In this exclusive interview with Trion Worlds, Ten Ton Hammer grabs at
the recipe book of crafting in the upcoming style="font-style: italic;">Rift
MMOG. Sitting amidst the smoking cauldrons and bubbling flasks of an
apothecary’s laboratory, we talked with Gina Reams, Crafting
Systems Designer, and Adam Gershowitz, Producer, to get all the
ingredients of what crafting entails in the fantasy world of style="font-style: italic;">Rift.
Some say you should never ask how a dish is created, but Ten Ton Hammer
dares!



If you have any questions you wish us to ask Trion Worlds in the
future, please post them in our href="http://forums.tentonhammer.com/forumdisplay.php?f=742">official
Rift
forum.

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Ten
Ton Hammer: What types of
crafting skills will be available in style="font-style: italic;">Rift?



Gina
Reams: We’ve got
Armorsmithing, which does heavy armor such as chain and plate. We also
have Outfitting, which does light armor, which includes cloth and
leather. We also have Apothecary, which does a lot of our potions and
brews. We have Runecrafting, which does magical enchantments on weapons
and armor, giving them special properties. And we have Weaponsmithing.
Weaponsmithing is important and deals with all kinds of weapons, from
bows to swords to two-handed weapons. There is also Artificer, which
makes necklaces, jewelry, and special items.



Adam
Gershowitz: Those are
basically our high end production skills, so that is all the various
things that a player can make. Most of our trade skills cover almost
every equipable item in the game. Players can make almost anything that
they can get elsewhere in the game.



The sole exception to that rule is the special rift loot, which is the
lift essences and focuses, which are specifically part of the rift
system. In addition to our six production skills, we also have three
harvesting, or gathering, skills, which are: Mining (which produces
metals and precious gems), Foraging (woods, herbs), and Butchering
(skinning monsters to get their hides, teeth, bones, innards, and
everything you can possibly need an animal for).

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Ten
Ton Hammer: So how many
professions can you take?



Gina
Reams: You can take a maximum
of three professions, and you can mix them between the production
skills and the harvesting skills in any combination you like.



Adam
Gershowitz: We’ve
actually designed the system to be a little more inter-dependent. If
you wanted to be the very best armor crafter or smith you could be, you
would probably want to take Armorsmithing plus two harvesting skills.
That would almost make you completely self-sufficient. That being said,
if you take Armorsmithing, Weaponsmithing, and Mining, you could make a
good portion of the items and definitely level up to the maximum, but
there will be several things that you couldn’t make and would
have to rely upon the auction house or the player economy to do.

Ten
Ton Hammer: Can you tell us
how crafting actually works? Can you walk us through creating a
particular product?



Adam
Gershowitz: The process is
really simple approach-wise. A lot of our game is more in the gathering
of materials rather than in hitting the button to combine. The big part
of the process is finding the recipe that you want, as well as the
ingredients that you need to make the recipe. Obviously, there are
simple recipes that you can get off the trainer. You can walk up to a
guy and go, “I want to be an Armorsmith now,” and
he goes, “Great! I can teach you to make tin
boots.” At which point, you find yourself with a tin boot
recipe and it’s all about finding the tin and cloth you need
to make the boots. You get the items, click a button, and
you’re one-and-done. You’re out the other end. We
chose not to go with a mini-game, because the simpler combination
method is more accessible to a larger number of people and we wanted to
make crafting something a lot of people would enjoy, not just a small
percentage.



That being said, for those people who like to hand-tune their items a
bit more, we have the augment system, which we’ll get into a
little bit later. While the normal process is to get a recipe, find the
ingredients, and craft the recipe, there is an expanded process that
involves using special augments that you find in various parts of the
world by doing different activities. The expanded process is to get a
recipe, get the materials for that recipe, find the specific augments
that you want to customize your item, and craft that item. The augments
allow you to customize your item to have specific or different stats
based off your personal desire for the item or for whomever
you’re making the item for.

