Artificers

Original Source: Artificer Guide by Smithers & Sirpsycho

	Smithcraft	Spellsmith
Learning Curve	High	Very High
Damage Dealing	A+	A+
Damage Absorption	A	C+
Soloing Ability	A+	B
Bashing Ability	A+	A
Tanking Prowess	A	C

Famous artificers: Anthem, Piggificer

Introduction

From the helpfiles: Artificers are magic-users whose magic is tied up in external devices and magic items which they must manufacture according to arcane formulae. As an artificer, each reboot you start out with a workbook containing a few formulae for things you know how to make. To learn more formulae you need to go out and find them, by studying in musty libraries or getting other artificers to teach you the formulae they know, perhaps in exchange for the formulae you know.

Each formula is a recipe for making an item from some number of ingredients, which can be found by searching the countryside for plants, metals and minerals, or by dissecting the corpses of animals. Many items require Concentration in order to maintain their magic; this is, in effect, a limit on the number of items which you can have made at a time.

The Craft of Artifice requires patience and hard work, but in the end can be very rewarding. Good luck!

Artificers are a very time consuming class, but not in the same way as a shifter or ranger - 'ficers reward hard work and persistence rather than just time spent sitting at the screen. They gather resources, and turn them into items - forged weapons and armour you can enchant, magical scrolls and potions and wands, and constructs, large fabricated mechanical creatures enchanted with life. This class has been worked on by Dawg, Pris, Theryn, and others, and is a large, complicated, and fun class, and my personal favorite.

They are challenging to use because collecting all the reagents can take a long time, but some of the items they make are incredibly powerful and useful to both themselves and other players. They make better cash even than mages by making and selling items off, and are formidable at soloing, bashing, or tanking, due to the huge range of magical gubbins they produce.

If you want to play a powerful, hugely varied class, and don't mind investing time to raising abilities and collecting reagents, this class is perfect.

While all players can get something from this class, it's definitely the hardest to learn as it demands a lot of knowledge of the world of Ancient Anguish. The aim of this guide is to make the class accessible to everyone.

Basics

This is a 'how to play ficers' section in all but name. Yay!

Warning: This is going to be looong. The basics for 'ficers goes into a lot of depth.

Joining: 'Ficers are found in a renovated old shop in Drakhiya. The dirs to Drakh
 are 10w, 4s, allw, 6s 2e s 11e 11s e alls allw s w s w s w s w. From here, it's
 2nw sw se to get to the class hall. You will have to pass a bridge in this journey
 that new characters may fall off. All races can join, and any guild aside from
 ravens and scythe can become artificers.

Drakh: Some words of warning about Drakh. You will be passing through this area 
a lot, and I mean a LOT. In Drakh, you can get attacked by the guards if you try to break in
 to protected areas or kill the inhabitants, so your life will be a whole lot easier as
 a newbie if you stay on the orcs' good sides. Also worth knowing, if you log off in an
 area in drakh you will log back on there. So A) beware and B) plan ahead for logging
 off if you want to start in your class hall, which can save a trip. 


Class hall: This is my arteest rendition of the hall.

                  
                   X       B
                     \   /
                       A
                     /   \
                   C       D

X - Drakhiya street             A - Artificer Hall           B - Artificer's Store
C - Artificer's Shop            D - Library of Artifice

X - X marks the exit. You leave the class hall here. How? Probably magic.
A - A is the Artificer Hall. Here is where you advance stats, choose a specialty,
    read the class board and view your quests. There is also an anvil here, so you'll 
    probably be doing a lot of forging here.
B - The Artificer's Store is where you buy 'ficer supplies and tools. It sells:
	Empty vials for brewing, 20 coins.
	White chalk for basic runes, 20 coins.
	Black ink for basic scrolls, 20 coins.
	Papyrus, Parchment and Vellum for scrollmaking - only place to get these. 
		120, 180 and 300 coins each, respectively.
	Lead, a terrible forging material, but good to get you started at 30 coins
		each. Limited stock.
	A hammer, for 60 coins, essential for forging, smelting, and scrapping.
	Fine tools for 400, exactly the same as Bort's. Specifically, used for
		fabricating mechanical parts and assembling constructs.
	An artificer pack, which is carefully handcrafted to hold more 'ficerish
		stuff and reagents than normal packs, for 960 coins.
		It carries 16, compresses 8 at max. More with 'ficer stuff. So
		the same stats as a canvas pack but with bonuses for reagents.
	A hand cart, which is still MIA. (when I used the old thing on the testmud
		it was PAINFUL)
	A chest for 3000 and a trunk for 5000 coins. These are put in a room (and 
		indeed, can't be used any other way) to help remove clutter and 
		store a lot of stuff nicely. They can carry lots. Not worth it unless
		you're tired of seeing TRUNCATED.
C - The Artificer's Shop is where you sell your reagents, or buy things others have sold.
    One man's trash is another man's treasure, and you can find just the bit you're
    looking for if you're extremely lucky. This is a good place to make money at the
    beginning, selling expensive rare reagents to the store, and it helps other players too.
D - The Library of Artifice contains the same formulae every boot (more on formulae later!
    there'd probably be something about boots in the misc section too). It contains one
    very basic formula for everything a 'ficer can do, which makes it a good place for a 
    tutorial on how to work a 'ficer. It also contains all three OILS, which I will get to,
    and a metal body formula which is required for all constructs, so getting to this
    library every boot is essential.

Stats

Stats: 'Ficers have similar stats to mages, only one more dex and two less con.
So, they have the lowest con of any class, but the highest int and dex.

