Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Aion Tailoring Guide, Tailoring Secret Tips Trick



Prologue
I’ve been playing NAion since closed beta. I never played CAion and therefore my knowledge on tailoring might not be as extensive as those who did. My main MMO experience background is 2 years playing SWG from launch up to the NGE nerf, and still playing EVE Online for 4 years now. I never played WoW, so I’m afraid direct comparisons won’t be made in the guide. Those who played EVE and its industrial side (mainly mining and manufacturing) might know me under the name Halada. I wrote a 90+ pages PDF guide on industry that evolved over the 3 last years. Writing material to help others is something I like to do, and while this won’t be as extensive as my EVE guide, I hope to make it as clear and concise as possible!

Introduction
Tailoring (also referred to as sewing) is a crafting profession that allows crafting of cloth and leather armor, as well as certain accessories such as belts and hats. Cloth armor is mainly used by Spiritmasters and Sorcerers, while leather is used mainly by Assassins and rangers. Since those classes are all very popular, there is money to be made in that profession. I will cover profits later in this guide.

Tailoring therefore is mostly suited for the aforementioned classes. It is not the most lucrative profession (although at this point it is hard to debate about the value of any profession so early in the game) but being able to craft your own set yourself is worth the investment alone. Later if you choose to become Expert in tailoring (you can master two professions in Aion, but learn them all if you wish. More on mastering later) there will be great profit in blue and orange items.

Aion Gear
Aion has an extensive collection of gear for all classes. You can acquire gear via the following means:
-Mob drops. They will drop white (common item), green (rare item) or blue (legend item) gear pieces. Elite mobs can also drop orange (Unique item) gear.
-NPC Vendor. There are NPC vendors across the entire Aion Universe. They sell common (white) items only (I’ve yet to find one selling green gear. Correct me if I’m wrong).
-Trade Broker (Auction House). This is where players sell gear they’ve either crafted or picked up from mobs.
-Quest Rewards. Many quests will reward you with a gear piece. You cannot however sell it on the AH. Your options is to either use it, sell it to a General NPC Vendor (not recommended) or de-enchant it using extraction tools to get an enchantment stone out of it.
-Abyss vendor. Referred to as divine items, these are sold either in your Capitol Building in your main city, or at the Abyss fortress. These is a green, blue and orange variety for each level range. The abyss is an amazing aspect of Aion. In the land of PvP, each mob or player (of the opposing faction) you kill grants you Abyss Points (AP) which you can then use to purchase special Abyss gear.
-Crafted items. This will be the scope of this guide.

Crafting armor and accessories
Tailoring allows you to craft white, green or blue items. It is possible for these items to “crit” or “proc” into its next color level (a white item “crits” to green, or green “crits” to blue, etc. Proc’ing will be covered later). Crafted items of any level will always be superior to its mob drop equivalent, sometimes very much so, and same color items with its comparable Abyss counterpart will either be on par or superior. A crafted blue gear set will last you for a good 10 levels and will be highly sought on the AH. Crafted items will not be superior to elite mobs drops and perhaps the best Abyss gear available (I have not yet done a full comparison), however the tl:dr version of this story is that crafted gear is high quality and superior gear that is worth the trouble of making.

Learning the profession
To learn Tailoring you must go to the crafting quarters of your capital city and talk to the Expert Tailor. Learn the profession by selecting the first option. Press “K” and head to the craft tab, Tailoring should appear there with a 1/99 bar. This is your skill level for that profession. The maximum level you can get to is 450P.

Leveling Tailoring
All you need to level professions is time and Kinahs. No character level prerequisite is needed, nor any questing (except the 2 expert quests you need to become an expert to reach 400P).

The best way to level your profession is via Work Orders, which are given from the Expert Tailor in the same room where the sewing machines are. For your first orders, when talking to the NPC, you`ll see work orders available formatted as such: “Work-Order-Name [___P]”. You’ll start with 1P work orders (which stand for 1 point (level) order).

The first ten levels (from 1P to 10P) are done by repeating the 1P work order for which all the materials (mats) are given to you by the NPC. To start crafting, head close to a sewing machine, double left click (or right-click) the machine, select your work order. At the bottom right corner you`ll be able to set the quantity of items you want to craft. Alternatively you can press the “craft all” button, which will craft as many items you can craft with the quantity of mats you have in your cube.

Simply do the works order, turn it in, and repeat until you reach 10P. As I said the first work order has all the mats already provided, so it`s a free way of leveling. Once you reach 10/99 (10P) a new work order will be available. You can either switch to this one (which allows you to level faster, more on this later) or repeat the free 1P work order until you reach 40P (so you level more slowly, but you do it for free, it`s a compromise to be made). At 40P the 1P work order will no longer be available so you`ll need to start buying work order supplies at that point.

Tip: Use a machine directly near the Expert tailor. Place yourself at the center point of the distance between the machine and the NPC. This allows you to craft, then once you`re done with the order simply right-click the NPC and turn it in without having to walk to her. It`ll speed things up and makes it less tedious.

