Moved: Mlogo's Crafting Guide

[vl]

New Crafting Guide - Long!

Mlogo guide to Crafting

Welcome to the world of Crafting. With this skill you can supply all Homins with their every need, from Armour and Weapons to Jewellery. There is also a small bonus for the hard work you put into your labours in the form of wealth. Played correctly, a Craftsman with the right contacts (Harvesters and Customers) can become exceedingly rich.

To achieve our desired product we need to follow some simple steps.
1. Create our Character
2. Learn the requisite skill
3. Load the skill onto your toolbar
4. Have the correct components
5. Make the product
6. Find a Customer.

Career
Before we start we need to be aware of some of the limitations on what we can or can’t do as a Crafter.

The major change introduced is that skills now cost 50 points to learn. We accumulate 10 points for every crafting level we progress, so you can see that we will be able to learn one new skill for every 5 crafting levels we achieve. This has a major impact on our decisions on what we want to do. We can either be a jack-of-all-trades at low-mid levels, or become a master and specialise in one area.

The careers that are available are (if we want to achieve high-level specialisation):
1. Armour craftsman
2. Weapons craftsman
3. Shield craftsman
4. Jewellery craftsman
5. Ranged weapon craftsman
6. Ammo (for ranged weapons) craftsman

Once we have decided what career we want to follow, whether it is a specialist or a jack-of-all-trades we can now create our character.

The first decision we have to make is our race, currently Fyros and Zorai are available to choose. This will have an immediate impact on what we will be able to do and fast we do it!

Fyros – Currently the crafting skills for Fyros cannot be learnt in-game (but who knows what will happen during a patch) therefore we cannot learn anything but our initial skills from start-up and they can’t be progressed past Quality 10, i.e. level 1 skill. If we want to progress past quality 10 items then we will have to accumulate skills pts (10 per craft level) and learn the Zorai crafting skills (50 pts each).
Zorai – All starting skills can be leant past skill level 1 and quality 10. Therefore we can initially advance faster than Fyros because we don’t have to relearn a new level 1 skill in-game (unless we switch professions, more on this)

The second choice we will have to make is how much of a Crafter do we want to be. We have 3 options open to us as the beginning, we can start the game with a small, medium or large craft pack. The details of we get in these are shown below.

• Small craft pack
o Race Armour Skill (Fyros or Zorai, dependent on the race we chose in step 1)
o 50x Raw Material Quality 10

• Medium Craft Pack
o Race Armour Skill (Fyros or Zorai, dependent on the race we chose in step 1)
o 100x Raw Material Quality 10

• Large Craft Pack
o Race Armour Skill (Fyros or Zorai, dependent on the race we chose in step 1)
o Race Weapon Skill (Fyros or Zorai, dependent on the race we chose in step 1)
o 200x Raw Material Quality 10

All packs get a “Fight Default” action as well.

We are now ready to enter the game and start crafting!

The first few levels.
Craft levels 1-10 are fairly straight forward, there no decisions for us to make and the future is rosy. All we need to do make items and sell them to NPC merchants and other players.

The actual mechanics of manufacturing and what to manufacture will be covered below, in this section I am just going to show you what decisions you are going to need to make along the way.

As we manufacture items we gain XP, and generally the higher the level of the produced item, the higher the XP gained. My advice for the early days is to always make the best quality item you can (i.e. buy Q20 Wondermat). Firstly, you will earn more XP and secondly the final item can be sold for more !

As mentioned above, we accumulate 10 skill points for every crafting level we achieve and that a new craft skill costs 50 pts. So, we don’t have to decide anything until we reach crafting skill 6, so just keep making items until we hit this level.

Level 6.
At this level we will have earned enough points to learn another skill, this is where you will have to make your first decision.
1. Continue with Armour or Weapons because that is what I want to specialize.
2. Switch to another skill of my race
• Weapons (if we started with Small or Medium craft pack)
• Range Weapons
• Ammo
• Jewellery
• Shields
3. Add a Zorai crafting skill to my Fyros skills

Level 11.
At this level we will have earned enough points to learn yet another skill, this is where you will have to make your second decision.

