D’oh – Ration’s Crafting Guide
Preface:
The following is a compilation of the efforts of the Crafting Guild and its affiliates. It is based on information obtained in Beta 2, just prior to the “Level 20” wipe. Several weeks of raw data was collected, and unfortunately, many drudges were injured in the process.
The following is a list of Major Contributors (in Alphabetical Order): An’nai, Arqane, D’oh, Dubious_Advocate, Duxx, Fuzzy the Baritone, Hotep, Huldo, Imperfect, Kragus, Laxvice, Niamh, Mad Prophet, Miiranda, Orgus, Painless, Pandrif and Rodric. Many, many others have made donations to our cause. Unfortunately, file size constraints prevent me from adding the two extra pages of names.
We would also like to give a special thank you to Shadoo for giving us a forum on ACOutpost.com.
Transmutation:
Whenever you pick up any loot in AC2, you will notice that the items have several values associated with them. One of the first things listed when you examine an item is its value. This value represents how much gold you will gain if you “transmute” the item. Transmuting is accomplished by dragging the icon of the item over the small bag of gold in your inventory window (the bag appears just above your paper doll image). Drop the item onto the bag and you will be prompted whether you want to transmute or not. Select yes and you will become insanely rich. Well maybe not.
Another set of values you will notice is it’s material values. These are listed as Wood: 16 or Iron: 20. An item may have one or more of these values listed, as the item may be made from several components. The numbers following the material type represent the quality of the material contained. The higher the number the better quality it is. There are currently five common materials in the game: Wood, Iron, Stone, Acid, and Crystal. Occasionally you may come across an item with a value like Iron (Silver): 5. What this means, is that the item contains an uncommon form of the common materials. Each common material has an associated uncommon material as follows: Iron-Silver, Wood-Elariwood, Stone-Obsidian, Acid-Brimstone and Crystal-Gemstone. For now, just concentrate on the common materials, we will be playing with the others in a later section.
Note: Material values are quality not quantity. Loot items cannot be stacked or combined in any way to make a higher number. Mined items can be modified though, see the Mining section.
Crafting Basics:
The first thing you will want to do, whether you know it or not, will be to make your first weapon. The freebee and loot weapons on the starter islands are horrible. The crafted ones will let you kill rats and beetles in two or three shots. Each race and class has it’s own first weapon, so I won’t be explaining them all. The good thing is, the method to make them all is nearly the same. I’ll use the human bow as an example. It does not matter what race or class you are to make this item.
To craft your weapon, you are going to need to find your recipe. Go into the crafting menu (F7), and scroll down the list to Human Weaponsmithing and click the arrow beside it. This will open up a sub-menu containing all of the human race specific weapons. Find “Bows” and click the arrow next to it. Yet another sub-menu will open containing all the recipes for bows available to you. If you are just starting, Whipstock Bow will be the only one you see, click the arrow next to it. This will bring up a brand new window called the “recipe window”. Before we get to this, drag and drop the small arrow you just clicked into your taskbar. This will make it easier to pull up your recipe window for the bow in the future.
Next, read the instructions that appear in the recipe window. It will say that it requires an item with a wood quality of 15 or higher. Look through your inventory for an item that matches the description. When you have found one, drag its icon up and place it in the recipe window. You can now hit the “craft” button on the bottom of the recipe window. Your avatar will go through a few motions, and within moments something wonderful happens. I’m saying “something”, because several things could actually happen here. You either made your new uber bow, or a less usefull one, or nothing at all. In any case, the item you were using in the recipe will be eaten up in the process. You may need to repeat the process a few times before you get a good bow, it’s also recommended that even after you succeed in making the bow that you make a few others. There is some fluctuation in the values of the crafted items and the best bow possible doesn’t always come out on the first try. With the exception of the material type used, every starting weapon recipe works the same way.
Recipe Advancement:
Whenever you attempt to create something there will be one of four basic outcomes:
1. Exceptional Success. You succeed in making an item of exceptional quality. Currently bugged.
2. Success. You have made a normal crafted item.
3. Success with flaws. You have made an item, but it is lacking in some respect(s).
4. Failure. Nothing is created.
When you get outcome 1 or 2, a yellow-green star will briefly appear in front of your avatar letting everyone know you are a master crafter on the rise. On outcome 3 and 4 a blue-purple star will appear and quickly melt letting everyone know you can’t even tie your own shoes. Also on outcome 1 and 2 something else interesting happens…
When you succeed in making a good item the new item appears in your inventory. Next you’ll notice that the numbers under the item in its recipe window have increased. For example it may go from 0/5 to 1/5. This means that you have succeeded once out of the five required times to master this particular recipe. Finally, each successful craft raises your skill in that crafting category by one point (i.e. – Human Weaponsmithing: 1 is now HW: 2, if you made the bow). This category skill rating effects your success rate for all the items in the category, so it’s best to complete all the recipes in a given category even if you don’t plan on using all the items. Once you have mastered the recipe (5/5), there is a little “level up” animation and you will become much more proficient at making that item. As a bonus, a new recipe will appear letting you make an ever better quality item of the same type.
