Ultima Online Imbuing - weights, the five-property limit, and every imbuable intensity

The soulforge, and how you open the menu

Imbuing has no tool. You stand at a soulforge and open the gump through the skill list — in the Classic Client a macro of use skill > imbuing, in the Enhanced Client the skill icon dragged to a hotbar. uo.com spells this out because it is what new imbuers get stuck on.

Which forge you stand at changes your success chance:

Soulforge	What is published
Player-crafted	Made by carpenters who also have Imbuing skill, placed in a house. The baseline.
Royal City public forge	Centre of town; grants a success bonus, a slight one [!].
Queen’s Soulforge	In the Royal Palace. Requires 10,000 loyalty points toward the Gargoyle Queen; the largest bonus of the three.
Small soulforge	Rare drop from Osiredon the Scalis Enforcer.
Mini-soulforge	From the Primeval Lich champion spawn. Decorative only — it does not work.

Unravelling - the resource engine, and the one threshold that matters

Unravelling turns a magic item into imbuing resources based on its total property intensity, and it is also, by uo.com’s own account, the best way to train the skill.

Total intensity	Resource produced	Imbuing needed
Below 199	Magical Residue	None
200 to 449	Enchanted Essence	45.1
450 and above	Relic Fragment	90.1

[!] The Enchanted Essence threshold is not quite settled. uo.com prints 45.1, the documented figure; there is also an unpublished figure of 45+ [!]. A tenth of a point, and it only matters if you are sitting at exactly 45.0 wondering why you keep getting residue.

Unravelling destroys the item — uo.com’s words. You can target one item or a whole container, which is how a night’s farming gets processed. Items that cannot be recycled, or that are made of special material, cannot be unravelled [!].

90.1 is the number to clear. Below it no amount of good loot yields Relic Fragments, and relics are what high-intensity imbues are bought with.

The weights system - the budget every suit is built against

This is the mechanic. Every imbuable property carries a property weight multiplier, and the weight an instance of it consumes is published as:

( current intensity ÷ maximum intensity ) × property weight × 100, rounded

A worked example [!] shows the arithmetic in full, and it is the shape of every decision you will make at a forge:

Property	Value	Max used	Weight × 100	Weight consumed
Hit Chance Increase	13	15	130	(13 ÷ 15) × 130 = 112.666 → 112
Lower Mana Cost	7	8	110	(7 ÷ 8) × 110 = 96.25 → 96
Damage Increase	20	25	100	(20 ÷ 25) × 100 = 80
Fire Resist	11	15	100	(11 ÷ 15) × 100 = 73.333 → 73
Total				361

Two lessons fall out. Cost is proportional to how close to maximum you push a property, not to its absolute value — 13 of 15 Hit Chance Increase costs far more than 13 of 50 Damage Increase. And weight varies by property: Skill Bonus, Faster Casting and Use Best Weapon Skill are the expensive ones at 1.4; resists, Luck and Damage Increase are cheap at 1.0.

[!] Damage Increase’s imbuable maximum is not settled. uo.com’s Magic Item Properties table gives 1–50. The worked example above divides by a maximum of 25 [!]. That is not rounding — it halves or doubles the weight any given Damage Increase costs. uo.com’s table is the current listing and the example may predate a change, but uo.com does not say so. Both are recorded.

The total weight you get to spend

Every item type has a maximum total imbuing weight. This is the number you plan a piece around:

Item type	Maximum total weight
Non-exceptional and looted items (excluding jewellery, bows, two-handed weapons)	450
Exceptional armour	500
One-handed weapon	500
Jewellery	500
Non-exceptional bow	500
Exceptional bow	550
Non-exceptional two-handed melee weapon	550
Exceptional two-handed melee weapon	600

Exceptional crafted gear is worth 50 to 150 more weight than looted gear — a whole extra property, or the difference between a capped resist and a nearly-capped one. That is the real link between Blacksmithy, Tailoring, Bowcraft & Fletching, Tinkering and this skill: they raise the ceiling of what can be imbued.

