Artisan classes

Artisan classes and their professions.

Gathering professions	Processing professions	Crafting professions
Fishing Herbalism Hunting Lumberjacking Mining	Alchemy Animal husbandry Cooking Farming Lumber Milling Metalworking Stonemasonry Tanning Weaving	Arcane Engineering Armor smithing Carpentry Jewel cutting Leatherworking Scribing Tailoring Weapon smithing

Artisan classes (also referred to as Artisan branches) allow a player to specialize in one or more of the three artisan skill trees: Gathering, Processing, and Crafting.

We want players to interact with each other. We want the professions to make stuff for the other professions that are useful. I am influenced quite a bit by the Star Wars Galaxies style crafting; and just having people in your network that could supply the metal that you need to make your armor, and the flowers that you need to make your potions, and maybe the potions that you need to make your enchantments. That to me was really interesting; and part of the economic gameplay of being a good crafter, being a good gatherer, is having that system; and it really plays into the economic field of a particular server. You can come in and be like, I want to be the the potion mogul here; and having good sources and having a guild that supports you is just really interesting. And without narrowing down what you have access to yourself, it takes away from the ability to achieve that. – Kory Rice

Within each of the three artisan classes lies different professions.

• Characters within a single account (Alts) may have different professions.

Q: How do you feel about players creating alts that allow them to cover every profession?

A: I think that's fine and I think that when we design the game, we design with that in mind as well; and that's why we have certain restrictions on the number of Grandmaster professions that one particular character can do. – Steven Sharif

• There are profession-specific quests.
• Professions will be balanced based on testing.

• Artisan progression in each profession is per-character.
  • Progression within each profession requires the completion of certification quests.
  • There are limits to the number of professions a character can achieve certain tiers of progression to.
  • Artisan progression does not directly relate to progression in a character's adventuring class, but there are requirements that take into account dangers, locations, toolsets, and surveying options that are level dependent.
  • Characters gain XP as they progress their artisan professions, but it should be expected that some artisans will have significantly higher artisan level than their adventuring level.
  • Choice of profession does not affect a player's stats.
  • Artisan classes and their professions are not affected by a character's religion, or class.
  • Race likely won't affect the artisan system. Certain influences may instead be housed in a background selection that isn't intrinsically tied to race.

When it comes to balancing a system that's something that we do during testing phases. When it comes to architecting the system itself and identifying the areas in which certain certain professions excel, where they interact with ancillary systems, their interconnectivity across the artisanship system as a whole, the important part there is to identify how that the interconnectivity lives with the other professions in the artisanship system. And what type of reliance you have on particular professions to complete the path of crafting or introduction of new items into the economy. – Steven Sharif

• A work order system is planned that will help players find artisans in nodes.

Artisan progression.

Artisan level	Artisan certification	Profession limit per character
1-10.	Novice.	22.
10-20.	Apprentice.	5.
20-30.	Journeyman.	4.
30-40.	Master.	3.
40-50.	Grandmaster.	2.

Leveling up in the Lumberjacking profession in Alpha-2.

Artisan progression occurs based on experience (repetition of tasks) as well as achievements of certain benchmarks within each artisan branch (Gathering, Processing and Crafting). Progression in each artisan profession is per-character.

• Artisans start off as novices in all professions.

All 22 professions, the players get to be novice of; and then it starts narrowing from there. So, after that you'll only be able to be apprentice of five things. You can be a journeyman in four things. You can be a master in three things; and you can be a grandmaster in two things. So you'll need to narrow, but you can also diversify to support the professions that you want to first push further in. – Kory Rice

• Progression to each "tier" within a profession grants skill points that can be utilized in a character's artisan skill tree.
  • Artisan certification quests must be completed to gain proficiency in that tier of artisan progression. Completing certification unlocks benefits for that profession, such as artisan tools for gathering professions and recipes for crafting professions.
  • There are limits to the number of professions at each certification tier across the three artisan branches. For example: a character may only ever be a Master in up to 3 professions and Grandmaster in up to 2 professions across all artisan branches.
  • Grandmaster artisans can max out their entire profession skill tree, but a character can only be a grandmaster of up to two professions.
  • Achieving an artisan certification in a profession also implies that the character also achieved any lower-tier certifications up to that point.

If you are grand master in that profession you can max out the entire tree. But you can only grand master 2 things. – Kory Rice

• Choosing a specific path in the skill tree allows the player an opportunity to specialize in a certain area. This encourages player inter-dependency, enhancing the artisan experience.

• Progression within artisan classes does not directly relate to progression in a character's adventuring class, but there are requirements that take into account dangers, locations, toolsets, and surveying options that are dependent on adventuring level.
  • Characters gain XP as they progress their professions.
  • It should be expected that some artisans will have significantly higher artisan level than their adventuring level.

Q: In regards to character level and artisan level. We know that currently there are two separate things. That being said, what prevents a player from staying level one and partying up with a level 50 player to then gather level 50 resources in the high zones? That way, anyone who wants to take those resources will have to kill the gatherer who is level one and get a large amount of corruption for killing a level one as a level 50.

