Crafting

The nine crafts, how recipes are learned, guild commissions, stations and tools, and how things are made.

Crafting turns gathered resources into weapons, armor, food, potions, jewelry and scrolls. There are nine crafts, each with its own level from 1 to 100, and every character can learn all of them whatever their class or level. What holds you back is your level in the craft, the recipes you know, and whether you are standing at the right station.

The Crafter's Guild in Aurin, east through the Merchant's Guild at the top of Merchant Way, has a workshop for every craft.

The nine crafts#

Each craft levels on its own. Smithing never raises Alchemy.

Craft levels#

clevel shows your level and progress in every craft. A craft pays its experience once per attempt, however many things that attempt makes; twenty arrow shafts from one log are one craft.

A full minute's craft pays 10 + 2 x recipe level. A 30 second refining step pays half that. The further you are above the recipe, the less it pays:

The result is rounded down, and never falls below 1. A level 10 recipe made at level 10 pays 30 experience for a full minute's work.

Early levels come quickly. At level 1, four crafts at your own level carry you to the next. It takes twelve at level 10, fifty seven at level 40 and eighty five at level 80, and mastering a craft to 100 is months of steady work. A recipe's page tells you how much it will teach you: challenging, steady, easy, simple or trivial.

Recipes#

A recipe names its craft, level, station, ingredients and output. recipes browses them without starting any work, one step at a time: recipes <craft>, then a group, a material and a recipe, as in recipes smith weapons copper. Recipes you have not learned are marked.

Every crafter starts knowing all the refining work (ingots, planks, thread, tanned leather, inks and the like) and every ordinary recipe up to level 8.

Odile the Patternkeeper sells the rest as folios in the Hall of Patterns, just inside the Crafter's Guild. A folio teaches every recipe of one kind and material at once, such as Copper Weapons or Wool Armor, or every recipe in a ten level band where a kind has no material, such as Potions 20-29. folios lists every craft and how many books are open to you, folios <craft> lists one craft's books with their prices, and buy folio <number> or buy folio <name> buys one. You can buy a folio from five levels below its first recipe, though each recipe still needs its own level to make. Buying a book you partly know teaches only the recipes you were missing.

The rarest masterworks are never sold. Their recipe scrolls turn up when you search and dig in the world. Reading a scroll teaches the recipe for good and uses up the scroll, unless your level in the craft is still too low, in which case you keep it. A fresh search has a 0.8% chance of a recipe and a fresh dig 1.2%; the recipe suits the place, and recipes you already know are never chosen. See gathering for searching and digging.

Guild commissions#

The Crafter's Guild keeps a ledger of commissions: work for clients such as a dagger for the Watch or a helm for the Gate Captain. Each craft has sixteen, from your first day at the bench to a master's piece, and each opens when your level in that craft reaches it. They pay that craft's experience, tools, fuel and materials, and in the early ones the guild's own pattern books. They pay no character experience and count toward no quest.

You hold at most one commission in each craft, so nine at once. Commissions are taken and handed in at the Crafter's Guild, and you can read and follow them anywhere. A commission may ask you to gather something, finish a craft, light or work at a station, bring finished pieces, know a folio or reach a level. Anything already true counts at once.

Making something#

craft on its own opens the crafting browser: craft, then category, then material, then recipe. Answer each step with a name, enough of it to tell it apart, or its number; back steps back. craft <recipe> starts work on a recipe by name, so craft trail bread and craft hardtack both work. craft <count> <recipe> or craft <recipe> x<count> queues up to 50 of the same thing, each starting as the last finishes.

Before work begins the game checks that your level reaches the recipe's, that you know the recipe, that the station and tool are there, and that you hold the materials. If you are short of something you are told what is missing.

Refining takes 30 seconds and finished work a minute. A ranger's lean-to shortens it. You can work on one thing at a time. Leaving the room loses the piece, and dying or falling unconscious ends it. The station, tool and materials are checked again when the work finishes, and the materials are used then, so a station gone cold or materials spent elsewhere waste the work. A queue stops when your materials run out, the station goes cold or you walk away.

There is no random failure. If everything is in place at the start and the end, the craft succeeds and makes the recipe's full output.

Quality#

Finished weapons, armor and shields take a quality grade from how far your level in the craft is above the recipe's.

Quality raises the piece's statistics, so going back to an old recipe once you have outgrown it makes a better piece than it did the first time. From Fine up the piece also carries an enchantment, as gear found in the world does: Fine and Good carry an uncommon one, Superior a rare one and Pristine an epic one. It is the same quality scale that dropped gear uses; see world drops. A clan with the Guildwork power gives its members a chance of a grade better at its own hall's stations.

Stations and tools#

Every recipe is made at its own station. The recipe page names it.

light <station> lights a forge, furnace, athanor or kitchen hearth, stoke <station> keeps it hot and extinguish <station> puts it out. The fuel comes from your resources. A lit station stays hot for anyone working there and goes cold if left idle. Milling, kneading, churning and curing need the kitchen but no fire. The tanning vats are filled instead, with fill vats. Look at a station to see its state.

The guild workshops lend tools from their racks (get tools from rack and so on), and the Guild Stores sell them to keep. A craft workroom in your own home is kept ready for its craft.

Smithed pieces go to the cooling table beside the forge for 30 seconds before you can pick them up.

Where the output goes#

Weapons, armor, shields, jewelry, potions, scrolls, tools, bags and food are real items and go into your inventory. Gear is made at the recipe's level and records its maker. Cooked dishes stack with matching food you already carry. Brewed poisons go into your poison supplies.

Anything a later recipe uses, such as ingots, thread, cut gems and inks, goes into your resource wallet. Ingredients come out of the wallet too, and a recipe that needs a cooked dish can also use matching food from your inventory. resources shows your wallet. Materials can be passed to another player with trade.

Material tiers#

Each craft climbs through its materials. A material has a base level, and each item made from it adds up to 9 levels, so one material covers about ten levels of a craft.

Smithing metals#

Meteoric iron comes from the crater in the Barren Wasteland. Its ingot is a level 90 recipe, and the meteoric weapons and plate run from level 91 to 99.

Lead, gold and platinum smelt into ingots at levels 15, 65 and 68, but nothing is forged from them as weapons or armor. Gold and platinum go to jewelcrafting and inscription instead.

Woodcraft timbers#

Leatherworking#

Hides are tanned into worked leathers, and armor is made from those.

Tailoring fabrics#

Canvas, velvet and brocade are woven from two other fabrics rather than spun from their own thread.

Related#

• Gathering
• World Drops
• Progression
• Economy