Here is a brief tutorial on training imbue. I ran it up to GM this week all by hand.
Because of the resources involved, the limitations on what you can unwind, and the sheer volume of attempts needed to advance, I recommend you work the skill on a blacksmith using dull copper runic hammers to craft items to unwind and train. At 50 imbue you can unwind everything you will make with DC hammers. You will get mostly residue, which is the primary ingredient you need to train the skill. Because of the resource requirement it will be onerous to work this skill on a character that does not have a crafting skill, preferably a blacksmith unless you buy a soulforge to place in your house and crank a pile of ingredients first. You can use a tailor, carpenter or bowyer, but ingots are the lightest raw material if you have to schlep to the soul forges in TM to work. You can go into the blacksmith near the large soulforge which has a small soulforge placed close enough to the forge and anvil that you can both smith and imbue. I think this is a good idea as this smaller forge does not give a bonus.
UPDATE From Massacre: You can use special materials and a regular tool to make items to unravel. The only difficulty in doing so is that the unravel bag doesn't always work and you need may to target the items individually. (I suspect that a UOA macro would be useful here.) I have had success on enhanced stuff using "unwind all" or whatever the second selection is that unwinds artifacts.
You need approximately 10,000 of the small normal gems to work skills. Amber and Citrine are the cheapest, but I also recommend getting rubies, the next cheapest. With these three you can work adding hit dispel, fire resist and luck to weapons, which works well for gains. Each of these three use residue and have graded difficulty steps, 1/15 for fire resist, 1/50 for hit dispel, and 1/100 for luck. You will want to use each in turn to keep you in the right difficulty range as you work. Buy the gems from NPC jewelers and plan on spending 550K or more. Buy all three types of gems as you will want to use more than one mod while training. There is also a new book you can buy for your miner(s) from the artificer at the smithy near the big soulforge titled Mining Quality Gems. This book will allow you to mine the tiny jewelry type gems that you have to use in large quantities to imbue .
You can buy the skill to 40 from the artificer at the big soulforge by the smithy. He also sells unravel bags.
In 2d you can work crafting at the same time as imbue if you move the gumps so that you can see both. I have been using one bag to craft daggers to unwind for materials while I work on imbueing daggers in another bag.
When you get to the point that a single mod would cost you multiple gems, start adding more than one mod. The first might cost you two gems or more, but then you can work the other nine or so imbues on the weapon with only one gem by using a different mod. You have ten attempts on each item before you get a message that you can no longer gain imbueing that item. I am keeping my difficulty at about 50% because that is what seems to work best for smithing.
There is more than one soulforge in Ter Mur. Ther big one in the square gives a bonus to imbue. There is at least one more in the blacksmithy immediately N of square that does not give a bonus.
You can also imbue on some weapons that you have crafted with your runic hammer to avoid multiple imbue patterns. You will have to experiment to see what fits your skill range. At 90 skill GM exceptional weapons with 40 DI and a 100% property like Use Best, are about 45% difficulty.
You can make UOA macros to run an imbue sequence and to unravel an item, but you will need to keep updating it to change the mix and keep you in the right training range as you progress.
Anyone with additional information, please feel free to add to this thread.
Useful Links:http://vboards.stratics.com/showthread.php?t=145009*From later in the thread* Taken from stratics.....
Imbuing Bonuses to Success Chance:
* Jewelry (non-magical) cannot receive the exceptional bonuses available on other items due to the inablilty to craft the pieces exceptionally. This includes both the 20% success chance bonus as well as the unknown total maximum possible intensity bonus available on all other item types.
* Magical jewelry (crafted artifact-type) is assumed to benefit from the exceptional bonuses available to other item types.
* The base value for all imbuing bonuses is that of a human character imbuing onto an NPC purchased item, except the Queen's Forge bonus.
o Non-Exeptional Crafted Bonus: applied 10%
o Gargoyle Racial Bonus: applied 10%
o Exceptional Crafted Bonus: applied 20%
* The Gargoyle Racial bonus will stack with the bonus obtained from the base item. The Queen's Forge bonus stacks with both racial and base item bonuses.
* The Queen's Forge base bonus is a flat bonus, rather than an applied bonus, of 2%. There is additional bonus added to the Queen's Forge bonus based on any other bonuses the character may receive. This bonus is the percentage of bonus the character has, applied to 2%. That total is then added to the character's success chance value as it would at any other soulforge.
[for better understanding, the above in mathematical terms]
H = Human Base Value
T = Total Succes Chance
(2 + (2 x .1)) + (H + (H x .1)) = T
[this equation is for a gargoyle using an NPC purchased item at Queen's Forge]
IMBUING BONUSES:
* Human "Success Chance" is the base value for success. (H)
* Gargoyles get a 10% racial bonus to success chance. (H x .1) = 10%
* Non-exceptional crafted items get a 10% bonus to success chance. (H x .1)) = 10%
* Exceptionally crafted items get an additional 20% bonus to success chance. (H x .2) = 20%
* Queen's Forge gets 2% [hard value] bonus + bonus value for racial and/or item (see below)
HUMAN:
* NPC Purchased Item: Base Value (H) ... Queen's Forge: H + 2
* Non-Exeptional Crafted: H + (H x .1) ... Queen's Forge: (H + (H x .1)) + (2 + (2 x .1))
* Exceptionally Crafted: H + (H x .2) ... Queen's Forge: (H + (H x .2)) + (2 + (2 x .2))
GARGOYLE:
* Racial Bonus: H + (H x .1) ... Queen's Forge: (H + (H x .1)) + (2 + (2 x .1))
* Non-Exceptional Crafted: H + (H x .2) ... Queen's Forge: (H + (H x .2)) + (2 + (2 x .2))
* Exceptionally Crafted: H + (H x .3) ... Queen's Forge: (H + (H x .3)) + (2 + (2 x .3))
REAL NUMBERS:
HUMAN SUCCESS CHANCE AT 1ST PROPERTY (100% INTENSITY):
Note: The game rounds some of the numbers wrong.
NPC Item: 155.6
NPC Item QF: 157.6
Crafted Item: 171.1
Crafted Item QF: 173.3
Exceptional Item: 186.7
Exceptional Item QF: 189.0
GARGOYLE SUCCESS CHANCE AT 1ST PROPERTY (100% INTENSITY):
NPC Item: 171.1
NPC Item QF: 173.3
Crafted Item: 186.7
Crafted Item QF: 189.0
Exceptional Item: 202.2
Exceptional Item QF: 204.8
