Upcoming Crafting XP changes - AMA

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Crafting XP rebalance - Core philosophy

• Will crafting XP be directly proportional to the total material cost of a recipe (including sub-components like charcoal, oil, padding, etc.)?

Yes. At a high level, crafting XP now closely tracks the true cost of a recipe, including sub-components and intermediary materials. If a recipe is expensive to make, whether because it requires rare materials, multiple steps, or significant preparation, it should feel meaningfully rewarding in XP. The goal here is simple: if you invest more resources, you should get more progress in return.

One important consequence of this approach is that many sub-component crafts now grant less XP than before, while the final recipe that consumes those components grants significantly more XP. In practice, this means that when you craft all the required sub-components and complete the final combine, the total XP earned across the entire crafting chain is, in almost all cases, higher than it was previously.

Blacksmithing is the main exception to this rule. A large portion of Blacksmithing progression is built around intermediary and sub-component crafting rather than final combines, and those steps are intentionally meant to be meaningful progression points on their own. As a result, expensive Blacksmithing sub-components still provide strong XP returns, ensuring that the profession retains its established leveling flow and remains rewarding even when focused heavily on component production.

This shift overall helps reduce situations where optimal leveling involves endlessly crafting intermediaries in most professions, while still fully rewarding players who engage with deeper, multi-step recipes.

• Are you using a formula-based XP system where each ingredient has an XP value that adds up for each recipe?

Yes, with an important nuance.

XP is calculated using a formula in which materials contribute value, but those values are weighted differently by profession. For example, tailoring components translate very efficiently into XP for Tailoring, but contribute proportionally less XP when used in professions like Armorsmithing.

This approach lets us better balance progression across professions without having to completely redesign every recipe’s ingredient list. It gives us consistency and flexibility, while still respecting the identity and economy of each craft.

• Is there a target “XP per resource” consistency across professions, or are some intended to be slower/more resource-intensive?

We’ve worked to bring professions closer together in terms of the overall effort required to level, especially where there were large outliers before. That said, not every profession is meant to feel identical.

Some crafts are intentionally more demanding to progress. The goal isn’t perfect uniformity, but fairness, predictability, and clearer tradeoffs.

• Will XP changes be retroactive for existing crafters, or will there be a one-time adjustment/bump?

This is a very fair question, but unfortunately, no. There’s no reliable way to retroactively calculate XP under the new system without making assumptions that would be inaccurate or unfair

• Will simpler/low-cost recipes keep their current XP, or will they be reduced to discourage mass-crafting trivial items?

In almost all cases, they will keep their current XP.

Our approach wasn’t to broadly nerf cheap recipes, but instead to anchor XP expectations around leveling recipes that players are already familiar with and comfortable using. From there, more expensive recipes scale upward much more aggressively.

It’s also worth noting that some of those anchor recipes, especially at higher tiers, actually received XP increases. In a few professions, the late-stage leveling grind had simply become too punishing relative to the materials invested, and we felt that bringing those anchors up was necessary to keep progression reasonable and motivating.

The result is that high-cost and rare-material recipes now grant significantly more XP than before, while familiar leveling paths largely remain intact. There are a few outliers in each profession where low-cost recipes grant less XP than before, but these are the exception, not the rule.

• Will the XP penalty on failed crafts be reduced or removed?

Great question. Yes, we do intend to reduce this penalty. However, this change won’t be part of the initial Public Test Server release. We want to first validate the new XP balance as a whole before adjusting failure penalties on top of it, but this is very much on our radar.

• Will crafting recipes clearly display expected XP rewards in advance?

This is something we’ve actively discussed. For now, we’re going to closely watch player feedback before committing to displaying this information on the recipes. Our hope is that the new balance builds enough trust and intuition that players feel confident making crafting decisions without needing to see exact numbers.

The underlying rule should become easy to internalize: Expensive recipes give a lot more XP, and recipes using rare ingredients give even more on top of that.

If that expectation isn’t landing clearly in practice, we’re open to revisiting how XP information is surfaced.

