Crafting & the Aether Economy
TODO: crafting chapter. Planned sections: learning a trade, one section per discipline with recipe tables rank by rank, Aether crafting, and other ways to earn (gathering, the market).
Learning a Trade
TODO: how a character picks up a discipline, whether trades are capped or freely multi-classed, and where training is offered.
Ranks & Advancement
TODO: what a rank means for a discipline, and the shape of the climb from novice to master.
| Rank | To Advance | Unlocks |
|---|---|---|
| TODO | TODO | TODO |
| TODO | TODO | TODO |
| TODO | TODO | TODO |
| TODO | TODO | TODO |
The Disciplines
TODO: overview of the crafting disciplines before the per-discipline sections below.
[Discipline]
TODO: what this discipline makes and who wants its output.
| Item | Rank | Materials | Yields | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| [Item] | [rank] | [mat × n, mat × n] | 1 |
| Item | Rank | Materials | Yields | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| TODO | TODO | TODO | TODO | TODO |
[Discipline]
TODO: what this discipline makes and who wants its output.
| Item | Rank | Materials | Yields | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| [Item] | [rank] | [mat × n, mat × n] | 1 |
| Item | Rank | Materials | Yields | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| TODO | TODO | TODO | TODO | TODO |
[Discipline]
TODO: what this discipline makes and who wants its output.
| Item | Rank | Materials | Yields | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| [Item] | [rank] | [mat × n, mat × n] | 1 |
| Item | Rank | Materials | Yields | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| TODO | TODO | TODO | TODO | TODO |
Aether Crafting
Aether is Vhael's crafting currency, and it works differently from anything you buy or gather at a node. Gear progression runs through it: instead of chasing a perfect drop, you take an ordinary base item and use Aether to build it into something better. Each of the ten currencies reaches into a piece of equipment you already own and remakes it in a specific way — reveal what it can do, break it down for parts, or (once the rest of the line ships) reshape what's already rolled on it. You get Aether two ways: it drops directly as loot, or you disenchant gear you don't want and let the resulting shards stack automatically into the finished currency. Aether can be spent straight from your bag or from a dedicated Aether drawer, whichever's more convenient mid-hunt.
Two Aethers are live today, and you'll use both constantly. Everything Magic quality or better drops unidentified — you'll see the base item, rarity, and item level, but the rolled properties and the item's generated name stay hidden, and you can't equip it until that changes. One Aether of Divination reveals all of it; if your bags are backed up with unidentified drops, town vendors offer an identify-all that burns through the pile at one Divination per item. Aether of Disenchantment runs the other direction: feed it gear you don't want and it's destroyed for shards, which is both the economy's main junk sink and your main source of the shards that become every other Aether.
The remaining eight Aethers are catalogued but not yet in the game (see the table below for what each is meant to do). When they ship, they'll all follow the same shape: the target item has to be identified first, each operation consumes exactly one Aether, and an illegal target is rejected without spending anything. Aether crafting overall leans random rather than guaranteed — expect a light deterministic safety net as a quality-of-life measure, not a way to force a specific outcome — and every roll resolves on the server, never previewed or decided client-side.
| Name | Tier | What It Does | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Aether of Disenchantment | Common | Breaks unwanted equipment down into aether shards — the loot economy's main sink. | Live |
| Aether of Divination | Common | Reveals a Magic+ item's hidden properties (identify). | Live |
| Aether of Enhancement | Common | Improves an item's quality. | Coming |
| Aether of Emptiness | Uncommon | Removes one unwanted modifier from an item. | Coming |
| Aether of Redemption | Uncommon | Undoes a craft, restoring an item to an earlier state. | Coming |
| Aether of Grace | Uncommon | Guards a destructive craft against downgrading the item. | Coming |
| Aether of Expansion | Rare | Adds a modifier slot beyond the item's normal cap. | Coming |
| Aether of Reshaping | Rare | Rerolls the values on existing modifiers; the mods themselves don't change. | Coming |
| Aether of Reconstruction | Rare | Rebuilds the whole modifier set from scratch — new mods, new values. | Coming |
| Tear of Elysium | Ultra-rare | Transforms an item into something extraordinary. No shard exists for it — drop-only. | Coming |
Materials Primer
| Material | Tier | Found In | Used By |
|---|---|---|---|
| TODO | TODO | TODO | TODO |
| TODO | TODO | TODO | TODO |
| TODO | TODO | TODO | TODO |
Other Ways to Earn
TODO: gathering professions, node types, and how they feed the disciplines above.
TODO: gathering trade list undecided.
TODO: gathering trade list undecided.
TODO: gathering trade list undecided.
TODO: selling crafted goods and gathered materials on the player market.