Leafiara (prime)/Mechanical Musings/Order of Operations: Servicing Gear

This is a guide, tutorial, or gameplay strategy written by one or more players to better assist others with their gameplay enjoyment. The information presented here may be subject to the personal opinion of the contributor(s), and may additionally require periodic updates to keep current as the game environment changes.

Title: Order of Operations: Servicing Gear

Author: Leafiara

Date Published: 2023-07-05

Updated: 2024-11-22

Disclaimer / Recommended Reading

This wiki page assumes familiarity with item properties and the profession services being described. If these topics are mysterious to you, please read the following first:

More on item properties:

• Item properties page - "Just the facts" of what item properties are.
• Nothing to Fear but Gear Itself - A more colloquial discussion where Jervil and Leafiara host an event to discuss gear properties at Silverwood Manor.

More on profession services:

• Enchant page - The basics of enchanting.
• Ensorcell page - The basics of ensorcelling.
• Sanctify page - The basics of sanctifying.
• WPS page - The basics of weighting, padding, and sighting ("WPS").
• At Your Service with a Smile - A more colloquial discussion where Leafiara hosts an event to discuss profession services at Silverwood Manor.

The Short Version

What do I do and when?

• Enchant from +0 to +25: Whenever.
• Enchant from +25 to +35: Whenever. Skippable on a budget.
• Enchant beyond +35: After ensorcelling and sanctification. Before flares and scripts when possible. Skippable on a budget.

• Ensorcell tier 1 on a physical weapon: Ideally after sanctification. Before flares and scripts when possible.
• Ensorcell on anything else or past tier 1 on a physical weapon: Before flares and scripts when possible. Skippable on a budget.

• Sanctify on physical weapons: Whenever. Skippable on a budget.
• Sanctify on anything else: Whenever. Skippable on a budget, either entirely or after sufficient tiers to avoid sheer fear.

• WPS from 0 to 5 CER: Whenever.
• WPS from 5 to 8 CER: Whenever. Skippable on a budget.
• WPS from 8 to 10 CER: Ideally after enchanting, ensorcelling, and sanctification, but whenever is also fine. Skippable on a budget.
• WPS beyond 10 CER: After enchanting, ensorcelling, and sanctification. Skippable on a budget.

This final bullet point section generally presumes that all desired player services are already done.

• Creature bane: 400k bloodscrip to add. Add near last when possible due to expense. (Creature bane is very scarce and unlikely to have as an item's starting point. However, sometimes boxfound bane items do get sold on the player market.)
• Flares: 7.5k to 90k event currency to add, so typically right after player services. If you're willing to pay a minimum 15k event currency, then Flare Gloves are potentially a better option since those add flares in a roundabout way that adds no gear difficulty. If your end goal is a basic elemental flare, which might only cost 7.5k depending on the base item you're adding flares too it's possible to have flares before player services and still negate the gear difficulty increase by paying fairly negligible silver costs for alchemy-produced (player-produced) potions available in playershops.
• Material properties: 50k to 450k event currency to add if not started with, so either first or pretty late in a project depending on which material. Skippable on a budget.
• Perfect forging: 1.5m bloodscrip to add, so either before player services, one of the last things added, or never. Skippable on a budget, but depends on how much budget and which scripts, if any, are desired for the end item.
• Scripts: 50k bloodscrip to add. Starting with it before player services is an option, but it can also be done at any time after player services to save on gear difficulty.
• Combat flourishes: 400k bloodscrip to add (of the ones currently available). Add near last when possible due to expense. (Flare Affinity and Lore Flares are extremely scarce and unlikely to have as an item's starting point.)

If this is all too abstract and you need examples, see the Examples section at the end, which goes over how to approach hypothetical scenarios depending on what you intend for the final form of your item and how much money (whether silvers or real-world) you're willing to spend.

What else could I spend silvers on instead?

The following current or future services don't go onto gear, so they can largely be considered benefits in a vacuum and purchased at any time.

• Battle Standards offer rescuing to town, passively firing flares, conventional flares, reactive defense boosts upon getting hit, and powered up modes with cooldowns.
• Covert Arts offer a cornucopia of scattered benefits like flares, maneuver defense, passively finding lost children for bounties, protection against Rooted and Staggered, search RT reduction, and more.
• Mystic Tattoos offer enhancive stat boosts.
• Ranger Resistance Trinkets offer defense and chances against immunity against various elements.
• Lucky Items offer chances for better combat rolls of every offensive and defensive variety.
• In the future, empaths' Bloodstone Jewelry will offer various health, mana, and stamina increases and regeneration increases, temporary wound removal, and extra damage on attacks.

(Caveat on Mystic Tattoos: When getting a tattoo for Strength, if AS is the primary or only concern, then enchanting your weapon to at least +30 first will usually be the more cost-effective option. That said, Dexterity is a strong alternative for melee characters as a stat that can pull double duty of increasing weighting and potentially decreasing RT. When getting a tattoo for a casting stat like Wisdom or Aura, on the other hand, the tattoo is a far more cost-effective--and universal--option than further ensorcelling or sanctifying a runestaff.)

