Professions – The Carpenter

Carpentry | The Carpenter | UO Craftsman Forum

With Hammer and Nails, By Petra Fyde

March 2010

You’d like to be a carpenter? It’s a hard task you’ve set yourself, for not only do you need to be a master of your own trade, you’ll need to be adept in several others.

The first thing to think about are your attributes.

You’ll need strength, logs and boards are heavy, you’ll need a little dexterity for stamina too; finally a little intelligence.

Suggested starting stats:

Strength 45

Dexterity 25

Intelligence 10

Skills:

You’ll need carpentry, obviously.

There are several other skills you’ll need. I recommend that the first of these you add are tinkering, to make tools, and lumberjack. There is no requirement for a carpenter to be a lumberjack, but you’ll need wood to craft with.

Minimum skill required for full crafting menu:

• Carpentry – 100
• Tinkering – 50 (stone ovens and flour mills).
• Blacksmithing – 80 (large forge).
• Tailoring – 75 (large bed).
• Magery – 75 (pentagram).
• Music – 45 (all instruments).

Some of these skills you may want to take higher, giving you other crafting options. Magery and Music bonuses can be found on various magical items, requiring you to have less ‘real’ skill if your chosen template is a little tight.

Tools:

All tools work equally well and can be bought from npc tinkers if you are unable to make your own. If you are making your own (having bought a tinker kit), it is a good idea to make one of the three types of plane, since they are made from wood, the resource you’re most likely to have on hand. All other craftable tools are made from ingots. It is worth noting that tools made by a grandmaster tinker will have more uses, and therefore last longer. Nails bought from the npc carpenter also function as a tool. A full list of tools can be seen below:

• Moulding Plane
• Smoothing Plane
• Jointing Plane
• Hammer
• Saw
• Dovetail Saw
• Froe
• Inshave
• Scorp
• Nails

 

Gathering Your Resources

You will need an axe or hatchet equipped; use that on a tree (double click the axe, target the tree). There are lots of trees in Britannia, and many of them are within town guardzones so you don’t have to defend yourself, or your pack animal. The farms to the West of Brittain are a good place to start.

Logs are heavy; to avoid becoming overloaded too quickly you should occasionally use the axe on the pile of logs in your pack (double click the axe, target the logs), thus turning them into boards. Chopping a tree will give you one of the following messages:

• “You hack at the tree for awhile, but fail to produce any usable wood” – You failed your skill check, but can try again on the same tree.
• “You put some logs into your backpack” – You have chopped 10 logs from the tree. You can continue trying to get wood from the same tree until you get the next listed message.
• “There is not enough wood here to harvest” – Move on to another tree. Trees regenerate in around 20 to 30 minutes.
• “You can’t fit any more wood in your backpack!” – You’re overloaded. This message can be avoided by regularly transfering your boards from your pack to that of your pack animal (he can carry 1600 stones).

 

Crafting items

The full list of craftable items shows also the level of skill required to make it and any additional skill and material requirements. Crafting forges requires blacksmith skill and ingots, crafting spinning wheels and beds requires tailoring skill and cloth for example.  Several of the craftable containers can be lockable. When crafting these a check is made against your tinkering skill. The higher that is, the more difficult your locks will be for a thief to pick.

House Add-ons

These larger items of furniture are produced in deed form and can only be placed in a house by the house owner, or a co-owner. A detailed description of these items can be found here.

If your lumberjack skill is high enough you will be able to obtain special woods. Using these woods will give your items the color of the wood used. In the case of armor and weapons crafting, or enhancing, special woods also grant a material bonus. There is a carpentry skill level requirement to being able to craft in these woods. They are as follows:

Oak – 65

Ash – 75

Yew – 85

Heartwood – 95

Bloodwood – 95

Frostwood – 95

Colors

Non-deed items of furniture (chairs, tables etc)

In addition to being crafted in special woods to create furniture in different colors, these can be dyed with a furniture dye tub. This item is a first year veteran reward. They can also be dyed with natural dyes from plants.

Deeded items of furniture

Using special wood for these can have varied effects. Crafting a water trough from Yew, for example, gives a brown, muddy colored ‘water’ which makes it useful in decor as a ‘planter’. Crafting a loom from colored wood changes the color of the cloth on the loom, crafting a bed changes the color of the blankets.

Deeds crafted in special wood can also be dyed using natural dyes from plants or the more rare ‘tokuno dyes’ from ‘treasures of tokuno’ events. It is most usual to craft in Oak if planning to dye the deed as this is the most common of the special woods. You can not dye a deed crafted from normal wood.

To place an add on, double click the deed and target the floor of the house where you want the item to be. To re-deed the item, chop it with an axe.  Items that are re-deeded give a deed which has the opposite orientation and is blessed. These deeds can not be dyed.

Pictured: (left to right)Large bed made in oak, large bed made in oak then dyed with natural dyes (fire).Two looms made in oak then dyed with natural dyes. Water trough made in Yew and used as a planter.

Training

Best gain for least material use, craft shields, and then weapons, only moving on to more resource-hungry items for the final 10 – 15%.

In order of difficulty:

• Wooden Shields
• Fukiya
• Bokuto
• Gnarled staff or Shepherds Crook
• Easels
• Wooden Foot Locker

A supplementary skill that can be ‘learned’ by carpenters is stonecrafting.