Crafting in Atlantica Online

At first glance, the crafting in AO seems to be typical of other MMO's. You have your crafting levels with new recipes available upon reaching some arbitrary level. You gather up the materials and the crafting job constitutes a workload you have to work through to come up with the finished product. As an aside, there are literally no trash drops in this game. Chances are if you don't know what an item does, it is used as an ingredient for some crafting recipe somewhere. This will drive those with packrat mentalities bonkers as they come to grips with the limited inventory space. After you gather up the necessary mats and go through the steps to define your job and workload, you will then find out where Atlantica Online diverges from the norm.

Your crafting progress is fueled by the XP you get from killing stuff.

Sure, you could get an auto-craft license on the market or as a reward for a quest chain you get in your 40's. This license will allow you to craft in the traditional way without having to kill anything and is a great option for those crafters unable or unwilling to engage in combat. But it really is faster and more efficient to craft the other way. The process seems a little strange at first and not a bit counter-intuitive but, eventually, you get used to it and will appreciate the fact that you’re not tied to a forge or sewing table if you want to make something. Guild officers can even set up guild crafting jobs where the huge workload is shared by everyone in the guild and their kills contribute to its progress, provided they aren't doing their own personal crafting. You can learn as many crafting skills as you want and there are a huge variety to choose from. Everything from weapons, armor, food, potions, buildings for your towns, skill books, and even licenses needed can be crafted. I'd say that short of special items only available from the item mall or special quest rewards, everything found in this game can be crafted. The only limitations being that it takes some effort and quite a lot of gold in order to level up your tradeskills. There are even plans to introduce end-game gear that is crafting-only; a move that hasn't met with universal acclaim.

That's not the only new wrinkle to crafting in this game. You gain crafting levels (up to a max of 100) by gaining craft XP. Once you gain enough XP to go to the next level, you will then need to be trained up before you actually gain the new level. It's even possible to gain enough XP to gain several levels at one time. Training can be done by finding the appropriate NPC or a player high enough to train you. For example, you can begin to train others at level 11 and can train those levels 11 and below. The same goes for levels 21, 51, and so forth. Training takes a huge chunk of Will which limits how often you can do it but the trainer gets a crafting XP reward as well for doing this which can be a great way to level up your crafting on the cheap.

There are other ways to gain crafting XP. There's the normal way of personal crafting jobs but you can also gain it through the guild crafting jobs as well. When the job finishes, it awards crafting XP to those guildies who contributed to the progress. You also get XP from dismantling gear into materials you can then use to create new crafting jobs. Teaching others also gains you crafting XP as mentioned already. These alternate methods are a great way to level your crafting without having to shell out for expensive materials. For example, I was able to level up my Machine skill from 0-12 purely from the XP I got from one guild crafting job (admittedly it was a huge one) without having to scrounge up so much as one lugnut or whatever it is they need to make things from that craft.

Better Living Through Chemistry

Since I had tried out talisman making with my Warrior Priest, I figured I'd see what the other crafting profession was like with my Ironbreaker. I thought the natural gathering profession to pair this with would be cultivation. Much like TM and salvaging, I foresaw cultivation providing the main ingredients for apothecary that I would need to level.

This plan worked all the way up until the level where the level 1 stabilizers failed to ensure even a slight chance of success even using the maximum of 3 per attempt. Obviously, I would need higher level stabilizers if I wanted to level up any further. The problem was, getting a steady supply would be problematic unless you had access to a scavenger or butcher. So whereas fragments were the bottleneck in TM which ensured you needed to also be a salvager to level efficiently, stabilizers were the limiting factor in apothecary. This means you need to either be a scavenger or a butcher as your gathering profession in tandem with the crafting of apothecary. I switched over to scavenging from my relatively high cultivation skill as soon as I figured this out. Luckily, I didn't need to grind in low level areas to start leveling up scavenging. In fact, it seems you can only level it through level-appropriate mobs and the drops improve as your level does and not necessarily have anything to do with mob level.

I have even found that there are apothecary main ingredients that can be scavenged or butchered. So where does this leave the gathering skill of cultivation? Well, all those seeds that find your way into your backpack will still need to be converted into ingredients via this profession. But it's the perfect alt tradeskill in that it isn't really level dependent or require you to do much travelling. Once you get to the chapter 2 town to learn the skill, you can just park by the mailbox and level from 1-200 from seeds sent to you from your other characters. I was not happy with the prospect of going through cultivation 40-50 again but there seemed to be no other choice if I wanted to level apothecary up anytime soon.

The tradeskill shares a similar interface with talisman making in that you get a crafting window where you can plug in the various vials, main ingredients, and additional ingredients you are qualified to use. After finding a mix you are happy with, you hit the brew button and depending on how stable the mix is, you will get a random result as far as potency is concerned. The main ingredients will inform you as to what the potion will untimately be but you can still get random results depending on the additional ingredients you choose to also include in the mix. A skillup is gained if you successfully brew a potion depending on your current apothecary level and the level of the main ingredient.

Is it worth it? Only if you like the idea of always being stocked with every kind of potion you might ever conceivably need. And if you just hate empty bag slots for some reason.

Talisman Making Update

Since I made this post, Mythic has come out with some changes to the Talisman Making profession in the recent patch. Gold Essences have now been removed and, in their place, you can plug in the Gold Dusts as an ingredient. This removes the dependency TM'ers had with Apothecarists. Now, it's more feasible than ever to skill up using level appropriate ingredients instead of level 1 ones you can buy at merchants.

They have also seen fit to have standard merchants carry level 1 fragments and even salvageable gear. This will help tremendously those just starting out with Talisman Making and Salvaging. No longer will you need to keep buying low-level renown gear just to start leveling those skills up.

If you've been on the fence about this profession while you waited for Mythic to fix it, now is the time to jump in. Now if only we can find us some other containers aside from these level 1 starters.

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.