Crafting

**Crafting** in *Stellar Tactics* will allow you to create powerful **equipment for your crew** and **ship equipment**. Each crafted item requires components salvaged from similar equipment of the same quality tier. Crafted items are significantly better than looted items and depending on the item type you can choose (or re-roll) what you need, e.g. which **stat** bonuses are on **body armor**. For some items, it's the only way to get certain possibilities, e.g. looted big guns like plasma streamers, flamers, miniguns and rocket launchers always have 1 ammo. Crafted ones can have up to 5 ammo.

## Prerequisites

To craft anything, you'll need a blueprint (schematic), some materials and a crafting table.

Crafting tables can be found on all stations in space or on planets - provided your reputation with the **faction** of the system is at least wary. Just move next to it and click it.

A crafting table is shown as a wrench and a screwdriver on the radar (see image to the right).

## Salvaging

Crafting requires the disassembly of items you find in your travels. When salvaging, you learn about the items you are disassembling and eventually, you earn a schematic so you can craft that item.

*Salvaging*: Process items found in your travels into component parts for crafting.

* You must mark items in your inventories (CTRL-Click - General/Stash/Cargo Hold).
* Once items are marked, you can access the salvage toolbox from the inventory menu via an icon above the general inventory.
* Junk items generate finishing materials used in the crafting finish process.
* Weapons, armor and other items that can be equipped generate primary crafting components (item parts).
* Salvaged items are placed in a separate infinite inventory. This inventory feeds the crafting bench and parts are automatically placed on the crafting table.
* As you salvage items, you will earn experience towards unlocking a schematic for that item. At times you may even gain experience towards the next tier schematic.
* The higher your skill in salvaging, the more components you get when salvaging an item. In some cases, you may be able to salvage enough components to build several items of a similar type.

## Schematics (Blueprints)

A schematic is needed to craft an item of a certain quality. Schematics can be found in loot or learned by salvaging items. The chance to find a schematic can be increased with some **perks** in the salvaging perk line. Each loot has a small chance to contain a schematic. Containers or loot dropped by enemies during **ground combat** have the chance to give weapon/mod/shield/body armor schematics, while loot from **destroyed space ships** has a chance to drop schematics for **ship equipment**.

Alternatively, you can learn schematics by salvaging. Each salvaged item (CTRL-click items in the backpack or cargo storage to mark them for salvaging) raises the exp in a schematic until it is completely learned. However, each item has the chance to increase the schematic EXP for the next tier of that item (e.g. salvaging an exceptional targeting computer might give EXP towards rare targeting computer schematic). The higher the quality tier, the more EXP in a schematic is necessary to learn it.

It takes about 2-3 hours starting with a basic schematic to learn the exceptional and rare versions by crafting and subsequent salvaging.

Hint: When you try to learn a next tier schematic by crafting/salvaging it's reasonable to NOT choose crafting perks for the item type you're crafting, to ignore positive and negative effects during crafting and not to assign any finishing points, because the less AP you have, the less clicks per crafted item are needed. You simply want the item as fast and cheap as possible, because it doesn't matter, if it's good or bad if it's salvaged anyways.

## Materials

There are four types of materials: item parts, **refined ore**, **rare earth minerals** and finishing items.

### Item Parts

Item parts can only be acquired by salvaging items. Item parts have quality tiers (basic, exceptional, rare, legendary and epic) and can only be acquired by salvaging items of the same type and quality, i.e. to get parts for rare mining lasers, rare mining lasers have to be salvaged. However, there's a chance to get item parts of one quality level above the quality level of the salvaged item, i.e. when salvaging a rare mining laser, there's a chance, that a random item part for a legendary mining laser is salvaged.

### Finishing Items

Finishing items can only be acquired by salvaging items, primarily junk items. However, each item has a chance to drop finishing items, when being salvaged.

### Refined Ore and Rare Earth Minerals

**Refined ore and rare earth minerals** can either be obtained by **mining** or bought via the **trade-net**. More precisely, mining gives raw ore and rare earth minerals. Raw ore has to be **refined** using a refinery (equipped on the hardware mount of your **ship**). Alternatively, raw ore can be bought via the trade-net and then refined by yourself, this is a little cheaper than directly buying refined ore. However, the time to refine the ore has to be invested.

## Crafting

Once you unlock a schematic, you can craft the item.

Crafting requires a number of items:

* (Required) Item parts of the same quality tier salvaged from a similar item
* (Required in cargo hold or station storage) Refined ore. You can **mine** ore and refine the ore, or purchase from the **Trade-Net**
* (Optional in cargo hold or station storage) Rare earth minerals to clear conditions. You can mine ore or purchase from the Trade-Net
* (Optional in cargo hold or station storage) Finishing items salvaged from junk and rewarded during salvaging of equipment

Rare earth minerals and finishing items are optional, however, they are very important and you could end up with a sub-par item if you do not have any on hand when crafting.

To craft an item, travel to any trade station and look for a crafting station. Crafting stations have a unique icon on the radar and map.

### The Crafting Screen

In the upper left corner, the character, who is selected for crafting is shown. You can click the portrait of the char to make that char your dedicated crafter. A dedicated crafter is indicated by a green check mark. The number and bar under the name of the character is his/her crafting level including the progression towards the next skill level. The icons to the far left are filters for your available schematics. The list to the upper left (SCHEMATICS) shows the available schematics (blueprints) in the selected filter. The list to the lower left (RESOURCES) shows the available item parts in the selected filter. The screen to the right is black, until you start crafting. It will show the data of the crafted item. In the middle you can find the main screen, this will be described in the next paragraph. Furthermore, in the main screen there's the button to start the crafting process (the screw icon), if you have all necessary materials or if you don't have the necessary materials there's a remark, that you do not have all of the resources required to craft this schematic.

