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It's time to take a better look at the crafting system in Age of Conan, and how you can make a bit of money on something that does not involve killing people!

Ask any adventurer journeying through the lands of Hyboria for advice on how to survive the brutal realities of the world, and they'll tell you to get a good sword as soon as possible. If it's not demons haunting you at night, clawing at your back ready to rip out your eyes, it's the treachery of man you must defend yourself from. Unarmed you will not get further in Hyboria than the nearest graveyard.

But there is one thing that can be just as persuasive as the sharp end of the sword: cold cash. Tin, copper, silver and gold – they flow through the cities of civilization like blood flowing through the heart of man: the Stygian merchant, whose commodity is death, hiring assassins to slay his competitors for a few pieces of gold; the Aquilonian noble fuelling political conspiracies with the promise of silver; the Cimmerian chieftain trading his last copper pieces to feed his starving tribe.

For you, as the player, there are numerous ways in which you can acquire some currency. You can head out into the great unknown to perform quests for people in need. You can murder innocents and loot their bodies for valuables. Maybe you would prefer hunting for game and selling the skin?

Either that or you can pick up a trade – a craft – using your hands to make something others want!

Becoming a craftsman

In the world of Hyboria there are certain locations where craftsmen (and women!) congregate to form societies where they can practice their trade. These are commonly called resource and gathering regions as they are areas with a special abundance of resources needed for crafting, and here you will also find many who are more than willing to learn others how to practice their trade.

Upon reaching the required level needed to start crafting (which is currently set to level forty, but that might change during the beta process) you need to seek out a crafting trainer who can teach you his or her trade. This will be your mentor on the long road ahead, sending you out on various quests where you need to prove your worth as a crafter. The important thing to remember is that you can only have one crafting profession, so choose wisely before dedicating yourself to your mentor!

Here are the different crafting professions in Age of Conan:

• Weaponsmithing: Picking up this trade allows you to craft various types of weaponry, from swords to staffs, from daggers to crossbows. Everything needed to kill your opponents!
• Armorsmithing: If you wish to go the completely opposite route from the weaponsmith, try picking up the armorsmithing craft that allows you to craft various types of armor pieces.
• Alchemy: Do you enjoy mixing things into vials and seeing how the result affects people? Then you should try your luck at alchemy, allowing you to make various types of potions.
• Architecture: City-building is an integral part of Age of Conan, and you will need someone skilled in the arts of architecture to draw up the plans needed for the different buildings.
• Gemcutting: Monsters tend to drop rough gems that the gemcutter can turn into powerful enchantments, and these can be placed into other crafted items to make them more potent.

We have tried making it so that crafting is as intuitive as possible, while still maintaining the level of challenge that makes progression so entertaining. When you’re ready to start crafting something, all you do is bring up your recipe book and click on what you want to create. If you have the required resources in your inventory, the item will be created for you. There are certain exceptions to this, as some of the top tier recipes will require that your guild is in possession of certain types of structures within the guild city. Some of the top tier alchemy recipes will, for instance, require your guild to have an alchemist’s workshop constructed within the guild city.

Once you have chosen a crafting profession you will start out small, with little knowledge of how to create anything at all, much less anything of real use! Now it’s time for you to prove your worth to your trainer, allowing you to craft more and more advanced items over time.

(http://community.ageofconan.com/conan/frontend/feature_crafting_small.jpg)

(click HERE (http://community.ageofconan.com/conan/frontend/feature_crafting_big.jpg) for a larger version of this image)

Collecting resources

Integral to crafting is, of course, resources. It’s what you have to pour into anything you create, whether it is a basic sword or an entire tower structure for your guild city. In order to collect a specific type of resource you will need to learn how to master the resource gathering profession that is associated with that resource. Note that you can master all of these professions at the same time.

Here are the different resource gathering professions you can master:

    * Mining: This profession will allow you to gather resources such as copper, tin, iron and more. You can also find rare ones like aurichalcum and blue iron.
    * Prospecting: This profession will allow you to gather resources such as silver, electrum, gold and more. You can also find rare ones like illustrium and platinum.
    * Skinning: This profession will allow you to gather resources such as different types of leather, some of which are rare ones like the grained leather and the whorled leather.
    * Stonecutting: This profession will allow you to gather resources such as sandstone, granite, basalt and more. You can also find rare ones like adamant and obsidian.
    * Weaving: This profession will allow you to gather resources such as cotton, wool, flax and more. You can also find rare ones like bloodflax and cottonwisp.
    * Woodcutting: This profession will allow you to gather resources such as ash, yew, oak and more. You can also find rare ones like soulwood and amberwood.

