Crafting in Tree of Savior

I’ve only just begun to take a look at crafting in Tree of Savior and what I’ve found thus far is pretty minimal. It hardly seems to be a key aspect of the game yet it is a viable way to obtain better gear. If you’re looking for a deep and intricate crafting system, you’re not going to find it here, however if you like the idea of crafting one or two pieces every now and again as the culmination of several quest chain rewards, then you’ll be quite happy. Before going any further though, I want to clarify that this is not intended to be a definitive guide, this is just what I have discovered so far by naturally playing through the game without outside resources.

Recipes are required to craft items, and from what I’ve seen this is limited to gear and weapons. Everyone is able to craft these items and the materials are gained through questing and killing mobs, not farming nodes of any kind. So you won’t find a list of professions to chose from or have to limit yourself to one form of crafting over another because the entire system is pretty limited to begin with.

Other than the weapons and gear you can make, I’ve seen no other forms of crafting. If they exist, it must be something discovered later on in the game.  There are several “crafting” classes like the Squire, Alchemist and the Pardoner however I wouldn’t call them crafters so much as “service” classes. If you happen to play a Swordsman, Wizard or Cleric respectively and select one of those three advanced classes you will be able to set up a shop in one of the cities to sell item repairs, improve gems, or even sell abilities. From what I understand you can have one character set up to sell these things in town while playing on another character on the same account. It’s a simple form of having player vendors but it’s more than what I’ve seen in most other MMOs.

As for the more “traditional” crafting in Tree of Savior, it seems limited to a handful of recipes that are obtained as quest rewards and as the occasional drop from random mobs. At first, most of the recipes you receive will be for blue quality or “uncommon” gear. You will have to collect several crafting ingredients as drops along with a base item, like a simple chest piece or gloves which can be received as quest rewards or random drops. Once you’ve collected everything you will need to have your character sit (I forget the default key as I remapped mine) and then press “2” to open the crafting window.

The menu will appear on the left hand side where you can select the item you wish to make. Selecting the item will expand the menu where you will then click on the boxes with plus signs to add each ingredient, name your piece if you would like, and then once you are ready press “craft” to make the item.  You will need to have your materials in your bag as they will not be detected if they are in your storage. Thankfully Tree of Savior is very generous with the amount of crafting materials you can hold in your bag so it’s not too difficult to hold on to everything you need to make several items.

Recipes rewarded at higher levels will require materials that can only be obtained by defeating bosses you will encounter During several quest chains spanning 2 or 3 zones. The end result will be a crafted purple, or “rare” quality item. This is why I’m starting to think crafting was simply meant to be a way to reward players for fully completing a series of maps and quests by providing powerful gear that otherwise can’t be earned any other way during the leveling process. If that’s the intention then I like the way crafting is implemented as it makes the gear feel more meaningful because of how long it took to obtain everything. It also makes it more rewarding because it’s the only way to earn such a powerful piece of gear.

This robe required a recipe earned as a quest reward as well as ingredients obtained by defeating three different bosses over as many maps.

 

I’m still hoping there may be more to crafting in Tree of Savior, but if not I think the system works with the simplicity of the game. While it may be limited at early levels I like that crafting an item feels important once you’ve finally gathered everything. And since crafting isn’y a skill to level you aren’t required to make a pile of vendor trash in order to reach the next tier. Instead you work through the story quests to earn the ingredients needed to make a useful item that cannot be obtained anywhere else.

Trove Progression: Classes, Mastery, and Gear

Trove offers a surprisingly wide array of options for character progression, much of which may be missed at first glance. It may not be nearly as complex as what you find in the traditional MMO, but the layers are there and certainly satisfying enough to keep me playing. I’ve written on Trove’s progression a couple of times already, first addressing the issue of whether it is a shallow grind, and secondly looking at what I consider to be one of the more unique elements of Trove gameplay, movement progression. However I’ve been wanting to provide a general overview for those curious as to what Trove offers by way of long term goals and character progression. That has proven to be more than I’d like to include in a single post, so instead I will break it up over at least two articles beginning with a look at class level, mastery rank, and gear progression.

This screenshot was taken right after I reached level 20 with my first class.

Class Level

The first and most basic element of progression in Trove is leveling one of the many classes available. Trove is similar to Final Fantasy XIV in that with a single character you are able to play as all the classes, only they must be leveled separately. Max level for each class is 20 but it is possible to increase your character’s level beyond that based on gear quality. Upon reaching level 20 there is a server wide announcement (or perhaps just within your current instance) of your character’s name and class. I have only one character at max level myself and it was a bit of a grind toward the end, however gameplay isn’t all that different at 20 than it is during the 10-20 leveling process, so I was never in a hurry and didn’t feel as though I was missing out.

To get started, depending on your character level you will enter one of the portals provided by the hub world in order to defeat mobs and complete dungeons for XP. Unlike many MMOs, mobs and dungeons never “grey out” so that you can continue to earn XP in a lower level zone, albeit at a slower rate. This is helpful if you’re struggling with a particularly squishy class. If you are leveling with other players, XP is applied to everyone involved regardless of who tags the mob first. In fact, if you arrive a little late to the final boss you will still be rewarded XP just for being close.

