How useful are Crafting and Blacksmithing?

[chefcook90]

Is it worth investing heavily in them during character creation? (for example, +1 Crafting, +1 Smithing, +Scientist Talent?)

[Reality]

It's a matter of preference based mostly on convenience...

Personally I don't worry about getting them invested until the second town.

Crafting and Blacksmithing do two things

1: The best source of money per (real time) spent.
2: You can always get on-level weapons and armors with fixed (hard stat) bonuses instead of being at the mercy of the RNG and area-based level tables for looted equipment.

Earlygame Crafting has a couple extra benefits -

1: Much cheaper access to Status Effect type arrows and Grenades

This is a TON more valuable than it sounds.... Many peope argue that "Grenadier" charathers are the most effective in the earlygame through midgame with no competetion - from levels 1 to 6 for sure, some people will even say 1 to 9 or 11 (no one questions the level 12 damage skills finally obsoleting it) . However trying to buy already assembled grenades from the shops is extremely expensive.... Getting things like fuses and empty bottles costs next to nothing by comparison.

As for archers - you get a near infinite supply of 3 very powerful status effects (crafted from common dungeon/wilderness items) and major cost reduction of every other special arrow type (crafted from bought arrowheads as opposed to bought fully assembled arrows)

It's possible to play without crafting with minor drawbacks if you find the time spent in inventory menus annoying, but earlygame is the time most affected by shunning its use.

Final thought -

Crafting 1 and Scientist at charather creation let you get most of the grenades and arrows for a smooth early game experience .... Blacksmithing 1 and higher levels of Crafting aren't important until the second town, as the extreme money generation isn't neccesary for the first town (and most people spend 20+ hours and don't reach second town until level 7-8) Also the equipment scaling is very slow at low levels so you don't need it for making your own equipment for earlygame areas either.. you can easily run aroud with stuff multiple levels below your current level without feeling a disadvantage.

[chefcook90]

Thanks for the tips

I think I'll go in for 1 Crafting + Scientist then :)

[Herb & Bea Ehltée]

A consideration if you're running around with a set party through the whole game is to level crafting up on one of your other characters back at the End of Time. I never use Jahan or Madora, so I leveled Jahan in crafting and Madora in blacksmithing, then saved a bunch of gear with those skills and send all my crafting materials either directly to homestead or save & transfer them to Jahan when I go back.

Every 3 levels or so I go visit Jahan & Madora, temporarily swap them into my party, do some micromanaging, selling, crafting & smithing (there's at least a sharpening wheel at Hall of Heroes right away, but you can go back to Cyseal for a full smithy), etc, and that frees up build points and perks for more useful skills in my active fighting party. I do keep some blacksmithing +1 stuff on hand in my party just for ad hoc repair.

[v0]

almost nothing beats ability to spam charm grenades (in points for buck metric). ofc if you've build optimized for high dps and you do encounters in 'intended order' you wont need charming ppl..

[redgreen999]

If you have a cold mage paired with a melee SH, you almost have to have level 5 craft. That allows you to make snow boots so you won't slip on all the ice your cold mage creates.

Smithing is nice but not as important. You can smith nice damage swords but you can also craft nice weapons as well. So if you had to choose between one or the other, crafting wins out. I like to play both my SH as lone wolves. I put 2 levels of smith and crafting into my melee SH and get 1 more from science, the remaining 2 levels from equip. So for both smith and crafting its only 6 points invested which I have easily as a lone wolf.

Playing melee, you generally only get enough ingredients to craft 2 or 3 godly swords, so I wait till I am level 18 or so for those. That is where smithing helps more. You can smith a new sword every level or two to get max damage possible for each current level. That way your never waiting to upgrade.

For bows, smithing is less productive, maybe it was my replay, but I always found store bought bows nicer than the ones I made using a branch/bowstring.

[Breadfolimo Bereaminnini]

Well craft and weapn smith makes you reach :D