Mass crafting & leveling efficiency issues

• Will the rebalance remove the current incentive to mass-craft gloves/shoes/shoulder pads as the fastest leveling method?

Largely, yes. Because XP now scales much more directly with total material cost, the advantage of repeatedly crafting the cheapest viable item in a tier has been significantly reduced. Those recipes are still perfectly valid for progression, but they’re no longer disproportionately efficient compared to more complex crafts.

The intent is that players can choose what to craft based on usefulness or preference, rather than feeling forced into a narrow set of “XP-optimal” items.

• Will complex items (e.g. chest pieces, breastplates) now grant meaningfully more XP than simple ones?

Yes. Items that require more materials, more steps, or rarer inputs now grant substantially more XP. In many cases, complex items grant dramatically more XP than before, reflecting both their cost and their place in the crafting ecosystem.
If a recipe feels like a serious investment, it should also feel like a serious step forward in progression.

• Will all recipes within a level range provide viable XP, instead of having clear “fast tracks”?

That’s the goal. While there will always be some variance, the rebalance is designed so that most recipes within a given level range provide reasonable and competitive XP. Players shouldn’t feel like there’s only one correct recipe per tier to avoid wasting time or materials.

• Will green and blue items grant significantly more XP than grey items?

Yes. Recipes that produce higher-quality items naturally involve greater cost and risk, and the XP now reflects that. Green and blue crafts grant noticeably more XP than grey equivalents, reinforcing the idea that taking on more demanding recipes should be rewarded accordingly.

For example, Herald’s Plates of the Ironroot II now grants dramatically more XP across all quality tiers. The common version yields roughly 670% more XP than before, while crafting the uncommon (green) version grants about 150% more XP than the common, and the rare (blue) version grants roughly 350% more XP than the common. All of these XP increases derive from the value of the rare ingredients used in the higher-quality recipes.

• Will there be profession XP for repairing items?

No. Repairs are a maintenance activity, not a progression path.

Recycling/salvaging

• Will there be a system to recycle/salvage crafted items?

Yes, we’re planning this, but it’s not ready to share yet. Systems like recycling, partial material returns, or Grace-related interactions have wide-reaching implications, so we want to introduce them with clear goals and proper context. We’ll share more details when it’s ready, and at that point, we’ll be looking for player feedback.

Bulk crafting & Quality of Life

• Will there be:
  • Quantity selectors at crafting benches?
  • Bulk crafting for mastered recipes/components?
• Will crafting stations get:
  • “Take All” buttons?
  • “Craft All” options?
  • Cancel buttons?
  • Default recipe selections per station?

These features are not part of the upcoming update, but we hear the request loud and clear.
Bulk crafting and core crafting QoL improvements like quantity selectors, “take all” / “craft all” buttons and cancel options are things we very much want to add. We’ll share more when these are ready to be discussed in concrete terms.

Recipe changes & progression

• Are recipes themselves changing, or only XP values?

Primarily XP values. The focus of this update is on rebalancing crafting XP rather than a broad redesign of recipes. That said, there are a small number of targeted recipe adjustments where they were clearly necessary to support the new balance.

• Will recipe levels shift (e.g. gloves lower, chest higher)?

Yes, in a targeted and intentional way. We adjusted recipe levels in Armorsmithing, Tailoring, and Leatherworking so that at most points in progression, you have access to a wider variety of equipment slots, not just gloves or boots, but also chest pieces, helmets, pants, and more.

We also reduced the level gap between common, uncommon, and rare versions of the same recipe, especially at higher tiers. In Tier 1, this works largely the same as before, but by Tier 4, the uncommon and rare variants sit much closer in level to the common version, making higher-quality crafts accessible earlier and more consistently.

This isn’t a full re-tiering of all recipes, but a focused pass to improve progression flow and reduce dead zones where only a narrow set of crafts felt viable.

• Will any recipes move to higher levels, causing players to lose access temporarily?

Yes, in some cases. Many recipes have moved to slightly higher or lower levels as part of the broader effort to improve progression flow and slot variety across professions. We know this can be frustrating, and we didn’t make these changes lightly, but they were necessary to achieve the goals outlined above.

