Ultima Online Bowcraft and Fletching - woods, runic tools, and the exceptional figure nobody publishes

What a fletcher makes, and with what

The tool is a set of fletcher’s tools, bought or made with Tinkering. uo.com notes that grandmaster tinker-made tools have more uses than store-bought ones — [!] without publishing a figure for either, so the size of that advantage is unknown. Runic fletcher’s tools make magical bows and are also used for re-forging.

The materials are wood, gathered with Lumberjacking, and feathers, from birds and harpies. One published detail is worth building a route around: Felucca birds have twice as many feathers as their Trammel counterparts. The ammunition economy is deliberately weighted toward the dangerous facet.

uo.com’s product list:

• Bows — Simple Bow, Composite Bow, Heavy Crossbow, Repeating Crossbow.
• Ammunition — arrows and crossbow bolts.
• Fukiya darts, the ammunition for the fukiya blowgun — which is itself a Carpentry item, so the blowgun and its darts come from two different crafters.
• Kindling, which feeds Camping.
• Elven Fletching, an Imbuing ingredient.
• Jukan Slayer Bows.

[!] How many feathers, shafts or logs go into an arrow, a bolt or a bow is not published by uo.com.

The woods, and the skill each one needs

Each wood type has a skill gate. Note the status of these figures carefully: uo.com’s Bowcraft page publishes no wood skill table of its own, so the Bowcraft values below are marked [!] — although uo.com does publish the identical values on its Carpentry page for the same woods.

Wood	Bowcraft required [!]
Plain (regular)	0
Oak	65
Ash	75
Yew	85
Bloodwood	95
Heartwood	95
Frostwood	95

Three woods share the 95 gate, so the last real step up in material access is at 95, not at grandmaster.

What each wood does to a bow

Bows are weapons, so the weapons row of uo.com’s Material Bonuses table is the one that applies. The percentages in the Cold Dmg column are damage conversion: that share of the bow’s damage is dealt as cold instead of physical.

Wood	Cold Dmg	Damage Inc.	Swing Speed	Hit Chance	Durability	Luck	Lower Req.	Lower Weight	HP Regen	Hit Life Leech
Oak	—	5%	—	—	50	40	—	—	—	—
Ash	—	—	10%	—	—	—	20	75%	—	—
Yew	—	10%	—	5%	—	—	—	—	—	—
Heartwood	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	Variable
Bloodwood	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	2	Variable
Frostwood	40%	12%	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—

Two woods do the heavy lifting for an archer. Ash is the only wood with Swing Speed Increase, at 10%, and it carries a 20 lower requirement and a 75% lower weight alongside it. Frostwood is the damage wood: 12% Damage Increase and 40% cold conversion, the largest figures in the table. Yew sits between them at 10% DI with 5% Hit Chance.

Heartwood is a lottery. Instead of a fixed line it applies one random property from a published set — for weapons: Luck 40, Durability 50%, Lower Requirements 20%, Swing Speed Increase 10%, Lower Weight 75%, Hit Chance Increase 5%, Hit Life Leech (variable), or Luck 10. One of those, not several.

[!] The physical damage column of this table is not reproduced here. uo.com’s Material Bonuses page carries a leading Physical Damage column. They exist on uo.com; they are left blank here rather than invented.

Runic fletcher's tools

uo.com’s Runic Bonuses page publishes four tiers:

Material	Min. Intensity	Max. Intensity	Min. Properties	Max. Properties	Charges
Oak	1%	50%	1	2	45
Ash	35%	75%	2	3	35
Yew	40%	90%	3	3	25
Heartwood	50%	100%	4	4	15

Two things follow from this table that are easy to miss.

First, these values are identical to the Runic Dovetail Saw used by Carpentry. The two wood crafts share one runic ladder.

Second, and more consequential: wood runics are a tier below the best metal runics. A Heartwood fletcher’s tool tops out at 4 properties at 50–100%. A Valorite runic hammer on the Blacksmithy page reaches 5 properties at 85–100%. That gap is published, and it is why a top-end player-made bow does not reach the same ceiling as a top-end player-made sword.

Properties from runic fletching kits stack with properties from magical items, but not with artifacts [!].

[!] uo.com’s runic table lists only Oak, Ash, Yew and Heartwood. Whether Bloodwood or Frostwood runic fletcher’s tools exist at all is not stated either way.