                             St Dx In Co Wi
Baseline (Human Adventurer): 16 15 15 15 14

Stats mods by class
Artificer:                   -1 +2 +2 -2  0

Therefore, max stats:
Elf:                         12 19 19 11 14
Half-Elf:                    13 17 18 11 16
Orc:                         15 18 15 14 13
Dwarf:                       16 16 14 14 15
Human:                       15 17 17 13 14

Abilities

Artificers make things, some mundane and some magical, out of various resources. The artificer has no direct ways of harming or healing or improving abilities or skills or stats or improving armour or giving light - all of these things are done through the items they make. 'Ficer abilities are all given at different levels, aside from identify, forging, crafting, and scrapping, which all 'ficers have.

All 'ficer abilities are raised by using the ability, so forging a weapon can increase your craftsman ability. This is different from ranger's woodcraft, which increases based on stats, and rogue abilities, which increase based on 'training hours'. This system makes a lot more sense, since killing an ogre doesn't mean you're going to be better at writing scrolls. Also, this system allows you to get high abilities at low levels if you focus. (note: abilities are set up with a level 'cap' similar to a skill cap, that means at a certain point, ability raising will cut off until you reach a higher level. This means you can't be a god-like level 5. By level 23/24 you can get all abilities to 100)

Identify

Like mages and some lesser known bullfrogs, 'ficers can identify hidden magical properties of an item. You must be holding the item, and you can't do it out loud like mages, and it costs 15 sp. It's a wonderful ability which you will use often, considering how many of the items you produce have magical properties.

Assay

This is like a ranger's forage command. In an outdoors room, type assay and your ficer will look around and determine what resources are available there. It will give you a list like:

You locate the presence of the following:
Some saffron.
Plentiful stickwort.
A little holly.

You then collect (exactly the same as a ranger's gather) the resources. It costs 2 sp to assay, and 2 sp to collect. That's how you gather any resources not currently attached to animals.

'A little' means there is only 1 in the area, 'Some' is 2-4 things and 'Plentiful' means 5 things and up.

Like rangers, different types of room give different resources, and some resources are rarer than others. Check the resource list to see where to find things, and the map to work out where to go.

Unlike rangers, you don't have to worry about nighttime or rain! Woo!

You can also assay items to work out what you get when you 'scrap' them. It's a bit expensive at 20sp, but I imagine less expensive than scrapping a really good item and finding you get nothing from it.

Craftsman

This is a real ability, like all the other abilities artificers have, and canbe checked out by typing 'abilities'. The craftsman ability is got at level 1, so everyone has it. It allows you to forge items out of metals, smelt metals and minerals together to create stronger alloys, craft rings and amulets out of a lump of metal, and scrap (destroy) items for 10 sp, to try to get usable materials out of an item. Check the forging section for full information on everything craftsman.

Research

Research is also got at level 1. It gives you the commands research, study, and teach. Research costs 25sp, and is used in libraries to find formulae to learn. When you have found a decent formula in researching, you can 'study' it.

> view
Library, west room (w,e)
> research
You spend some time conducting research.
You discover that the following formulae can be found in this occasionally
used library.
> You find a formula for amulet of light, but you already knew about that.
You find a formula for black chalk, but you already knew about that.
You find a formula for ring of the swordsmaster.
You find a formula for bronze.
You find a formula for amulet of spellcraft.
You find a formula for scroll of ice bolt, but you already knew about that.
You seem to have researched every item here.
> study bronze
You transcribe the formula into your workbook.
Bronze: a chunk of copper ore and a chunk of tin ore.

You can also 'teach' a player a formula, to let them learn it. This is a great bargaining chip if you're the only person around with a specific formula, or someone doesn't want to go through the hassle of running around all the libraries.

The formula in the libraries are random, and change each boot (and you lose all your formulae every boot too). Different libraries will have different formulas. Libraries that aren't visited as much as others give rarer, more powerful formulae on average than other libraries, which makes exploring and getting to hard to reach libraries worthwhile.

The research ability raises very fast, and you'll be at 100 in relatively little time in comparison to other abilities. At low abilities, all that will happen is you occasionally won't understand a formula first time when you try to study.

If you're stumped for places to research, check out the library list.

Rune lore

Learned at level 4, this ability allows you to 'pen' scrolls, and 'enscribe' various runes. You can't at this stage make your own inks and chalks, so you'll have to wait a few levels before you can make anything interesting, but you can create some fun things with black ink and white chalk from the 'ficer shop. A very powerful ability. For more information, see the scrolls and runes section.

Alchemy

Learned at level 7, or level 5 for spellcraft specialists, this ability allows you to 'brew' oils, inks, and chalks, which are required for other things, and some fun potions. You also get the 'dissect' ability, to extract animal bits from various creatures. You don't need to worry about this ability a lot unless you plan to use potions, as it raises quite fast.

Staves and wands

Learned at level 14, or 12 for spellcraft specialists, this ability affects your 'enchant'ing of wands, rings and amulets. Spellsmith specialists can raise it with their 'recharge' ability, but for everyone else this ability is incredibly slow. Some of the wands are very powerful. Check out the enchanting sections for more information on this.

Spellsmith

Learned at level 14, or 12 for smithcraft specialists, this ability allows you to 'spellforge' enchantments onto your forged weapons and armour. These can be weapon and armour boosts, helmets that emit light, weapons that give boosts to skill, artificially light weapons and armour, all sorts. It raises slowly for everyone, and a lot of items can really eat up your concentration, but they are worth it a lot of the time. See the spellforging section for more info. Again.

Artifice

Learned at 18, unless you're a smithcraft specialist in which case it's learned at 16 *drool*, this ability allows you to 'fabricate' parts out of oils and resources, and then 'assemble' these parts into massive constructs that do your bidding. The ability can raise reasonably if you have 'repair', or moderately fast if you don't by fabricating parts. The constructs can be very powerful. More information is in the usual place.

