Imbuing Skill
Written by: Equinox
Imbuing is the ability to add properties to items. It also affects Mysticism spells, much like the relationship between Magery and Evaluating Intelligence.
Imbuing requires a special forge called a soulforge and no other tool. You have to stand next to a soulforge to do anything related to imbuing. There is a public one in TerMur Royal City (location) that you can use to start with. Players can also craft soulforges and place them in their houses, but the one in TerMur gives a slightly higher success chance. Inside the palace in TerMur there is another special one called The Queen's Soulforge (location). It is the soulforge with the highest success chance in the game. To use it you need at least 10,000 Queen's Loyalty points. You can earn those by doing the imbuing quests in TerMur or by killing creatures that award loyalty.
Soulforge
Since TerMur is the Gargoyle region, Gargoyles start the game with 2000 Queen's Loyalty points and have a higher Imbuing success chance than humans and elves. That is why it is better to create your imbuing character as a Gargoyle.
There are basically two things you do with the Imbuing skill: add or change properties on items (Imbue/Imbuing), or break items down into magical ingredients (Unravel). The properties you can add vary by item type. Armour, weapons, shields and jewellery can all be imbued. When jewellery is imbued it gets 255/255 durability if it did not have any. Apart from cloth hats and Gargoyle cloth armour, other cloth items cannot be imbued. With a few exceptions, artifacts cannot be imbued either.
An imbued item can be repaired. However it becomes Brittle, meaning Powder of Fortifying (POF) can no longer be applied. So if you want an item to last a long time, apply POF before imbuing it.
An imbued item can be enhanced, and an enhanced item can be imbued. If you are making armour and need high resists, first imbue the maximum resist value and then enhance with the material matching the resist you want. Or if you are making a bow and want, for example, the extra 10% SSI that comes with Ash wood, first add the properties with imbuing and then enhance with the special material. To enhance items with a 100% chance you can use an item called Forged Metal of Artifacts, bought with trash points, before enhancing.
An item can hold at most 5 properties. Properties already on the item, whether natural or previously imbued, count against that number. For example, a looted item with LRC and low resists can take 4 more properties. Existing or previously imbued properties cannot be removed, but their values can be changed if conditions allow. To change a value the item must have at most 5 properties and its imbuing capacity must not be exceeded.
Every item type has a different imbuing capacity. This capacity affects the values, and even the number, of properties you can add. The capacity can never be exceeded.
Imbuing requires three different groups of materials.
The first group is the Magical Ingredients: Magical Residue, Enchanted Essence and Relic Fragment. They are obtained by unravelling items with properties. (See the Unravelling Magical Ingredients section for details)
Magical Residue
Enchanted Essence
Relic Fragment
The second group is the gemstones in the game (Common Gems). (Amber, Citrine, Ruby, Tourmaline, Amethyst, Emerald, Sapphire, Star Sapphire, Diamond). They can be bought from a jewelry vendor, mined, or found in loot.
The third group is the High Intensity Ingredients. They are needed for properties without levels, such as Slayers, Faster Casting and Spell Channeling, and generally for the last 2-3 levels of a property's value. You can get them from the loot of TerMur creatures, from GM Miners and GM Lumberjacks, from the Tinkering and Alchemy-Magery skills, or from fishing.
For the list of properties you can add and the ingredients they need: http://www.uoguide.com/Imbuing_Ingredients
Before imbuing an item, you can use this calculator to get detailed information and the ingredient list: https://www.knuckleheads.dk/imbuetester.php
How Is It Used?
You can drag the imbuing entry out of your skill list to turn it into a button.
1. Unravelling Magical Ingredients (Unravel)
The point of unravelling is to obtain magical ingredients. Buttons 5 and 6 in the menu perform the Unravel operation:
5. Unravel Item unravels the magical ingredients from a single item. Pressing the button asks you to target the item.
6. Unravel Container is used to unravel every item inside a bag or box. Pressing the button asks you to target the container.
Be careful not to use Unravel Container on your backpack in particular, and make sure the container you target holds nothing important. If the Unravel fails, the item is left intact and you can try again. If it succeeds, you get the ingredient and the item is destroyed. Most items with properties can be unravelled, artifacts included.
Depending on your skill and on the number and intensity of the item's properties, Unravel will produce one of three magical ingredients:
2. Adding Properties to an Item (Imbuing)
To add a property by imbuing you need the required imbuing skill level and the required ingredients. The ingredients vary with the property being added and are shown in the imbuing menu. If your imbue attempt succeeds, all the required ingredients are consumed and the property is added to the item. If it fails, some magical ingredients are lost, while the item and the other ingredients remain untouched.
As an example, let us try making an LRC set. Clicking the button opens the Imbuing menu.
1. When we click the Imbue Item button, we get the list of property categories available for the item we targeted. We will cover the other buttons later.
Since LRC is in the Casting category, we pick that one.