Why is any of the above true?

For that you'll need the long version, which is the rest of this page!

Before You Begin

What's your long-term vision?

The Enchant, Ensorcell, and Sanctify sections below primarily cover the topic of sequencing those services based on possible skill ranges for different professions. Before any of that, though, several questions need to be asked:

• What will your project look like when you've finished everything?
• How much in-game currency are you willing to spend on your project?
• How much real-world currency are you willing to spend on your project?
• How much real-world time are you willing to spend on your project?

These answers vary wildly by individual, but the one safe assumption is that nobody has infinite time or infinite money. Therefore, the only common wisdom says to add flares and scripted abilities to your gear as late as possible. However, depending on your answers to the questions, "as late as possible" might mean starting off with a scripted ability! It will only rarely mean starting off with a flare, however, unless you have no interest in scripted abilities.

Now to elaborate on why that's the common wisdom!

What can low-end clerics, sorcerers, and wizards work on?

The most straightforward method to keep your sanctifying, ensorcelling, and enchanting costs as low as possible is to keep the gear difficulty as low as possible. (Less straightforward methods include leveling several characters of different professions on a premium account, running multiple accounts, networking to find people willing to give deep discounts, and so on.)

Let's put some numbers to this.

• A typical level 25 wizard who just learned Enchant is likely to have in the realm of 199 to 219 skill, allowing them to work on items of roughly 95 to 115 difficulty.
• A typical level 30 cleric who just learned Sanctify is likely to have in the realm of 166 to 186 skill, allowing them to work on items of 46 to 66 difficulty.
• A typical level 35 sorcerer who just learned Ensorcell is likely to have at least in the realm of 178 to 198 skill, allowing them to work on items of 28 to 48 difficulty. (Add 10 to these numbers if they're a dark elf.)

The above assumes that the characters' associated stats for their services are at 10-20 bonus each and they're training profession spell circles once per level, Magic Item Use and Arcane Symbols once per level, mana controls twice per level for wizards and clerics, each of a sorcerer's types of mana control once per level.

Of these three professions, sorcerers are the ones most likely to be outside these assumptions and could certainly have 20-25 more skill bonus, as they're the least incentivized of the three to train Spell Aiming or to use a relatively even spell split in the early levels to round out their combat toolkits.

How much do flares and scripts get in the way?

Nearly all flares add (at minimum) 100 difficulty to an item. To put that in perspective, I wouldn't expect a level 50 wizard to have gained more than 115 or so skill over the fresh level 25 wizard unless the player is specifically aiming to push enchanting ability.

(Conversely, clerics and sorcerers are incentivized to heavily push their profession circles eventually, so they'll likely make more progress in 25 levels than a wizard would, but they'll also have come from a worse starting point due to wizards' hefty workshop bonus. These are all just fine details for those who care, though. The point is that...)

In other words, the moment you add flares to an item, you've guaranteed that the lowest end clerics and sorcerers can't work on that item--at least, not without a tempering potion, but even those only apply to basic acid, cold (ice), heat (fire), impact (earth), lightning, steam, and vacuum (void) flares.

Meanwhile, scripted abilities typically add in the range of 50 to 200 difficulty. Most of the popular ones trend toward that 200 mark, though there are some exceptions: greater elemental flares and knockout flares "only" add 150 while multi-tiered scripts like Sigil Staves or Twin Weapons have lower difficulties at lower tiers. In the latter case, the least expensive route is delaying upgrading the tiers of the script until after profession services are mostly or entirely finished.

Aside from those exceptions, a variety of popular scripts like Animalistic Spirit, Daybringer/Nightbringer, Energy Weapons/Shields, Parasite Armor/Weapons, and Sprite Armor/Weapons all have 200 difficulty immediately and will require mid-level clerics, sorcerers, and wizards at minimum.

Still, this is where the question comes in of what you intend your project gear to look like at the end. Buying scripted gear off the shelf and needing to pay mid-level-and-up prices to mid-level-and-up characters right away is but a fraction of the cost that it would take to pay low-level prices to low-level characters and then add a script later.

(One possible exception would be if greater elemental flaring weapons were sold off the shelves in the future. Those aren't offered as I write this, but since adding that script is only 40,000 bloodscrip, it's at least conceivable that you'd be able to save more than 30 million silver (the exchange rate at time of writing) by finishing all services first.)

Conclusion

That covers the groundwork of why many players delay adding flares and scripted abilities when they can. I could go into further details and examples like perfect forging, material properties, banes, and more, but I'll reserve that for later updates to the guide in the Examples section.

For now, on to the main event of enchanting, ensorcelling, and sanctifying!

Enchant

How much enchanting is enough?