The alchemist doesn’t actually go out and gather resources for his potions. Instead the different ingredients required will drop from defeated enemies, just as with the gems used by the gemcutter. One of the reasons why we are doing this is to create a certain level of dependency between crafters and adventurers, making it a bit more interesting for everyone involved! Another way we’re creating dependencies between the two is making it so that only crafted items can have gems embedded, so the adventurers will be running back to the crafters with the gems they just picked up in some dark dungeon, asking the weaponsmith to make a weapon for them and the gemcutter to put the gems in! Using gems you can customize items, while dropped items can’t be customized.

One central element of the resource gathering system is the rare resources. When gathering a resource there is a small chance that you may collect a rare version of it. Using rare resources when you are crafting will allow you to make a special version of an item. These items will have additional bonuses, such as allowing gemcutters to put more gems into them. This allows crafters to make some incredibly potent and unique items by using several special gems and rare resources!

The primary reason for us allowing you to master all resource gathering professions is because of how important resources is to so many different aspects of the gameplay in Age of Conan. As an example you will need to pour resources into your guild city in order to pay for its upkeep!

Progression

In stark contrast to similar games out there, progression within your chosen craft is not done by simply producing items or gathering resources over and over again until your skill improves. In Age of Conan you do not have a numerical crafting skill listed somewhere – instead you progress through different quests whose rewards allows you to craft better items and gather more advanced resources. This means that progression is entirely tied up to quests that you do for your trainer.

Progression is split up into tiers. You start with the first tier, involving basic items/resources, and you will have to be a certain level before you can move onto the next tier. Each tier consists of various quests that will reward you with new recipes for items to make, and resources to gather.

As an example, when you first start out in the alchemy craft your trainer will teach you how to craft what we call crude remedies. One of the first quests requires you to make a set of crude remedies for your trainer, and in return he will show you how to make common remedies. Within the first tier, currently starting at level forty, you will learn how to make crude and common potions. As you reach level fifty you will be eligible for tier two quests, rewarding you with refined potion recipes. It’s the same with resource gathering: the stonecutter will start gathering sandstone while he’s in tier one, but will quickly move up to adamant and basalt when he complete quests in higher tiers.

One of the reasons why we have chosen to make progression quest-based is to eliminate the feel of going through a grind. Instead of producing one hundred basic potions just to learn how you make something a bit more interesting, you will actually progress through a storyline that will also reward you with a healthy amount of experience points which will count towards your next level!

Hard work pays off

Sooner or later once you have started to master a crafting profession (and/or resource gathering profession) you will want to get paid for the hard work. There are several ways to flog your items (and resources collected). You can stand in front of Conan’s castle in Tarantia, screaming your lungs out for someone to please buy your wooden crossbow – or you can seek out the tradepost.

Tradeposts are Age of Conan’s equivalent to the auction house that you find in most other games of this genre. Tradeposts can be found in cities and player cities, and using them brings up an interface that combines your bank, your mail and a marketplace where you can buy and sell items. To sell something you have crafted you simply put it on your bank and tag it for sale with the appropriate price. Someone in need of it will eventually come along and buy it from you.

One important aspect of the tradepost is actually that it is not an auction house. There is no auctioning, there are no bids. You put something up for sale with a set price and either someone purchase it or not. It certainly makes things interesting and the market much more fast and furious!

At the end of the day you can finally head home with a few gold pieces in your pocket, proud of the fact that you once again managed to make a solid living – without cutting off someone’s head!

Upon reaching the required level needed to start crafting (which is currently set to level forty, but that might change during the beta process)

At last, craft players have their own equivalent of grinding to access raid content.

I love seeing the words "HARD WORK PAYS OFF" in a writeup related to an MMO.  I enjoy paying $20 a month for a second job. 

You can't make it green while actively playing the top levels of WoW. >_<

I love seeing the words "HARD WORK PAYS OFF" in a writeup related to an MMO.  I enjoy paying $20 a month for a second job. 

In stark contrast to similar games out there, progression within your chosen craft is not done by simply producing items or gathering resources over and over again until your skill improves. In Age of Conan you do not have a numerical crafting skill listed somewhere – instead you progress through different quests whose rewards allows you to craft better items and gather more advanced resources.

So how does Architecture work? You draw plans and watch to see if your building falls?
I'm seriously curious about that.

Maybe the floorboards creak.

Or it costs more in maintenance.

