 5 Mods. I don't want exceptional 500 where one of the mods (Damage Increase) has been forced down my throat.

Our friggin' Smiths should know what the hell it is their making.
So basically making Imbuing a useless skill?

lolque
 

Madrid

Slightly Crazed
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
Imbueing was introduced in order to give new players a chance at decent gear.That mission has been accomplished.

Verite and Valorite Hammers which are very difficult to obtain should be able to craft better items than what is available via imbueing and be able to save you on resources to boot.

Ender go post your useless drool on the Warriors Forum.:loser:
 

Freelsy

Babbling Loonie
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
...

If the monsters dropped 3 or 4 1 million gold checks would that be better?

While I do grab the gold off of monsters, I hunt mainly for utility with other skills and systems, not for what I can turn over.

If I want the quick cash, I'll fill out the PoF BODs I have on hand as well as ones for the more useful runics, or spend some time farming ratmen in the Abyss for imbue ingredients.

It's all a matter of perspective really.

No, what they are saying is it was a thrill to hunt Lady Mels looking for those perfect items. There is no way in hell you were always going to get one, but one out of every 10-15 Mels you could snag a decent item. Make a good profit and keep going. It was a thrill pvm'ing for those godly items. Now it's just boring, only looting to unravel. It's pointless.

Imbuing = death of peerless farming for other than special drops
 

lucitus

UOEC Modder
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
Hey mates first you complain about the runic tools and now you complain about imbuing, no!

Imbuing is a cool skill and i love it! You can make cool armors of nearly every armor type, thats nice, in the past i have to spent millions on good armor because the kits and runic tools were too rare.

Now we have to get between that, a runic tool should have better quality and it has better quality (verite, valorite runic hammer) than the imbued stuff. But the rarity is too high! It is simply not enough chance to get a better than an imbued item. Also we can think about new mods for runics for example soul charge for shields, or eaters for armor, or this new burst mods.
 

G.v.P

Stratics Legend
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
Aside from using low end runic hammer and fletching kits to create base weapons to imbue, all runic tools are useless. Which also makes BODs less interesting.

Anybody else think that this should be remedied? What are some ideas for fixing it? Did the devs mention anything when imbuing was introduced about plans for runic tools?
Golden Runics and better can still make sweet stuff w/ 5 mods, while Verite and Val can do 6 mods. Imbuing has its limits. But other runics, like tailor kits, yeah, they're pretty useless now. Funny, used to be all about barbed kits.
 

Viquire

Crazed Zealot
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
Golden Runics and better can still make sweet stuff w/ 5 mods, while Verite and Val can do 6 mods. Imbuing has its limits. But other runics, like tailor kits, yeah, they're pretty useless now. Funny, used to be all about barbed kits.
This could be solved by taking a closer look at tailoring materials, their bonuses, and or recipes or lack there of.
 

NuSair

Crazed Zealot
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
...

DC runics are popular since they are cheap and can give that first mod needed on an item (especially one that uses Relic Frags)

Shadow maybe Copper: Pretty much useless
You really don't know what you are talking about, Shadow are not useless and are almost as good a Bronze at making Relic Frags.
 

Cogniac

Grand Inquisitor
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
What they need to do is introduce a New Runic System giving us a menu option virtualy idenical to what is on the imbueing menu. We should have the option to place what properties we want on a given weapon/item/armor when crafting with runics...
No.

The entire point of Imbuing vs. Runics is that it's a trade-off:
* Imbuing: Get the exact properties you want or need, but the item eventually wears out.
* Runics: The item never wears out, but you don't ever get exactly what you want or need.

If you make it so that runics give you exactly what you want, this first negates the entire Imbuing system, and then later negates the entire runic system, because once everyone has a bunch of perfect items that never wear out, no one will ever need to make more.

And then you'll be right back here pancakes about the worthlessness of runics.
 

NuSair

Crazed Zealot
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
...

DC runics are popular since they are cheap and can give that first mod needed on an item (especially one that uses Relic Frags)

Shadow maybe Copper: Pretty much useless
You really don't know what you are talking about, Shadow are not useless and are almost as good a Bronze at making Relic Frags.
Wanted to backup my statement here:

Using a Bronze hammer with Gold ingots is
630 ingots for ~42 Relic Fragments and 5 EE

Where a Shadow Hammer is:
810 ingots for ~45 Relic Fragments and 34 EE

So, 180 more Gold ingots (and additional perfect emeralds) for about the same relic frags and ~30 more EE.
 
U

UOKaiser

Guest
Aside from using low end runic hammer and fletching kits to create base weapons to imbue, all runic tools are useless. Which also makes BODs less interesting.

Anybody else think that this should be remedied? What are some ideas for fixing it? Did the devs mention anything when imbuing was introduced about plans for runic tools?
With that it became a dominoe line making hunting for item properties pretty useless, then unique builds useless a, then inovated crafting useless, merchanting in those areas obsolete, long term goals and collecting useless etc... Big huge long line of dominoes.
 
U

UOKaiser

Guest
No.

The entire point of Imbuing vs. Runics is that it's a trade-off:
* Imbuing: Get the exact properties you want or need, but the item eventually wears out.
* Runics: The item never wears out, but you don't ever get exactly what you want or need.

If you make it so that runics give you exactly what you want, this first negates the entire Imbuing system, and then later negates the entire runic system, because once everyone has a bunch of perfect items that never wear out, no one will ever need to make more.

And then you'll be right back here pancakes about the worthlessness of runics.
Imbuing system items eternal or not will always make runics as useless as hunting for items to put on. If a item wears out after a long long time then another of the exact item can be made immediately with exact properties at max. While runic in order to get a exact perfect copy of a specific suit without artifacts takes years of work for 1 person. Runics cannot neither compare or compete with that. They are obsolete for that type of work.
 