When we pick Lower Reagent Cost on the next screen, we get an information screen about the operation.
The success chance shown here depends on your skill, your race, the type of soulforge, the number and values of the properties already on the item, and how many times the item has been imbued before. For 6 pieces to total 100% LRC, a value of 17 is enough. As we can see, with a 100% chance, spending 4 Magical Residue and 8 Amber, we can add this property as the first one, using 85 of the 500 imbuing capacity (had a property been added earlier, it would show the total usage). When we click Imbue Item and the attempt succeeds, we will see the property on our item. If it fails, we can retry with the Reimbue Last button.
2. Reimbue Last retries the last attempt. It tries to imbue the item we last selected with the property and value we set at that time. You do not have to make any selection after pressing the button.
Our attempt succeeded and the Imbuing menu came back up. The system message:
Say we now decide to add Luck to the same item as well; we can use the Imbue Last Item button.
3. Imbue Last Item is used to add a different property to the item we last worked on. Pressing the button brings up the category list for that item.
We changed our mind about Luck, let us carry on with LRC
If our LRC imbue succeeded, we can use the Imbue Last Property button to add the same property to the remaining set pieces.
4. Imbue Last Property is used to add the property from the last operation, at the same value, to another item. Pressing the button asks you to target the item you want the property added to.
Using Imbue Last Property on all the remaining armour pieces, we finish adding LRC to the whole set.
Skill Training
Imbuing can be trained by imbuing and by unravelling.
Up to somewhere above 100 you can train by unravelling the items your Tamer brings back. To train quickly, pile the items into containers and unravel the whole container at once; the skill gain is calculated separately for each item in the container. If you reach a point where unravelling no longer gives gains, carry on by adding cheap properties such as luck or LRC to items with 3-4 props. If you set the property's value so the success chance falls in the 50-60 range, your chance of a skill gain improves. Remember too that you can only attempt to imbue the same item 20 times. Beyond that you get no skill gains.
How Do You Get Imbuing Power Scrolls?
Imbuing PS do not drop from champions. You get them from the quest-giving NPCs around the soulforge in TerMur.
Imbuing is the ability to add properties to items. It also affects Mysticism spells, much like the relationship between Magery and Evaluating Intelligence.
Imbuing requires a special forge called a soulforge and no other tool. You have to stand next to a soulforge to do anything related to imbuing. There is a public one in TerMur Royal City (location) that you can use to start with. Players can also craft soulforges and place them in their houses, but the one in TerMur gives a slightly higher success chance. Inside the palace in TerMur there is another special one called The Queen's Soulforge (location). It is the soulforge with the highest success chance in the game. To use it you need at least 10,000 Queen's Loyalty points. You can earn those by doing the imbuing quests in TerMur or by killing creatures that award loyalty.
Soulforge
Since TerMur is the Gargoyle region, Gargoyles start the game with 2000 Queen's Loyalty points and have a higher Imbuing success chance than humans and elves. That is why it is better to create your imbuing character as a Gargoyle.
There are basically two things you do with the Imbuing skill: add or change properties on items (Imbue/Imbuing), or break items down into magical ingredients (Unravel). The properties you can add vary by item type. Armour, weapons, shields and jewellery can all be imbued. When jewellery is imbued it gets 255/255 durability if it did not have any. Apart from cloth hats and Gargoyle cloth armour, other cloth items cannot be imbued. With a few exceptions, artifacts cannot be imbued either.
An imbued item can be repaired. However it becomes Brittle, meaning Powder of Fortifying (POF) can no longer be applied. So if you want an item to last a long time, apply POF before imbuing it.
An imbued item can be enhanced, and an enhanced item can be imbued. If you are making armour and need high resists, first imbue the maximum resist value and then enhance with the material matching the resist you want. Or if you are making a bow and want, for example, the extra 10% SSI that comes with Ash wood, first add the properties with imbuing and then enhance with the special material. To enhance items with a 100% chance you can use an item called Forged Metal of Artifacts, bought with trash points, before enhancing.
An item can hold at most 5 properties. Properties already on the item, whether natural or previously imbued, count against that number. For example, a looted item with LRC and low resists can take 4 more properties. Existing or previously imbued properties cannot be removed, but their values can be changed if conditions allow. To change a value the item must have at most 5 properties and its imbuing capacity must not be exceeded.
Every item type has a different imbuing capacity. This capacity affects the values, and even the number, of properties you can add. The capacity can never be exceeded.
- Non-exceptional or looted;
- 450 for armour/clothing
- 450 for one-handed weapons
- 500 for bows
- 550 for two-handed weapons
- Exceptional items get 50 added to the values above.
- The limit for jewellery is 500.
