For some new players crafting in Guild Wars 2 can be a little confusing especially for those who have not played any of the Beta weekends or stress tests.
So here is a great video by Enigmus that shows you the basics of crafting. I suggest you watch it as it will show you all the things that you need to know to start crafting in GW2.
For the moe experienced players this is nothing new and you will probably know all the information given already.
Remember to level any crafting discipline in Guild Wars 2 follow the 1-400 crafting guides that you can find HERE.
In Guild Wars 2 there are 8 crafting disciplines. Two of these discipline are categorized as being more advanced. Cooking belongs in this group. This is mainly due to the fact that leveling cooking takes more time, ingredients and there a lots of recipes to be discovered.
To train cooking you first have to go to a master chef that is located in every capital city, but also in some towns in the starting areas. Here is a list of the trainers in all the capital cities:
With the cooking crafting profession you can make different types of food but also dyes. Different types of foods give you different stat buffs, but all food gives you a +10% experience buff.
Dyes are named Unidentified as you don’t know the exact color that will come out. The Unidentified dye only gives you the basic color, such as yellow or brown, the rest is randomly given. To make each dye you will need stacks of 25 or 50 pieces of one ingredient. For normal dyes you will need to combine two different ingredients , for masterwork dyes you will need three.
In this cooking preview video you can seee the mechanics of cooking and the way you discover new recipes:
The main reason that cooking is an advanced crafting discipline is that you need lots of ingredients. Most of them can be collected trough foraging but some you can only get from karma vendors. Some of these vendors also sell exclusive cooking recipes so getting cooking to level 400 will take some time. You can find a list of all the ingredients here.
If you want to power level cooking you will need a lot of gold as the ingredients will be expensive and you will need lots of them to discover all the known recipes.
I would not reccomend choosing cooking as your first crafting discipline but if you do choose it here are a few tips:
1. Always have a harvesting sickle equipped and gather everything you can find.
2. After finishing renowned heart events always check the vendor to see if he sells some cooking ingredients or recipes.
3. Find the locations of herb farms (there is one in each map) and visit them once a day.
4. If you are in a helpful guild ask your guildmates to send you cooking ingredients and in exchange send them food.
Cooking is one of the most fun crafting disciplines to level in Guild Wars 2 and you can sell food and dyes to make a profit. If you will level cooking be sure to try all the foods you’ve made and always have the buffs on when leveling.
There are a lot of things that you can do in the Guild Wars 2 world to gain experience. Usually quests and exploring are the two main ways of getting experience in MMO’s.
The unique crafting system in GW2 also gives you experience. In fact you can level your character from 1 to 80 without ever doing a quest, pvp or dynamic event.
In Guild Wars 2 you can train all of the 8 crafting disciplines on one character. Leveling a crafting discipline from 1 to 400 will award you with 10 levels of experience. So if you max out all 8 crafting disciplines you character will gain 80 levels!
This might not be an option for your first character, but if you wish to level an alt in this way its totally doable. Of course you will need all the necessary materials to level all 8 crafting disciplines. You can gather them yourself or buy them of the Trading Post. Buying all the crafting material won’t be cheap so do have a good gold strategy.
You may train all of 8 crafting professions but only 2 can be active at one time. You can change your active skills by visiting a trainer and paying a fee. Upon changing a crafting skill all the recipes and progress will be saved.
Crafting in Guild Wars 2 is defined as the process of turning different component items, such as crafting materials into equipment and consumables.
There are eight different crafting disciplines in Guild Wars 2. You can choose from:
- Armorsmith – makes Heavy Armor
- Artificer – makes Magical Weapons (focus, staves, scepters, tridents)
- Chef – makes food with temporary buffs
- Huntsman – Wooden weapons and fireams (pistols, rifles, bows)
- Jeweler - makes Jewelry (rings, earrings, necklaces9
- Leatherworker – makes Medium Armor
- Tailor – makes Light Armor
- Weaponsmith – Metal Weapons (swords, spears, hammers, daggers, axes)
The neat new thing in GW2 is that you can learn all the 8 different crafting disciplines on one character. The catch here is that you can have only 2 crafting disciplines active at one time. You can switch your crafting disciplines at any time for a fee which changes according to your crafting level. The fee goes from 10 copper at an early level, to 40 silver for a level 400 maxed discipline.
This does not mean that you unlearn the crafting discipline it just means that you can’t use it. You will also maintain all the recipes you have learned on all of your crafting skills.
Each crafting discipline has a max level of 400. Every 25 skill points you will learn new recipes. You will learn them automatically so you don’t need to visit your crafting trainer constantly as often happens in other MMO’s.
Crafting in Guild Wars 2 is a fun and productive way of passing time and a great alternative for making additional gold.