Or it spawns giant termintes at odd intervals.

That is the shittiest crafting/trading system ever.
they basically given every possible way to be specialized crafter/trader/resource collector. If was bad in WOW, but here it's just mega suck

I don't think you can fail, so you shouldn't have to watch your building crumble.

It's pretty much : We are different!  You don't have to grind crafting, instead grind for quests then grind for ressources.  Revolution!

To their defence, it's a nice secondary system if ressources gathering is easy but you have to fight for the best ressources.  It promote immersion and interesting meaningful battle. I see it has a step forward from most system.  It's definitely not EVE but I don't think it's what they were shooting for.

The whole point is that you cannot become specialized crafter in Conan, that's what's wrong.

Hmmm how so? You can only pick one profession and you advance it by running the quests to learn how you craft the shit. That's about as specialized as becoming specialized sword swinger or whatever they use as spell casters. Except sword swingers advance swinging the swords and crafters advance well, crefting apparently.

Only problems is that people who actually like to play the industrial type won't have anything to do in this game:(

I wonder if that was intentional; bringing back the whole "don't play to bake bread, play2crush" thingie.

There are certain exceptions to this, as some of the top tier recipes will require that your guild is in possession of certain types of structures within the guild city. Some of the top tier alchemy recipes will, for instance, require your guild to have an alchemist’s workshop constructed within the guild city.

When gathering a resource there is a small chance that you may collect a rare version of it. Using rare resources when you are crafting will allow you to make a special version of an item. These items will have additional bonuses, such as allowing gemcutters to put more gems into them. This allows crafters to make some incredibly potent and unique items by using several special gems and rare resources!

Another way we’re creating dependencies between the two is making it so that only crafted items can have gems embedded, so the adventurers will be running back to the crafters with the gems they just picked up in some dark dungeon, asking the weaponsmith to make a weapon for them and the gemcutter to put the gems in! Using gems you can customize items, while dropped items can’t be customized.

The primary reason for us allowing you to master all resource gathering professions is because of how important resources is to so many different aspects of the gameplay in Age of Conan. As an example you will need to pour resources into your guild city in order to pay for its upkeep!

I have to pump resources into my castle again? I had enough of that in SB.

I think things like player built / owned areas should actually provide resources free (your serfs mine the land and shit). It would take a good chunk of resources to build at first, but after that it would be profitable. This makes them something beyond a 'WEE LOOK WHAT WE HAVE WE ARE UBER'.

Translation: Hope you have a guild!!

I'm surprised many people are surprised that a guild based game would require guilds.

Crafting only serves a purpose at two points in the game:

1) The regular stuff that you use to level is only useful when the server is in its infancy.  Once the server matures, general crafted items become merchant fodder.

2) At the endgame.  If the best items that you can craft require super rare drops and a long grind while only being marginally better or the same as random drops, noone will bother buying crafted items. 

DAoC is the only game I've seen really get any mileage out of crafted armor and weapons.  The addition of jewelcrafting and ability to effortlessly macro to max skill made this so.   

I was pointing out that this is a system that rewards the powerful with the best gear.   Creating disparities like this tends to make PvP suck for the have-nots.

I stand corrected.  Thanks for the info... and the slight glimmer of hope.  I enjoy crafting, but feel that my efforts are futile in nearly every game out there.

I hate crafting in MMOs.  It's a dumb timesink.  There is no way to make crafting fun for most people.  To me it's just collecting crap and making stuff and get a +1.  I like the fact that you can max out your crafting painlessly.  More time for other stuff.

On a serious note, I'm not sure how crafting could ever be fun, but its probably just me.

DAoC is the only game I've seen really get any mileage out of crafted armor and weapons.  The addition of jewelcrafting and ability to effortlessly macro to max skill made this so.  

I mean, if players can spend their whole game lives crafting, there will be an awful lot of those industrial types, which might be considered kinda weird for a Conan game.

It's strangely satisfying to smoke pipeweed you've grown and harvested yourself.

I like to craft.  I almost bought LotRO just to be a farmer.

I thought this was a gaming discussion?!?!

I did buy LotRO just to be a farmer.  Then they changed it all up.

LotrO -> Farming -> Pipeweed -> Smoke

Conan was the son of a blacksmith.  It wouldn't be all that weird.

Ok, I can add one more reason people like to craft in MMOs: to be a resource baron. So far I've got: resource baron, resourcefulness (smoking your own pipe weed,) and getting rich. And yet - none of it relates to the actual act of crafting itself. Throw shit into a window and click combine = not interesting. Do it 300 times to level = soul crushing.

