Posted on 09 April 2006 at 03:48:43 by Magi. |

Crafting: The Basics

1) Gathering Materials
Materials are gathered from everywhere in AA. Every object you blow up has a chance of dropping salvage. Salvage is indentified by a blue aura. Every crafting "set" has different materials it usually requires. For instance, projectile weapons takes mostly barrels, metal, and nuts and bolts at tier 1. Materials can be difficult to stockpile, and some materials are hard to find. *later versions will include a what gives what when it dies in an appendix, which im still working on*

2) Refining Materials
Materials can be refined at the refinery. There are three stages of materials: Salvaged (the way it is when you pick it up), Patched (which requires 2 salvaged materials and 3 clink each), and Functional (which requires 2 patched materials and 24 clink each). Most recipes call for a variety of materials, so its good to keep you materials at salvaged, just in case you need them.

3) Training Skills
Skills need to be "unlocked" before you can use them. To do this, you need to find a trainer. These people are available in town, and have the gear icon for vendors above there heads. To train a skill, just go up to a trainer and train in that skill (lvl 1 costs 100 clink, lvl 2 costs 1 scrip 200 clink, lvl 3 i havent gotten too yet). The basic skills you can learn are: projectile weapons, power plants, and armor. Skills above these have requirements which require you to get 100 skill in one of the basics before proceeding (for instance chassis' requires 100 armor). Once you have a skill unlocked, you have a skill rating of 1/50. You increase your skill rating by crafting items that have a easy (very low chance of skill gain), moderate (medium skill gain chance), hard (high skill gain chance), and very hard (+1 skill per craft).

4) Crafting
Crafting requires broken equipment of the type you are trying to craft. Broken equipment can be acquired in 3 ways: Reverse Engineering on a non-broken piece of equipment. Broken equipment can also be found as loot, and bought from various vendors throughout the lands. Every item has a requisite skill, show near the bottom if you mouse over the item in the formate Skill - xxx, for instance a minigun has a req of projectile weapons - 25, meaning it requires 25 skill in projectile weapons to craft. To craft you simply right click on the item near the appropriate building (weapons @ a control center, teh big blue C in a circle, armor at a fabrication plant shown as a wrench, and powerplants at the battery symbol {that i dont know what is called}. It then brings up the crafting window, which shows every item you can craft. Items in red, are higher than your required skill, orange are very hard, yellow hard, white moderate, blue easy, green very easy, gray trivial. After selecting which item you want to craft by clicking on it, the items picture shows in the top right, along with the material requirements at the bottom, shown with a material if you have the material required, or shown in red if you dont have that material. Below the required materials is the enhancement slots, which if your broken item has a enhancement already will have material requirements that must be met to build the weapon. If the ehancement slots show as a green square, you can add items from your inventory to attempt to craft enhancements into the weapon (such as +dmg, etc). When your ready to build the items, just click on the craft item button at the bottom of the crafting screen. You will see a progress bar at the bottom of the screen, and then the item will be in your inventory (if crafting was successful) and you might see a message that says you memorized this item and to select the memory slot you wish to place it in. Memorized items do not require a broken item, however they cannot be enhanced.

5) Reverse Engineering
Reverse Engineering breaks down usable items into craftable ones. Your sucess rate depends on your level of Reverse Engineering, how many enhancements the item you are attempting to RE has, whether the item HAS a recipe, and the level of the enhancements in the item. To RE you click on the researh icon on your toolbar (the wrench symbol) and click on the buttom that says reverse engineering mode, which then brings up your inventory and turns the cursor into a wrench. If you mouse over an item in this mode, it shows in yellow the % chance to sucessfully RE the item, and then a view of what the item will look like, as well as stats for the item when it is broken down. To RE the item just click on it, and if sucessful it will appear in your inventory as a broken item.

6) Enhancements
Enhancements can be crafted into items. Every item has a maximum number of enhancements that can be crafted into them. AFAIK, enhancements do not increase the level of the item, therefore enhancements can make some very very very good items. To enhance an item you just add materials to the enhancement(s) line in the crafting process. There are a variety of different recipes, and a recipe basically gives you a roll on a table with a set number of different results. For instance, Functional Radioactives, Functional Duct Tape, and Patch Metals gives you a roll on the +1 dmg table. There are a variety of recipes, and i dont know many of them. Experimentation can take a long tiem to get the result you want, and requires a lot of materials. Before you start doing experimentation on an item, i recommend you memorize it first, then produce memorized ones and reverse engineer them. That way you can still have the template item if you need it. Enhanced items are much much harder to memorize than unenhanced items. And the more enhancements, the harder it is to memorized the item.

7) Gadgets and Tinkering
Certain Items have gadget slots. These are shown by white circles, grey circles, or red circles in the item view.A white circle indicates a empty gadget slow, grey circles are used gadget slots, and red circles indicated locked slots. To unlock a slot, a gadget kit that corresponds with the slot (i.e 1st slot requires a mk1 tinkering kit, slot 2 a mk2, etc etc) is required, and most vendors sell a variety of gadget kits. To use a tinkering kit, right click on it, then left click on the item you wish to remove the locked slot from. Note failure can either destroy the tinkering kit, or it can destroy both the kit and the item. Sucess is dependent on your tinkering skill.

8) Research Skills and Research Points
At various level ups, and in a few instances some quests, you get RP or research points. They can be allocated by clicking on the wrench icon in your quickbar. There are four research skills, Reverse Engineering, Experimentation, Memorization, and Tinkering. For a new character i strongly recommend putting your points into RE and Memorization, followed by experimentation after you have at least 4 pts of RE and 2-3 of Memorization. Dont take tinkering unless you just want to break gadget slots, or your in a clan that needs a gadgeteer. The four skills uses are described above in prior topics.
Hopefully this provides the basics for everyone, and it anyone still has questions, comments and possible additions to this, feel free to contact me on the AA forums via PM to CMFChaotic or via email @ harrionxxi@yahoo.com.

Appendix 1: Salvaged Locations (known)

Nuts and Bolts - Buildings
Barrels - Enemy Vehicles
Salvaged Wiring - Enemy Vehicles
Plastic - CratesMetal - Fencing, Guard Rails, Old Cars
Glass - Buildings, BarrelsRadioactives - Biologicals, i.e Crawlers, etc

Back