1. Be a jack-of-all-trades and learn another level 1 skill
2. Improve my knowledge of an existing skill to level 2 (produces items of up to Quality 20)

As our skill progresses, our options become more and more limited making us extreme specialists. For example, assuming we chose Zorai as our starting race and the Large crafting pack and that we want to specialise in one of starting skills.

Thereafter every 10 levels we will be able to learn the next skill level in our chosen arena, i.e at Levels 21 we can get level 3 skill, at 31 we can get level 4 skill, and so on.

Note: remember you have to have learnt all the lower levels before you get offered a high level skill

Decision Time
Level 1-20
We can make any product for any available race and gain xp towards our goal.
Level 21-50
We now can only progress in making products for our race, if we want to continue towards our goal. We can still make items for the other races, for Fyros for example, if we have the skill, but it will no longer give us xp against our chosen branch of specilisation.
Level 51-100
We now have to make another decision, want do we want to specialise in for our race:
1. Armour
2. Weapons
3. Shields
4. Jewels
5. Melee Weapons
6. Ammo
7. Ranged Weapons

And so it goes on, at level 101 if we had gone down the Armour route above, we would then have Light, Medium or Heavy Armour specialisation to choose.

If we want to be THE BEST in one field we will have to keep narrowing our choices down until finally we are experts in producing Expert Heavy Armour – for instance.

If we want to be GOOD, we can train in 2 or more fields, such as Armour and Weapons. But we will never be the best in either.

If we want to be a Jack-of-all-Trades we can learn all 7 branches of items for a race, but we will never make the really good high-end items, but we will be a one-stop shop for the majority of the players.

Enchanted Items
We also need to decide do we want to make “plain” items or items with “a bonus”. The bonus come in the form of SAP, HP, Stam and Focus adders to your manufactured items, and have to be incorporated into the initial plan when you make the item. Like normal crafting skills, the bonus skills come in various skill levels with can be learnt from the Instructors at each town, these also cost 50 points to learn.

Note: Bonus bricks are not yet functioning in this beta build (but were working in a previous build)


Getting Going
Ok, now we know the theory, but how do I actually get that first new skill and progress?

Learning new skills
Before we can manufacture any new items we need to have learnt the relevant skill to make that item, for example Zorai Jewellery.

Learning the skill is easy, once you have enough skill points you can ask any Crafting Instructor for the skill. Just target the instructor then right-click on him and select “Trade”. You will now be shown a list of skills that are available for your skill level. Once you have decided which is the skill for you just select it and confirm the purchase by clicking on ”learn”.

Note: If you want to learn a higher level skill i.e. Zorai Jewellery you will need to learn all the lower levels first, i.e. Zorai Jewellery 1 to 4. If your skill level is sufficient you can do this but you will have to do the following steps:
1. Start a trading session with the instructor
2. Learn level one skill
3. The level 2 skill will now appear (maybe at the bottom of the list, so you may need to scroll down)
And so on and until you have learnt all the levels you require.

Loading the new skill onto our Toolbar
Now we have learnt the new skill we need to install it on our toolbar so that we can use it. Follow the simple steps below to do this:-

1. Equip the relevant tool in your right-hand. This will make sure the correct toolbar appears at the top of the screen.
2. Press “a” to open your actions window.
3. Select “Craft” to see all your skills. This show as small icons on the right-hand side of the table, just hover your mouse over them to get a brief description of the skill. The skills will be shown here in the order learnt, so the latest one learnt will the last one shown.
4. Drag the required skill to an empty slot on your toolbar.

You’re done, the new skill is ready for you to use now. As with all skills in the toolbar, the skill can be activated by either clicking on it or by selecting the “hot key” to start it. So if we had put the skill in the 2nd slot from the left and on the top row, then the hot-key will be “2”, the 3rd slot would be “3” and so on.

