Source: [UWO Captain’s Log] Crafting and You
Captain Anjel's Log
by David "AnjelusX" Slauenwhite
January 24th 1495
Ahoy, I’ve written quite a bit so far on my various voyages and the many things I’ve learned. I’ve tried my hand at various jobs, gone exploring for treasure, battled pirates, and engaged in trade. During my turn building ships and preparing to make for the New World, I’ve also dabbled in the diverse experience that is crafting. One of the more expansive systems to be involved in there are several avenues of getting your hands dirty and making items for your own benefit or for sale to others. Taking a cue from what I’ve seen other voyagers accomplish and my own experimenting, I found that crafting can be rewarding not only in building items I might otherwise have to search town after town for. Crafting is also a lucrative way to make some money while I’m in port on shore leave.
To begin with there are several forms of crafting, from simple food production to the making of weapons, clothing, cannons, figureheads, and of course general items. While in the beginning, the items might not be noteworthy or really profitable. With persistence and determination, you can achieve levels of skill to begin making some decent and eventually really good gear. Even at the start, making food might not be profitable, it certainly helps to keep your Vigour replenished so you can continue to craft and level your crafting skills.
Crafting is broken down into the following skills, each having their own required materials, trade goods, and recipes. They are Cooking, Storage, Sewing, Casting, Handicrafts, and Alchemy. Cooking as I mentioned is all about making food, which as your level grows and you gain more advanced recipes, the amount of Vigour restored by consuming the food increases. Cooking is pretty straight forward, as you gain the ingredients by purchasing them from various towns and obtain recipes you can really start making some quality food that is both useful but also profitable when sold compared to the pricing in the Taverns. Storage is somewhat related to this as it converts fish into storage food which is handy to have on hand. Storage also lowers the chances of having items stolen should you lose a battle or the loss of durability on inactive items in your inventory.
Sewing, of course is the production of clothing, ranging from the early hats, tops, bottoms, shoes and so on, but also sewing is useful with the right recipes to craft new sail equipment. Building the right sails which are then added to your ship can increase the speed and turning performance, again at a lower cost than buying them directly as the ship yard. You can eventually make special clothing or sail attachments that might night not otherwise find in stores through obtained levels and recipes.
Likewise, Casting is all about the crafting of weapons, such as swords, guns, throwing knives and so on. But also the crafting of cannons, which as you progress allows you to make better and better weapons and cannons, and for cannons, larger sets of one type or another. Really good Casters are always in demand as they might be producing weapons or cannons that are not readily available for some players, which can in turn generate some good money for the Casters. Casting also produces stern-castles and other combat related ship parts.
Handicrafts, is more of a utility type of crafting, creating things ranging from items like deck brushes, to figureheads for your ships, furniture for your residence, and as a Handicrafter grows, they can discover new and interesting avenues of creation, such as Gem cutting and more. There are several possible uses for a Handicrafter and while they may not overly profitable, there is still money to be made.
Lastly is Alchemy, which is a more complex type of crafting in which special and rare equipment is produced. While Alchemy is a lucrative skill to pursue, it is by no means an easy one and is not a beginning skill to be sought after as it is suited for higher level voyagers and not available until later levels of both skills and job category.
All in all there is much to be made and an enterprising crafter can find new and interesting items and gear to create, plan out routes to obtain the required items and always be on the look out for recipes that will bring in even bigger and better crafting options. I’ve found if I am going to actively pursue crafting I may continue to focus on casting or sewing as equipment will be much more important and expensive later on in levels.
Fair Breezes and Safe Seas,
Captain Anjelus Xavier Infiniti
Official Site: http://global.netmarble.com/uwo
