Wiki › Crafting and upgrading

Crafting and upgrading

Crafting works like Minecraft: logs become planks, planks become sticks, and everything else is laid out in a grid. By hand you have a 2 × 2 grid; at a Workbench, 3 × 3. The recipe book in the crafting window (C) shows what you can make and fills the grid for you. Other things are special orders, picked from a list at a station; some cost labor, which comes back over time, even while you are away. Metal weapons, tools and armour are smithed at an anvil, in the window’s Anvil tab (see The Anvil tab, below).

What a recipe makes

Point at anything in the crafting window (a recipe in the book, a special order, the cooking and brewing lists, an ingredient, one of your materials, or what the grid will make) to see what it is: its kind, its numbers (damage, armour, mining speed, healing, flight), what it gives, its lore and what it sells for, as the bag shows it. Pick a recipe (in the book, or a row of special orders) and a card opens under it with the same, and Open in the wiki for its entry, with every way to get it. On a phone a tap shows the card. Point at an ingredient in a row, or tap it, and the card is the ingredient's. The × on the card puts it away.

The window keeps your place, in the book and in the window, and the box you were typing in, while your life or your bag changes.

Many at once. Craft all makes as many as the grid's materials allow (up to 999 at a time). A special order, a brew or a dish you can make more than once has a ×N button beside it: it makes all N in one click, by the same rules as one, and stops at the first that cannot be made (out of something, or of labor). The chat says it once: Crafted 36x Ballista bolt.

Repair at an anvil

Stand by an anvil, any anvil (your own too, not only Aldhearth's), and the crafting window's first tab, Crafting, starts with Repair, right under the search box. Repair mends anything worn that you carry for gold (Repair everything does it all at once); tempered gear costs more, and the note under Repair says how much. Away from an anvil it sits at the bottom of the window, after the other stations' lists.

The Anvil tab

The crafting window has three tabs at the top. Crafting is the grid, the recipe book and the other stations' special orders, with Repair first whenever you stand at an anvil. Cauldron is brewing and cooking (a cauldron opens the window on it). Anvil is everything an anvil makes:

• The Forge first: upgrades, runes, sigils and Wanestones, with Open the forge (see The Forge, below).
• Smithing: every metal weapon, tool and piece of armour. Pick one and press Smith; ×N makes several at once.
• Anvil orders: wings, Jewels of Ascent, the iron longbow and the returning glaive, the Ironwood, Starsilver and Emberglass rods, the broad, tunneller's and quarry picks, the builder's ring, the lamp helm, Home defences, the Deep's forged weapons and charms, and the rest.
• Runes and sigils to carve.

Any anvil does the work: the one beside the Workbench in every town and at the camp where you begin, your own (7 iron bars on the grid make one), or the Master Forge in Aldhearth, the only one that makes mythril and starsilver gear. Away from an anvil the tab still shows everything, greyed, and says to stand at one. In the Forge, Smith gear at this anvil opens the tab. The window keeps the tab you chose while the game is open; a cauldron opens on its own tab without changing it, so C still opens the one you chose.

Not on the Workbench any more. Metal gear is no longer made on the grid, and the recipe book no longer lists it. Lay out an old pattern (two iron bars over a stick) and the grid says where it is made now.

And higher up: starsilver (Master Forge) makes a blade (2 bars, 2 crystal and a stick, 16 labor) and a pickaxe (3 bars and 2 sticks, 16 labor); embersteel, from the Deep, makes a blade (2 bars and a stick, 18 labor), a pickaxe (3 bars and 2 sticks, 18 labor), a helm (5 bars, 14 labor) and a plate (8 bars, 24 labor), at any anvil.

The Forge

All other work on a piece of gear is done in the Forge: right click an anvil (or press F by it, or Open the forge in the crafting window). It has three slots:

• The item, in the middle: the piece you work on.
• The stone, beside it. What it is says what the forge does: a Jewel of Ascent tries +1; a rune gives a weapon its move; a sigil gives its power an element; a Wanestone reforges the power (see Weapon powers).
• The ward: Warding stones, for a try that could break the piece (one from +8, two from +9).

A deep rune goes in the stone slot too, with a helm, armour, boots, a ring, an amulet or wings in the middle: the piece's socket takes it (see Deep runes). A piece that holds a rune shows it, with Take out.

A Ram’s horn goes in the stone slot with a weapon or an axe in the middle: that weapon's socket takes it, and its blows knock the Grown back (see Knockback, below). It shows and comes out the same way, with Take out.

Quick forge. Tick Quick forge under the Forge button (or in Settings > Graphics > Effects, the same setting) and every try is answered at once: a short flash and its sound instead of the hammering, the result in the chat straight away. The odds are the same either way.