Concentration

Concentration is what stops 'ficers from completely washing the MUD with incredible items - it's a limitator. Almost every item we produce costs concentration - the bigger items, more. You can only concentrate on a certain number of things, so your armoury is limited to however much you can concentrate on maintaining. Your concentration is determined by your highest stat, int or wis. So an elf with 18 int will have 18 concentration, a dwarf with 14 int but 15 wis will have 15 concentration. Also, for every level over 19, you get an extra 2 concentration. See the specialties section for more information on this.

Specialisation

You can specialise in the class hall to dedicate yourself to one of two different paths - spellsmithing or smithcrafting. Spellcrafters use more scrolls and potions and wands, and smithcrafters use more forged weapons armour and constructs. You pay less concentration for your specialty, but MORE concentration for items of the opposing specialty - it can be quite harsh in some areas. You can choose to stay neutral too, but then you don't get the cool abilities associated with specialising - repair and recharge. Repair is the only way to heal up a construct, and recharge is the only way to add more charges to a wand. This hugely effects play style. More info on specialisation in the proper section.

Tutorial

Let's say you joined the class at level 19, and now you want to make your first spellforged weapon - a hammer of skillfulness.

First, you must learn the formula - formulae could be in any library, or known by a player, but luckily there is a formula for this in the Library of Artifice, se of the board. So go there, and type research to see what there is. Lo and behold, there is also bronze here! 'study hammer of skillfulness' and 'study bronze' to get both in your workbook. Type 'recite all' to see what other things you have in there.

Hammer of skillfulness: a gill of enchanter's oil, a lump of sand and a pinch of marigold seed.

Enchanter's oil! So, you'd need to learn that formula too. All weapons require one oil, so they're very important. Thankfully, you can learn them all at the Library of Artifice.

Enchanter's oil: a lump of clay, a daffodil blossom and a deer spleen.

(note - all these formula are randomised every boot, so you will get different formula each time)

And you're going to make this hammer of out bronze too, so you need:

Bronze: a chunk of copper ore and a chunk of tin ore.

(note - alloys don't change formula - nor do constructs, though their parts do)

You need three chunks of bronze to forge a bronze hammer, so let's get that first. You need three bits of copper and three bits of tin, to smelt into 3 bits of bronze. Copper and tin can be found in a couple of places, but most likely place would be the taiga to the north. Head up there, and assay various rooms. When you find a room with tin or copper, collect it. Repeat until you have 3 of each, and watch out for ogres and aggressive bits of lint.

Now, you need a hammer - and you can get one from the artificer store. Now, wield this hammer and by a fire or anvil, type 'smelt bronze' three times. You should now have 3 bits of bronze. Type 'forge bronze hammer' to get yourself a nice shiny new hammer.

Now, you've got the hammer, you just need the ingredients to enchant it. You need to make an oil, and get sand and marigold.

	Sand - found in beaches and deserts
	Marigold - found mostly in grasslands
	Daffodil - same as marigold
	Clay - Beaches and rivers
	Deer spleen. Ah.

For a deer spleen, we first need a knife. Then we need a dead deer. I'll let your inventiveness run wild for this part. Once the dear has paid the ultimate price for your bitchin' hammer, type 'dissect corpse', to take its precious juicy spleen. Do not eat the spleen, you need it for a-spellforging. Kill a second deer if you must eat the spleen.

Now, we need to make the oil! Buy an empty vial (or drink a beer to get an empty container), get to a fire and with the spleen safely tucked in your inventory, and type 'brew enchanter's oil'.

Did it work? If so, great! If not, kill more deer. It's worth pointing out that all these steps get a lot easier as you near 100 in abilities - no chance of failure on anything.

Finally, when you have the oil, sand and marigold in your inventory, and you've psyched yourself up and crossed your fingers and gone to the toilet and all the other things you have to do before checking - wield the bronze hammer, and type 'spellforge hammer of skillfulness'.

Tada! You now have, if that didn't fail, a hammer with a small skill+ to club and crafstman ability. Wonderful!

Brewing

You learn alchemy at level 7. Level 5 for spellcrafters. It's the art of dissecting stuff from animals, (and you thought that was biology! Nope, alchemy!) and the brewing of inks, chalks, oils and potions.

Dissect

Okay, a brief bit about dissect. For dissect you need a knife in your inventory and a corpse on the ground of the race you need a bodypart of. You also need 5sp. Type 'dissect corpse' to hack it up. This will violate claims, so watch you don't hack up someone else's stuff. When you have the bodypart, the corpse is still available for everything you might need a corpse for - feeding shadowspawn, draining, eating, skinning/gutting/carving/plucking, birthdays, bar-mitzvahs, etc. So, that's nice. Dissecting works on alchemy, and will increase your alchemy, so if you don't care to raise the ability it will raise itself pretty nicely just by running an amateur biology lesson on everything you come across.

Brewing basics

To brew things, you'll need a fire (nope, an anvil won't do it). For everything but chalks, you'll also need an empty drink container. Try the 'ficer shop, or Drudge's beer bottles.

Inks

You can brew coloured inks, which are required to make the more powerful scrolls. You can buy black ink from the shop, but you can also learn the formula in the Library of Artifice and make it, which is a VERY good way of raising your alchemy ability.

Inks require an empty bottle, and 5 sp. They don't take any concentration, and they're weightless when made so you can stock up on a lot for scroll madness.

Chalks

Chalks are required for runes. The more colourful chalks are needed for more exotic runes. They're weightless when in chalk form and require no concentration, so stock up. It's an alright way to raise alchemy ability. All chalks require limestone. It costs 5sp to brew a chalk, and you don't need a bottle (you may still need a heat source). You can learn white chalk in the Library of Artifice, but you can also just buy chalk a few rooms away, so, you know. YOU know. Yeah.