Three more limits, none published by uo.com: a maximum property intensity limit of 500% [!]; an item can be imbued up to 20 [!] times before gains diminish; and items marked (Imbued) cannot be affected by Powder of Fortification [!] — imbuing a piece permanently forfeits restoring its durability.

Five properties, and the groups that overwrite each other

“An imbued item may have up to 5 properties in total.” A hard limit independent of weight: a piece can be well under its weight cap and still be full.

Some property types cannot be duplicated, and adding a second overwrites the first rather than failing. On weapons that means Slayer properties, hit spell effects and hit area effects — one of each at most. On jewellery, skills are divided into five groups, and “trying to add two skills from the same group will result in the second skill overwriting the first”:

Group	Skills
1	Magery, Musicianship, Swords, Macing, Fencing
2	Wrestling, Provocation, Tactics, Spirit Speak, Animal Taming
3	Meditation, Discordance, Parrying, Focus, Animal Lore, Stealth
4	Mysticism, Bushido, Necromancy, Veterinary, Stealing, Evaluate Intelligence, Anatomy
5	Resist Spells, Peacemaking, Healing, Chivalry, Archery, Ninjitsu, Throwing

Read Group 4 from a mage’s seat: Mysticism, Necromancy, Evaluate Intelligence and Anatomy share a group, so a mage cannot put Eval Int and Anatomy on the same piece for defensive wrestling. Skill Bonus imbues at +1 to +15 at weight 1.4, the most expensive weight in the table, though loot can carry up to +20.

Every imbuable property, with its range and its weight

From uo.com’s Magic Item Properties table. The column below is the imbuable range specifically — runic reforging and loot generation have their own, wider ranges on the same table.

Property	Imbuable range	Weight
Damage Increase	1–50 [!] see the note above	1.0
Defense Chance Increase	1–15	1.1
Dexterity Bonus	1–8	1.1
Enhance Potions	5–25	1.0
Faster Cast Recovery	1–3	1.2
Faster Casting	1	1.4
Hit Area Damage	2–50	1.0
Hit Chance Increase	1–15	1.3
Hit Dispel	2–50	1.0
Hit Fireball	2–50	1.4
Hit Harm	2–50	1.1
Hit Life Leech	2–93	1.1
Hit Lightning	2–50	1.4
Hit Lower Attack	2–50	1.1
Hit Lower Defense	2–50	1.3
Hit Magic Arrow	2–50	1.2
Hit Mana Leech	2–93	1.1
Hit Point Increase	1–5	1.1
Hit Point Regeneration	1–2	1.0
Hit Stamina Leech	2–93	1.0
Intelligence Bonus	1–8	1.1
Lower Mana Cost	1–8	1.1
Lower Reagent Cost	1–20	1.0
Lower Requirements	10–100	1.0
Luck	1–100	1.0
Mage Weapon	−29 to −20	1.0
Mana Increase	1–8	1.1
Mana Regeneration	1–2	1.0
Night Sight	N/A	1.0
Reflect Physical Damage	1–15	1.0
Resist — Physical, Fire, Cold, Poison, Energy	1–15 each	1.0
Skill Bonus	1–15	1.4
Slayer	N/A	1.1, and uo.com’s table also shows 1.3 for a second slayer tier
Spell Channeling	N/A	1.0
Spell Damage Increase	1–12	1.0
Stamina Increase	1–8	1.0
Stamina Regeneration	1–3	1.0
Strength Bonus	1–8	1.1
Swing Speed Increase	5–30	1.1
Use Best Weapon Skill	N/A	1.4
Velocity	2–50	1.3

The three things a soulforge will never give you

uo.com’s table marks three properties “No” in the Imbue Weight column, and the first shapes an entire class of character:

• Casting Focus — intensity 1–3, on reforged and looted armour only, capped at 12%, “a chance to resist interruptions while casting spells”. Not imbuable. A PvP caster must find it, reforge for it, or take Inscription.
• Mage Armor — the property that lets non-medable armour support meditation. Not imbuable. This is why mage suits are leather, or found and reforged, rather than imbued platemail. See Meditation for what that costs.
• Durability Bonus (10–100) — not imbuable, and an imbued item is locked out of Powder of Fortification too.

