taken from vgcrafters
Work Orders
Work orders provide the primary mechanism for gaining experience and levels in Vanguard crafting. Refining and Finishing taskmasters in all cities offer work orders; additionally some NPC's may have mini-quests in the form of work orders. Since you're doing the local establishment a favor by completing their work, they don't expect you to bring anything but your tools and utilities to the job. Any lumber, stone, metal, cloth or other raw materials required for the job will be supplied at the table (they won't appear in your inventory).
If you choose to use your own materials for the work order you will receive a small initial grade boost, about 2/3rds of a grade if you use Grade A material. Refining work orders use raw resources; finishing work orders use refined resources. Work orders typically require you to make multiple instances of an item (each instance is commonly referred to as a leg). Some work orders have only one leg some have as many as five.
Types
For each trade there are four types of work orders: one for refining, one for the primary trade and one for each of the two trade specializations. You should give some forethought to what you want your specialization to be in the beginning. Taking work orders prior to 11th level in both specializations will cause you to skill up in both. While this may be attractive in trying out both trades it will have an adverse effect on your ability to complete recipes.
Once you have specialized at 11th level, you will only be able to accept refining work orders and primary trade or chosen specialization finishing work orders. Work orders you've received show up in your quest log or can be viewed by right clicking the appropriate crafting table type and selecting 'work orders'. Once you complete a work order it must be turned-in to the taskmaster who supplied it. Hail the taskmaster, select <current>, then the work order in question then click <complete>. Work orders are abandoned by clicking <abandon> instead of complete.
Difficulty and Grade
Did you notice that Work Orders are separated by color?
Each color represents the difficulty of the work order to your crafting level.
The taskmaster lists all available work orders in order of difficulty, from most (impossible) to least (trivial) difficult. Success completing very easy to difficult work orders can vary depending on your skill, attributes, gear and tools. In general a mediocre crafter should expect to obtain A quality on very easy work orders, B on easy, C on moderate, and C or D on difficult. Simply completing a very difficult work order is it's own reward.
Moderate work orders vary from a level below to a level above your level. They are sorted within the block of moderates from highest to lowest level. You will see a noticeable difference in difficulty between the easiest and hardest moderate work orders.
Experience
Work orders are the primary method of gaining experience. From a per leg point of view, single item work orders provide the most XP, followed by set (3 items) and batch (5 items) type work orders. From a time expended point of view, including running back and forth to the taskmaster, set or batch type work orders provide more XP. The higher the quality you achieve the greater the experience reward.
There is a delay before a given work order will refresh. If you focus solely on single or set type work orders you will either be forced to try overly easy or difficult ones or resort to doing batches. In general it's best to focus more on the level of the work order than the quantity type.
Rewards
There are a variety of rewards for completing work orders; the most obvious is experience. In addition you'll receive faction that is necessary for later quests, monetary or vendor-able rewards, dusts, tools and gear. The quality of the reward is directly related to the quality of the turn-in. There is no benefit to completing a work order to 100% quality, any A quality is equivalent to any other.
Completing all legs of a work order at A quality will generate better XP and item rewards than B quality. The level of gear and tool rewards is proportionate to the work order level. Higher-level work orders return higher-level gear. There is no definitive answer as to whether very easy, easy, moderate or difficult work orders are better to undertake. Getting A on easy is superior to getting C on moderate in terms of experience earned. Where gear rewards are concerned, a moderate difficulty work order completed to C grade may be better. In some cases, for instance faction rewards, trivial work orders are best.
Work orders with only one leg never supply gear or tools as rewards.
Non-taskmaster work order rewards can take various forms. For instance, completing all three legs of the Tursh Fair Ring Toss work order gives a Raki. In addition to monetary and gear rewards, you will receive city and continental faction when completing work orders.
Recipes
In general, particularly early on you will learn recipes from your local crafting instructor. Simply hail them and select those recipes you wish to learn. As you gain levels your crafting instructor will offer you new recipes. Upon reaching 11th level you will need to complete the tier and specialization quests.
