Ultima Online Tailoring - barbed runic kits, arcane gem charges to 120, and the second craft whose enhancing keeps improving

The four leathers

uo.com publishes four workable tiers:

Leather	Tailoring required	uo.com’s wording
Regular Leather	0	From the tanner and furtrader NPCs, or harvested from creatures
Spined	65	“The easiest colored leather to get and, at 65 skill, the first you will be able to work.”
Horned	80	“Workable at 80 skill”
Barbed	99	“The highest level of leather … this leather is not workable until 99 skill.”

Three gates, and the top one is at 99, exactly as Valorite is for Mining and Blacksmithy. The last point from 99 to 100 unlocks no new material; what it unlocks is everything in the enhancing section below.

What each leather is worth

uo.com’s Material Bonuses page publishes the armour bonuses:

Material	Phys	Fire	Cold	Poison	Energy	Luck
Spined	9	—	—	—	—	40
Horned	2	4	3	3	3	—
Barbed	3	2	3	3	5	—

The shape matters more than the individual figures. Spined is one large physical number and 40 Luck, and nothing else — it is a specialist. Horned and Barbed spread smaller bonuses across all five resistances. That is why Spined is the luck-suit material and Barbed is the balanced-resist material, and it is a happy accident of design that Spined is also the cheapest to reach at 65.

A tailor also works dragon scales, which are a different shape again — one very large number and one penalty:

Scale	Phys	Fire	Cold	Poison	Energy	Luck
Red	1	11	-3	1	1	—
Yellow	-3	1	1	1	1	20
Black	11	1	1	1	-3	—
Green	1	-3	1	11	1	—
White	-3	1	11	1	1	—
Blue	1	1	1	-3	11	—

Every colour is +11 in one resist and −3 in another, with ones elsewhere — except Yellow, which trades its 11 for 20 Luck. The −3 is published and should never be left off: scale armour is an encounter-specific choice, not a general upgrade.

Cloth, from sheep to bolt

uo.com publishes the whole chain, which is the only part of the skill with no skill gates in it at all:

1. Raw material — flax, cotton or wool, bought from the Tailor NPC or harvested: wool from live sheep, cotton from fields, flax from plants.
2. Spinning wheel — double-click the raw material and target the wheel hub. One pile of wool yields 3 balls of yarn; a bundle of flax or bale of cotton each yield 6 spools of thread.
3. Loom — double-click the thread or yarn and target the loom near the lower crossbar. Five spools or balls make one bolt of cloth.

The loom and spinning wheel themselves are Carpentry items, and the sewing kit, scissors, skinning knife and clippers are Tinkering ones — Sewing Kit at 10.0 [!] Tinkering, Scissors at 5.0 [!], Clippers at 50.0 [!]. uo.com’s own tool list names the sewing kit, scissors, dye tub, salvage bag, spinning wheel, loom, skinning knife, butcher’s war cleaver and harvester blade.

Runic sewing kits

This is how a tailor-made piece competes with an artifact. uo.com’s Runic Bonuses page publishes three tiers, and uo.com’s Tailor Bulk Order page prices them:

Kit	Min intensity	Max intensity	Min properties	Max properties	Charges	BOD points
Spined	40%	100%	1	3	45	350
Horned	45%	100%	3	4	30	600
Barbed	50%	100%	4	5	15	700

Read a row as a floor and a ceiling together. A Barbed kit makes armour with 4 or 5 properties, each rolled between 50% and 100% intensity, and has 15 charges — fifteen attempts at a near-perfect piece, for 700 BOD points. A Spined kit gives 1 to 3 properties at 40–100% across 45 charges.

Compare that with the metal side: the Valorite runic hammer on the Blacksmithy page gives 5 properties at 85–100%. The barbed kit matches it on property count and loses on guaranteed intensity — 50% against 85% as the floor. That gap, published on uo.com’s own table, is the reason a high-end suit mixes metal and leather rather than being all one.

Arcane gems - the one thing that scales all the way to 120

This is the only published mechanic in any craft that rewards each individual point of skill from 60 upward, and uo.com publishes it in full:

• “Tailors of 60 skill and above have the ability to use Arcane Gems”.
• The item must be crafted of Exceptional quality first.
• “The number of charges per item at 60 skill is 12, this number goes up by 1 for each 5 points of skill gained to a total of 24 at legendary (120) skill.”

