Anything the shops sell, you can make better — and anything the monsters drop, you can melt down and make into something you actually wanted. Seven disciplines, one workshop, and a moon overhead that genuinely cares how your evening goes.

Crafting turns gathered materials into gear, potions, pet food and catalysts. Open the workshop from Professions → Crafting — one panel, nine disciplines, each with its own skill that climbs from 0 to 100 as you work. The six equipment benches (Blacksmith, Woodworker, Armorsmith, Leatherworker, Tailor, Jeweller) forge gear through an interactive forging mini-game; Alchemy, the Culinarian and Runecrafting craft their recipes instantly.

The Four Equipment Benches

• A bench can forge every catalogue item up to Epic — the same weapons and armour that shops sell and monsters drop. Bespoke gear (raid sets, dungeon-boss items, rare-monster trophies) keeps its own sources and cannot be crafted.
• Every crafted weapon rolls a random Element and a random Unleash element at the forge — a Fire blade that unleashes Lightning is a perfectly legal roll. Each forging is its own little gamble.
• Crafted pieces carry a value premium: they sell for 25% more than the catalogue copy — double for HQ — so routine crafting pays for itself.

What Your Pick, Axe and Rod Are For

From Tier II onward every equipment bench also wants one gathered material — something you mined, felled or landed yourself. Each bench draws on its own discipline, so two crafters are never queueing at the same node.

The quantities fall as the rarity climbs — six of a common ore, two of a legendary one — because rarity is decided by the node, not by your skill. Gathering skill only makes you miss less often, so anything a tile yields is reachable by anyone standing on it; the Legendary yields are simply thin. Every requirement sits on a tile at or below its own band, so a recipe will never send you somewhere your level cannot follow.

Rarity Changes the Bill

The bench lists Common, Uncommon, Rare and Epic recipes side by side at every level. They are not the same craft: a rarer recipe asks for more of every ingredient — the tile resources, the gathered material and the boss material alike — and teaches its discipline a little faster in return.

Cost climbs faster than the teaching value, on purpose. Common remains the cheapest route to mastery per material; Epic is the fastest per craft. Neither is strictly better — which is the point, because the Epic piece is also the better item once you wear it.

Materials & Recipe Tiers

Materials come from Gathering. Each bench draws on its four materials in quantities that grow with the item's level, and from the Expert tier a boss material joins the bill — Dungeon Cores, Ancient Shards and Void Relics drop from dungeon bosses (not guaranteed). The bench lists the exact skill requirement beside every recipe.

Beyond Level 2,000 the Sundered tiers (VII–IX) trade boss relics for the islands' own gathered materials — see the Sundered Reaches section further down this page.

Where Boss Materials Drop

Boss materials come only from boss kills. There is no gathering node, no mining vein and no vendor that sells them — if a recipe wants a Dungeon Core, an Ancient Shard or a Void Relic, something with a health bar has to die for it.

Dungeon bosses drop one on 65% of kills, 1–2 at a time. Which one you get is decided by the level of the boss you actually fought — the difficulty-scaled figure, not the dungeon's lore range — and is then promoted by difficulty:

Ultimate converts every boss material to Void Crystal. This catches people out: if you are short of Ancient Shards or Dungeon Cores, Ultimate is the one difficulty that cannot give them to you. Drop to Hard and farm a boss in the right level band instead.

Raid bosses pay 1–3 every clear, chosen purely by floor:

Boss materials are shared with the rest of the crafting tree: rune catalysts, guild vault and relic contributions, the higher pet foods and the Mastercraft reforges all draw on the same pile.

The Forging Mini-game

Clicking Craft at an equipment bench commits the materials and opens a live forging session. Four bars tell the story:

• Progress — fill it to finish the item.
• Quality — decides Normal versus High Quality.
• Durability — every action wears it; hit zero before Progress completes and the craft fails (half the materials are salvaged, and the attempt still teaches a quarter of the usual skill).
• CP (Crafting Points) — the budget for finesse actions. Your cap is 90 + skill, and an Artisan's Tonic drunk before you start locks its bonus in for the whole craft.

• Risk lives in the greedy actions. At exactly the required skill they fail 6–18% of the time (a failed action grants nothing but still costs full CP and half its Durability). Every 2 skill points above the requirement shave the risk down, and 24 points over makes every action reliable. Steady Strike and Crystal Reforge never fail — there is always a safe, slow way through.
• Skill sharpens every blow — Progress and Quality gains scale up to +50% at skill 100, and the bars themselves grow with the item's level.
• The moon leans on the forge. Each phase shifts Progress and Quality gains, tool wear, and the HQ bar itself — the conditions strip above the bars shows tonight's terms.
• One craft at a time; cancelling forfeits the materials.

