Publish 47 - Crafting & Imbuing

[Voxpire]

Publish 47 - Crafting & Imbuing

Here we are at last, after the past week or so of tolerating a semi-working imbuing system, we are happy to finally announce the arrival of the new and unique imbuing rune crafting system.

Imbuing has always been a complex feature, very hard to balance, but after some thorough testing, we believe everything is on-par! (we - myself and the player testers who took part)

With the new system overhaul, comes a few logic changes, but nothing too drastic or confusing.
Of course, such a big change may seem disorientating at first, but it's really easy to begin crafting Imbuing Runes!


First off, just some quick notes on the crafting menus, as this globally affects all crafting systems;

The item crafting menu appearance has been enhanced dramatically;
It now gives you all of the feedback you could possibly need in order to make your crafting decision.
Everything from detailed descriptions about the item to special functions, special requirements (recipes, heat, forge, etc) and extended skills and resources information.

Everything has been color-coded to make your life easier - red means you don't have something you need, yellow means you're cutting it fine (in the case of skills) and green means you have filled the requirement.

We've even added a small box next to certain entries on the menu that link directly to UOGuide - click the link in the menu to be taken to the page with information. It's a simple help feature for your convenience. We may some day link this to our own Wiki instead of UOGuide, but it's good for now!



OK, the juicy bits;

Blank Runes

Blank Imbuing/Unravelling Runes are essential to crafting Imbuing/Unravelling Runes.
In order to craft a Blank Rune, you will need 1 Rough Stone.
To begin crafting Blank Runes, use a Scribe's Pen.


Imbuing Runes

Imbuing Runes are small stones that carry special property inscriptions that can be applied to a wide range of items; Spell-Books, Glasses, Talisman, Armor, Clothing, Jewellery, Ranged Weapons and Meleé Weapons.

Each Imbuing Rune carries a unique property that can be applied to an item.
To use an Imbuing Rune, simply double-click it and target the item you wish to imbue.
Using an Imbuing Rune is always successful and doesn't require any skill to apply them.
There is no chance of destroying your equipment when applying an Imbuing Rune.

To begin crafting Imbuing Runes, you can double-click a Soul Forge.
You will require at least 1 Blank Imbuing Rune for each Imbuing Rune you wish to craft, each craft requires different levels of different resources, depending on the intensity of your selection.

Imbuing Runes that show a 0 (zero) Imbue Rating may still be imbued (if available) but will not count towards the Rune Count or Equipment Rating on an item.

The ignored/zero-rated properties are;

• Night Sight
• Luck
• Increased Karma Loss
• Battle Lust
• Blood Drinker
• Lower Stat Req
• Hit Fatigue
• Hit Curse
• Hit Mana Drain
• Self Repair
• Durability Bonus
• MageArmor
• Reactive Paralyze
• Soul Charge

Unravelling Runes

For every Imbuing Rune craft group, there is an Unravelling Rune craft.
When you use an unravelling rune, the property on the item is wiped and you have a chance to recover up to 90% of each resource used to craft the imbuing rune for that property.
There is no chance to destroy your equipment when unravelling individual runes.

To begin crafting Unravelling Runes, you must use a Rune Chisel.
You will require at least 1 Blank Unravelling Rune for each Unravelling Rune you wish to craft.


Resource Recovery

It's possible to recover up to 90% of the resources used for a specific Imbuing Rune when using an Unravelling Rune on an item, but you can't unravel an entire item just yet.
The resources you recover are the same resources that would be used to make an Imbuing Rune for the property you are Unravelling.
You aren't always guaranteed to recover resources, but you will more often than not!


Limits / Caps

Specific pieces of items have certain limits for imbuing, as before, there is a cap on how many runes (slots) can be taken up by imbued properties.
There is also a cap on the maximum rating (total property weight) that specific items can have.

The current limits/caps are as follows:

• Spell-Books: Rating: 800 - Runes: 6 - Max Imbues: 50
• Glasses: Rating: 1,200 - Runes: 10 - Max Imbues: 50
• Talisman: Rating: 1,000 - Runes: 8 - Max Imbues: 100
• Shields: Rating: 1,000 - Runes: 8 - Max Imbues: 50
• Armor: Rating: 1,800 - Runes: 15 - Max Imbues: 100
• Clothing: Rating: 800 - Runes: 6 - Max Imbues: 20
• Jewellery: Rating: 1,500 - Runes: 12 - Max Imbues: 50
• Ranged Weapons: Rating: 1,500 - Runes: 12 - Max Imbues: 100
• Meleé Weapons: Rating: 1,500 - Runes: 12 - Max Imbues: 100

Equipment Rating

Equipment Rating is the combined total of all of your equipped items' ratings and is displayed on the list under your character's name.
If someone has  a higher rating than you, the color of their rating will sway towards red, if they are below you, it sways towards green. -This should give a good indication of what you can do when faced with an unfriendly player, but don't rely on the rating, you might just be able to take out the guy who's double your size!


