Crafting Guide

The Lord of the Rings Online crafting system is one of the most intricate systems for crafting in game items seen in any MMO. It involves Vocations, which are overarching “Jobs” which have 3 Professions in each. The professions are the actual skills that you can use. The Vocations are all inter-dependent, which means that to craft items, you need other crafted items that you can not make, and you will have to either buy them on the auction house or have another crafter make them for you. There are also several tiers of crafting that you progress through as you gain more experience in each professions. Once you reach a certain skill level in your crafting professions, you can also join crafting guilds, which give you access to vendors who sell recipes for the profession that you chose for the crafting guild that are better than other purchased recipes.

There’s an overview, lets get into the nitty gritty, shall we?

When you create your character and reach level 5, you will be able to now go to the Master of Apprentices and pick a vocation. These vocations are a collection of Professions that fit together in some way. The Vocations, and their professions, are listed below.

Armourer [Metalsmith, Tailor, Prospector]: This vocation will allow you to create armour of all types, from light and medium (Tailor)  to heavy (Metalsmith). You will also be able to create shields and crafting tools (Metalsmith). You will be able to gather Ore that you will need and you will be able to process it into a usable form. You will NOT, however, be able to process your hides into the leather that you need for your Tailoring and for some Metalsmith components.

Armsman [Weaponsmith, Woodworker, Prospector]: This vocation will allow you to create weapons of all types, including melee and ranged weapons. You will be able to gather Ore that you will need and you will be able to process it into a usable form. You will NOT, however, be able to gather or process the wood that you need for your Woodworking.

Explorer [Tailor, Forester, Prospector]: This vocation will allow you to gather many different types of resources and process them. You will also be able to create Light and Medium Armour. You will be able to gather and process Ore, Wood and Hides. Since you will only be able to use the leather that you create from the hides for your tailoring, you will be able to sell the ore and the wood, either as raw materials, or in their processed form. This is a great profession for making some money.

Historian [Weaponsmith, Farmer, Scholar]: This is an odd vocation, as you will be able to gather materials for cooking (Farming) but not be able to cook.  You will be able to make weapons, but you will not be able to gather or process the Ore that is needed for the Weaponsmith profession. You will, however, be able to gather your own materials as a scholar, with which you will be able to create potions and scrolls which will help you and your fellowship out in many ways.

Tinker [Jeweler, Cook, Prospector]: With this vocation, you will be able to create jewelery to increase your stats, you will be able to cook food to increase your stats and help you heal, and you will be able to gather and process Ore, which is needed for the Jeweler profession. Gems for the Jeweler profession (and others) come from Prospecting mining nodes. You will NOT, however, be able to gather materials for your cooking profession, other than world drops.

Woodsman [Woodworker, Farmer, Forester]: With this vocation, you will be able to make weapons, both melee and ranged, from wood. You will also be able to gather materials for the woodworker profession and the cooking profession (which you can sell on the Auction House to make money).

Yeoman [Cook, Farmer, Tailor]: With this vocation, you will be able to cook food from materials that you have gathered and processed yourself, and you will be able to create Light and Medium Armour. You will NOT, however, be able to process the hides that you need to turn into leather for your Tailoring profession.

So there is a quick overview of the Vocations and the Professions. For beginners, Explorer seems to be the easiest to pick up, as you are able to gather everything that you need to advance your Tailoring (except for specialty ingredients) and you can sell the ore and wood that you gather and/or process on the Auction House.

Now, let’s move on to actually create something! Let’s use explorer as an example to show you how things work. The basics can transfer over to any other profession.

First, hit “T” to bring up your crafting window. You will notice that there are three tabs across the top. In our case, they are Tailor, Forester and Prospector. Clicking on one of these tabs will bring up that particular profession. Let’s start with Forester, as this profession will allow you to create leather for your Tailoring profession.

We’ll assume, for the sake of this post, that you’ve gone out and gathered some hides, and you’re ready to create some leather. The Master of Apprentices will have given you some inferior crafting tools that you can equip for each profession. For Forester, it’s a Forester’s Axe. Make sure that whatever profession you are using, you have the appropriate tool equipped.

When crafting, you first need to craft the components of the final product. For example for Tailoring, you need to turn your hides into Leather.  Then with your Tailoring Profession you can turn that Leather into a Leather Brace for example, which you need to create a piece of armour.  If you click the + Apprentice, and then click the  + Leather, you’ll see the components that you can make, in this case it’s a Piece of Light Leather. Click on ‘Piece of Light Leather’ and a window will come up showing you how many Pieces you can make, based on how many hides you have collected.  It will also tell you what tool you need to equip, and what crafting facility you need.  If either the tools listing or the facility listing are red, then you are missing your tool, or are not close enough, or at the wrong facility.  If both required items are green, then you can select the number of components or Leather that you would like to make then click ‘make’.  The same steps and rules apply to all the crafting items, though you may have to buy some components from the supplier or one of the other merchants in the crafting house.  For example, when treating wood, you require a Lump of Wax, which is available from the crafting house supplier.  Once you have yourPieces of Leather, you can move on to the Tailor tab and follow the same steps to creating your light armour.  Make the components first, then your completed item.

As you create the components and the final product, you’ll start to notice the little bar next to apprentice start to fill up. This means that you are working your way to proficiency in apprentice. Apprentice is a “Tier” in the crafting system. As you get better at your craft, you will go to the next Tier of crafting. There are 6 Tiers to crafting in LOTRO: Apprentice, Journeyman, Expert, Artisan, Master and Supreme.

Once your bar has filled up, and you are proficient,  you earn the next tier of crafting for that profession. You also unlock the “Mastery” component of crafting. Although you’ve become proficient at this tier, you can still improve. You will now have one experience bar next to Journeyman and one next to Apprentice. How it works is that while you are working on your proficiency for Journeyman, you can continue to make items/recipes from the Apprentice list, and you will gain points. Once you have “mastered” your profession, it opens up the possibility of getting critical successes when you craft. For professions such as Tailor or Weaponsmith, this means that you will have created an item that is better than a normal item that you create. It may increase the armour, or the DPS, or perhaps add to the stats that the item gives. For professions such as Forester, Farmer or Prospector, it means that you have a chance to get more ingots/boards of wood/pieces of leather when you process the raw material. You will have opened up a tab at the bottom of the crafting window called “Mastery Options”. Clicking on this tab will give you the opportunity to use some of the trophy items that you have looted from mobs to increase your chance of a critical success.

Now lets get into Recipes. Recipes are the items that are in your crafting panel that you can make. There are 4 different classes of recipes: Auto-Granted, Purchase from Vendor, regular monster loot, and one time recipes that are for more powerful items. Auto-Granted recipes are those that you get automatically, just for being in that tier. For example, when you get to Journeyman tailor, you automatically get certain recipes. The other recipe types are pretty self-explanatory.

Sometimes, when you get to a new tier in your crafting, you will find that you are not able to begin on the next tier. Talk to one of the Master Craftsman for that profession, and he or she will give you a quest that you must complete before continuing on with the next tier.

So there you have it. A quick run down on crafting. You will have noticed that I didn’t go into the farming profession in detail. I’m saving that for a future edit to this page, as it requires a little more time to prepare.