The exceptional bonus for a bow is not published. Do not borrow the smith's

[!] This is the most important gap on the page.

uo.com publishes 35% Damage Increase for an exceptional weapon and +15 resists for exceptional armour — on the Blacksmithing page. But neither uo.com’s Bowcraft and Fletching page nor any other uo.com page states the exceptional figure for a fletcher-crafted bow specifically.

So it is not stated here. The smith’s number is not silently copied across, because doing that would be an inference presented as a fact, and this page does not do that. If you need to know what an exceptional bow is worth, the honest answer on the published record is that nobody has published it.

[!] The same applies to the exceptional chance — what proportion of your work comes out exceptional at a given skill — and to any success-chance formula for crafting at all. Neither is published for any craft.

Does Arms Lore improve a bow? It is not settled

[!] Unresolved, and it matters, because Arms Lore is a 100-point commitment on a character who has to find those points somewhere.

• uo.com’s Armslore page names the crafts that benefit exactly: “Blacksmithing, Carpentry, Glassblowing, Tailoring, Tinkering or Stonecrafting”. Bowcraft & Fletching is absent from that list.
• An unpublished description [!] gives no list, and has the bonus applying instead 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.
• Confusing it further: uo.com’s own Bowcraft page links Armslore as a related skill, while the Armslore page does not name Bowcraft in return.

Both positions are recorded; neither is picked. Treat a fletcher’s Arms Lore as an unpublished behaviour rather than a known bonus.

Enhancing stops at grandmaster

Bowcrafting is one of the six skills that can enhance an item, with Blacksmithing, Carpentry, Stonecrafting, Tailoring and Tinkering. An item can only be enhanced once, a normal failure eats materials, and a catastrophic failure destroys the item outright.

The published detail that sets a fletcher apart from a smith: uo.com states there are no skill levels beyond grandmaster for Bowcrafting, so unlike Blacksmithy and Tailoring, a fletcher’s enhancing success cannot be improved past 100. There is no scroll to buy and nothing further to train. Grandmaster is the end of the skill in every sense.

uo.com also warns that “the more properties an item has, and the higher the intensity of those properties, the more difficult it will be to enhance”, and that “gargish necklaces and earrings do not benefit from material bonuses and should not be enhanced.” The Forged Metal of Artifacts, in 5- and 10-charge versions from the Origin Store, gives 100% success on an enhancement attempt.

Only a fletcher repairs a bow

uo.com’s Repairing page divides the work strictly by craft, and bows belong to fletchers alone. A smith cannot repair a bow; a carpenter cannot either, despite both being wooden and metal things respectively. If a shard has no fletcher, its archers have no repairs.

Fletchers can make repair deeds at a minimum of 50 skill. Deeds are blessed, so they survive death and can be carried into a fight — which is exactly what an archer wants, since a bow takes durability damage every swing. The published cost of that convenience: “repair deeds have a substantially higher chance of loss of a durability point on a success, as compared to a crafter doing the repairs directly.”

The general repair rules apply as they do everywhere: a 40% base chance to lose a point of maximum durability on a repair, offset by 1% per 10.0 skill, increased by 1% for each point of durability the item has already lost, and loss can happen even when the repair itself fails.

In PvP

Indirect, and specifically the archer’s supply line. A fletcher is what stands between an Archery character and running dry:

• Ammunition. Archers burn arrows and bolts continuously. uo.com’s note that Felucca birds carry twice the feathers tells you where the game expects that economy to be run.
• The bow itself. Exceptional crafted bows plus runic fletcher’s tools — up to 4 properties at 50–100% intensity with Heartwood — are what player-made PvP bows are.
• Wood choice is a PvP decision. Ash gives 10% Swing Speed Increase and Frostwood gives 12% Damage Increase. Those two properties are the ones an archer builds a suit around, and here they are free on the material.
• Repairs. Only a fletcher can fix a bow, and repair deeds at 50+ let an archer carry their own field repairs.
• Fukiya darts supply the Ninjitsu blowgun.
• [!] What is not published is whether an exceptional bow gets any damage bonus at all, or whether Arms Lore improves one. Both are open questions, not settled numbers.

