Crafts

1. Gather or buy the materials

   Ore, coal, logs, silver and a little gold come from the woods and mines; herbs, hops, resin and feathers from the meadows and woods; fish from the waters (and now and then a river pearl, for the jeweller, the tailor and the alchemist - the game's freshwater pearl counts as one); now and then a woodcutter turns up a piece of exotic wood, the weaponsmith's from level 6, straight into the pack (the Kuttenberg importer sells it too); miners likewise find tincal and jasper, fishers dogfish skin; meat, hides and boar tusks from the hunt. Herbs, vegetables, honey and plums carried in the game's own inventory count at the bench as loads of the sack, one piece a load. They go in your sack. Herbs you pick by hand in the wild go in your pack and count at every bench, alongside the herbalists' loads; the alchemist's other herbs are picked the same way or bought from an apothecary. The auction houses sell the raw goods too (the gatherers' listings and the realm's own stock), so a crafter does not have to gather The brewer's goods are gathered too: the herbalists find barley malt, grapes and plums, the woodcutters wild honey.

2. Find a workshop

   Each craft is worked at certain workshops in the towns (see the table below). Stand within a few paces of the keeper and open F2 > Work > Crafts: the workshop's recipes open, sorted by level. Where a workshop serves two crafts, you choose which. Away from any workshop, F2 > Work > Crafts > a craft lists the three nearest workshops for that craft with their distance: pick one to put it on your compass.

3. Make the parts

   Each craft makes its own parts: the smith's and armourer's steel, the tailor's leather and padding, the bowyer's bowstrings and hafts and the goldsmith's fine silver. They go in your sack, and no market sells them: they can only be made. The forge's ingots and parts (iron, steel, Frankfurt and Toledo steel, guards, pommels, skins) are the game's own items and go in your pack (see the forge). Up to level 4 a crafter works alone, with raw goods and their own parts. From level 5, nearly every piece of the gear crafts, the goldsmith's and the joiner's needs a part that another craft makes (an ordinary garment does not: see Parts, professions and costs).

4. Make it

   Pick a recipe and how many: up to 25 at once in the craft window, 50 for an Early Supporter and 100 for an Early Founder (five from the menu). A long run is made 25 at a time, and each 25 is handed to you before the next begins, so an interruption only costs the 25 under way. You stand still a few seconds per piece (a little less as the craft rises), and a small fee pays for fuel and tools. Items go in your pack, parts in your sack, and your craft gains experience. The window's drop-down lists every craft with your level in it, highest first, and remembers the last one you picked. Many garments and pieces of armour come in several colours and coats of arms (a town's, a lord's): pick the variant you want on the recipe. Every variant is open to everyone, and each costs according to its own worth.

5. Fill a craft order

   Every day the town hall's board has a craft order for smithing, alchemy, cooking, jewelling and brewing - iron bars, bandages, a cooked fish - that anyone may take (see Work orders). It trains the craft and pays a little coin: what the pieces cost, plus about 100 gr. an hour of work. The town commissions buy your pieces in bulk on similar terms.

Where each craft is worked

What a dish is worth

A cooked dish fills by its level: about 18 hunger at level 1, rising to about 48 at level 10 (a light dish - a dried apple, a bread roll - a share of its level's worth, only up to level 3: a master's dish never fills less than an early one). How it is made counts on top of its level: smoked +10%, dried -10%, a large cut +15%, a dish with its side +10%, wolf meat -10% (48 at most). Uncooked food never fills more than 24. The kitchen's window and the bill of fare show each one's worth.

Sides. Six dishes of level 5 and up take a side - garlic, mushrooms, horseradish or an apple - in place of part of the kitchen's fee: the same cost, and a dish that fills more. Two plain dishes have a second, optional way with a side that is cheaper a piece: two hares and a load of onions make four cooked hares, two chickens and a garlic make three roasted chicken legs. The usual way stays. Two pork make three bacon now, and the poppy seed kolach takes a poppy (1 groschen at the apothecary).

A dish of level 6 and up leaves you well fed: a little health comes back while you are out of a fight - 8 minutes (and a weaker regeneration) after a level-6 or level-7 dish, 10 after level 8, 15 after level 9, 20 and a little more health after level 10. One at a time: a better dish takes over, a lesser one only once the better one has run out - it never adds to itself.

