Armslore not mentioned for certain crafting skills on the UO Wiki
If someone new to crafting were using the UO Wiki to help them choose a template, they would not necessarily realize that Armslore is an auxiliary skill useful for them in making the best possible weapons and armor. The Blacksmithing and Tailoring pages do call out this relationship. But Bowcraft and Fletching, Carpentry, and Tinkering do not. I noticed this while reading the Carpentry page, where there is a well-written section discussing what skills are necessary to cover the full crafting menu. I realize that Armslore is not "necessary", but it does help make exceptionally crafted weapons and armor even better. Of the skills where it is not mentioned, Tinkering would likely benefit the least from Armslore, with less than 10 (5?) crafted items improved by it. OTOH, Bowcraft and Fletching would benefit the most, with every type of bow gaining from the crafter's Armslore skill.
I'm not mentioning Imbuing because it is a whole different category, improving items after they are originally crafted, not during. Plus anyone can imbue the items; it is not bound to their originators.
I know not all craftsman choose to take Armslore. My point is that someone researching the related skills should know they are actually related.
If the pages are revisited, consider specifically mentioning whether a skill has an accelerated gain quest in New Haven. It was a shock to me recently when I created a Blacksmith/Tailor/Tinker/Imbuer recently. Tailoring could only be bought to about 33 and Imbuing to 40. With no newbie quests, that character would have had to spend a lot of unnecessary time just to get those skills to 50. After wasting several hours, I ended up deleting the original, and remaking him with both Imbuing and Tailoring starting at 50.
Imbuing in particular is badly designed at low levels. Until the skill reaches 45.1, enabling someone to unravel most magical monster loot, they can barely acquire base raw materials (Magical Residue and Enchanted Essence) necessary to gain skill while imbuing. It is a chicken & egg situation which can be avoided by starting your imbuer with at least 46 skill up front. BTW, being a gargoyle does not help with unraveling. Even gargoyles need to hit 45.1 skill to effectively unravel. (From 45.1 up, skill can be gained by both unraveling and imbuing, but skill gain is quite frustrating below that point.) I know there are very low-level magical items which someone with 40 skill can unravel. But probably only 1 in 50 pieces of magical loot fit in that category. At a guess, whoever designed Imbuing was assuming there would be a much higher quantity of weak magical loot, unravelable at skill level 40. As it turns out, there is not.
I'm not mentioning Imbuing because it is a whole different category, improving items after they are originally crafted, not during. Plus anyone can imbue the items; it is not bound to their originators.
I know not all craftsman choose to take Armslore. My point is that someone researching the related skills should know they are actually related.
If the pages are revisited, consider specifically mentioning whether a skill has an accelerated gain quest in New Haven. It was a shock to me recently when I created a Blacksmith/Tailor/Tinker/Imbuer recently. Tailoring could only be bought to about 33 and Imbuing to 40. With no newbie quests, that character would have had to spend a lot of unnecessary time just to get those skills to 50. After wasting several hours, I ended up deleting the original, and remaking him with both Imbuing and Tailoring starting at 50.
Imbuing in particular is badly designed at low levels. Until the skill reaches 45.1, enabling someone to unravel most magical monster loot, they can barely acquire base raw materials (Magical Residue and Enchanted Essence) necessary to gain skill while imbuing. It is a chicken & egg situation which can be avoided by starting your imbuer with at least 46 skill up front. BTW, being a gargoyle does not help with unraveling. Even gargoyles need to hit 45.1 skill to effectively unravel. (From 45.1 up, skill can be gained by both unraveling and imbuing, but skill gain is quite frustrating below that point.) I know there are very low-level magical items which someone with 40 skill can unravel. But probably only 1 in 50 pieces of magical loot fit in that category. At a guess, whoever designed Imbuing was assuming there would be a much higher quantity of weak magical loot, unravelable at skill level 40. As it turns out, there is not.
Rock (formerly Imperterritus VXt, Baja)
Comments
I've also found that treasure chest loot for my treasure hunters and the stuff my fisher gets from MIB chests yields a fair quantity of residue, again because they aren't that good and their armor doesn't have much luck on it. I usually have the t-hunter characters and fishers unravel their loot containers before stashing it and they probably unravel a third to half the pieces as residue.
Yeah, sometimes it sucks not being a power player but in this particular situation, I've found that I've never ever lacked for or had to buy residue for training imbuing to 120 on the shards where I've already done it.
