okay. so. you want that badass item right. well. everything has a beginning. so. im going to use in my first example. masterworks, and materials.

Crafting Falls into 5 Categories.
Blacksmithing, the creation of ignots and materials for making things
Armor smith is spread into making Mundane,Masterwook,Mitheral,Silver or Adam Armors. Weaponsmithing goes into Weapons and ammo (Darkwood is here, but ive never used it.) and will work the same idea. you craft masterwork bases and enchant either. but you CANNOT upgrade/enchant a basic silver weapon.

more complexity lowers chances in any form of crafting (see below.),

Magic and Wonderous fall into two catagories.
Magic deals with upgrading the + of your weapons, enchanting random affixes, to four. more affixes more complexity, higher cost. bonding silver, or creation of composite bows or magic guided crossbows.

Wonderous deals in upgrading of specialized items,such as an already wonderous item or not normal crafting like a mage robe of the spellcaster. and crafting of items such as cloaks,rings,gloves,belts,ect. the upgrade can be lower in a + magnitude (+4,+1 to +4 will be a hard upgrade. a + to a 2 is much simplier and easier.) i will stress this several times. this. is expensive to get good at.

both can disenchant.

you will never make money on crafting. failures will take materials and gold and sometimes the item. but a disenchant always destroys the item. in a failure, a disenchant yields nothing.

dont worry on bonding silver to an already magic item, failure here is just money and materials. not your item.


as you can see. elf as i am. im not good at making masterwork equipment weapons or armor.

notice at the bottom of the shot my abilty and xp bar listed to it. i use blacksmithing,armor and weaponsmithing very rarely. Misao (Left.)has the highest skill. she is being aided by Yugi (Middle. hmm this one looks kinda familar.) and Majorita, Right. as you can see. Yugi dosent have a prayer in this. Majorita is a bit better off but not much. Misao seems the top here.any one of them tries this alone. this is a doomed affair, where i will lose money and materials.

so. lets use something i already have.
a masterwork short sword.


yep. boring.


ah. that looks better. but... hey. i have an adanamite i did this to earlier. it kept it's adm. propererties. sweet.

so lets have a look at that.


nah. that still looks boring. okay. im a perfectionist.

so lets go into to those star shaped icons, see what we can do here.


this is a tier 1 upgrade. but its +3. making it harder. Misao and Majorita seem to have things handled. Yugi is still bad at this. shes just an addon for a little better shot, but its still 49%. i miss. i lose it, my money and materials.

i can lower it to +2 and get better odds if need be.

so. lets roll those dice.


Yay! it worked. even though yugi tried to drop it into the forge. shes special. what can i say.

youll notice the odds improved for everyone becuase this is not smithing,armor craft or,weaponsmithing.

so. how do you go about bonding silver?

well. first off. only certain things can be silvered. staves are obviously out. being made of wood.


heres an idea of what you can do it to.

but silver takes off a bit of damage for the bonus going through certain things Damage Reduction.

Now. Your Materials Basic Properties.

Silver
Adam. i have given up spelling this.
Mithril
Darkwood and Masterwork.
thier Effects.
Adam. armor is good to enchant and upgrade. it keeps it damage resistance even on the random roll. its also a damage reduction weapon. not sure if its better then silver.
Silver is a damage reduction material. only works with weapons and not armor.
Darkwood decreases weight as well as Mithril. ive never used these arrows. if anyone can give insight to them, id appricate it. ive never found them. and i dont craft them.
im kind of dissapointed on the mithril. but maybe that will change later.

and an enchanted item will keep its base like an adam.
and you can silver items that are already enchanted like this.


(Yes. anyone whos seen this stupid show formerly knows there should be a staff there, but a halberd was a much better choice. i do try my best to get as close possible to representing the characters i create, but im not impractical. besides the mental image is quite amusing.)

this is what tier 4 looks like as well.

but this is always random once again.

this is basic upgrading dependant on your skill. good int scores, better results: most of the other big bonuses however are coming from boosted item stats.