Here are some different schools of thought:

• +20 is enough because, except for post-cap areas intended to be the most difficult hunting in the game, all other content is designed with the expectation that +20 is viable.
• +25 is enough because enchanting even from +0 to +25 consumes less than two weeks of a wizard's weekly resource points, but enchanting from +25 to +30 consumes three weeks, consuming from +30 to +35 consumes 6.75 weeks, and it only gets more intense from there.
• +35 is enough because it's the maximum an item can be enchanted by players without acquiring potions from pay events, raffles, or other means not ubiquitously available.
• +40 is enough because that's the minimum necessary enchantment for a weapon to hit certain demon creatures without going through several layers of dispelling.
• +50 is enough because it's the maximum an item can be enchanted in commonly occurring circumstances and/or because, even when enchanting higher is offered, it's prohibitively expensive. (As I write this, enchanting up to +75 has been offered exactly once at a cost of 275,000 bloodscrip per +5 over +50.)
• +75 is enough because it's the maximum possible.
• Enchanting is irrelevant because you can make up a deficit from a low enchant with heavy investment in the enhancive and Ascension systems or simply using other tools available like maneuvers (offensively) or scripted abilities (defensively).

(The latter would typically only be argued in the case of, say, an auction item that has a lower base enchant but is attractive due to extraordinary properties that come with the downside of adding high gear difficulty to make further enchantment less feasible.)

Are there any additional considerations based on build?

Excellent value for Enchant:

• Bows and crossbows used by any profession and build because archery has fewer alternative ways to increase AS than other physical weapons.

Poor value for Enchant:

• Armor and runestaves used by builds that spend a lot of time in guarded or defensive stance since they're likely to be untouchable by AS attacks regardless.
• Unarmed combat gear used by any profession or build due to UAF mattering only fractionally as much to unarmed combat as AS does to physical weapons.

Roughly average value for Enchant:

• Everything else. See previous section for why.

When should I enchant?

According to the enchanting formula, some enchanting benchmarks are:

• +20 is 36 gear difficulty
• +25 is 58 gear difficulty
• +30 is 87 gear difficulty
• +35 is 121 gear difficulty
• +40 is 160 gear difficulty
• +50 is 256 gear difficulty

To put this in perspective, each tier of Ensorcell adds 50 gear difficulty, the first five tiers of Sanctify add 20 gear difficulty each, and holy fire adds 50 gear difficulty. Most gear you'll work on will already be +20 as a baseline, so the case could be made that moving to +25 is only another 22 difficulty, moving to +30 is only another 51 difficulty (over +20), and so on. Viewed in that light, Enchant is among the least gear difficulty-intensive of services.

In other words...

Adding to an item's enchantment at any step in the process of gear improvement is less likely to get in the way of ensorcelling and sanctifying it later than vice versa.

However (and it's a very big however!), this is speaking very generically and assumes that the final result of your intent for the item could be reasonably handled by sufficiently skilled player clerics, sorcerers, and wizards without requiring suffusion, super potions from Bloodriven Village, or fixskills and mutant builds.

For example, it's viable to enchant an Animalistic Spirit Weapon to +35, add flares to it, and still expect that a player cleric can add all five tiers of sanctification to it. However, if you additionally wanted to add holy fire and the first tier of Ensorcell, then either the flares shouldn't have been added until after those services were finished, the weapon should have been left at +20, or both.

As safe as it can feel--and, in many cases, be!--to add enchanting early in the process, it's paradoxically even safer to add enchanting late in the process.

There are several reasons why enchanting late or even last is viable:

• Clerics need 120 more skill than an item's difficulty to safely sanctify it (or 150 more skill in the case of holy fire) and sorcerers need 150 more skill than difficulty to safely ensorcell, but wizards only need 100-111 more skill than difficulty due to the more multi-step mechanics of enchanting. In other words, all else being equal, wizards would be able to work on higher difficulty items than clerics and sorcerers.
• All else isn't equal in the first place! Wizards get 75 total bonus to their enchanting skill from having a familiar summoned and being in a workshop; clerics and sorcerers only get 20 bonus from being in, respectively, a shrine of their Arkati/spirit or a workshop. This is somewhat offset in that clerics and sorcerers tend to push their respective native spell circles higher than wizards do, but ignoring stat bonuses from race, high end post-cap wizards will have higher bonus than their cleric and sorcerer counterparts. (More on that with sorcerers, however, as they're typically dark elves...)
• As for uncommon mutant builds, I don't have hard numbers, but they do seem to be more common--or at least more well-advertised--than mutant clerics and sorcerers. At absolute least, there are certainly more wizards in general than clerics or sorcerers. Furthermore, because clerics and sorcerers train more ranks of their spell circles than wizards, that means wizards have more room to grow when they do go mutant.
• Wizards' suffusion is five times as efficient as clerics' or sorcerers' suffusion, converting a week of resources into up to 125 skill instead of 25 skill. This means that as long as your item doesn't need more than five times as many casts of Enchant as it does casts of Sanctify or Ensorcell, it would be easier to push extra requirements onto the wizard than onto the cleric or sorcerer. (And that's even disregarding the likelihood that the wizard has higher skill in the first place!)

And, of course, if all else fails...

• The Duskruin pay event offers a path, albeit expensive, to enchant items with no consideration of gear difficulty at a rate of 150,000 bloodscrip per +5. The same isn't true of ensorcelling or sanctification.
• The Duskruin pay event also offers potions for 50,000 bloodscrip that grant +500 to a wizard's skill for their next CHANNEL of Enchant. These potions notably have five pours each (to make them suitable for, say, going from +45 to +50), unlike the cleric and sorcerer counterparts that have one pour each for the same price.

