Crafting Basics

This page covers the fundamentals of the crafting system in Engines of Ascension.

Engines of Ascension boasts an expansive crafting system that is both easy to learn and extremely robust in application. As an aspiring crafter, it helps to be aware of the fundamentals behind the system in order to be able to utilise it effectively.

=Getting Started=

In the server, items are followed by a number in a bracket. That bracketed number denotes the item's level (also known as "rank" or "grade"). Item levels will be covered in more detail later, but the quality of an item you can craft is heavily dependent on both your current skill level of the crafting skill(s) being used, and ability points spent in those crafting skill(s), if any.

Without abilities in the crafting skill you are using, you will only be able to craft items of an Item Level up to half your skill level, rounding down. Spending abilities in the crafting trees will allow you to use your full skill level in crafting from that tree up to a point depending on what tier of ability you are at. However, having a higher skill than your abilities cover will result in a maximum of halfway between the maximum permitted by the skill and your actual skill rank.

For example, having an Alchemy rank of 30 without any Alchemy abilities will only allow you to create potions up to Item Level, or rank, 15. Taking the Alchemy I ability allows you to brew potions with full skill level up to rank 25 (Alchemy I lets you brew to level 20, then half of the remainder - 10 - is 5, making a total of 25). Take Alchemy II, though, and you can brew potions to your full skill level of 30.

Therefore, if you want to get the most of your crafting capabilities, it is recommended to invest ability points into them.

What You Need
In order to begin crafting an item, you need the following:


 * 1) Money - At least $50 is needed to pay for a crafting pass and the privilege to use a crafting station before accounting for the cost of materials (if you have to buy any) and crafting the item itself.
 * 2) Materials - You can't craft something from nothing. Have the required materials to make the item on hand.
 * 3) Knowledge and Expertise - You must know what you're making in order to be able to replicate it. Experience or lucky finds can help you with this one.

Before you start crafting, you need to be in an area that lets you craft in the first place. Currently, the Calidor Crafter's Guild located near the East Gate houses workstations for various crafting tasks, and the Tower of Hermetia west of the Free Market has a workstation for alchemy. In order to use these workstations, you will need to pay a nominal fee for the pass, and you need to be within that workstation itself.

There are six total passes that may be purchased: Once you have the appropriate pass, you can use the facilities for that crafting skill when you are within the specified area. For the Tower of Hermetia, you have to be within the back half of the room. For the other crafting skills, you have to be within the specified small room (read the signs beside the doors to see which area is the correct one). For the Machine Shop, you have to be upstairs and within the room with the crafting apparatuses (beside the ore smelter).

After you find your crafting location, you will need the components required to craft the item you need, and the money needed to craft the item. The components can be pulled from your main inventory or a storage bag, while the money needs to be on your person.

Crafting
When crafting an item, you will be treated to a window similar to the one displayed in the picture here. The various areas are defined from top to bottom, left to right:

1: The item's name, and its item level.

2: The current item level. Clicking on this area will allow you to adjust this number to craft an item at a lower level, if desired.

3: The fee in bucks and dimes that you will need to pay to craft the item.

4: Displays the crafting reagents required to create the items.

5: Augments and modifications. More detail on these will be covered in their respective section.

6: The description of the item, showing their properties and stats they would have in their current state.

7: Enables or disables team crafting.

8: Crafts the item.

If you are in the same party with someone else, you have the option of using "Team Crafting" to use their stats while crafting an item. This is especially helpful when an item you are creating involves using more than one crafting skill. Team crafting only works when the other person has the option enabled, so ensure this is the case prior to the work.

Modifying an item follows similar guidelines as the above except that you only need to pay the monetary and component cost of the modifications.

=Crafting Experience Acquisition=

Deconstruction
Deconstruction involves destroying an item of higher level to gain a chunk of experience in the relevant crafting skill and a portion of the materials required to make the item, if applicable. The greater the disparity of the item's level versus your crafting skill, the greater the boost of knowledge. Deconstruction also affects augments and mods: if a set of scale armor (an Armoring item) contains Fireproofing (a Tailoring modification), the total experience gained will be distributed among both skills proportional to their relative difference to the item's level. In addition, as you deconstruct augments and modified gear, you will accrue knowledge towards the augment, and enough deconstructions of items with that same augment will eventually provide you with the capability to replicate the augment yourself. See the respective page on augments and modifications. In the case of items with a metal component you will also receive between 30 to 70 percent of the items' metal in ores, making deconstruction a possibility for recovering material.

To deconstruct an item, simply right-click an item and select Deconstruct. Note that deconstructing an item that is of lower rank than your crafting skill and without any modifications that you do not already know will not provide you any experience gains (but you will still gain the materials), and in the case of items not eligible for material return (such as potions and clubs), you will not be able to deconstruct the item.

Warning: Deconstruction is irreversible, so be careful to confirm an item's worth before deconstructing it.

Crafting
The second way to acquire experience towards a crafting skill would be to actually craft. See the above for details on how. There are a few factors affecting the resulting experience gains from the production, however.

As a general rule, to receive experience you will want to produce goods no lower than five ranks below your relevant skill. The higher the rank of the item, you more experience you will receive, and crafting below your abilities will not provide any progress. It is possible to craft items above your abilities, by 'Improving' equipment of greater rank than your skill. This process will reduce the rank of the item, and grant relevant experience proportional to the lost value of the item as though it had been partially deconstructed.

Cost is also a factor: more expensive items appear to grant more experience, if the rank is sufficient. When two items are of the same rank, the more costly item will be worth greater experience; this principle also applies to Deconstruction.

The number of skills used in an item do not affect the total experience gained, but do affect how it is distributed. Any relevant crafting skills will receive experience proportional to their affect on the current crafting price. This means that while adding an oil-canister onto a sword uses both Engineering and Blacksmithing, unless the sword's rank is altered, 100% of the price change is caused by the Engineering modification and thereby direct the experience. If the sword were created with the oil-canister, such that each skill were worth half the value, each skill would also receive half the experience - which would then be compared to their relative ranks.

Team-Crafting works just like any other multi-skill crafting, with the only difference being that the respective skills are on separate characters.

[ToDo-Kit: Finish this tut, and add all my figures.]