Crafting has seen some pretty major changes in 0.5.4, so this post is here as an introduction to the new mechanics. This is also a general introduction to crafting for new players and those in need of a refresher. In the previous post about crafting I went over some of the design goals for the system, now this post covers more detail about the mechanics.
There are four main types of items that go into crafting. Equippable items, which are worn by your character that can be improved through crafting. Affix shards each represent a single tier of an affix that can be on an item. Now to the new ones! Runes are items that directly affect an item. Glyphs support Runes, and affect the outcome of a craft. In Eterra glyph parchments are wrapped around Runes when they are used together.
Shards
Affix shards allow you to add or improve specific affixes on an item. You can acquire them in two main ways; direct drops in the world from enemies, barrels, and chests or from equippable items shattered with Runes of Shattering. World drops will give a good quantity of shards, but shattering allows you to get specific shards you want.
Fracturing
When Shards and some Runes are applied to an item they add fracture chance. As more fracture chance is applied to the item the chance a fracture will occur increases, and the potential damage caused to the item increase. There are three tiers of fracture:
Tier 1: Minor Fracture - a minor fracture locks the item, but has no effect on it’s affixes.
Tier 2: Damaging Fracture - a damaging fracture will reduce tier of affixes on the item by a random amount, then locks the item.
Tier 3: Destructive Fracture - removes all affixes from the item, then locks it.
The later tiers of fracture can only occur once fracture chance has built up on the item. 25 for a damaging fracture and 50 for a destructive fracture. Each affix adds 5 fracture chance, so you can make some good progress on your item before you risk damaging it.
Runes
There are four Runes as of 0.5.4, but more will be added in the future.
Rune of Shattering - Destroys the equippable item and returns some of it’s affixes as shards.
Rune of Refining - Rerolls all affixes within their tiers on the equippable item, and adds two fracture chance. For example, if an affix has a value of 14, and it’s range is from 12-20, a Rune of Refining could bring that affix to anywhere between 12 and 20.
Rune of Cleansing - Removes all affixes on the equippable item, and lowers it’s fracture chance to between 5 and 15 (unless the item’s fracture chance started lower than that)
Rune of Removal - Removes a random affix on the equippable item, and adds two fracture chance.
Glyphs
There are two Glyphs in 0.5.4 and, like Runes, more will be added later.
Glyph of Stabilizing - Makes a Rune or Shard add 80% less to 40% more fracture chance than usual. This gives it an element of risk, but on average crafting with Glyphs of Stabilizing will result in less fractured items.
Glyph of the Guardian - If a fracture is caused by the craft, the tier of fracture is reduced by one. That means if an item would have gotten a minor fracture, instead it does not fracture at all. If an item would have gotten a destructive fracture, instead it only receives a damaging fracture, preserving some of your crafting progress on the item.
That covers all the general information required to start crafting, so with that, good luck and happy crafting!
… thanks for the update info… it really helps.