Under them the strip shows what in your bag can go in, in three rows: what you wear first (each piece with where it is worn and its +N), then the rest of your gear, then your stones. drag a thing into its slot, or click it and it goes to the slot it belongs in. Click a slot to empty it. Nothing leaves your bag until you press Forge. Before you do, the box under the slots says what will happen: the odds, what a failure costs, and what it takes (or, on the button, why it cannot be done yet). When the forge can break the piece, the button turns red and says Forge: can break.

The moment. Press Forge and the stone flies into the item; the sparks spin faster, the anvil rings and the piece shakes with heat. Then a white flash and golden rays (a rune's violet, a sigil's colour of its element) if it worked; smoke and a crack if it failed; a red flash and shards if it broke. Those standing near see the sparks fly from your anvil and hear it ring. The chat line comes when the outcome shows.

Upgrading

Every piece of gear can be upgraded, from +1 to +15:

Each try takes a Jewel of Ascent. Any anvil goes to +6; from +7 only the Master Forge in Aldhearth will try. A piece's tooltip says what its next + gives, number by number, and the odds.

A warning first. When a try can break the piece, the result box says so in red, and pressing Forge: can break asks first, in red: what you would lose, the odds, and a button to use your Warding stones if you have enough. Only Risk it goes ahead without one.

The Warding stone. From +8 on, put Warding stones in the ward slot: one for a try from +8, two for every try from +9. A failed try then keeps the piece whole, but it still drops a level: the stones stop the breaking, not the drop. They are used up either way. With stones from +8, a +10 takes about 58 Jewels of Ascent from +0 on average and 12 stones, a +12 about 209 Jewels and 85 stones, and a +13 about 474 and 224. The Master Forge makes them (3 Jewels of Ascent, a Wanestone, 4 crystal and 1,500 gold), Tobias the Town crier sells them for 350 event points, and every great one that falls leaves one, one time in eight, for the killer and for each who had a share of its spoils.

Past +9 the gear shows it. A weapon glows from +6 (pale blue, deep blue, gold, violet), and from +10 it burns grander: crimson, molten, jade, white star, rose, and at +15 every colour in turn, with motes that circle you, a halo at your feet, a turning ring of runes from +13 and rays at +15. A set (a helmet, chest armor and boots worn together) glows from +7 in the colour of its lowest piece, and from +10 it has the motes and the halo too. Everyone sees it. Take a piece to +10 or more and everyone online hears of it.

Two of a kind? The forge works on one. If you carry more than one of the piece in the middle, the others go to your mail as they were, and the result box says so before you press Forge: a bag keeps one make of a thing (see Mail). The same goes for runes, sigils and reforging.

Runes, sigils and Wanestones

These work on weapons only. Runes and sigils work at any anvil; a Wanestone only at the Master Forge in Aldhearth. Put the weapon in the middle (from your bag or your hand: it need not be held) and the rune, sigil or Wanestone beside it. The result box says what the move does, or the element, or each way a reforge can go and its odds, and the gold it costs.

Knockback

Some blows throw the Grown back, the way a greathammer's do: a step away from you, so they have to come at you again.

• Stone cudgel. Made by hand from the very start: two stone, planks and a stick, in any shape in the 2 × 2 grid. It hits as hard as a stone sword, and every Grown it strikes is thrown back.
• Ram’s horn. Later, a socket for any weapon (or an axe), made at an anvil from two mythril bars and 10 essence. Set it in the Forge like a deep rune: the weapon in the middle, the horn as the stone. Setting it always works and taking it out again is free; it goes wherever the weapon goes, into a chest or a trade.

A weapon's tooltip says when its socket holds a horn, and beside the weapon you hold it counts the knockback as a difference. Great ones and bosses stand their ground, and a player is never thrown.

When gear breaks

Weapons wear when they hit, tools when they dig, armour when you are hurt. At 85 % wear you are told it is badly worn, and at 95 % that it is about to break. When it breaks you see a red note and hear it snap. Broken gear gives nothing until you repair it at an anvil:

• A broken pickaxe or axe digs and chops like bare hands: slowly, and not ore, deepstone or the Deep's band rock at all. An area pick digs one block, and a flying pick stays in your hand.
• A broken weapon hits like bare hands: its damage, its reach and its +N do not count, and it stops glowing. A broken bow, staff, glaive or wand will not shoot, and says so at once.
• Broken armour, helms and boots give no armour and none of their bonuses (a lamp helm gives no light).
• Charges, bombs and blasts use your best whole pickaxe; with none, they work as bare hands.
• Wings, rings, amulets, rods, buckets, bombs and mounts never break.

