Base Properties
Starting with AoS in 2003, each piece of armour (including hats) crafted was imbued with certain base properties that are the same for all non-exceptional cloth or leather armour. These standardized properties represent how that type of armour resists physical and various elemental damage types.
Armour: Exceptionally crafted pieces of armour (excluding shields) receive additional resists, distributed randomly among the five resist types. The amount of additional resists is determined as follows...
a. If the item was crafted by a conventional sewing kit, then the minimum number of additional resists is 15.
b. If the item was crafted by a Runic Sewing Kit (a special form of Sewing kit, gained from doing Bulk Order Deeds - see that section below), then the minimum number of additional resists is only 6.
c. Note that at this time, only LEATHER items can be created with special properties with a Runic Sewing Kit. Hats (being cloth) will come out with the non-runic resist bonus, and no special abilities. It WILL waste one of the charges of your runic kit in doing so, however. There is current discussion with the UO Developers about possibly changing this, but there is no guarantee that we will ever be able to make runic hats.
d. In cases of both a. and b., an additional bonus may be imparted by the Arms Lore skill. FOR EACH TWENTY POINTS* of Arms Lore, one additional point is added to these numbers. Due to the "Jack of All Trades" bonus possessed by Human characters on accounts upgraded to Mondain's Legacy (including the 9th Anniversary Boxed set), humans are treated as having 20 points of Arms lore, if their actual Arms Lore skill is under 20.
e. For a crafter (of any type) with Grandmaster Arms Lore skill (100.0), the "normal tool" Exceptional bonus reaches its maximum of 20 random points. If crafting with a Runic Hammer, the maximum Exceptional bonus is 11 random points, with 100.0 Arms Lore. It is strongly recommended that all crafters have 100 Arms Lore, if possible.
* bonus is every 12.5 points of Arms Lore on Siege Perilous, for an +8 resist bonus (23 total for normal tools, 14 total for runic-made).