Oils

Oils are essential for spellforged weapons, enchanted amulets, rings and wands, and doubly essential for constructs. Good thing you can learn them all at the Library of Artifice then! They require no concentration, take 5 sp to brew, and are weightless. A skill you will learn as a 'ficer is how to farm all the stuff you need for these oils, since you will be using them a lot.

Potions

Potions do a bunch of cool things, like you can make shanni potion doubles, stat boosters, throwable potion bombs, even potions to give you a good night's sleep. For a full list check out here. You need 25sp to brew a potion, and they take concentration. 2 for neutrals, 4 for smithcrafters, and none for spellcrafters. That means as a spellcrafter you can stock up on a lot of these pretty easily. Nice!

Charms

Charms is the spellcrafter equivalent of spellforging. You learn it at level 14, or level 12 for spellcrafters.

Charms is the art of enchanting a ring or an amulet with magical abilities. The ring and amulet has to be a 'ficer one, I'm afraid. It costs 100 sp. To enchant a trinket, you need to be wearing it, know the formula, and have all the ingredients. Then you type 'enchant (ring/amulet) of (whatever)'. Shazzam! Lucky you.

It works on the staves & wands ability, and it's the best way to raise it unless you have recharge (<3 recharge). It will take a while to raise with 100sp needed each time, but that's the price you pay for cool stuff.

It takes concentration to maintain an enchantment, on top of the 1 conc already needed for the ring or amulet. It's 6(!) conc for a smither, 4 for a filthy halfblood and 2 for a spellcrafter. So, guess which one of those is going to use this ability the most!

The rings and amulets themselves are a mixed bunch. Some give half-useless ability plusses like ring of swimming, ring of climbing, and amulet of the diplomat. Others give awesome effects, like a teleport amulet that can be used as many times as you like completely for free, or the amulet of stealth that increases dispossession, or the ring of accuracy that increases archery, thrown weapon and marksmanship all in one. For a full list, see enclosed.

I tend not to use charms, but I really like the teleport amulets. I've even used them with my smither before. There are people who would pay a lot for these rings and amulets though, considering what their other choices are (name me one ring that has a better effect than raising your thrown weapon). The skill plus rings are better than es's once you've made them, and can be used in conjunction with es for some amusing sights. (For example, Gyn has 19 longsword as a mage, with an es, 19+25, with a skill ring another +16 and with the sword of virgis another +15. Overall 19+56, 75 longsword. Youch.) While es spells peter out in use over 50 to completely useless at about 70, rings give the same bonus nomatter what your skill.

Before I forget, you can only put 1 enchantment on each ring or amulet.

Class specialty

An artificer can, once, at the class hall, decide a specialty, a single area to focus his studies on. You can choose either spellcraft, which focuses on the arts of penning scrolls, brewing potions and the use of wands, or smithcraft, the art of making junk with your bare fists, enchanting your junk, and then smashing it against other junk.

This decision is huge, much larger than choosing a mage school. With mages, it seems to be more of a choice of 'do I want cheap acid arrows, cheap venom spits, cheap lightning bolts, or perm?'. Also a mage can change their school, though at a pretty hefty fee. When a 'ficer chooses their specialisation they cannot go back, back to the way things were, the good times. A specialisation doesn't just give advantages either - the 'ficer's weaker area will cost a LOT more concentration. Because of this, you may want to stay neutral for a while, at least for your first 'ficer until you get a feel of the class and what abilities you use the most.

A specialisation is incredibly useful at later levels though, for a number of reasons. First, the basic crafts of the different 'ficers (forging for a smithcrafter, potions, scrolls and runes for a spellcrafter) cost NO concentration. You can produce INFINITE amounts of these items, with no limitations. This, incidentally, makes it much easier for a 'ficer to make money. Infinite weapons and armour, infinite stat potions and combat scrolls and runes - big potential there. Secondly, the specialists each get one ability which neutrals don't get.

For smithers, it's REPAIR, which for 50sp repairs some of the damage done to your construct. This is the only way to heal constructs. Other 'ficers, when their constructs get hurt, can do nothing but watch the thing they created fall to pieces. And constructs take a loong time to build. Combine this with the very cheap constructs that smithers can make, and you have a recipe for a lot of damn nice construct tanking. The repair ability is based on your artifice, and, yes, RAISES your artifice, and you can get to 100 by actually playing. Which is nice.

A spellcrafter's vocation ability is RECHARGE, which recharges wands for 15sps per charge. Like repair, this is the ONLY way to add charges to wands. And when you're playing with wyrm tongue/emerald wands which take an hour to make and hold 8 charges, this is a HUGE difference. Instead of your free scrolls, which cost 30sp and a lot of cash for a max of 50 damage 5 or 6 times (still pretty huge damage if you ask me), you can recharge a wand of total destruction, that does more damage a round, for 6 or 7 charges. Youch! They also have healing wands which, yes, heals 50hp per shot at 15sp cost. Wands can be used by anyone too, so a spelly will ALWAYS have a place on a party if he can keep up recharges for the tank. Very, very fun. What's more, recharge is based on your wands and staves ability, so playing around with recharge will let you increase your staves and wands ability as opposed to training it for forever with rings of light and amulets of pine fresh smells and wands of increased voracity in the field of botany or whatever.

As you can imagine, both vocations play very differently.

Here is a list of concentraion effects.

Ability	Smithcraft	No Vocation	Spellcreaft
Smelting	0	0	0
Forging	0	1	2
Crafting	1	1	1
Enscribing	4	2	0
Penning	4	2	0
Brewing	4	2	0
Brewing oils/inks/chalks	0	0	0
Enchanting	6	4	2
Spellforging	2	4	6
Fabricating	0	0	0
Assembling constructs	5	10	15(oof)

Just in case I didn't make it clear somewhere in this guide, you can get concentration back by destroying an item you're concentrating on. So if you have 14 conc and a weapon as a spelly, and you want to make a construct (to inevitably die, poor spellcrafters), you can destroy the weapon to get yourself the conc needed to build a metal warrior.

