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Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Crafting Guide and a little Feedback
Taiisien
Member, Alpha Two
Crafting Guide and a little feedback.
First and foremost to start any type of crafting you need to do the "The sweat of your brow" quest. This can be received by talking with Tradesmanager Hernet or Falson in Lionhold. Ensure you are tracking the quest as this will give locations on the map if those are available (for this quest they are). When you complete all steps in the quest chain you will have a horse, and access to all novice skills (all 22 of them) and you will have a full set of crude tools. If you open your character sheet (press H) there are two tabs at the top, the first is your equipment and the second is your artisan tab, this will show all your artisan tools (including the fishing pole). Ok, you finished the quest and now you have novice skills, time to put them to use.
A few general tips before we begin...
When you first start out you will be novice level 1 and so will only be able to harvest items within this skill range. If you are seeing nodes that say you need to have an apprentice or journeyman certificate these nodes are above your sill level. To acquire these certificates you need to level the skill to level 10 then you can get a quest from the tradesperson to become an apprentice, upon completion of that quest and getting your new tool you will be able to harvest novice and apprentice nodes. To get the journeyman nodes you need to progress the skill to level 20 and do the quest and get the tool. This pattern continues every ten skill levels Novice 1-10, Apprentice 10-20, Journeyman 20-30, Master 30-40, Grand Master 40-50.
When you first exit Lionhold you wont find much if any of these resources, you need to move out into the world and go into another district on the map (Halcyon - Teal border, Joeva - Purple border, New Aela - Gold border, Miraleth - Blue border, or Winstead - Orange border). Once out of the Lionhold''s realm of influence you should be able to find the resources you are looking for. Resources spawn in a logical locations for the most part, so if you are looking for minables look near rocky outcroppings or cliffs, if you are looking for plants look in plains / fields, and if you are looking for trees, well head to the forest.
Harvestable resources tend to "stand out" from things in their surroundings. Head towards one of these items and see if a white circle appears as you approach. Get close to the item and turn your camera until the white circle becomes a full dot and press F to harvest. If the resource is above your skill level the dot will be red and not let you gather from this resource.
When at processing stations, near the top of the processing window on the right hand side you can set the quality (which requires different quality of ingredients) and you can set the job size. Jobs can be done in quantities of 1, 5, 10, and 25. The larger the quantity the longer the job will take and the more expensive it will be (this is straight multiplication of quantity times base time / money, they do not add extra for larger jobs). Once the job has started you are able to leave the station and go do other things, then come back whenever to collect the goods. In one of my tests I processed 25 fish, this took about a half an hour, I went and harvested wood and herbs for about an hour then came back and picked up my processed fish.
And now back to the skills guide.
Fishing...
Get close to a body of water that looks big enough to realistically fish in, then open your skill book (press K), on the left find artisan skills, select fishing. On the right this will show the fishing skill and the fishing survey skill, the fishing skill can be placed on your hotbar. Press the button on your hotbar or from the skill book and your character will attempt to cast. If the cast did not land in fishable water your character will do a gesture with their hands and stop trying to fish. Find a location where the character makes the cast and then leave them alone, they will cast and catch all on their own.
Mining...
As a novice miner you can only harvest a small set of gatherable nodes, these include Basalt, Granite, Copper, Zinc, and Rubies. Head to rocky areas on the map and look for the harvestable resources there. Currently it appears that copper is in short supply, possibly due to the nature of random spawn tables and the resource being replaced by higher tier spawns but I do not know for sure. What I do know is that in the first Alpha 2 weekend copper was pretty hard to come by.
Lumberjacking...
Just like mining, as a novice there is a small set of gatherable nodes, these include Ash, Oak, Eastern Hemlock and Western Larch. Look for these in forested areas. Each of the trees have several "skins" to give them variety.
Herbalism...
