If you have ever played a MMORPG, you're probably familiar with this scenario. You're in town resupplying when someone shouts out, "How much is this item worth?" Usually my response would be, "Whatever you can get for it." However, with crafted and dropped items being comparable, that answer won't work for Vanguard.

A new approach will be required. It's more likely that the dropped items will be priced based on how the crafters price their goods. But how does one begin to figure out what their items are worth? That's what we'll examine now.

Time is an important consideration in calculating your costs. Time is money! You need to remember to charge for it--figure out what your time is worth, and charge appropriately. You need to remember to not only charge for the time involved in making the items, but also the time required to get the recipe in the first place, as well as for material acquisition.

Time is a valuable commodity. You have every right to charge for it, but be reasonable. Obviously, the more in-demand your services are, the more your time is worth. Remember to recalculate your time costs periodically if things should change, such as higher demand for your goods, longer journeys due to resource location changes, and so on.

This covers not only the costs involved in purchasing needed supplies, but also the costs involved in acquiring the supplies. Yet again, you have to factor in time, so consider the time it takes to get your needed items. Since you have to spend the time collecting supplies, you can charge for it.

Also remember to cover your recipe acquisition expenses. Remember to calculate in your time, as well as any monies you needed to expend to get the recipe. Divide that amount by the number of that item you can realistically expect to sell to get the recipe cost per item.

There may be other costs associated with making items. These would be things such as any fees involved in accessing necessary workstations, or even fees required just to get into a city where the desired workstation is.

You need to make profit too! You'll need a markup to accomplish this. Once you've figured your costs to make the item, you need to settle on a markup. A percentage is the best way. Simply take your costs and multiply by the desired markup. Add that number to your costs and you have a final item value.

As you can see, there's a lot to the process that isn't written in stone. Your time costs can vary greatly even from month to month. You'll need to remember to recalculate periodically as things change to keep up to date. The key is to keep current and keep competitive.

After all this calculating, you're ready to sell your item. Of course, that's a completely different subject entirely. Happy crafting!

General Crafting Questions

The system is very involved, and will require both the character and player to be actively involved in the process. Strategy will be required to consistently produce the best items, and many finished products will require multiple crafters. Recruit your friends!

To an extent. There will be maker's marks implemented, although further details aren't yet available. You can also substitute certain actions in the process to get a different look, such as going to Qalia and learning how to make scimitar blades.

The concept of masterpieces will exist in some fashion. Exactly how is not yet known.

No. Classes will in no way limit what trade skills you can learn.

No. Each sphere is treated separately. In fact, a crafter never even has to leave town if he's willing to buy his supplies!

It depends on how many players are harvesting while they're adventuring, and bringing the supplies back to town to sell. If few adventurers are doing this, it will be much harder to get what you need to make the really good stuff.

They will be similar, but it will also take a similar amount of work to craft them as it would to go out and get them.

Players will also be able to make vehicles and entire cities!

Yes! There will be multiple ways of gaining these titles too.

At the present time, crafting of food and drink is not planned.

This is also not planned at the current time.

Yes! Tailoring will be in, and will include non-adventuring clothes. Anyone want to play dress up? :)

No. Fishing will not be part of the harvesting mechanism.

Discovery, experimentation, drops, and NPC trainers. Note that many of these sources are the only way to get the recipe. For example, some recipes will be be dropped only, and others will only be found through experimentation.

No. You can do all the spheres on a single character. Of course the more you are working on, the slower you'll progress in any given sphere.

The odds are that they'll be more different than you might think! There are multiple points where people will take different paths to recipe acquisition.

IF deconstruction is put in, you wouldn't gain any skill from doing this.

While crafting valuable items will require the help of others, you can skill up to the highest levels of your trade alone if you wish.

Nope! You can buy them from other players if you wish, and many adventurers will come to you with the supplies needed to craft an item. You can also charge a fee for doing custom orders.

No. Selling to NPCs is not something Vanguard is aiming for.

No.

Yes.

Yes, although you should expect it to take some time and a lot of resources.

No. You have to go get each recipe you want.

No.

To an extent. There should be plenty of filters to allow you to organize it and access what you need easily. Sigil is also working on adding a notes section, added to the book, for you to write your own info.

No class or racial bonuses to crafting are planned.

No. Recipe sharing isn't going to be implemented. Gotta do your own work

Participation from all 3 spheres: adventuring, crafting, and diplomacy. Better have some friends or a lot of money.

No. Groups will be able to do much more as some of the places you'll need access to aren't solo-friendly.