I would not class WoW's combat as repetitive or uninteresting. Leveling is quick and easy. There is very little downtime. Abilities and options available to a character, while relatively narow, are effective and represent strategic options. The game has well structured questlines to keep attention focused.

WoW is popular because of all of those things; it would be less so if the combat were no more than 'have x, y, and z' and click combine.

You prefer sword-swinging animations to hammer-hitting-anvil animations.

I still have not heard anyone say that they enjoy the actual mechanics of crafting.

I just read that you liked resource gathering and the variety it produced, also being a bit of the resource baron. And even in that the burn out factor was high.

The act of leveling crafting in SWG was still just have a bunch of stuff, put it in the window, click combine, wait for results, repeat ad nauseum. Was that fun for you, or just something you put up with to get to the top of the ladder?

Puzzle pirates is a great example, as far as puzzle pirates goes. Put in the context of a tradiitional MMO grind it would just get that much more tedious. IE: Instead of clicking combine 300 times to get a crafting level, you play the same minigame 300 times to get a level. I'd actually think it would work out really well for AoC though - as long as people can be satisfied by crafting no more than 10-20 items a day.

I just read that you liked resource gathering and the variety it produced, also being a bit of the resource baron. And even in that the burn out factor was high.

The act of leveling crafting in SWG was still just have a bunch of stuff, put it in the window, click combine, wait for results, repeat ad nauseum. Was that fun for you, or just something you put up with to get to the top of the ladder?

<troll>
I thought it was clear from the last 10 years of online gaming that people who like to play games don't like to be dependent on people who like to craft.  Something to do with having to suck craftard cock to get something you need to play the game not being fun.
</troll>

Or be dependant on others for your combat advancement. (Forced grouping)

<troll>
I thought it was clear from the last 10 years of online gaming that people who like to play games don't like to be dependent on people who like to craft.  Something to do with having to suck craftard cock to get something you WANT to play the game not being fun.
</troll>

<troll>
I thought it was clear from the last 10 years of online gaming that people who like to play games don't like to be dependent on people who like to craft.  Something to do with having to suck craftard cock to get something you need to play the game not being fun.
</troll>

I thought EvE disproved this.  If you going to make everyone dependent on crafters than it requires a robust economy.

I still have not heard anyone say that they enjoy the actual mechanics of crafting. And you can't tell me that people never enjoy the actual mechanics of adventuring because otherwise, why are people playing these games at all? Once they get to your level of apathy expertise, the only things that keep them playing are their social connections, the time they have already invested into the game, the prospect of maxing out their gear, and the occasional expansion. And then eventually even that is not enough, but I don't have a problem with this.

That's fine, but again it's a matter of taste.  For some reason you're hellbent on proving that combat is more interesting than crafting in existing MMOs.  You can't.

I derive just as much enjoyment from fakely making fake things as you do from fakely swinging a fake sword and killing things that aren't alive.

There are more good combat systems out there in MMO's than there are good crafting systems.

Are we playing the same games?  Combat sucks in most MMOs.

Yah, I was gonna say, I certainly don't see this happening in EVE. SWG? Yes, but I'm not sure why.. can't buy stuff far away maybe?

[...]If you can get what you need from other players easily and without requiring direct interaction, it stops sucking.

Not having played EvE much at all, I'm going to guess that the big difference is that you can buy stuff you want in EvE at a fair market price right away without having to spend lots of time walking to one poorly-stocked shop after another, sending in-game mail to people who are offline and waiting a day for a response, et cetera.  That "robust economy" thing.

The key thing (in my mind) is that it sucks to be dependent on other players in real time, because most people aren't always logged in at the same time you are.  If you can get what you need from other players easily and without requiring direct interaction, it stops sucking.

Not having played EvE much at all, I'm going to guess that the big difference is that you can buy stuff you want in EvE at a fair market price right away without having to spend lots of time walking to one poorly-stocked shop after another, sending in-game mail to people who are offline and waiting a day for a response, et cetera.  That "robust economy" thing.

The key thing (in my mind) is that it sucks to be dependent on other players in real time, because most people aren't always logged in at the same time you are.  If you can get what you need from other players easily and without requiring direct interaction, it stops sucking.

And at that point the only difference from a game where you do all your buyng from an NPC is that the price is set by the "market", rather then by the devs.  For those of us who are largely un-interested in the "sym-wallstreet", it seems like an awful lot of work to get to the same end result.