Trying to take advantage of the 50% bonus in Vanguard before they take it away (I’m dreading that) so I decided to shuffle my crafting around a little bit. Satia was a level 13 tailor, making bags and light armor, but I decided to switch her completely to an artificer, and make jewelry. Stuff that’s useful to all classes, and not just a specific class. She’s now level 10, which is great. I’ve been making necklaces, rings, and earrings that cost me 4silver each to make, and selling them (well) on the broker for 20-25silver each. Nice little profit there and it’s very easy to make. It does require me to harvest gems, but I don’t mind that at all.
As a kojan artificer I could learn all styles of gems (for jewelry) but only actually form pieces from the marques and oval shaped ones. I decided to head to Thestra and learn their two styles as well (which let me use dex and str, the kojan one is con and vit). I headed to New Targonor, managed to find Linnike Velra some how (the starter person of the quest) who told me to talk to three other npc, and make three wooden staffs and then I’d learn their style.
Thank goodness for Randolph. I flew to Bordinor’s Cleft (which is BEAUTIFUL, nestled in the rocky hills as dwarves reside there), spoke with Brondar Northwall, from there traveled to Leth Nurae, and spoke with Tirarre Welsare, and then finally ran to Teln Oshken in Tush. Returned to NT, and recieved my 50 faction with the Thestra Artisans as well as the ability to learn their jewelry style – only one issue.
To actually buy the recipes, you need 100 faction. Easy enough, headed to Stormwatch and completed a couple of single light blue work orders for the faction I needed. Also managed to ding level 10, and picked up the new recipes. Woot.
Crafting is a game all in its own. Sure, now I can make the Thestra stuff, but there’s also Qalia that I have yet to do (which you also need to work 50 faction for to buy their stuff) and I’m level 10, which means at 11 I’ll be doing my tier quest and the continental style of crafting is something you have to learn every time you reach a new tier. So if I want to make the Thestra jewelry for level 11+ (or Qalia for that matter) I’ll have to do a new quest.
There’s also quests for crafting gear, quests for faction, so many wonderful things. For anyone who’s just starting to get into it all, I highly suggest checking out this crafting site here. I wanted to make sure I got the crafting stuff done also before they took away Randolph, who makes it easy for me to travel around (ack, gotta pick up the rest of those rifts on a few characters too!) and I just had a good time making items that were actually useful. I still haven’t figured everything out yet, like where to put points and what to decrease in points, and what gear to focus on, but I am having a good time. Which is the most important, right?