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Ten
Ton Hammer: You mentioned
going to the trainer to learn recipes. Is there any other way to learn
recipes? Will there be dropped recipes or rewards from artifact
collections or rift rewards?



Gina
Reams: Your skilling up
recipes that you will use to level up will come from your trainers.
There will be recipes in other parts of the world. They can drop off of
mobs, rift vendors, reputation vendors, and crafting daily quests,
which will reward you with recipes. To get through crafting, you can
just use the trainer recipes. If you want to be the best in your craft
and have the most diverse amount of recipes, you’re going to
be out in the world doing quests and searching for drops.



Ten
Ton Hammer: Or buying them
off the auction house.



Gina
Reams: Yeah.

Adam
Gershowitz: There are
definitely four subsets of recipes. There is obviously the trainer
ones, which are bare bones and designed to get you through the game.
Then there are the dropped ones, which are your open economy recipes.
Finally, as Gina said, there are the faction recipes and the Artisan
store, which are rewards for doing crafting daily quests, which are
more of a personal thing. You won’t be able to go to the
auction house to get that particular recipe; you’ll have to
put the effort into crafting to get a hold of these recipes.



Ten
Ton Hammer: I’d
like to expand upon that because we haven’t really talked
about it before. For the daily crafting where you can get these recipes
as rewards, are they going to be level appropriate or are they
randomized? Will you end up getting repeats of the recipes?



Adam
Gershowitz: I can answer that
one. Basically, the way that we set up our daily quests is more of a
work order/barter currency system. The current daily quests in the game
are fairly simple work orders. “Hey, there’s a
certain faction in the world that wants you to make boots for
them.” You make the boots and deliver them. As part of the
reward for that, you get notoriety with that faction, so
you’re working towards getting things out of their store the
same one somebody else is by adventuring and killing monsters, but at
the same time, we give you artisan tokens and a materials grab bag.



Instead of throwing a random recipe in the grab bag and telling you to
grind, grind, grind, grind and never getting the recipe you want,
you’re collecting the barter currency with the artisan tokens
which you can spend on a variety of different recipes that you can see
on a store and see what is going on there. That being said, there are
awesome things in the grab bags ranging from materials in the level of
the daily you did to special augments and other things as well.

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Ten
Ton Hammer: Is there going to
be a need to return to town to craft or can you do it anywhere in the
world?



Gina
Reams: Most of the crafts are
based around a station. For example, an Apothecary is based around a
laboratory or a loom for an Outfitter. The vast majority of the recipes
will require you to be at town, near a station to do them. That means
that every now and then, there might be a recipe that you can do at any
location in the world.



Adam
Gershowitz: The guaranteed
places to craft are the capital areas, but depending upon where you are
in the world, you may across an apothecary station or a workbench.
There are definitely other places to craft in the world, but the
guaranteed places are in the capital cities or lower level areas. We
did that on purpose because it helps build the community up, and all of
your core things that you need to craft (auction house, bank, mailbox,
other players to barter with) are located in one centralized area.



Ten
Ton Hammer: How does crafted
gear compare to dropped gear?



Gina
Reams: Crafted gear is
comparable to gear that you find dropped throughout the world, either
from rifts or quests.



Adam
Gershowitz: I can give you a
better idea in terms of general game balance. Your basic crafted items
are comparable to world drops. If you make a level 17 uncommon sword,
it is going to be similar in quality (in stats) to a level 17 world
drop item or a level 17 uncommon dungeon item, where the difference is
mainly in the augmentation.



Gina
Reams: With crafted items,
you have the ability to add a little extra onto them and augment them,
which can take them a little bit above the general power level of an
item that you would find in a drop.

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This concludes the first part of our two-part interview of crafting in style="font-style: italic;">Rift
with Gina Reams and Adam Gershowitz. The second part of our interview
will be published in a few days.