Crafting: A Guide to Ordnance : Champions Online - General / Guide - Discussions

from: http://forums.champions-online.com/showthread.php?t=45439

author: Mors-Subita


Crafting - A Guide to Ordnance. Recovered and reposted from the old forums.

If you have questions you want answered, or information you think I should include, please let me know. Also, if you don't think you have the patience to read through this, or you are confused about crafting in general, scroll down and read the last paragraph from my third post.

I've seen lots of posts about how crafting is not user friendly. About how it doesn't make sense, etc. In only one respect do I agree. I think that the recipe results should be viewable from the blueprints screen before you spec or purchase them, so you can make an informed decision. To that end, I have screenshotted all of the recipes up to 334 skill(where my char was sitting at at lvl 31 when the beta was supposed to end). I will be posting them here. Let me summarize crafting you for.

You must choose a discipline. You must choose a specialization from that discipline

In my case I chose Arms and Ordnance.

How do I choose a discipline?

Your upgrades boost your stats, so you need to choose your discipline based on character concept and your planned super stats(focus stats), rather than your planned power framework. Each discipline has a specific stat which it is completely lacking. The stat voids are as follows:
Arms has no Pre
Mysticism has no Con
Science has all the stats, although the Pre and Con are both low on all fixed stat items.

Please note that for science you might get less focused items because they are spread with more stats. Also, I do not know how this affects fixed stat vs. variable items. If someone with science could give me the values for Pre and Con vs. Int, Str, and End so I could compare, it would be nice(please include the level of variable item, and please take the stats at the highest rarity).

How do I choose a specialization?

If coins had 3 sides I would say flip one. Specialization is only cosmetic. It allows you to make upgrades that better suit your hero's lore.

You gain skill primarily by breaking down upgrades from your discipline that you do not need, and alternately, by making(and then breaking down) recipes

For the most part I only broke down bound arms upgrades and crappy ones. Good BoE ones went on the AH. Even with that I was still able to easily keep my crafting in line with my level(at least in terms of recipes). It takes a while to get new mats once you hit a new tier. As your skill gets higher, you get less and less skill for each item you break down, to the point that it becomes most efficient to break down single star items one at a time for the one point each. Also, generally 4 zero star items will give you 1 point(you can see the star rating at the bottom. 0 is actually a fraction, so keep adding 0 star items till it hits 1). You can break down more than 1 item at a time in the same window. As far as I know there is no limit on how many items.

Help! I am trying to break down an upgrade or several upgrades at one time and it tells me it failed every time! What do I do?

One(or more) of those upgrades is a quest reward that cannot be broken down. You can tell which one it is because it does not show you any resulting materials in the result box. Any attempt to research that includes that upgrade will fail. Its vendor trash.

The stats seem kind of weird, or none of the sets have exactly what I want!

This is only true at low levels. Once you get into your 20s, you start being able to craft exactly the stats and rarities you want. I will explain more about it later.

Its so hard to get materials. I can never make what I want!

Then you aren't breaking things down enough. Unless I had just hit a new tier of materials, I never found myself short... not once. And I leveled through 3 crafting trees(mysticism/echanted gear, Arms/fighting, and Arms/ordnance) on 3 different chars.

There are so many different materials, and I need so many to make anything. I don't want to keep them in my bags, but its a pain to go back and forth to the bank.

So don't go back and forth! Once of my favorite innovations of this game is that, if you have the mat, you can use the mat. It doesn't matter if its in your bank or your inventory. Bank them all, and use them whenever you want. Your recipe will automatically pull the mat from the bank.

Ok, so what can I make that I would care about?

How about +45 to a single stat at lvl 26 on a primary item? +10-12 on a secondary?
At lvl 31 you get a complete set of primary and secondary recipes which you can customize for all slots. More on that later.

There are two kinds of crafting recipes in your specialization tree. Fixed stat recipes and Variable recipes. Fixed stat recipes are very simple. You can make an item with these stats and only these stats, it requires X Y and Z. Variable recipes are much more fun, and this is where crafting comes into its own. Alongside your recipes, you can also purchase enhancements. You've probably been buying them for a long time, but you had no idea what they did. Each of those enhancements represents a stat or an effect. On variable recipes, you get a choice of a major enhancement, or a minor enhancement, or both. You also get a slider to determine rarity (hint, the more rare the item, the better the stats).

Here is a list of all the Ordnance enhancements up to skill 334, and what they do:

Major Enhancements
On rank 31 item, single stat is +41 for rare and +36 for poor. Dual stat is +23 rare and +21 poor.
Kinetik - Dex/Recovery
Engineer - Increased end building
Force - Intelligence
Montrous - Strength
Radiant - Recovery
Supersonic - Dexterity
Adhesive - Adds root to basic attack(not sure what qualifies as basic)
Neutronium - Crushing damage resist, increase physical and energy resist
Power - Endurance
Impact - Adds knock back to basic attack(not sure what qualifies as basic)
Cyborg - Raises maximum endurance(does not raise endurance stat, only energy pool)
Enhanced - Ego
Striker - Offense
Energy Shield - Energy damage resist, increase physical and energy resist
Strengthened - Constitution