Master's dishes. At cooking level 10, a dish with a meal effect or Well fed has a Master's dish switch in the craft window: each good half as many again, rounded up (1 becomes 2, 2 become 3, 3 become 5), for the same fee, time and experience. Each portion is named (master's), and its meal effect and Well fed last one and a half times as long - still one at a time, the next dish replaces it. A master's portion stocks a counter and an inn's shelf like an infused one; B shows it with its mark.

Meals that do more

A cooked dish also gives a small meal effect by what it is made of - from recipe level 5 (poultry, eggs, dairy and vegetables from level 3). It lasts 20 minutes at its family's first level and 5 more for each level above. One at a time: the last dish you eat replaces the one before. A ring shows it, and the cooking window tags each dish with its effect. Nothing of it helps in a fight.

Cooking climbs faster in its middle levels: the experience of recipe levels 4 to 6 is half again what it was. The kitchen takes the farms' goods - its cabbage, carrots and onions by the sack's load (a load of cabbage is four cabbages, of carrots or onions ten; the craft window counts the pieces you carry with the sack's loads, "3 / 10", so nine onions in your pack show as nine), roasts with onions, boiled beef with carrots and onions, sausages and salami of pork and beef, cheese, curd and cream from milk, bread from barley - and two dishes have joined it: roast duck (level 6) and Pepa's sauerkraut (level 9). The eel's and the pike's dishes come sooner (levels 3 and 5).

The game's own fires count too: a dish you cook or smoke at a fire in the world is yours if your cooking has reached its level, and it trains the craft as the kitchen would. Below that level it spoils and is taken back. What dries on its own over time - herbs, fruit, meat - is always yours.

A high craft must be kept up

A craft of level 8, 9 or 10 is kept up by earning at least 600 XP in it within a week - a few pieces of your level. Seven days after it was last kept up, it starts to fade: it loses XP every day, about a level a fortnight, and stops at level 7 - never lower. Work at it again and the fading stops; what was lost is earned back like any XP. A character set away does not fade. You are told at login when a craft is about to fade, and when it loses a level.

The realm's own effects

Some potions do more in the realm than the game's own effect, which they still give. Drunk (or eaten in an infused dish), they add an effect the server keeps, shown on the ring beside the others while it lasts. The game's tooltip does not show it: your pack (B) marks those potions with a green seal and says the effect in their details, as do the craft window and the auction house. A potion never does more than a draught of the contraband would.

Gear that ends

Every piece of gear has a condition, and it is saved with your character: a piece is as worn when you come back as when you left. Gear wears ten times slower than in the single-player game, but nothing repairs it: there are no repair kits, and neither a smith nor a whetstone restores a piece (the grindstone only sharpens a piece you forged at the game's anvil within the half hour). A worn piece stays worn until a crafter makes you a new one.

• Worn to nothing: a weapon, a helmet or a piece of armour that reaches 0% falls apart and leaves your pack.
• A death costs every piece of gear you wear 15% of its condition, and a worn-down piece may break: never above half condition, 1 in 10 below half, 1 in 4 below a quarter, 2 in 5 at zero. A sparring duel or a tournament bout costs nothing.
• Armour at the work: each load you gather (wood, ore, herbs, fish, a butchered carcass, a harvested strip), every piece of metal armour you wear - a helmet, mail, plate, a brigandine, a cuirass, gauntlets - has a 1 in 3 chance to lose a point of condition, and one worn to nothing breaks. Padded layers (gambesons, aketons, quilted hose), clothes, weapons and your trade's tools are spared: take your mail off to work.
• Clothes and tabards wear as they do in the game, never break and lose nothing when you die.
• A piece handed to someone, dropped on the ground, put in saddlebags or delivered to a town keeps its condition. So does a piece sold at a market stall: its condition is shown on the counter, and the buyer gets it exactly as worn as it was.
• A piece also keeps its quality (I to IV) wherever it goes: your pack, chests, saddlebags, carts, rooms, homes and town warehouses, the auction houses (a listing holds pieces of one quality, shown beside the name), the shop counters, a hand-over, the master's finish, even a robbery.