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From the Codex of Ultimate Wisdom

Reagent

A folio of the realm

Reagent

A reagent is a consumable item required to cast certain spells. Reagents are the chemical matter of the realm's magic — pinches of herbs, fragments of bone, drops of essence — drawn from a pouch as a Magery, Necromancy, Alchemy, Inscription, or Mysticism caster shapes a spell. The Chivalry school is the sole exception, replacing reagents with tithe points; everything else, in some measure, runs on this slow-burning supply chain. Reagents can be purchased from NPC vendors, looted from monsters, harvested from the ground, or — in modern play — entirely sidestepped by stacking the Lower Reagent Cost item property to 100%.

How Reagents Work

Each reagent-using spell consumes a small fixed quantity of one or more reagents on cast. If a reagent is missing from the pouch the cast fails before mana is spent. A handful of mechanics modify the basic pull-from-bag behaviour:

  • Lower Reagent Cost (LRC). An item property that, summed across worn equipment, gives a percentage chance to cast without consuming reagents. Equip enough LRC to total 100% and reagents are never consumed. Below 100% the chance applies independently per reagent: a 95% LRC suit casting a one-reagent spell consumes a reagent about 1 in 20 casts; for a two-reagent spell the probability of no consumption is 95% × 95% ≈ 90.25%, and so on.
  • Chivalry. The Chivalry spell school does not use reagents at all. Instead its spells consume tithe points earned by donating gold at a shrine or chapel.
  • Spellweaving and Bushido likewise do not use reagents.
  • Necromancy and Mysticism do use reagents, drawn from their own dedicated pools.

Where to Find Reagents

  • NPC vendors. Mage, Healer, Alchemist, Necromancer, Mystic, and Gargoyle Mage vendors carry reagents according to their type. Each vendor stocks up to twenty reagents of the kind they sell by default. The vendor stock-up trick: when a vendor sells out of a reagent, the next inventory refresh doubles the amount they offer for sale. Repeating the buy-out cycle scales the available stock up to a single-vendor maximum of 999, after which it caps. This makes any frequented vendor a reliable bulk source for stockpiling guildmates.
  • Loot. Many monsters drop reagents in their corpse loot, including some that drop reagents found nowhere on a vendor (notably Daemon Bone and Dragon's Blood).
  • Spawning on the ground. Certain regions of Sosaria and Ilshenar host fixed reagent spawns that can be picked up by hand.
  • Player-to-player trading. Magincia Vendors and Commodity Deeds let players move reagents in bulk: a single Commodity Deed holds up to 60,000 of a single reagent.

Magic Reagents

Used for Magery, Inscription, and Alchemy spells, and for the bulk of Mysticism casting. These eight are the foundation set every mage carries:

  1. Black Pearl
  2. Blood Moss
  3. Garlic
  4. Ginseng
  5. Mandrake Root
  6. Nightshade
  7. Spiders' Silk
  8. Sulfurous Ash

Inscription scrolls and Alchemy potions both draw from this same pool, sometimes with a small quantity adjustment.

Necromantic Reagents

Used for Necromancy spells and a small number of Alchemy recipes. Necromancy draws on its own set of five:

  1. Batwing
  2. Daemon Blood
  3. Grave Dust
  4. Nox Crystal
  5. Pig Iron

Mysticism Reagents — the Pagan Set

Mysticism spells use the eight Magic Reagents above and additionally call for four special Pagan Reagents of their own:

  1. Bone
  2. Daemon Bone
  3. Dragon's Blood
  4. Fertile Dirt

The Pagan label reflects their origin in earlier Ultima titles — see Reagents of Old, below.

Peerless Reagents

A separate class of reagents drawn from defeating the realm's Peerless boss creatures. These are crafting-only ingredients, not spell components, and feed Imbuing and Peerless-tier item recipes:

Reagent Source
Blight All Peerless (common)
Captured Essence Shimmering Effusion
Corruption All Peerless (common)
Diseased Bark Lady Melisande
Dread Horn Mane Dread Horn
Eye of the Travesty Travesty
Grizzled Bones Monstrous Interred Grizzle
Lard of Paroxysmus Chief Paroxysmus
Muculent All Peerless (common)
Putrefaction All Peerless (common)
Scourge All Peerless (uncommon)
Taint All Peerless (uncommon)

Reagents of Old

A wider set of reagents survives in the realm from Ultima titles whose magical systems were never fully implemented in UO. Most of these are no longer spawning; a handful (notably Bone, Daemon Bone, Fertile Dirt) found new homes in modern systems. Together they are commonly called Pagan Reagents, after the Ultima VIII title where many were first introduced.