In PvM

The same bows and ammunition, plus three things that are specifically monster-facing:

• Jukan Slayer Bows. A slayer is the largest single damage multiplier available to a PvM archer, and a fletcher makes them.
• Elemental conversion by wood. A Frostwood bow converts 40% of its damage to cold, so an archer can be handed the right bow for a monster with a hole in one resist — the same trick a smith does with Bronze and Verite.
• Elven Fletching is an Imbuing ingredient, so a fletcher feeds the imbuer who finishes the bow.

Kindling ties into Camping, and Bulk Orders — available for Bowcraft since Publish 95, late 2016 — are a gold and reward loop on the side. [!] uo.com does not publish which Bowcraft BODs give what, or whether runic fletcher’s tools come from BODs or only from the Heartwood quests.

Caps, stats and thresholds

Bowcraft & Fletching caps at 100. It is not on uo.com’s Scrolls of Power list, and it is one of 23 skills [!] with no Power Scroll. There is no 105, no 110, no 120. Combined with uo.com’s statement that enhancing does not improve past grandmaster for this skill, 100 is genuinely the end of the line — a fletcher has nothing left to chase once they get there. It counts against the 720 total skill cap.

Primary stat Dex, secondary Str, listed on uo.com’s stat table as “Bowcraft/Fletching”. No mastery — it is not on uo.com’s Skill Masteries page.

Skill	What changes
30	Basic bows craftable [!]
50	Minimum to make repair deeds (uo.com)
65 / 75 / 85 / 95	Oak / Ash / Yew / Bloodwood, Heartwood and Frostwood become workable [!]
75	Minimum for many special-recipe magical and artifact weapons [!]
90	Repeating crossbows [!]
100	Hard cap. No Power Scroll, and enhancing does not improve beyond it

Training - and one unpublished variant

uo.com publishes a banded route built largely on the Heartwood crafter quests:

Skill	uo.com method
0–30	Buy from an NPC Bowyer
30–35	Make shafts, gather feathers, Heartwood quest “Lethal Darts”
35–55	Heartwood quest “A Simple Bow”
55–60	Make Fukiya Darts
60–70	Heartwood quest “Ingenious Archery (Part I)”
70–80	Make Composite Bows
80–90	Make Heavy Crossbows, Heartwood quest “Ingenious Archery (Part II)”
90–100	Make Repeating Crossbows, Heartwood quest “Ingenious Archery (Part III)”

A plain crafting route with no quests at all is unpublished [!]:

Skill	Crafting-only method [!]
0–30	Purchase from an NPC Fletcher
30–35	Shafts
35–55	Bows
55–60	Fukiya Darts
60–70	Crossbows
70–80	Composite Bows
80–90	Heavy Crossbows
90–100	Repeating Crossbows

The two differ at 60–70. uo.com sends you to “Ingenious Archery (Part I)”; the crafting-only route uses plain crossbows [!]. Both are recorded and neither is picked — the bands are otherwise identical, so this is one row of difference rather than two competing routes.

Underneath either route sits the Guaranteed Gain System: a mandatory 0.1 when nothing has been gained inside your bracket’s window, which on a 700-point character is 22.6 hours at 90.0–94.9 and 27.0 hours at 95.0–99.9. A Scroll of Alacrity raises each check from 0.1 to 0.2–0.5 for 15 minutes.

What is not published

Collected in one place, because several of them are easy to fill in wrongly:

• [!] The exceptional bonus for a fletcher-crafted bow. The smith’s 35% is not this skill’s number and is not asserted here.
• [!] Whether Arms Lore improves a bow at all. uo.com’s list omits Bowcraft; an unpublished description arguably includes it.
• [!] The per-wood physical damage values from the weapons material table.
• [!] Any exceptional chance or crafting success-chance formula.
• [!] How many feathers, shafts or logs each arrow, bolt or bow consumes.
• [!] The number of uses for store-bought against grandmaster tinker-made fletcher’s tools — uo.com says more, and stops there.
• [!] Bulk Order specifics for Bowcraft: which deeds, what rewards, and whether runic tools come from them.
• [!] Whether Bloodwood and Frostwood runic fletcher’s tools exist.
• [!] Any skill gain rate or time-to-grandmaster figure.

Where these come from

uo.com Bowcraft and Fletching · uo.com Material Bonuses · uo.com Runic Bonuses · uo.com Enhancing · uo.com Repairing · uo.com Repair Chance · uo.com Armslore · 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.