Research

Research is used to unlock new gathering options, crafting recipes, and construction blueprints. One Advancement Point is used for most unlocks (with a few requiring two or three). The available research options are arranged into three tech trees.

Spending these Advancement Points wisely is crucial, because if you make a mistake you may end up crafting items you do not need to get an Advancement Point, or re-sending an expedition for a material that will help you get that point, which in both situations would be a waste of time.

## Advancement Points

Whenever a player fills research experience circle, they get an Advancement Point and can spend it to unlock new crafts, buildings, or materials. The required amount of research experience to get another Advancement Point increases with each point earned.

A small amount of research experience is gained from quests and challenges, but it is mostly generated by completing craft or construction projects. It is represented as research experience circle. Each task has additional information about how much research experience it will provide, and that value depends on the rarity of the material used in production.

At some point in game you may find yourself lacking advancement points to unlock new recipes or resources. In that case you may either wait for your characters to earn more research points via events or grind some research with your crafters. Both crafting items and constructing buildings provide significant amount of research points, however it is more efficient to craft items. There are two reasons for that:

* Crafting items generally provide more research points per spent labor (per gathering points, spent to obtain materials, and crafting points, spent to produce item)
* You can queue items to be crafted an infinite number of times. You can only queue buildings up to the number of empty building slots you have, forcing you to manually destroy and re-queue them.

What items to craft is a more complex question. The choice will be significantly influenced by materials, which are available nearby, and by unlocked technologies. Basically, crafting Clothes, Clubs and 1-handed swords are safe choices. You may use any materials, but it is better to avoid crafting with the lowest tier material as they usually produce very little research points. There are certain exceptions to this rule, like Mace for example, which is made of  steel and  leather, but is very research-efficient. Anyway, if you want to find an item, which is best for your current situation, you should do some research yourself. The data on research efficiency is available in this spreadsheet.

## Researching Gathering

Researching a new material in the Gathering tech tree gives the player 5 units of that material and allows gathering of that material. Top-tier materials like Dragon bone, Moonstone, Mithrill and others are not visible on the map until researched.

It is *not* necessary to research a material in order to be able to craft and build with it. So if you find some units of an advanced material you did not unlock, by all means use it right away, though be careful--you won't be able to *gather* more until you unlock that material in the Gathering research tab.

## Tech Trees

Each indentation level indicates a prerequisite. For example, Leather is a prerequisite for both Fur Leather and Scaled Leather. Scaled Leather is in turn a prerequisite for Dragon Leather.

### Gathering

*Main article: Gathering*

	+ Monster Bone - 1 AP
		- Enchanted Bone - 1 AP
		- Dragon Bone - 3 AP
	+ Clay - 1 AP
	+ Quartz - 1 AP
		- Granite - 1 AP
		- Obsidian - 2 AP
 Gems
 * Amber - 1 AP
	+ Malachite - 1 AP
		- Topaz - 1 AP
		- Ruby - 1 AP
			* Diamond - 2 AP
	+ Cane - 1 AP
	+ Wicker - 1 AP
 Leather
 * Leather - 0 AP
	+ Fur Leather - 1 AP
	+ Scaled Leather - 2 AP
		- Dragon Leather - 2 AP
	+ Vine - 1 AP
 Metal
 * Iron - 0 AP
	+ Steel - 1 AP
	+ Gold - 1 AP
	+ Silver - 2 AP
		- Mithrill - 3 AP
	+ Dark Wood - 1 AP
	+ Elven Wood - 1 AP
		- Dryad Wood - 1 AP
		- Ancient Wood - 2 AP

### Crafting

*Main article: Crafting*

	+ Shields - 1 AP
	+ Medium armours - 1 AP
	+ Heavy armours - 2 AP
	+ Roasted Meals - 1 AP
 * Jewellery - 1 AP
	+ Artifacts - 1 AP
 * 1-Handed Swords - 1 AP
	+ 2-Handed Swords - 1 AP
 * Clubs - 1 AP
	+ War Hammers - 1 AP
	+ Pikes - 2 AP

### Construction

*Main article: Construction*

	+ Cabbage Field - 1 AP
	+ Herbalists Hut - 1 AP
	+ Totem - 1 AP
 * Watchtower - 1 AP
	+ Palisade - 2 AP
		- Blessed Paths - 1 AP
	+ Barracks - 1 AP
		- Archery Range - 1 AP
	+ Manger - 1 AP
	+ Meeting Hall - 1 AP