The crafting window

Eight crafting skills work through one window: Alchemy, Blacksmithing, Bowcraft, Carpentry, Cooking, Inscription, Tailoring and Tinkering. It opens when you double-click the skill's tool.

Sections are on the left, the products of the chosen section on the right. Click a product and you see its materials, whether it can carry a maker's mark, and your chance of success. What you cannot make is greyed out.

Cartography, masonry, glassblowing and elemental armour use the same window; only the tool differs — the mapmaker's pen, the chisels, the blowpipe and the elemental hammer. There is one crafting interface to learn.

Chance of success

Below the recipe's requirement nothing can be made. Standing exactly at the requirement leaves you with that skill's base chance, and every point above it adds two percent.

Since a single skill cannot pass 100, recipes asking for 100 stay at the base for everybody — 40% even at mastery. That is deliberate: the top tier is meant to be expensive.

A failed attempt neither costs nor teaches. The engine spends a small part of the materials on failure, and on a recipe that asks for a single unit that rounds down to nothing. Your skill does not rise either: gaining skill from a failure that costs nothing would be free training. Skill comes from actually finishing the things near your own threshold.

Glassblowing keeps its own rule: there a failed attempt loses the sand.

Exceptional work

The chance of exceptional quality is forty-five points below your chance of success, so working at 100% leaves 55% exceptional. Exceptional pieces are more durable, and only they can carry a maker's mark.

The maker's mark

To sign a piece it must come out exceptional and your skill must have reached mastery. The window lets you turn the mark on and off. With high fame your name is prefixed with Lord or Lady.

The skills that can sign are Blacksmithing, Bowcraft, Carpentry, Tailoring and Tinkering. Alchemy, Cooking and Inscription cannot — nobody signs a potion, a meal or a scroll.

Choosing your metal

The ingot decides which metal you work. There are two ways: double-click the ingot of the metal you want, or double-click the hammer and target an ingot.

The chosen metal is written at the bottom left of the window, and the list becomes what that metal can make. To change metal you leave the window and click another ingot.

Fifteen metals have their own set of armour. Silver additionally has a Silver Weapons section: seven weapons that strike undead twice as hard.

Blacksmithing does two more things: smelting, which turns metal items back into ingots, and repair, which no other skill offers. Both need a forge and an anvil nearby.

Recipes particular to Elpida

• Silver weapons — seven weapons, double damage to undead. They appear once silver ingots are chosen.
• Mage robes — Shroud, Craft's Robe, High Mage Robe, Warlock Robe and Wizard Robe. They give armour, but their protection falls as they wear; the Shroud is only for characters past 600 total skill, and the Wizard Robe is refused below 90 intelligence.
• Bows — exceptional and superior tiers of the bow, crossbow and heavy crossbow, plus the Elven Bow, Poison Bow and Energy Bow. Poison and energy arrows are bowcraft too.
• Glassblowing — an alchemist who reads the book and takes up the blowpipe makes their own bottles. The shovel and the pipe are tinker's work; digging sand is mining.
• Fishing gear — net twine and the net from a tailor, net bait from a cook, the pan from a tinker, the fish oven from a carpenter.
• Masonry — a carpenter who reads the book and equips the chisels opens the stone sections; coloured granite and the flowers are ours.
• Elemental armour — four sets, forged from the window the elemental hammer opens, beside an elemental anvil: 90 smithing for the ingot, 95 for the armour. The anvils are in Britain and Minoc.
• The rest — the gold pouch (tailor), the taming staff and the incubator (carpenter), the treasure compass, the practice lock and the Lethe Stone (tinker).

Applying poison

Poison is applied by double-clicking the poison potion, not from the skill list. The bottle must be in your pack and you must not be in combat. Double-click it and pick your target: the weapon or the food you want poisoned.

Only edged and piercing weapons take poison — swords, daggers, spears. Maces and axes do not. Food takes it too; whoever eats it is poisoned, and NPCs may refuse it depending on their TasteID.

Applying takes two seconds, and you cannot poison anything else meanwhile. Something already poisoned needs cleaning first, and an oil cloth cleans it — a tailor's product made from one piece of cloth.

Poisoning rises only from applying poison. Casting the spell or striking with a poisoned blade does not raise it. In return, a high Poisoning makes your Poison spell land harder.

Worth knowing

• Total skill is capped at 800 and a single skill at 100. Eight skills at most can reach mastery, which is why nobody makes everything themselves.
• Some recipes ask for several skills. The Craft's Robe wants tailoring, magery, carpentry and tinkering; the Lethe Stone wants tinkering and inscription.
• Gargoyle equipment cannot be made on this shard.