How high does wizard skill get?

• 645 is achievable without using Ascension nor enhancives on a race with a neutral 25 Logic bonus and 25 Intuition bonus using a fairly typical post-cap build with 128 ranks of Wizard Base and all other relevant enchanting skills maxed out through ordinary training.
• 655 is the same as the above, but with the use of BOOST ENHANCIVE STATS from daily logins.
• 720 is the same as the above, but now also wearing an incredible enhancive set to finish maxing out Logic and Intuition in addition to maxing out Magic Item Use, Arcane Symbols, and Elemental Mana Control. (Finding someone with such an enhancive set is very unlikely!)

• 820 is achievable without using Ascension nor enhancives on a race with a neutral 25 Logic bonus and 25 Intuition bonus using a mutant build with 303 ranks of Wizard Base and all other relevant enchanting skills maxed out through ordinary training.
• 830 is the same as the above, but with BOOST ENHANCIVE STATS.
• 895 is the same as the above, but now with the full set of enhancives.

• 945 is the same as the above, but now with the extremely expensive +50 spell rank enhancives from the High End Scrip Shop.
• 1020 is the same as the above, but now also the extremely time-consuming 1135 Ascension Training Points to nearly max out every skill. (Magic Item Use and Arcane Symbols can stop two ranks short of maxing while Elemental Mana Control can stop one rank short.)

• Add 15 to any of the above numbers if the character is a burghal gnome or halfling, the races statistically best at enchanting. Aelotoi and humans also get +10 while dark elves, dwarves, erithians, and forest gnomes get +5.

In summary, 1035 is as high as theoretically possible, but a range of 645 to 700 is what you could more likely expect from ordinary post-cap wizard builds while 820 to 875 is what you could more likely expect from post-cap mutant wizard builds.

So how tough an item can I realistically get enchanted?

• 544 difficulty: a conventional far post-cap wizard with no investment in Ascension nor enhancives.
• 589 difficulty: a conventional far post-cap wizard with a reasonable enhancive set and/or a good chunk of Ascension experience.
• 719 difficulty: a far post-cap mutant wizard with no investment in Ascension nor enhancives.
• 764 difficulty: a far post-cap mutant wizard with a reasonable enhancive set and/or a good chunk of Ascension experience.

Add +125 to either of the latter two numbers if you're willing to pay for an extra week of suffusion, +250 if you're willing to pay for two extra weeks of suffusion, and so on.

In short, try not to push too far beyond these difficulty amounts if you'll still need a slew of enchanting afterward. These numbers are more forgiving than the ones for Ensorcell and Sanctify, though!

Ensorcell

How much ensorcelling is enough?

Some schools of thought for physical weapons:

• T1 is enough because it only adds 20% of the gear difficulty of T5, but still allows 60% as much stamina/health regeneration (on average) and 100% as much use of Spell Cleave, Spell Parry, and Spell Thieve.
• T5 is enough because it's the maximum possible and/or because the AS boost scales proportionately with each tier (unlike frontloaded regen) and/or because Tainted Bond uses the AS boost.
• As far as you can go without requiring fixskills, suffusion, or super potions is enough.
• T0 is enough because the game isn't designed with the expectation that you have anything more and/or because stamina regeneration is an unlikely chance for a flare (which itself is only a chance) compared to AS.

Some schools of thought for shields:

• T1 is enough because it only adds 20% of the gear difficulty of a T5, but still allows full use of Shield Mind and Spell Block.
• T5 is enough because it's the maximum possible and/or all protection against CS spells is good because they're among the game's most deadly attacks.
• As far as you can go without requiring fixskills, suffusion, or super potions is enough.
• T0 is enough because the game isn't designed with the expectation that you have anything more.

Some schools of thought for armor:

• T5 is enough because it's the maximum possible and/or the CvA boost scales proportionately with each tier and/or all protection against CS spells is good because they're among the game's most deadly attacks.
• As far as you can go without requiring fixskills, suffusion, or super potions is enough.
• T0 is enough because the game isn't designed with the expectation that you have anything more.

Some schools of thought for runestaves:

• T1 is enough because it only adds 20% of the gear difficulty of a T5, but still allows 60% as much mana regeneration (on average).
• T5 is enough because it's the maximum possible and/or the CS boost scales proportionately with each tier (unlike frontloaded regen) and/or the CvA boost scales proportionately with each tier and/or improving your CS spells and protecting against enemies' CS spells are good benefits since they're among the game's most deadly attacks.
• As far as you can go without requiring fixskills, suffusion, or super potions is enough.
• T0 is enough because the game isn't designed with the expectation that you have anything more.

(Note: I've only ever heard one person make the T1 argument for runestaves--and it was in response to me initially posting this page while mentioning that I left it out specifically because I'd never heard anyone make it before then!)

Are there any additional considerations based on build?

