Artisan mastery

A character may only ever master one of the three parent artisan paths (Gathering, Processing or Crafting).

• That character may then master up to two professions within this mastered path (subject to testing).

• A character will be able to achieve up to tier 3 or tier 4 proficiency in professions that are not mastered.

Players will have the opportunity to dabble in all of the professions at a very beginners level and then that gives them an understanding of what that profession feels like and then allows them to pinpoint the direction that they want to go in to master particular professions. – Steven Sharif

• Based on testing, it may be decided to limit profession mastery certificates to a capped value.

Becoming a master Crafter or a master Processor or a master Gatherer should be a significant time investment and resource investment; and because of that it should also be something that when you achieve that status it's like people on the server know who you are. – Steven Sharif

• Masteries aren’t just about making an item. They grant many things, including titles, access to items, bargains, and quests.

• Previously it was stated that with considerable effort a player can master all professions within a mastered parent artisan class. This was later changed to a player being able to master some but not all professions within a mastered parent artisan class. This was changed to being able to master up to two or three professions within a mastered parent artisan class (subject to testing). The current stance is being able to master up to two professions.

Q: What would be the daily activities for someone at level 50 with a maxed out artisan tree?

A: The daily activity might be something along the lines of, depending on what type of profession or processor you are, of interacting with fellow artisanship individuals to wheel and deal on supply and demand chains; orchestrating and participating and caravan roads that move materials across the world so that you can satisfy buy orders and/or commission requests. Participating in unique trades and/or dungeon experiences that have the opportunity to acquire unique crafting materials so that you can create the dragon's legendary sword and sell that potentially. Finding unique harvestable materials in remote parts of the world or engaging in treasure map finding for again unique materials and/or processing things. There's a whole host of different intents that are loops for the players to participate in that again are situationally relevant based on the world state. – 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 crafter or gatherer, processor. You will be a master of one of those, you will not be master of the other two. – Steven Sharif

• The developers have referred to the following proficiency tiers of artisan progression.
  • Novice.
  • Journeyman.
  • Master.
  • Grandmaster.

• 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

Gathering tools

Alpha-2 Gathering tools user interface.

Gathering Halcyonite using a mining pick gathering tool.

Each gathering profession will have three tools. The tools come online as you progress through the profession; and the different resource types for each one of the professions may require different tools. So, you basically want to carry around the right tool for the job. And tools along with artisanship gear will have stats on it, so you can itemize towards how you want to gather, how fast you want to gather. – Kory Rice

Gathering tools (also referred to as harvesting tools and artisan tools) enable the gathering of resources in Ashes of Creation.

• Each gathering profession has three gathering tools. Each tool allows gathering of different resource types.
  • Gathering tools and artisan gear have stats that affect gathering rates and yields.
• Progression in the gathering artisan class unlocks higher level harvesting tools that enable gathering of higher level resources.
  • Artisan progression unlocks higher level surveying tools that enable better identification of gatherable resources within a location.
  • Higher level of progression can also speed up gathering times, resource yields, and may allow access to resources at earlier growth stages.
  • A gatherer at maximum proficiency will unlock master toolsets that will grant them access to the highest quality gatherables.

• Tools will have durability and lifespans.
  • The amount of usages of a gathering tool increases as the gatherer becomes more proficient in the gathering artisan tree.
  • Tools may become non-repairable, requiring re crafting.
• Artisans will not need to rely on other trees in order to make their tools.

Tools do advance within the artisan tree, so your ability to either gather, process or craft will require the equivalent tools necessary at that stage of crafting in order to accomplish the task at hand. So, you could not mine copper and mithril with the same tool. – Steven Sharif

• The developers are considering the introduction of gathering tools that require two players, such as two-person saws that can fell larger trees.

Your progression within the profession will take account what tools you can use. There might even be some opportunity to do some gathering with other players that . Typically in other games that I play you usually do the gathering alone. You're venturing around alone; and we wanted to take a look at maybe having a friend to help you with a two person saw on a larger tree. Maybe there's some panning that you could do as opposed to just hitting with the pickaxe. So, we'll have other tools that are part of that progression path and other activities that players can do if they would like to gather together. – Kory Rice

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, 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

• Artisan classes
• Progression