[Imbuing] The Art of Imbuing

[Atlantic Smith]

Hello

I'm being told by several people to use horned leather when crafting items for imbuing. What's the difference between horned and barbed leather when I'm going to be imbuing fire onto all of the pieces anyway? Wouldn't barbed be better to get higher resists in cold/poison/energy and then just imbue the phys fire or am I missing something?

 

[hawkeye_pike]

I use barbed leather most of the time. When I do the last piece of the suit, it can happen that I need certain resists on it to make it fit. Since horned gives a +3 bonus on fire, whereas barbed gives only a +1 bonus on fire, it may be better in rare cases to use a different leather type (somteims even spined) to achieve your goal.

 

[TullyMars]

It really is a subtle art with a bunch of minor intricacies.

It does not matter so much as to what type you started with as it does the end result of the piece.
So if you are choosing between two already made pieces - you don't care what it was made of just what resists are on it currently. Since you plan on imbuing fire and physical, you would want the piece with the lowest numbers in those categories and the highest in the others. Regardless of what it was originally made of. The differences stem from where the exceptional bonuses fell.

If you are starting from scratch and making the items to be imued, then yes you are absolutely correct. Most would make the item with barbed as they give you two more energy and one more poison resist than a horned leather piece.

If you are starting with normal and then enhancing after you imbue, horned might be the way to go for a super high fire resist item. But the failure rate is astronomical with this, so the venture gets quite costly.

I always look at Tower of Roses - Crafting for the differences in materials.

One other point is horned leather is more easily obtained and if you are buying it rather than hunting it, it costs roughly half the price of barbed.

 

[Krinkle]

I get asked for high fire items quite a lot. I use horned for them because you cannot Imbue fire as high as you can from making a piece with horned. Some of the resists are, sometimes, 'wasted' because you are imbuing them higher than what is on the piece, so barbed can sometimes be a less than optimal choice.

As an example, here are two piece. One is made using barbed, the other horned. The barbed has 52 total resists, while the horned has 51. Of course, the horned allows me to have a piece with a higher fire with just one less total resists. Some of the suits I see use a specific combo of artifacts and faction items. Fire tends to be low, so they need more.

 

[Smoot]

Excellent example Krinkle. Really, theres no art in imbuing itself. Its pretty simple, only need to know what to imbue first, second, etc.

The "art" comes into play when crafting the base items. There are two things you want to think about when making the base piece.

What do you need on it?
If you need any resist higher than you can imbue, then you must use a low level kit, usually that would be spined. Sometimes its even better to use a non 120 tailor to get less mods.

Next is what material type do you want to use. You want to get the most resists and mods as possible on the piece. So, if you're imbuing fire, you want to use barbed, otherwise the 3 resist points horned gives would be wasted. If i dont need the armor to be med, and plan on imbuing fire, i use boned armor because it gives the lowest base fire resist.
You were probably told to use horned simply because you can imbue poison resist higher than fire.
This goes with any base material. If you imbue cold, dont use boned. If your imbuing energy, dont use barbed.

Then, for the absolute highest intensity imbued piece, you craft the base piece from leather, or wood, make pieces that have the right resists, then imbue, then enhance with leather or heartwood.
You will of course break most of the armor you just imbued, but when successful will get the best armor possible.

If youre not making top end armor, like just a base lrc suit or to make decent, cheap armor, then you dont have to really care too much about the base piece.

 

[TullyMars]

That is using a runic kit right?

Don't want the OP running off with a regular sewing kit thinking he is doing something wrong.

 

[Krinkle]

That is using a runic kit right?

Don't want the OP running off with a regular sewing kit thinking he is doing something wrong.

Yeah, I used a Spined Runic kit with a Legendary Tailor with GM Arms Lore. I usually get at least one usable piece per kit.

 

[War Machine GTFO]

crafting noob here

Do those pieces in the screenshots take up more imbuing weight than a piece with 18 fire resist only would?

In other words, if imbuing weight for max intensity fire resist on leather is 100, do those pieces take over 100 imbuing weight when they hold 20+ fire resist?

 

[Basara]

Since a Runic tool was used to give the property to the item, yes.