Tailoring

Tailoring is the craft skill of cutting, stitching, and assembling cloth, leather, bone, and exotic hides into clothing and armour. It is one of the oldest and broadest crafting professions in Britannia: a master tailor produces everything from a peasant's plain dress to studded armour for a warrior to enchanted Arcane robes that store charges of magical power. The skill rewards both fashion-minded players and serious armorers — and through the Bulk Order Deed system, it offers one of the most rewarding long-haul income paths in the realm.

Materials and Tools

A Tailor needs a Sewing Kit to work — every craft attempt consumes one charge from the kit. Most tailors keep a stack on hand. Scissors are the partner tool: scissors cut bolts of cloth into usable cloth pieces and recycle finished items back into raw materials. A Salvage Bag speeds the recycling process by chunking through a whole bag's contents at once; an item placed inside is reduced back to ingots, hides, or cut cloth depending on its type. When recycling cloth garments through scissors directly, the cut cloth must be moved out of the bag before the next pass — otherwise it becomes bandages.

The materials sit in a clear hierarchy by yield and difficulty:

• Cloth — bought from NPC tailors, cut from bolts, or shorn from sheep. The base material for clothing, hats, robes, and the fancier kimonos.
• Leather — tanned from regular animal hides at a tanning vat. Used for the lightest armour and footwear.
• Spined Leather — from creatures of the spined-hide tier. The first exotic leather; modest resists.
• Horned Leather — from horned-hide creatures. Higher resists, used in mid-tier studded armour.
• Barbed Leather — the highest standard exotic hide. Premium for studded and bone armour.
• Bones — collected from undead and bone creatures. The component for Bone Armor.
• Dragon Scales — harvested from dragons. Required for Dragon Scale armour, the strongest tailoring-crafted set.
• Daemon Bone — used in Daemon Bone Armor, a high-end recipe-locked set with elemental flavour.
• Leather Braid — the refinement material, used to make Threads of Defence/Fortification/etc.

Bulk Order Deeds

A unique reward stream is reserved for tailors. NPC tailors hand out Bulk Order Deeds (BODs) to players with sufficient skill: each deed names a specific item, quantity, material, and quality (normal or exceptional). Returning a completed deed yields specially coloured cloth and other reward items. Higher-difficulty BODs reward Power Scrolls and Runic Sewing Kits, the latter of which produces magic-property armour. The BOD economy supports a long-term goal beyond simply maxing skill; for many tailors, it is the skill's primary draw.

Arcane Clothing and Other Specials

Experienced tailors can craft Arcane Clothing — robes and tunics that store charges of magic power, allowing the wearer to cast spells without expending reagents. The charges are consumed per cast and replenished by a special arcane focus item. Arcane garments are a quiet pillar of mage outfitting and one of the few cloth items with combat utility.

A Stitcher's Pouch is another specialty item — a portable container that briefly preserves the exceptional-quality status of crafted goods.

Training

A new tailor is best started with fifty skill points purchased from an NPC trainer; the early levels are slow and offer little of value to make. From there, training proceeds by crafting items appropriate to the current skill range. Cloth is cheaper than leather; recycling finished items recovers most of the investment.

A reliable progression:

• 0 – 29.0: buy from an NPC tailor.
• 29.0 – 35: Short Pants (6 cloth).
• 35 – 41.4: Fur Cape (13 cloth).
• 41.4 – 50: Cloaks (14 cloth).
• 50 – 54: Fur Boots (12 cloth).
• 54 – 65: Robes (16 cloth).
• 65 – 72: Kasa (10 cloth).
• 72 – 78: Ninja Tabi (10 cloth).
• 78 – 110: Oil Cloth (1 cloth) — the slowest stretch, but materials are negligible.
• 110 – 115: Elven Shirt, brown (10 cloth).
• 115 – 120: Studded Hiro Sode (8 leather).

Faster alternates exist for the late game, all trading material for time. Gargish Leather Chest pieces are favoured between 105 and 110 for raw speed; Gargish Cloth Kilts and Arms cover 110 through 120 with reasonable cloth budgets.

The advanced Satyr Trick technique uses a tame Satyr's discordance ability to compress training significantly for those willing to invest in the setup.

The Craftables

Across all skill levels, Tailoring produces the items in the tables below. Skill values are the minimum at which an attempt may succeed (success rates rise as skill exceeds the minimum); items marked recipe require a learned recipe scroll obtained through quests, drops, or rewards.

Armor

Leather, studded, bone, hide, and dragon-derived armour. Most pieces are crafted in standard human, elven, and gargish patterns; the entry below names the canonical form.

Clothing and Footwear

Cloth garments, hats, masks, and the cloth-and-light-leather footwear that sits alongside them in the same crafting menu.

Refinements

A grandmaster tailor may craft refinement threads, which alter armour-piece resists in distinct, stacking ways when applied to existing items. Each thread requires twenty Leather Braid.

Other Items

Decorative goza tatami mats, exotic quivers, and the high-end utility cloths.

Power Scrolls and Runic Sewing Kits

A tailor's skill cap is raised from 100 to 120 by the consumption of Power Scrolls in five-point increments — 105, 110, 115, 120. Power Scrolls drop from Champion Spawn bosses and are sometimes earned through high-tier Bulk Order Deed turn-ins.

Runic Sewing Kits, also a BOD reward, allow a tailor to imbue magic properties onto crafted armour. They come in tiers — Spined, Horned, Barbed — each tier producing items with stronger, more numerous random magic affixes. The output of a Barbed runic kit is among the most coveted equipment in the realm.

Related Skills

• Imbuing can add and reforge magic properties on tailoring-crafted armour, complementing Runic Sewing Kits.
• Inscription is the analogous craft for paper and scrolls; a useful side-skill for any crafter.
• Cartography and Tinkering combine well with Tailoring on a dedicated crafter character.

Trivia

The original release of Ultima Online included only cloth and basic leather work; bone, dragon, and gargish recipes were added across later expansions — bone armor in The Second Age, dragon scales in Age of Shadows, gargish patterns and dragon-turtle recipes in Stygian Abyss. The Bulk Order Deed system was added with Publish 13 in 2001 and remains substantially unchanged in its core mechanic.