Foot-Notes

-All current Removal Runes (formerly crafted with Inscription via the Rune Chisel) will be wiped.
We have decided to wipe them because writing a conversion algorithm for each individual Removal Rune simply isn't worth the time and effort and extra delay to this patch.

-Slayers not currently available on Imbuing Runes, but will be added in later this week!

-For some reason, some Talisman are classes as clothing, we can't change this without wiping them, so we'll just leave it at that for now.

This should be enough information for you to get started, more information will come available as people ask for it, so get going and have fun!

[Thatperson]

how awesome!!! just getting started with this, sysyem is fluid and easy to use.. i hardly know where to start :] so many possibilities.
All crafting tali's are imbuable, its the non crafting ones that are considered clothing.
Only oddity is that clothing has imbue slots but only luck can be imbued on them.. though i suppose this is better in the long run as the power clothing is supposed to be for the donator and imbuing your own robe kinda penalises donators.
Top job vor... good work

[Voxpire]

You should be able to put Faster Ethereal Casting, Lower Reagent Cost, Night Sight and Luck on clothing - the donator clothing usually has properties on them that can't be imbued so don't worry about that

The reason there's so many slots on clothing is because we may expand property availability in the future

Glad you're enjoying the patch!

[Thatperson]

yeah man lovin it, feel i shouldn't have said "penalises" but rather, limits reasons for people to fund these marvellous endeavours but you are right, those properties do go on and they are exactly the right ones for balance... big up

[Horns Nigel]

Great Job Vor, I am enjoying this so much I cant even tell ya....Nigel

[zaxarus]

Like I already said while testing: Awesome! Thank you!

btw who tried something strange, cause the server just crashed?

[Voxpire]

Not a crash, my fault - ran a command with a bad argument and it locked up trying to process 6 million equations lol... Back up in a mo.

[Crylana]

So still cant imbue Instruments? would be nice to at least be able to add slayer to them since you can do that to any weapon. And the Instrument is the Bards weapon.
=)

[Maggdalena]

Looks amazing guys!  Nice work

[Saturn]

The only issue i see is the use of rough stones. The only way for players to get rough stones is through champs and mini champs. Which would make them pretty much impossible for ungeared new players to be able to farm them. Consequently, they would be forced to buy stones/runes from other players and would be unable to provide for themselves. I could see how that would sound like a nice boosting factor for the economy to force people to buy certain materials, but I would view it more as a deterrent for new players. I crafted all of my own gear from new player to now, but if we force players to use an ingredient that they don't even have at their disposal, then they don't even have the option.

It kinda seems like Pandoras own version of the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer.

[Voxpire]

I've already said that we're giving it a couple of days to sink in and we're gonna increase the different ways to obtain Rough Stone, you will be able to craft it, mine it, etc.

It doesn't make sense to me why it's not readily available already, it is rough stone after all... And why would monsters carry stones around with them anyway?

[Dwarvey]

It's a nice looking system. But to me so far it's the same exact thing with just a different way of getting there.

I just logged in the check it out. Made a blank imbue rune without any problems. Doing anything with it was a different matter. The public soul forge wouldn't activate, but my imbue skill did the job.

The first thing I noticed was a blank crafted item with no properties showed 5 of 15 runes. Since the old system let you imbue 10 properties I'm left wondering where the expansion is.

Am I missing something?

[Voxpire]

The old system was bugged in a way that it didn't take bonus resistances as a factor in the total property count.
Assuming your crafted item has resistances, they will count towards the rune count.

Resistances vary between items in the way that they are implemented, some items have base resists and the value is merged with bonus resists when displayed. This is probably where the confusion is.

You are missing a lot actually, I would take the time to check it out properly before judging it, because a few things have changed with the mechanics for chances, resource recovery, etc. I get the feeling you didn't read the patch notes yet.

[Dwarvey]

Actually I read the patch notes twice. Resource recovery is a nice new feature. My issue is the whole property/rune count thing.

The way it shows things currently. I'm just not seeing extra room for the new properties to be added into existing suits. Especially if you take a hit for resists being listed as a property.

Don't get me wrong. This new system looks good as I said. I'm just trying to understand.

[Voxpire]

If you find loot with great base resists and no resist bonuses, you will have a full 15 slots to fill, I assume most crafted items have 0 in base resistances and only have bonuses?

I will see if I can manipulate the system to discount the resists for crafted items without disturbing the current balance.