PVP:Yes | Distribution:Download | Retail Price:Free | Pay Type:Free | Monthly Fee:Free
Desktop Client | System Req:
Runes of Magic: Apprentice Crafting Guide
MMORPG.com Runes of Magic Correspondent Pam Blalock writes this guide to apprentice crafting in the upcoming MMORPG, Runes of Magic.
Creating items in-game is an exciting thing to accomplish in an MMO. Oftentimes, the finished product yields a hefty amount of experience and sometimes a profit can be made. This is true of Frogster’s new free-to-play MMO, Runes of Magic. In RoM there are three harvesting skills and six production skills. All skills can be taken beginning at level one, but as you progress through these skills you must choose which ones you’d like to improve.
Currently there are 80 levels for harvesting and crafting. During levels 1-20 you are an apprentice, during 21-40 you are a craftsman, during 41-60 you are an adept (also called a specialist) and during 61-80 you become a master of that profession. All professions can be leveled to 20, but only 6 can enter levels 21-40. Beyond that only three professions can progress through levels 41-60 and only one can become a master skill.
You can access your crafting sheet by pressing “Y.” Here you can see all of your current progress through the levels of harvesting and production.
Harvesting
RoM’s harvesting and production system will be familiar to most gamers. When you first log in, you’re only a few yards away from Pioneer’s Colony. All three harvesting trainers are either in or very close to this town. Alice the herbalism trainer and Wood (wait for it) the woodcutting trainer, are in the town proper. Hansen, the mining trainer, is a few yards away directly west of the Colony. After speaking with these three different trainers, you are ready to harvest.
Nodes spawn all across Taborea and are plentiful for the apprentice level. You can track all nodes on the minimap with a toggle function that is on by default. There are six different types of nodes for each harvesting skill for levels 1-20. They are acquired at level one, eight, eleven, fourteen and twenty. Those marked with an asterisk are rarer spawns and are used less frequently in vendor bought recipes. World drop recipes, uncommon recipes that not everyone will have, usually require one of these rare spawns.
)
Herbalism
- Mountain Poplar
- Rosemary*
- Wild Berry
- Bison Grass
- Bitterleaf
- Moxa
Woodcutting
- Balsa
- Chime*
- Williow
- Stone Rotan
- Maple
- Oak Mining
- Brass
- Flame Dust*
- Tin
- Cyanide
- Iron
- Copper
Since these are harvested resources you must refine them to use them in production recipes. Refinement takes place at different crafting tables. Herb refinement takes place at the alchemy table, woodcutting at the carpentry table and ore smelting at the blacksmithing table. There are usually two steps to refinement, although the rare type of wood has three steps. For example, you begin with two recipes to refine mountain poplar. After you harvest the resource you can take two mountain poplars and turn them into a mountain poplar bundle. If necessary, you can take six mountain poplar bundles and make them into mountain poplar sap. The sap is usually required for recipes with a higher grade (saps are often used to make green items instead of white).
The two refinements for ore are sand and nugget and the two refinements for wood are timber and lumber. However, the rare spawn of wood, chime, does have a third refinement option. Two chime pieces create one timber and six timber can make one lumber. With six lumber, chime can yield one chime plank. That’s a total of 72 harvested chime pieces to make one chime lumber.
Production
Until you arrive in Logar you can’t pick up any of the production skills, however, all skills are available in Logar. It is the second town you’ll come across in your adventures in RoM and you’ll probably be around level five when you arrive. Since you’re an apprentice you can pick up all the production skills. You might as well if you want to try them all out but be warned, each item you create costs gold. This price increases with the level of the recipe in which you are creating. A portion of this gold may be retrieved if you sell your products to a vendor while leveling a certain skill, but you will still be losing gold for each creation.
You cannot craft anywhere; you will need to be near the appropriate crafting table (sometimes called crafting tools). These tables are marked by a green circle above them with a picture of the production icon in the center.
Recipes for production will also feel familiar to most MMO players. Each recipe will take two refined materials from the different types of resources. For instance, a tailoring recipe called Magical Leggings needs three balsa timber and one mountain poplar bundle to be created. Tailoring recipes take from the wood resource and the herb resource. The world drop of Enhanced Magical Trousers, a green quality recipe, requires three balsa lumber, one mountain poplar sap, one chime timber and Magical Leggings. There we see the use of the rare resource and the second step of refinement. All of the production skills have different combinations of the resources they use. No production skill takes from more than two of the harvestable families.
)
Production Skill -> Harvestable Family
Alchemy -> ore and herbs
Armor crafting -> ore and herbs
Blacksmithing -> ore and wood
Carpentry -> ore and wood
Cooking -> wood and herbs
Tailoring -> wood and herbs
Alchemy and cooking are two exceptions. While they require materials from two of the harvesting families, they also need supplies from a vendor on all of their recipes. Alchemy uses vials and containers. Cooking uses additional types of food including fish and frog legs among other things. All of these are found at an alchemy or cooking vendor. These vendors are usually next to the crafting tables.
