Guide for the Hardcore
Crafter

by Charabis

Think you’ve got what it takes to be a hardcore
crafter?  Then come along with me on a little
journey. Your guide on this trip will be me, a level 25
Artificer [as of this article's submission date on February 7] on
Woefeather. This guide assumes you've learned the basics of crafting
and are ready to dig in and become a hardcore crafter.

In the Beginning

Obviously, begin with your initial crafting quests, which should be
simple for any potential hardcore crafter. Once those are out of the
way, it's time to plan your belt strategy. What’s a belt
strategy?  It’s laying out your belts for optimum
usefulness and Action Point (AP) usage.  Here’s my
setup on all my new Artificer characters to give you an idea:



Belt 1 (Refining):
Saw, Drill, Rigging Tools

Belt 2 (Finishing):
Saw, Etching Knife, Rigging Tools

Belt 3 (Complications):
File, Chisel, Measuring Stick



Other classes will obviously have different tools. Now what
about the Rigging Tools you ask? Why did I load one into each
bag? At low levels, one of the worst complications I can get
is a quality penalty. Early on, it takes a lot of effort (and
a couple of utilities) to get back the quality from just a tick or two
of that bad boy. Rigging Tools are the remedy most of the
time.  By putting the rigging tools in the extra slot, I
don’t have to switch belts back and forth, thus saving me 10
APs.



I know 10 APs doesn’t sound like much, but there have been
many times I’ve been forced to take the 0 AP finishing action
and lose a quality grade on my item because I only had 100 AP left,
causing the game to throw a Very Low AP Cost penalty as I finished
stage 3. Yes, the game can (and will!) throw complications on
the action that takes you out of phase 3 and into phase 4.

Managing Your Action Points

Pay attention to your complications, and their remedies.  Find
what bugs you the most and make sure you’re ready for
it.  You’ll also need to weigh the advantages and
disadvantages of clearing a complication or letting it ride. For
example, you get a low AP penalty, and are using 75 AP
actions. On the full duration of 5 turns, that would be 75 AP
the penalty would eat up.  To clear it, the remedy may call
for 35 AP per attempt, and take 2 attempts to clear. Since two attempts
at 35 AP each equals 70 AP (as opposed to 75) you may think you can
save 5 AP if you clear it in 2 attempts, right? 
WRONG. The penalties also apply to the remedies! So
let’s add another 14 APs (20% of 70), and the balance is now
84 AP to 75 AP.  Better to let that complication ride.



However, not all complications are that clear cut.  Let's look
at Effectiveness Penalties, for instance. These bad boys reduce the
effectiveness of every action you take--whether you're concerned with
progress or quality, you’re taking a hit. 
There’s no hard formula for whether or not these are worth
clearing.  Only experience is going to tell you
that. So go get some experience!



Another situation that might occur when you let a complication ride, is
having another pop up while that one is still active. 
Let’s go back to the above example on AP penalties. 
We’ll assume the very next action you get another low AP cost
penalty.  Oh, the horror! We’ve already been hit
once on the first penalty (15 AP), and now things are even worse. For
the next 4 turns we’ll have to eat 30 APs for 4 turns, and 15
AP on the 5th (135 additional APs!) if we don’t do something.
So, what to do? Grab the first complication and clear
it?  NO! Bad choice, and here’s why:



Remember that the penalties affect the remedies, and every remedy
action causes the complication to take another tick. That includes the
duration. So, we remedy the style="font-style: italic;">newest one
first. If it takes 2 attempts to clear, that leaves
just 2 ticks on the original complication. If we cleared the
first one, we’d wind up eating all but one or two ticks from
the first one and ALL of the second one.



Complications don’t always come in ones. 
There’s a reason there’s 3 slots in the
complication bar.  Always remember that.  Plan for
the worst and hope for the best is the key to surviving complications.

Skilling Up

There’s been a lot of discussion on how to best skill up your
characters.  Many say balanced, while just as many say
utilities. So what are the best skills to level? That depends
on your style.  Different things are going to work for
different people.  However, there are a couple of realities to
keep in mind:

1. At low levels, utilities are your best friend for quality
   actions
2. At higher levels, tool actions become more efficient at
   raising quality
3. Station actions do eventually get a quality action, albeit
   a minor one

With that in mind, let’s take a look at how to go about
getting your character to level 11.  The time has come to talk
about Work Order strategy.



Grinding Work Orders...



Aaah!  He said the ‘G’ word! 
Face it; there’s going to be grinding involved in skilling up
your crafting. The question is, do you want to work smarter,
or harder?



My money’s on smarter. Before you start, you have a
choice to make: Which branch are you going into?  For
example, Artificers can be Mineralogists or Carpenters. The
earlier you make this decision, the easier the time you’ll
have. For this example, we’ll pick a Mineralogist.



Immediately set the material specialization you’re not taking
to minus. 
This will ensure all the points available in the pool are going to the
skills you’re actually going to use.



Speak to either the refining or finishing taskmaster (you’ll
talk to both very soon). Grab the 3 easiest Work Orders for
the Refining Taskmaster, or the 3 easiest recipes from the Finishing
Taskmaster that aren't
related to the field you’re ignoring.  In the above
example, we’d be skipping any that list the skill as
Carpentry.



