Crafting

Trade Skills

Crafting in AC is definitely a side-job, preferably one left to trade mules only.  The problem is that each trade skill takes skill credits, and most people don't have extra credits to be tossing around.  It's pretty much unavoidable that you relegate your crafting duties onto a secondary character, ideally one that has an active vassal underneath them as an experience source.

There are quite a few different trade skills available, some more valuable than others.  Alchemy is used to create potions, one-time use items that restore health or mana, and oils, which can be added to other crafted items.  Alchemy also can be used on the battlefield as a replacement for life magic, allowing alchemists to make debuffing grenades and protective gems.  Cooking is used to make foods, both mundane and magical, and to dye armor.  Fletching produces ammunition for bows, crossbows, and atlatls and uses alchemical oils to imbue ammunition with elemental power.  Lockpicking is used to open locked chests and doors, as well as to carve various trophies into useable items.  There are a number of alternative uses for each trade skill too, some more useful than others.

Of the 4 skills, many characters choose to take Lockpicking to press deeper into dungeons filled with locked doors.  There are also valuable keys that many monsters drop which can only be used if they have been carved by a lockpicker.  Fletching is a huge time-saver for any archer.  Instead of relying on another person to produce ammunition, a Fletcher can carry a massive amount of arrowheads and shafts and make ammunition on the fly.  The components used to make a set of arrows weighs a mere fraction of the finished product, so archers can save a lot of unnecessary burden, since they are usually overburdened as it is.

Tinkering

Tinkering is a newer crafting skill that replaced the old 'assess item' skills.  There are four types of tinkering:  item tinkering, magic item tinkering, weapon tinkering, and armor tinkering.  Item tinkering affects the more mundane properties of any item, such as value or burden, or can be used to change the activation requirements of an item, such as changing missile requirements to melee or removing a rank requirement.  Wield Requirements cannot be changed.  Magic Item Tinkering can increase the mana conversion and elemental damage percentage on orbs.  Weapon Tinkering can change the damage, speed, or attack/defense bonuses of an item.  Armor Tinkering can change the armor rating and the individual damage resistances of a piece of armor.  Each item may be tinkered up to 10 times total, with each successive tinker attempt being harder than the previous one.  The workmanship of an item also affects the difficulty of the job, with low quality items being far easier to tinker than high workmanship.  Items with a workmanship of 5 or less have a reasonable chance of being tinkered out the maximum 10 times.

In addition to the regular tinkering options, weapons, armor, and magical orbs can be imbued with magical effects.  The imbuing process is drastically different from any other skill check in the game.  The skill check is made the same way as any other check, but then the success rate is divided by three, so even with very high skill, the highest outcome percentage possible is 1 in 3.  That means you will undoubtedly go through a lot of items and salvage bags.  There are 4 basic imbues.  Magic Item Tinkering can be used to add a minor cantrip to an item or can attempt to add a damage effect to a weapon or orb.  These three are Armor Rending, which ignores a percentage of the target's armor and cannot be added to orbs, Critical Strike, which increases the rate at which a player lands criticals, and Crippling Blow, which increases the critical strike multiplier.  These effects depend on base skill with the weapon (or war magic for orbs).  Armor Imbues add a +1 to either melee, missile, or magic defense.  Weapon Tinkering can add a Resistance Rending effect.  A weapon or orb with rending ability acts as if the target has a vulnerability spell on it, up to a potency comparable with a sixth circle spell, again based on level.  There is an imbue for each damage type.  These newest imbues are especially powerful, as they amplify damage by over 100% without the need to cast spells!

Before you can tinker, you'll need the raw materials.  Each tinker requires different materials, which have to be collected from old items.  For instance, if you want to increase the AL of a piece of armor, you'll need to gather steel.  Old items can be broken down into their components using a special item called an Ust.  Drag the items you wish to salvage into the Ust's dialog box and press salvage.  The item will be destroyed and you will receive some material.  The quantity and quality will depend on the item you salvaged.  The higher the quality, the easier the tinkering job will be.  You will need a full bag - 100 units - of a material before you can tinker with it.

Additionally, there are two other tinkering jobs that don't fall into the four skills because you can never fail in the tinkering attempt.  Using salvaged Ivory removes the 'attuned' status from an item so you can get rid of it.  In exchange, the item gains a wield requirement so that only the original user can wield it.  Leather gives an item 'Retained' status, which means you cannot accidentally sell or salvage an item.  Ivory is great for use on no-drop quest items you don't want in your pack all the time and Leather prevents you from losing your prized weapons.

Gearcrafting

New with the 100th patch is a new kind of tinkering called Gearcrafting.  This skill is a hybrid crafting skill that combines tinkering and more typical crafting.  The main purpose of gearcrafting is to add special properties to trinkets, which are items you can equip much the same way you wear jewelry.  The difference between jewelry and trinkets are the exclusive gearcrafting effects a crafter can add.  There are a total of 6 types of augmentations that can be added and each trinket can take up to three in varying strengths.  Those effects are increased health, increased stamina, increased mana, outgoing damage increase, incoming damage reduction, and XP increase.  Of those 6, you can choose 3 to add to your trinket in minor, moderate, and major strength levels.  The important thing to be aware of is that the major augmentation is added like an imbue, so you only have a 1/3 chance of success at best.  The other two augmentations are standard tinkers and a good gearcrafter can do those without much difficulty.  In addition to the salvage requirements listed below, adding an augmentation to a trinket requires an armature.  These can be bought from vendors inside the Society strongholds.  Minor and Moderate armatures cost pyreals, but major armatures cost society tokens.  Add a bag of salvage (twice) to the armature to prepare it for use.

The other use for Gearcrafting is its more traditional crafting functions.  Gearcrafters can take mundane metal scarabs from archmage vendors and turn them into a variety of items that increase the usefulness of various other skills.  Gearcrafters can make medals that loyal characters can use to raise the stamina and mana of their comrades, horns that good leaders can use to raise the health of their followers, Virindi relics that players can deceive into increasing their arcane lore, and fine lenses that allow skilled characters to see the weaknesses in their enemies. 

Below is a table of salvage materials and their uses.  Not everything is that useful and I've also listed the usefulness of the tinkering.