Minor Enhancements
On rank 31 item, single stat is +13 for rare and +12 for low. Dual stat is +7 for rare and low both. Triple stat is +5 on rare and +4 on low.
Destructive - Crit Severity
Reinforced(tooltip says banded) - Constitution
Developed - Con/End/Ego
Fantastic - STR/Dex/Rec
Atomic - Reduced End cost on all AoE powers
Energized(tooltip says galvanized) - End
Fulminating(tooltip says volatile) - str/dex
Colossal - Str
Controlled(tooltip says piercing) - Ego
Electrified - Rec
Energized - End
Microcell - Increased energy regen
Reinforced - Con
Controlled - Ego
Modular - End/Ego
Scanning - Perception/minimap radius/offense
Accelerated - Dex
Heightened - STR/Rec
Fulminating - str/dex
Amalgamated - Dex/rec
Life Supporting - 5% max health

So given this list, a poor quality Monstrous Collosal primary item will have 48 STR on it at lvl 31. Additional levels of rarity increase it by 2 stat per level(i.e. 50, 52, and then 54 for a rare item). A Poor item has very low crafting mat requirements, so its often worth it to build the lowest level one right away(you can make them very soon after you get the recipe) and then upgrade them for the minor bonus when you have the excess materials.


Here are compiled screenshots of all of the recipes for the Ordnance specialization up to 334 skill(from lvl 1 up past lvl 31). If anyone can show me how to make the code actually display them instead of just linking them, I would appreciate it.

Utility Upgrades
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v485/Blizzisme/utilityupgrades_small.jpg

Offensive Upgrades
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v485/Blizzisme/offensiveupgrades_small.jpg

Defensive Upgrades
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v485/Blizzisme/defensiveupgrades_small.jpg


If you go through these, it should help you decide if the fixed stat/lower level recipes from this spec are right for you.




My crafting trainer wants an <insert> instead of money!!! What is this and where do I get it?

People will notice that there are quite a few recipes that do not require money to buy, instead they require either:

Profundity -> Mysticism
Insight -> Arms
Epiphany -> Science

and come either in slight, mild, normal, or great flavors.

You get these as random bonuses for breaking down items in the research window. Again, researching is good.

Sometimes when I pick up materials from crafting nodes around teh world I see a graphic and I get a buff! What is this?

When you harvest a crafting node in the world, you will likely get an effect based on what kind of node it is. Arms nodes will give you a damage boost. Mysticism nodes give you an end boost, and science nodes give you a HoT.


For everyone who doesn't have the patience to go through what I wrote, here is crafting in a nutshell.

Choose a school(you can click on the skills talk point at the vendor and he will tell you which stats they don't give you). Choose a specialization(pick one at random). Break down all upgrades you find from your school for materials and skill ups(if its better than what you have use it, and break it down when you replace it). Sell all other upgrades you don't need on the AH or trade to other players for MORE upgrades from your school. Buy all blueprints(recipes) from your school. Check all new recipes. If its better than what you have, make srue you have all the listed mats(nothing is red in the requirements list) and then hit create. When you get to choose your own stats, select the stats. Slide the rarity meter towards rare until you reach the best quality you can make. Hit create.

There you go, crafting in a nut shell.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Newcs
couple things to add

First you can put multiple items in the research window when breaking them down to achieve a higher score (1/5 meter).

Second that the subspecialization is purely cosmetic (ie ordinance under arms).

You can put multiple items in the research window. I mention above that you can put in multiple zero star items to bump it up to 1 star(in my experience, 0 star items in the appropriate level range usually convert at about 4 for 1 star). Just reread and you are right, while I did imply it I didn't actually say it. I've added it in. Thank you.

Retracted... specialization is cosmetic.



Quote:
Originally Posted by wendigo4
I guess the only other factors for me to consider would be consumables or variation in the added abilities. I don't think there is a complete list for all disciplines yet though, right? Anyway, I figure I can just pickup anything I'm missing from AH or friends.

As I can't get into game right now, I am doing this off the top of my head, but Arms offers a heal item and an ablative item(damage absorbtion). Science offers a HOT, and mysticism offers an item which gives you a big heal immediately, and then damages you for 50% of the healed amount after 30 seconds. I don't remember the secondary item from science and mysticism. I will check tomorrow at head start. The consumables do not change based on specialization.

Quote:
Originally Posted by NnyOne
are the power replace recipes different by specialization? or are they all the same across arms?

Power replacers are the same across each of the disciplines. They are separate from the specializations. So all of the arms get the same power replacers. All of the mysticism get the same. All of the science get the same.


Quote:
Originally Posted by cyris
The images you have of the recipes are too small to read.

If you are having trouble reading it, save them instead of viewing them in the web browser and open them on your computer. You can zoon in as close as you need. each of the pictures is about 500k. They started as 8.5X11, but the height was cropped down based on the used space, and they are 144 dpi(can provide higher if you really need it, but why?). Basically what this means is that you should be able to save them to your pc, zoom in on them, and read them at any level of magnification you want.

nice 100 to you and moved to confirmed.