Not from the crafting process, although if you're using a workstation in a dangerous place, the surrounding creatures aren't obligated to leave you alone.

No.

40,000 is the best guess at the present time. Still plenty for me!

The Crafting Process

For some recipes you will need expendables such as flux and charcoal. These will be available from NPC vendors.

Refining, finishing, and assembly.

Proceed to an appropriate crafting station with materials in hand. Begin crafting, possibly paying a fee to use the crafting station. Perform the actions in the given order. Note that these are PARENT actions, which will each contain groups of available actions based on the crafter and recipe.

Crafting is turn-based. Take all the time you need. Of course, if you're sitting there thinking, the process is obviously on hold.

When assembling an item, no. However, when making the items you can if you run out of action points.

Each recipe has a certain number of actions that must be completed in a particular order. Each of these actions takes points from the action point pool.

Each recipe comes with a pool of them that can be used each time you craft the item.

Inspiration is gained based on how well you do during crafting. Inspiration is a pool that you can build up and use during the process, or use it to enhance your chances of successfully experimenting on an item.

There are problems that can occur. Up to 3 of them can crop up while you're crafting, and which ones do happen isn't completely random. The problems are based on the crafting station you're using, its quality, the recipe, and the materials.

Crafters' tools will be every bit as important to a crafter as a sword is to a warrior. There will be crafters' tools that come with mods. Tools can be enhanced, much like an adventurer's weapons. While some of these can be crafted, some will have to be acquired in other ways. Also, certain qualities of tools will be required to perform some of the actions to make an item.

Tools will also have tool charges. Certain actions use a number of these available charges. You can still use the tool once the charges are depleted, but the penalties for doing so keep getting worse.

If you use Grade A hilt, Grade B sword blade, and grade C pommel, you'll get a final version of the item that is different than if you'd used all Grade A parts. More than that, Sigil isn't saying.

Yes! Each type of crafting station can have it's own issues, as well as limitations on what it can and can't craft.

If not focusing on quality, maybe a minute, although the exact time is still in development.

It depends on how you define success. Through the work order system, you'll be able to not only skill up, but make some money. It's possible to be successful through the work order system, but the big bucks are in cooperation.

Vanguard NPC cities all need things. Thus, they need crafters to make them. Work orders will be posted based on those needs. You perform the work, and get paid. The items themselves are handled abstractly. In other words, you get credit for the work, but the items never hit your inventory. This provides a way for crafters to level and not worry about having to give away a ton of stuff, thus ruining the market for those who are actually trying to make money on the items. As an added bonus, as work orders are completed, more will pop up based on which ones are being filled, so there should always be a wide variety to choose from. There will also be group work orders available that will be more involved.

You use their supplies. Again, totally abstract.

Absolutely. This is when you'll start seeing work orders to restock the supplies. Once the supplies are sufficient again, the NPCs will go back to wanting items made from them. Supply and demand will be the key to the work order system.

No. Your chosen trade determines what you can assemble. For instance, A blacksmith can put primarily metal weapons together, but won't be able to do much with a longbow.

Yes, but it will affect your ability to produce a quality product. As an example, putting 20 copper ore into the process. Because of the quantity, the cost of each action is increased by a percentage, but action points for the recipe are NOT increased.

After completion of a finishing recipe, but before assembly. Experimentation is done on parts, not entire, assembled items.

The Crafting Skills

Artificer
Blacksmith< br /> Outfitter

Each trade also has two specialty trades within it.

Two. One of these will be your primary and allow you access to the advanced recipes. The other is your secondary, and allows access to only the basic recipes. Better than nothing :P

No. Crafting and gathering are treated separately.

Crafting in Vanguard is meant to be as involved as adventuring, and will take a similar amount of time. Alas, there are no good estimates yet as to exactly how long that is.

Nope! Vanguard cities will need certain things that a lone crafter, or an entire group of them, can complete. These Work Orders will change based on what orders are getting completed, and will be handled abstractly. This means that no actual items will be created for the orders.

Many choices will affect the recipes you end up with. Because of this, picking a random crafter of the same type of you at random and examining his recipe book will likely yield very different recipe combinations.

Vanguard will give you the option of opting out of a path. You will lose all skills from that path, but will retain your crafting levels.

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.

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:

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.

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 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.

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:

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.

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.

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 raising skills. 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 give 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!

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...

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, and 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. Yes, 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.

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.

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 few obnoxious people; the kind for whom the /ignore command was created).