Age of Conan at Ten Ton Hammer - Taking MMOG Gamers to the Next Level!

Undoubtedly the most time consuming part of crafting in Age of Conan is the gathering of materials.  Even with the new and improved streamlining of recipes, certain items will always be more difficult to find than others.  This guide will give you a solid overview of gathering crafting materials plus a few tips that will hopefully save you some time.

You learn to harvest the same way you learn to craft.  You speak with a harvesting trainer in one of the resource zone villages and take on a quest to gather items from whatever you are learning to harvest.  The trainers will have you gather basic items and a rare item to progress to the next tier of gathering nodes.  DO NOT delete or use the items that you need for the quest because you need to give them to the trainer to complete the quests.  If you use them then you have to gather the same amount all over again to progress.

As a side note to save some time, it doesn't seem the taking on the leather gathering quest from the skinner actually does anything.  Leather drops from animals whether you train or not and you do not need to progress this quest in order to gather various tiers of leather.  We'll be sure to update this guide if this changes in the future

You may take on 4 harvesting skills, which is really nice for the classes that need multiple node materials.  For the most part, you can get all that you need for your recipes if you are dedicated enough.

Talking About Tiers

Gathering is bound by the same tier rule that crafting is.  Your recipes are given in tiers so the materials that you will need to complete those recipes also come in tiers.  Below are the level ranges for each crafting/gathering tier along with the most common adventuring zones that will yield nodes and mob dropped materials for each given tier.

The zone levels are a good guideline but not really the rule so if you are gathering from mob kills remember to check the level of the mob you are killing and make sure it is within the level range you need.

What You Need and Where to Get it

Now for the crafting class specific goodies.  You want to make something and gosh darn it, you just aren't sure where to find it.  Believe me, we know this pain!  At least one item in each recipes will need to be purchased from the tradeskill merchant and the rest is up to you to find.  Most of these things can sell for quite a bit of coin on the vendor so you'll really want to go out and get your own materials.  Here is a run down of what you will need to craft and some of the better places to find it.

Alchemist:  Herbs, plants, extracts, etc are often found on humans.  They will drop in caches which you open from your inventory to transfer into your resource pack.  Animal items will be found on the corresponding animals (i.e. feral blood comes from wolves) but you can also get some those from the caches.  A great tip - visit the Villas in The Noble District.  The caches drop with frequency here and the loot will scale to your level!

Architect:  All the plan ingredients are purchased from a tradeskill merchant in the resource zones.  They are silly expensive but you don't have to do all the harvesting legwork!  You do need harvested items for the construction pieces, and those all come from harvest nodes.

Armorsmith: Your metals, stones, and cotton come from harvest nodes.  Silks are human mob drops and leathers are animal drops.  A good tip for tier 1 leather harvesting is to stick with the "prey" mobs.  You can kill those really quick with ranged combat and harvest much quicker!

Gemcutter:  All your gems, uncut and pristine, will drop from human mobs.  Some are more rare than others so never toss a gem out when you get one, even if you don't need it at the moment.

Weaponsmith:  The metals, stone, and woods are all from harvest nodes.  All of these are pretty easy to gather in the resource zones.

Resource Zones versus Adventuring Zones

If you spend a lot of time out and about in Hyboria you may find that you have little use for the resource zones.  Nearly everything you could possible need can be found in the adventuring zones, however, for those who are more focused on crafting the resource zones may be a better choice.

Resource zones are top notch when it comes to node harvesting.  The concentration of nodes makes it easy to make your way around the zone quickly harvesting as you go.  By the time you get back to where you started, nodes have refreshed and are ready to utilize again!

Adventuring zones end up being the better pick for humanoid and animal kills, particularly if you're already out adventuring.  You can use the mobs in the resource zones for mob dropped materials but it can limit how much and how quickly you can kill when you are dependent upon a small camp rather than having an entire adventuring zone to play with.  The upside of using the resource zones for these is you don't have to deal with a full zone of pesky aggro-happy mobs, you can just grab what you need. 

If you do choose to use the resource zone for your mob-dropped materials, remember to create a waypoint on your map so you remember where you found what you were looking for or use the maps that I have created.  These maps not only tell you where the mobs are, but also indicate what tier they are.  You'll notice on the maps that these zones have different mobs so if you can't find something in Poitain, check Purple Lotus Swamp for what you need!

Always check the trader for reasonably priced materials, ask your friends and guildmates to save materials that they obtain through adventuring, and keep a nice stockpile of recipe items in your bank!  Remember to keep this page bookmarked because there will always be items that you can never find and yet you desperately need.  Having a quick guide on hand can make all the difference in the world and can save huge amounts of precious gaming time.