For the most part there is no real advantage to leveling one or multiple classes, it’s up to you which approach you prefer. However, if you want to participate in the hourly challenges with the highest level of efficiency, you will want all of them at max level and well geared in order to get the multipliers applied to specific classes each challenge as well as those for completing challenges in Uber 5 and 6 worlds. If you’re taking a more casual approach, I would recommend getting them all at least to level 10 which will be enough to access Uber 1 worlds and complete the challenges with at least the class multiplier. The cost of a new class is 1050 credits, about $7, however if you are patient and complete the Star Bar every day you can earn one new class every 8-10 days using the in game currency of Cubits. Stars are earned by completing lair and dungeon bosses and the Star Bar is filled after completing about a dozen.

At master rank 20, you receive a set of wings as a reward.

Mastery Rank

Whereas levels are unique to whichever class you happen to be playing, your mastery rank gauges your overall investment in the game. Each tier require one hundred points and points can be earned by doing just about everything in Trove. They are earned by gaining levels, advancing your professions, and collecting recipes, skins, mounts, costumes, allies, flasks—basically if you can collect it, you’ll get mastery for it. Because several of these collectibles can be purchased from the cash shop, it is possible to increase your mastery level by spending money, however many of those cash shop purchases can be made with Cubits which are earned in game.

Each rank of mastery provides a different reward, anything from a permanent percentage increase to a stat, Cubits for the cash shop, crafting materials, mounts, wings, ships, and even Credits which can otherwise only be purchased with real money. For a complete list of the Mastery rank rewards by tier, open up the character panel in the UI by pressing “C” and click the icon of a ribbon in the upper right corner. You will receive a reward for every rank up to 100; after that rewards are received every 10 levels. At first, leveling classes was my primary focus but now that I’ve become more familiar with the mastery system and its rewards, I think I’m more excited about a new mastery rank than I am about gaining a level with a class.

If you work on gear in Trove, not only will your stats progress, but you can look as good as I do as well.

Gear Progression

Obtaining the best gear in Trove requires a little luck, a little crafting, and a whole lot of grinding for materials. Currently there are eight tiers of gear: common, rare, epic, legendary, relic, resplendent, shadow, and the newest addition, radiant. The first four tiers drop within the zone portal of the same color but once you work your way up to the Uber zones gear drops could be anything from legendary to shadow with the chance to drop decreasing as the rarity increases. However the higher the Uber zone you enter, the greater the chance for shadow gear. As you level you won’t really need to worry about gear, it rains down like candy from the lairs and dungeons you’ll be completing and by level 9 or 10 you should at least have a complete set of legendary (orange colored) gear.

Gearing gets much more interesting (and complicated) once you start collecting shadow gear. Shadow pieces start at shadow level 1 and can be upgraded to shadow level 5. Within each shadow level there are also five tiers of upgrading which can be identified by the stars on the item’s tool tip. The number of stars that are full (yellow) will tell you how much the shadow gear has been upgraded. With a shadow level 1 piece it will cost you 15 flux and 10 Eyes of Q’bthulhu for each tier and then 50 Eyes and 100 flux to increase the gear to shadow level 2.

At this point things get grindy. Once you’ve upgraded a shadow level 2 piece five times (all the stars are full), you’ll need to deconstruct two other pieces of shadow level 2 gear to obtain the materials necessary to advance the piece to level 3. This pattern persists all the way up to Radiant which requires three penta-forged souls (three deconstructed shadow level 5 pieces of gear) to craft. In addition to leveling your gear in this way, you can also add additional stats and re-roll the third and fourth stat on every piece. And as mentioned earlier, as your gear improves so does your character level. As a level 20 Dracolyte with fully upgraded shadow level 2 gear, my overall level with the gear is 26. Needless to say, there’s quite a bit of progression and customization involved with crafting the best gear in Trove.

One aspect of this progression that I really appreciate is that while it may take you much longer, even by playing in the lower level Uber zones you will be able to make some progress toward gearing your character, if you like that sort of progression without the challenging combat encounters of Uber 5 and 6. You are also able to buy some of the crafting mats from the cash shop (the Eyes of Q’bthulhu) but the shadow gear itself must be earned in game. With the dragon caches rewarded during challenges there is no reason to ever buy the Eyes unless you are in a real hurry as both flux and Eyes of Q’bthulhu are rewarded in large quantities. For example, in only a few nights I’ve pushed my gear through all the level 1 and level 2 shadow tiers (five stars each) and I am now working on the pieces needed to create the forged souls for shadow level 3.

Believe it or not, there’s actually more that I could mention regarding classes, mastery, and especially gear progression, but this should serve as a solid primer for anyone getting started in Trove or curious about what kind of progression the game offers. Next I’ll be taking a look at leveling professions, fishing and ship crafting, and building a Cornerstone and Club World in Trove.