Weaponcrafting

The edge every fighter shops for

Someone in every group wants this craft's work, because the rare rung alone covers all three appetites: the Osmium Warblade for Strength melee, the Glyphsteel War Axe for Agility fighters, and the Highpine Battle Staff, an Intellect and Spirit stave for the robe crowd.

On the craft ring it stands between Armorcrafting and Jewelcrafting. Its living identity is the Smith, the Weaponcrafting and Armorcrafting pair, sworn before Forgemistress Darva at the forge by working three ore veins with your own hands; the Bladewright pair with Jewelcrafting is named on the ring too, and though Jewelcrafting now works its own 0-to-50 jewelry ladder at this same forge, the pair still waits for its oath quest before it can be sworn.

What the forge drinks

Mining is the backbone. Copper ore comes off the tier 1 veins of Eastbrook Vale, iron ore from Mirefen Marsh, and osmium ore from Thornpeak Heights, and each rung of the ladder steps up the same way. Logging matters more than you might expect: ironbark hafts the boar spear, ashwood shoulders the maul, and a single highpine log forms the battle staff.

The rest comes from the hunt and the counter. Rough hide for grips is harvested straight off wolf and boar corpses, bone fragments come off the restless dead or out of salvaged common gear, and the forge ladder burns Smithing Flux, 20 copper a jar from Darva herself. If your own mining lags behind, no counter will save you on the ore itself: osmium comes off the Thornpeak veins, off the starter veins of every younger zone but the Farshore (whose veins dig iron), or out of another player's stack, by trade or the World Market. Only the Glyphsteel Bar is bought for coin, from Tinker Gizzel at the toolworks or Quartermaster Bree in Highwatch.

The ladder, rung by rung

One field recipe, the Eastbrook Arming Sword, is known to everyone from the start and crafts anywhere from hunt drops (a couple of wolf fangs and bone fragments) plus six Smithing Flux off the forge counter. The real ladder is nine trainer recipes in three rungs, all forge-bound: the copper rung (bearded axe, flanged mace, boar spear) is free to learn at skill 0, the iron rung (longsword, maul, dirk) opens at skill 25 for 25 silver a recipe, and the osmium rung (warblade, war axe, battle staff) opens at skill 50 for 1 gold each. Darva teaches a recipe the moment your tier in the craft reaches its own, so each rung unlocks exactly when its skill band begins.

One more recipe rides the pair: the Gravewyrm Gauntlets, a trainer-taught combination piece that only an attuned Smith with both Weaponcrafting and Armorcrafting at skill 25 can work, and it needs no station at all.

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

Any piece with a real stat line, which on this ladder means the iron rung and up, can come off the anvil as a masterwork so long as the finer quality fits inside your tier ceiling; the statless copper commons never proc, because there is nothing in them to improve. Iron and osmium count as tier 1 materials for the masterwork bonus, highpine and glyphsteel as tier 2, and skill sitting above a recipe's own tier adds its own point per tier, so among the osmium three it is the war axe and the battle staff that carry the material edge, and a rung keeps proccing better after you have outgrown it.

Ride the copper rung to 25, train the iron rung the day it opens and ride it to 50, then the osmium rung to 75. Above the osmium three sits an apex rung Darva does not teach: its patterns are found, not bought. For a smith whose majors include Weaponcrafting, which today means the sworn Smith, an apex craft pays full gain right to the 125 cap; below a major's ceiling it teaches nothing at all, so an undeclared or hobby smith works one for the weapon, not the points. Either way the osmium recipes carry the climb, fading to half and then quarter gain: budget roughly 150 more crafts to reach the 125 cap, and each craft takes real cast time, so a long batch is paced by duration rather than a quota.

Fund the climb as you go: Darva's forge work order takes eight copper ore off your hands every 30 minutes for a little coin and XP, and the iron and osmium rungs sell honestly to leveling melee. The Book of Deeds marks Edge and Temper at skill 50 and crowns Grandmaster Weaponcrafting at 125.