Crafting

To understand how crafting works, first you need to know the difference between skill points and talent points. At every new level, a character gains skill points and talent points. Talent points are spent in better stats or abilities like health/mana regeneration, and are completely irrelevant to crafting. Skill points are what the player spends on abilities like mining, smithing, engineering, herbalism and enchantment.

Most skills in the game are limited to the player's level times 5. That means that a level 3 warrior can have a maximum of 15 skill in axes, shields, defense. However, crafting skills work different. There are three levels of crafting - apprentice, journeyman, and master. An apprentice can have up to 75 skill, journeyman 150 and master 225.

Up close and personal - first person view

Thunderclap!

The guards were nice enough to save my ass

The level of your skill determines what you can do. So gathering some herbs would require 50 or 100 skill, and to learn recipes to make potions from these herbs requires a certain skill level. The success rate is determined to an extent by your skill - so just having gotten level 50 blacksmithing and trying to make a level 50 item might lead to a few failures - but worry not, components are not lost.

I was somewhat concerned at how quickly skills increase at first, but they really do slow down quite a bit once you hit the journeyman levels. The odds of finding sufficient components drop down, and without these components, you can't make the items, and if you can't make the items, your skill level won't increase.

On top of the mountain all covered with cheeeeese

Quest type dude

Sweet!

This has some interesting results for the economy. When the beta was new, the first quality crafted items went for a premium. Now, there are so many, they barely fetch more than standard vendor prices (which are at least somewhat reasonable.) However, the items that few people can craft or find on monsters, are incredibly expensive. The iridescent pearl is a rare component used for a paladin's mace, and the early ones sold for as little as one gold. Now smiths are constantly shouting in the trade channel of Stormwind (the biggest city in the game) for the pearl, sending the bidding well into the 3g range. The economics of the world are thus divided into two extremes - either items are ridiculously expensive or incredibly cheap. Very few manage to maintain a balanced price.

There is no item decay and given the way the rest of the economy is set up (around incredibly rare drops and hard-to-develop skills), we doubt Blizzard would implement it. To be honest, it's quite nice to get attached to a remarkably good item you got at a low level and it lasted you until your teens. Most of the quality items worth keeping tend to be soulbound - that means once equipped in the proper slot, they can only be used by you (though for some reason vendors still pay for them.) This also keeps their sale price fairly stable, as they're in demand because of their quality, but since they can't be re-sold, it keeps enthusiasm down. The one exception to this is near level 30 gear, since level 30 is currently the highest available in the beta, and nobody would sell the best items anyway - so the prices for even binding equipment are through the roof.

I'm a rich man now

Travel in style

Gryphons, the only way to fly

It's very interesting to see how the trade skills all work together. Smiths need ore from mining of course, but also occasionally other equipment. Engineers need some smithing products, and leatherworkers can make upgrades for armor made by a smith. It's impossible to have all the skills, but it's likely that by level 60 (the expected level limit in the retail version), a character will be a Master craftsman in about four trades (such as smithing, mining, skinning and leatherworking, for example.)

Have questions or comments about the article? Discuss it on our brand-spankin'-new forums!