Ultima Online Arms Lore - the 1% per 20 crafting bonus, and the bow question nobody answers

The whole skill is one line of arithmetic

uo.com, verbatim: “Armslore grants a bonus to exceptionally crafted weapons and armor (but not shields) at a rate of 1% per 20 points of armslore”, with “(1% per 12.5 points on Siege Perilous and Mugen)” and a “Maximum 5% (8% Siege/Mugen)”. On weapons “this bonus is applied to the damage increase property”; on armour “the bonus is applied to resists and is spread randomly”.

	Production shards	Siege Perilous / Mugen
Rate	1% per 20 Arms Lore	1% per 12.5 Arms Lore
Maximum	5%	8%
Exceptional weapon, Damage Increase at GM	40%	43%
Exceptional armour, resist bonus at GM	+5, spread randomly	+8, spread randomly

Because the rate is a flat 1% per 20 points, the bonus steps at 20 / 40 / 60 / 80 / 100 and nowhere else. Nothing is gained at 79 that 60 did not already give you, and grandmaster is the only value worth stopping at.

That parenthesis — “but not shields” — is doing real work, and it is the easiest thing here to get wrong. Shields are excluded exactly as they are from the exceptional armour bonus on the Blacksmithy page. A grandmaster Arms Lore crafter adds nothing at all to an exceptional shield, so a Parry character gains nothing from who made theirs.

The bonus also lands differently on the two classes it does cover. On a weapon it is a clean +5 Damage Increase. On armour it is five resist points dropped at random across the five resists, which may or may not land where you were short. [!] uo.com says “spread randomly” and publishes no weighting or distribution rule, so no odds can be given.

Which crafts benefit - and the one that is not settled

uo.com names the list exactly: “Blacksmithing, Carpentry, Glassblowing, Tailoring, Tinkering or Stonecrafting” — that is Blacksmithy, Carpentry, Glassblowing, Tailoring, Tinkering and Stonecrafting.

[!] Bowcraft & Fletching is not on that list, and whether it should be is not settled. This is the most consequential gap on the skill, because it decides whether an archer’s bow is worth buying from an Arms Lore crafter at all.

• uo.com’s Armslore page gives the six-craft list and omits Bowcraft & Fletching.
• An unpublished description [!] has the bonus applying, without a craft list, to metal, wood and leather items — which would cover a wooden bow.
• uo.com’s own forum carries a thread titled “Armslore not mentioned for certain crafting skills on the UO Wiki”, so the omission is known and queried rather than settled.
• Pulling the other way again: uo.com’s Bowcraft and Fletching page links Armslore as a related skill, while the Armslore page does not link back.

uo.com does not state the answer outright, so this site does not either. If you are building a fletcher and weighing 100 points of Arms Lore, you are betting on an unpublished behaviour.

[!] Nor is it published whether Glassblowing and Stonecrafting — both named by uo.com — have exceptional bonus values of their own for Arms Lore to add to, or whether the Siege and Mugen rate applies equally across all six named crafts.

Where the ceiling is, and what it stacks with

Stated as a combined budget, both cases show clearly where Arms Lore fits:

• Armour — a 15% [!] exceptional bonus plus 1% per 20 points of Arms Lore, with the combined extra from Exceptional and Arms Lore capped at 20% [!]. Exceptional does 15 of the 20; grandmaster Arms Lore does the last 5.
• Weapons — a 35% [!] Damage Increase bonus, raised by 1% for every 20 points of Arms Lore, to a maximum of 40%.

The bonus stacks with Runic Tool properties [!], and the crafting bonus dates to Publish 44, April 2007 [!]. That stacking is why Arms Lore is not made redundant by runics: its points sit underneath the runic roll rather than competing with it. What it raises is the floor of every exceptional piece a crafter produces — a smith without it makes 35% weapons forever, and the same smith with it makes 40% weapons forever.

Using the skill by hand, and the one live field use

Arms Lore can still be activated directly — uo.com: “using the blue button from the skill list, an icon pulled from the skill list, or a macro ‘use skill – armslore’”. On a weapon or armour piece a success returns “You study the item in an attempt to learn more of its craftsmanship and use.” On a modern client the properties are already on the tooltip, so this tells you very little.