Excellent value for Ensorcell:

• T5 for armor used by professions and builds that either A) have just short of high enough TD to be immune to most spells with a little bump or B) have very low TD, but are in heavy armor and/or using Kroderine Soul so that every additional point of TD improvement matters comparatively more.
• T1 (at least) for katanas and katars used by squares or semis due to weapon technique rotation incentivizing even heavier stamina usage than for other physical weapons.
• T1 (at least) for unarmed combat gear on any profession and build due to high attack volume.

Good value for Ensorcell:

• T1 (at least) for low RT weapons used by any profession and build due to above average attack volume.

Poor value for Ensorcell:

• Any tier for bows and crossbows used by any profession and build because archery consumes significantly less stamina than other physical weapon.

Roughly average value for Ensorcell:

• Everything else. See previous section for why.

When should I ensorcell?

Since every tier of Ensorcell adds 50 gear difficulty, it hinders clerics and wizards more than their services hinder sorcerers. (Additionally, ensorcelling an item before sanctifying it will require the use of an inky black potion for each cast of sanctification. That point's far more minor, though, as playershops sell inky black potions at very low costs.)

The first tier of Ensorcell is sometimes done early, especially for physical weapons that reap immediate and noticeable benefits, but pushing items further is typically reserved for later in the gear improvement process due to the high gear difficulty this service adds.

Finishing all five tiers of Ensorcell before finishing Enchant and Sanctify will very likely require more skilled clerics and wizards charging more silver than doing it the other way around. This isn't to say that doing Ensorcell last will be easy either, though, since sorcerers need 150 more skill bonus than an item's gear difficulty to work on it without failing (barring fumble) and suffusion doesn't give them the same degree of leeway that it does wizards.

Plan carefully to determine how far you can prolong Ensorcell on your project piece without rendering it impossible nor prohibitively expensive.

How high does sorcerer skill get?

Unlike with wizards, I'll assume as a base that the sorcerer is a dark elf rather than a race with neutral stat bonuses. Statistically, players have made this true due in some part to a combination of Faendryl lore and the calculations for sorcerer CS using Aura and Wisdom, which dark elves have the best bonuses in. As for ensorcelling, that uses Wisdom and Intuition, which leaves dark elves and halflings tied for the best.

• 642 is achievable without using Ascension nor enhancives on a dark elf (or halfling) using a fairly typical post-cap build with 170 ranks of Sorcerer Base and all other relevant ensorcelling skills maxed out through ordinary training.
• 652 is the same as the above, but with the use of BOOST ENHANCIVE STATS from daily logins.
• 730 is the same as the above, but now also wearing an incredible enhancive set to finish maxing out Intuition and Wisdom in addition to maxing out Magic Item Use, Arcane Symbols, Elemental Mana Control, and Spiritual Mana Control. (Finding someone with such an enhancive set is very unlikely!)

• 775 is achievable without using Ascension nor enhancives on a dark elf (or halfling) using a mutant build with 303 ranks of Sorcerer Base and all other relevant ensorcelling skills maxed out through ordinary training.
• 785 is the same as the above, but with BOOST ENHANCIVE STATS.
• 863 is the same as the above, but now with the full set of enhancives.

• 913 is the same as the above, but now with the extremely expensive +50 spell rank enhancives from the High End Scrip Shop.
• 1000 is the same as the above, but now also the astonishingly time-consuming 1400 Ascension Training Points to nearly max out every skill. (Magic Item Use, Arcane Symbols, and one out of Elemental or Spiritual Mana Control can stop two ranks short of maxing.)

In summary, 1000 is as high as theoretically possible, but a range of 642 to 710 is what you could more likely expect from ordinary post-cap sorcerer builds while 775 to 843 is what you could more likely expect from post-cap mutant sorcerer builds.

So how tough an item can I realistically get ensorcelled?

• 502 difficulty: a conventional far post-cap sorcerer with no investment in Ascension nor enhancives.
• 560 difficulty: a conventional far post-cap sorcerer with a reasonable enhancive set and/or a good chunk of Ascension experience.
• 635 difficulty: a far post-cap mutant sorcerer with no investment in Ascension nor enhancives.
• 693 difficulty: a far post-cap mutant sorcerer with a reasonable enhancive set and/or a good chunk of Ascension experience.

Add +25 to either of the latter two numbers if you're willing to pay for an extra week of suffusion, +50 if you're willing to pay for two extra weeks of suffusion, and so on.

Despite sorcerers nominally having similar skill bonus numbers to wizards, they top off working on lower difficulty items because of how the formulas work! If your item would end up beyond these difficulty numbers before your intended final tier of ensorcellment, that might be a signal to reserve enchanting for last instead. Alternatively, ensorcelling being so high difficulty is why others will leave it for the last of the profession services and simply stop just before they'd need suffusion or super potions.

Sanctify

How much sanctification is enough?

Some schools of thought for physical weapons:

• S5 is enough because it maxes out the AS benefit and/or because of the QoL of never running out of blessings again.
• S6 is enough because it grants 75 extra damage per flare on average over holy water flares.
• S0 is enough because you can simply get blessings from high end clerics for the benefits of the crit portion of flares (as acid instead of fire), anchoring noncorporeal undead, and ignoring undead damage resistance.