Note: Some crafted items can decay over time. These items will show a timer when you examine them. When the time runs out, the item becomes weak and should be transmuted and replaced.
Note: Recipes are generally categorized by players into what are called “tiers”. A tier represents all the recipes that create items of a certain usable level. For instance, all the Armor and Weapon recipes that require quality 15 items and are level restricted to 3 are considered “tier 1”.
Tip: Because your chances to succeed go up with every completed recipe it is HIGHLY recommended that you finish all of the lower Tier recipes in a category before moving on to the next Tier.
Forges and Crafting Tools:
In addition to improving your skill in crafting by creating new items, there are ways to give your skills a much-needed temporary boost. The first way is to visit a forge. Forges are mostly found in the major towns all over Osteth. Simply standing near an active forge will give you a subtle bonus to a specific crafting category or categories making it easier to craft. There are several types of forges, each giving bonuses to different skills. To activate a forge, examine it to see what type of material it needs. If it needs stone, drag and drop some pure stone(see mining) onto the forge. The more fuel the forge has, the greater your skill bonus will be.
Another, more portable way to give yourself a bonus is to make a crafting tool. Crafting tools are found in the crafting Menu (F7) under Toolmaking. There are several different types of tools, each designed to give a bonus for certain crafting skills. There is even a tool that helps you make tools! To make the tools follow the same procedure that you would for any other craft recipe. Once a tool is crafted you must wield it to receive its crafting bonus. Obviously, it’s a bad idea to wield a crafting tool while in combat. The hatchet may look cool, but showing it to rampaging monsters won’t save you.
Mining:
Scattered about the countryside are various odd formations that are called Mines. The mines in AC2 are not actual mines in the classic sense, you know, the big dark caverns where miner type people hang out and extract ore. The mines are merely a generalized term for a place to extract raw material. There are five basic types of mines currently in the game. Each conveniently corresponds with one of the five common material types. Iron Mines yield Iron, Crystal Mines yield Crystal, Stone Quarries yield Stone, Fumaroles supply Acid, and Logging Camps drop Wood. You can find mines easily by opening your mini-map and looking for small orange triangles. Mines are not easy to spot in your main view, (especially the logging camp) they look like very strange landscape ornaments. Use caution when approaching a mine, there is a very good chance they are guarded by a high level creature or swarms of smaller ones.
Once the coast is clear, walk up to the mine and double click on it. You will go through your crafting animation and then Woot! a small piece of the material falls into your inventory. You are allowed to extract material from mines only five times in a 24 hour period per material type. When 24 hours rolls around and resets your charges for a certain material, ALL of your mining charges will reset. There is also a small chance to get one of the five uncommon material types from the basic mines, examine the mine to see if it produces these traits.
Note: Using a crafted tool on it’s respected mine is designed to give you a slight bonus to success rate and mote quality.
Note Every fourth time you mine successfully, your management skill for the material type goes up 1 point. So mine every day!
Purification and Distillation:
These two skills are the most underused, and misunderstood of the basic crafting skills. The very purpose of their existence has been hotly debated. I will do my best to clear out the hooey, theories and rumors and give you the facts.
Purification allows you to take a mote of material and increase it’s quality rating. In order to accomplish this, look in the proper Material Management category, then under Enhancement. Open up the Purify material recipe and place your mote of material there. It must be a mote, loot items do not work. If you have a tool for the material type equip it, then hit the craft button on the recipe window. As in item crafting, you can either fail or succeed. However, in the case of purification the recipe does not eat your mote, it simply changes it’s quality rating. The resulting mote will have a new value with a variance of @+/- 5 points. There are two skills that affect the results in different ways. Your overall management skill and your distillation skill work in conjunction to both improve the success rate of distillation and also to give bonuses on top of your variance. What this means is that at higher levels, even a failure may give you a positive improvement. The higher your skill, the less likely you are to get a negative result in your mote. This skill requires gold in addition to the mote in order to operate. You may reuse the same mote over and over again provided you have the gold to do so.
Distillation lets you turn a common trait mote into an uncommon trait mote. The process is set up exactly like purification. Look under the proper Management skill, then Enhancement, then Distill Material to find the recipe. Unlike purification, when you run this skill the mote of material will be eaten regardless of a success or fail. Only in the case of a success you will receive a new mote of uncommon material. The quality of the new mote is currently bugged and always will come out with a value of 1. Motes of uncommon material cannot be purified. Success in distillation is determined by your Management and Distillation skill levels.
Note: Success in purification and distillation will both increase your overall management skill at a ratio of 3 to 1.
In closing:
With every new patch, changes are made to make statements in this guide incorrect or obsolete. A copy of this text will be posted in the Crafting Guild forum and will be updated as needed. We will be continually testing the crafting system well into retail. If you have feedback or would like to contribute in any way email me at [email protected] or better yet, please visit our forums at www.acoutpost.com .
On behalf of the Crafting Guild, we wish you luck in your travels. Craft well.