Again like mining and lumber, as a novice there is a small set of gatherable nodes, these include Daffodil, Snowdrop, Cotton and Flax. To gather these head out to open fields and plains. The daffodil look like patches of yellow flowers approximately 5 foot wide by 8 foot long (complete guess as to the size, but meant to illustrate it is a sizeable patch, not a single plant). Snowdrop is similar to daffodil but is made of white flowers instead of yellow ones. These two are often found in very close proximity to one another. Flax is a small cluster of blue plants approximately 1 foot wide by 1 foot long, and also seemed fairly scarce during this first testing weekend. I was not able to find any cotton out in the wild while playing this weekend. Cotton and Flax are also farmable.
Farming...
Not sure if it is due to being a Novice, or if it is not implemented fully yet, but at the moment farming is a processing profession done at a bench not in a plot of dirt. Go to a farming workbench, here you can craft mulch or "grow" certain crops. To grow a crop you need various resources, some purchased from the vendor like seeds or water, and some crafted like the mulch. When you have all of the resources you click the start job button and have to wait on it to complete. In my testing one seed will create one plant in one minute. Also like other processing stations this station requires fuel, I used wood, and you can walk away from the station while it processes.
Cooking...
I did not get around to testing this one, but it looks like you need various resources, some crafted like farmed lettuce, some purchased from the vendor like pepper and you click to combine.
Hunting...
Larger list for the novice level of hunting, these harvestable creatures include Grem, Spiders, Ravens, Horses, Wolves, and Bears. This profession feels kind of like a place holder at the moment, but here is what I found. In the wild you will come across certain animals that you cannot click on or target, their names appear in white letters, and if you get close to them a gathering circle will appear. Get within gathering range of them and press the collect button (F). This only needs to be pressed once but will do an animation of "petting" the animal and a progress ring will fill in around the action button. Progress goes up in thirds and takes some time between showing updates. When the progress has completed one of two results will occur, first is a "collected" animal will be put into your inventory, or second, it will kill the animal and the carcass will be put in your inventory. The "collected" animal is to be used with animal husbandry and the carcass can be used to craft meat for cooking or hide/skin for leatherworking. Unfortunately, at the moment there does not appear to be a way to butcher the "collected" animals so they too can be used for cooking / leatherworking. There is also currently no way to skin / butcher animals that you kill, only ones that you collect via hunting. One other inconvenience, both the "collected" animal and the carcass take up a 2x2 grid in your artisan inventory, but a mount only takes up a 1x1 in general inventory.
***Steven / Intrepid, can we please get a way to butcher collected animals to use for cooking / leatherworking. Also can we please get the ability to harvest at least some of our kills for the same purpose. Other gatherable nodes exist in much greater quantity than hunting creatures.***
Tanning...
For this skill you take one of the carcasses gathered from hunting and process it into one of several items. In my test I used ten wolf carcasses and received 50 wolf hides from processing at the tanning station. Now to turn this into leather I need to use the tanning station again to make tanned wolf hide (an apprentice level skill) which requires salt (purchased from a vendor), and weeping willow wood chips, these require apprentice level lumberjacking to gather and craft. Final step, I would then need to process these tanned hides again at the tanning station with another vendor item to then create the actual leather this final process is a journeyman level skill. Each step is usable in leatherworking at the same tier, so the hides are usable at novice level leather working, the tanned hides are usable at the apprentice level leatherworking, and the leather is, you guessed it, usable at the journeyman leatherworking skill. I find that I really like how the tiers for gathering and crafting line up, this shows good forethought on the developer''s part.
Animal Husbandry...
This profession felt horrible to me, mostly due to cost, but I think at higher character levels this may not be as bad, or it may be worse for higher skill levels, I do not know. For now though, as a low level character money is not super easy to come by and each attempt to tame an animal costs roughly 70s. So, how the profession works, you have an animal in your inventory from the hunting profession, go to a "workbench" and attempt to tame, this has a 50% chance to be a mount or a 50% chance to become a beast of burden. At the novice level, if you get the mount it has a 135% movement speed increase (the free horse has a 130%). This movement speed increase was the same for all available mount types whether it was a wolf, a bear, or whatever. Changing the quality of the mount did not appear to change the stats or the mount / bob chance. I made the attempt once and got a bear beast of burden then I gave up as that took all my coin at character level 9, a guildy received 3 wolf beast of burdens before finally getting a mount. Again, the 70s might not be an issue later in the game with a higher character level, but I like to progress my professions as I level so I am not trying to find low tier stuff when I am max level, the cost for this atm seems to want to prevent leveling like this though.
