Crafting

Alpha-1 Forge concept art.

Crafting and gathering is a very important component of the economy that players will have direct control over. Whether you wish to build a sprawling plantation around your house, or wish to travel the vast wilderness in search of treasure and resources. There are many tools available to the crafters of our world. Regardless of how you gather your resources, we believe that every item that exists in the world should in some way reflect its creator. As such, there will be extreme versatility in our crafting system – giving crafters the ability to create unique items that represent their strengths and weaknesses.

Crafting is one of the artisan classes in Ashes of Creation. It is a driving force for the game economy.

• Crafting requires the acquisition of recipes in order to craft items.
• Crafting stations are located on freeholds or within nodes.
  • Higher tier crafting stations are unlocked with node progression.

Anything that you want to bring into existence in the world is going to be built by players: Whether that is Ships, Siege engines, Weapons, Armor, etc. – Jeffrey Bard

There will not be a labor or energy system in Ashes of Creation.

There is no labor or energy system in Ashes. However, that's not to say that crafting will not be difficult. Crafting is very difficult; but it is because it is difficult that it will be very rewarding as well. – Steven Sharif

Crafting professions

Pre-alpha crafting.

• Alchemy
• Armor smithing
• Blacksmithing
• Carpentry
• Cooking
• Jewel crafting
• Scribes
• Ship building
• Siege weapons
• Weapon smithing

Artisan mastery

Ambachtsklassen staan niet toe dat een character een meester in alles kan worden. Een speler moet voor elk character een pad kiezen in de ambachtsvaardigheidsboom. Het vertakken in specifieke paden staat de speler toe om zich te specialiseren in bepaalde vakgebieden. Dit moedigt een spelers inderdependentie aan, wat op zijn beurt de ambachtservaring verrijkt.

• Beroepskeuze heeft geen effect op de statistieken van een speler.
• Characters binnen een account, ofwel alts, mogen verschillende beroepen hebben.

Wanneer we refereren naar het niet-zijn van meesters van alles, betekent dat niet dat je geen meester kunt zijn binnen jouw eigen ambachtstype. Dit type kan maker, verzamelaar of verwerker zijn. Je zult een meester zijn van een van die drie, je zult geen meester zijn van de andere twee. – Steven Sharif

Recipes

Crafting in Ashes of Creation is recipe based, not RNG based.

• Within a crafting recipe, there are dials (based on artisan specialization) that are used customize crafted items, such as:
  • Increasing one stat at the expense of another.
  • Making an item more magical versus more physical.

I think Star Wars Galaxies had a great crafting system... The resource gathering and the crafting system altogether as a whole really was I think way beyond its time. That's kind of the direction we want to go, where there's choices to be made in the crafting system and those choices change what you end up with... It's not just about doing X recipe to get Y item. You know, there's actually thought involved in it and there is you know a market to be captured based on those decisions. – Jeffrey Bard

Obtaining recipes

There are many different ways to achieve recipes. We want to take crafting and house the location of those recipes throughout different progression paths, so that not everything is pigeon-holed into one way forward. – Steven Sharif

Recipes are found in the world, for the most part.

• Drops from monsters.
• Completing quest lines.
• Becoming Mayor may unlock specific node-related recipes.
• Progression within a social organization, such as the Thieves' guild or Scholar's academy.
• Killing a legendary boss.
• Gaining a title.
• By constructing certain buildings on a freehold.
• Based on status within a religious organization/church.
• Deconstructing/dissassembling rare item drops from bosses can yield recipes that can be used to replicate that item.
• There may be a royalty system where players can license recipes to other players for a certain amount of time and collect royalties.

We talked about having this idea where if somebody discovers a recipe they get exclusive access to that recipe for a given amount of time similar to a patent; and then they can license that recipe out to other crafters so they can use the recipe and eventually that timer runs out and then everybody can use it, but we wanted to reward people for experimentation and going out in the world and finding something new. – Steven Sharif

Race or class locked crafting

Crafting will not be race or class locked.

Crafting mechanics

Players are able to specialize in focused crafting branches.

• There are going to be different tiers of crafting stations that represent the quality of the items being crafted.

Crafting stations can be located on freeholds or within nodes.

• Certain crafting stations relate to specific nodes, areas or buildings.

Q: Can crafting stations be mobilized / moved and can they be placed anywhere in the world?

A: It depends on the crafting station. There are going to be different tiers of crafting stations that represent you know the quality of item you're looking to create within that specific profession. There's going to be crafting stations that can be utilized by players within their freeholds and then crafting stations that are resigned only to the development of particular nodes, within particular areas, or particular buildings... There's a wide variety of those things to kind of make it a more dynamic experience and and kind of something that caveat how players decide to build the world and what the value of those things are. – Steven Sharif

Skill-based crafting mechanics have been considered and may be a part of the final design.