Smoot

Stratics Legend
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
...

DC runics are popular since they are cheap and can give that first mod needed on an item (especially one that uses Relic Frags)

Shadow maybe Copper: Pretty much useless
You really don't know what you are talking about, Shadow are not useless and are almost as good a Bronze at making Relic Frags.
Wanted to backup my statement here:

Using a Bronze hammer with Gold ingots is
630 ingots for ~42 Relic Fragments and 5 EE

Where a Shadow Hammer is:
810 ingots for ~45 Relic Fragments and 34 EE

So, 180 more Gold ingots (and additional perfect emeralds) for about the same relic frags and ~30 more EE.
Im pretty sure he didnt mean making things to unravel into relic frags, he meant getting the actually property on an item that would Require relic frags / essence etc. Like 30 ssi or 15 hci. :)
 

Smoot

Stratics Legend
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
No.

The entire point of Imbuing vs. Runics is that it's a trade-off:
* Imbuing: Get the exact properties you want or need, but the item eventually wears out.
* Runics: The item never wears out, but you don't ever get exactly what you want or need.

If you make it so that runics give you exactly what you want, this first negates the entire Imbuing system, and then later negates the entire runic system, because once everyone has a bunch of perfect items that never wear out, no one will ever need to make more.

And then you'll be right back here pancakes about the worthlessness of runics.
Imbuing system items eternal or not will always make runics as useless as hunting for items to put on. If a item wears out after a long long time then another of the exact item can be made immediately with exact properties at max. While runic in order to get a exact perfect copy of a specific suit without artifacts takes years of work for 1 person. Runics cannot neither compare or compete with that. They are obsolete for that type of work.
Totally agree with Kaiser. In my opinion imbuing should have only had a max durability of 100 or 150. Then runics would still be useful. As it is, a casters armor wont wear out, well, forever basically. A melee maybe a couple of years before you have to replace. The sampire i play takes the most damage to his gear, and its only down to about 16 points after a year...
 

Smoot

Stratics Legend
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
My own thoughts, -yeah runics need a buff. It would be Very Simple. Extra mod for barbed kits, maybe 35 uses for a val hammer instead for 15. Or something like that. I would like to see balancing of crafting in UO than any crappy boat expansions or gobbly gook the devs dish out right now.
 

NuSair

Crazed Zealot
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
Im pretty sure he didnt mean making things to unravel into relic frags, he meant getting the actually property on an item that would Require relic frags / essence etc. Like 30 ssi or 15 hci. :)
...

DC runics are popular since they are cheap and can give that first mod needed on an item (especially one that uses Relic Frags)

Shadow maybe Copper: Pretty much useless

Bronze - Agapite: Useful for ML recipes to net Relic Frags

Verite/Valorite: Still good at making top end items, don't like the random roll you get, you can still unravel for a Frag or resmelt, your choice.
I am pretty sure he did, since he catagorized them differently.
 

Dermott of LS

UOEC Modder
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
...

If Shadow and Copper can make Relic Frag producing items, then I stand corrected as I had not heard of them doing so. When I sell hammers from time to time, DC hammers are snapped up VERY quickly as are Bronze, but Shaodw and Copper seem to languish on the vendor for months (even at WELL below Luna prices).

So there is at least the perception that at those two levels of hammers, the utility (usefulness) of the hammers dips considerably.

Again, I'll freely admit being incorrect if that is not the case.
 

NuSair

Crazed Zealot
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
...

If Shadow and Copper can make Relic Frag producing items, then I stand corrected as I had not heard of them doing so. When I sell hammers from time to time, DC hammers are snapped up VERY quickly as are Bronze, but Shaodw and Copper seem to languish on the vendor for months (even at WELL below Luna prices).

So there is at least the perception that at those two levels of hammers, the utility (usefulness) of the hammers dips considerably.

Again, I'll freely admit being incorrect if that is not the case.
Maybe I'll make an imbuer on LS just to buy up your hammers and make frags. :D
 
L

longshanks

Guest
imbuing is a kick in the sack for runics for sure.

Basically killed the Val hammer industry which was probably the point.

i look at smith and tailor as support skills for imbuing now.

im happy for imbuing for two reasons.

1) you can make anything you need

2) you don't have to undergo a serious grind to do so, outside of becoming
legendary in the skill.

imbuing was one of the things the dev team got right.
 
J

jaashua

Guest
Personally, pre-forged-metal-artifacts, I did about 100 barbed kits recently. My thinking was that it would be nice to have armor that I could repair and keep forever if I wanted.

I managed one suit and it was far from ideal. I tried to sell the extra pieces that came out with good properties and intensities for 50-150K on my vendor on Pac because there is nobody else selling armor, but I sold maybe one piece a week.

100 barbed kits and I kept an average of less than 1 piece per kit.

Even using them to save imbuing ingredient cost is impractical because you'll never get the resist to line up right.
 

Cogniac

Grand Inquisitor
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
Totally agree with Kaiser. In my opinion imbuing should have only had a max durability of 100 or 150. Then runics would still be useful. As it is, a casters armor wont wear out, well, forever basically. A melee maybe a couple of years before you have to replace. The sampire i play takes the most damage to his gear, and its only down to about 16 points after a year...
That I can agree with: The idea that Imbued items are effectively infinite due to the fact that they can have up to 255 durability. You can have all the necessary ingredients collected to replace an item 10% into that item's life (or less), when it should be more like 85-95%.

The solution to this, however, is to lower the maximum durability of items (or just Imbued items), not to change runics in such a fashion as to eventually make both Imbuing and runics themselves obsolete.
 
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