Some schools of thought for shields:

• Sufficient sanctification for immunity to sheer fear in your chosen hunting ground is enough.
• S5 is enough because it's the maximum possible and/or CS attacks are among the game's most deadly attacks, so all protection against them is good.
• S6 is enough because it grants 75 extra damage per flare on average over holy water flares.
• S0 is enough because you can simply get blessings from high end clerics for the benefits of the crit portion of flares (as acid instead of fire) and ignoring undead damage resistance.

Some schools of thought for armor:

• Sufficient sanctification for immunity to sheer fear in your chosen hunting ground is enough.
• S5 is enough because it's the maximum possible and/or CS attacks are among the game's most deadly attacks, so all protection against them is good
• S6 is enough because it grants 75 extra damage per flare on average over holy water flares when getting hit by undead or using offensive maneuvers involving the body against them. (Note: Greaves or helmets worn over armor will prevent holy fire flares from going off when attacking with or getting hit on the respective body parts.)
• S0 is enough because you can simply get blessings from high end clerics for the benefits of the crit portion of flares (as acid instead of fire) and ignoring undead damage resistance.

Some schools of thought for runestaves:

• Sufficient sanctification for immunity to sheer fear in your chosen hunting ground is enough. (For sorcerers and wizards, this will likely also require sanctification of your armor.)
• S5 is enough because it's the maximum possible and/or CS attacks are among the game's most deadly attacks, so improving your own and protecting against enemies' are good benefits.
• S6 is enough because it grants 75 extra damage per flare on average over holy water flares.
• S0 is enough because you can simply get blessings from high end clerics for the benefits of the crit portion of flares (as acid instead of fire), anchoring noncorporeal undead, and ignoring undead damage resistance.

Are there any additional considerations based on build?

Excellent value for Sanctify:

• S6 for any physical weapon used by bards or wizards due to Song of Tonis or Celerity, respectively.
• S6 for bows and crossbows used by squares or semis due to Volley.
• S6 for katanas and katars used by squares or semis due to weapon technique rotation indirectly increasing attack volume.
• S6 for unarmed combat gear used by any profession and build due to high attack volume.

Good value for Sanctify:

• S6 for low RT weapons used by any profession and build due to above average attack volume.

Poor value for Sanctify:

• S1-S5 for unarmed combat gear used by any profession and build due to UAF mattering only fractionally as much to unarmed combat as AS does to physical weapons.

Roughly average value for Sanctify:

• Everything else. See previous section for why.

When should I sanctify?

Assuming that somebody wants Sanctify in the first place instead of opting for blessings, they usually intend to push to the fifth tier or fully into holy fire, which are end results of 100 or 150 gear difficulty. This is less intense than the 250 gear difficulty added by a finished T5 Ensorcell or the 220 gear difficulty added by taking an item from +20 to +50, but more intense than the 85 gear difficulty added by taking an item from +20 to +35.

Clerics and wizards each add low enough difficulty that they're not likely to make an item impossible to work on for the other unless at least two other factors get involved out of flares, script flares, Ensorcell, difficult materials, banes, and substantial WPS.

However, if those factors do come into play, that's when it becomes relevant that wizards have more leeway with skill bonus than clerics do (for all the reasons described in the Enchant section--and below in this Sanctify section). The numbers are close enough that which to do first might be a matter of who you know, but if you don't know anyone in particular, the safer move is most likely sanctifying before enchanting.

How high does cleric skill get?

• 632 is achievable without using Ascension nor enhancives on a race with a neutral 25 Wisdom bonus and 25 Influence bonus using a fairly typical post-cap build with 170 ranks of Cleric Base and all other relevant sanctifying skills maxed out through ordinary training.
• 642 is the same as the above, but with the use of BOOST ENHANCIVE STATS from daily logins.
• 707 is the same as the above, but now also wearing an incredible enhancive set to finish maxing out Wisdom and Influence in addition to maxing out Magic Item Use, Arcane Symbols, and Spiritual Mana Control. (Finding someone with such an enhancive set is very unlikely!)

• 765 is achievable without using Ascension nor enhancives on a race with a neutral 25 Wisdom bonus and 25 Influence bonus using a mutant build with 303 ranks of Cleric Base and all other relevant sanctifying skills maxed out through ordinary training.
• 775 is the same as the above, but with BOOST ENHANCIVE STATS.
• 840 is the same as the above, but now with the full set of enhancives.

• 890 is the same as the above, but now with +50 spell rank enhancives. At the time of writing, this is easier to come by than for other professions since there's a widely known player who loans out a spell rank enhancive for a few minutes for a fee.
• 965 is the same as the above, but now also the extremely time-consuming 1135 Ascension Training Points to nearly max out every skill. (Magic Item Use and Arcane Symbols can stop two ranks short of maxing while Spiritual Mana Control can stop one rank short.)

• Add 10 to any of the above numbers if the character is an elf or erithian, the races statistically best at sanctifying. Giantmen and half-elves also get +5.

