http://eqiiforums.station.sony.com/eq2/ ... sage.id=88
Tradeskills for dummies
Each tradeskilled item takes three types of components:
1. primary component
2. build component(s)
3. fuel
For each tradeskill station, the fuel is always the same. Example: anything you make in a forge, requires coal as the fuel component. The other two components vary depending on what you are making.
There is always 1 primary component and 1 type of fuel (but you may need to use more than one fuel component, e.g. need 2 coals). There may be multiple build components though most of the recipes I have looked at so far take only one. Example: to make sepia ink (alchemy skill) you use a chemistry table. Chemistry tables are for the Alchemy knowledge type. Alchemy always uses candles as a fuel type. The recipe for sepia oil is: 1. sepia dye (primary component), 2. chloro wash (build), 3. candle (fuel).
When you go to a crafting station and begin work, you have two status bars: Durability (green) which will be full, and state (blue) which will be empty. The longer you work with your raw materials, the more the durability decreases. However, as you work on an item, the "state" bar increases as you progress towards a finshed state. You will see numbers rising up the top of the crafting station as you craft, showing gains and losses in progress.
When your "durability" bar runs out, you can't progress any further in "state" and that's your finished product. How far the "state" bar got towards full determines how good is the product you made. A poor product is "crude", an OK product is "shaped", the second best quality product is just the product name with no description, and the best quality product is "pristine". Depending on what the product is, this may or may not affect the final results. For example, a "crude" spell scroll is just the same as a "pristine" one, but a "crude" tin sword has worse stats than a "pristine" tin sword. If you don't care about the final quality of an item you can click 'stop' at any time to interrupt your crafting and settle for whatever progress you have made so far. If you interrupt before you have made any progress, you get your ingredients back, minus the fuel component which is still used up.
The quality of the final item - and (I believe) the amount of experience you get from the combine - depends on the quality of the primary component. So, you can't make a pristine tin dagger unless the primary component is also pristine.
For each type of tradeskill (e.g. tailoring, alchemy) there are dangers that can either cause damage to you (hit point loss) or decrease the quality of your product. A warning icon for these dangers will appear at the bottom of the crafting window as you craft. Use tradeskill abilities to counter these dangers as you see the warning icon appear. For each type of tradeskill there USED to be a buff(s) that can improve your product quality, however these were removed with the last big change pre-beta, at least for artisans under artisan lvl 10, possibly once you specialize you might get them back - not sure. All these tradeskill abilities and buffs are in your Knowledge Book (press "K") under the Tradeskills tab. It is a good idea to make one or several hotbutton bars containing these abilities for use while tradeskilling.
Be careful, at one point it was possible to die while tradeskilling. Although I think they were talking about preventing this, I don't know if they have. Tradeskills have changed frequently and greatly during the beta and are still changing.
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Crafter workstations:
Note: each workstation type seems to have 3 tradeskill abilities associated with it, EXCEPT the forge, where I have seen 4. My theory is that armour crafting and weapons crafting have 3 abilities each, but as armour crafting is more advanced than weapon skills I have not been able to experiment on this.
Chemistry table (alchemy)
Fuel: candle
Use abilities: Reaction, Theory, Experiment
Engraved desk (scribing)
Fuel: incense
Use abilities: Lettering, Spellbinding, Notation
Forge (weapons, armour)
Fuel: coal
Use abilities: mind over matter, hardening, tempering, anneal(possibly also dovetail joint and angle joint?)
Sewing table & mannequin (tailoring)
Fuel: filament
Use abilities: Stitching, Knots, Nimble
Stove & Keg (culinary)
Fuel: coal
Use abilities: Seasoning, Constant Heat, Awareness
Woodworking table (woodworking)
Fuel: sandpaper
Use abilities: Handwork, Measure, Cutting
Work bench (artificing)
Fuel: coal
Use abilities: Mind Over Matter, Round Brilliant Cut, Focus of Spirit
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List of tradeskill abilities:
Note: as your skill in a trade improves, you learn upgrades to these skills. I do not know many of these but have listed them where I have found them.
Angle Joint (upgrade: Bridle Joint)
Counters Small Red Bead/Orange Bead/White Bead
Anneal (upgrade: Indurate)
Counters Hardened Metal
Awareness
Counters Steam
Concentrate01
Counters Distraction
Constant Heat
Counters Heat Spike/Heat Loss
Cutting
Counters Knotting/Unyielding Board
Dovetail Joint
Counters Loose Joint/Misalignment
Experiment
Counters Emulsing/Solvolysis/Catacaustic
Focus of Spirit
Counters Paradigm Shift
Handwork
Counters Kickback
Hardening (upgrade: Vitrify)
Counters Quench/Soft Metal
Isothermic (upgrade: Steady Heat)
Counters Heat Wave/Heat Depletion
Knots (upgrade: Binding)
Counters Frayed Material
Letters
Counters Common Writing/Uncommon Writing/Outlandish Writing
Measure
Counters Mismeasurement
Metallurgy
Counters Impurity Bubble
Mind over Matter
Counters Magical Anomaly/Magical Influx
Nimble (upgrade: Dexterous)
Counters Material Catch
Notation
Counters Uncommon Symbols/Strange Symbols/Exotic Symbols
Reaction
Counters Exothermic/Endothermic/Electrophilic Reaction
Round Brilliant Cut
Counters Impurities
Seasoning
Counters Flavor Loss
Spellbinding
Counters Mystic Anomaly/Spectral Influx
Stitching (upgrade: Embroider)
Counters Loose Material
Strikes (upgrade: Hammering)
Counters Hot Metal
Tempering (upgrade: Strengthening)
Counters Hot Material
Theory
Counters Miscalibration/Miscalculation
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Notes on 5 November patch.
The artisan instances in the cities have been divided up. You can only access your crafting instance in your home zone, now. There is a general 'wholesaler' crafting area that contains all types of stations, that you use until you reach artisan level 10. Standing outside is an NPC you have to ask for access. Once inside, you can do artisan quests if you speak to an NPC - these are things like "gather 15 maple lumber" or "gather 15 rough malachite". When you return with them, you get paid - a few silver - but don't get to keep the resource.
Once you reach artisan level 10 you have to decide what type of crafting you will specialize in. At this point you can gain access to another crafting instance. There are four 'specialist' crafting instances in each home zone, for each path of the artisan tree.
Notes: this post is a work in progress that was added to (and frequently edited, darn you devs!) as I played around with crafting in beta. It doesn't cover many things, in particular it doesn't cover the actual tradeskill paths, what recipes are obtained from where, and how the interdependence and artisan quests work. This is mainly because many of those things changed so often and so late in beta that I didn't have time to try them. This information is accurate as of the last day of beta, but has not yet been tested in the live game.
Please add information if you have it! Any mistakes are, as usual, my own!
