Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity Original Sin - Help/Tips/Tricks Couple Questions About Crafting

Hi.. So much to craft, hoping to get some tips from other players. My party is ranger and witch (primary) with Madora and Jahan: Jahan and my witch cover all schools of magic.

1. Do I really need to worry about crafting skill books, seems like most can ultimately be bought ?

2. Crafting that shows requirement of anvil - do I need to actually find an anvil (if so where ?) or is this something the npc's in cyseal can do for me ?

3. Can all armor and weapon enhancing be done by NPC's in cyseal ?

4. Excluding arrows and potions, curious what crafted item have you found to be very worthwhile. I know this will to extent be a function of your game style and character selection (mine is above) but just looking from some thoughts from the more experienced players.

Thanks in advance

Anvils are in a few places and yes they are very useful to fashion weapons out of bars, beat the armor and shields for various perks, especially removing movement penalty on armor.

Cyseal-behind the abandoned General store west side of town.

Silverglen behind the pickaxe tavern (or in the smithy before you help Bjorn).

Sacred stone in the smithy and out front of the smithy.

Homestead when the Armory is unlocked it has forge anvil and sharpening wheel, also hall of heroes has an anvil and a sharpening wheel.

Hunters edge has an anvil but you cant use it at first.

Even though player crafted items especially weapons lack special abilities ( I have not figured out how to make weapons do those yet, and not sure if you can) they far out-perform game weapons for damage, I craft a new 2handed sword every time I level simply because it is so much more damage usually 1/3 to 50% better, then I throw an elemental essence and or tenebrium on it and a Tormented soul and put it on the sharpening wheel.

You will probably want/need the anvil, the sharpening wheel and the forge for various reasons. Make sure your crafter is also your blacksmith and that both skills ( and later Tenebrium) are all as high as 5 as soon as possible, except tenebrium which doesnt seem to need to be higher than a 3.

I dont think potions are valuable at all ( except invisibility for that one part of the game), and I find enough scrolls, I never craft skillbooks I just buy or find them. Homemade Bows are awesome like other homemade weapons really worth getting homemade bow as often as you can after leveling up,
probably increased Wolgraffs lethality by 50% or more. Put a sextant on it and a tormented soul and an essence or tenebrium as well!

Thanks for the detailed response.. I guess I have a problem then because I did not develop blacksmithing in any of my characters - I focused on crafting and loremaster as I had seen a post when starting out that said all blacksmithing could be done by npc's.

Ouch !!!

Thanks again

not sure how that could be, yes they can repair but they wont manufacture new items, thats probably what they meant with that post, but why spend money on repairing?

You can get a character up in blacksmithing or crafting pretty fast though.

use items ( Bracers and Belts the best give +1 to both crafting and blacksmithing) and grab the scientist talent which gives +1 in both then its only 6 points to lvl 5 in each. Level 4 Blacksmith may be plenty but I usually get it to 5 and try to get everyone at least 1 so they can repair their own items.

Loremaster is useful for its identification but I rarely get above 2 or 3 in it and use items and merchants for the level 4 and 5 identifications. Toward 18-20th level I usually get to levewl 5 in loremaster anyway since I do not need anything else by that level, and by that level you should not need anything else. Rings and amulets give loremaster bonuses just unequip when you need a real ring that helps in combat.

Is there really any point to Loremaster at all? It consumes magnifying glasses anyway, and identifying at merchants is cheap.

Yeah, sure, at the end of the day, Loremaster saves you money. But most all other Abilities (Dangit I keep wanting to write "Skills", why did Larian mess those two up?) actually *do* something.

Loremaster is cool 'n' all, but it mostly feels like dead weight.

Interesting point Luckmann, it would seem loremaster should be the ability I outsource instead of blacksmithing.

Damn.. and I thought everything I read on the web is supposed to be true

Any thoughts on any items you crafted that were very helpful to your play ?

Thanks

Loremaster is useful for one main reason, you can immediatley start using a piece of magic gear when you find it if you identify it. The side-effect of being able to find out about an enemy by holding your cursor over it and pressing CTRL sounds good if your a novice but if you are not you already know undead dont like fire etc...etc...the money is small but in the early stages cash is always short.

Wait, something on the internet isnt true?


