This guide is meant for aspiring tailors as well as other crafters whos crafts depend on the resources and semi-finished products. Those looking to know more about leather armors and special clothing will also find some useful information.
The core mechanics of the skill hasn’t changed drastically compared to OSI, but the list of craftables has been expended quite a bit, making it easier for you to customize your character the way you like.
Main Skill, its Perks and Supporting skills
Your skill in Tailoring improves you chance on making cloth and leather items and allows you to access perks that will further improve your crafts. Crafting most items has a chance of granting an infusion reward.
The chance and the amount of this reward can be further improved with Infusion Focus perks which will pay off in time if you plan on crafting a lot of item (and when Tailoring is not just a support skill for your other crafts).
There are three perks (Laborious Linens, Trappings Of The Trades and Vocational Vestments) that let you craft cloth items with innate +skill bonus to certain skills. Scroll down for detailed description of the system.
Leatherworking perks grant HP bonus to your crafted armors. On level 3, your light armors (normal and studded leather) will grant +3 HP per piece while medium armor (bone armor) will grant +6 HP per piece. Every armor piece is subject to dexterity and stamina penalty (-1 per piece for light and -2 per piece for medium armors), which you should consider. Level 3 also grants a chance to create items with additional resists.
Epic Leathercrafting and Epic Tailoring both work similarly. They bestow upon a crafter a permanent 2.5% chance to craft items with an additional augmentation slot.
Tailoring Grandmastery lets you raise your skill to 120, which is especially useful for studded and bone armors, as well as few specific cloth items (like Obi for example).
A set of perks under the World Lore skill also affect crafting in general, which includes Tailoring. Quality Manufacturing perks improve your chance of crafting Extraordinary (EO) and Masterwork (MW) items, which usually have better properties, durability and more augmentation slots.
Two gathering professions that go hand in hand with Tailoring are Agriculture and Skinning. First one let you pick cotton and flax (at 55% skill and up) in order to obtain cloth while skinning is used to collect hides for leather items (more than 50% skill is needed to be efficient in skinning leather hides).
Leather armor also requires Armor Pads and Iron Ingots to craft, both obtained via Geology/Blacksmithy combo. 70% Geology is needed to be able to mine iron and 40% minimum Blacksmithy to smelt it.
Getting started
A character that start with “Tailor” template will start with some points in agriculture, skinning and tailoring. My suggestion is to train or invest animus in agriculture at the point until you are able to obtain cotton and flax yourself, which would then let you train your main crafting skill. Agriculture doesn’t require any specific tool for harvesting.
Cotton and Flax crops outside Fort Praesidium.
Other useful items for a tailor are:
- Scissors: used to cut down bolts of cloth and unwanted cloth items
- Dagger: used to cut wool from sheep (Don’t kill the sheep, just click on the with a dagger)
- Skinning knife: used for skinning, can replace a dagger for wool collecting as well
- Dyeing Tub and Dyes: used to dye your items. A combined craft from Carpentry and Engineering. You will only really use one. Dyes can be crafted by Artisans.
Dyeing Tub and Dyes
Crafting tools are separated by tiers and by crafting material. There are 6 tools in total that you will be using:
Spindle (Tier 1) is used to make yarn from wool and spools of thread from cotton and flax as well as bowstrings from sinew.
Your basic resources: flax, cotton, wool and leather.
Tailor Needles (Tier 2) are used to make bolts of normal and heavy cloth, which can be further cut with scissors and used for all cloth-related crafting.
Yarn, spools of thread and cloth. Let’s start crafting!
Sewing Kit (Tier 3) is used to craft all cloth items.
Curing Basin (Tier 1) is used to cure raw hides.
Tanning Rack (Tier 2) is used to stretch the hides and create cut leather, that is used in final crafts.
Leathering Tools (Tier 3) are used to craft all leatherworking items.
Tools for tailoring and leatherworking.
Semi-finished products
Other professions, especially Blacksmithy and Engineering, require some of the semi-finished products from Tailoring in order to craft weapons and armors in their respective skill. For easier conversion of what is needed for what, I prepared a conversion chart.