Have the correct components

Ok, we are almost ready to make our first item now, but before we do we need to ensure that we have the correct components to make it. To check what components are required is straight forward.

Activate the skill for the item you want to make, for example Zorai Melee, by either clicking on it or using its hot-key.
You will now have a table come up that shows the items that can be made, swords, axes, lances and so forth. Select the item that you want to make, in this case a sword. You will see that it has 4 basic requirements to assemble the sword, a Point, a Shaft, a Grip and a Balance. Click in each of the Blank Squares in turn and select the item you want to use from the list that comes up.

When you have filled in all 4 boxes, then click on “Make Item”, a few seconds later another box will appear showing you the work in progress. Shortly after that, you will have either succeeded in making the item or not. If you have succeeded you will see the quality of the item you have made. Now just select “Take all” to put the item in your bag. If you failed in making the item this box will just disappear.

How to tell what Materials we can use
So how do we know what materials we can buy/harvest to use to make the sword? The easy way is to go to a Raw Materials Merchant or right-click on any material you can see and select info, this will bring up a small description box that shows you, amongst other things, the quality of the item and what it can be used for. i.e. Mediocre Zorai point.

So all you need to do is ensure you have the correct components (it’s easy to start with, Wonder Material can be used as a substitute for everything, and can be bought from any Raw Material Merchant on the starting Island).

“Wonder Material”
This can be used as a substitute for any and all components to make any item up to Quality 20. At skill level 3 and higher (which would normally give you Quality 30 or better items) you will achieve a maximum of Quality 20 items if you use Wonder Material.

“Real Material”
These have an upside and a downside to them. The upside is that you will produce better items that using “Wonder Material” and the items that are Player crafted are usually better products than shop bought items. This can be seen in various ways, such as:

1. The damage a weapon gives
2. The Protection a piece of Armour supplies
3. The lower penalty bonus on each item
4. The lower bulk of an item
5. SAP loading


The downside is that you have either Hunt/Forage/Harvest for the goods (time consuming, and high quality items will need high skills) or you can buy them from Merchants on the Mainland (expensive)

When deciding which Materials to use for your item do your homework first. Items now have various benefits they can offer you, such as - reduced bulk, increased sap loading and so on. As you would expect, if you are buying these from the Merchant then the better materials are going to cost more, therefore your Customer is going to pay more. Expect Hunters/Harvesters/Foragers to also charge you more for the better materials.

Quality
As you would guess, the higher the quality the better the product, and the higher the skill required to make it. So at Crafting Level 1 you can make quality 10 items, and at Crafting skill 10 (the next time you can get offered new skills to improve quality) you can make Quality 20 items. You will also need to buy the new skill to make the higher quality item, for example – Zorai Jewellery 2, to make Quality 20 Jewellery items.
A word of warning, higher quality products are not necessarily the correct thing for your customer! As a guide, your customer should be using items of the same quality as his relevant skill level to get the maximum benefit from that item.

A small example:
Mlogo has skill level 61 in Melee, skill level 51 in Close Combat and skill level 58 in Armour defence. So if I was going to make a sword, a dagger and a suit or armour for him I would make a sword of quality 60, a Dagger of quality 50 and a suit of Armour of quality 60.
Remember match the item to the relevant skill tree of your customer - Weapons, Armour and Shields.

The higher the skill level of your customer the more important this becomes, eventually they will become proficient in one type of weapon, for example, one-handed piercing.
At lower levels the type of weapon is not critical, before they hit level 21 any weapon will do for the “Fighting” skill and any heavy armour will do for the “Defence” skill.
Generally your customers skills will change every 20 levels and become more specific each time.

