So you want to be a master crafter in WildStar? The journey of one thousand miles begins with a single step.

Crafting Progression: Tech Trees & Talent Points

The last thing we’ll get into about crafting, is crafting progression. How do you acquire new schematics? And how do you specialize in a specific in an area within a Tradeskill?

First, all of the crafting Tradeskills that allow you to create items has what is known as a “Tech Tree”. You can think of this Tech Tree almost like an achievement tree for crafting. Similar to a traditional talent tree with branches, there are certain achievements which must be completed before others become available. There are also multiple paths which you can choose to go down.

In the Weaponsmith Tech Tree for example, one side of the tree might be dedicated to the creation of ranged weapons, while the other dedicated to melee weapons. Now you don’t need to complete every single achievement to level up your crafting, which means you can choose to go down a specific route or complete the entire Tech Tree if you wish. However, there are advantages to finishing the entire tree which we’ll talk about in a bit. Before we do that, I want to talk about the types of achievements you’ll find in this tree and what they reward you with.

When you’re first starting out you’ll get a lot of “craft 3 of these” type achievements along the Tech Tree. Completing these usually grants you a reward of a stronger schematic or pattern to craft and also gives you access to the next achievement in that branch. Once you get further down the tree, you’ll start to see achievements that grant some pretty good rewards, but also require you to collect rare patterns in order to complete them.

Some of these achievements will ask you to collect a series of crafting schematics native to a specific zone, faction, or instance. Collecting all of them will allow you to finish the achievement and will usually reward you with another good or rare schematic. While some of these may prove to be far more difficult to complete, the crafters who go out of the way for these achievements and unlock the ability to craft some of the more powerful items in the game, will no doubt earn recognition from the player base.

As a side note, crafting schematics can also be found as drops from various creatures or dungeons around the world.

Remember how I mentioned before that there are advantages to going out of your way to complete more achievements on the Tech Tree? Well, this is because some of these achievements award you stars. Get enough of these stars and you’ll be rewarded with a “Talent Point”.

Each of the crafting Tradeskills, and even cooking, has a specific Talent system associated with it. This Talent system allows you to gain passive bonuses to your crafting skills with things like making it so overcharged items have a smaller chance to fail, additional crafting experience, more rewards for completing crafting dailies, primal elements are easier to come by and use for crafting. The list goes on, but you get the idea.

Additionally, because you have a limit to the number of talents you can select, you’ll want to choose talents that best compliment you as a crafter. Talents are retrainable for a cost, but be sure to choose wisely if you don’t want to spend more money than necessary.

Well my young crafters, that about does it from me. As you can no doubt see, WildStar’s crafting systems are fairly complex, but I would argue that’s what most crafters love to hear. It gives them systems that allow them to strive toward being the best crafter possible and rewards them for doing so by granting crafters the ability to make very powerful and unique items.

But enough about that, I want to hear from you all. How does the crafting system sound to you and what crafting profession interests you the most? Let me know in the comments below! And as always for more WildStar information you can check out the official website and keep a watchful eye on ZAM as we bring you more news, information and updates from the WildStar beta and beyond.

See you on Nexus!

Corey Jenkins

Follow Corey on Twitter @Cyglaive