In summary, 975 is as high as theoretically possible, but a range of 642 to 697 is what you could more likely expect from ordinary post-cap cleric builds while 775 to 820 is what you could more likely expect from post-cap mutant cleric builds. However, you could also add 50 to either of those ranges due to the loaner spell rank enhancive in the community!

So how tough an item can I realistically get sanctified?

Two numbers are shown depending on whether the item will be stopping at S5 or going all the way to holy fire, respectively:

• 512/482 difficulty: a conventional far post-cap cleric with no investment in Ascension nor enhancives.
• 567/537 difficulty: a conventional far post-cap cleric with a reasonable enhancive set and/or a good chunk of Ascension experience.
• 655/625 difficulty: a far post-cap mutant cleric with no investment in Ascension nor enhancives.
• 700/670 difficulty: a far post-cap mutant cleric with a reasonable enhancive set and/or a good chunk of Ascension experience.

Add +25 to either of the latter two numbers if you're willing to pay for an extra week of suffusion, +50 if you're willing to pay for two extra weeks of suffusion, and so on. Add +50 to any of these numbers if you're willing to count the loaner spell rank enhancive. Add +50 to any of these numbers if you're working on eonake, white ora, faewood, Voln armor, or white alloy, which have bonuses for sanctification.

Although it doesn't necessarily feel true in the Prime community due to a frequently used +50 spell rank enhancive, Cleric skill technically tops off lower than sorcerers or wizards and that's one reason why sanctification is often done early in the process of gear improvement.

Examples: Putting Everything Into Practice

This work in progress section looks at several possible starting points for items, then analyzes either how low level or how high level you'd need characters to be to get to the final product.

Perfect Forged Mithril Weapon

Why would someone start from this point?

It doesn't require pay event currency and mithril is an easy material for all professions to work on. It's a good place to start if the intended final product will use a fluff script like Anfelt or a mechanical script in the midrange, such as greater elemental flares or knockout flares. Alternatively, if budget isn't a consideration and the final product is meant to have perfect forging and a high end script, then perfect forging is by far the cheaper starting point. (1,500,000 bloodscrip to add perfect forging vs. 250,000 bloodscrip to add a high end script.)

How far can a fresh level 25 wizard enchant it if nothing else is done first?

Up to the +35 cast.

How far can a fresh level 30 cleric sanctify it if nothing else is done first?

Most can cast the third tier of Sanctify and some might be able to cast the fourth tier with the right stats and skills. The fifth tier is unlikely and holy fire is dozens of levels away at minimum.

How far can a fresh level 35 sorcerer ensorcell it if nothing else is done first?

One tier of Ensorcell at least, two tiers at most.

What would you do?

This is a case where I wouldn't concern myself at all with the order of Enchant and the main tiers of Sanctify. The -20 gear difficulty inherent to mithril is often equivalent to five or so levels' worth of skill bonus, allowing very low end clerics and wizards to work on your item. Holy fire generally isn't an expected offering from clerics below level 60 (if even that early), so there's a little flexibility to add a couple Ensorcell casts first and probably not drive up the price in the process.

In summary:

• Enchant to +35 (or preferred stopping point) and Sanctify to S5 in any order (pushes difficulty up to 201 total)
• Add holy fire (if desired) and Ensorcell as far as T2 in any order (pushes difficulty up to 251 or 301, respectively)
• Add holy fire and the remainder of Ensorcell in any order

Perfect Forged Eonake Weapon

Why would someone start from this point?

It doesn't require pay event currency, eonake is one of the easiest materials for clerics to work on (and the only one of them that starts at an enchant of +20 while not requiring pay event currency), and paladins can add Consecrate flares to eonake even before learning the Holy Weapon spell. It's a good place to start if the intended final product will definitely have holy fire--or even just the main tiers of Sanctify--while also using a fluff script like Anfelt or the midrange end of mechanical scripts, such as greater elemental flares or knockout flares. Alternatively, if budget isn't a consideration and the final product is meant to have perfect forging and a high end script, then perfect forging must be the starting point.

How far can a fresh level 25 wizard enchant it if nothing else is done first?

A +31 cast is nearly guaranteed for a typical build, +32 is likely, and +33 and +34 at least aren't entirely impossible.

How far can a fresh level 30 cleric sanctify it if nothing else is done first?

The fourth tier will be easy and the fifth tier isn't impossible.

How far can a fresh level 35 sorcerer ensorcell it if nothing else is done first?

A single tier of Ensorcell.

What would you do?

This is mostly similar to mithril in that even low end wizards and clerics can handle most or all casts, except this time it's flipped to favor clerics. Like with mithril, both professions can handle the casts well enough. Where eonake shines is that it essentially cancels out the added difficulty of an entire tier of Ensorcell instead of just 40% of one like mithril. Going as far as T3 Ensorcell might very well not impact the price of a holy fire cast in the slightest. Even T4 might not, though I personally wouldn't risk pushing that far.