A long further set comes only from runic reforging or loot — Antique, Balanced, Bane, Battle Lust, Blood Drinker, Bone Breaker, Brittle, Chaos Damage, Cursed, Damage Eater and more. That is the honest boundary of the skill: Imbuing builds a competent suit reliably and cannot build a best-in-slot one.

Resources, failure, and what it costs you

Three ingredient types feed an imbue. Type one is the unravelled resources. Type two is small gemstones, from NPC jewellers or loot. Type three is special ingredients, “only needed to imbue properties at greater than 90% intensity”.

On failure the item survives. uo.com: “Failure will cause the loss of some of your type one and type two resources. Type three resources, the special ingredients, are not lost on failure.” You try again once the resources are replaced — which is why pushing an imbue to a marginal success chance is a resource decision, not a gamble with the piece.

[!] How much of the type one and type two resources is lost is not published — uo.com says only “some” — and [!] nor is how much any given imbue consumes in the first place.

Type three ingredients map to properties on uo.com’s Imbuing Ingredients table: Seed of Renewal for the regenerations, Boura Pelt for all resists, Chaga Mushroom for Luck, Essence of Achievement for Faster Casting, Essence of Diligence for Faster Cast Recovery, Essence of Order for Lower Mana Cost, Void Orb for the three leeches, Essence of Control for Swing Speed Increase, Crystalline Blackrock for jewellery Skill Bonus, and eight separate creature parts for the slayers.

Success chance - one measured test case, and no formula

The gump shows the success percentage before you commit, with the weight, the resource cost and a description. What it does not show is why. uo.com states only that “the more properties, and higher intensities you try to squeeze into a piece the more difficult it becomes and the lower your percentage success chance”, and publishes one measured case — adding 20% Lower Reagent Cost to a ring that already had two properties:

Soulforge	Human	Gargoyle
Player’s Soulforge	73.5%	80.8%
Royal City Soulforge	75.1%	82.6%
Queen’s Soulforge	78.5%	86.3%

[!] Those six numbers are one test case for one imbue, not a general table. They are the only published success figures anywhere and must not be read as the gargoyle bonus or a forge bonus in general. [!] No success-chance formula is published at all.

[!] Nor is the maximum intensity achievable at a given Imbuing skill. uo.com quotes no Imbuing figure other than 45.1 and 90.1, and does not give these thresholds. Any skill-to-intensity table is unpublished. Gargoyles get an enhanced success bonus at 100+ [!] Imbuing.

Imbuing as a second job - the mystic's damage skill

Imbuing is not purely a crafting skill on a caster. uo.com’s Mysticism page makes it one of two permitted support skills alongside Focus: “when damage spells are cast, if both skills are present, the effectiveness will be determined by whichever of these two skills is the higher.” Imbuing also scales Stone Form’s resist and maximum-resist bonus.

So an artificer with high Imbuing has a Mysticism damage skill for free — and the reverse is not true, since uo.com notes “there is no bonus to an artificer in having mysticism unless you plan use it for combat”.

The choice is not cosmetic. Focus adds a second casting school to the template and forfeits the 30% single-school Spell Damage Increase cap; Imbuing keeps the school count down and hands you a craft. Focus gives regeneration armour cannot block. Those are the two options and they pull opposite ways.

In PvP - how a suit actually gets built

Imbuing has no combat ability of its own. Its whole PvP relevance runs through gear — which is enough to make it one of the most consequential skills in the game.