A broken thing's hotbar slot turns red and its bar is struck through. Slots and bag cells say BROKEN, and its tooltip says first what it does now and what the repair costs. The comparison against what you wear counts a broken piece as nothing. The Market and the trade window show how worn something is before you take it. Carry a spare pickaxe when you go deep.

Furnaces

Loading it. The furnace window lists what you carry that smelts and what burns, each with an Amount box (type a number, then Enter or Add), +1, +10 and All: no slot to pick first. Typing more than you carry puts in all you carry. Smelt all loads, in one click, all of the ore you carry most of and the fuel it takes (the fuel already in it if you have more, else your longest-burning). Each slot holds up to 999, so load everything you have: it smelts on while you walk away or log off (up to 2 hours), and does not stop at a stack. Bars of another kind waiting in Result go to your bag when you load a new ore, so they never hold it up.

Every furnace is its own. What you put in one (its ore, its fuel, its progress) is yours alone, in a town's Furnace too, where everyone has their own. F opens the furnace you are standing at, and a right click the one you point at; the window shuts when you walk away from it. If someone else's fire is burning in a furnace you open, it says so, and your own slots in it are still yours.

A furnace shows what is in it: dark when it is cold, red coals when its fuel is low and there is nothing to smelt, and flames, light and smoke while anyone's fire is burning in it. It does not glow when it is empty. A furnace that is dug up, burnt or washed away gives everyone back what they had in it (what you had in one while you were away comes back at your next login).

The stations

The crafting grid 96

Put the ingredients in the grid in this shape (anywhere in the grid, as long as the shape matches). The recipe book in the crafting window fills the grid for you.

Smithing at the anvil 24

Every metal weapon, tool and piece of armour is made in the crafting window’s Anvil tab, at any anvil; mythril and starsilver only at the Master Forge in Aldhearth. None of them is made on the grid.

Special orders

Picked from the list at a station, not laid out in the grid. Labor comes back over time, even while you are away.

At the Workbench

At the Anvil

At the Furnace

At the Sun-forge

At the Deep anvil

Runes, sigils and the Wanestone

All of these are master work, made at the Master Forge in Aldhearth. What they do is on the weapon powers page.

Brewing

At a Cauldron. The strongest brews only at the Alchemists’ Cauldron in Aldhearth. More on the potions page.

Cooking

At a Cauldron. “Any raw fish” takes the cheapest fish in your bag first, and never a legend. Every dish heals and leaves you Well fed for 10 minutes (one meal at a time). More on the weather and cooking page.

Wands and spells

At a wandwright’s bench: Odile has one in Aldhearth, and a workbench makes your own. More on the spellcraft page.

Smelting

Ore on top, fuel below. Each item takes 4 seconds.

Upgrading

Hold the weapon, stand at an anvil and use a Jewel of Ascent. Each level adds 8% damage. Any anvil takes a weapon to +6; from +7 on only the Master Forge in Aldhearth will try. A failed try from +6 up costs the blade a level. The jewel is used either way.

Everything that is master work

Mythril blade, Mythril pickaxe, Mythril armor, Mythril helm, Mythril boots, Mythril axe, Starsilver blade, Starsilver pickaxe, Stormwing, Skyforged pick, Mythril excavator, Potion of Might III, Potion of Ironskin III, Potion of Swiftness III, Potion of Keen Eye III, Potion of Regeneration III, Potion of Delver’s Brew III, Skywarden wings, Lesser rune of Dash, Lesser rune of Leap Slam, Lesser rune of Whirlwind, Lesser rune of Hurl, Lesser rune of Groundwave, Lesser rune of Smite, Lesser rune of Nova, Burning sigil, Frozen sigil, Blighted sigil, Hungering sigil, Thundering sigil, Quaking sigil, Wanestone, Jewel of Ascent, Fledgling wings, Greater healing potion, Firelight elixir, Greater mana potion, Weaver’s elixir, Starsilver rod, Delver’s excavator, Warding stone, Reachwarden helm, Reachwarden plate, Reachwarden boots, Reachwarden ring, Reachwarden pendant, Riftglass helm, Riftglass plate, Riftglass boots, Riftglass ring, Riftglass pendant, Throneguard helm, Throneguard plate, Throneguard boots, Throneguard ring, Throneguard pendant, Ossuary helm, Ossuary plate, Ossuary boots, Ossuary ring, Ossuary pendant, Coldflame helm, Coldflame plate, Coldflame boots, Coldflame ring, Coldflame pendant, Sunforged helm, Sunforged plate, Sunforged boots, Sunforged ring, Sunforged pendant, Nightglass helm, Nightglass plate, Nightglass boots, Nightglass ring, Nightglass pendant.