Tailoring	Arcane charges
60	12
80	16
100 (Grandmaster)	20
120 (Legendary)	24

Those intermediate rows follow directly from uo.com’s published rule of 1 charge per 5 points from a base of 12 at 60; the 12 and 24 endpoints are uo.com’s own figures.

Recharging is published too, and it has a quirk worth knowing: “the tailor that made the item, or one of equal or higher skill, can re-charge it fully, but even a non-tailor character can restore some of the charges. Example: on an item with a maximum charge level of 24 a non-tailor can restore 19 charges.”

Applying gems costs you three things, all published by uo.com: it will “remove ‘blessed’ from any blessed item”, “reduce resists on leather gloves to ‘base properties’ level (2/4/3/3/3)”, and “remove any re-forged or imbued magic properties”. That last one is the expensive mistake: arcane gems and Imbuing are mutually exclusive on the same piece.

Enhancing - the second craft that rewards going past grandmaster

Enhancing adds a material’s fixed bonuses to a finished plain item, and it can only ever be done once per item. Six skills can enhance. One published line separates two of them from the rest:

Success chance increases with skill above grandmaster in Tailoring and Blacksmithing only. There are no skill levels past GM for Tinkering, Bowcrafting, Carpentry or Stonecrafting, so those four crafters enhance no better at their ceiling than they did on the day they reached it. A tailor does. Together with the runic kits, that is the clearest published argument for spending a Power Scroll on Tailoring rather than treating 100 as the finish line.

The risks are published as well, and they are not small:

• “The more properties an item has, and the higher the intensity of those properties, the more difficult it will be to enhance.” The better the piece, the worse your odds — exactly backwards from what you want.
• “Failing an Enhancing attempt will cost you some of your materials, but there is also a very good chance of destroying the item.”

[!] uo.com publishes no enhancing success percentages for Tailoring at any skill level — the statement that skill above GM helps is qualitative, with no figure attached to it anywhere.

Bulk orders, and what they pay

uo.com’s own training advice for this skill is, unusually, to go and do paperwork: “It is strongly suggested that you begin training by making Bulk Orders for the tailor NPC. Not only will this allow you to gain skill, you will also be paid in gold for your efforts.” The published point values:

• Cloth BODs — small orders at 10 / 15 / 20 quantity earn 10–50 points; large 4- to 6-part orders earn 110–610.
• Leather BODs by material — Normal 10–650, Spined 60–700, Horned 110–750, Barbed 160–800.

And what the points buy, beyond the runic kits and Power Scrolls already covered:

Reward	BOD points
High Charge Crafting Tool (250 charges)	10
Title: Weaver	10
Special Hued Cloth	10–300
Title: Dressmaker	25
Title: Haberdasher	100
Special Hued Sandals	150
Master Craftsman Talisman (10 / 25 / 50 charges)	200–350
Stretched Hide Deed	300
Flower Tapestry Deed	400
Bear Rug Deed	450
Clothing Bless Deed	550

The Clothing Bless Deed at 550 is the one non-tailors care about: it is what stops a character’s clothing dropping on death.

In PvP

Tailoring is the single largest crafting input into a PvP suit, and every part of that is indirect — nobody fights with a sewing kit.

• Barbed runic sewing kits produce leather armour with 4–5 properties at 50–100% intensity. Those are property intensities Imbuing cannot reach, and the kit’s 15 charges are the scarce resource the whole high-end suit economy runs on.
• Material choice sets the resist spread before any magic is added: Barbed 3/2/3/3/5, Horned 2/4/3/3/3, Spined 9 physical.
• Studded and bone armour carry a hidden 3% [!] Lower Mana Cost — LMC being a core caster stat, and this figure not appearing on uo.com’s Tailoring page.
• Clothing Bless Deed at 550 BOD points keeps the clothing on the corpse’s owner.
• Arcane clothing from 60 skill supplies the charge-bearing robes on caster templates.
• Enhancing improves above grandmaster, which only a tailor and a smith can say. In a game where PvP gear is consumed, the crafter who can enhance a finished piece at better odds is worth more than one who cannot.

