Crafting (Viking)

Crafting is an utility skill which allows the character to create weapons. Combined with the utility skills of armoursmithing and artisan, you can create armor and improve the odds that they gain special properties. All three skills can be used at a campsite when you assign a character during one shift to craft something.
You need at least rank three crafting to have access to artisan and rank 1 crafting to make armour, whereas the crafting skill doesn't have any requirements. Since the total sum of skill points is 115 to have all 12 ranks in all three utility skills, its recommended that a camper, a hirdmember who specialised in utility skills, should gain all ranks in all three skills.

## The crafting skills

This table gives information what you can do with these three skills and how much skill points you have to spend to gain a rank and all ranks of every utility skill.

## Crafting armor and weapons

In this section, you will more information about crafting weapons and armor. The first to subjects are about armor and helmets. The other subsections will be about weapons in alphabetical order.

### Armor

Body armor has four items ranks, cloth, leather, lammelar and chain mail with a limit of hides of 20, 40, 60 and 80 respectively. Whenever you increase the rank, the armor gains 5 point in melee and ranged damage reduction (DR), but the movement penalty increases with one point per rank. With chain mail you have a total movement penalty of 3 moves. But unlike any other item, you can use five different armoursmithing schematics to:

* improve movement by 1 with **armor oil**;
* **armour webbing** increases the amount of items the wearer can take into battle with 1;
* make yourself fire or poison resistant with **hardened leather** or **armour padding** respectively;
* **armour balm** restores 5 hp per turn if the wearer has lost hitpoints.

The amount of components needed increases by one with each the rank. In order to improve movement, you need only one dose of armor oil when you apply it to cloth armor, while chain mail needs four units of oil to gain the same effect.

### Weapons

#### Axes

The five ranks are: tool, bearded, broad, battle and crusible steel with salvage limits of 7, 14, 20, 28 and 35 respectively. For every salvage invested, base and max. damage increase by 2, armor piercing by 1 and critical hit multiplier by 0.05. Base damage can be increased up to 31, armor piercing to 10 and the multiplier to 1.5 at best.

#### Bows

The five ranks are: willow, birch, pine, elm and yew with salvage limits of 10, 20, 30, 40 and 50 respectively. For every salvage invested, base and max. damage increase by 2, armor piercing by 1 and critical hit multiplier by 0.05. Base damage can be increased up to 42, armor piercing to 20 and the multiplier to 1.5 at best. The base weapon cost 2 salvage and offer 3-6 damage, 1 armor piercing. 1.05 multiplier for 3 salvage.

## Special properties

With the artisan skill, you improve the odds that a created item gains one special property from 25% to 100%. Armor, shields and weapons have some exclusive properties for each category, but they all have the following three general properties:

* lucky, +1 morale;
* cursed, -1 morale;
* unbreakable, armor or weapon can't lose durability after battle and thus will not lose their statistics.

### Armor

Armor and helmets, may gain along with the three general properties, one of the following properties:

* robust, +5 melee damage resistance;
* strengthening, +10 hit points;
* thick, +5 ranged damage resistance.

Body armor may also gain the agile (+1 movement) or the vigilant property (+25 to avoid critical hits). Helmets may gain an additional five mental points with the focusing property exclusively.

### Shields

Shields can gain the following four exclusive properties:

* bolstering = +5% block;
* defender = +10% block when next to ally;
* steeling = +5 physical resistance;
* vigilant = +25 to avoid critical hits.

### Weapons

All weapons may gain the following special properties;

* berserker, +10% damage vs uninjured;
* hunter, +10% damage vs beasts;
* raider, +10% damage vs unarmored;
* ruthless, +10% damage vs immobilized;
* sutr, +10% damage vs burning enemies;
* swift; 5% extra attack chance.
* keen; 2% critical chance;
* precise; +5 armor piercing

#### Melee weapons

Melee weapons might gain the following exclusive properties:

* biting, +10% crit multiplier;
* sharp, +5% damage;
* sundering, +10% damage vs shields;
* tactician, +10% damage vs flanked.

#### Ranged weapons

Ranged weapons may gain three exclusive properties:

* awkward, -5 max accuracy;
* marksman, +5 max accuracy;
* seeking, night accuracy penalty halved.

## Crafting strategies

When it comes to crafting items, there are few things to consider:

* durability and maintainance (becomes more important in games with a high difficulty);
* item rank crossing points;
* critical hit multiplier (weapons);
* melee or ranged damage reduction (armour).

### Durability and maintainance

 19
 29
 39
 49
 59
 69
 79
 80

Equipment used in battle can lose 10% of their durability after battle, which is rounded down to a number with no decimals, but is always one point at least. By lowering the durability score of the item from 20 and 30 to 19 and 29 respectively, it will lose one and two points per every degradation and thus survive 18 and 14 degradations respectively. This will lower the costs of maintainance significantly.

This should be ignored if the intention is to create an item with the unbreakable property. Item with that property will never lose durability at all. In games with higher difficulties, items are more likely to lose duration often, so it could save salvage and hides in the long run.

### Item rank crossing points

By investing one extra salvage or hide, you can give the weapon an one point higher maximum damage and body armour will gain a bonus of 5% melee and ranged DR when they become of a higher rank.
In the case of body armour, it can also backfire, since the movement penalty become worse and one additional Armoursmithing schematic is needed to give the armour a chosen property.
Helmets don't benefit from this crossover point and will only gain penalties to accuracy, starting from steel helmets.

### Critical hit multiplier

In case a character has a low Finesse score, which results in a low critical hit chance, although there are plenty of ways to increase this chance, you can consider giving this unit a weapon with a low critical hit multiplier. This will save some salvage.

### Melee or ranged DR

Depending on the role of a character, you should consider whether the armour should provide more melee DR or ranged DR.
Units who fight with shields, have high blocking percentages and who are on the frontline, should have armour which provides high melee DR. That way, the shield will lose absorption less quickly, because damage dealt to shield is calculated with a slightly different calculation as to characters. Because shields can't be damaged by ranged attacks, those will likely be protected from projectiles longer that way as well.

Melee fighter who don't have shields or have low blocking percentages, should be given armour which is more or less balanced, while archers and support units who stay in the back, benefit more from armour which provides better ranged DR.

## Getting armour or weapons with a specific property

Every time you give a character the task to craft armour or a weapon, a random
property will be added to the weapon. This property is selected by the computer when the task is given to the party member instead of during your stay during the camp. As a result, you will always receive a crafted item with the same property during your stay at the campsite if the game is saved after the task is given.

The only way to to make sure that you gain an item with your preferred property, is to give the task to the character during one or more shifts and then save the game. In case you don't get an item with the desired property, reload the game, then remove the tasks to create the item and then give the tasks again. This will change the property. Rinse and repeat until you get the item with the desired property.

If you have two or more shifts in which the characters makes the same item with an undesired property, you can remove the task during those shifts and then save the game before resting at the camp. Watch the messages you get during every shift to see in which one the item is made.

This method of does not work in Ironman mode, since the game will save multiple times before you are at the world map again, thus you have no way to know which property is given to the crafted item before the possible result is irreversible.