***If I could make a suggestion, since like all other professions this has skill levels and must be leveled up, maybe add an option that allows a 100% chance for a beast of burden for significantly lower cost. After all, in the real world it takes far less time to train a horse to pull a wagon than it does to train it to be a battle mount. I understand not wanting everyone to have the ability to create mounts on the cheap, but this is still a profession like any other and there will only be a few grand masters on the realm, and to get there they will need to level which means they will need to "process" massive amounts of animals to get the skill levels. Also, not everyone is going to want to do the profession to get the mount, many will prefer to just buy one, as it stands my guildy would have needed to sell her wolf mount for 2g 80s just to break even on the money invested let alone having to actually acquire the animals through hunting, all this for a 5% increase in movement speed.***
***One final suggestion, give me the ability to mix and match quality of items if it is not going to affect the result. For instance, for me to create Daffodil Mulch this requires two ingredients that I have to collect in the wild, Daffodil and Droppings. To use the uncommon (green) daffodil I also have to use uncommon droppings. This gave me uncommon mulch that had the same stats on it as the common mulch and when used to create flax it gave me the same quantity and quality of flax. If any of this is not intended I am sorry. Even if it is intended though, let me mix and match and say give me a % chance that the result will be common vs uncommon. Since there were two items required if one is uncommon and one is common maybe do 50/50 chance, or since uncommon is rarer, maybe something closer to 60/40 or 70/30.***
Thank you for your time reading this, and thank you Steven/Intrepid for developing this game, So far I am really enjoying it and looking forward to continued testing and eventually playing the released game.
EDIT: Corrected the size of animals/animal carcasses
First and foremost to start any type of crafting you need to do the "The sweat of your brow" quest. This can be received by talking with Tradesmanager Hernet or Falson in Lionhold. Ensure you are tracking the quest as this will give locations on the map if those are available (for this quest they are). When you complete all steps in the quest chain you will have a horse, and access to all novice skills (all 22 of them) and you will have a full set of crude tools. If you open your character sheet (press H) there are two tabs at the top, the first is your equipment and the second is your artisan tab, this will show all your artisan tools (including the fishing pole). Ok, you finished the quest and now you have novice skills, time to put them to use.
A few general tips before we begin...
When you first start out you will be novice level 1 and so will only be able to harvest items within this skill range. If you are seeing nodes that say you need to have an apprentice or journeyman certificate these nodes are above your sill level. To acquire these certificates you need to level the skill to level 10 then you can get a quest from the tradesperson to become an apprentice, upon completion of that quest and getting your new tool you will be able to harvest novice and apprentice nodes. To get the journeyman nodes you need to progress the skill to level 20 and do the quest and get the tool. This pattern continues every ten skill levels Novice 1-10, Apprentice 10-20, Journeyman 20-30, Master 30-40, Grand Master 40-50.
When you first exit Lionhold you wont find much if any of these resources, you need to move out into the world and go into another district on the map (Halcyon - Teal border, Joeva - Purple border, New Aela - Gold border, Miraleth - Blue border, or Winstead - Orange border). Once out of the Lionhold''s realm of influence you should be able to find the resources you are looking for. Resources spawn in a logical locations for the most part, so if you are looking for minables look near rocky outcroppings or cliffs, if you are looking for plants look in plains / fields, and if you are looking for trees, well head to the forest.
Harvestable resources tend to "stand out" from things in their surroundings. Head towards one of these items and see if a white circle appears as you approach. Get close to the item and turn your camera until the white circle becomes a full dot and press F to harvest. If the resource is above your skill level the dot will be red and not let you gather from this resource.
