6 – Crafting

Here's one I made earlier

Age of Conan’s crafting system is a little different to the traditional ‘build 1,000 planks of wood’ time-sink model that other MMORPGs have employed to keep you playing (and paying). Instead, initially you can't craft anything. Only once you reach level 20 (via standard questing and mob killing) can you head to one of the gathering and crafting areas, and pick up missions to collect resources. You're tasked with going out and collecting twenty copper bars, twenty planks of ash tree wood, and so forth for each different resource type.

Resource nodes don't vanish after you collect from them; instead they slowly recharge, so you could potentially leave you avatar next to a node, do some housework, come back and grab another stack of silver. That said, this approach is not only boring, it's also potentially flawed, as another player can get in there before you. Our advice is to keep the missions in your journal and pick up resources as you're out doing other quests. If you find a silver node though, count yourself lucky, because they seem to be rare at this point.

Once your resource collecting is done, you can progress to specialising in a crafting profession, although you'll need a level 40 character for this. Unlike the resource gathering skills, you can only choose one crafting tree to specialise in. As the game is so new, economy and trade of items hasn't taken off yet. Funcom has stated that loot drops and crafted items will compliment each other, which will be a big consideration if it comes to pass - however carefully crafted, nobody will pay for your wooden longbows if they can get a better one from killing a few easy mobs.

The one crafting profession that we think will always be in high demand is the architect. Guild cities and forts in PvP need walls, towers and buildings. The only way to set down these buildings is for an architect to create them. A guild without an architect will be like a car without an engine.

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