Ultima Online Inscription - the 10% spell damage bonus, the Casting Focus sentence that contradicts itself, and every scroll threshold

The spell damage bonus - 10% at Grandmaster, on nine spells or on all of them

uo.com, verbatim:

“Inscription adds 10% bonus damage to the following spells at Grandmaster level: Magic Arrow, Harm, Fireball, Lightning, Energy Bolt, Explosion, Chain Lightning, Flamestrike, Meteor Swarm”

So the published figure is 10%, it turns on at Grandmaster (100), and uo.com scopes it to those nine named spells — which is, not coincidentally, the entire Magery direct-damage set.

[!] The scope is not settled. An unpublished description gives the same bonus as +10% Spell Damage Increase [!] to any Magery spell a Grandmaster Scribe casts. uo.com names nine spells. The difference only bites on spells outside the nine — whether, for instance, a scribe’s Poison Strike or a damaging Mysticism spell benefits. uo.com’s nine-spell list is the published wording.

• uo.com — uo.com Inscription

[!] uo.com also does not say whether the bonus scales below Grandmaster or is a flat on/off switch at exactly 100. The published wording is only “at Grandmaster level”. And [!] uo.com does not state whether item-modified Inscription — from jewellery, say — counts toward it.

Casting Focus, and the sentence uo.com contradicts itself in

This is the most important unresolved thing on the page, so here is uo.com’s line in full, untouched:

“Inscription adds Casting Focus – from Apprentice to Grand Master a 1% increase to base casting focus per 10 points of Inscribe. (5% at Grand Master)”

[!] Read it twice. 1% per 10 points of Inscription would give 10% at 100 skill. The parenthetical in the same sentence says 5% at Grand Master. Those cannot both be true, and uo.com does not resolve it. There is also an unpublished figure of 5% [!], which agrees with uo.com’s parenthetical and not with uo.com’s rule — but it is not a correction of uo.com, only a figure that happens to match one half of a broken sentence.

Reading	At 100 Inscription	Source
“1% per 10 points of Inscribe”	10%	uo.com Inscription
“(5% at Grand Master)”	5%	The same sentence, same page

What is not in dispute is what Casting Focus does and why a caster wants it from a skill rather than from gear. Casting Focus reduces the chance of a cast being disrupted when you take damage, and the part that makes Inscription worth template points is this: the Inscription-derived Casting Focus can exceed the item cap [!]. Gear-sourced Casting Focus stops at that cap; this does not.

Two spells that scale with Inscription by published formula

uo.com publishes exact formulas for two self-buffs, which is more arithmetic than most skills get:

Spell	Published formula
Reactive Armor	“Increases caster’s Physical Resistance by ((Inscription / 20) + 15) points, decreases caster’s Fire, Cold, Energy and Poison Resistance by 5 points each.”
Magic Reflection	“Decreases caster’s Physical Resistance by (25 − (Inscription / 20)) points, increases caster’s Fire, Cold, Energy and Poison Resistance by 10 points each.”

Worked through uo.com’s own formulas at 100 Inscription: Reactive Armor gives (100 / 20) + 15 = 20 physical resistance, and Magic Reflection’s physical penalty falls to 25 − (100 / 20) = 20 points instead of the full 25. Those are arithmetic on the published formula, not separate claims.

The Magic Reflection case is the interesting one. A scribe pays a smaller physical penalty for the same elemental gain — five points of physical resistance kept, purely for having the skill. Against an opponent who is throwing spells rather than swinging, that is a straight profit.

uo.com also lists Protection among the spells Inscription touches, describing it as letting you cast without interruption while lowering physical resistance and Resisting Spells skill and increasing casting delay. [!] uo.com attaches no Inscription-scaled numbers to Protection, so none are given here.