Original Necromancy Reagents (Ultima VIII: Pagan)

These were originally intended for an early UO Necromancy implementation that did not ship in its planned form. The Necromancy that was eventually delivered uses a different reagent pool entirely.

Serpent Isle Magic (Ultima VII Part 2)

  • Blood Spawn — "Bloodspawn" in Serpent Isle. (Hue 0 graphic 3964.)
  • Serpent's Scale — "Serpent Scales" in Serpent Isle, originally a Thaumaturgy reagent in Pagan.
  • Wyrm's Heart — "Worm Heart" in Serpent Isle.

Sorcery Reagents (Ultima VIII: Pagan)

Thaumaturgy Reagents (Ultima VIII: Pagan)

Other Rare Reagents

Beyond the working sets and the Pagan lineage, a long tail of variant reagents exists as collectibles or curiosities — created by old quests, bugs, or seer-driven events.

Newbiefied Reagents

In the early game, new-player starting inventory was "newbiefied" — blessed without showing the blessed tag. Each of the eight Magic Reagents existed in a newbiefied form. Stacking newbiefied reagents with unblessed ones loses the blessing on the entire stack:

Blessed Pagan Reagents

Generated by the original Paladin quest Uzeraan's Turmoil, which has been disabled since the release of Age of Shadows:

Glacial Reagents

A small set of hue-shifted reagents handed out at an EM event on Chesapeake in 2013:

Rubble Reagents

Created during the destruction of Magincia event arc. Each shows the name "Rubble" instead of the reagent name:

Golden Bloodmoss

A bug from the addition of Trammel produced a single hue-149 Bloodmoss variant, which has since become a server-tier rare.

Blackrock Reagents

Hue-shifted Blackrock reagents from various seer-run events. Not to be confused with the unprocessed forms (small pieces and ordinary pieces of Blackrock).

Server Birth Reagents

When the shards first went live, a number of server birth reagents existed in the world. They can still be visited in their original positions but cannot be picked up. Server birth reagent variants exist for Garlic (graphics 6369–6372), Ginseng (6377–6378), Mandrake Root (6365–6366), and Nightshade (6373–6376) — Nightshade graphic 6375 in particular is visually identical to ordinary spawning Nightshade despite being a different item internally.

Stacking Bug Reagents

A long-since-fixed stacking bug reset the name of stacked items to the default name for the underlying graphic, producing legitimate but anomalous reagent variants:

20th Anniversary Event Reagents

A bespoke set of reagents found in treasure chests during the 20th Anniversary event, used for the Thaumaturgy, Pagan Necromancy, Sorcery, and Theurgy spell schools available during that event:

Blackrock

A long-standing oddity of the realm: samples of Blackrock can be found in display cases throughout Sosaria, and various forms have appeared in seer events, but the substance has never been given a confirmed in-game use as a reagent. It remains one of the unresolved mysteries of the Origin / EA Games transition.

NPC Vendor Matrix

NPCs of different classes carry different reagent subsets. The matrix below summarises what each vendor type sells:

Reagent Alchemist Healer Mage (Human) Mage (Gargoyle) Mystic Necromancer
Batwing
Black Pearl
Bloodmoss
Bone
Daemon Blood
Daemon Bone
Dragon's Blood
Fertile Dirt
Garlic
Ginseng
Grave Dust
Mandrake Root
Nightshade
Nox Crystal
Pig Iron
Spiders' Silk
Sulfurous Ash

Daemon Bone and Dragon's Blood do not appear on any standard NPC vendor — they must be looted, harvested, or traded between players.

Practical Notes

  • The all-LRC mage suit. Most modern Magery characters wear an LRC-100% suit, which trivialises bag management for everyday casting. Reagents are still consumed by Inscription crafting and by Alchemy recipes regardless of LRC.
  • Chivalry's economy. With Chivalry tithed at gold-for-tithe-points instead of consumed reagents, paladin builds bypass the reagent supply chain entirely — a substantial early-game advantage.
  • Bulk supply. A guild that runs reagent buy-outs on the same NPC across all eight Magic Reagents can fill a single Commodity Deed (60,000 reagents) within a few cycles.
  • Hue-shift collectibles. The variant sets above (Glacial, Rubble, Newbiefied, Server Birth) are collectible, not strictly mechanically distinct from their ordinary counterparts. Many of them will function as ordinary reagents if used in casting; collectors generally do not.
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