Talisman Making in WAR

Having leveled my talisman making skill up to the 130's, I can't help but feel like this crafting skill is the red-headed stepchild compared to the more favored apothecary skill. Apothecary is often paired with cultivation which, while it has a similar crafting window to cultivation and talisman making, is actually considered a gathering skill. Cultivation has numerous perks to it starting with the numerous seeds which can drop often from kills. As if that wasn't enough, there are repeatable quests in all the zones which will award you with seeds should you ever find yourself short for some reason. And as if that still wasn't enough, you can find crafting merchants everywhere that sell you the supplies; the tavern even has some of the more esoteric ones for sale if you can't get them anywhere else. Trainers for cultivation and apothecary can be found conveniently in your capital city.

By contrast, talisman making is usually paired with salvaging and the only trainers for them can be found in the chapter 2 town in each racial pairing. Nobody is going to give you supplies for free and the only way to get them is to salvage any magical gear you can find short of some exceptions like belts and some other items. You better make friends with the renown gear vendor as, unless you have a steady and voluminous supply of magical gear, that is going to be the only way to level up your talisman making skill with any regularity. Buy the cheapest renown gear that will salvage into a fragment that you can currently use. Cross your fingers that the salvage operation doesn't fail and you don't need to buy another for a possible skillup. Plug the fragment into the crafting window along with some containers, gold essences, curios, and magic essences. Pray as you hit the fuse button that it gives you a skillup. Rinse and repeat.

There isn't a recipe book that lists ingredients and their results. It's a freeform process and the end-result depends heavily on the quality of the ingredients. There's a little power-up bar that might figure into it with the timing but I've been able to ignore that so far without any ill results. If you are just skilling up, you can get by with a fragment of your current skill level (I have found using fragments I have out-leveled won't skill me as dependably as current level ones) and level 1 ingredients in the other slots.

Is it worth it? Only you can decide this for yourself. The ability to create talismans on demand is offset by the number of talisman awards and drops you can find in the game. But it does get better as you find yourself being able to craft higher quality talismans; eventually even epic ones that have no expiration timer like most of the ones you will find yourself making.