Scribing scrolls: the circle ladder

The scribe copies a spell onto a blank scroll. The prerequisite is plain: to copy a spell onto a scroll, you must already carry a spellbook that contains it. You cannot scribe what you have not learned.

uo.com publishes the requirement per Magery circle:

Circle	INT / Mana	Inscription required
First	4	0
Second	6	0
Third	9	3.5
Fourth	11	17.8
Fifth	14	32.1
Sixth	20	46.4
Seventh	40	60.7
Eighth	50	75

Mysticism scrolls run the same eight-step ladder at the same skill values, two spells per step:

Inscription	INT / Mana	Mysticism scrolls
0	4	Nether Bolt, Healing Stone
0	6	Purge Magic, Enchant
3.5	9	Sleep, Eagle Strike
17.8	11	Animated Weapon, Stone Form
32.1	14	Spell Trigger, Mass Sleep
46.4	20	Cleansing Winds, Bombard
60.7	40	Spell Plague, Hail Storm
75	50	Nether Cyclone, Rising Colossus

Necromancy scrolls are published per spell instead of per circle, and they run higher at the top. uo.com’s figures: Pain Spike 19.6, Curse Weapon 19.6, Blood Oath 19.6, Mind Rot 29.6, Animate Dead 39.6, Poison Strike 49.6, Wither 59.6, Strangle 64.6, Lich Form 69.6, Vengeful Spirit 79.6, Exorcism 79.6, Vampiric Embrace 98.6.

Vampiric Embrace at 98.6 is the highest published scroll requirement in the skill, and it is the reason a scribe who intends to supply necromancers has to go essentially the whole way to grandmaster rather than stopping at 75 with the eighth circle.

Spellbooks, runebooks and the rest of the product line

From uo.com’s Inscription Craftables page:

Item	Inscription	Materials
Runebook	45.0	8 Blank Scrolls, 1 Gate Travel Scroll, 1 Recall Scroll, 1 Unmarked Rune
Spellbook (Magery)	50.0	10 Blank Scrolls
Necromancy Spellbook	50.0	10 Blank Scrolls
Mysticism Spellbook	50.0	10 Blank Scrolls
Charged Rune	60.7	Recipe required
Scroll Binder	75.0	1 woodpulp
Spellbook Engraving Tool	75.0	7 Black Pearl, 1 Feather
Scrapper’s Compendium	85.0	Recipe required

Three of those are load-bearing for the whole game rather than for the scribe. Runebooks at 45.0 are the travel and escape system. Scroll Binders at 75.0 are what bundles scrolls — uo.com’s Skill Gain Systems page notes that higher-value Scrolls of Transcendence come via scrollbinders. And the three spellbooks at 50.0 are the entry ticket for every caster class in the game.

The tool itself comes from somewhere else entirely: the Scribe’s Pen is a Tinkering item at 25.0 [!] Tinkering and 1 ingot [!]. uo.com’s Inscription pages do not publish the pen’s requirement.

[!] Note what is not on that list. uo.com’s Craftables page publishes only the Magery, Necromancy and Mysticism spellbooks. No skill requirement is published for Chivalry, Bushido, Ninjitsu, Spellweaving or Gargish spellbooks. Runic atlases, blank scrolls and bulk order books are also craftable [!], with no skill figures published.

Magic spellbooks are gated on Magery, not on Inscription

A crafted spellbook can come out carrying magic properties, and this is the one place where the scribe’s own skill is not what decides quality. The gate is Magery skill [!]:

Magery [!]	Properties on the book
80	1
90	2
100+	3

The possible properties [!] are Faster Casting, Faster Cast Recovery, Lower Mana Cost, Lower Reagent Cost, Mana Increase, Mana Regeneration, Spell Damage Increase, Intelligence Bonus and mage-related skills. So the scribe who makes good spellbooks is a mage with Inscription, not a crafter with a pen.