Racial Bonuses will come into as well as the aid system. you can mesh up 3 characters skills making for better chances.


it is suggested you use the people with the highest skill of course. everything goes through all of em. DONT CRAFT ALONE! you will most likely fail.

as a side note. Characters can aid in trap disabling, and lockpicking.

this concludes the basics. now on to how to farm and grind the skills.

Now. for the part we dont like.

Grinding and Farming.

Ore and Lumber can easily be found in mines of various quality

Wisdom is the Modifer here, and Miners and Lumberjacks can Aid each other too.

so.

this is my main Material Gather. (Ore and Lumber.)

now i have a cleric too.


so why am i not using her? the paladin a frontliner. and she wont pass many concentration checks. this is my healer. if she goes. no resses. in other words, Kikyo's skills are tied up in Concentration and healing. Yugis not a good canditate either for the same reason.

and we are all wood,gray and drow elves. so our constitutions arnt pretty anyway, yugi and kikyo need concentration high as prime spell casters, in the event something gets to them.

i think Misao was an aid to the ore and lumber gathering but its not an extensivly used skill in my party.

as for the other materials...


The First Tab is what i get from mass disenchants from dungeon runs. i build them up and the ones not worth selling or upgrades, turn into those. you need a steady flow of this stuff to keep you enchanting,upgrading

2 is a mixup of mundane wood ignots and gems. but alot of the stuff there is gotten for the wonderous branch of crafting. you will usually see what it can make when you hold your tool tip.

most of the other stuff can be found as loot on monsters,or in barrels,backpacks and chests.

if you want to grind wonderous craft xp, the generally best way to go about it, is just disenchant items in that crafting skill. it will boost your points in either magic common or wonderous depending where you do it. but mass disenchants on items in wonderous will yield skill points until your compenent enough to try to craft something. and start small. this stuff is expansive. you can also disenchant things you create. but that method is quite expensive, and the more complex the item the more XP in it for doing so. REMEMBER:You will always lose cash even if you fail and keep some materials. and a failed disenchants gives nothing. so. onto the next topic.

This part covers percentages. which is always luck.

remember the 49% on that Adm. shortsword. i got lucky there.
if you are below 45% its not good odds. but theres nothing saying you wont fail at 75% either.
Luck is fickle.


id say none of this is a good idea given my skill or price.





looks a bit better.

easier items. also if i take the plus down, it gets even easier for mass production-disenchants, but thats not very good XP for the cost.

Risk vs reward.

take racial,skill modifers and everything into account. i know i said this in the first part.
but i cant stress it enough.

examples:




Better Int+ Better Chance. Grey Elfs can get a nat 20 int. making them good crafters if you need a mule. you can hire substitutes you created in the adventurer guild. however. i cant go into this part. i only got one out of my entire list so i dont know what im doing wrong there.

and if you want dedicated crafters: do not forget this corrosponding feat for what you are trying to do.



sorry if pictures got out of focus. first guide. hope it helps some. and i wouldent recommend even putting in crafting until at least level 8. Wizards and Rogues make good at this for the extra skill points,
although. there are no wizards here. all sorcs, a paladin and a rogue/sorc trickster.

this willl be an evolving part of the guide as i figure out things either i put down that are incorrect, or missed. anyone who corrects of course be given credit, this is kind of a community guide, if you know even more then i do here, im up for adding contributors.

Patits brought up something i didnt think of. he was on the right track though, however:

DC and Pros of Cons of "Mass Production"

DC: or the difficulty of the item, determines how much you crafting XP you get, more for a success.

Mass Production of Simple Items. it sounds like a great idea.
The problem is with this, After you get better at crafting in your field...you need more complex items to raise the XP. Which, DC Goes down as you get better. making a "Mass Production" of very simple items, very time consuming of a grind and not very efficent.

however, if you decide to try it in reverse with more complex items, your XP might go up, but you risk failure as they are more difficult to make.

Mass Disenchants are usually to raise wonderous XP,and get the enchanting mats


an added Suggestion/Correction.

for your would be crafter, it may be a good idea to save some skill points aside in the beginning if you can get it early with any leftover points your not going to use at the very start. dont need to burn through em when you first start either.

i know i said until level 8, at the least, but thats basing on my party. which is made up entirely of Spell users. Divine, and Arcane. including the paladins.