Also for completionist's sake, specialising allows you to get abilities in your vocation earlier (see 'help artificer_abilities' for a full list), and it changes what formula you get at reboot. You get formula for your vocation a lot more than stuff for the other vocation.

Constructs

Or - Everything you've ever wanted to know about making an army of death robots but were too sane to ask.

Constructs are mechanical creatures that follow your commands. They are tough to build, but very rewarding when you finally make them and watch them tear into things or be your personal butler. These are truly mechanomagical wonders

Making constructs can take a while, but they're one of my favorite parts of being a 'ficer. They're unique pets to get, to actually control, and in design, and I strongly recommend trying them even if you're a spellcrafter.

To make construct you're assembling a large number of parts into like a Brio-Tech or Lego pre-designed model - so like, a forged centaur requires 4 mechanical legs, a metal body, a metal head, and two mechanical arms. You make the body parts, and then slap 'em together into a form, which then using MAGICKC comes alive to DESTROY OERTHE.

Making a construct

Making a construct can take a while, but it's worthwhile. Okay, let's say you want to make a forged dog, called Patchwork (or Sparky, or Locutus of Dog, or Mecchaspot), to run with and play with and forget to feed every day.

First thing you'll need is to learn the formula for forged dog. Search around until you find it in a library somewhere, or pay some other chump to do it.

Tada, you have a formula!

Forged dog: a mechanical jaws, a metal body, a mechanical leg, a mechanical leg, a mechanical leg and a mechanical leg.

(worth noting, the construct formulae never change)

So now you need the formulae for mechanical legs, metal body, and mechanical jaws!

Metal body can be learnt in the Library of Artifice, because it's used in all constructs and is totally essential. Jaws and legs you'll have to research/pay someone else to research for.

But once you've got them, then you start gatherthing the resources needed.

Metal body: a gill of alchemist's oil, a lump of clay and a chunk of copper ore.
Mechanical jaws: a gill of enchanter's oil, a lump of sand and a chunk of tin ore.
Mechanical leg: a gill of alchemist's oil, a lump of sand and a chunk of tin ore.

You peruse your workbook.
OILS
Enchanter's oil: a sprig of chickweed, a lump of coal and a fox's tail.
Alchemist's oil: a lump of clay, a dandelion stem and a fox's tail.
Sorcerer's oil: a dandelion stem, a lump of sand and a piece of elf flesh.

(remember, you can learn all the oils in the Library of Artifice, lucky sods)

So to create Man's Best Metallic Friend, you will need to harvest:
6 lumps of clay
1 chunk of copper
5 lump of sand
5 chunks of tin
1 sprig of chickweed
1 lump of coal
6 dead foxes (preferably virgins) to complete the ritual of binding.
5 dandelion stems

Get these now. Brew all the oils you'll need, and then: 'fabricate mechanical leg' four times, 'fabricate metal body', 'fabricate mechanical jaws'.

It costs 25sp to fabricate a part, and you need to be carrying some tools and know the formula. Parts are weightless once you've made them, which helps when collecting because the raw ingredients certainly aren't.

Fabricating also increases your artifice, and if you're not a smither it's the best way to raise artifice at any speed - mass producing mechanical legs. You could probably sell them to other 'ficers too. Parts don't require concentration to fabricate.

Once you have all the parts in your inventory and a song in your heart, you can 'assemble forged dog'. It costs 50sp, and you need tools in your inventory, but you should now find yourself with a little robot pup! Awwe!

The higher your artifice, the more likely you'll 'skillfully' make a construct. This is vastly desired, as the quality you make the construct decides the stats and hp of the construct. A skillfully made centaur can wield ssm, a carefully made one can't. For some of the bigger constructs, it's best to be using things that increase your artifice ability.

Constructs require concentration - lots of concentration. 5 for a smither, 10 for a neutral and, oof, FIFTEEN for a spellcrafter.

Using constructs

Remember that I said constructs are unique? Well they are. And here is why.

1. They cannot be healed by any means other than repair
2. You can have 2 constructs at once. *grin*
3. Constructs will last the entire boot unless someone kills them.

1. means that if you're not a smithcrafter, don't ever let your constructs tank. For they will die, and leave nothing but whatever parts you can salvage from them (yes, when they die they leave spare parts). That doesn't mean constructs are useless for non-smithers - it just means they're limited to bashing and carrying. Watch out when ordering them to attack, as sometimes the enemy gets a free hit on them.

2. means. Well. It means constructs are REALLY COOL, that's what it means. But it makes playing them weird!

To command a construct, you can use command construct 1, command construct 2, and command all. Fairly obvious what these do, but it can be difficult getting a good alias system that works. The best way I've found is to command all for everything aside from rescuing, where I have a few set aliases for one to rescue the other or something else.

The commands a construct can use are similar to undead. Like the helpfile says

command : command
argument: {}
cost : none

Allows you to command your construct. Constructs will respond to the following commands:

Command	Description
follow {<person>}	follow that person (default is yourself)
stay	stop following
kill <creature>	attack that creature
stop	stop attacking
protect {<person>}	protect that person (default is yourself)
get <object>	get the object
drop <object>	drop the object
wield <object>	wield the object
unwield <object>	unwield the object

Note that constructs without arms will not be able to wield weapons.

In addition to this, you can drop 'loot' to drop everything but wielded weapons. Also worth making clear, with unwield you have to type the name of the object you want to unwield. To wield a weapon in the left hand, it's 'command wield weapon in left hand'.

