Crafting Manifesto

BlackLotusDragon

As part of their commitment to post weekly updates to their fan community the Forged Chaos team released details on their crafting system including what's currently possible and their future plans:

This week we’re going to discuss Trials of Ascension’s crafting system. The Co-Founders allowed me time to pick their brains so I can share with you both what is possible now, and what we hope to provide for you all at launch. Keep in mind that what I am about to share with you isn’t set into stone; while it is what we would like to do, it is subject to change.

Crafting in ToA involves taking various raw resources collected using gathering skills and processing those materials into useful or decorative items that players can use, wear, or interact with in game. It is a multistage process that requires a variety of skills and no little effort. Gathering materials is really its own topic, so we’ll save that for another time.

Crafters will encounter two types of tools as they transform their raw resources into goods. The first type are inventory tools, such as hammers, saws, sewing needles, whisks, specialty knives and other such tools that one would expect to see in the hands of a crafter. The second type of tools are work stations, such as forges, looms, stretching racks, baking ovens, drying racks, stills, anvils, and other stationary tools that are far too bulky or heavy to be carried around. While only the person in possession of an inventory tool may use it, anyone can use a workstation provided they have the owner’s permission.

Refining materials and crafting items can either be a passive or active process. While most workstations use passive crafting and most inventory tools use active crafting, they are not exclusive. For example, smelting ore is a passive process, meaning once the ore is loaded into the forge to melt, the smelter may walk away while the forge does its thing. However, using a knife to carve a handle is an active process, and requires the full attention of the woodworker.

There are also two types of component parts that crafters will encounter; raw resources and refined materials. Raw resources are those produced by the gathering skills, such as logs from trees, ore from mines, meat or skins from animals, sand from a beach, so on and so forth. Refined materials are those that have been processed in some way, such as cutting logs into lumber, smelting ore into ingots, tanning a hide, spinning fibers, or roasting a vegetable. With the exception of “Flawless” resources and materials, which are used to produce “Legendary” items, most component parts do not carry a quality of their own. They were either made successfully or they weren’t. You can better appreciate this when you consider the crafting of a material like nails; you know in advance you may need 100 nails to build a wall, but do you really want to end up with a small stack for each quality produced (5 at 100%, 2 at 91%, 7 at 89%, you get the picture).

The last part of crafting comes in the form of events. Events can randomly occur while the crafter is working and can have an effect on the tool itself, the item being created, and/or the crafter themselves. Examples of events include heat sources becoming too hot or too cool, the item becoming too wet or too dry, impurities in the materials, and such. Properly countering an event can give a bonus or advert disaster. Ignoring an event can destroy the item being created, damage the tool being used, or cause harm to the next person to interact with the station.

Quality comes into play for the final product, such as a leather vest, or elm bow, or a stone hammer. The quality of the item produced is affected by several factors; the skill of the crafter, the quality of the tools used, the “appropriateness” of the tool used, and the attentiveness of the crafter to events. I’ll use an example to explain.

Joe Smith is a blacksmith with a variety of skills based around working with metal and creating tools, weapons, and armor. His neighbor Carol is a master carpenter and needs a new hammer, so she commissions Joe to make her one. Joe gathers together several iron ingots, a mold for a hammerhead, and loads them into a caster (a work station). He adds fuel to the caster and while the ingots melt and fill the mold, he works on the handle of the hammer. He can do this because casting the hammerhead mold is a passive process.

To create a handle for the hammer, Joe uses the handsaw in his inventory and selects a “hammer handle” from the list. He fails because he doesn’t have a board in his inventory. He gets one from his stockpile and tries again. Cutting the handle is an active process, so he can’t do anything else until it’s finished. Once he has finished the handle, Joe notices that white smoke is coming from the caster. This is a signal from the workstation that it has encountered something that requires Joe’s attention. He opens the caster to see that the fire in the caster has become too hot and the caster itself is at risk of damage. The interface presents him with two options: dowse the fire with water or close the damper. Joe knows he also has a third option; to ignore it since the warning will eventually expire.

If Joe was to ignore the “too hot” warning, it could cause a large loss to the durability of his caster. He doesn’t want that to happen but he doesn’t have any water in his inventory, so he closes the damper. The white smoke disappears and the caster goes back to melting the ingots. Once it has finished melting the ingots, it signals again with white smoke. Joe opens the interface again to see that the metal is ready to be poured into the mold. He expertly pours the metal into the mold and begins the next stage, another passive process called “Cooling”.

Once the metal has cooled, Joe removes the shiney new iron hammerhead from the caster and joins it to the handle. Now Joe has a few options on how to do it. The “right” and proper way is for Joe to use a carpenter’s vice, but it has taken many trials and errors for him to learn that is the optimal tool for the job. If he didn’t have the ideal tool, he could also try banging it with a hammer or even a rock, but those would incur a small penalty to the quality or durability of the resulting hammer.

The hammer complete, Joe sells it to Carol and then goes about his business of being a blacksmith. There are several ways we could change the scenario for a slightly different outcome.

-- Joe could have used stone instead of iron to make the head, but a stone hammer would have resulted in a item with lower durability and would have required skill in masonry to create the hammerhead.

-- If Joe’s tools were old and worn-out (low durability or low quality) they could have also affected the quality of the hammer, so it’s worth keeping quality tools in good repair.

-- If Carol had an old hammer she did not want anymore, Joe could have salvaged it for materials for the new hammer, saving him on materials and her on cost.

-- If Joe was helping someone improve their own blacksmithing related skills, an apprentice if you will, he could have allowed them to set up the caster to melt the ingots, and to address the event that occurred, while pouring the melted metal himself to ensure the success of the pour.

-- If Joe was an apprentice in the skills himself, he would have a higher risk of failure at each step.

-- If he were a master or legend in the skills needed, the hammer he made would benefit from greater quality and durability on completion.

I hope that this has whetted your appetite for taking up a crafting role in Trials of Ascension. We’ll definitely need crafters of all sorts all over TerVarus!