CRAFTING GUIDE (please read!)

CRAFTING GUIDE
WHAT THEY ARE AND HOW TO DO THEM EFFICIENTLY

Once you Ascend and reach Lv.10, you will unlock the ESSENCETAPPING and AETHERTAPPING skills. These two skills are fundamental to gather raw materials and ingredients for a variety of recipes to make, in general, almost anything - from food, clothing, armor and weapons - to even morph one substance to another rare material.

There is a difference between the two. ESSENCETAPPING is generally the GATHERING action you have in the beginning, pre-Daeva status. By leveling up your Essencetapping, you will be able to gather a wide variety of naturally-occurring materials in the world map - ingredients for cooking, ores for armor and weapons, wood for handicrafting, and precious stones for accessories.

On the other hand, AETHERTAPPING is by tapping natural Aether from the floating, green rocks you can find up in the sky in various cities that allow flight; Verteron and Ardus Shrine to name few. You will see floating rocks called Small Vortexes and Big Vortexes, and they operate the same as Essencetapping. You will need to fly up to reach it though, so if you take too long you might fall down to your grisly death so you should always find a safe ridge or a cliff close by and checkpoint, resting every now and then.

So what does these Aethers do? They're required to make finished products; weapons, armors, accessories, etc. You can buy various types of Aether Powder from the Materials Merchant in Sanctum but they cost quite a lot, and each player is limited to a certain amount of sales each day. It's much better to take a break every now and then in-between leveling to level up your Aethertapping skill and stock up on some Aether Powders.


CRAFTING IN A NUTSHELL
Crafting is extremely important in Aion. You can get by without crafting anything, to be precise, but it's a much more lucrative AND rewarding path in the long run. Why? Because crafted equips usually give much better stats and more Manastone slots than equips that are dropped from mobs. Each class has their own special needs; so you should focus on refining a certain skill that is beneficial to your corresponding class.

[/b] >> Gladiator & Templar
CHAIN >> Gladiator, Templar, Cleric, Chanter
LEATHER >> Ranger, Assassin, Cleric, Chanter
CLOTH >> Sorceror, Spiritmaster, Cleric, Chanter[/ul]
These restrictions apply to jackets (body), pants (lower body), shoes, and arm guards. HELMS/HEADGEARS, EARRINGS, NECKLACES and RINGS of all sorts and types can be worn by any class; this allows for the classes with weaker physical defense such as the Scouts and Mages to be able to equip plate helms for an added physical defense boost.


INITIATING THE CRAFTING SKILL
Assuming that we're all playing as Elyos, the only place to do crafting is in Sanctum. Yep, unfortunately you cannot craft on the world map; you need to craft your things on a crafting table in the respective 'rooms' for each craft. To learn a trade or craft skill, you must first go to Sanctum, and head towards the HALL OF ARTISANS.

For those who don't know where that is, you can view a map on how to get there here.

Also, a list of what sort of skill produces what:

• WEAPONSMITHING > swords, daggers, maces, greatswords, polearms
  
• ARMORSMITHING > plates, shields, chains
  
• TAILORING > leathers, cloths
  
• HANDICRAFTING > rings, earrings, necklaces, bows, staves
  
• ALCHEMY > potions, scrolls, tomes, orbs
  
• COOKING > food (enhancements without spellcasting buffs)
  
• FURNISHING > furniture for your home (useless imo, but if you have money to spend on decorating your home pad space, go ahead and level this up)

Inside the Hall of Artisans, you will see a lot of NPCs in the area. The NPCs out in the open center dome chiefly teaches Tailoring (Leather & Cloth equips), Cooking (food), and furnishing (furniture for your house). The armorsmithing and weaponsmithing NPCs should each have their own 'shop' and you'll need to go inside and talk to the Master NPC standing in the center of the room. Once you initiate conversation with your desired NPC, clicked 'Learn ------', pay the required amount of money, and you can now craft things.

How to level them up exactly? Well, you will notice that the very same NPC will have a few options for you. One of them being, is WORK ORDERS. Work Orders are the cheapest method to level up your crafting as fast as possible. They're simply little tasks that allows you to level up your crafting without having the need to buy a design or gather materials to craft something else. Most often the NPC will even give you the required materials, sometimes you might have to talk to the Merchant NPC in the back to buy some of required materials to craft; but they're very cheap.

Work Orders function like quests; you craft a certain amount of things, you'll see a completed quest symbol above the Master NPC's head, go to In-Progress: Work Orders and voila! You'll be awarded sometimes essential materials you might need to for your own personal crafting; sometimes if you're lucky you might get designs for free.

You can only craft if you have learned a design. Designs are dropped by monsters, sold by the corresponding Merchant, and awarded for Work Orders and other certain quests. The default starting quest for each NPC isn't required; I don't recommend doing it because you'll be wasting Kinah teleporting around to get materials to level up your crafting when you can do it all in one go at Sanctum via Work Orders.

Note: Designs come with a required crafting skill. For example, a certain design requires your crafting level to be at 80p; if your skill is below the required amount, the design will be shaded red and you won't be able to use it until you level up!


CRAFTING AND STATUSES
When you are crafting, you will sometimes have a random chance that your crafted result will gain a 'status'. For example, a regular Betua Rod Staff weapon might become a Noble Betua Rod Staff. The prefix 'Noble' plus the fact that the item's name will change color indicates that it will have higher stats, more slots, and generally a better weapon than its regular form (white text). The higher your craft skill, the better chance you will be able to produce higher grade crafts.

Higher grade statuses range from 'Noble' to 'Heroic', 'Legendary', etc. and each status set are defined by their own color, such as light blue, green, orange, etc.

It's always best to keep status equips for yourself, unless you want to make some money, you can always sell it via Trade Broker and it's almost guaranteed if you place it at a good selling price people will be more than happy to take it off your hands and you will earn some good money in the process.


EXTRA COMMENTARY
I find it much easier to delegate each group member/friend a certain craft to invest towards; after all, crafting is not a very cheap thing to do! You will need time, patience, and kinah to make it happen. It's best to assign a certain crafting trade to a particular person who will be able to provide for the rest of the group.

This makes for a better relationship amongst players of the same group, alliance, or even legion, and people will interact with each other more. You can make trades, assist each other financially, and overall increase your own skill level by crafting things not only for yourself, but for your friends!


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