When at processing stations, near the top of the processing window on the right hand side you can set the quality (which requires different quality of ingredients) and you can set the job size. Jobs can be done in quantities of 1, 5, 10, and 25. The larger the quantity the longer the job will take and the more expensive it will be (this is straight multiplication of quantity times base time / money, they do not add extra for larger jobs). Once the job has started you are able to leave the station and go do other things, then come back whenever to collect the goods. In one of my tests I processed 25 fish, this took about a half an hour, I went and harvested wood and herbs for about an hour then came back and picked up my processed fish.
And now back to the skills guide.
Fishing...
Get close to a body of water that looks big enough to realistically fish in, then open your skill book (press K), on the left find artisan skills, select fishing. On the right this will show the fishing skill and the fishing survey skill, the fishing skill can be placed on your hotbar. Press the button on your hotbar or from the skill book and your character will attempt to cast. If the cast did not land in fishable water your character will do a gesture with their hands and stop trying to fish. Find a location where the character makes the cast and then leave them alone, they will cast and catch all on their own.
Mining...
As a novice miner you can only harvest a small set of gatherable nodes, these include Basalt, Granite, Copper, Zinc, and Rubies. Head to rocky areas on the map and look for the harvestable resources there. Currently it appears that copper is in short supply, possibly due to the nature of random spawn tables and the resource being replaced by higher tier spawns but I do not know for sure. What I do know is that in the first Alpha 2 weekend copper was pretty hard to come by.
Lumberjacking...
Just like mining, as a novice there is a small set of gatherable nodes, these include Ash, Oak, Eastern Hemlock and Western Larch. Look for these in forested areas. Each of the trees have several "skins" to give them variety.
Herbalism...
Again like mining and lumber, as a novice there is a small set of gatherable nodes, these include Daffodil, Snowdrop, Cotton and Flax. To gather these head out to open fields and plains. The daffodil look like patches of yellow flowers approximately 5 foot wide by 8 foot long (complete guess as to the size, but meant to illustrate it is a sizeable patch, not a single plant). Snowdrop is similar to daffodil but is made of white flowers instead of yellow ones. These two are often found in very close proximity to one another. Flax is a small cluster of blue plants approximately 1 foot wide by 1 foot long, and also seemed fairly scarce during this first testing weekend. I was not able to find any cotton out in the wild while playing this weekend. Cotton and Flax are also farmable.
Farming...
Not sure if it is due to being a Novice, or if it is not implemented fully yet, but at the moment farming is a processing profession done at a bench not in a plot of dirt. Go to a farming workbench, here you can craft mulch or "grow" certain crops. To grow a crop you need various resources, some purchased from the vendor like seeds or water, and some crafted like the mulch. When you have all of the resources you click the start job button and have to wait on it to complete. In my testing one seed will create one plant in one minute. Also like other processing stations this station requires fuel, I used wood, and you can walk away from the station while it processes.
Cooking...
I did not get around to testing this one, but it looks like you need various resources, some crafted like farmed lettuce, some purchased from the vendor like pepper and you click to combine.
Hunting...
Larger list for the novice level of hunting, these harvestable creatures include Grem, Spiders, Ravens, Horses, Wolves, and Bears. This profession feels kind of like a place holder at the moment, but here is what I found. In the wild you will come across certain animals that you cannot click on or target, their names appear in white letters, and if you get close to them a gathering circle will appear. Get within gathering range of them and press the collect button (F). This only needs to be pressed once but will do an animation of "petting" the animal and a progress ring will fill in around the action button. Progress goes up in thirds and takes some time between showing updates. When the progress has completed one of two results will occur, first is a "collected" animal will be put into your inventory, or second, it will kill the animal and the carcass will be put in your inventory. The "collected" animal is to be used with animal husbandry and the carcass can be used to craft meat for cooking or hide/skin for leatherworking. Unfortunately, at the moment there does not appear to be a way to butcher the "collected" animals so they too can be used for cooking / leatherworking. There is also currently no way to skin / butcher animals that you kill, only ones that you collect via hunting. One other inconvenience, both the "collected" animal and the carcass take up a 2x2 grid in your artisan inventory, but a mount only takes up a 1x1 in general inventory.
***Steven / Intrepid, can we please get a way to butcher collected animals to use for cooking / leatherworking. Also can we please get the ability to harvest at least some of our kills for the same purpose. Other gatherable nodes exist in much greater quantity than hunting creatures.***
Tanning...
