Chaoscrafting guide

[priorGuesstimator]

Chaoscrafting is cool as hell, but is pretty difficult. It is much like FF XIV crafting system, but a bit different. So, to make yourself mighty weapons and sturdy armor.
First: quality is good, chaos is bad. When you get 100 chaos, you are forced to stop crafting and just take item. Gained quality determines tier of item (white-green-blue-golden) and possible number and magnitude of stat bonuses. I think, 50 quality results in green, 100 in blue.
Second: steps are very important. Every skill costs some steps, and chaos trggers activate every few steps. Also I suppose that after every trigger you start to get +1 chaos every step, so +2 after second trigger, +3 after third and so on. Also if you use skills with high step cost, they burn through your active buffs.
Third: triggers are bad, very bad. But you can use some of them to your benefit.
Fourth: catalysts are useful only in one situation which I will describe later.

So, the main thing about chaoscrafting is to use skills. You should buy every skill possible if you have craft TP, except Recourse and Delay, which are expensive and not immediately useful.

Expertise, Innovate, Scrap Master, Catalyst Research and Material Master are very beneficial passives. They do exactly as they are described, so there's no much to it.

Refine is your most base and useful skill. It uses one step and gives some quality. However, after triggers activating, it starts to give chaos as well.

Polish is useful buff that adds quality every step when active. So it's basically plain +[duration] quality. Why should you use it, when Refine gives +[level] quality every turn? Well, there are 2 triggers - "half quality gain" (HQG) and "+7 chaos every skill"(7Sk). So, you can skip 3 steps and gain 7 chaos instead of 21, and also gain some quality later.

Combat chaos is pretty good too. It decreases chaos for duration if you gain quality for step. It is useful to minimize the terrible trigger "+5 chaos every turn"(5St). So you can use it 2 steps before trigger and then spam Refine for duration, so you'll take only 3 chaos instead of 5 every step.

Concentrate is mighty but step-expensive skill. It's better used to skip through HQG and then spam Refine again. Perfect fit is when HQG turns into 5St, so Concentrate 6 steps before trigger, then CC 2 steps before, them Refine all the way.

Modify catalyst is great at high skill levels. What is does is that catalysts used for duration remove chaos. So prepare some catalysts before difficult crafting and use them immediately after that skill to get some nice quality bonus and remove chaos.

Focus is a bit tricky to use. It doubles quality gain, so best time to use it is Concentrated Refine or well-timed Convert Chaos. Calculate needed steps before using, it has short duration.

Convert chaos is tremendously useful skill, but it has terrible cooldown. Any gained chaos is turned into quality. I dunno is this a bug or not, but it's actual duration is not just 2 steps while buff is active, but also 3 steps when it's channeling. Great for "+20 chaos" (20C) trigger, late "+25% chaos"(25%) trigger (like at 95 chaos) and late Refine with 7Sk, when you get 7 chaos for skill and like 5 just for a lot of triggers you've had.

Postpone is interesting skill to use for step management, but has rare chance to be used effectively. I don't get it's duration yet. First next skill used? Every skill that is used later?

Recourse have a great chance to change bad trigger into worst trigger. But might be useful late for 7Sk or 5St.

Delay needs insane calculations to use it effectively. Basically it takes 2 steps from one trigger and adds them to other trigger 5 steps later. May be good for getting rid of HQG and adding safe time to like 20C.

Well, that's it for now. Experiment, get experience, make great items. High level skills are much, much more powerful, so you can expect to gain like 200+ quality later in the game.

[*,..,*]

If you don't mind Follower, I'm going to decipher my understanding of your observations, and add them to my guide. Since crafting has grown considerably with the new release, I'm breaking it out into a separate guide.

Thanks,
Bob

[Jasson]

Great stuff Follower! It is really interesting and beneficial to get an inside look at someone analyzing this system and seeing what's working and what's not. We are definitely not done with Chaos Crafting so feedback is more than welcomed. :)

[priorGuesstimator]

Bob, I found your guide just after I posted this. I think it's great and very useful, and for sure you can use my thoughts in it.

[priorGuesstimator]

Looks like level of recipe item corresponding to craft talent level affects recipe difficulty. This mostly applies to starting quality. Maybe difficult recipes also has reduced quality gain?

Then, 150 quality is purple. I managed to make 250 quality (that's current cap) Cluster ring, it became golden.

Also recipe difficulty affects how much quality do you need to get multiple of resulting item. Like at lvl 23 craft talent I always make 5 torches even with quick craft. Also I can make 2 golden ingots with 100 quality and 3 with 150 quality. But like rubies and diamonds are still 1 even at 150 quality.

[*,..,*]

Thanks Follower, I've given you and the other credit where it's due. The game is good and there's more on the way. If you haven't already, go to Siege Game's website and have a look at their project plan. Interesting changes and additions coming. If seen no one showing project details like this before, it's refreshing.

I find similar results in crafting items for improved numbers. For the time it takes, I usually only use the advanced method to make things I have small amounts of resources for, like adamantite, etc.

For gems I found that the most you can get is 2 and it has to be perfect quality (250). Perfect quality on ingots begets 4 ingots. This is very useful when you first start gathering a new resource, like hiogh level ores, gems, etc.

[stylez]

Gems only need to be 200 quality to get 2:

diamond.ce, ruby.ce, sapphire.ce:
    CraftResult(quantity=1),
    CraftResult(quantity=2, quality=200)

[*,..,*]

I stand corrected. I put that in early this morning and thought about it on the way to work.

[Slayn25]

What do the catalysts do when not buffed by modify catalyst?

[priorGuesstimator]

Hey, that's an old post here. Anyway, I think they just give some quality, 5 maybe.