Command all is a very powerful and versatile command, as you'll see. You can command all kill enemy, command all get all, command all get all from corpse, and a very fun one command all get (single object) - both constructs try to take the object, so if there are two maces lying on the ground both will take one. command all get all is very nice for weight management, because when one can't pick up everything, the other one will pick stuff up.

Be wary using command construct 1 and command construct 2 in aliases, since you could well be commanding construct 3 or construct 4 in the room if you're partying with another 'ficer. You can look at your own constructs using 'exa my construct', or 'command my construct 2 protect'. This way you won't end up dead because someone's forged bird is stopping you from being rescued.

3) Means that if you put a construct in a safe room when you log out, they'll still be there when you log back in. Awesome! You can spend the morning building a construct, go to work, and then come back in the evening and tear shit up.

Also different from undead - constructs are veeeery obedient. They will not rebel if you hit kill twice in a row accidentally, or use a dotimes protect. Not that a dotimes protect is needed since, and this is king, enemies won't turn on you during the middle of combat like they do with undead. If they're fighting a construct, they will STAY fighting the construct until someone else rescues. You may still need to watch out for intelligent monsters though.

Constructs do lose energy over time - you'll find them getting worse if they go a long time without having their chi or whatever rechi'd. To do this, 'unlatch' the hinge of your construct. This costs sp, more sp if you've let them charge down for a long time. Constructs fight better when fully charged, so always try to unlatch them after every fight.

Constructs are immune to a bunch of things that affect living beings - poison, necro rituals, fear, etc. They also follow in a very unique way, arriving in a room even before the 'ficer has got there almost. They will follow you anywhere, through anything, even breaking the laws of physics to get where their target is. So even though there is nothing to summon your construct to you, there doesn't NEED to be. Plus, you can get them to follow players other than you if you like!

Repair

Along with very cheap concentration costs for constructs, smithers also get the repair ability, which is love. For 50sp you heal a fair chunk of damage done to your construct. This means you can heal constructs when they get damaged, and therefore, you can use them to tank. Drool.

Constructs can take a fair bit of punishment before collapsing. They'll probably need a rescuing in a 9k fight, but with two constructs, you can take down most things without ever needing to step in yourself. Then it takes a couple of repairs to get a construct back up to full health (you can't repair mid fight), and then back to killing.

Anther good thing about repair is that using it increases your artifice ability. Purr. Increasing the ability by actually playing? Good stuff! Fabricating mechanical parts is the other good way of raising artifice.

Forging

By Forging I mean every skill that falls under craftsman - forging, smelting, crafting, and scrapping.

Forging

Forging is the act of making a piece of armour or a weapon out of unformed lumps of metal. It's a very useful skill, not only for getting weapons and armour, but also for getting initial exp as a 'ficer. You can forge 'for' specific players if they are in the room, and attempt to make a weapon suited for their skill. There are limitations to the minimum and maximum difficulty of weapon you can forge, however, which you can read about on the artificer weaponry page.

To forge you'll need:

• To be wielding a hammer
• To be next to a fire or an anvil
• To have a certain amount of metal in your inventory.
• Have a certain amount of sps

Okay, hammers - buy one at the 'ficer shop seems the easiest option. For a heatsource, try any campfire, or an anvil - currently there is one at 'ficers and one in Flaw's place. For the metal, here's the amount you need for different items:

Item	Amount		Item	Amount		Item	Amount
Longsword	4		Shortsword	3		Greatsword	5
Battleaxe	7		Axe	3		Wand	3
Staff	6		Hammer	3		Sabre	3
Rapier	3		Polearm	4		Knife	2
Flail	3		Spear	3		Scalpel	1

Item	Amount		Item	Amount		Item	Amount
Helm	3		Full-helm	5		Collar	2
Breastplate	3		Greaves	3		Vambraces	3
Gauntlets	2		Sabbatons	2		Platemail	9

Item	Amount		Item	Amount		Item	Amount
Buckler	2		Shield	5		Barding	13

So if you want a trillian platemail, you'll need 9 bit of trillian. Good luck with that. If you want a full suit, that's 18(!) bits of trillian.

The stronger the metal you make the item out of, the better the item will be. So, a lead armour will only ever reach very poor eval, while trillian can hit absolutely perfect. The sp needed to make the item is what I used to determine the quality of the alloy. The formula for sp used to forge an item is: 30 + (quality of metal * amount of metal used).

So, here is a list of all the metals from worst to best:

Metal	Quality	Eval at "Fine" quality
lead	1	very poor
zinc	2	poor
tin	3	serviceable
gold	3	serviceable
copper	3	serviceable
iron	3	serviceable
platinum	3	serviceable
bronze	4	serviceable
brass	4	serviceable
silver	4	serviceable
electrum	4	serviceable
steel	5	adequate
orichalcum	6	fine
mithril	7	very good
adamantite	7	very good
trillian	8	absolutely perfect

The other thing that will affect the end quality of the item is your craftsman ability. At 100, you should be 'skillfully' forging most of your items when before you were 'clumsily' or 'carefully' forging them, or just getting blobs of unrecognisable slag. Also in general, it's harder to skillfully make items with stronger alloys, or larger items, than smaller, low quality metals.

You get a good amount of exp for each weapon or armour forged. With the bigger alloys we're talking 1k-3k exp per piece. These items also sell for a lot, and provide good damage/damage protection. So this skill is one of the more essential skills to practice, and is a very nice way to level up your character in its early stages. If you intend to use the items, you can further spellforge them with extra abilities.

Note that if you're not a smithcrafter, you have to pay concentration per item. By destroying the item by scrapping it, you can keep your concentration high.

Crafting

Crafting allows you to turn 1 bit of metal into either a ring or an amulet, which you can further enchant with charms. Crafting costs 40sp and 1 concentration, and you need tools in your inv. The metal you make the amulet or ring out of is purely for aesthetic purposes - it won't affect the quality of the enchantment, and as far as I know the rings and amulets don't give any protection on their own. So, just buy a hunk of lead for 30 coins from the shop.

