Crafting is what makes an MMO an experience truly individual for each and every player. The things that you can create with your own hands – your equipment, your clothes, your armor or your weapons – are what define you in the vast fantasy worlds that you traverse. Fractured Online gives you the chance to tailor each and every one of your favorite pieces of equipment to your personal preferences.
HOW TO BECOME A MASTER CRAFTER
Crafting is a vital part of any MMO game, something that you will do again and again – and as such it is important to keep it interesting over the course of time. That’s why we have implemented several layers of crafting that have very different requirements. The first one is what we call “inventory crafting”: No matter where you are, you can always open your inventory and craft simple things on the go. Things like bandages or a club – your everyday basic stuff. It doesn’t take much time or effort to create these items, and they will serve their purpose very well – but of course they’re not what you would call fancy handiwork.
If you intend to create something precious and with a bit more finesse, you need preparation. First and foremost you need to find crafting stations, special benches that can be placed within cities and sometimes also personal land parcels. These allow you access to more advanced crafting – the so-called “Tier Crafting” that applies to all kinds of armor.
Here’s an example: the common Plate Mail is a heavy Tier 1 armor mostly made of metal, that gives you very solid protection against all kinds of attacks. Using this as a basis and investing additional rare materials you can create three kinds of Tier 2 armors: a Knight Armor or a Slayer Armor. Each and every one of these has not only very different properties when it comes to physical and magical resistances, but also has a unique passive ability that can define your character build… and that’s just Tier 2! Tier 3, which will be available later on, splits into even better and more specific armor variants that are reserved for the most tenacious and resourceful of adventurers!
It is important to know that the basic material requirements for Tier 1 and Tier 2 items are the same – Tier 2 requires additional variable materials on top of it that are usually not that easy to come by. Also, persistent crafting will make you get better at it: the more you craft an item, the more a dedicated experience bar fills up, the better you will get at doing so and the better and more valuable the item eventually becomes. This is not only important for your own self-esteem but also for your reputation, as fellow adventurers will surely consult you first when they need a certain item tailor-made for them by the best!
THE IMPORTANCE OF CITIES
We already mentioned that crafting stations are only available in cities. The important thing to know here is that each crafting station is not like the other. What you can craft on the station in your own city doesn’t have to be the same items that you can create two cities down the road. Quite the opposite, it’s much more probable that you will find many new and exciting crafting opportunities by visiting new cities and their crafting stations, as each city has their own tech tree that their citizens can invest into. A certain amount of focus is important here as you can’t simply invest into everything – each city has to become specialized in one direction sooner or later.
So in order to be able to craft a very specific item, like for example a metal spear, you will not only have to find special crafting recipes, which are rare drops within monster loots – but also a city that gives access to a specific crafting station. So how do you find this particular city? Of course you can explore the world, visit every city in your reach, make notes of their specialization and keep searching while having fun in the worlds of Fractured Online. You can also join your fellow players on forums or Discord channels to find out if anyone happens to know where this or that particular item can be crafted and which city provides which particular kinds of service. We are also working on a handy location tool which is going to show you in detail what kinds of research which city has completed, or which level of taxation awaits you at what location, so you can make informed decisions about where to go for some sweet, sweet crafting or even where to settle down. But for the time being let’s just say that there will be more information about this topic for you in the future, as this feature is still being developed as we speak.
THE SCIENCE OF MATERIALS
Any kind of crafting can only be as good as the materials used in it – so choosing the right materials matters, as some are simply better than others! Fractured Online has lots and lots of different materials available to satisfy all of your deepest crafting desires: metals, fibers, woods, leathers, furs or skins, amongst many others. Their value for crafting can not be overstated: with the exception of the most primitive weapons that are made of wood and stone, each item you can craft has at least one variable material, which determines the crafted item’s properties.
So if you take for example the Plate Gauntlets, which are mighty and quite useful heavy gloves, you can make them in Iron, Bronze, Silver, Gold, and even some fancy alloys like Mithril, Oricalcum or Moon Steel. Of course that’s the same for any Tier 1 or Tier 2 armor, like the Knight’s Armor or the Cleric’s Armor: the base ingredients for crafting these are always the same – but it’s the over-the-top additions that make the difference between taking a fireball, and withstanding a firestorm!
THE MAGIC OF IMBUING
Imbuing is The Artistry Formerly Known As Enchanting. At one point in the development of Fractured Online we realized though that the term “Enchanting” didn’t quite send the message that we wanted to convey – so we changed it to “Imbuing”. Imbuing is not directly part of the crafting system, but it’s closely related – a first cousin, if you will.
Just like with the more advanced crafting you also need a dedicated station for imbuing – in this case it’s not a crafting station but an imbuing table, featuring a black top covered with a mystic pentagram, onto which you put the item that you wish to enhance. The item rests in the center of the pentagram, which means that you have five end slots which you can fill up with the reagents you intend to use. Reagents are enchanting materials, and they can be pretty much everything: Milkweed, Spider Eyes, Dragon Soul, Garlic, Holy Water, Ogre Horn, Rabbit Paw, Wolfsbane, Zombie Brain – you name it. There are hundreds of different reagents, common and uncommon, and just like regular crafting materials, these reagents all have different properties. You can use up to five different reagents in one imbuing session, it’s completely up to you. The important thing to know is that you will need the specific reagents that have certain properties to be able to imbue properly and create the specific property you’re looking for – things like Mana Regeneration, Magic Resistance or a Strength Bonus.
There are many, many possible properties for each and every item, and they are also staggered into Tiers. Each item that you can imbue has very specific properties that are each separated into ten little bars – things like Fire, Chaos, Soul, Knowledge or Energy. In order to reach Tier 1 of an enchantment you will have to fill up two of those bars. Tier 2 requires you to fill up five bars. For Tier 3, the maximum of the game, you will have to fill up all of the bars of all four property icons – an enormous task that requires only the best and rarest reagents in your inventory! But it also yields the most impressive results, of course.
This system is a bit complex to explain but really easy to use in the game: you just put your item in the imbuing table, select the reagents, imbue, and Bob’s your uncle. Unlike a crafting station, the imbuing table can be placed pretty much everywhere – you can even build one yourself into your own home in Fractured Online! But that doesn’t mean that you can imbue all day to your heart’s content – each item can only be imbued a limited amount of times.
Finding the right reagents is also not that trivial a task, particular in the case of the higher-tier ones: some reagents you can find pretty much everywhere, others can only to be found in very specific locations – about 95% of the reagents are specific either to a continent or a region within that continent. Garlic, for example, can only be found on Myr – so you will have to go there to find it or buy it from someone. Of course you can also hire someone to bring it to your continent if you shy away from the troubles of traveling abroad. Ingredients can also be found or bought on the marketplace within cities, and in case you’re looking for a very specific ingredient you can always find help within the community: there are already player-made tools available that find the right combination of items to obtain certain enchantments.
We believe that the best things in life are the ones that you create with your own hands. Crafting is a mighty tool for doing just that – and in Fractured Online we give you all the options to become a master crafter in no time!
Until next time,
Your Fractured Online Team
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