Work orders… how many and how
Starting at 10P you’ll be supplied with SOME mats, a part of the required mats. The rest must be purchased from the supplies vendor (who is in the same room as the Expert Tailor). Leveling with work orders is the cheapest method – the only other way is to craft items from designs (recipes), which is way more expansive and not a recommended method. There is no supplies you will need to farm or buy from the AH – from 1P all the way to 399P, all is available at the supplies vendor.

Each time an item is crafted you will gain XP – as if you were grinding mobs. This is a rewarding factor of profession leveling – even though you might spend hours grinding work orders, you can still level your character as well. In fact, I leveled to 31 from the very beginning of 30 by leveling tailoring from 1P to 399P… that is several millions XP.

You do not get XP by successfully completing a work order. Instead, you are rewarded with a random item. This could be materials you can use later to craft items from designs, or it could be a design itself. Design rewards are what you’re looking for. You can be rewarded with white, green and even blue designs by turning in work orders. The level of the item the design will allow you to craft depends of the level of the work order. Example: work orders from level 200P to 250P will reward you with designs meant to craft items for level 33.

Now, as far as leveling the profession is concerned, there are two methods.

The fast way: to level as quickly as possible, you can repeat and grind the highest work order available. You get a new one every 10P. The Export Tailor will always only have four levels of work orders available (example: you’re at 49P. The Export Tailor will have 10P, 20P, 30P and 40P work orders available for you to choose. Once you reach 50P, the 10P work order will no longer be available, and you’ll only be able to pick 20P, 30P, 40P and 50P orders). You’ll get fewer designs this way, but you’ll level faster.

The slower way: This is the method I used, because even though it is more expansive and slower, it gets you more designs in the end. What I did was to craft the last three available work orders. If I was at 45P and wanted to work my way to 50P, I’d craft work orders 20P, 30P and 40P repeatedly until I reached 50P, then would craft work orders 30P, 40P and 50P until I got to 60P, so on and so on. This allows me to get the maximum number of designs and is also less tedious.

Word of advice: if you’d like to have all the juicy green designs for each level range (gear sets are available every 5 levels, 18, 23, 28, 33, 38, etc) remember that once you hit 300P, you’ll only have access to 260P, 270, 280P and 290P work orders. So if you are missing some of the Worthy Xilix designs for level 33 and you level too quickly before you can get all designs, you won’t be able to get them from the work orders ever again. A reminder: level 33 designs come from 200P to 250P work orders. Your alternative will be the AH. So if having all the designs for all level (38,33, 28, 23…) is important to you, keep repeating the same work order until you do, hoping you’ll get them all before you level to the point where you can’t get them anymore.

Once you reach 99P you’ll need to talk to the Expert Tailor and pay to get your upgrade to level 100. Then grind work orders until you reach 199P and you’ll need to visit her again for 200P, and the same for 300P. Once you reach 399P you’ll be offered an Expert Quest to get to 400P. More on that later.

Leveling… what does it cost?
You’ll need Kinahs for two things. The first is to buy supplies to complete work orders, and the second is to pay for each level upgrades.

The cost of supplies to complete each level is approximately the following:
1-99 65k
100-199 175k
200-299 500k
300-399 1mil

All-in-all, using the slow method described above and including the upgrade fees, you’ll be spending 2.5-3mil Kinahs to get from 1-399. Yes, it is expansive, and so early in the game, less than a month after launch, it is not recommended to sprint your way to 399 like I did, hoping to get Expert first and craft some REALLY juicy gear that can only be made from 400P+ designs. Why and when will be discussed shortly.

Craft all or not
The Expert Tailor will always supply more mats than you need to complete the quest… usually you’ll have enough for 2x extra items. This is in case some fail. If you failed too many times and are out of NPC supplied mats, you’ll need to abandon the quest and start over.
Whether you press craft all or manually set the quantity you need is up to you. Since you get XP each time you craft an item (and not from turning the quest in), you’ll level faster by crafting all you can each time. This will however cost you more Kinahs in the end, as you’ll end up using more supplies as well.

Designs
Designs are needed to craft all items. All white designs in existence are available at the supplies vendor in the tailoring room. They’re cheap, and some can proc into green items. Green and blue designs are either rewarded from work orders, or dropped from mobs. You’ll find some on the AH as well.

Proc’ing or crit’ing
Certain designs have the chance to proc (or crit) into a better item than the original item the design is meant to craft. Sometimes a green design can crit into a better green item with improved stats or it can even crit into a blue item. To know if your design can crit into another color or not, open the designs list (press K, then double click the Tailoring level bar, this will open the crafting window with all designs) then CTRL+right-click a design. This will place a yellow link in your chat bar: click on it one to open a new window. Hover the mouse over the design and two new windows will pop beside it, indicating the basic item it produces and what it can crit in.