Actually rather more than it being a lie, its just poorly communicated...

Loremaster doesnt use up magnifying glasses it just requires one to be effective....unless my game is not working properly????

Useful items...well any pretty much.

Weapons already noted as being better damage dealers in particular than game generated items. THis is not to be underestimated, spells really cannot cause the same amount of damage as a melee fighter with a great weapon and using Flurry and rage or melee power stance. I love Fireballs they make me feel all warm and fuzzy and all but...the tormented soul, elemental essences or tenebrium, sharpening stone and Joshua's spice.

Improvements for armor especially adding stealth and removing the movement penalty and increasing its armor value and elemental resistances. anvil, ruby, metal scale scraps and void essence.

In truth I have like a 12 page crafting guide I hardly use, but I should. If it isnt a weapon or armor I probably will pass it by. But game generated items can be improved as well, and have special abilities.

No, like a repair hammer or tongs to repair equipment, a magnifying glass should not be consumed when used to identify.

It doesn't consume glasses. And it's very useful to know what you're picking up, especially when you don't want to run back to town for every pair of boots you just found.

I could have sworn... <.<

Loremaster 5 is useful as you progress further in the game to check enemy resistances. Yep, the item identification is secondary. Saves you lots of time though.

I have a weird thing that happened crafting....

I just leveled ( to 18th) and went to make a new 2handed sword, crafted it, added tenebrium and put it on the sharpening wheel and it does less damage than the one I made at 17th level.

WTH????

Any ideas why?

Was it the same sword or a fresh sword?

Newly crafted, created from large iron bar on anvil with crafter/blacksmith level 5 in both in the armoury at the homestead.

Sword is a 2-handed sword ( a Claymore specifically).

With Blacksmithing 5 and a (cheated) level 17 character, the damage on a crafted two handed sword can be 140-227 or 193-312. On level 18 it can be 148-240 or 204-329. In both cases it was a 60/40 split when I tried it, but with enough variation in the 2 stacks (of 10) at each level that that may have been a coincidence.

My characters are not cheated I do not mod in any way. I believe that when I crafted at 17th it came out to 193-312 now at level 18 it is @ xxx-299.

SO make another one? try it on a different anvil? Why would the low end 18th lvl range be less than the hi-end 17th level range?

I am just trying to understand how to always make the best weapons.

Of course I am using the sharpening wheel and adding a tenebrium, even the Tenebrium damage range is different between the 2 swords, it is higher on the level 18 blade.

Sorry I cannot at the moment give exact numbers I am at work. Otherwise I would be playing and messing around with the game.

Thanks- any advice and how is the process and order for making the best weapons you make?

craft-tenebrium-sharpening-wheel or am I adding something in an order that is breaking the process?

I specified that I used cheated characters (rather than look for saves with characters at that level with iron handy), in case that made a difference (I have not tried very much crafting).
Sharpening the level 18 swords resulted in damage 185-299 or an unchanged 204-329. The level 17 swords sharpened to 175-283 or an unchanged 193-312.

With Crafting level 5, the lower damage range for each character level got a +2 Strength bonus when created on the anvil.

Yes I did get a +2 STR bonus, but I got that either way. I dont craft that much either just a new weapon for my fighter every level, and try to improve the armor whenever I find a better suit, this is recent to this playthrough- I have garnered such lousy loot this time, I had to try something else. Mostly it has been good, damage improving every level, until now.

I find the inconsistency disconcerting.

Sorry, I havent modded anything so dont know if it has an effecft or not, I actually did not think being modded would matter. I didnt know you were gonna try it with a cheated character.

Can a tormented soul affect damage, I did not add one this time? I thought it would only add the +2 to STR and Dex as always, and I am fresh out of them at the moment.

When you compared the damage, did you have the things equipped at the time? Because I'm pretty sure that having additional STR will indeed increase damage for STR-based weapons.

I mean, it won't show up as different on the weapon itself obviously, but it might be different if you check the damage numbers on the character sheet.

I figured cheating would be faster, and someone that crafts more would reply if there was a difference.

Tormented souls didn't make any difference to damage when I tried, before or after sharpening; they just add the +2 Strength (unless there was already that bonus from Crafting) and +2 Dexterity.