In PvM

• Spined leather’s 40 Luck per piece is the basis of the luck suit, and luck drives loot quality on every PvM kill. Spined is also the lowest gate at 65, so the luck suit is a mid-level tailor’s product rather than an endgame one.
• Dragon scale armour pushes one resist to +11 at the cost of −3 in another — built per encounter.
• Enhancing lets a tailor promote a finished piece into a better material, with the published risk of destroying it.
• Master Craftsman Talisman (10 / 25 / 50 charges) at 200–350 points and the High Charge Crafting Tool (250 charges) at just 10 points are the workhorse BOD rewards.
• Container limits, published on uo.com’s Tailoring page because tailors hit them first: 125 items per backpack, 400 stones per container.

Caps, stats and Power Scrolls

Tailoring is one of only two crafting skills with dedicated Power Scrolls. uo.com’s Scrolls of Power page names Tailoring and Blacksmithy, both as bulk order rewards rather than champion spawn drops. Tailoring therefore reaches 120.

Scroll	Raises the cap to	Tailor BOD points	Blacksmith BOD points
Wondrous (+5.0)	105	400	625
Exalted (+10.0)	110	500	675
Mythical (+15.0)	115	575	800
Legendary (+20.0)	120	650	900

Tailoring’s scrolls are cheaper than the smith’s at every tier — 650 against 900 for the Legendary. Scrolls are not cumulative: reaching 120 needs a +20.0 scroll directly, and once one is used, scrolls of lesser or equal value can no longer be applied to that skill. The skill counts against the 720 total cap.

Primary stat Dex, secondary Int, per uo.com’s table. No mastery — Tailoring is absent from uo.com’s Skill Masteries page.

One caution on what the scroll actually buys. [!] No published material unlocks above 99 — Barbed is the top leather and it arrives a point before grandmaster. The two published reasons to go past 100 are arcane gem charges, which keep climbing 1 per 5 points to 24 at 120, and enhancing success, which uo.com says improves above GM without giving a number. Everything else is the same at 120 as at 100.

Training

uo.com gives no stepped script. It advises taking Tailoring as a starting skill at 50%, notes there is “no accelerated gain quest for this skill”, and points you at bulk orders as above.

An unpublished 0–120 path [!]:

Range	Item
0.0–29.0	Buy from NPC
29–35	Short Pants
35–41.4	Fur Cape
41.4–50	Cloaks
50–54	Fur Boots
54–65	Robes
65–72	Kasa
72–78	Ninja Tabi
78–110	Oil Cloths
110–115	Elven Shirt (Brown)
115–120	Studded Hiro Sode

The 78 to 110 row is the whole grind: thirty-two points on one item. Underneath it 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 runs 27.0 hours at 95.0–99.9, 32.0 hours at 100.0–104.9 and 51.0 hours at 115.0–120.0. A Scroll of Alacrity raises each check from 0.1 to 0.2–0.5 for 15 minutes. [!] No Tailoring-specific gain rate is published.

What is not published

• [!] Any per-item skill requirement table on uo.com for individual garments and armour pieces — it publishes the leather tier minimums and nothing more.
• [!] Any success-chance or exceptional-chance formula. uo.com mentions a 7% figure only in the narrow arcane-gloves context; there is no general exceptional table.
• [!] Any cloth type bonuses — uo.com publishes material bonuses for metal, leather, scale and wood, and none at all for cloth.
• [!] Any enhancing success percentages for Tailoring at any skill.
• [!] The studded and bone armour Lower Mana Cost on uo.com — the 3% figure is unpublished.
• [!] Any gain-rate table.
• [!] Whether Power-Scrolled Tailoring above 100 unlocks any material beyond Barbed. Arcane charges are the only published above-100 scaling with a number on it.

Where these come from

uo.com Tailoring · uo.com Tailor Bulk Orders · uo.com Material Bonuses · uo.com Runic Bonuses · uo.com Enhancing · uo.com Scrolls of Power · uo.com Blacksmith Bulk Orders · 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.