In PvP

Inscription is one of very few trade skills that earns a slot on a fighting template outright:

• +10% spell damage at Grandmaster on Magic Arrow, Harm, Fireball, Lightning, Energy Bolt, Explosion, Chain Lightning, Flamestrike and Meteor Swarm — which is exactly the PvP nuke set. (An unpublished reading extends that to any Magery spell [!]; see above.)
• Casting Focus against interruption, at either 5% or 10% depending on which half of uo.com’s sentence you read — and it can exceed the item cap [!], which is the whole argument for buying it with skill points instead of suit properties. Being disrupted is the single most decisive thing that happens in a caster fight.
• Magic Reflection costs a scribe 20 physical resistance instead of 25, by uo.com’s formula.
• Reactive Armor gives a scribe 20 physical resistance by the same arithmetic.
• Scrolls are the pre-cast burst layer: a scroll casts a spell the caster may not otherwise be able to cast, and Inscription is the only published source of them.
• Runebooks at 45.0 are the escape mechanism. Every PvP character carries one; a scribe made it.

The trade is honest: 100 points spent on Inscription is 100 points not spent on Evaluating Intelligence, Resisting Spells or Meditation, and the 10% bonus does not arrive at all until the very last point.

In PvM

• The same +10% spell damage applies, and against monsters it applies for the length of a long fight rather than a twenty-second window.
• Spellbooks at 50.0 for Magery, Necromancy and Mysticism, with up to 3 magic properties when the crafter has 100+ Magery.
• Runebooks and charged runes (60.7) for getting to hunting grounds and out of them.
• Scrapper’s Compendium at 85.0 and the Spellbook Engraving Tool at 75.0.
• Necromancy scrolls up to Vampiric Embrace at 98.6.

[!] uo.com publishes no property caps or intensities for the Scrapper’s Compendium on its Inscription pages, so none are given.

Caps, stats and the absence of a Power Scroll

Inscription caps at 100.0 real skill. It is not on uo.com’s Scrolls of Power list, which names only Blacksmithy and Tailoring among the crafting skills with dedicated scrolls; there is no Inscription Power Scroll at all. That matters more here than for most crafts, because the skill’s headline bonus fires at exactly the cap: Grandmaster is not a stepping stone in Inscription, it is the destination, and there is nothing beyond it.

It counts against the 720 total skill cap. Primary stat Int, secondary Dex. No mastery — Inscription is absent from uo.com’s Skill Masteries page. It is, however, the skill that makes the Scroll Binder at 75.0 that other people’s scroll economies run on.

Training

uo.com’s own guidance: reach 50 from an NPC trainer — it names Jillian in New Haven — or by self-teaching; gains slow around 35–40, at which point switch to writing spells; at 75, transition from scrolls to scribing spellbooks. It warns that training consumes pens, blank scrolls and substantial mana, which is why Meditation sits next to Inscription on most scribe builds.

An unpublished circle-by-circle ladder [!] is the alternative:

Range	Method
0–30	Buy from NPCs
30–55	4th Circle scrolls
55–65	5th Circle
65–85	6th Circle
85–94	7th Circle
94–100	8th Circle

The two differ — uo.com moves you to spellbooks at 75, the unpublished ladder keeps you on scrolls to 100 — but that is advice, not mechanics.

Underneath both 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. [!] uo.com publishes no Inscription-specific gain rate or success formula.

What is not published

• [!] Any resolution of the Casting Focus contradiction — “1% per 10 points of Inscribe” against “(5% at Grand Master)”, in uo.com’s own sentence.
• [!] Whether the 10% spell damage bonus scales below Grandmaster or switches on at 100.
• [!] Whether item-modified Inscription counts toward either bonus.
• [!] Whether the bonus covers nine spells or all Magery spells — uo.com names nine; an unpublished reading says all.
• [!] Any Inscription-scaled numbers for Protection, despite Protection being listed.
• [!] The Scrapper’s Compendium property caps or intensities.
• [!] Any success-chance formula or gain-rate table for Inscription.
• [!] Skill requirements for Chivalry, Bushido, Ninjitsu, Spellweaving or Gargish spellbooks — uo.com publishes only the three.

Where these come from

uo.com Inscription · uo.com Inscription Craftables · uo.com Scrolls of Power · uo.com Skill Masteries · uo.com Skills, Stats & Attributes · uo.com Skill Gain Systems. Everything here is from uo.com or the game itself; anything uo.com does not publish is marked [!] as unpublished where it appears.