User:Alamoth83/CraftingGuide

= Alamoth's Guide to Crafting = '''Hello adventurer, and welcome to my guide to a becoming a Grandmaster Craftsman in your spare time. Crafting is essential to the life of any heroic citizen of Neverwinter. Whether you need to outfit yourself and/or your friends, or you're just looking to make a quick copper piece, you've come to the right place. I will take you all the way from the basics of plying your trade all the way to the secret arts of turning a into a piece of Gemmed +6 Armor.'''

Chapter 1: Introduction
The first section of this guide covers the Basics of crafting. This includes gathering raw materials, processing them into materials you need to craft equipment, crafting that equipment, upgrading your craftsmen, and trading your tools in for better tools. In this section you'll also learn about the symmetries across all crafting professions and the three ranks of crafting: Basic (Rank 1, Level 1-6), Advanced (Rank 2, Level 7-13), and Master (Rank 3, Level 14-20).

The next section guides you through the process of leveling your craft from start to finish. This is provided from three different perspectives. The first, and most detailed walk-through, involves leveling your profession alongside your class. The different levels at which new equipment can be crafted plays heavily into this guide. The second and third maximize profit and time respectively, allowing you to advance your crafting in a way that either makes you the most coppers or costs you the least amount of time.

The third part of the core guide deals with advanced concepts in crafting. This includes the acquisition and use of uncommon, rare and very rare crafting assets and the creation of rare and very rare equipment, often from rare tasks. The final part of the guide is a brief discussion on where to go once you've mastered your craft.

After the guide there are three useful appendices. Appendix 1 is a legend of terminology. Throughout the guide, generic nomenclature is used. For example, instead of you will see Rank 1 Craftsman and instead of  you will see Footgear. This Appendix links these generic terms with craft-specific terms instead. Appendix 2 is a table of generic common equipment tasks and Appendix 3 is a table of generic rare equipment tasks.

Feedback on this guide is appreciated and will always be read, whether or not it is acknowledged. Please leave feedback on the discussion page of this guide. Happy crafting!

Gathering
Each rank of crafting includes a Gathering task. This is the first step in every piece of equipment you'll craft. These tasks take 10/15/20 minutes based on the rank, and will always produce two raw materials appropriate to your rank. They require a rank-appropriate craftsman and have no optional asset slots. Once you've gathered the raw materials you can move on to the next stage in crafting, which is processing those raw materials into something you can turn into equipment.

Below is the list of generic tasks related to Gathering. Each crafting profession has one with a more specific name, such as "Gather Iron Ore." The key of which profession uses which raw materials is below the task listing.

Gathering Task Table

Processing
Processing is the important middle step taken after gathering raw materials but before crafting actual equipment. This has a different flavor for each profession but the results are the same. Provided a rank-appropriate craftsman, two raw materials, and two consumables unique to the processing step you will get back two processed materials. Unlike gathering, which is only available in 10/15/20 minute increments, the processing step has a "Mass Procesing" option at each rank. There are pros and cons to mass producing your materials. On the plus side, you use less consumables, which cost copper pieces. Normal production has a 1:1 ratio of consumable:product, but mass production has a 1:2 ratio. On the downside however, you consume slightly more raw materials. Instead of the 1:1 ratio of raw material:product you get from normal production, you have a slightly less efficient ratio of 5:4 using mass production. You also get less profession experience points per hour when using mass production, but the process takes 6/7/8 hours depending on rank, which means you can run it overnight if you're sleeping, or while at work.

Ultimately, I recommend normal production if you are readily available at your machine. However, if you'll be away for a bit, Mass Production is definitely the way to go. The table below details the tasks for both normal and mass production, and is followed by a key of products and consumables for each rank and profession.

Appendix 1: Profession Specific Item Legends
Raw Materials

Appendix 2: Common Equipment Tables
Armor Arms

Feet

Head

Shield

Shirt

Trousers

Appendix 3: Rare Equipment Tables
Armor

Arms

Feet

Head

Shield

Shirt

Trousers