Crafting

Stations

You must be within 3 tiles (walking distance, no diagonals) of a recipe's station.

Recipes without a station can be made anywhere.

Discovering recipes

You don't start out knowing what can be made. You discover an item the first time you carry or wear it, and a recipe appears on the crafting list once you have discovered every one of its ingredients.

• The journal notes each new find ("Discovered: Iron Ore") and names any recipe it completes.
• A recipe you are part of the way to shows under Almost worked out: "Unknown recipe · 1 of 2 found", with the ingredients you know named and the rest as ???.
• Discoveries are kept for good. Selling, using or banking the item doesn't forget it.
• Some recipes also stay hidden until your skill is near their requirement (dusted cloth).
• Each hero has their own discoveries. In a shared world, the host keeps them with your character.
• A character from before discovery starts knowing everything they hold or have banked, and every recipe their skill had already reached.

The crafting list can be narrowed by typing (a recipe's name, an ingredient, a kind such as "potion"), by level (the skill a recipe asks for: Novice 0–24, Apprentice 25–49, Journeyman 50–74, Expert 75–99, Grandmaster 100+), by ingredient, and to what you can make right now.

The discovery journal

The journal's Discoveries tab lists every item in the game. Items you haven't found are blanks. For each one you have found it tells:

• what it does, what it is worth and what it weighs;
• how it is made: the skill, the station and the ingredients (??? for ingredients you haven't found);
• which recipes it goes into, and how many more you haven't worked out;
• which creatures drop it, with their level, the odds, and the lands and dungeons they live in;
• which trees, veins and plants give it, with the skill needed and where they grow;
• which waters it is fished from, which stores sell it (and from which store level), and whether treasure chests hold it;
• for a unique, its tier and the lands to hunt it in.

Searching the journal looks through all of that: "wolf" finds what wolves drop, "whisperwood" what is found there, "iron ingot" what iron ingots go into.

Skill window and success

• Each recipe has a minimum skill and a maximum skill. If the recipe doesn't set a maximum, it is the minimum + 40.
• Success is 20% at the minimum, rising to 100% at the maximum. Below the minimum you can still try, at 10% falling to 1% at 20 points under ("long odds").
• A failure destroys about half of each ingredient: half the amount, rounded up, at least 1 of each.
• On Swift and Brisk worlds every recipe needs ×1.75 or ×1.35 the materials, rounded up. Practice recipes aren't affected.
• You can craft in batches. The batch keeps going until you've made the number asked for or run out of materials.

Quality

Gear, potions and food come out in a quality. Materials, ammo and bandages don't. Crafting can produce three tiers. Margin means your skill minus the recipe's minimum, and quality only rolls when you meet the minimum.

• Masterwork chance: (margin − 30) / 500, between 0 and 12%. The game rolls this first. It starts at margin 30 and reaches 12% at margin 90.
• Exceptional chance: (margin − 10) / 80, between 0 and 60%. Rolled only if the masterwork roll fails. It starts at margin 10 and reaches 60% at margin 58.
• Everything else comes out Normal.

Because the margin is measured from each recipe's minimum, easy recipes give masterworks often and the hardest recipes rarely do.

Grandmaster alchemists never brew a plain potion. With 100 Alchemy of your own (worn bonuses don't count), every potion that doesn't come out Masterwork comes out Exceptional.

The full quality ladder (Magic, Rare and Legendary only come from magic loot):

What quality improves:

• Attack, armor, healing, mana restored, thrown damage and a poison's strength are multiplied, with at least +1 over the base.
• Durability is +15% per tier number: Exceptional +15%, Masterwork +60%.
• Bags carry +5 stones per tier number: Exceptional +5, Masterwork +20.
• Masterwork gear also gets a random +5 skill bonus, and Legendary gets +10. The skill depends on the slot:
  • weapon: its weapon skill or Tactics
  • shield: Parrying
  • axe: Lumberjacking
  • pickaxe: Mining
  • anything else: Tactics, Magery, Healing, Parrying or Meditation
• Crafted gear carries the crafter's name and the quality in its name, for example "Masterwork Iron Sword".
• A batch of potions or food shares one quality, so it stacks with others of the same quality.

Spells use the same ladder. Casting can come out Exceptional or Masterwork, with the same odds measured from the spell's minimum Magery.

Extra output

For anything that isn't gear (potions, arrows and so on), a successful craft has a chance of min(50%, margin/80) to make extra. The extra is a quarter of the recipe's output count, at least 1.

Smelting

Smelting is its own skill: Mining digs the ore, Smelting turns it into ingots. Every bar is 2 ore + 1 coal at a forge.

• Learning it: the training grounds teach it to 10 (2 Scrap Ore make a Slag Lump, no forge needed), the smith sells lessons to 20, and Artisans start at 35.
• Extra ingots: like other stackable work, a smelt has a min(50%, margin/80) chance of one more ingot from the same ore.
• Melting down: metal gear is salvaged with Smelting, not Blacksmithing. The share of ingots you get back (25% + 0.4% per point, up to 75%) and the skill that may rise are the smelter's. Leather, cloth and wooden gear still use the skill that made them.
• At Grandmaster: a failed smelt never loses the ore. You pull it from the fire and only the coal burns, which matters most for gold and mithril. Worn bonuses don't count toward this.
• Dusted cloth: every dusted recipe needs a Grandmaster smelter (Smelting 100, or 90 for iron). See Dusted cloth.
• Older heroes: smelting used to be part of Mining. A hero from before the change starts with Smelting equal to their Mining.

Alchemy

Twenty potions, from Lesser Heal at 10 to the Elixir of Life, which only a Grandmaster can brew. The recipe list has what each needs.

Alchemy pays twice: in what you can brew, and in what potions do for you.

• Using potions: healing, mana, thrown damage and a poison's strength are × (1 + Alchemy / 200), and a potion's status lasts × (1 + Alchemy / 100). A Grandmaster gets half again the effect for twice as long. See Combat for each potion.
• Brewing: more margin means more Exceptional and Masterwork batches and more extra potions, as for every craft.
• At Grandmaster: nothing you brew is plain, and the Elixir of Life opens.

Salvage

• You can break gear back down into materials if it has a recipe. Named uniques can't be salvaged.
• Metal gear is melted down with Smelting; everything else uses the skill that made it.
• You get a share of each ingredient: 25% + 0.4% per point of the recipe's skill, capped at 75%, rounded down. If that rounds to nothing, you still get 1 of the first ingredient.
• Salvaging needs the recipe's station.

Wear and repair

• Items with durability lose 1 point each time they're used:
  • a weapon on each swing or shot
  • a tool on each gathering swing
  • a rod on each cast
  • a shield on each successful block
  • a random piece among head, body and shield whenever a hit does damage to you
• At 10% durability you're warned "badly worn". At 0 the item breaks: it stops giving its bonuses, and a broken tool or rod can't be used.
• Repair at the recipe's station. It costs half of each ingredient (rounded up, at least 1), adjusted for pace, and restores full durability.