• The caster package. Faster Casting 1 at weight 1.4, Faster Cast Recovery 1–3 at 1.2, Lower Mana Cost 1–8, Lower Reagent Cost 1–20, Spell Damage Increase 1–12 — all to a chosen number rather than whatever loot offered. Faster Casting is the expensive one by weight and only goes to 1.
• Defensive numbers. Defense Chance Increase 1–15 at 1.1, each resist 1–15 at 1.0. Resists are the cheapest useful property in the table, which is where a piece’s last weight usually goes.
• What you cannot buy. Casting Focus is not imbuable, and it is the property that stops you being interrupted. A PvP mage’s suit is always part imbued and part found. Mage Armor is not imbuable either.
• The jewellery trap. One skill per group per piece, second overwrites first — check the group table before planning a template around +15s.

In PvM

• Luck suits. Luck imbues at 1–100 for weight 1.0 — the best intensity-per-weight in the table, and why a luck suit is an imbuing project rather than a loot project.
• Slayer weapons at weight 1.1, one per weapon, a second overwriting the first.
• The weapon package. Hit Life, Mana and Stamina Leech all to 93, Swing Speed Increase 5–30, Damage Increase, and the hit-spell effects to 50. Most of what makes a PvM weapon work, all of it buyable.
• Hybrids. Use Best Weapon Skill (1.4) and Mage Weapon −29 to −20 (1.0) are what let a character fight with a weapon they never trained.
• Unravelling is the loot sink — everything not worth wearing becomes the currency for something that is.

Caps - and the only Power Scrolls that come from a quest

Imbuing has Power Scrolls to 105 / 110 / 115 / 120 against the 720 total cap, non-cumulative. But it is one of only two skills whose scrolls do not come from champion spawns — uo.com lists Imbuing with Fishing under quest acquisition. The quests are given by gargoyle NPCs in Royal City:

NPC	Quest	Cost	Reward
Beninort	Secrets of the Soulforge	50 Magical Residue	105 or 110 power scroll
Aurvidlem	Knowledge of the Soulforge	50 Enchanted Essence	115 power scroll, rarely a runic hammer or chisel instead
Ansikart	Mastery of the Soulforge	50 Relic Fragments	120 power scroll

A different economy from every other skill on the list: no Felucca, no spawn, no competing for a drop. You farm your own scroll out of loot you were unravelling anyway. Primary stat Intelligence, secondary Strength. The item-level caps matter more day to day: 5 properties per item, and 450 to 600 total weight by type.

Training, and no mastery

uo.com is unambiguous: “Unravelling is by far the easiest, and least costly method of gaining skill.” High-level treasure chests yield multiple relic fragments. The properties it names for training imbues are hit dispel, reflect physical damage, luck and lower reagent cost — all cheap-weight, all low-ingredient.

Range	Unpublished method [!]
0–40	Buy training from NPCs
40–50	Leather Caps with Reflect Physical Damage at 8–11% [!]
50–70	Butcher Knives or Daggers with Hit Dispel
70–120	Heavy Platemail Jingasas with Reflect Physical Damage

Aim for roughly a 50% [!] success rate while training. Imbuing does not appear in uo.com’s Accelerated Gains quest table, so there is no New Haven shortcut. And Imbuing has no Skill Mastery — it is not among uo.com’s nineteen.

What is not published

Searched for on uo.com, and absent:

• [!] The success-chance formula. The six percentages above are one test case, not a table.
• [!] The numeric size of the gargoyle bonus, or of each forge’s bonus, standalone.
• [!] Maximum achievable intensity at a given Imbuing skill.
• [!] How many residues, essences, relics or gemstones an imbue consumes, and how much is lost on failure.
• [!] Whether artifacts, antique or brittle items can be imbued.
• [!] Per-imbue quantities on the Imbuing Ingredients table.
• [!] Which Damage Increase maximum, 50 or 25, is current.

Where these come from

uo.com Imbuing · uo.com Magic Item Properties · uo.com Imbuing Ingredients Table · uo.com Mysticism · uo.com Magery, Evaluate Intelligence and Meditation · uo.com Scrolls of Power · uo.com Skills, Stats & Attributes · uo.com Skill Masteries · uo.com Accelerated Gains for New Characters. Everything here is from uo.com or the game itself; anything uo.com does not publish is marked [!] as unpublished where it appears.