My experience in loot unraveling (Pub 98 and 99) was from three new characters, starting out at 40, 40, and 45 Imbuing skill. I have created a number of folks on several shards since I returned to the game. The loot they tried to unravel mostly came from fairly low end sources, such as Old Haven accelerated gain fighting (skeletons, zombies, spellbinders, and (greater) mongbats), the brigands further to the south, and, leaving Haven, lizardmen, giant spiders, harpies, ettins, ogres, and trolls. There were several characters, all new, providing magical loot from these sources, but very, very, few of these pieces would be unravelable at 40 skill. Even 45 skill on a gargoyle was insufficient; he actually needed 45.1 skill to get the green stuff. Even some items that only unravel to the red have too much magic to unravel below 45.1. Luck was limited. Some folks wore a random drop or two that had some Luck, but generally it wasn't more than 100 total. Most of these gatherers had 0 Luck.
(I probably should have done the unraveling rant in another post, if at all. Mentioning it was tangent to my main Armslore point. It seemed to fit because, if giving advice in the Wiki to players creating craftsmen, characters would significantly benefit starting their Tailoring and/or Imbuing at 50 skill.)
I'm thinking that what would help you the most would be to maybe try digging up treasure maps or fishing up sunken chests.
If you're working fishing, you can start to fish up "sodden pieces of parchment" (treasure map) or messages in a bottle without an accompanying sea serpent once you hit about 75 fishing skill (although I once fished up an MIB with no serpent at 71.0 fishing skill). At about 81 fishing skill, you'll start getting sea serpents when you fish up an MIB or a treasure map. I believe you only need 65 fishing, though, to pull up sunken chests if you can get your hands on MIBs from some other source. The lowest level sunken chest will give you 4 magic items, while an ancient chest (the white ones) will give 24 magic items.
The lowest level treasure maps (plainly drawn) require 27.1 cartography skill to decipher and they will give 32 magic items, as well as anything you loot from the monsters those spawn (headless, mongbats, skeletons, ratmen, and zombies). The quantity of magic items from treasure chests increases per level, up to 80 for diabolically drawn maps. The Grizelda the Hag quest is a fun, fairly low-risk way to get low level treasure maps.
Another idea, if you are just coming back and maybe don't have a tamer with a lot of skill, is to tame two lowland bouras and use them to kill stuff. Wisps are one suggestion for something they can easily handle that don't come with a lot of aggressive spawn around them. There is a nice spawn of them SE of Blighted Grove or in Ilshenar at the Wisp dungeon. They drop 3-5 magic items per wisp, plus you can pick up peculiar seeds if you're into gardening. Crystal elementals are also another easy thing for a pair of bouras to kill, and they drop 1-4 magical items each as well as 4 small gems. Solen infiltrators would also be easy for bouras to kill and they drop 1-3 magical items and 1-4 small gems each. You could also take them to the first level of Shame and other places as well.
Just a couple of thoughts on how to get more residue for training imbuing. I'm sure other people can throw in some ideas as well.
Edited to add: I just had my human tamer unravel the bag of loot she acquired while checking out the wisps, elementals, and infiltrators while writing this. She has 1645 luck on her suit. There were 39 items in the bag and she unraveled 19 of them with her jack-of-all-trades level of imbuing (i.e., 0) and got 73 magical residue as a result.
@Margrette , thank you for the suggestions. I do have a treasure hunter / fisherman on Baja, although I have not created one on the new shards I've added since coming back. Relating to my new Imbuers, all three can new unravel most stuff now. I don't know why our experiences below 45.1 skill are so different; perhaps my guys were just very unlucky or gave up trying too soon. After one of them tried to unravel over 20 items in a row, and couldn't do a single one of them, I sort of gave up that route of skill gain. Once they reached 45.1 there was no problem gaining from both unraveling and imbuing.
I should have also mentioned toxic sliths as another option for quick piles of loot to unravel for residue. Again, using the same human tamer with 1645 luck, just did the Percolem "Revenge of the Slith" quest to kill 20 toxic sliths. Took about 10 minutes. She looted 52 items and left about 10 50-stone items behind (I never grab those unless they might unravel to a relic fragment); grabbed 9009 gold, 6 toxic venom sacs, 4 slith tongues, and some ancient pottery fragments. Percolem gave her another 4376 gold, 4 magical items (none of which she could unravel), 10 enchanted essence, 2 ML gems, and one of the collectible books. Of those 56 magical items from sliths and Percolem, 22 unraveled for the tamer to make 81 magical residue and the artificer got 70 enchanted essence and 2 relic fragments from the rest.
If your artificer has other skills sufficient to kill toxic sliths, that could be a good way to get residue and essence and imbuing gains (from unraveling) while building up loyalty to use the Queen's soulforge. If you have lots of time on your hands, you can also go thru the loot before you unravel it and look for stuff with only one to three properties on them that you can imbue luck or LRC on for imbuing gains. It's one alternative to training imbuing if you don't have lots of spare ingots or other materials to make items for training, however it is very time-consuming to sort the loot that way and it takes up storage too.