Levels 11-20
Things change slightly once you hit level 11 with any of the production skills. Your harvesting skills remain the same, but the six production skills will now require a production rune for all recipes level 11 and higher. You will begin looting these runes from the beginning so it’s a good idea to hold onto them until you hit 11 with your production skills.
Production Skill -> Production Rune
Alchemy -> Combine
Armor Crafting -> Purify
Blacksmithing -> Frost
Carpentry -> Link
Cooking -> Activate
Tailoring -> Disenchant
Once you’ve leveled something to 20 you will need to complete a quest to continue any further. Remember, you can only take six of these skills into the craftsman level so pick your skills carefully. All of the production skills need two types of the harvestable resources so it’s a good idea to choose at least two gathering skills at this point if not keeping them all. Of course, it’s up to you which ones you choose and since there is an auction house resources will surely be available from other players.
Runes of Magic is currently in open beta with a tentative launch date of Q1 2009. It is still in the process of being localized. It is a free-to-play and free-to-download game with international and US servers.
I've been playing myself a bit but one thing still isn't clear to me
Can you get a crafting profession till 80 if you can only have your gathering professions till 60?
In others words, can you sustain your own crafting profession?
prolly not
From one of the forums the levels for crafting are: Apprentice 1-20; Adept 21-40; Journeyman 41-60; and Master 61-80. I don't know for sure, but for the sake of argument.
I read on the site, but it seems to be missing now, that 1 can go to Master level, and 3 can go to Journeyman level, and 6 can go to Adept level. I can't find anything that will confirm that now.
When a game ties crafting to a players level, it basically dooms crafting in the game. So as we can see here, crafting is an after thought in this game, just another way to get you to entice you to use the item shop.
Crafting, especially at the low levels, which is all I have experienced, is not tied to your character level. Crafting levels are gained as you use them. I have a level 2 Priest who is level 9 at least in all the Gathering Skills.
WRONG. Before you go spewing junk, know what your talking about, kid. Crafting is not not not tied to character level. So, therefore, the clever nature of crafting and also the game as a whole is very well thought out and trumps the borefest of alot of macro-payment games that bait you into playing based on false praise/advertising.
Thankfully this game is in open beta where you can learn more about it. Having said that, crafting will be treacherous by attempting to gather the materials that are needed if you are a much lower level than the area.
You apparently haven't played the game. Seeing as there is not 80 levels in the game character level wise, this statement is null and void. Also as stated above, levels are not tied to each other.
One thing i like about gathering is once you out level a zone you can just about run the zone without any mobs attacking you as you level the agro on lower mobs drops.
Did you just call a 61 year old man a kid? lol... but seriously, try to be nicer. you'll be much happier when you post with the intent of making people feel good instead of putting them down ; )
This is the funny side of the internet, isn't it?
To the article: I don't play RoM, because I don't play F2P games even if they would call it World of Warcraft, but this crafting system sounds like many other failed crafting systems.
It seems, the writer couldn't do anything else except running around gathering and refining by OK button. Else there would be more about an actual crafting process instead of describing the materials and where to find a crafting table.
I hate crafting systems, where the only thing to do is gathering 10 different ressources 50 times and refining them 10 times for making a squirrel fart and then pressing the OK button, then use the squirrel fart with 10 gnat vomits to get a flea crap which is the first basic element of a bunny piss.
EQ2 was master in this system.
It is amazing to see, how simpleminded some game designers are.
The best crafting system until now was the SWG crafting system. Period. It was not perfect, but it was fun. There you gathered your ressources and used them. No combining and no refining and shit. You just used the ressources with the best attributes and experimented on the item itself.
Run around for 10 ressources to combine them to get the 1 same ressource to use in a recipe with 10 other ressources which were combined out of 5 other ressources to get 1 same ressource and then press the ok button to get the same item the other 5 million people get too when they use this recipe = NOT FUN
Run around for 5 ressources, then put them together and experience on the result and get a literally unique item = BIG FUN!
That's why I don't play today's MMOs neither F2P nor P2P, because they don't get it with crafting.
I totally
I quite often see people stating on these forums that they love crafting in mmos and yet I can never understand why considering that the crafting systems that get implemented by these developers is always a load of shit. I think it is unfortunately the case that developers fear that if they create a system with ANY level of complexity or requirement for thought involved then many unintelligent players just wont understand it, will stop playing the game and will drift towards a more simplistic option........so basicly the developers just make the crafting system as simple and rubbish as possible just to be on the safe side. Sad.
Oh and is it just me or is there something wrong with this statement?......
