Crafting Mechanics

From Vanguard WikiSpheres

Getting Started

The walkthrough, Crafting - Getting Started, explains how to begin your crafting career by running through the initial Introduction to Crafting quests.

Crafting Activities and Stations

You do the actual work of crafting at a crafting station. Each stations serves one of the three primary activities of crafting:

Refining

Refining takes raw materials and converts them to a form needed for crafting (for instance spinning thread or weaving cloth).

Finishing

Finishing takes the prepared materials and creates a finished item.

Assembly

Assembly combines finished items into more complex items.

Each of the three major crafting professions uses a specialized set of crafting stations for refining and finishing items; they all share a common Assembly Workbench.

Equipment

Crating equipment consists of tools, clothing and utilities.

Crafting Tools

Tools of course, are necessary to undertake the various portions of the crafting process. Different tools are needed for different stages, the details of which can be ascertained via the crafting recipe. As you gain skill, you will be able to use a wider variety of tools during your crafting career. Better tools will be able to provide certain benefits to the crafter, so keep an eye out for upgrades in your travels.

Clothing

Clothing, too, provides benefits to the crafter. Different clothing provides aid for different aspects of crafting. Magically enhanced articles of clothing are also available for crafters, much like in diplomacy and adventuring.

Crafting Utilities

Utilities are expendable items that are used up in the process of crafting. These can be purchased from utility vendors in or near crafting workshops. The recipe descriptions will provide details on what ultilities are required for that particular item. Some remedies (counter-complications as it were) also require utilities, so it is a good idea to keep a stock of basic utilities before beginning the crafting process. Better safe than sorry.

It is very important to keep your crafting equipment up to date. Just as in the other two spheres, equipment has a large impact on the success of a crafter.

Experience Points

You gain experience from making items, doing quests, and turning in work orders:

Work orders

work orders are your primary source of experience; you get it for making the items and turning in the work order.

Quests

there are plenty of quests around that give experience, faction, and cash, equipment, or both.

Items

you only get experience the first time you make an item from a given recipe.

Faction

There are several factions associated with crafting:

• Continental faction (Kojan Artisans, Qalian Artisans, and Thestra Artisans) determine at what level you can learn the Continental Styles.
• There are competing crafting factions in the two major cities, Ahgram and New Targonor; as you advance, you will need to align yourself with one of each city.
• Various city factions (e.g., The City of Tanvu, Bordinar's Cleft) determine whether you can safely enter the city to complete quests (such as the continental style quests).

Skills

There are a myriad of Crafting Skills associated with the crafting sphere. Managing your skills well can mean the difference between Grade D (failure) and A (perfect) products.

Actions

Crafting Actions are the crafter's abilities. These are the abilities that are clicked during the crafting process and have affect the overall crafting progress and product quality.

You start off your crafting career with a small arsenal of actions, though these will increase as you get more experience with your crafting skills.

Action families are individual steps within the crafting process that have multiple actions associated with them. An example of this is the Stage 2 of the crafting tutorial recipes. Selecting one member of the action family shows you the actions available to you for that particular step. Completing each action in the family will progress the process to the next step.

Actions cost action points. Action points are a numerical value applied to the time and energy your character has during the crafting process. Each ability's cost is indicated on the tooltip for that ability. Use your actions wisely, for when you run out of action points, the crafting process ends, whether or not you are finished with the item.

When you gain new actions and action families, the icons on the crafting table will glow.

Attributes

Attributes can have a large affect on action success. These attributes are linked to certain skills, as listed below, and generally give bonuses to their associated skill.

• Tool actions are affected by finesse attribute.

• Station actions are affected by ingenuity attribute.

• Utility actions are affected by reasoning attribute.

• Remedy and Complication actions are primarily affected by problem solving attribute, and to a lesser extent by the appropriate one above.

Recipes

You learn your basic Recipes from crafting instructors. The ones on your home continent will teach you recipes after you have completed your tier quest to open up each tier; the ones on other continents require you to also complete a continental style quest for each tier.

In addition, you will learn some recipes after completing quests for various NPCs. Recipes are also available as dropped items and as rewards for doing work orders.

Tier Quests and Specialization

Crafting is broken up into tiers. These tiers correspond with appropriate tools and attire for harvesting. They also correspond to the kinds of materials with which you can craft.

Every 10 levels or so you will be given the opportunity to complete Tier Quests. The first Tier Quest at level 11 involves choosing your specialization.

Item Quality

All crafted items have a quality value. For refined items this represents a bonus to finishing, while for usable items this represents the object's power. The quality is measured from A (best) to D (worst).

Certain items, such as bags and harvesting tools, can become "pristine". This occurs when the crafter raises the quality to 100% and keeps it there until the crafting process is complete. Pristine items have even higher stats than normal Grade A items.

When doing work orders, the quality of your product affects the amount of experience you will gain for turning in that work order.

When refining raw materials, the quality must be at least C, or the process will fail and yield unusable materials.

Enhancing Items

Items can be enhanced by adding Dusts and Catalysts at various points in the crafting process. Beginner crafters can only enhance items by adding special properties to the raw materials. More advanced crafters can enhance the primary or secondary components.

Deconstruction

Certain items can be deconstructed. For an item to qualify for deconstruction, it has to have some magical properties, and it cannot be an item that was crafted by a player. (Unsure if caused by a bug, but able to deconstruct player made grade A weapon.) Successful deconstruction requires an A-grade result.