High Quality (✦ HQ)

Finish with Quality at or above the night's HQ threshold — 45–60% of the Quality bar, set by the moon phase — and the item mints High Quality: +20% to its stats (weapon damage included) — +25% above item level 5,000, where a flawless craft is meant to be worth the trip — plus double sale value, and double skill gain for the craft, with ✦ HQ stamped on the item's name. The instant disciplines (Alchemy, Culinarian, Runecrafting) don't roll quality — HQ is the forge's prize.

Beyond the Benches

• Alchemy — brew combat, utility and profession potions across Tiers I–IV, from starter Draughts to Supreme elixirs.
• Culinarian — cook pet food that raises a Tamer's companion down the Might / Speed / Fortitude / Arcana paths (Tiers I–VI).
• Runecrafting — added in Patch 3.0: forge Catalysts that empower a Runesmith's rune inscriptions. Anyone can craft and sell them; only Runesmiths can consume them.

Mastercraft Assembly

From skill 48, Mastercraft moved to its own Mastercraft tab, shared by every equipment bench (Blacksmith, Woodworker, Armorsmith, Leatherworker, Tailor, Jeweller). Assembly recipes are dual-source: they consume a component item from your bag — any Epic item of the right kind at or above a level floor — plus gathered materials, boss trophies and gold. The result is a Masterwork: a Unique item that no shop sells, no monster drops, and no ordinary recipe makes.

Weapon Masterworks take your class's signature form. Exactly like dungeon and raid boss weapon drops, an assembled weapon is re-forged for the crafter: a Magician assembles the Caldera-Forged Focus, an Archer a Longbow, a Lancer a Lance — the weapon kind, name and stat spread all follow your class (the six stats are redistributed on the same total budget, so no class's version is stronger). Craft on the character you want to wield it. Armour and ring Masterworks are class-agnostic, as armour always is.

Quality carries — the one exception. If every consumed component is a bench-crafted ✶ HQ item, the Masterwork itself is forged HQ: the same bonus a bench HQ carries (+20% to its stats, +25% above level 5,000) and double value, with the ✶ HQ marker in its name. The panel announces it before you confirm ("Flawless components — this Masterwork will be forged HQ"). Since assembly always takes your lowest-level qualifying piece, lock (🔒) any cheaper non-HQ copies so your HQ components are the ones selected.

Masterwork Days & the HQ Streak

Four per-discipline daily quests ask for 2 High Quality crafts at a named bench (double the generic Masterwork daily's rewards), and two weekly quests reward HQ work at any bench: Hands of Gold (5 HQ crafts, 40,000 gold) and — from level 40 — The Master Artisan (8 HQ crafts, 120,000 gold + 60,000 EXP). Separately, crafting 3 High Quality items in a row at one bench pays a flat +1.00 bonus skill point — a normal-quality craft resets the streak, and your progress (1/3, 2/3…) is shown on each craft result. The crafting log also gained ▶ replay links to step through any recorded craft.

Recipe Bands to Level 3,000

Three new recipe bands cover the Sundered Reaches, each gated by that island's gathered material (crafting skill 100 required past Lv 1,000):

Mastercraft Assembly gains two Pinnacle Masterworks at skill 100 — the Starfall Brand (weapon) and Worldspine Bulwark (chest), both Lv 2,800, both requiring an Epic Lv 2,500+ component plus the new materials and Umbral Residue from the Underworld's Umbral Deep. Runecrafting gains the Tier-4 Sundered Catalysts (+70% inscription power, skill 92, Umbral Residue required).

The Artisan’s Loop — Raising Skill 0→100

Every completed craft teaches its discipline, but the multipliers decide how fast you climb:

The rhythm of a fast climb: drink an Artisan’s Tonic before starting (its CP bonus locks in for the whole craft), open with safe Steady Strikes while Durability is rich, spend CP on Polish/Engrave to cross the night’s HQ line, and only reach for Crushing Blow when your skill is comfortably above the recipe (every 2 points over the requirement shaves the fail risk; 24 over makes every action reliable). Check the moon strip before committing an expensive craft — a generous phase can be worth more than a tier of skill.

Salvage & the Material Economy

Crafting eats materials at one end and produces sellable gear at the other — and the realm gives the loop a third leg:

• Mass Salvage (in your bag) breaks down unequipped gear in bulk into Ascension Dust for the Gear Ascension system — filter by rarity and a level ceiling, preview the exact Dust total before confirming, and per-item yields match single-item salvage exactly. Equipped and 🔒 locked items are never touched. Yesterday’s crafting practice is tomorrow’s Ascension fuel.
• Auto-salvage — tick the box beside the bag’s auto-collect Loot Filter and any drop below your threshold is broken straight down into Ascension Dust the moment it falls, at the same per-item rate. Legendary and rarer drops are never auto-salvaged.
• Crafted gear sells at a 25% premium over the catalogue copy (double for HQ) — skilling up on sellable tiers pays for its own materials.