Smelting

Okay, to forge anything really cool, you'll want something stronger than just silver. You have to combine two or more raw materials to make one stronger alloy. Smelting is this process. To smelt, you need a fireplace or an anvil, a hammer, and 10sp to spare, and of course the formula for the alloy and all the resources needed to make it. It's impossible to fail smelting and it raises your craftsman skill, so that's pretty nice. You get some exp for it too.

The different alloys are:

Alloy	parts
Adamintite	silver, meteorite, iron, pitchblende
Brass	copper and zinc
Bronze	copper and tin
Electrum	silver and gold
Mithril	iron, silver, antimony, zinc
Orichalcum	copper, cinnibar, iron, zinc
Trillian	platinum, meteorite, iron, cinnabar

Scrapping

If you have 10sp and you're wielding a hammer, you can demolish an item, hopefully getting some usable metal from it. You can scrap any item, but only big metallic things will give you metal afterwards. You can increase your craftsman ability by scrapping too, which is very nice - make an item, scrap it, get the spare stuff, use it to make another item, scrap that, and so on for big craftsman gains.

There are some items that when scrapped give powerful alloys too. Here's a list of some of the ones I've found:

Star Armour - 1 trillian, 1 steel, 1 adamantite (per Lancaster, Feb 2015. 
      previously reported as 2 trillian, 2 adamantite, 2 iron)
Draqisfang - 1 trillian
Black Mithril Platemail - mithril
Great Mithril Axe - mithril
Mithril Boots - mithril
Armour of Ichor - mithril
Krakadoom - Adamantite

Disks from frost giant area are a very good source of gold 
Battered swords and rusted chainmails turn into good sources of iron! 
Crescent gets you 4 steel.

You can scrap your own constructs to salvage mechanical parts from them.

Shoeing

An artificer can work together with a ranger to make a pretty evil staff. First, get a ranger to cut you a staff - staff power does affect the overall strength. Then the 'ficer can shoe the staff with bands of metal, to make it do more damage.

The syntax is, 'shoe (staff) with (metal)'. You need 1 bit of the metal you want to use, and it costs 40sp. It doesn't take any concentration either.

The type of metal is important - a staff shod with trillian will do more damage than one shod with lead. The staff will stay the same difficulty as when it was first cut, but will do more damage per hit.

Spellforging

You learn spellforging at level 14, or 12 if you're a smithcrafter.

Spellforging is the act of enchanting the weapons you forged with extra powers. For instance, pour some oil on the blade, and sacrifice a duck with a pointy ruby, and your sword will hit for more damage. Useful, every day stuff like that.

Spellforging costs 100sp, and only works on forged items. So no, you can't enchant a random sword with extra abilities I'm afraid. Still, if you make a very big powerful battleaxe, you're probably going to want to crank up its power even more.

To spellforge, wield/wear the item, and then type 'spellforge (insert item name here) of (insert enchantment here)'. You'll need to know the formula for the spellforge and have all the ingredients. It's pretty simple. The difficult bit is making things well. The only way to raise spellforging is to spellforge - meaning you have to shell out 100sp and an oil and other things 23489432092 times to reach 100 spellforging. Still, worth it for the big weapons of mastery and power.

Okay, with weapons, you can get two main types of enchantment - skill plusses to your weapons, and damage plusses. There is also a (weapon) of power, which gives both a skill plus and a damage plus, very nice.

For armour, you have a choice of cold resistance, fire resistance, and physical resistance plusses. You have a bunch of shield enchantments which can make some REALLY nice shields. You also have helm of brilliance, which gives light when worn (lame), and gauntlets of the dualist, which increases your TWO WEAPON SKILL when worn (dude, guh).

You also have for practically everything, foos of lightness. These lower the weights of your weapons and armour. Quite nice for armour - you can turn an 18 weight full suit of armour into 14 (still twice as heavy as star armour though *duck*). And it will allow you to dual wield your weapons more effectively *drool* - you could even dual wield 2 hammers of lightness for an effective club dual wield.

It takes concentration to maintain an enchantment, on top of what you're already maintaining. 2 for smithers, 4 for neutral, and 6(!) for spellfags. This means for one spellforged item, a spellcrafter has to put in 8 conc. Ouch.

For a full list of items, try um. Here?

Also, a note about hammers. Any skill plus enchantments on hammers will increase your craftsman ability by the same amount, too. This is desirable for making good stuff, but slows down ability raising.

Oh, yeah. One spellforge per item, no more. Sorry.

Scrolls & Runes

The rune lore ability is learnt at level 4, and it allows the creation of scrolls and the enscribing of runes. It costs 25sp enscribe and 30sp to pen, and you need the formula and the required chalk/ink (and you can't make the required chalk/ink for most until you hit level 7). They require concentration - 2 for neutrals, 4 for smithcrafters *wince* and.. woo! None for spellsmithers. Since the inks and chalks and paper needed for them are weightless, these things are IDEAL for a spellsmith to use in bulk.

Scrolls

To 'pen' a scroll, you need the formula, the correct colour ink, and, oof, the paper. The formula you find in libraries, the ink you brew or buy, but the paper you HAVE to buy. The 'ficer store sells paper, but since they have the monopoly on it, they're gonna make you pay huge amounts for a scrap of papyrus. The paper is weightless, and doesn't cut into your money THAT much when you're bigger - think of them in comparison to necro oils and you'll see - but when you're levelling this is going to be a big money drain to train up rune lore.

