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Ehrayn's Spellcrafting Cheat Sheet

Spellcrafting is the simplest art in the Realms of Dark Age of Camelot, in many respects. It uses a very small 'pallette' of supplies, all available from every one of the SC merchants, at least those within the realm you are crafting in. There are no items that must be obtained 'in the wild', although many monsters do drop them (only the Gems themselves are worth collecting). It is weak in only two respects, one is the inability to embue the gems into jewelery, necklasses, belts, bracers or rings, and the other is the inability to embue any of the newer Trials of Atlantis or Catacombs bonuses. Mythic hints that 'Jewelrycraft' might still and yet be added in a future update, but crafters long ago stopped holding their breath. And there is rumor of new bonuses, perhaps some that have never been seen before and that only Spellcrafters could imbue? Someday, perhaps, Spellcrafters will embue %power pool rather than +power. Time will tell.

Although Spellcrafting might appear limited, it is essential to rounding out most character's gear. Rare is a solid template made up entirely of drop gear, that covers every resist, appropriate stat buff, and skill. If you visit the Spellcraft Master to change your in-game title to Spellcrafter, and you /setwho trade - then you will undoubtedly be solicited for your skills in the art. Many don't handle unsolicited orders (to hide one's trade, simply /setwho class) but they simply choose the trade for their own gear, for friends and guildies.

Look at the chart, below. Immediately you notice all gems follow a very simple pattern, and existing strategy guides in print and on the web don't pay very much attention to the order and arrangement of things. Even Mythic's Catacombs engineers were caught unawares; for example, if you study the newest Gems, the Catacombs classes' +Skill gems don't correspond to their corresponding Focus gems!) Thankfully, you'll probably not craft a focus gem ever again (except perhaps for skilling up) since player crafted staves will now have 50 focus imbued already.

Nearly every gem you can craft is based on the given gem for that level, and some quantity of two ingredients. It's very handy to know your ingredients so that you know what to obtain from outside of your own realm (on PvP and co-op servers) and which 'left over' ingredients might do something useful for you at the moment. In fact, you only need to have six dusts (12 across all the realms of Gaheris and Mordred) in large quantities and eleven agents (only 8 of which have many applications) in smaller quantities, plus the appropriate gems themselves.

This simple arrangement makes Spellcraft a very backpack-friendly and vault-friendly craft. The fact that a single merchant supplies all of the crafters needs is another big plus. Although each stack of 200 ingredients now weights in at only 5lbs, if you are rolling a Spellcrafter, you still might choose a race with high starting strength or a class with rising strength and/or strength self-buffs.

I use the ingredient titles 'dusts' and 'agents'. Dusts, which you use in large volumes, include ground bones, ground crystal and soot. The agents, as in chemistry, are smaller volumes of the active ingredient. Others refer to these agents as 'liquid', but as not all are actually in liquid form, I don't care for that term.

With all this said, here follows my complete reference of gems by their functions and ingredients.

The superscripts ^A, ^H and ^M indicate types of stones or ingredients that are available and usable only within one specific realm. Typing /craft {realm} permits you to switch between realms on the PvP or Coop servers, but you must obtain ingredients from merchants in the appropriate realm. On Gaheris or Mordred, this may mean keeping all three realms Incantation Merchants in your personal house vault, and switching between them as the need arises. Another solution on cross-realm servers is to keep your personal or house vault stocked these realm-specific dusts, much as Tailors once kept wreath and pointed cap patterns handy.

The subscripts ₀₃ and so forth indiciate the skill level required to create the given gem of the first tier, that is, an Um gem from a low gem ingredient. Add 100 for each level above the basic gem, so crafting a first tier Heated Essence Jewel is Spellcraft level 3, while crafting the fifth tier gem is Spellcraft level 403.

You will notice several oddities in the table above. First, the Ground Draconic Scales are used to create both Shielding Gems, as well as Focus Stones. You will also notice that Mythic created several more 'custom named' gems within each realm, although you can see that there were 'enough empty slots' to fit those skills into otherwise 'commonly named' gems. In such cases, the recipies are identical. Why 'Steaming' uses two different agents in the two different realms, there is no explanation, worse, why two different agents are used for the newest focus stones and caster skills, Blighted, Spectral, Ethereal and Phantasmal Wail.

Finally you will notice the last column, which I have simply called 'Complex'. And so it is, these gems grant +Skill to All Melee or All Magic skills (but only the first tier stone, a +1 bonus), and All Focus Level magery gems. These cost approximently three times as much a usual stone, but use no more embue points than their single-skill counterparts. They use a much larger quantity of three different agents, Draconic Fire, Mystic Energy and Treant Blood than any normal stone uses. The Brilliant Focus Stones burn three gems, not one. Clearly Mythic did not wish this to be inexpensive, but their cost is hardly prohibitive when weighted against their advantages.

The Spell Skill gems increase the character's effective specialization level, limiting the variance of damage and healing spells, and potentially increasing their effect when well over the character's level.

With the recent fletching changes, every new crafted staff now enjoys the benefits of 50 focus across all spell lines as a free bonus. Although there was only 1/2 point of utility used by a focus stone, using three powerful stones was less efficient, and more limiting. With that slot free, a total of four enchantments are unlocked for the caster's enjoyment. And one heavy limitation on spellcrafters of more modest skill has been removed, you no longer need 1000 skill to entertain the hope of spellcrafting a useful level 50 focus staff!

Note that the Focus Level gems above can only be embued upon a staff. Well, not literally true, they can be embued as any other gem, but will only have an effect if they are placed on a staff. The other stones may be used in any player crafted object. This is why several spell classes who are also weapon users do not have a Magic Focus gem, and why all have a Spell Skill gem available as well. The Magic Focus gem is used to embue a staff to a given skill level, reducing the power cost of all spells below that skill level (and above that level, to a much lesser degree.) Only Cloth Casters (excluding Valewalkers) benefit from Focus bonuses.

The table below details the quantity of materials and cost for crafting each level of stone. The 'Magic Focus' and Shielding gems, made with Ground Draconic Scales, cost slightly more in quantity of those dusts. Note that the Power Essence gem (Mystical) also falls under the lower, Resist Shield gem bonus, although it is uses the less expensive quantity of dust. The third row, 1st Tier reflects the complex Finesse gems, while the last row of all Tiers are the complex Brilliant focus gems.

Note, all Focus gems are considered 1st tier gems, for embue calculations. To calculate imbue cost, take the gem with the highest embue cost (1st number in the Imbue column) and add the half-values of the other gems (shown as the 2nd "+ number" in the column.) *** Tier 9 and 10 +Skills gems require too many imbue points to even be possible on a player crafted level 51 item.

If this is not enough detail, there is an even more arcane Spellcrafting Limits research in an older article written by Lok, hosted on Classes of Camelot. Mythic has documented the chances of success buried in the herald.

HOWEVER, two important things have changed. The gem quality no longer matters, and most practitioners of the craft now leave out one of the lower cost gems for an overcharge, and then apply the last gem so that it alone blows up on a failure. The item (and previously imbued gems, tinctures and bonuses) no longer disappears when the crafter explodes! Which is the second important change, even the most skilled LGM Spellcrafter has a small (10%) chance to blow up embuing an MP item with 5 points overcharge. Bind well my friends.

Is ón cheann a thagann an cheird.

Ehrayn