A Guide to Crafting in The Secret World

There’s no doubt that the hottest new release in MMO is The Secret World.  One of the key portions of this post-apocalypse game is crafting.  Players can transcribe or assemble, but the term “crafting” is used to denote all of it.  The process is fairly simple and it all starts when you press the “Y” key.

Three Things to Know First

Here are three quick things you should know and remember while playing Secret World:

1. All weapon drops should be kept – do not sell them unless they are so low-tier that you have absolutely no use for them or anything like them.  This is because it takes 5 weapons of a given tier to disassemble and make into a new weapon of that same tier.  Green drops are your weapon materials and don’t come around too often, so disassembling a weapon to get one is your best bet.
2. The same goes for runes and talismans.  While these are often plentiful, there are so many types of them that getting an inventory of what you’ll use for a specific crafted item is easier said than done.  So keep them around.
3. Pay attention when vendoring (selling) items and note which ones sell for more.  Some of those items can be crafted and if you learn to make them from materials you got for free (and that don’t sell for much on their own), you can increase your profits with little extra effort on your part.

Getting Started

To begin, press the “Y” key to bring up your crafting window.  Even if you don’t plan to put a lot of time into crafting, you should at least know the basics.  There are some things in-game you can only get by making them.

With your assembly window open, grab the stack of items you’ll need for your “recipe” from your inventory by clicking them with your left mouse button.  Carry the stack (“drag” it by holding the mouse button down) to your assembly window.  From there, you can release the left button and right click each material into its appropriate slot.  This saves dragging and dropping individual items to and from inventory, which saves time and mouse clicks.

Before you actually make whatever you’ve put together the recipe for, the item will preview so you can make sure you’re working towards the right one.   When making items, focus on gadgets if you can.  These are similar to potions, but don’t run out and are one of the best things that crafters can do for themselves.

For disassembly, the same basic idea applies.  The crafting box is self-explanatory here.  Just drag and drop the item(s) to be taken apart, add the appropriate tool (if any) and disassemble.

Finally, learn the bare bones basics of crafting from the missions TSW offers in Kingsmouth to orient yourself into crafting.  There’s Zen and the Art of Weapon Maintenance outside of the Sheriff’s station and The Occultist’s Cookbook found in the Raven’s Nook.  Do these to get started.  They’ll also introduce you to the crafting notebook.

Materials

Nearly all of your materials in TSW will come from disassembly.  You may find an occasional raw material or weapons kit, but most of the time, you’ll find working or broken items that you can tear down to get parts to make something else.  Some base metals can be refined through the Assembly window.

To keep your inventory manageable, it’s a good idea to tear down anything you aren’t going to use.  So every so often, spend a little time disassembling the weapons and unused talismans in your inventory to get their base parts for use later.

Mats come in five categories:

1. Base
2. Imperfect
3. Normal
4. Holy
5. Pure

Five of any one type can be refined together to make the next tier.  So five imperfect metals can be refined to make a normal one.

For talismans and glyphs, you’ll need one of the three elements (fire, dust, water).

• Fire makes attack rating items
• Dust makes healing rating items
• Water makes protection rating items

Glyphs are added to weapons making to increase stats and a special prefix (name) to them.  Weapons must be uncommon or better.  While you can’t mix offensive and defensive runes on an item, you can have more than one rune on an item.

Gyphs are a little more complicated, but basically they go into the empty slots on weapon crafting builds in a circle patter (one at top, left, right, and bottom).

A Closer Look At The Crafting System

If you’ve played Minecraft, then you’ll have a very good idea of how TSW’s crafting system works.  Basically, you put items together by dropping appropriate materials into “slots” on a grid.  There are 5 columns and 4 rows in the grid.  Putting items into the slots makes an Assembly Diagram.

Sometimes the diagram resembles the item to be made, but most of the time it doesn’t.  Most weapons require metal to make.  7 metal mats can become anything from an assault rifle to a hammer.  Here’s the grids for several weapons:

Assault Rifle X X X X X X X	Dual Pistols X X X X X X X	Shotgun X X X X X X X	Fist Weapons X X X X X X X
Blade X X X X X X X	Hammer X X X X X X X

For Talismans, potions and glyphs it’s the same. The number and type of materials required changes, but the idea is the same.  You place the mats into the grid and the recipe delivers what you want.

Using metal, you can assemble an Elemental Focus with:

		X
	X	X	X
		X
	X		X

And Chaos Focus:

	X	X
X	X	X
X	X

And Blood Magic:

X		X
X	X	X
X		X

For talismans, you’ll need fire, dust or water.  Head requires 12, Finger 8, Neck 10, Wrist 8, Occult 8, Waist 10, and Luck 8.  Portions and glyphs require runes.

Gadgets are made using runes, elements, and raw materials.  Long lasting consumables (potions and the like) can be made in the same way, with the element used to make them determining what the item does.

Conclusion

Once you’ve played around with the crafting system, you’ll see that it’s actually easy to use and understand.  Much easier to use than it is to explain.