Scrolls weigh 1 bottle, but the materials are weightless, so cart around a bunch of them and pen them when needed. To use a scroll, you just 'read' it. Be warned, in some rooms you'll have to drop all your scrolls and pick them up again to use them, just because something in the room also uses the 'read' command. Scrolls are penned with multiple charges - you can use the scroll that many times, before the scroll crumbles to dust. If you move while reading you'll stop, the same if you move the scroll. You also can't read another scroll or wave a wand while reading.

The scrolls you can get your hands on do all sorts of fun things. There are damage scrolls you read in combat, scrolls that increase stats, skills, and abilities, scrolls that increase your resistances, and scrolls that teleport you about the place like a crazed grasshopper. For a full list, check this out.

When levelling up, I invested heavily in damage scrolls, and it paid out. Even when using my smithcrafter I'll spend 4 conc per damage scroll. Even with the high price, they give such good value for sp/damage.

You need rune lore to read scrolls, and your rune lore ability affects not only how well you make the scrolls, but how fast you read them. Get the ability over 100 and you should be reading once every one or two rounds, which makes a big difference with the damage scrolls.

Scrolls aren't damaged by water any more thank god, but fire will still damage them - you'll find yourself losing charges on all the scrolls in your inventory when hit by fire.

Runes

Runes are 'enscribe'd on the floor of the room you're in. Anyone can enter them and use them, but only 'ficers can actually see what they are. Runes are split into three types.

• Wards - Protective runes, enter these and you'll get some form of protection depending on what the rune is.
• Glyphs - Damaging runes, enter these and type 'activate glyph' to shoot a small damage dealer to your enemy. Available in fire, cold, and pointed flavours! Long recharge time between shots, but infinite shots until they wear away.
• Traps - When anyone who isn't the maker enters a room with one of these in, it will trigger the effect. I will come back to these.

You can put three runes in a room before you've used up the floor. You can only be in one rune at a time, but it does allow you to set three glyphs up against an enemy and shoot them off one after the other.

The use of runes if you're a smithcrafter seems pretty unlikely due to the high concentration cost, but as a spellsmith they could be very useful. Throw down extra protection for your tank (the racial wards are very powerful - they give a noticeable difference to your defence!), put down glyphs before killing for extra damage, easy healing. All chalks are weighless, so stock up and enscribe away.

You can 'erase' runes to get rid of them, and they wear out over time.

Okay, now, traps. Watch out with traps. There is a high chance of killing people with them. If someone enters a room with a trap, they have one round to leave before the trap fires. It won't do much damage but it never misses, and it has an infinite number of charges until the trap finally wears away or is erased by an angry person. So, practically no chance of escape. They are logged as player attacks too. Don't put them down, at all. Ever. For serious.

Possible uses for traps: I really can't think of any other than to annoy people. The damage isn't good enough for pk thank god, and people will erase them if they get hit by them. One thing you could try is putting cold traps in a bunch of rooms in frost giant area. Every time the frost giants move, they'll get hit by the traps and you get a small bit of exp (you get the exp even if you're not in the room). But since they're cold, you won't do them any damage and so can continue harvesting exp remotely. Or, you could use fire traps and harvest all their eq! Of course, no player is going to like that and will angrily erase all your traps if you tried this, 'cause the area is a deathtrap already without taking damage every room.

Wands

Wands are the other things you can enchant. You need to be level 14, or level 12 if you're a spellcrafter. It costs 100sp to enchant a wand, and when enchanted it gives it several charges of an ability, be it damage dealing, healing, or something else. Spellcrafters can also 'recharge' wands to replenish their charges, and it's this that makes wands powerful.

Okay, you first need an artificer-made wand. It doesn't matter what material you make the wand out of for the enchantment, but it will make a difference if you plan to fight with the wand. Since you need to be wielding the wand to wave it, you'd probably want to make it out of steel or silver to do some actual damage with it while waving - or have some very good unwield-wield actual weapon aliases.

Okay, back to making. You need 100sp, you have to be wielding an unenchanted 'ficer-made wand, you need to know the formula and have the ingredients. Then type 'enchant wand of floobedoobedoo'. Tada! Wandness.

It takes concentration to maintain an enchantment on a wand - 6 for a smither, 4 for a neutral, and 2 for a spellcrafter. This is true even when the wand has spent all its charges. You can't 're-enchant' a wand, so if you can't recharge a wand just toss it so it's not eating up your concentration with no use, or get a friend to recharge. Wands typically come with about 7 charges. As you can imagine, the cost to make a decent wand far outweighs the power of the 7 charges you get with it, and wands are pretty useless. UNLESS, that is, you're a spellcrafter and can 'recharge' a wand!

You can add more charges to a wand, up to its maximum (again, around 7). You can do this as many times as you like, without the wand straining or exploding. Recharging will even increase your staves & wands ability, meaning you can gain staves & wands by actually using the wands. This makes a spellfag's wands on par in power to a smither's constructs. The cost for recharging depends on the number of charges given to the wand by the recharge.

It's best to make a wand as well as you possibly can, because it's not going to change from that level. So in some cases, making the rare damage dealers is going to be worse than the medium damage dealers - while they can do about twice as much damage, they're almost always going to be made clumsilly, and therefore do less damage. The best thing to do is to make an Amulet of the enchanter before making a rare wand.

Once you have a wand, to use it you have to wield it, and 'wave wand' to do the effect on yourself, or on the enemy if you're in combat and it's a damage wand, and 'wave wand at foo' to do the effect on foo. It should take 1-3 rounds to come through, depending on your staves & wands ability (so non-'ficers using a wand will have a much harder time with it than 'ficers). You can't read or wave another wand while you're waving, and if you leave the room or move the wand you stop waving.

Only artificers can wave wands, so don't be fooled into buying one from someone if you can't use them!

Credits

Written by the awesome Smithers Updated previously by Sirpsycho Source: https://sites.google.com/site/artificerguide/