by: Tony "RadarX" Jones

As recently discussed in the Crafting Video Blog by EA Mythic's General Manager Mark Jacobs, the crafting system design is in full swing. Revealing very detailed information regarding each skill, we're going to break down as much information as we can for you. It's important to note that Warhammer online's crafting system will break away from the traditional recipe based system. No longer requiring a lengthy grindfest, everything will be based on experimentation and certain steps.

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Will Camps Like These Allow Crafting?

The Cultivation skill will provide players the ability to grow their own weeds and fungi, which might not sound very exciting, but is necessary for the Apothecary skill. The major benefit of Cultivation is, it can be used almost anywhere and isn't dependent on equipment like forges or worktables that you'd see in other MMO games.

According to Mark Jacobs, the following steps will be necessary in order to properly use this skill:

1) You'll need to collect seeds and/or spores. Where can these be found? Merchants within the "Chapter 2" area will have these available for purchase. They also will apparently drop off certain monsters and can also be found scavenging (it's not clear if this means nodes). At this point you will need to use a pot to plant the seeds and currently Mark stated you can have up to four pots but this could be subject to change.

2) Step 2 will be what was referred to as the "Growth Cycle" and actually has 3 substeps. The first of these is to add soil to the plot which would make sense when you attempt to grow something. After adding soil, I'm sure you can guess what is next, water. Finally, you'll be able to add nutrients/fertilizer to the mix assuring that not only will your plant grow, but you'll be admitted to any agricultural club in the world.

What do these items do? Well they aren't required, but they speed up the growing time of your weed/fungi. They also increase the chance something "unusual" will happen which seems to imply we'll see rare items spawn from time to time.

3) Step 3 is of course gathering of your grown items. By harvesting these items you will place them in your backpack and resets your plot to empty allowing you to begin the process all over again.

An important note is that seeds and spores will have a skill level requirement meaning while you can acquire many, you may not necessarily be able to use them right way. This will apparently provide progressions through skill levels.

What hasn't been covered so far? For starters exactly how you skill up. How many of these plants do you have to grow in order to advance? Will there be difficulty levels involved providing a chance to skill up such as a harder combination being more likely to help? Are certain things going to be more useful than others when it comes to Apothecary skill?

As the beta testing continues, we're certain more and more details will be revealed providing a more in depth look at these skills. For now, we'll investigate as much as possible and provide updates as we can find them.