### The Main Screen (in the middle)

In the top of the main screen, there's the quality bar, the available action points and the gathered finishing points. Depending on the chosen item, the quality bar is divided into 4 or 5 milestones (represented by the vertical lines). I'll explain the milestones later.

Below the action points are the materials, which are potentially needed including how many are available. The materials are: item parts (the bigger icons in the first row), refined ores, rare earth minerals and finishing items.

Below the materials some extra options might be shown. This depends on the selected schematic. In the example screenshot above, it's a rare turret schematic so there's the possibility to select the ship type for which the turret is for, the turret mount (light/heavy) and the turret type (laser, ion, plasma, gauss, laserbeam, ionbeam, plasmabeam). For other schematics, this might be the required weapon skill, the beam type (for beam weapons) or for some mods the weapon type the mod is for.

### The Crafting Process

If you have all the needed materials, you can start the crafting process by clicking the screw icon (**!No materials are used at this point, you can still cancel the process without losing any materials!**)

#### Preparation Phase

After clicking the screw icon, there's a preparation phase. In this phase, information on the crafted item are shown in the right panel. You may need to adjust a few initial values before you start crafting. For example, when crafting a weapon, make sure to set the correct weapon skill level before selecting the begin crafting button. When crafting an item for your ship, make sure the correct ship is selected.

In the example to the right, a rare heavy ion beam for a Basilisk CG-1 is crafted.

If there's the option to re-roll, attributes can be re-rolled without any costs as often as you like by clicking the icon with the three arrows arranged in a circle. However, some item types have fixed attributes, so there'll be no re-roll icon. The process can still be cancelled by selecting another schematic or closing the screen, without losing any materials. If you're satisfied with the item and attributes, the actual crafting process can be started by clicking the wrench icon next to "assembly and conditions". Still, no materials are used up to this point.

#### Crafting

Each click on the wrench icon uses one action point. By each click, there's a chance, that the quality will go up (quality can't go down). Additionally, there's the chance that negative effects (red color) will be activated or you have the chance to activate positive effects (blue color). A positive effect called "easy assembly" can be activated in the image below.

The number in the positive effect's icon shows, how many actions it is available to be activated or for negative effects, how many actions it still applies. To activate a positive effect, click it. However, one rare earth is needed (gadolinium in the shown example) for its activation. Negative effects apply automatically for the indicated amount of actions, but they can be cleared by clicking on them. This costs one rare earth mineral as well. Information on the effects and the needed rare earth mineral are shown in the mouse-overs. **As long as you don't click an effect and you don't reach the first milestone (remember: the vertical lines in the quality bar), you still did not use any material in the crafting process!**

An example for a negative effect can be found below.

* Crafting - Positive Effect
* Crafting - Negative Effect

#### Milestones

When the first milestone is reached, some finishing points are granted and the first item part and the first ore are used, which is indicated by darker icons:

Furthermore, each milestone grants another attribute, that can be increased in the finishing phase (see in the following paragraph). You can click the wrench icon until the quality bar is full or all action points are used. Either way, one unit of each item part will be used. In contrast, the usage of refined ore solely depends on the reached milestones, i.e. if only one milestone is reached, only one unit of the first refined ore will be used. If two milestones are reached, one unit of the first and the second refined ore will be used, etc.

#### Finishing Phase

In the finishing phase, the acquired finishing points can be used to increase certain attributes. However, the increase of most attributes is capped, e.g. the maximum increase is 5. The available attributes, which can be increased depend on the reached milestones:

An example with two milestones reached (only "Range" and "Capacitor use" can be increased, only the first and the second refined ore are used) and one example with all four milestones reached ( "Range", "Capacitor use", "Energy use" and "Reload speed" can be increased and all four refined ores are used) can be found below.

* Crafting - Finishing Phase with 2 Milestones Reached
* Crafting - Finishing Phase with 4 Milestones Reached

When you are satisfied with your distribution of the finishing points, you have to click the "Finish crafting" button in the lower right. The item will be placed in your backpack or cargo storage.

## To Skill Crafting

With a salvaging skill level of 25 and a schematic (the higher the quality, the faster you'll skill, e.g. rare targeting computer), you can quite easy skill crafting. You only need item parts for about 5 items and refined ore to start the skilling cycle. No rare earth mineral and finishing items are needed.

Generally speaking, you simply craft. However, you don't need to activate positive effects or deactivate negative effects and you don't need to apply any finishing points. Choose all salvaging **perks**, that reduce the salvaging failure chance (at level 25 it's only "Not an option" from level 10). When salvaging, use the option to the left with the lowest salvaging failure chance, so you get as many item parts back as possible. Thanks to the salvaging perk at level 25, you have an 85% chance to get 1-3 of each item part per salvaged item, i.e. statistically, you get more item parts back than the crafting of the item required. Therefore, you can use the excess parts to craft items for sale if you like. However, this pays off for ship equipment only. Alternatively, you can use the excess item parts for salvaging with other salvaging options to increase skill gain in salvaging or more schematics-EXP. You have the chance to gain experience towards the next quality tier schematic of that item, e.g. by salvaging exceptional fists you have the chance to gain experience towards rare fists schematic. However, quite a lot are needed to learn a full schematic of the next tier, with each tier more are needed of course.

As a nice side-effect you also skill salvaging when you skill crafting. And just to stress it again: the higher the quality, the higher the EXP-gain in crafting and salvaging. So try to craft high quality tier items (basic < exceptional < rare < legendary < epic).