Aakek — January 31st, 2007, 09:49 AM
Work in progress: being bugged about it so throwing up whats together.
General Guide to Crafting
By Aakek, Hilsbury (The Vindicators) 16 Weaponsmith
Disclaimer:
These are my personal views on crafting from experience through the end of beta and into live.
Your mileage may vary or you may have your own preferences which is great.
This is a work in progress. I do not attempt to explain everything in complete detail.
For additional info and details check here:
http://vanguadrcrafters.com/
I will try to give you a general guide on crafting. This is not a step by step howto nor is
it the last word on what works. Unlike most prior MMO's, crafting in Vanguard can be very
interdependent with other crafts. I am going to touch on what I feel are some important basics
and understandings about crafting so you can hopefully join us in the ranks of dedicated crafters.
Terminalogy
I will be using WO to stand for Work Orders that you get from taskmasters.
Choosing a Craft
Additional information to be added later with details regarding the crafts.
At level 11, you will be given a choice of specializing in one particalur style of your
chosen craft. You will have quests one for joining the next rank of crafting and a choice
between each specialized craft. I would suggest talking with your server craft community as
well as your own personal desires on which choice to make.
Basic Crafting 101
Stages
There are 4 stages to crafting in which you do different things.
First Stage:
This is where you pick the basic choices regarding the item you are crafting.
Second and Third Stage:
These stages are where you apply the three basic skills of Station, Utility, and Tools.
Note: Beginning of Third Stage is where you apply dusts. It has to be the first action
you take in third stage.
Final Stage:
This is where you finalize the product.
Skills
I have heard many theorys and claims on how you should set your skills and stats.
My view from experience is you need a somewhat balanced perspective. This balance is going
to have to take into account your crafting gear as well. I try to keep in general a balance of
30% station, 30% tools, and 40% utility.
Why do I choose to spend them this way? The majority or most critical application of
your limited action points is spent in two places, Utility Actions and Complications. I keep my
utilities slightly higher so I get better results when doing not only progress but quality actions.
Why keep them so closely balanced? If you let the gap grow too wide between the
skills your going to find your having alot of difficulty in the actions related to that skill causing
you to spend more action points.
Another view on this would be to have your 40% skill in what are the overall (both refining
and finishing) complications. This can help you to be able to deal with complications better
and spend less points in removing these gremlins that plague us.
Stats
Again there are many theorys and claims on how to set your skills. I think foremost
you should decide what works best for you. I choose to keep them once again balanced mostly.
Its just my feeling on how things go and its a bit difficult really to truly test all the possible
scenarios effectively since it would require leveling several crafters all into the 20's imo to even
consider getting some thoughts to figure out more on these.
Gear
If you find yourself having difficulty with WO's this is the first place that I recommend
checking. If you gear starts getting out of date or could use more +skill items then this is can
be a problem.
+Skill vs +Stat gear is a debate for some but frankly its no contest. Skill gear by far
in my experience will give you far more tangible results. These will also help you balance
your skills and you may find yourself needing to adjust for new gear at times.
Where do I get better gear? There are a few ways to get it.
First and foremost is going to be 5 and 3 WO's.I try to do Moderate 3's and
Easy/Moderate 5's when I am looking to try to upgrade my gear. Do what works best for you
but just remember its not a guarntee so you may find yourself doing alot of them. Try to
throw some in while your just leveling.
Second place for some nice gear is quests. Some are obvious and right at your
main crafting area and others in towns, outposts, and possibly other locations. As we are
really discovering some of these (espically since they snuck in new quests with live) your best
resource for this will be crafting websites such as vanguardcrafters.com or your server crafting
community.
Third place is going to be players whether its other crafters selling off stuff they do not
use anymore or if recipes are added for it having them make gear (I hope they do this!)
Completing a recipe
You should know the basic concepts of this from doing the starter quests. You usually
have 2000 action points to spend but this may vary with special recipes.
I am going to explain some of the insights and general perceptions that I have at this
point. It may be my own personal delusions on some things but its how I do things.
Beginning a stage, I will always choose a moderate progress action for the first action in
a stage just to see how much it gives me. I want to judge just how difficult this is going to be and
with balanced skills/stats this tends to be pretty effective method for myself. If its one skill in a stage
then 20%+ is a good indicator that it will not be too difficult but if its 10% then its going to be rough.
If its two actions then 13-15 is a good start.. if its 7 then its going to be rough.
Utility (aka Quality Stage) is where your going to make your biggest decisions and possibly
your biggest mistakes by overspending points. If your doing a WO then your going to need to try to
judge just how difficult it is for you (such as above), how many action points at, how many other
and skill actions do you need to do. For most recipes I would recommend just making one without
using dusts or rares if possible and just see how far you can push it.
Addition for WO's
It is ALWAYS better to accept lower quality results on a work order than to not turn in
the full amount of items that the WO calls for.
Leveling Crafting
There are several methods that people swear by but its all going to come down to you.
I have discovered in my progression in live that what works best for me has varied as I progress.
Sometimes doing Single WO's has been quick while others plodding through a 5 WO has been
faster. At the start of each level though I recommend picking up some 5's regardless of anything
else your doing for skill ups and maybe some new gear.
Harvesting Notes
Rare resources currently are just that rare in my experience and we are very dependent
upon the availbility of these. Never if at all possible harvest a rare solo.. its nowhere near as good
as group harvesting (and it seems to give even better results on rares).
Group harvesting is very nice. Basically it works like solo harvesting but instead your group
harvests it at the same time. You can assist even if you do not have the skill by using harvester tools
(they will show harvest skill requirement and not specialized skill). Blacksmiths can make upgraded
versions of these. Make friends in your craft community or even between guilds to help harvest these
resources to support the crafters.
2 people looks like its 55 'resources' max on normal nodes
3 people looks like its 75 'resources' max on normal nodes
I have not tested larger groups yet to see what the max may be. We got more resources
than we normally get when we did a rare node (was something like 1.8 for normal and the rare gave us
something like 2.3 it could have been fluke but this is what we observed).