Before we do anything, let me give you a warning about crafting within
Aion.
Despite what the evil denizens of your starting area will imply
when they insist you gather ingredients for their health potions, you
can *not* do any crafting until you complete your ascension and become
a daeva. That’s right. None. Nada. Zilch. Do you have any
idea how much time I spent roaming the land, looking for a crafting
trainer in the early levels of the game? Better me than you though,
right?



Once you've managed to ascend and become href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/70855" target="_blank">the stunning
immortal you were
born to be, you'll need to make your way to the crafting district of
your capital city (Pandaemonium for the Asmodians or Sanctum for the
Elyos). Check the map to find the correct section of the city and make
your way there to begin.



There are six different crafting professions you can learn. To learn a
profession, just talk to the appropriate trainer within the crafting
district. While you can learn all of them, you can only train one to
the highest levels in the game, so keep that in mind for the future.
The current professions available to choose from are:



Alchemy:
Create potions, magical weapons (spellbooks for casters), and equipment
upgrade items. The kids will be banging on your door day and night to
see what you've been brewing.



Armorsmithing:
Create all metal armor pieces for href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/70906" target="_blank">the tanks
around the land. They may
not have a lot of brains, but it's your job to give them the means to
protect what little they've got.



Cooking:
Create tasty foods and beverages to buff you and your groupmates, not
to mention your customers. Sure, everyone could survive on gruel and
water if they really had to, but let's face it... nobody wants that.



Handiwork:
Make wooden weapons and all the parts that don't fit into any other
profession. You're the one-man (or woman) cleanup crew. If it's needed
in a recipe by someone else, you’re the person to make it.



Sewing:
Tailoring cloth and leather
armor pieces is your life. It may not be
the most glamorous sounding gig in the game, but creating a powerful
robe will keep your local spell slingers happy. Trust me; you always
want to keep your casters
happy.



Weaponsmithing:
Thoughts of creating metal weapons consume your every waking moment.
Armorsmithing may be all about protecting a fighter’s noggin,
but you just want to see someone get brained with one of your
creations. If it was designed to be shiny and cause a world of hurt,
you were the hand behind its creation.

While
it's possible to learn each skill, I'd advise grabbing one to
concentrate on initially. The costs involved with becoming proficient
in your chosen profession may start off small, but they’ll
begin burning their way deep into your pocketbook before you know it.
If you’ve got the kinah to spend, or the time to hunt down
materials, more power to you. You'll still need to do work orders to
get recipes (unless you want to buy those off of other players as
well), so be prepared to pay, no matter which path you choose.



To craft anything in Aion, you have to be at the appropriate
workstation. As a Sorceror (and href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/70988" target="_blank">Spiritmaster),
I chose to concentrate
on the Sewing profession to offset the cost of armor pieces in the
future. Thus my instrument of imminent pauperdom was a magical loom.
Feel free to choose any station in the area. It doesn't matter whether
another player is there or not, as it has absolutely no effect on your
own work.



Once you've chosen your loom, the crafting UI will appear. The window
will show you what recipes you have available, how many of each you can
make with the materials you currently have available on your person,
and an option to choose how many you wish to create. It may sound a
little convoluted, but it's actually an intuitive and elegant piece of
design work. At a glance, you can see what you need to do and whether
you've got the ability to do so.



Choose how many widgets you wish to make (you can also select the "Make
All" option), then click the craft button and get ready to pray.
Similar to the method of gathering used in Aion, the actual act of
crafting involves clicking once, then sitting on the edge of your seat
in palpable anticipation as you watch your pass and fail meters rise.
Sadly, you have no control over their progression. If your pass meter
reaches the end before your fail meter does, you've successfully
created your very first item. Just because you managed to create an
item doesn't mean you'll get a skill-up point for it, so you'll need to
be both patient and persistent.



The primary method of gaining skill (and recipes), is to complete work
orders for your profession trainer. As you progress in skill, your
trainer will give you more difficult orders to fulfill. If you
can’t gain any skill-ups from a work order, your trainer will
no longer offer it to you. It's nice to know they're looking out for
you.



For the very first work order, your trainer will provide all the
materials you require to complete it. If you happen to fail the order,
just abandon the task and grab it again. When you do, the trainer will
remove whatever requested items you had managed to complete and give
you the quest over again. Yes, that means you'll need to start from
scratch. Just look at it as more opportunities to gain some skill.

There are a couple of different ways you can go about getting your
skills up. The first (and possibly most boring method), is to grab the
first work order from your trainer (skill of 1 required) and continue
to repeat it until your trainer no longer offers it to you (skill of
40). This method will save you some much needed cash, but may not be
worth the cost in sanity since as you progress closer to a skill level
of 40, your skill-ups will come less and less often.



Unlike some other games, the trainers in Aion do not limit you to only
having one active work order from them. This brings me to the second
method of gaining skills and the route I chose to pursue. Be warned
that this method gets expensive quickly, so be prepared to take the
occasional break to go out there and do some hunting to replenish your
ever-dwindling coin purse.



By taking every available work order (more will open up every 10 points
you progress in your profession), it not only saves trips back and
forth between the loom and your trainer (though this is a miniscule
distance), but also grants you better rewards. With this method, you'll
be gaining progress at a steady rate instead of trudging through the
lowest order to save some money.



Every work order past the first requires you to provide some of the
materials yourself. Everything I needed for the first tier of trainer
(skill of 1 to 99), I found on the Sewing merchant right near the
looms. You'll be amazed at how quickly the costs of all this adds up. I
know I certainly was. As I mentioned earlier, be ready to go do some
hunting and you'll make back the cash in no time. Fortunately, it
doesn't take too long to gain a decent amount of money in Aion. This is
a good thing, because to progress past a skill of 99, you're going to
need 18,000+ kinah to do it.



For those old-school players of EverQuest, this method of crafting and
gaining skill will feel very familiar. Unlike other games, if you fail
in the creation of your item, you will lose the materials you were
using to create it. This is no big deal in the very beginning, but
imagine how much more painful that system is going to feel as you get
closer and closer to the top, losing both expensive and rare materials
alike. The system may be simplistic, but that doesn't mean those
players at the top tiers didn't pay their dues along the way.