Artisan supply chain

Artisans within Ashes of Creation must choose a path in their artisan skill tree. This inter-dependency establishes a supply chain from raw materials to finished product. Each stage of the chain may require caravans to transport goods from one artisan to another.

1. Obtaining raw materials:
   • Using the Gathering profession.
   • By killing mobs and bosses.
   • From deconstructing weapons or armor.
   • By purchasing them from other players.
2. Refining the raw materials with the Processing profession.
3. Crafting the finished product using its crafting recipe.
   • Recipes are also obtainable from boss drops.

As a crafter you're going to want to know where certain recipes can be fulfilled; which nodes have the capability of creating what you've processed material that you've gathered for; and then you're going to want to plan out your route to either transit the goods there or make sure that you're situated in the area so that you can go out collect and build in that area as well. So there's a lot of planning that's going to be necessary. – Steven Sharif

Artisan progression

Progression within the artisan tree occurs based on experience (repetition of tasks) as well as achievements of certain benchmarks within each branch (Gathering, Processing and Crafting).

• Choosing a specific path in the skill tree allows the player an opportunity to specialize in a certain area. This encourages player inter-dependency, enhancing the artisan experience.

When we reference not being masters of all that doesn't mean you're not a master within your own one of the three artisan types, which is you know crafter or gatherer, processor. You will be a master of one of those, you will not be master of the other two. – Steven Sharif

• Progression within artisan classes does not directly relate to progression in a character's adventuring class, but there are requirements that take into account dangers, locations, toolsets, and surveying options that are level dependent.
  • It is likely that characters will gain an amount of XP as they progress toward mastery of their profession, however it should be expected that some master artisans might be significantly lower than the level cap.

Q: In regards to character level and artisan level. We know that currently there are two separate things. That being said, what prevents a player from staying level one and partying up with a level 50 player to then gather level 50 resources in the high zones? That way, anyone who wants to take those resources will have to kill the gatherer who is level one and get a large amount of corruption for killing a level one as a level 50.

A: Gathering higher level resources requires significant advancement within a particular profession for that gatherable resource. So, if I'm a Miner and I want to access the highest possible mineral, I need to be a master miner; and in order to achieve the master minor status I am going to be gaining adventuring level experience through that process, because many of those quest lines, many of those achievements are facilitated through quest lines. Some of those quest lines interface with adventuring difficulties that are out in the wild at certain levels. So that's going to predicate me- that's going to be a predicate for me to achieve a certain level in order to complete some of these quest lines and achieve that master status. So you will you will likely not see the ability of a level one alt character having the access to high level mineral mining, or any other type of gatherable out there. – Steven Sharif

Legendary items

There is a small RNG chance of looting rare and legendary items or crafting materials from mobs based on the level, status and type of mob. This also applies to harvesting resources with a gathering profession.

• There is a much higher chance that materials and unique recipes are dropped that can be used to craft items of equitable value.
• Legendary equipment is only dropped by Legendary world bosses.
  • Legendary equipment will have a roughly 6-12% improvement in base stats, subject to testing and balancing.

At each stage from Gatherer to Processor to Crafter you are required to have certain prerequisites before those elite types of materials can be essentially gathered, processed, or crafted. – Steven Sharif

• Gatherers must have high quality tools to gather rare resources.
• Processors must have high tier processing buildings on their freehold to produce rare materials.
• Crafters must also satisfy certain prerequisites to craft legendary equipment.

The amount of effort needed and interdependencies across the different types of players – between raiders and PvPers and crafters and even role players and the taverns and businesses: the processors and gatherers – all of those systems will likely have a component that lends toward creating or crafting that legendary item... We want to stay away from the highly RNGd system, and instead take our multiple progression paths that we are offering the players and put the construction components for achieving these legendary items within them so it encourages communities to work together because it's going to be difficult for just one person by themselves to gather everything. Not to say that they couldn't in an economic sense, by buying those components, that's possible. But achieving them from a time investment standpoint we want it to be considerably less RNG focussed. – Steven Sharif

Certain legendary items may be limited to one per server at any given time.

• If the player character leaves the server then the item will become available for acquisition through whatever means it was acquired previously.

There are absolutely legendary items and they're not items that are attained easily nor are they granted out in a volume. There might even be items that are single items that will exist on the server at any given time.

A legendary weapon is easily distinguished by its visual appearance.

It will be a very ornate and detailed weapon, more so than any other weapon or piece of equipment in the game. It will also include some awesome looking effects that won't too gaudy, you know they won't be too bright and shiny so that it doesn't look good, but they will be subtle and people will notice it and know wow that guy has this weapon. – Steven Sharif

Legendary items are not intended to be temporary.

• A notable exception to this is Royal mounts.

The fact there is only one of them... or very very few of them depending on what it is. I think that in and of itself is a balance component right and you need to make sure that the players who are striving for those legendary things and who are devoting the time energy, resources in order to achieve them are accurately rewarded... We do not intend on having legendary items that are temporary. – Steven Sharif

Some of the following information has not been recently confirmed by the developers and may not be on the current development roadmap.

Discovery of legendary items will unlock further chapters of the Lore.

See also

• Gathering
• Processing
• Crafting