For this skill you take one of the carcasses gathered from hunting and process it into one of several items. In my test I used ten wolf carcasses and received 50 wolf hides from processing at the tanning station. Now to turn this into leather I need to use the tanning station again to make tanned wolf hide (an apprentice level skill) which requires salt (purchased from a vendor), and weeping willow wood chips, these require apprentice level lumberjacking to gather and craft. Final step, I would then need to process these tanned hides again at the tanning station with another vendor item to then create the actual leather this final process is a journeyman level skill. Each step is usable in leatherworking at the same tier, so the hides are usable at novice level leather working, the tanned hides are usable at the apprentice level leatherworking, and the leather is, you guessed it, usable at the journeyman leatherworking skill. I find that I really like how the tiers for gathering and crafting line up, this shows good forethought on the developer''s part.
Animal Husbandry...
This profession felt horrible to me, mostly due to cost, but I think at higher character levels this may not be as bad, or it may be worse for higher skill levels, I do not know. For now though, as a low level character money is not super easy to come by and each attempt to tame an animal costs roughly 70s. So, how the profession works, you have an animal in your inventory from the hunting profession, go to a "workbench" and attempt to tame, this has a 50% chance to be a mount or a 50% chance to become a beast of burden. At the novice level, if you get the mount it has a 135% movement speed increase (the free horse has a 130%). This movement speed increase was the same for all available mount types whether it was a wolf, a bear, or whatever. Changing the quality of the mount did not appear to change the stats or the mount / bob chance. I made the attempt once and got a bear beast of burden then I gave up as that took all my coin at character level 9, a guildy received 3 wolf beast of burdens before finally getting a mount. Again, the 70s might not be an issue later in the game with a higher character level, but I like to progress my professions as I level so I am not trying to find low tier stuff when I am max level, the cost for this atm seems to want to prevent leveling like this though.
***If I could make a suggestion, since like all other professions this has skill levels and must be leveled up, maybe add an option that allows a 100% chance for a beast of burden for significantly lower cost. After all, in the real world it takes far less time to train a horse to pull a wagon than it does to train it to be a battle mount. I understand not wanting everyone to have the ability to create mounts on the cheap, but this is still a profession like any other and there will only be a few grand masters on the realm, and to get there they will need to level which means they will need to "process" massive amounts of animals to get the skill levels. Also, not everyone is going to want to do the profession to get the mount, many will prefer to just buy one, as it stands my guildy would have needed to sell her wolf mount for 2g 80s just to break even on the money invested let alone having to actually acquire the animals through hunting, all this for a 5% increase in movement speed.***
***One final suggestion, give me the ability to mix and match quality of items if it is not going to affect the result. For instance, for me to create Daffodil Mulch this requires two ingredients that I have to collect in the wild, Daffodil and Droppings. To use the uncommon (green) daffodil I also have to use uncommon droppings. This gave me uncommon mulch that had the same stats on it as the common mulch and when used to create flax it gave me the same quantity and quality of flax. If any of this is not intended I am sorry. Even if it is intended though, let me mix and match and say give me a % chance that the result will be common vs uncommon. Since there were two items required if one is uncommon and one is common maybe do 50/50 chance, or since uncommon is rarer, maybe something closer to 60/40 or 70/30.***
Thank you for your time reading this, and thank you Steven/Intrepid for developing this game, So far I am really enjoying it and looking forward to continued testing and eventually playing the released game.
EDIT: Corrected the size of animals/animal carcasses
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Comments
Edit: added note that this also does not grant skill xp.
Something else to keep in mind, I don't think harvesting those resources contribute to skill xp. So don't try to farm them.
you are correct about inventory size, I updated the post. cost to tame varies by location and tax rate, the lowest one i saw was 66s and the most expensive was 75s so i averaged to roughly 70s.
Your Welcome, I am glad you enjoyed it. I still have not attempted alchemy, but if I remember there are recipes on the alchemy vendor at the Alchemists Tower near the middle of the map.