Artisan skill
Artisan skills are various trade skills that can be learned by player characters. They allow you to craft various things with a minor benefit over the normal items an individual might be able to find or purchase. Free-to-play characters do not have access to artisan skills.
The Skills
The currently available artisan skills are Fletching, Cobbling, and Forging. Mining and Smelting are planned artisan skills.
Fletching
- Main article: Fletching
Fletching allows a character to produce arrows, crossbow bolts, and thrown darts. Fletchers can produce better arrows than one can buy (with both an attack strength (AS) bonus from a high fletching skill and from enchanted wood or arrowheads). The final product can be customized with colors, painted bands, and various fletchings, and merchants occasionally sell items that allow a fletcher to add flares to his or her arrows.
Cobbling
- Main article: Cobbling
Cobbling allows the character to produce shoes, boots, sandals, and slippers. This footwear can be measured to fit the wearer and contain a pocket at high skill ranks. A master cobbler can craft an almost incomprehensible variety of shoes.
Forging
- Main article: Forging
A character skilled in forging can produce weapons with a slightly higher AvD and damage factor than normal weapons of their type. Because these improvements do not interfere with blessing, enchanting, ensorcelling, or any merchant-offered weapon upgrade, artisan-forged weapons are sought-after.
Forging is actually broken down into six different artisan skills. The first is crafting, which is used for any part of a weapon that does not actually need to be put in the forge. This is generally used for the hilts and hafts of a weapon and allows the character to craft a forging-hammer.
Each of the other five skills is dedicated to a single weapon type, and allows the character to forge the business ends of:
Characters cannot forge thrown weapons, ranged weapons, or runestaves.
Artisan Skill Ranks
Each artisan skill has 500 individual ranks, each of which is harder to achieve than the previous. The character earns a new title as he or she advances in the skill.
| Ranks | Title |
|---|---|
| 0 - 99 | Novice |
| 100 - 199 | Apprentice |
| 200 - 299 | Journeyman |
| 300 - 399 | Skilled laborer |
| 400 - 499 | Highly-skilled laborer |
| 500 | Master |
There is a limit on how many artisan skills a character can learn. Currently, each character can have up to 1200 artisan ranks, which allows him or her to master two artisan skills. Forging is an exception: because two skills are needed to even make a weapon and because the system was designed to allow characters to master every weapon type, forging ranks count as only one-third of an artisan rank. Thus, forgers can choose to master crafting and two weapon types alongside a non-forging artisan skill, or they can master crafting and all five weapon types.
To learn a new artisan skill beyond this limit, previous ranks can be unlearned using the ARTISAN UNLEARN command.
Experience
Learning artisan skills grants experience alongside the ability to make items. Each time the character advances to the next rank of an artisan skill, he or she earns experience based on the rank achieved:
In other words, when a new artisan reaches rank 300 of cobbling, he would earn 300 experience. If he then took up fletching, upon earning rank 300 there, he would earn 300 ÷ (1 + 1) = 300 ÷ 2 = 150 experience. On the other hand, if an experienced forger had mastered crafting and each of the four non-brawling weapon types, she would earn only 300 ÷ (1 + 5) = 50 experience upon reaching rank 300 of brawling.
ARTISAN (verb)
The ARTISAN verb is used to track how many ranks a character has in artisan skills.
>ARTISAN or ARTISAN HELP
Usage:
ARTISAN HELP - Displays this message.
ARTISAN SKILLS - Displays your ranks in various skills.
ARTISAN RANKS - Displays the text to rank information.
ARTISAN UNLEARN {CHECK|HELP} - Checks your unlearning preference, or provides info about it.
ARTISAN UNLEARN {SET} {SKILL} - Sets your unlearning preference to the skill selected.
Where {skill} is one of the following:
COBBLING FLETCHING FORGING-BRAWLING
FORGING-CRAFTING FORGING-OHE FORGING-OHB
FORGING-PA FORGING-THW MINING
NONE SMELTING
>ARTISAN SKILLS
In the skill of cobbling, you are a skilled laborer with 385 ranks.
>ARTISAN RANKS
+----------------+-----------+
| Level Name | Ranks |
| Novice | 0 - 99 |
| Apprentice | 100 - 199 |
| Journeyman | 200 - 299 |
| Skilled | 300 - 399 |
| Highly-Skilled | 400 - 499 |
| Master | 500 |
+----------------+-----------+
>ARTISAN UNLEARN HELP
Unlearning is the method by which your character will forget a learned skill in order to learn a new one. This is done because there is a limit to the number of skill ranks a player can learn in GemStone's Artisan Guild System.
The current limit is set to the maximum of 1200 ranks. Since there are 500 ranks in a single skill, you are allowed to master two skills and dabble in another as well. This doesn't mean you have to only master and dabble. You can spend your 1200 ranks as you see fit.
The exception to the 1200 rank limit is forging. Because crafting and the weapon types are different skills, all of which are intrinsically combined, players can master either ALL of the ranks within forging (Crafting, Brawling, One-Handed Edged, One-Handed Blunt, Pole Arms, and Two-Handed Weapons) at the expense of 1000 of their ranks, or instead, learn Crafting and any two weapon types at the expense of 500 of their allotted 1200 ranks. The remaining ranks can be used to test other skills or however the player sees fit.
When you attempt to gain a new rank, the Artisan Guild system first checks if you're able to and reacts based on that check.
- If you are under your rank allotment, you learn with no problems.
- If you are at your rank limit, you will not be able to learn further without an unlearning preference set. If you have an unlearning preference set, you will lose the necessary rank in order to gain a rank in the new skill you're working on.
- If you are over your set number of ranks, you will be thrown into a forced unlearning where you will unlearn skills at an accelerated rate to bring you back in line with our current Artisan Guild limit. If you have a preference, it will take from that skill first. Lacking that preference set, you will lose skill ranks in the Artisan Guild skill that is currently the lowest.
Lastly, to set your unlearning preference, you would type:
ARTISAN UNLEARN SET {SKILL}
where {SKILL} is:
COBBLING FLETCHING FORGING-BRAWLING
FORGING-CRAFTING FORGING-OHE FORGING-OHB
FORGING-PA FORGING-THW MINING
NONE SMELTING
Resources
- Saved posts
- Smelting
- Artisan Skills Guides, on Play.net