2 cotton = 1 spool of thread
2 flax = 1 spool of thread
3 spools of threads = a bolt of cloth (50 pieces when cut)
5 spools of threads = a bolt of heavy cloth (50 pieces when cut)
Light Cloth Padding requires 5 cloth (0.6 cotton/flax per padding)
Medium Cloth Padding requires 10 cloth (1.2 cotton/flax per padding)
Heavy Cloth Padding requires 5 cloth and 5 heavy cloth (1.6 cotton/flax per padding)
Light Leather Padding requires 1 leather
Medium Leather Padding requires 2 leather
Heavy Leather Padding requires 3 leather
You get 3 Leather Wrappings for 1 leather
A Rope requires 5 spools of thread.
Layers
Armor and clothing in UO goes to different layer when worn and understanding how those work is crucial if you want to stack some nice clothing over armor for example. You can only ever wear a single item in a single slot (so no cowl over leather cap for example).
Head Slot: this is were all the hats and leather caps go
Earring Slot: earrings as well as face bandanas and veils go to this slot
Neck Slot: used for necklaces as well as gorgets and cloaks (both cloth and leather versions)
Chest Slot: used for armor tunics
Shirt Slot: hides under the Chest Slot and it used for shirts of all kinds (shirt, fancy shirt,...)
Back Slot: used for things like quivers
Robe Slot: outermost layer that can carry robes and dresses
Sash Slot: used by body sash, tunics, doublets, surcoats and alike
Arms Slot: used for armor arms
Hands Slot: used for armor (and cloth) gloves
Belt Slot: used by half aprons, obis and belts
Skirt Slot: used by skirts and kilts
Legs Slot: used by armor legs and pants
Footwear Slot: used by shoes, sandals and boots
To summarize, you can wear a maximum of 6 pieces of armor and 7 pieces of clothing (or any other combination of your choosing) at the single time. If you do not wear any armor, you can wear 11 pieces of clothing in different layers.
Leather armor
There are 4 different leather types in the world of Eden: plain, spined, horned and barbed leather. As a rule of thumb, better leather results in a greater sum of all resistances on an armor piece. The type of armor (normal or studded) effects the distribution of the resists, not the total sum. Normal leather armor is usually more oriented towards elemental resists while studded favors physical. Armor requires leather, wool (for yarn) and metal (any metal for normal leather while studded requires iron).
Resists values are still a subject of change while Sic and Rex polish things out.
Plain leather armor pieces grant 17 of total resists, while spined and horned grant 22 points. Barbed leather grants 27 points per item. As an example, a spined normal leather piece has 2/2/4/7/7 resists while a studded one has 5/5/4/4/4.
Clothing with +skill attributes
With all the perks selected, you have 10% chance at any given time to craft an item with innate +skill bonus. Values of that bonus range from 1.5% to 6% with all the perks selected. The potency of the bonus is governed by the perks alone, not your Tailoring skill. Three groups of skills are eligible for bonuses:
Gathering Skills: Agriculture, Geology, Horticulture or Skinning
Crafting skills: Alchemy, Blacksmithing, Carpentry, Cooking, Engineering, Tailoring and Subterfuge
Other: Allopathy, Lockpicking, Hiding, Stealing and Item Identification
A cloak with bonus in Geology.
Clothing with bonuses in the range of 5-6% is not unheard of but quite difficult to produce. With 11 slots in total where you can wear clothing, a dedicated person can obtain up to 66% bonus in specific skill.
It is worth noting that you CANNOT buy any perks while under the effect of +skill clothing. You will have to either train or invest into the skill first and buy the perks (and then lower the skill accordingly if you choose). Clothing with +skill can push you to 120 skill if you obtained Grandmastery perk in that specific skill.
Extraordinary/Masterwork Items and Augmentations
You exceptional crafts have a chance to be made either Extraordinary (EO) or of Masterwork (MW) quality. Those items obtain innate Defense Chance Increase (DCI) bonus of 1-2%, as well as augmentation slots and increased durability. Items of higher quality also offer more enchanting capabilities for Enchanters (under Artisanry and tied to magecraft).
Extraordinary items come with 1-2% DCI and 1 augmentation slot
Masterwork items come with 1-2% DCI and 2 augmentation slots
Mystic items come with 1-2% DCI and 3 augmentation slots.
Augmentation themself are in the domain of Engineering.
Augmentable Extraordinary cloak with 1 slot.
Feel free to replay with any question you might have. I will try to answer them and compile them into a little FAQ. Good luck.