Crafting Overview...
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- Category: Wizard101 Articles
- Published on Monday, 21 March 2011 18:34
- Written by Kyle Wilson
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Crafting quests start out with a one or more items that need to be crafted. In order to craft an item you need the recipe for the item, the reagents needed for that recipe in the required quantities and a crafting table of the appropriate sort. This article is still in kind of rough form. I'll add images and better formattting later, but a friend of mine is trying to get crafting going and I wanted to publish it as soon as possible (hiya Sherrill).
In most cases where you're crafting for a quest, the recipe you need will be offered by the person who gave you the quest. I a few cases in DragonSpyre and Celestia you'll have to locate the recipe elsewhere. In general this isn't too hard as between Google and the conversation that plays out when you get the quest (you can review this later by clicking on the circle in the upper left corner of the quest) it is generally pretty easy to figure out where to go (and I'll post some information about these later as I'm not at my home computer right now). Recipes cost a few coins, but generally the recipe cost isn't significant in the overall scheme of things.
Once you have the recipe you can see the list of reagents that are needed. If you need to make more than one of the item, you'll need proportionately more reagent before you're done. I've far to frequently sold off one crafted item before making the second one, so unless there is a cool down interval issue (and once you have two crafting slots there generally isn't) I will almost never make the first item until I have the supplies to make all that I need at one time. Reagents break out into three basic categories:
- Purchasable reagents. There is almost always a reagent vendor who sells all of the purchasable reagents needed for a recipe who is standing near the vendor that sold you the recipe. These reagents are not generally all that expensive and I usually just buy them on the spot. Make sure to buy enough to make the number of items that you'll need as many crafting quests involve making at least two of the same thing.
- Common findable reagents: Quite a few reagents are found all over the place. If you see something sitting on the ground with a bit of a haze over it (mushrooms, sticks, etc.) it is generally worth just grabbing it, you'll probably find it useful sometime later. Most of these can also be found relatively cheaply at the bazaar in the reagents section. If you're fast on the mouse click and patient (click on the section heading to refresh the display, the merchandise changes frequently, sometimes in a few seconds, for hard to get items), even some of the harder to find items (scrap iron, frost flower) can be obtained. The less common the item, the more costly it is likely to be to buy. This route takes some patience, but is generally (in my experience at least) going to be faster than the alternative. The other way to get these if you don't have them from previous questing and you aren't willing to click and pay to get them in the bazaar then you'll have to run around areas where the reagent you need is common and try to grab it as it respawns. Depending on how popular the reagent is and what time of day you're doing this results will vary. In order to get the most in the least amount of time, your best bet will be to realm shift to a (I generally go random) realm as soon as the realm shift timer lets you. Keep shifting and grabbing materials until you've got what you need or you run out of steam
Keep in mind that there may very well be one or more other wizards doing the same thing at the same time. I've gotten very good mileage out of tag teaming over voice chat (this is in the case where I was helping and didn't need the item myself). You each shift to a different realm (voice makes this livable) and if the helper sees the item in their realm (you can port to friends without the realm shift timer interfering) the person who needs the reagent grabs theirs and then ports to their friend and grabs the stuff on that end. Pretty much doubles your reagent farming speed, you just need to be working with someone that you like to talk to, but then I don't generally run with folks who aren't fun to chat with - Uncommon Craftable Reagents: Some items (black pearls, golden pearls, grendelweed) are quite uncommon and only come into your posession by luck (once in a while a lesser reagent will also give you one of the rare ones), by haunting the bazaar (costs a lot and you have to be VERY fast on the click), by raising the right plants or by crafting the reagent from one or more common reagents. Pearls are the most familiar of these. Black pearls come from black lotus (itseld not that common) and once you get the relevant recipe you can turn some number (10?) of black lotus into one black pearl. Golden pearls are made from fifteen regular white pearls (which can currently be farmed in the Portico instance in Celestia). This generally takes a huge amount of the more common reagent to make modest amounts of the rare reagent. Pink Dandelions give black pearls (not all the time, but often enough) and seem to be a common drop at higher levels (to buy them requires crowns though).
Each recipe requires a specific crafting table. Crafting tables are bought at the various furniture stores. If the 'craft it' button is greyed when you're in your chosen crafting table then you should be able to hover over one of the circles to the left and see which table you need for the item. Move to that table (or buy one if you don't have the required table) and you should be able to make the item.
Some higher level items require treasure cards that themselves need to be crafted. In general you'll be able to craft the cards that are needed for your crafting quests. Some specialty crafted items require cards that only certain schools can make. For these you'll either need to farm like the dickens (some bosses do drop things like helephant cards) or find a friend who's willing to craft them. Cards are crafted like any other item, get the recipe, get the ingredients (which may involve lower level cards, often these can be readily purchased at the bazaar or the oracle) and craft what you need at a card crafting station. In general the card crafting cool down periods seem to be short, so you should be able to make what you need without waiting days in between.
One crafted item that everyone level 55 and above tends to want is the crafted school gear. This stuff gives better critical and block ratings than anything else you can get (at least at this point). There are some tradeoffs here as you often lose something that the other (buyable) gear gives you like added power pip percentage and such. This gear also generally requires far too many golden pearls Eleven seems to be a common number, that means fifteen pearls per golden pearl. Generally this involves many passes through the Portico (at least this is boring but not dangerous). This is an instance, so if you go out through the main door you'll reset it after each pass. Go in alone (company in here does neither of you any good) ideally with someone on some sort of voice chat or something else to keep your mind occupied and run around to each of the lower areas without fighting any of the monsters (the monsters in those areas don't show up until you get a way into the instance). You'll generally find some kelp (once in a while this gives Aether too), some shell and around two pearls. At worst you pick up two pearls per pass. At best each pearl you find may give you several white pearls and (if you're very lucky) a golden pearl). Keep this up until you have enough buckets of pearls to meet your needs.
probably more to come here, but for now I need to stop...