Ulm beefed up ...

[Graeme Dice]

FrankTrollman said:
And Ulm can't even natively buil a hammer, which means that anyone else who wants to forge a bunch of stuff can probably do it better than Ulm can.

Do you really hve that much trouble making it to construction 4 so that you can build a single pair of earth boots?

Forge bonuses are by themselves meaningless unless you actually have a supply of gems.

You'd use independent mages for that anyways, as a single random doesn't allow for site searching via spells.

If you have to wait until you get Construction 6 to Clam hoard, you aren't a real clam hoarder, are you?

Construction 6 is not particularly hard to achieve, and given a 5 gem cost on clams, your rate of return is huge.