Armorcrafting

Mail for the front line

Armorcrafting's ladder reads like a soldier's career: the plain riveted copper girdle, sabatons, and gauntlets to start, the ironlink hauberk, legguards, and spaulders with their first real stat lines, and the rare osmiumscale greathelm, cuirass, and leggings, Strength and Stamina pieces with armor numbers at the very top of a crafter's art.

It has a quieter side too: the Eastbrook Warded Leggings, a caster-statted field common, and the Kilnscale Mantle, a rare Intellect and Spirit mail shoulder at skill 75, keep the spell-minded mail wearers on the customer list. On the ring it sits between Weaponcrafting and Engineering; the Smith pair with Weaponcrafting is sworn before Forgemistress Darva, while the Gearwright pair with Engineering is named but has no oath quest yet.

Ore by the sackful

No craft eats ore faster. The ironlink hauberk alone takes five iron ore, and every osmiumscale piece wants three or four osmium plus a glyphsteel bar, so a serious armorcrafter mines Mirefen Marsh and Thornpeak Heights or pays someone who does. Copper feeds the first rung, straight from the veins by the Copper Dig.

Around the metal go the soft parts: rough hide harvested off wolf and boar corpses, bone fragments off the restless dead (or salvaged out of common gear), and Smithing Flux jars (20 copper each at the forge) in nearly every recipe. No counter sells osmium: the impatient buy it off other players or mine it themselves, on Thornpeak or the starter veins of ten of the eleven younger zones (the Farshore alone digs iron).

Learning at Darva's forge

Two field commons, the Eastbrook Chainmail Vest and the Warded Leggings, are known from the start and craft anywhere. The trainer ladder is nine recipes in three rungs at the Eastbrook forge: the copper rung is free at skill 0, the ironlink rung costs 25 silver a recipe at skill 25, and the osmiumscale rung costs 1 gold each at skill 50, with each rung teachable the moment your tier reaches it.

Beyond the ladder sit two specials. The Boundstone Helm is one of the two Smith combination recipes (the Gravewyrm Gauntlets are its sibling on the weaponcrafting side), trainer-taught, station-free, and workable only by an attuned Smith with both crafts at skill 25. The Kilnscale Mantle needs no teacher at all: everyone knows it from the start, and nothing but the forge and the materials gates working it. Its listed skill of 75 is about gain, not permission: with Armorcrafting as a major it pays full skill gain from the very first hammer stroke to 99, so a Smith with osmium to spare can lean on it early. Below a major's ceiling the tier 3 recipe teaches nothing, so an undeclared or hobby armorcrafter works it for the piece, not the points.

How crafting works

Open the crafting window (default key T) and every recipe you know is listed with what it needs and what you have on hand. Station-bound recipes ask you to stand within 20 yards of the right station in town, field recipes craft anywhere, and Enchanting's breaking and enchanting need no station at all (only its three trainer recipes are station work, at the toolworks). There is no failure roll: a craft with the materials in hand always succeeds.

Two small frictions keep the economy honest. Every successful craft pays a fee of 2 copper per point of the item's stat budget, and every craft-family action takes real cast time (field crafts near two seconds, harder ladder crafts longer, and disenchant, enchant, salvage, and tool recharge each about a second and a half). Materials, the gold fee, stations, and skill ceilings do the rest; nothing scolds you for working too quickly.

Recipes

Every recipe of the craft: its exact skill requirement and materials, where it is learned and for what fee, and the three skill values where its gain fades to half, a quarter, and nothing.

Skill gain

Every recipe in the window wears its gain state in the classic colors: orange means full gain, yellow half, green a quarter, gray nothing. The boundaries are exact, every 25 skill is a tier, and a recipe fades one color for each tier it falls below yours.

Because gains are deterministic (a full-gain craft always moves you exactly one point), you can plan a whole climb from the list: work a rung while it is orange, train the next rung as it turns yellow, and never spend materials on a gray craft expecting progress. At the cap of 125 the number stops, but the recipes, the masterwork chance, and the profits keep working.

Masterworks

Every successful craft is exactly what the recipe promises, and sometimes a little more: a masterwork finishes the same piece one quality tier finer, with the bonus stats baked in at craft time. It is add-only, never a downgrade. Ordinary crafting follows its existing gear ladder; the raid-funded Crucible collections are a separate alternative at the current raid tier.

The apex Masterwrought crafts are the one exception, and they pay the same proc a different way. An apex piece already sits at the top of its ladder, so there is no finer tier to finish it in; a masterwork there hands the piece over one rank into Perfecting instead, a free first rank on the four-rank walk the Professions page describes. Nothing is baked into the stats, and the chance and its gates are the ones below.

The chance is published, not mystical: 3% base, plus 1% per tier your skill sits above the recipe, plus 2% when any signed reagent goes in, plus 3% once you are specialized, with higher-tier materials adding 1 to 2% more, all capped at 15%. Only a piece with real stats can improve, so statless commons, tools, and consumables never proc; a dormant craft never produces one, and a hobby craft cannot masterwork past its rare ceiling.

Fine work carries its maker. Rare and better outputs are signed, every copy (Crafted by; gathered materials carry Gathered by), a masterwork is always signed whatever its quality. A signature is provenance, not a lock: signed goods trade, mail, and list on the World Market freely.

Training

Trainer recipes come from the resident masters, taught at their stations. The rule is one line: a master teaches a recipe once your tier in the craft has reached the recipe's own tier, and nothing else gates it, not your level, not your archetype. The gear and consumable ladders run their rungs at skill 0, 25, and 50, and every craft adds one 75-rung intermediate above them, taught at its station (Enchanting's is the Lucent Reagent, beside its two charm recipes on the 25 rung); Engineering's two rod lessons continue its ladder at 75 and 125, so a fresh rung opens as your tiers climb.

Fees are one-time and flat by rung: the starting rung is free, the skill 25 rung costs 25s a recipe, the skill 50 rung 1g 0s, and the 75 and 125 rungs above them carry their own fees, listed beside each recipe in the table. You must stand at the master's actual station to train, and a mobile station never counts. The common field recipes and the six crafted land-tool recipes need no training at all; every character knows them from the start.

Specialization

At skill 75 this craft specializes you, no quest needed: discountable recipe materials cost 20% less from then on, and specialization adds its own bump to the masterwork chance. Raid-core costs are never discounted.

Specialists also learn to take the workshop with them: a specialized crafter can set up a mobile station in the field for ten minutes at a time, so station-bound recipes can be worked at the mine mouth instead of back in town. Its limits are deliberate: it never counts for training with a master or for unbinding a commissioned piece, and it expires on its timer whether or not you used it.

Masterworks, and a working route to 125

From the ironlink rung up, every craft rolls the masterwork chance; the armor-only copper commons cannot proc, since a masterwork improves stats and they carry none. Iron counts as a tier 1 material for the proc and glyphsteel as tier 2.

The climb is the standard three-rung ride: copper to 25, ironlink to 50, osmiumscale to 75, training each rung the day it opens. Where Armorcrafting gets lucky is the stretch after 75: the Kilnscale Mantle is a tier 3 recipe, so it pays full gain to 99 and half after, which means the last fifty points take about 75 crafts instead of the 150 a craft without a capstone needs. Each mantle costs seven osmium ore and five Smithing Flux, so stock up in Thornpeak and at the forge counter before you start the run.

Darva's work order buys eight copper ore every 30 minutes for coin and XP, a nice sink for the low-tier ore you outgrow. The Book of Deeds marks Hammer and Plate at skill 50, and Grandmaster Armorcrafting waits at the 125 cap.