"There are six different types of nodes for each harvesting skill for levels 1-20. They are acquired at level one, eight, eleven, fourteen and twenty."
I totally
I quite often see people stating on these forums that they love crafting in mmos and yet I can never understand why considering that the crafting systems that get implemented by these developers is always a load of shit. I think it is unfortunately the case that developers fear that if they create a system with ANY level of complexity or requirement for thought involved then many unintelligent players just wont understand it, will stop playing the game and will drift towards a more simplistic option........so basicly the developers just make the crafting system as simple and rubbish as possible just to be on the safe side. Sad.
Oh and is it just me or is there something wrong with this statement?......
"There are six different types of nodes for each harvesting skill for levels 1-20. They are acquired at level one, eight, eleven, fourteen and twenty."
Actually, the statement is not wrong, per se, but it does not completely express the facts behind it. There are six types of resource nodes for each harvesting skill, but at least the first two of each are acquired in pairs. For example, both brass ore and flame dust are acquired at Mining 1.
There are two things about this crafting system that bother me. The first is the term "brass ore". The second is the irregularity of the advancement progression (7...3...3...6). And to further the mining example, it has no new node at level 14 because "tin ore" and "cyanite" are both acquired at Mining 8.
There are definite problems with the crafting system, especially the amount of real time it requires of the player. A three-second animation to get one resource is excessive in my opinion because the player must invest so much real time doing nothing but watching repetitive animations. For example, getting the Elite Skill for a dual-class 15/15 character requires almost 15 minutes in real time of nothing but watching the character's gather and process animations. And why crafting is tied to Elite Skills is yet another question.
On the other side of the coin, despite any problems that the crafting system in this game might have at least the game is free. So if the players time is being wasted by making them watch harvesting and crafting animations at least it isnt costing them any money. The same cannot be said for other mmos. In fact although the crafting system in RoM is pretty much the same old crap we have seen before it still appears to be better than most crafting systems in other P2P games. It seems to me that RoM is going to highlight what a rip-off most mmos actually are.
I cannot comment on the crafting systems of other games, as the other MMOs I have played do not have any crafting system at all. And, taking you at your word, I am damn glad of it.
But micropayments are still payments. If these animations are a problem for too many people, there will not be enough micros to add up to any company-desired mega.
This is the funny side of the internet, isn't it?
To the article: I don't play RoM, because I don't play F2P games even if they would call it World of Warcraft, but this crafting system sounds like many other failed crafting systems.
It seems, the writer couldn't do anything else except running around gathering and refining by OK button. Else there would be more about an actual crafting process instead of describing the materials and where to find a crafting table.
I hate crafting systems, where the only thing to do is gathering 10 different ressources 50 times and refining them 10 times for making a squirrel fart and then pressing the OK button, then use the squirrel fart with 10 gnat vomits to get a flea crap which is the first basic element of a bunny piss.
EQ2 was master in this system.
It is amazing to see, how simpleminded some game designers are.
The best crafting system until now was the SWG crafting system. Period. It was not perfect, but it was fun. There you gathered your ressources and used them. No combining and no refining and shit. You just used the ressources with the best attributes and experimented on the item itself.
Run around for 10 ressources to combine them to get the 1 same ressource to use in a recipe with 10 other ressources which were combined out of 5 other ressources to get 1 same ressource and then press the ok button to get the same item the other 5 million people get too when they use this recipe = NOT FUN
Run around for 5 ressources, then put them together and experience on the result and get a literally unique item = BIG FUN!
That's why I don't play today's MMOs neither F2P nor P2P, because they don't get it with crafting.
Agree with SWG as the best crafting system! Although I have to argue its for an entirely different reason. I think the dependablity on crafters can make or break a system. For example I'm a big fan of Face of Mankind. A mmo where every item was crafted. In this system you had to run around and collect different objects and click okay to craft everything, boring right. Even worse (or better) you didn't gain any direct exp for it ( although finding the best places to mine and finding lowest taxes gave personal experiance). Its what you do with the item you make that seems so fun (at least to me). In face of mankind and even SWG the best part are the customers or the open market. The experimenting was only fun because it allowed you to tailor your weapons for someone else, and get that ever so rewarding "thank you" from the customer. And in the Face of Mankind it was rewarding to see your own crafted bullets end up killing you in the end. Its the price cutting, the bulk customer orders, or personal experiance with other players.
I also think tieing a weapon "level" (like you have to be X level to use an item) to an object makes a crafting system bad too. But this is probably something I feel personally. (like there was a trade off to wearing padded armor compared to composite in SWG, or Face of Mankind items had different properties and tradeoffs).
I guess I don't want to argue against your point since its pretty much true too, but would rather add these two things to define what a perfect crafting system is :)
But to keep on topic, does Runes of Magic have this sort of dependablity on crafters? (honestly can't find it on the website).