We did discuss that type of a feature where the skill of the crafter would grant a greater window of skill-based type crafting. So the higher master level you have of crafting a certain item, the greater your potential to impact the quality of that item might be... The concern obviously that we have when going into developing this type of system is that we don't want what is a fun - you know for lack of a better term - mini game to be something that becomes repetitive and kind of makes it monotonous... If when we start to flesh out the crafting system and we take a look at that interaction of melding crafting, the actual activity of making something, there is room in the design sheet for different iterations of that particular action; and we may see something come about that can be skill oriented, but that's something that's going to require a lot of testing and different iterations from a design standpoint. – Steven Sharif

Crafting materials

Materials (processed goods) are obtained in the following ways:

• Processing raw materials.
• World boss drops.
• Item deconstruction.

The quality of crafting materials will influence the quality of the crafted item.

High-level materials

Materials for crafting high-level items are obtained from world bosses and through the deconstruction of other high-level items.

Many end level items with crafting will require mats from world bosses etc. we want those systems intertwined. However. There may be opportunities to deconstruct high level items and replace those needed materials as well. We will be testing the crafting trees in alpha and beta. – Steven Sharif

Crafted items

Crafted items will be on par with best in slot items.

• Highest tier items will be a combo of both crafted and boss dropped.
• The rarity of the items will be commensurate with the effort required to gather, process and craft the items.
• It may be possible for crafters to determine what their crafted items will look like.
  • At the moment, harnessing corruption to warp items into demonic or decayed things is not on the cards.
• A crafter's name is embedded in the items they craft.

We believe that every item that exists in the world should in some way reflect its creator. As such, there will be extreme versatility in our crafting system – giving crafters the ability to create unique items that represent their strengths and weaknesses.

Crafting and World Bosses will be the main way to obtain high-level gear. There are some exceptions to this in the form of Legendary items (single server drops or discoveries), and other equipment that may drop wholesale, but we want Artisans and top tier raiding to produce the lion’s share of high level, high effectiveness equipment. – Sarah Flanagan

Skills and stats on gear

Crafters will be able to assign different skills/abilities and stats on armor.

• Master crafters will be able to influence several but not all stats on their crafted items.

Not all armor sets will be the cookie cutter kind of set. They will have the influences from the crafter available in it, if it's a crafted set. – Steven Sharif

Gear is broken down into Core Stats and Additional Stats.

Item creation suite

An "item creation suite" that allows crafters to create unique appearances for items has been discussed as a future possibility.

Relics

Reliquary concept art.

Each city has what's called a reliquary and the reliquary begins to spawn unique items for the citizens to take advantage of based on the performance progression and achievements that those citizens have within the world. So if your citizens are part of downing a world boss or completing a dungeon in a record time or crafting a legendary item or whatever: all of these different types of progression paths for the cities could result in the production of a relic that exists within the reliquary. – Steven Sharif

Node relic. This is a protective relic that is preventing an attack. Once stolen, it enables a siege against the metropolis.

Relics are achievements for a node that unlock over time. They allow node citizens to craft certain legendary items and progress in certain legendary quest lines.

• Relics are placed in a node's reliquary.
• Limited access to the relics stored in a node's reliquary are granted to registered attackers after successfully destroying that node in a node siege.

Artisan supply chain

Artisans within Ashes of Creation must choose a path in their artisan skill tree. This inter-dependency establishes a supply chain from raw materials to finished product. Each stage of the chain may require caravans to transport goods from one artisan to another.

1. Obtaining raw materials:
   • Using the Gathering profession.
   • By killing mobs and bosses.
   • From deconstructing weapons or armor.
   • By purchasing them from other players.
2. Refining the raw materials with the Processing profession.
3. Crafting the finished product using its crafting recipe.
   • Recipes are also obtainable from boss drops.

As a crafter you're going to want to know where certain recipes can be fulfilled; which nodes have the capability of creating what you've processed material that you've gathered for; and then you're going to want to plan out your route to either transit the goods there or make sure that you're situated in the area so that you can go out collect and build in that area as well. So there's a lot of planning that's going to be necessary. – Steven Sharif

Gathering

Alpha-1 gathering.

Gathering in the Alpha-1 early preview.

Gathering is one of the artisan classes in Ashes of Creation.

• Gatherable resources are discovered by trial-and-error and by learning their visuals.
• Gathering requires the creation and use of tools.
• Gathering within a node's Zone of influence (ZOI) will contribute to its experience growth.
• Certain low level gatherables will have a tiered progression into higher level crafting.

