There isn't much new that can be said about crafting that hasn't been said somewhere else, I wanted to make a guide that would explain everything though. If I am missing anything about crafting in this guide please leave a comment and I will add it.
In Rift you can have a total of three professions, there are three gathering professions and six crafting professions. You can unlearn a profession at any time by going to any crafting trainer and selecting I'd like unlearn a skill...
You can get the professions at either your main city, Meridian or Sanctuary, or at these locations.
For the Guardians you can get them at the Argent Glade,
For the Defiants it is a little bit more confusing you can get some of them at the King's Retreat, and some at the Kelari Refuge
You can get the gathering professions a bit earlier but if you want all of the professions you would have to go to these locations.
Gathering Professions: Butchering, Foraging and Mining.
Butchering: With the butchering profession you will be getting leathers/hides off of beasts that have been killed.
Foraging: With the foraging profession you will be getting herbs/wood from nodes. If you use the skill Track Wood and Track Plants you will be able to see where they are on your mini map.
Mining: With the mining profession you will be gathering metals from nodes. If you use the skills Track Ore you will be able to see where they are on your mini map.
Crafting Professions: Apothecary, Artificer, Armorsmith, Runecrafter, Outfitter, Weaponsmith.
Apothecary: With the apothecary profession you will be making different potions using plants gained from the foraging profession and sometimes items gained from the butchering profession. The apothecary profession requires a Laboratory to make items.
Artificier: With the artificer profession you will be making different wands, totems, rings and necklaces with ores, and items gained from mining and wood gained from the foraging profession. The artificer profession requires a Workbench to make items.
Sometimes when mining you will get containers that when opened will give you different stones which are used in the artificer profession.
With the artificer profession you will also get a skill called Salvage Accessories that will allow you to break your rings and necklaces into matierials that you can use to make more accessories.
Armorsmith: With the armorsmith profession you will be making different armors using ores gained from the mining profession, leather gained from the butchering profession and cloths gained from killing enemies. The armorsmith profession requires a Forge to make armor.
With the armorsmith profession you will also get a skill called Salvage Armor that will allow you to break your armor into materials that you can use to make more armor.
Runecrafter: With the runecrafter profession you will be making different runes that you can use to increase the stats on your armors and weapons. You get the materials by using the runebreak skill that allows you to break your equipment into magical materials used to make runes. The runecrafter profession requires a Workbench to make runes.
Adding Dim Deft Rune to my armor will add 2 dexterity to my armor which when applied will look like this.
If I want to add another rune to the same item, it will ask me to replace my old one.
Outfitter: With the outfitter profession you will be making different armors using leather gained from the butchering profession and cloths gained from killing enemies. The outfitter profession requires a Loom to make items.
Weaponsmith: With the weaponsmith profession you will be making different weapons using ores gained from the mining profession, and wood gained from the foraging progession. The weaponsmith profession requires a Forge to make some items and a Work Bench to make others.
With the weaponsmith profession you will also get a skill called Salvage Weapons that will allow you to break your weapons into materials that you can use to make more weapons.
Crafting areas: Loom, Forge, Workbench, Laboratory
There are four places where you can craft items and each profession needs you to be at one of the four places. To craft you need to be at either a Loom, a Forge, a Workbench or a Laboratory.
Loom: Butchering, Outfitter
Forge: Armorsmith, Weaponsmith, Mining
Workbench: Runecrafter, Artificer, Foraging, Weaponsmithing
Laboratory: Apothecary
How to craft:
Once you have your crafting profession, your gathering professions, some materials what do you do next?
This is what the crafting window looks like, you can select the recipe that you want to make and it will show the ingredients needed, how many that you can make with the materials you have, what skill level you are (as you can see my character is a Novice apothecary, skill level 2 out of 75.) It will show you that what area you need to be crafting in and what you will make. At the bottom you can choose to craft all which will craft as many as you have the materials for, or you can click the over arrows to select how many you would like to make and then hit craft. As you can see there is a blank window with the words augmentation above it. If it is grey like it is in the picture then you cannot augment the item you are trying to make.
Some recipes can be augmented though by adding a planar augment into the augmentation box. Each planar augment has it's own effects that will be added to the item when crafted.
You can get planar augments a few ways, the easiest ways would be from doing rifts or invasions. They can either be obtained randomly during rifts and invasions or you can spend your planarite obtained from them on boxes with random planar augments in them.
When opening the novice augment box I bought to test it I got this in it.
Crafting Dailies:
To get certain recipes you have to buy them from special vendors that will only sell the patterns for special marks gained from doing crafting dailies that can be done once per day, per profession. That means if you have three crafting professions you could do three crafting dailies per day. If you only have one crafting profession and two gathering professions you can only do one per day. You can find your daily crafting quest giver in either of your main towns. (Sanctuary or Meridian)
In this picture I have three crafting professions which means I can do three work orders.
The work orders will tell you to go make a few of whatever your profession normally makes and give you a few tokens and a little supply bag with a few materials in it.
After you make the items that you are requested to make they will tell you to deliver them to either the college or the kings retreat to get your marks and your supply bag. Because of this I recommend trying to get a mount before doing too many of these, it is a decently far walk to each of these places. As you level up your crafting you will get newer daily quests with better rewards which will ask you to go to different areas other then the college of the kings retreat.
Once you get enough artisans tokens you can spend them on recipes from the special merchants which you can use to make new items that couldn't be made without buying these recipes.
Last of all eventually you will hit skill level 75 and you will need to train your profession so that you can get it up any higher. To get it higher you will need to go to your profession trainer in your main city. You will need to train every 75 skill levels so don't forget to pay attention to your skill level.
Finishing Comments: Phew my longest guide yet is finally over. It took a few days and four hours just to write all of it up and edit the screenshots and thats not including taking all of the screenshots and gathering all of the materials, figuring out where to get everything and test everything so that is why I took so long getting this guide out. Over the next little while I will be doing just a few mini helpful guides before doing another huge long project guide like this one. I only used 26 screenshots in this guide but that doesn't mean I only took 26 screenshots. I had to choose which were helpful etc and edit them and it took awhile so I'm going to do a few mini guides as a bit of a break for a couple of days. If you want to know what I am up to, or what I am thinking of creating next, or just to say hi add me on twitter, my twitter name is MikuRift. Thank you all for reading and if you have any comments dont be afraid to leave some in the comment section below!
Miku~