The first group is the Magical Ingredients: Magical Residue, Enchanted Essence and Relic Fragment. They are obtained by unravelling items with properties. (See the Unravelling Magical Ingredients section for details)
Magical Residue
Enchanted Essence
Relic FragmentThe second group is the gemstones in the game (Common Gems). (Amber, Citrine, Ruby, Tourmaline, Amethyst, Emerald, Sapphire, Star Sapphire, Diamond). They can be bought from a jewelry vendor, mined, or found in loot.
The third group is the High Intensity Ingredients. They are needed for properties without levels, such as Slayers, Faster Casting and Spell Channeling, and generally for the last 2-3 levels of a property's value. You can get them from the loot of TerMur creatures, from GM Miners and GM Lumberjacks, from the Tinkering and Alchemy-Magery skills, or from fishing.
For the list of properties you can add and the ingredients they need: http://www.uoguide.com/Imbuing_Ingredients
Before imbuing an item, you can use this calculator to get detailed information and the ingredient list: https://www.knuckleheads.dk/imbuetester.php
How Is It Used?
You can drag the imbuing entry out of your skill list to turn it into a button.
1. Unravelling Magical Ingredients (Unravel)
The point of unravelling is to obtain magical ingredients. Buttons 5 and 6 in the menu perform the Unravel operation:
5. Unravel Item unravels the magical ingredients from a single item. Pressing the button asks you to target the item.
6. Unravel Container is used to unravel every item inside a bag or box. Pressing the button asks you to target the container.
Be careful not to use Unravel Container on your backpack in particular, and make sure the container you target holds nothing important. If the Unravel fails, the item is left intact and you can try again. If it succeeds, you get the ingredient and the item is destroyed. Most items with properties can be unravelled, artifacts included.
Depending on your skill and on the number and intensity of the item's properties, Unravel will produce one of three magical ingredients:
- Magical Residue from low level items at 0 skill (imbuing value 200 and below),
- Enchanted Essence from mid level items at 45 skill and above (imbuing value between 200 and 479)
- Relic Fragment from high level items with many strong properties, and from artifacts, at 90.1 skill and above (imbuing value 480 and above).
To add a property by imbuing you need the required imbuing skill level and the required ingredients. The ingredients vary with the property being added and are shown in the imbuing menu. If your imbue attempt succeeds, all the required ingredients are consumed and the property is added to the item. If it fails, some magical ingredients are lost, while the item and the other ingredients remain untouched.
As an example, let us try making an LRC set. Clicking the button opens the Imbuing menu.
1. When we click the Imbue Item button, we get the list of property categories available for the item we targeted. We will cover the other buttons later.
Since LRC is in the Casting category, we pick that one.
When we pick Lower Reagent Cost on the next screen, we get an information screen about the operation.
The success chance shown here depends on your skill, your race, the type of soulforge, the number and values of the properties already on the item, and how many times the item has been imbued before. For 6 pieces to total 100% LRC, a value of 17 is enough. As we can see, with a 100% chance, spending 4 Magical Residue and 8 Amber, we can add this property as the first one, using 85 of the 500 imbuing capacity (had a property been added earlier, it would show the total usage). When we click Imbue Item and the attempt succeeds, we will see the property on our item. If it fails, we can retry with the Reimbue Last button.
2. Reimbue Last retries the last attempt. It tries to imbue the item we last selected with the property and value we set at that time. You do not have to make any selection after pressing the button.
Our attempt succeeded and the Imbuing menu came back up. The system message:
Say we now decide to add Luck to the same item as well; we can use the Imbue Last Item button.
3. Imbue Last Item is used to add a different property to the item we last worked on. Pressing the button brings up the category list for that item.
We changed our mind about Luck, let us carry on with LRC
If our LRC imbue succeeded, we can use the Imbue Last Property button to add the same property to the remaining set pieces.
4. Imbue Last Property is used to add the property from the last operation, at the same value, to another item. Pressing the button asks you to target the item you want the property added to.
Using Imbue Last Property on all the remaining armour pieces, we finish adding LRC to the whole set.
Skill Training
Imbuing can be trained by imbuing and by unravelling.
Up to somewhere above 100 you can train by unravelling the items your Tamer brings back. To train quickly, pile the items into containers and unravel the whole container at once; the skill gain is calculated separately for each item in the container. If you reach a point where unravelling no longer gives gains, carry on by adding cheap properties such as luck or LRC to items with 3-4 props. If you set the property's value so the success chance falls in the 50-60 range, your chance of a skill gain improves. Remember too that you can only attempt to imbue the same item 20 times. Beyond that you get no skill gains.
How Do You Get Imbuing Power Scrolls?
Imbuing PS do not drop from champions. You get them from the quest-giving NPCs around the soulforge in TerMur.
- The Secrets of the Soulforge quest from Beninort the Articifier, for 50 Magical Residue, gives a 110,
- The Knowledge of the Soulforge quest from Aurvidlem the Articifier, for 50 Enchanted Essence, gives a 115,
- The Mastering the Soulforge quest from Ansikart the Articifier, for 50 Relic Fragment, gives a 120 PS.