All recipes have level, specialization and faction requirements that must be met before you can learn them. Continents also have their own recipes, continental style quests are required to unlock these. The more rare or prestigious the recipe the more likely it will have faction requirements. Higher level recipes are typically available in larger cities like Ahgram, New Targonor or Tanvu. Special recipes will involve finding and completing quests and are not simply learned from an instructor. You can list the recipes you currently know from the crafting tab of your abilities window (p).
Catalysts
Are you having trouble adding catalysts to a recipe?
Try these:
- - Did you add the dust to the table?
- - The option to add the dust comes only after the second stage.
- - Try moving your crafting window as the icon may be behind it.
Catalysts have varying affects like increasing a players attributes (strength, intelligence, dexterity), statistics (health or energy regeneration, armor class), increased range, damage and many more. Moving your mouse cursor over a catalyst will show a tooltip that describes its effects, what items it can be applied to and what tier it's applicable to.
When creating items you will have opportunities to add catalysts, in the form of dusts, powders or shards to the primary and secondary components. Recipes will list in their description whether they allow for the addition of catalysts. When setting up the table you will see a catalyst category along with the normal utilities listing. Simply select the dust you wish to add.
Catalysts are added to items immediately before the next to last stage. A dust icon will appear where the normal action icons are. Clicking that icon or typing will apply the catalyst. The icon is easy to miss so take that portion slow until you get a feel for it.
Grade
The level of an item is affected by the grade at which it's completed. In general an item will be 3 levels lower for each reduction in grade. If a grade A bow is level 28 then the grade B version will be level 25, grade C will be level 22. There are corresponding reductions in the magical characteristics with grade as well but they tend to be set such that grade C items are comparable to world drop items of the same level.
Final Product
When you look at your recipe book, you will see a variety of different categories and pages. The three main pages are refining, finishing and assembly.
- Refining includes recipes related to the crafting of raw resources for use as either a component for another recipe, or a simple final product.
- Finishing includes recipes which are finished products and usually are composed of multiple items or sub-components.
- Assembly includes actions that allow you to combine items that may have been made by other crafters and permits you to create a new item with these components.
Under the Finishing tab, there are multiple categories:
- Primary component recipes represent finished products. They will include a list of one or more secondary components required to complete the recipe. Primary component recipes have one additional table slot to account for the additional secondary item.
- Secondary components are added to the table (currently listed under polish) much the same way a utility or catalyst would be. In the final cleaning step the secondary item will be added to the primary component and you will receive the completed item. If you have more than one of the required secondary items be careful when adding it to the table. The simplest approach is to identify it in your inventory and see that it's removed when you add it to the table.
- Miscellaneous and Special recipes are specific to each profession and vary. These can be upgrade recipes, barding for mounts, expendable charms and a variety of other recipes acquired while playing. They are typical to their namesake and tend to be finished products that usually do not include secondary components but may require items from the refining page.
Deconstruction
Deconstruction has changed recently with the introduction of deconstruction kits. What follows is no longer used.
Grade A quality is needed for deconstruction recipes.
Anything below a grade A will result in material that can only be sold to vendors for coin.
Deconstruction is a special form of recipe that is available to all crafters. At 11th level (after completing the amateur quest) you will recieve the recipe called Amateur Deconstruction. Common, uncommon, rare or even more powerful items can be destroyed in return for base materials (wood, metal etc) or magical essence (dusts, powders etc) by using this recipe.
When starting the recipe the first stage allows you to choose the type (resources or dust) reward you want. Deconstruction works just like normal recipes except you must achieve Grade A results to be successful. Higher-level items return higher level materials and dusts but are more difficult to deconstruct.
Use the appropriate tier deconstruction recipe when destroying objects. For example:
- Use the Amateur version when destroying items between levels 11-19
- Use the Apprentice version when destroying items between levels 20-29
- Use the Initiate version when destroying items between levels 30-39
- Use the Journeyman version when destroying items between levels 40-49
The rewards from deconstruction are based on the lower of the items tier or the recipes tier. Using a higher tier recipe on a lower tier item just results in more work.