We hope that the overall XP rebalance, improved rewards for expensive and complex crafts, and a smoother leveling experience more than make up for these adjustments, and that crafting as a whole feels better and more enjoyable than before. We’re asking for a bit of forgiveness on this one, and we’ll be watching feedback closely.

• Will trivial/unused recipes be removed or reworked?

Not as part of this update. The professions targeted in this first XP balance pass don’t have many truly trivial or unused recipes, so removing or reworking them wasn’t a priority here. Even niche recipes often serve a purpose in the broader system, and we didn’t want to remove content as part of an XP-focused rebalance.

This kind of cleanup is more relevant for some of the other professions coming later, where those issues are more pronounced. There was one exception: the steel anvil recipe, which was available due to a bug and has been removed.

• Will recipes better match material acquisition difficulty and biome danger?

Yes, indirectly. Because XP now scales with material cost and rarity, recipes that require materials from more dangerous biomes or harder-to-access sources naturally grant more XP. This creates a stronger link between risk, effort, and reward without requiring large-scale recipe restructuring.

• Will inconsistencies like low-level recipes requiring high-level materials be fixed?

Yes. We addressed these inconsistencies as part of this pass for the professions in question. The other professions will follow.

Profession balance & interdependencies

• Why are so many parts centralized in Blacksmithing, causing progression imbalance?
• Will Armor/Weapon Smithing get missing components to progress properly?

Blacksmithing is intentionally a foundational profession that produces many shared components.

The XP rebalance directly addresses the resulting progression dynamics by ensuring Armorsmithing and Weaponsmithing recipes now grant strong, competitive XP that reflects their true material cost.

• How will XP rebalance affect:
  • Jewelcrafting?
  • Professions that share materials (silver, gold, iron)?

It won’t be part of this first pass.
Jewelcrafting is not included in the initial crafting XP rebalance, but it is planned for a future update. We wanted to focus this pass on a smaller set of professions and do the work thoroughly rather than spreading changes too thin.
We’ll share more details once Jewelcrafting is up next.

• Will there be adjustments to prevent power creep from enchanted + mastercrafted gear?

The current PvE balance already accounts for the headroom created by Mastercrafted Item Power bonuses. We’ll continue to reevaluate this as systems evolve, especially as we move toward finalizing the consumables revamp.
Our goal is to ensure that exceptional gear feels rewarding without becoming mandatory.

Economy, market health & demand

• How do you envision crafting professions remaining economically viable when everyone can craft everything early/mid game?
• Will recipes be reworked to ensure sellable items at all levels?

Crafting professions aren’t intended to be economically equal at every stage of progression. Early and mid-game access is meant to support self-sufficiency and experimentation, not to fully define long-term market value.

Lower-tier items are intended to have economic relevance, but we agree that the current sinks for them aren’t strong enough. We have plans to address this and give those items clearer purpose and demand, but those changes aren’t ready to be shared in detail.

Over time, economic viability is expected to emerge from specialization, time investment, mastery, access to higher-tier recipes and materials, and exceptional outcomes like Master Crafting. As progression deepens, the gap between “can craft” and “can craft well and consistently” becomes increasingly important.

In short, early accessibility supports gameplay flow, while sustained economic value comes from expertise, scarcity, and reliability—not just recipe unlocks.

• Are there plans for:
  • Specializations?
  • Higher profession caps?

Yes. We’re planning to have specializations within each profession, allowing crafters to focus on specific areas and differentiate themselves meaningfully. Alongside that, we’re working on ways for specialized crafters to push their capabilities beyond the base profession cap.

We’re not adding additional tiers just yet. The priority is making the existing progression, recipes, and systems feel great first before expanding outward.

• Will consumables (oils, kits, buffs) be added to create ongoing demand?

Yes, that’s the plan. Expanding and improving consumables is a key part of creating sustained demand, and this work primarily affects the next set of professions we’ll be focusing on. We’ll share more once those changes are ready to be discussed in detail.