I know what you’re probably thinking. Why
can’t I start doing moderate difficulty work orders?



Well, you can do the moderates. You can do very difficult ones if you
really want, but you’ll also fail a lot more. The
initial goal is to use up that pool of points you have sitting
around. You just got from 1 to 3 in about 15 minutes, and
there’s a lot of unused points. Work Order
difficulties are based on your level, not your skills



Make sure to use the skill progress buttons (minus, lock, plus) to
guide your skill progress the way you want it to go, and then get to
work. I like to keep the character window open to the crafting
skills page to monitor the progress.  It’s much
easier to control the progress now than it is to correct the progress
later.



Once you complete a full set of 3, go to the other task master, and get
a set from them as well.  Bounce back and forth until your
pools are used up, or you level.



But what does all that
stuff on the Work Orders mean?



Take a look at your Work Order list. You’ll notice
that work orders come in 3 sizes--single item, 3 item, and 5 item
orders.  So what exactly do they do?

• Single item – Great for leveling, but you only
  get cash.
• Triple item – Average leveling, but better for
  getting extra toys
• Five item – Slowest for leveling, but the best
  odds of getting some neat toys

Obviously, single items are the way to go for the hardcore crafter,
right?  WRONG!  The problem is that if you just do
single item orders, you won’t get any good gear. The
better your gear, the easier your life is going to be. You also need to
remember that the work order lists changes. There will be many times
when you won’t be able to find a work order for a single
item.  So what is the best approach?



5 item Work Orders are the best for skilling.  Take advantage
of them primarily for using up any points in your skill
pools.  This will also give you a good chance of getting more
toys to play with.  Use the single item orders to level
quickly. Grab a 3 item now and then when you know you can get
B-Grade. Why? 3 item B-Grade orders gave you the
highest chance of getting attuning dusts as an added reward. 
Hey, if you want to spend 40 copper to buy dusts, feel free. 
Me, I’ll take all the freebies I can get!

Level 11

So you finally reached level 11?  Good job!  But your
journey has only just begun. Go back to the crafting
instructor.  If you haven’t been back since
finishing the starter quests, you’ll have a couple new ones
to do.  However, the big one is ‘Seeking the
Trainer.’ Depending on your race, this might prove
to be a nightmare.



When you get the quest, it will give you instructions to speak to
someone about getting the rest of your Amateur recipes.  The
catch?  You might be Kill on Sight to the town they send you
to.  If so, you might want to get some friends together, as
you’ll need 400 to 500 faction to get to your trainer alive.
Once you get this quest done, you can go back to grinding, but a new
challenge is looming on the horizon…

Level 20

Did you have a nice journey?  Good, now we can begin the
serious crafting. You read that right. Getting here
was only preparatory work for what lies ahead.



No doubt you’ve gotten used to that familiar pattern of 3
actions, divided between stage 2 and stage 3, right?  Now say
goodbye to it!  The T3 recipes aren’t nearly as
nice, and the complications are meaner to boot. Instead of 3,
there are now 4 actions divided between the 2
stages. They’re not evenly divided
either. You might have a single action in one phase with the
other 3 in the other. The real challenge is that one of those 
4 action groups, will only have a single action in it.  Talk
about repetitive, but at least it doesn’t require a lot of
time on your part to figure out which action to use from the set.



It’s also the time to revisit your tool belt
strategy. Many of these recipes take 3 tools now. In
the case of our mineralogist, it’s a chisel.  So, if
you haven’t already, grab those 4 slot belts and load them up.



And what of complications?  Moderate penalties are
now the norm, and, like before, the quality penalties are a major
annoyance. Only now they also come with a moderate
effectiveness penalty. That’s right; the
quality-killers hit you harder and take more effort to remove.
Doesn’t sound good, does it? It
isn’t. It gets worse, compliments of a fun combo of
complications and actions. See, the problem is that of those 4
actions, 2 are considered tool actions.  When those 2 actions
wind up in the same stage of a recipe, it’s a recipe for
disaster.



The problem lies in the Moderate Tool Progress Penalty
complications.  es, you read that right,
complications—plural!  Not only can you get more
than one of these bad boys, every time they tick, they give you a
progress hit on each of those tool actions.  Talk about your
double whammy!  Be very aware of this behavior or you will
walk away in disgust as your work goes out the window.



Also, you’ll need to remember that, until you get a few more
levels, you should be aiming for D quality on moderates. 
Why?  You’ll barely have enough points to finish the
recipe even without touching a quality action.



What about all those
recipes I learned?



Sure, you can make those any time you want, but you only get experience
the first time you make the item. This makes them almost
worthless for leveling.

So, now What?

Keep at those work orders and also keep an eye out for any crafting
quests.  (There’s one behind the crafting buildings
in Halgarad that gives you a few Ultra Rare resources.) 
Probably the single, most important piece of advice I can leave you
with is a very simple command.  /join Craft which will bring
you into the crafting chat channel!  You'll find lots of nice
and helpful folks willing to answer your questions (plus a fee
obnoxious people; the kind for whom the /ignore command was created).



Farewell until next time, and happy crafting!