A: Gathering higher level resources requires significant advancement within a particular profession for that gatherable resource. So, if I'm a Miner and I want to access the highest possible mineral, I need to be a master miner; and in order to achieve the master minor status I am going to be gaining adventuring level experience through that process, because many of those quest lines, many of those achievements are facilitated through quest lines. Some of those quest lines interface with adventuring difficulties that are out in the wild at certain levels. So that's going to predicate me- that's going to be a predicate for me to achieve a certain level in order to complete some of these quest lines and achieve that master status. So you will you will likely not see the ability of a level one alt character having the access to high level mineral mining, or any other type of gatherable out there. – Steven Sharif

Gathering professions

• Fishing
• Herbalism
• Hunting
• Lumberjacking
• Mining

Processing professions

• Alchemy
• Animal husbandry
• Cooking
• Farming
• Lumber Milling
• Metalworking
• Stonemasonry
• Tanning
• Weaving

Crafting professions

• Arcane Engineering
• Armor smithing
• Carpentry
• Jewel cutting
• Leatherworking
• Scribing
• Tailoring
• Weapon smithing

Artisan supply chain

Artisans within Ashes of Creation must choose a path in their artisan skill tree. This inter-dependency establishes a supply chain from raw materials to finished product. Each stage of the chain may require caravans to transport goods from one artisan to another.

1. Obtaining raw materials:
   • Using the Gathering profession.
   • By killing mobs and bosses.
   • From deconstructing weapons or armor.
   • By purchasing them from other players.
2. Refining the raw materials with the Processing profession.
3. Crafting the finished product using its crafting recipe.
   • Recipes are also obtainable from boss drops.

As a crafter you're going to want to know where certain recipes can be fulfilled; which nodes have the capability of creating what you've processed material that you've gathered for; and then you're going to want to plan out your route to either transit the goods there or make sure that you're situated in the area so that you can go out collect and build in that area as well. So there's a lot of planning that's going to be necessary. – Steven Sharif

Recipes

Alpha-2 Nightblade recipe.

When players are looking to create different items in the game they're going to need to go out and either purchase, or get drops of recipes, or trade with other players; and when they acquire that recipe, like I have here: it says Nightblade. I can use the recipe and I will learn a Weaponsmithing recipe for the Nightblade. So, I have a recipe book that I get to keep. Essentially I learn these recipes once. – Steven Sharif

Crafting in Ashes of Creation is recipe (blueprint, schematic) based, not RNG based.

• Recipes that are obtained must be committed to a player's recipe book (by right-clicking on the recipe item). This "consumes" the recipe item and unlocks the ability to craft the item in question.
  • Artisans must have the required artisan certification to learn recipes at that level (or lower).
  • Recipes can be traded or sold prior to them being committed into a player's recipe book.
  • In most cases learned recipes are permanently added to a character's recipe book, but in certain unique cases there will be a "charge count" where learned recipes will disappear from the recipe book after a number of uses.
  • Once a recipe is learned, it cannot be shared with other characters, including alts.

• Recipes have slots for required and selectable crafting materials. Adding higher rarity selectable materials increases the rarity of the crafted item. Choosing different selectable materials can also result in crafted items with different statblocks and unique properties.

These are the things we want to explore on [the] crafting side, where we introduce maybe new stat lines, or a different proportion or ratios of stats at certain tiers; and when you craft these items using better materials, the rarity of the item increases. For demonstration purposes we're using legendary, but basically when you use a higher tier than the recipe is intended for- so we could technically build this item with common copper and zinc fragments, then that would produce an uncommon item. But, since we're showcasing this at legendary tier, you can move up the tiers and have the stats increase. – Mike Han

• Recipes have differing rarities and may be locationally dependent.

• Recipes may have an XP component, where crafting that recipe multiple times can level up the recipe and unlock better results.

Something unique in our crafting system [is] where we want to have recipe XP of some sort; and then those sub-recipes could [be] earned by leveling up your recipe, which means that you have to craft the Nightblade multiple times to level it up to have a better result. The sub-recipe could be from a vendor recipe or world drops like we said earlier, but the idea is one type of item can have potential to be multiple different outcomes. – Mike Han

• While selectable materials offer a wide degree of customization, crafting results must lie broadly within the realms of the recipe's definition; and so cannot be arbitrarily customized.

Q: Will players have the ability to innovate within the crafting system creating unique items or designs? If so, how much customization can players expect when it comes to crafting their own gear or items?

A: There are statically defined an array of results that can come out of a particular recipe; and your ability to unlock those results is predicated on what composition of resources you contribute to crafting that particular weapon type; and so in that sense, yes crafters will have the ability to uniquely create certain types of the recipes results, based on how they're contributing resources to it. The result has to have a corresponding recipe definition; and so in that sense it isn't completely customizable to the point where the player gets to uniquely create these particular items, but rather they are discovering what creations are possible with each recipe type. – Steven Sharif

Timeline

Artisan classes are scheduled for release in phase 2 of Alpha-1.

See also

• Archetypes
• Classes
• Progression