Greetings fellow Istarians, my name is Thorin Iceforge. Darkstaff has asked me to help you out in your quest to attain fame, wealth, and skill as a Crafter. Whether you delve into the mystic arts of crafting spells making magical jewelry forging wonderous weapons smithing impenetrable armor building astute structures or brewing delicious stews, the basic principle to learning these skills are the same.

After speaking with the trainer that can teach you the craft of your desire, request the basic equipment necessary to begin you journey. The trainers give you only very basic tools, and they are quite crude but effective for your first few lessons. You have tools and your trainer was kind enough to give you the basic formulas that are needed to start your craft. Now what? Well that is up to you, your options are not limited to what I will say, but I’d advise you consider my advice at the very least.

Ok, time to get technical. Your training equipment limits the skills that are related to the use of that tool to 50 (for example: Training Smelting Tongs limit your smelting skill to 50). Once you reach around level 5 of your crafting school you really need to look into upgrading to bronze tools (these limit the skill to 200).

You start with formulas necessary to refine the raw resources into usable material (for example copper and tin ore into bronze bars) and also one or two skill 1 formulas for craftable items. As a crafter it is essential to have formulas that are close to your skill level (there is a base skill level and a modified skill level—modified by your stats). You cannot use formulas above your modified skill level, but formulas that are equal to your modified skill level will give you the best gain. Also keep in mind that each level has a experience gain cap (level 1’s can only gain 20 exp for a single item no matter what they craft), and this cap progressively allows more experience as you gain levels.

There are several ways to obtain formulas. The first way is to do tasks for the trainer. Doing tasks is very helpful and I highly suggest it for low-level crafters (especially crafters below level 5). Not only do you get a formula, but you also get experience points and a little copper coin (note: once you repeat a task it seems that you don’t get a formula 100% of the time). The formulas received this way are usually very basic formulas (skill 1-50). The second way is to go to the Consigner or Pawn Broker that reside in every town and look to see if a formula useful to you is available for purchase. Consigners sell items for players at whatever price the player designates, while the Pawn Broker sell items that they have bought from players and are usually very high priced (though not badly priced for low level formulas). Third, you can go and hunt undead for formulas. This will be the least efficient way to find formulas, as they drop randomly and infrequently (frequency may change once Horizons is released). Supposedly there will be a fourth way to obtain formulas, which is not yet active as of the writing of this article. The ability to place buy orders on the Consigners will be the fourth and maybe best.

Now to the nitty gritty. You gain experience from making items and also from doing quests. From level 1-5, I recommend doing tasks for trainers. These tasks often yield more experience upon completion of the task than actually obtaining the items necessary to complete the task, and considering the experience point cap doesn’t cover quest experience points this is a huge plus.

Once you’ve reached level 5 in your crafting school, you must start looking into replacing your training equipment. Not all skills will be capped yet, but start looking for those bronze or sandstone or cedar tools (hopefully you get lucky enough to acquire formulas for them). I would suggest that you keep doing tasks till the primary crafting skills are 50 (for example weaponsmithing, fletching, spellcrafting, Armorcraft and so on).

At skill 50 or level 5 crafter (for some schools, skill 50 is level 6 or 7) tasks tend to become less productive and seem to yield fewer useful formulas. Now you have a choice of what to do. The obvious choice is to start producing items but remember to craft formulas at your skill for best experience gain. And also don’t limit your crafting to one item in that skill range, some items produce more experience than others. An example in Beta was at fletching 50 you could make cedar cudgels that yielded 72 experience per item compared to 57 experience and actually used less resources than every other item.

The best locations to craft for level 1-20 crafters would be the “newbie islands” (this isn’t true for Jewelers or Confectioners, you have to explore around the racial cities for sufficient spawns of gems and a gemcutter hut or food plants and ovens). You also have a choice to either deconstruct or sell your goods. This is of course up to preference, but let me say that deconstructing does provide enough experience points to be effective in leveling. And here is a tip if you sell your goods. You are allowed 5 items per Consigner (there is a consigner in every town) so don’t waste those 5 slots. Once you have 5 items on the Consigner look into selling you items to the Pawn Broker. An interesting find with the Pawn Broker is that their pay isn’t dependent on the skill level of the item (I have found several skill 100 items that sell for 3 times as much as a skill 150 item to the Pawn Broker). Sell different items to the Pawn Broker to get a feel for his/her pricing.

The less obvious choice is to quest. Quests come in many shapes and sizes and most have a beginning level requirement (the good ones start at level 5). DO NOT do quests for the Imperial Taskmaster (unless you are a miner or gatherer), these yield too little experience and copper for the time it takes to complete them. Most non-trainer NPC’s give quests and it is best to explore the racial cities and talk to them. One quest of note is the Darkstaff Quests. Gregory the Darkstaff is located in Dalimond and gives you errands to run for him. Once you complete his errands you receive 500 experience in your current adventure school and 500 experience in your current crafting school (note: this is as of Beta 3, but they are adding more quests to him so it’s a fair assumption that he’ll be around for release). Darkstaff quests are repeatable and require you to be at least level 5 in either an adventure school or crafting school.

That should be enough information to get you started, but it is very general. Here are a few additional tips:

1. Buy items that increase your carrying capacity. The more you carry the faster you can level.
• Get a cargo disk as soon as possible. These are invaluable (even though they really slow your running speed down). With the added cargo capacity, you’ll find you will level faster even though you walk slower…I do have one tip in using them though, don’t equip them until you are either overburdened or till you have reached your destination to start mining or gathering
• Sacks that equip to your shield slot.
• Backpacks that replace your initial backpack (1000 inventory capacity) and increase your carrying capacity.
• Cargo armor is also very useful.
2. The initial prestige crafting schools can be entered when you hit level 10 of it’s basic school counterpart (example: At level 10 Scholar you can enroll with the Spellcrafter Trainer). This is true for Blacksmith, Outfitters, and Scholars.
3. Also Blacksmith, Outfitter, and Scholar are not the only schools that you can enroll in with no requirements. There is also Miner, Gatherer, Jeweler, and Confectioner whose trainers are located in certain racial cities (see the trainers location list for more details).

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