Warhammer Basic Crafting Guide

by Anna “Morvelaira” Dotson

In Warhammer, it's you and your weapon against the raging hordes of your enemies. Battle is non-stop as you fight fiercely to defend your realm. But sometimes it's nice to kick back and not have to think about those things for a little while. Sometimes you want to create instead of just destroy. And for that – there's crafting!

Crafting in Warhammer is divided into two categories, Production Crafting (where you actually make something useful) and Gathering (where you find the ingredients for Production Crafting). Each character can have one of each skill, and only one so choose wisely. There are two Production Crafting skills (Apothecary, Talisman Making) and four Gathering skills (Butchering, Cultivation, Magical Salvaging, Scavenging). If you're going to be a Talisman Maker, you'll almost certainly have to be a Magical Salvager, since that's the only profession where you get essential ingredients from. Any of the other three Gathering skills are well suited to Apothecary though, so you'll have more options.

Now before you go and decide what skills you want to take based purely off of names, it would probably be a good idea to know how each one works – and on a deeper level than theory. The two Production skills both have a wide variety of ingredients to use, not just in effect but in type. Let me explain with an example from Alchemy:

Before you can even begin to craft a potion in Alchemy, you'll need an ingredient type called a container. This will generally be something like an Empty Glass Vial – easily purchasable at your local crafting vendor. There are three different kinds of containers currently available at the crafting vendors. The Empty Glass Vial is for making consumable potions, the Mortar and Pestle is for making dyes, and a Simple Alchemical Condenser is for making something called Gold Essence.

Now that you have your container figured out, it's time to think about a main ingredient. Most things that can be used as a main ingredient are marked as such in their tool tips. If you're making Dye or Gold Essence your choice for main ingredient will be very limited, either to a pigment for dye, or Goldweed for Gold Essence. If you're making a potion though, you have many more options. The main ingredient that you choose will determine the effect of the potion. Some will create healing potions, and others will boost a specific stat. You can usually get a hint of which main ingredient goes with which effect by looking at their tooltip.

Next comes stabilizers and Fixers. These ingredients are used to make your potion more stable, so that 1) it is created successfully (your container will explode on a fail) and 2) that your potion doesn't contain any unwanted side effects. All potions without a stabilizer and dyes without a Fixer will be failures. So you'll need to add at least one. Fixers and basic stabilizers can be bought from the vendor. The stabilizer available is Cloudy Water – and higher quality waters found on mobs will do a better job at stabilizing a potion. Even with stabilization, your potion could still turn out volatile – which has a possibility of backfiring on the drinker. Using higher quality water or two different kinds of water can mitigate this.

So, you know what kind of potion you're making, and it's even going to be relatively stable! What's that? You want it to last longer or heal for more? You can augment your potion with the other generic ingredients out there. Some will increase duration, others will increase the effect. You have 3 slots to add ingredients and stabilizers after the main ingredient, so it's worth some playing around with to find the potion of your dreams.

Now that's a very detailed example of how Apothecary works. What about Talisman Making? It's really the same, just with different names. You still start off with a container. Your main ingredients will be designated as fragments in their tooltips, and your other ingredients will be called essences, curios, and coins. Again, some of these are available from a vendor, and others come from Magical Salvaging. (Mostly the essences.)

Since we've talked at length about what to do with your ingredients, it's now time to discuss where they come from. Of the four Gathering skills, let's start with Butchering and Scavenging. They're really the same skill in principle, though their targets are slightly different. Both skills rely on finding and killing mobs. Butchering is specific to the beast type mobs (like wolves or cold ones) and Scavenging is specific to sentient mobs (like Dark Elves or Servants of Chaos). Once the mob is dead and has been looted completely, it's available to have it's thing done to it.

If you need a parallel, it's similar to the way skinning works in World of Warcraft. Once the mob is dead and looted, you can skin (or butcher or scavenge) it. All of the materials that come from Butchering will find their end use in Apothecary (or at least that is what I have knowledge of at this time. Subject to change!) Scavenging will be able to contribute to either Production skill, especially as it is the source for Gold Dust – an important ingredient in making the Gold Essence mentioned in the Apothecary example, which is in turn an important ingredient in Talisman making.

Next we have Magical Salvaging. This is dependent on mob drops. Sometimes you will come across drops (mostly from sentient mobs) which have a green name and say in their tool tip that they can be magically salvaged. Using your skill, you can break them down into essences, which are used exclusively by Talisman Making. If you need another WoW-type example, this works exactly like Disenchanting where you click your Magical Salvaging icon, then click what you want to salvage, and – poof – it's an essence.

Last but not least we come to Cultivation. Cultivation is the least dangerous of all the Gathering skills (no mobs required!) but is also the most time consuming. It is, in essence, Warhammer's take on farming. You will grow seeds and spores into plants, which then are used exclusively by Apothecary. A good variety of seeds are available by vendor, though others of wider variety will drop from mobs or can be Scavenged. You then take the seed you want to cultivate, place it in the cultivation UI and it starts to grow on a timer. As the timer moves into different stages, you can opt to add soil, water or nutrients in the correct stages. While this isn't required, it does increase the chance of your cultivation returning a special seed back at the end with the plant, so it's worth it to try. These soils, waters and nutrients are available from vendors, or dropped.

There you have it, Ten Ton Hammer's basic guide to crafting in Warhammer. While it's no impromptu recipe list, hopefully you have a better idea at the workings of each profession now, and can start your WAR Crafting career with more of a clue than I did! So go in there. Get messy. Try new combinations. I'll be right there beside you figuring it out, and hopefully will have some nice things to share with you next time around!