Certain low level gatherables will have a tiered progression into higher level crafting. So for example you know if I'm gathering... leaves of the blue petal flower to craft a pigment that's going to be used in the development of a tunic that I can wear at level one, then I may need to collect those in order to craft the pigments to craft a greater pigment that might be present in the in the crafting of a higher level item. So it's going to be kind of a tiered progression so that materials have relevancy throughout the different levels of of crafting; and that's important from an economic stability standpoint. You need to have layered demand from a supply standpoint so that players who are interested in collecting and gathering those materials still are relevant when the later level items are crafted. – Steven Sharif

Processing

Furnace that can be placed on a freehold.

Processing is one of the artisan classes in Ashes of Creation.

• Processing involves the refining of raw materials obtained from gathering and item deconstruction.

Processing requires blueprints for the construction of buildings that are needed to process resources.

• Buildings can be placed on a freehold to process resources.

Upgrading items

There are two types of enchantments for items: Vertical and horizontal.

• Vertical enchantments are a power progression for a crafted item. More damage or mitigations, added effects or bonuses. Vertical enchantments include risks.
  • There isn't RNG in crafting but there may be a small amount of RNG in enchanting.
  • Over-enchanting items comes with a potential risk that the item decays or is destroyed if a safety margin is exceeded. This system is subject to testing.

When it comes to over-enchanting things, what we're going to do likely is have a safety- and this is something obviously it needs to be tested- but we're going to have a safety period of enchantment you know like in Lineage 2 I think you could enchant plus four or something. And so we're gonna have a similar system where you can enchant safely and then when you start to take risks, that percentage of potentially damaging your item either through the decay system or completely disabling it through the destruction system will be a risk that's present. – Steven Sharif

• Horizontal enchantments are more situational. For example: I'd like my sword to do force damage instead of holy damage because the monsters I tend to fight are incorporeal.
  • This doesn't make the item more powerful, but instead more applicable to different situations, and less so to others.
  • This type of enchanting assumes no risk, just time and effort.

Enchanting services are sold at player stalls.

Repairing items

Item repair will cost crafting materials.

• 0% durability will unequip items, increasing its repair cost.
• Damaged gear can be reforged at a player stall using a portion of the materials that were necessary to craft the item.
• There is no limit to the number of times an item can be repaired.

For example: if you have an iron sword and then the sword gets damaged from use, you have to use more iron to repair it; and what that does is... make sure that there's significant sinks in the game for base materials so that you are creating a scarcity and demand that's present on the creation of higher goods as well as supplying the necessary decay components for the world. – Steven Sharif

Escrow system

An escrow system is planned to prevent griefing in the crafting system.

We're going to have a UI... you're gonna put the resources in or they're gonna put the resources in. It'll be like an escrow system and then once [the job] is complete you'll get the item they'll get the money.

Caravan components

Certificates to create a caravan are issued by certain NPCs within nodes or at certain points of interest in the world. These certificates are comprised of multiple components:

• Axles.
• Armor rating (damage mitigation).
• Capacity.
• Chasis.
• Hit points.
• Maneuverability.
• Number of hired NPC guards.
• Speed.
• Steeds.
• Wheels.

Caravan components obtained from crafters will have stats according to the skill of each artisan.

• Mounts bred through the Animal husbandry profession can be applied as certificates toward the construction of caravans.

Ship building

Ship building is a crafting profession that is able to construct ship components based on blueprints that unlock capabilities that scale with their progression within the ship building profession.

• Movement, Durability, Speed, Turn rate, Hit points, Defensive and Damage abilities.
• Aesthetic customization.
• Ship components can be sold to other players.

A player does not need to be a ship builder to construct ships. Players utilize the ship components that are crafted by ship builders to upgrade their ships.

• Anyone with the right schematics, materials and an advanced enough node may construct a ship.

• Ships may only be crafted or upgraded in harbor crafting stations that are unlocked by the advancement of coastal nodes.

You will not need to be a ship builder profession to construct ships. The shipbuilder profession particularly they have the ability to craft components of the ships which increases the ship's capabilities, defenses, speeds, turn rate, offense and defense, you know all those types of things and then they can sell those to other players. – Steven Sharif

Players can choose which "joints" get populated with either utility or weaponry spots on a ship.

Backpacks

Backpack concept art.

A backpack is an item crafted by artisans that provides personal inventory space.

• The higher level the backpack, the greater the inventory space.
• Different backpack types cater to different activities.
  • Gatherer's backpacks are intended to carry gatherables.
  • Adventurer's backpacks are intended to carry consumables and items.

In order to roleplay you need to be able to represent kind of what your character is doing in that world and you know part of what animation is doing is creating these sockets on the let's say the belt or the backpack that you know can plug in certain types of props or items that are created by the character team. – Steven Sharif

Artwork

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Community guides

• Ashes101 - The Artisan System - Crafting

See also

• Gathering
• Processing
• Economy