Crafting allows a player to create new Upgrades, consumables, or Power Replacers, and at higher levels select sats for Upgrades.To perform any crafting action the player needs to be at a crafting table (these are next to the trainers).
Crafting is broken down into two stages; Research and Development.
**THIS SYSTEM HAS NOT BEEN IN USE SINCE 2013. YOU CAN NO LONGER BREAK DOWN DEVICES.**
Crafting window - research
Almost every item that can be equipped can be broken down by a player crafter for components. All Upgrades and most devices can be, while bags and certain mission rewards (such as Foxbat's Limited-Use Gun) cannot.
A player can only break down an item that matches their branch of crafting. To break an item down select Research at the crafting table. Click and drag, or right-click an item from your bag and it will appear in the Research window. An Experiment Score (ES) is displayed showing how much of an increase you will gain from this item. This is a scale of 0-5. The higher the Experiment Score, the more skill points you will gain (up to 10 skill points per Experiment at 5/5). You can drag multiple items into the window to boost your ES.
Also, depending on what level of crafting your character is at, you can "discover" different levels of insights by raising the Experiment Score. These can be used to purchase blueprints from your respective trainers.
1-100 Crafting Ability - Chance to unlock Minor Insights at 5/5
101-200 Crafting Ability - Slight Insights 5/5, Minor Insights 4/5
The Research window also displays the components you will gain from breaking down the item. You can also gain Insights, Epiphanies, or Profundities (depending on your crafting focus: Arms, Science, Mysticism) from particularly successful Experiments. These are used as an additional currency in the Learn Blueprint option at your trainer.
Scavenging components[]
Components can also be collected from caches scattered around the game world. When you have chosen a crafting speciality your minimap will automatically display any nearby caches you can interact with.
All the caches share distinctive looks based on each branch. For example in the Disaster in the Desert zone Science objects appear as yellow cylinders, Mysticism have glowing skeletons, whilst Arms components come in green supply crates. These forms change for different zones, but are always significantly different from standard background trash.
Development[]
Crafting window - development
When you have the components in your inventory, click on the Development window. This is where you turn the components back into useable items.
The first item you will be able to make comes as part of the introductory missions, and is either a radiation shield (for Disaster in the Desert), or a cold shield (for Crisis in Canada). Click to highlight the appropriate item, and the required components are displayed at the bottom of the screen. You can also hover over the icon the see a popup of the items stats.
Developing an item will sometimes grant you a skill point, but only if it's blueprint level is close to your skill level.
Developed items can of course be Researched back into components.
To level crafting quick, Canada seems the best for 0-100, simply camp in the spot the crafters send you to as a quest and you can pick up as many materials as you need. Millennium City West Side is good for level 100-200. It's also good to have a set of high presence gear if you want to pick up materials without aggroing villains nearby.
There is also a special "crafting" component: Coalesced Qliphotic Energy , which can only be obtained through certain UNITY Missions.
Here's a tip for the lower level characters: The components your character receives from breaking down items are highly sought after by a lot of higher level characters. Hence, in the auction market, these items tend to go for a lot more resources. This could be a quick way to make a lot of resources, especially the Tier 2 components which are used to craft some of the Action Figures.
Note: The low rarity crafted travel components of each tier and group can only be purchased, the common rarity drop from the appropriate level critters, the uncommon, rare and unique rarity components do not drop at all and must be crafted.