In summary:

• Enchant to +35 (or preferred stopping point) and Sanctify to S5 in any order (pushes difficulty up to 221 total)
• Add holy fire and Ensorcell as far as T3 in any order (pushes difficulty up to 271 or 371, respectively, but the 371 would act as 321 for purposes of the holy fire cast afterward)
• Add holy fire and the remainder of Ensorcell in any order

Midrange Scripted Weapon

For the sake of simplicity, this section assumes the maximum script difficulty of 200, seen in scripts such as Animalistic Spirit, Duskbringer, Energy Weapons, Parasite Weapons, Sprite Weapons, and Valence Weapons. However, if you instead have interest in scripts such as Fighting Knives, Greater elemental flares, Knockout flares, or Twin Weapons, the difficulty could be as low as 50 or as high as 150. (For more on this, see my Choosing Your Ideal Weapon Script guide.)

This section also assumes the weapon has a +20 enchant, which adds another 36 difficulty. Animalistic, Duskbringer, Energy, Parasite, Sprite, and Twin all fall into that category, but Fighting Knives and Valence actually start at +25.

Why would someone start from this point?

Other than greater elemental flares and knockout flares, which must be added to existing weapons, the aforementioned staple scripts attached to off the script weapons act as entry points to pay events' unique blend of flavor, mechanics, and a high power ceiling with potential for growth over time. If a player's vision for their endgame weapon includes a combat script that isn't GEF or knockout, then starting with the script will be anywhere from 8.33 (Twin Weapons) to 83.33 (Fighting Knives) times as cost-effective as starting with a perfect weapon and adding it later, with most scripts landing at 25 times as cost-effective (Animalistic Spirit, Duskbringer, Energy, Parasite, Sprite) to start with.

(Incidentally, if the final vision is GEF or knockout, then adding those last is the most cost-effective route because it delays the additional gear difficulty until the end, making it easy for lower level clerics, sorcerers, and wizards to improve a weapon it's ready for a script.)

In essence, these scripts serve as the convergence of power, style, and pricing. Certainly not the strongest, weakest, most expensive, nor least expensive, but if there's one thing they do excel at, it's unique flavor that can even go so far as character-defining. They're made for players to whom budget is a consideration and to whom money can be an object, but not so much of one that they want to sacrifice future potential or stylistic flair.

What level cleric would be able to sanctify a midrange scripted weapon if...

• Nothing else is done first: around level 65.
• It's enchanted to +35 first: around level 85.
• It's ensorcelled to T1 first: around level 75.
• It's ensorcelled to T5 first: far post-cap.
• It's enchanted to +35 and ensorcelled to T1 first: around fresh cap.
• It's enchanted to +35 and ensorcelled to T5 first: mutant cleric or far post-cap with substantial enhancives.

What level sorcerer would be able to ensorcell a midrange scripted weapon if...

• Nothing else is done first: around level 65.
• It's enchanted to +35 first: around level 85.
• It's sanctified to S6 first: around fresh cap.
• It's enchanted to +35 and sanctified to S6 first: far post-cap.

What level wizard would be able to enchant a midrange scripted weapon if...

• Nothing else is done first: around level 60.
• It's ensorcelled to T1 first: around level 75.
• It's ensorcelled to T5 first: far post-cap.
• It's sanctified to S6 first: around fresh cap.
• It's ensorcelled to T1 and sanctified to S6 first: somewhat post-cap.
• It's ensorcelled to T5 and sanctified to S6 first: far post-cap and (not or) mutant wizard.

What would you do?

Since we're in the realm of needing mid-level characters at minimum and ramping up to needing post-cap characters almost immediately, the order of enchanting and sanctification is largely immaterial. As you can see in the above numbers, though, T5 Ensorcell is extremely punishing on the caliber of cleric or wizard you'd need to follow up, so that should be reserved for last. That said, enchanting to +35 and S6 Sanctify before starting the Ensorcell process is conversely punishing on the caliber of sorcerer you'd need to follow up. Please note that each of the "What level..." sections only consider the first cast made by that profession. A far post-cap sorcerer with great enhancives might be able to add a T2 Ensorcell to a +35 S6 scripted weapon but going beyond that will need mutants, suffusion, or boosting potions from Duskruin.

It's possible to make compromises in any direction. The most common is probably stopping Ensorcell at tier 1, which is why my example bullet points include that but don't mention myriad possibilities like stopping Enchant at +25, stopping Enchant at +30, or stopping Sanctify at S5. Stopping enchantment at +25 does save slightly more than one Ensorcell tier's worth of difficulty. Stopping sanctification at S5 saves exactly as much as one Ensorcell tier's worth of difficulty. In cases where any one out of Enchant, Ensorcell, or Sanctify is undesirable in the first place, there's more leeway and breathing room to get the other two finished as you please. (Even then, I'd still reserve Ensorcell for last if T5 is on the menu.) Every individual will have to decide what they value and how much they value it.

In summary:

• Enchant to +35 (or preferred stopping point (and if desired)), Ensorcell to T1 (if desired and acting as the preferred stopping point), and Sanctify to S5 or S6 (if desired) in any order
• Add the remainder of Ensorcell to preferred stopping point (if desired) afterward