The exception, and the only genuinely informational use uo.com still documents, is armored swamp dragon barding. Using Arms Lore on it returns one of four condition messages, verbatim:

1. “The dragon’s barding is in perfect condition.”
2. “The dragon’s barding is still in very good condition.”
3. “The dragon’s barding is damaged but still functional.”
4. “The dragon’s barding is badly damaged and will need to be replaced soon.”

That is why a tamer running an armored swamp dragon sometimes carries a few points. [!] uo.com publishes no skill minimum for the check and no durability bands behind the four messages.

Historically the skill displayed durability 0–100% [!], armour effectiveness 0–31+ [!], and weapon damage effectiveness as 0–26 average damage [!]. Modern clients show item properties directly, so none of that is current.

In PvP and in PvM

Arms Lore never touches a fight. Its relevance is that it raises the ceiling of a player-made suit and weapon, which is a different thing from supplying them.

PvP. Every exceptional weapon a grandmaster Arms Lore crafter makes carries 40% Damage Increase rather than 35% — a permanent five-point head start on every player-made weapon for Swordsmanship, Fencing, Mace Fighting, Archery and Throwing alike, subject to the Bowcraft question above. Every exceptional armour piece gets +5 resist points on top of the exceptional 15, toward the resist caps a PvP suit is built to reach, and it stacks with runic tool properties rather than being replaced by them. It does nothing for a shield.

PvM. The same bonus against a different problem. Five randomly distributed resist points per exceptional piece is the cheapest way a crafter has of approaching the resist caps, and a weapon at 40% Damage Increase from the anvil is five points of damage-increase budget you do not have to buy with Imbuing weight — leaving that weight for a slayer or a leech. The barding check is the only thing Arms Lore does out in the world, and it is a tamer’s concern. Otherwise this is a skill that finishes all of its work before you leave the house.

Historically only: Arms Lore once gated the Wrestling special moves Stun and Disarm. That requirement was dropped at Age of Shadows [!], so a stun mage has not needed Arms Lore since 2003.

Caps, stats and training

Arms Lore caps at 100. It is not on uo.com’s Scrolls of Power list, and it is one of the 23 [!] skills with no Power Scroll — there is no 105, no 110, no 120. It counts against the 720 total skill cap.

Primary stat Int, secondary Str, listed on uo.com’s stat table under “Armslore”. Its professional title is Warrior [!], a leftover from a very different version of the skill. No mastery — Arms Lore is not on uo.com’s Skill Masteries page.

Training is the thin part. Arms Lore gains from using the skill on weapons and armour, and passively while crafting with the named skills. The only benchmark is unpublished: from 30 to 100, roughly 25 hours [!] to reach 100.0. The Guaranteed Gain System backstops it with a mandatory 0.1 when nothing has been gained inside your bracket’s window — 27.0 hours at 95.0–99.9 on a 700-point character, which puts that 25-hour estimate in context — and a Scroll of Alacrity raises each check from 0.1 to 0.2–0.5 for 15 minutes.

What is not published

Recorded rather than filled in:

• [!] Whether Bowcraft & Fletching benefits at all.
• [!] The distribution rule behind “spread randomly” for the armour resist bonus.
• [!] Whether Glassblowing and Stonecrafting have exceptional bonus figures of their own.
• [!] Whether the Siege Perilous and Mugen rate of 1% per 12.5 applies to all six named crafts equally.
• [!] Any skill gain formula or gain-per-use figure.
• [!] A skill minimum for the swamp dragon barding check, or the durability bands behind its four messages.

Any Arms Lore number that is not on this page is unpublished.

Where these come from

uo.com Armslore · uo.com Blacksmithing · uo.com Carpentry · uo.com Bowcraft and Fletching · uo.com Scrolls of Power · uo.com Skills, Stats & Attributes · uo.com Skill Masteries · uo.com Skill Gain Systems · uo.com forum - Armslore not mentioned for certain crafting skills. Everything here is from uo.com or the game itself; anything uo.com does not publish is marked [!] as unpublished where it appears.