By Garrett Fuller

Justin Webb, Senior Designer, from the Warhammer Online team was on hand to give us a great look at some of the more personal levels of character customization in Warhammer Online. Let’s face it in an MMO game everyone who plays wants to stand out. Players want to get the coolest looking gear and show it off to others. The problem is sometimes everyone has the coolest looking gear and it all looks the same. Warhammer Online is playing it different. Going through these three topics we’ll take a look at crafting first because that is something everyone wants to hear about. Then we’ll go through what Justin had to say about the trophy and item customization systems.

style="margin: 10px; float: right; "
border="0" width="200">

src="/image/view/29424/preview"
width="200" border="0">

The team at EA Mythic has made crafting very easy for players. They made it very clear that they want players to be in the action of Realm vs Realm or fighting it out with monsters, not standing over a forge for several hours. There are several gathering skills your character can customize. The ones we got a look at were Cultivating, Butchering, and Scavenging. The one great thing about the gathering skills is that you do not have to chase dots on a map to find materials.

All of the gathering skills come from monsters, players, or NPCs you have killed. So the more you fight and kill the more you will find. Justin explained that perhaps you are out killing chaos hounds and you find seeds or spores in their mangled fur. With Cultivating you will find all types of things that grow: weeds, fungus, and of course mushrooms.

Justin was quick to say that there is no f-word in cultivating, the f-word being “flowers.” This is Warhammer after all so do not worry about growing daisies as a cultivator. Butchering and Scavenging are almost self explanatory, when you kill something you have a chance to loot or butcher their corpse. This is how you will collect the items you need for some of the crafting abilities. Justin gave a tip to players that getting leeches from a body might actually help in healing potions.

The only crafting skill we were able to take a look at was Apothecary. This allowed the players to create potions, lotions, and powders as Justin put it. All potions will need a glass bottle to create and then one primary ingredient. After that players can adjust the secondary ingredients for different effects. Let’s say you are making a healing potion. You have the herbs you need for healing and a glass bottle to make your potion. With adding the secondary ingredients you can adjust the duration of the potion, or possibly its impact on healing. There are many ways to customize your creations with this process. The best part is you can craft anywhere in the game, you do not need a workstation in a town or city to do it with, talk about making things easy for players.

Justin also went on to tell us about the Trophy System in Warhammer. This is a great way to show off things that your character has done. There are many ways to customize the badges and skulls your character wears proudly on his or her armor. Justin showed us some of the small items for trophies on a Witch Hunter character. The witch hunter can have seals, potions, dagger, scrolls, stakes, a reliquary, and even pliers for torture. Those these items are just for show, they look great in allowing the class to stand out. Players will be able to get up to five trophies by rank forty and have up to fifteen places to show them on their character. Justin also explained that there will be unique trophies which drop from bosses in both PvE and RvR. Players can certainly show off some serious crazy items they get.

Also, players will have crafting trophies to show as well. If you are a master crafter, instead of having to spam a chat channel all day to find clients, simply put on your master craft trophy and walk around the market. This will let other players know you are the person to talk to about potions etc. The great thing is that trophies are interchangeable and do not bind once you put them on a piece of armor. So you can keep a batch of trophies and switch them out whenever you like. Also trophies do upgrade as you go higher in level. So if you get a new dagger to where on your vest at the top level, it will like have jewels in the handle and gold bands. Players will have many ways to stand out in Warhammer and the trophy system is just one way to set you apart from the group.

style="margin: 10px; float: left; "
border="0" width="200">

src="/image/view/29425/preview"
width="200" border="0">

Last but certainly not least Justin showed us the dye system in Warhammer. If you remember the dye system in Dark Age of Camelot then you’ll be familiar with the style that Warhammer is using. Dyes will be available by merchants, through crafting, or by drops. Some of the rare ones will be from boss drops etc. The great thing about dyes is that you can customize and color any piece of armor or clothing you like. Each piece of armor has two tint masks which means you can mix and match colors throughout your character.

Here is the best part for all you Chaos fans; you can dye armor on the Chosen or Marauder characters to match the other chaos gods. If you are a fan of Khorne and play a Chaos Chosen, sure you follow Tzeentch in the game, but you can dye your armor red or gold in the colors of a Khorne warrior.

Check out the video on dyes here at Ten Ton Hammer to get a better look. Also there is a large variety of green and yellow dyes for all you Nurgle fans. Even pink and purple will be added in which Justin and I discussed would make sense for Slaanesh fans. So the best part about the dyes is you can really set yourself apart or match to create guild colors and have a whole horde of Khorne looking warriors attacking an Empire keep.

Players will have plenty of chances to customize the look of their characters in Warhammer Online. EA Mythic is really focusing on keeping the crafting simple and the customization levels high for players. Justin explained that these are great elements to the game and are being made easy so players can spend more time exploring and fighting and less time standing in the corner of the shop. Thanks to Justin for giving us a great look at all of these features in Warhammer Online.

Will Trophies be enough to quell the adventurous thirst of the average Warhammer Online player? Let us know what you think on our forums!