The upshot of this is that your Customers will get what they pay for. If they want a cheap product use Wonder Material (for Q20 or lower) or a lower Quality Material (i.e. Q20 Lining to make a Q20 piece of Armour). If they are prepared to pay a bit more, then use higher quality materials to produce a better result. Using Q150 materials on a Quality 20 plan will produce better stats than using Quality 20 material. For instance I have produced Q30 heavy armour that’s gives 51-52% protection per item and only has 12 penalty points for the whole suit, by using Quality 150 materials in it’s production, but the customer had to pay the price and was happy to do so.
The benefit for your customer in buying the better product?
• Less damage because he has more protection
o maybe allowing tougher opponents to get better xp
• This means less “downtime” between fights
• This means more/quicker XP

A customer comment - “I couldn’t have got this high so quickly without your armour”
In the race to be the best, they need the best.

Customers
I will leave this part for you figure out  but the Merchants will buy any of your low quality items from you at a good price.

Again, any comments or feedback (polite ones) are gratefully received.

Mlogo

[tashunka]

One good piece of advice I will offer to starting Crafters is this:

Talk to the Apprentice Overseers - they will offer "contracts" to make armor or weapons for them. You can select a job that you're capable of and they will pay you well for them - even more than the materials would cost if purchased from the merchant.

This will allow you to craft without worrying about funding your work or finding a buyer, and the Overseers only care about the final Quality level of the product (not any particular stats) so you can use extra mats you have lying about that might not be the best for items you intend to use or sell to other players.

Working for the Overseers has allowed me to level up quickly and make a fair amount of money doing it.

[kierstad]

One good piece of advice I will offer to starting Crafters is this:

Talk to the Apprentice Overseers - they will offer "contracts" to make armor or weapons for them. You can select a job that you're capable of and they will pay you well for them - even more than the materials would cost if purchased from the merchant.

This will allow you to craft without worrying about funding your work or finding a buyer, and the Overseers only care about the final Quality level of the product (not any particular stats) so you can use extra mats you have lying about that might not be the best for items you intend to use or sell to other players.

Working for the Overseers has allowed me to level up quickly and make a fair amount of money doing it.

A very good point. I've done pretty much the same and am currently at Armorcraft 50, able to make light, med, heavy armors up to ql30. I'm slowly working on some other skills, but my main focus has been armor all along.

Another point along this line is the fact that there are not that many weapon crafting missions. It's almost a 3:1 ratio, 3 armor missions for every one weapon mission from an Overseer (at least for Zorai starting areas).

[lenik]

I have been unable to find the starting materials to make boots. (Didnt start as a crafter) I have every thing but the Armor Clip and the second thing on the list. I forget what it is. What goes there?

[kierstad]

I have been unable to find the starting materials to make boots. (Didnt start as a crafter) I have every thing but the Armor Clip and the second thing on the list. I forget what it is. What goes there?

For most armor recipes, the second ingredient will always be lining (resin types, or hides, etc from mobs (Mektoub)).

If you right click on an item, you can see what the item is used for.
It will say things such as hammer, counterweight on it.
I'd post a screenshot but I'm at work

[lyrah68]

I HIGHLY recommend getting the crafting packs WITH the wondermats included, to get the idea of crafting without having to learn all the matterials to make stuff. The fighter packs are (my opinion) TOTALLY worthless, you can buy/make a better dagger, and make ALL the skills for few points in a few hours TOPS.

To figure out the places you plug in certain materials right click and sellect Info. You can find EVERYTHING you need at the raw materials merchant...it isn't the best grade available in your region, but it WILL help you level. And you can make better than the newbie stuff WITH the store bought.

[riggs486]

How can I tell if the mats I have chosen to make a piece of armor will result in a Wiva, Parok, Vestini, etc? This must be listed somewhere. Thanks!!

[denature]

Is this guide from the beta? There appears to be a major change if so, that involves the ability to gain skill points from all skill branches.

[riggs486]

Is this guide from the beta? There appears to be a major change if so, that involves the ability to gain skill points from all skill branches.

Yes. If you look he says that " ... currently Fyros and Zorai are available to choose ...". This must have been during the beta.

[parisg]

Wiva, Parok and Vestini armor does not depend on the mats. They are different blueprints that have to be trained (purchased) from the trainer.