Tradeskills

Norrath's crafting system — tradeskills — has eight disciplines. Each is independently leveled (0 to 300), each has its own trainers, containers, and recipe book, and each is worth different things at different points in the game.

The eight tradeskills

• Baking — food, feasts, crafter-only recipes
• Brewing — drinks and potions
• Fletching — bows, arrows, thrown weapons
• Pottery — containers, kiln-fired items, ceramic combines
• Smithing — weapons, plate and chain armor
• Tailoring — cloth and leather armor
• Jewelcraft — rings, earrings, neck slot, eye slot
• Research — caster spells (Necro/Wizard/Mage/Enc)

Gnome tinkering

Tinkering is a Gnome-only ninth skill — not a standard tradeskill, but close. See Gnome for tinkering details.

How tradeskills work

• Containers. Each skill uses its own type of container (oven for baking, forge for smithing, brewing barrel for brewing, etc.).
• Recipes. Each skill has a recipe book of hundreds of combinations. Most recipes have multiple ingredients; some combines are trivial at low skill but most fail 40-80% of the time at level.
• Skill caps. Most tradeskill caps at 300. Some quest-specific combines raise to 350 temporarily.
• Class restrictions. Most tradeskills are open to all classes. Some (smithing, tailoring) are traditionally done by melee classes; others (jewelcraft, research) are more casters.

Why tradeskill

• Gear gap fills. Tradeskills craft gear at levels where vendors don't sell equivalent.
• Class-specific items. Some of the best in-era items are player-crafted only.
• Coin. A tradeskilled crafter can sell to other players for income.
• The Coldain Shawl. Velious's legendary 13-step chain requires baking, brewing, and tailoring — you can't skip to the end without all three.