CRIT’ING IS TOTALLY RANDOM! I wrote it in bold capital letters, because this question comes every day. To this day there is no known mechanics that help you increase your chances of crit’ing. Your tailoring level DOES NOT affect your chances of getting a proc: it only lowers the chance of failure in relation to the level of the design itself. There are many rumors about it, but nothing is confirmed. So far it is accepted that getting procs is random and there’s nothing you can do to improve your chances. I’ll dispense you of my opinion about this ridiculous aspect of crafting.

If you successfully get a proc, you’ll hear a buzz at the end of the crafting of the item, and rather than hear a bling and see the item appear in your cube, you’ll see a new crafting window appear with a new progress bar for the proc item. This one can fail just like the basic one can.

Again, there is nothing special to do to get a proc. It is totally chance based. All you can do is press that craft button and pray to the Gods of Kobol that they grant you a proc, or something similar in nature. Whatever divine beings you worship may or may not affect the proc rate at this time.

You should also know some items can proc twice…Xilix Textile for example, can proc into Fine Xilix Textile and then proc again into Superb Xilix Textile in the same session.

400P, also known as the WOW THAT’S AN EXPENSIVE EXPERT QUEST!
Once you reach 399P you’ll be able to get the first expert quest from the Expert Tailor. It’ll be listed under the work orders. The first quest isn’t too hard to do. You need to craft a Aion Item (green), which is obtained by proc’ing the Aion Item (white). This is a white design and is available at the supplies vendor. Since it is chance based, you could proc at your first try, or 10 tries later. For this reason, the quest can be expansive to do, but is doable already so early in the stage of the NAion if you have the money.

Once you turn it in, you’ll get another expert quest. This time, you need to craft a Aion Item (blue) by proc’ing the Aion Item design (green). This design is rewarded from the 390P work order, so you’ll need to grind and repeat it until you get it, or you find it on the AH. A simple look at the required mats will tell you the basic item is already extremely expansive to craft. The fluxes needed for it are dropped from mobs lvl40+ and will be hugely expensive to purchase on AH. Add the fact you need it to proc, and you’re looking at several millions kinahs to get it done.

Therefore, the path to 399P->400P is almost ridiculously too hard. However if you manage, you’ll get access to some insane designs that grants you the privilege of crafting sick gear. Upon the expert ceremony you will receive an Aion Item design, which can proc to orange, with superb stats. An example of an awesome 400P design would be this cloth jerkin: Aion Item. Look at those stats, and drool!

Farming or buying off AH
So early in NAion it is obvious the prices on the broker are totally unbalanced. Gear sells massively under auto-prices while mats sell massively over them. Because more than ¾ is under level 25 at the time of this writing on most servers, you’ll find high-end mats required for the better higher level gear are very expensive. Even the basic mats such as Xilix is sold for 2k a piece of my server!

Why is that? The grinding of vitality and aether extract is long and tedious. Many are prioritizing leveling their character rather than their profession of gathering skills, so the idea of having to grind vitality extract to 220 so you can farm that Xilix in the first place might not be attractive – especially since the better recipes require you make green or blue textiles, which means proc’ing the textile design once or twice. You’ll need several hundred pieces of Xilix to make enough textile so that you can get a dozen green Xilix textile mats.

Which begs the questions: is it worth it to grind and farm my stuff or can I make money buying it off AH? The answer is probably obvious, but in fact it is not. Short the fluxes, you can farm all your material easily. You simply need time and patience. That Xilix for example is easily found and you’ll have no problem farming a 1000 in a few hours. Green ore can also be farmed easily… sell the regular kind and keep the green, though the drop rate is ridiculously low, so for every 50 ore pieces you extracted, maybe 2 or 3 will be green, and 1 will be blue.

The problem involves the armor fluxes. Their drop rate is ridiculously low, and you need many. Even grinding mobs for many hours might fetch you only a couple fluxes. You’ll undoubtedly find the need to turn to the broker to get your fluxes. Even doing so, there is profit to be made with tailoring, especially with blue items (which you can sell for such a high price that it will recover any losses you might have encountered). Buying EVERYTHING off the AH is not advisable if you plan to make money with the profession: any profit margin you have to green items will be eaten away. If you’re leveling tailoring to craft your own blue set, then it might be worth doing so.

Morphing
The morphing skill is not well understood. There is no grinding to be done there. Morphing allows you to do two things: the first is to use aether and transform it into mats, such as ore, rawhide, etc. The second use is to make armor fluxes. Just like any other crafting professions, you’ll need designs to do this, and these designs are only available in the Abyss fortresses. This means your faction needs to control them to get inside them. If you’re playing Elyos I’m afraid you’ll need to rely on the AH

Each Abyss fortress has a Quartermaster inside. Each will sell unique designs for morphing materials, but all of them sell the same designs for morphing armor fluxes. So to get all mats morphing designs you’ll need to visit each fortress at least once. Once the design is learned, you simply need to open the skills window by pressing K, head to craft, then double click “Morph Substances”, and the recipes will appear there. Morphing can be done anywhere and does not require any instruments.

For mats, you need
1) Aether in different forms (powder, crystal, gem…)

Example: 1x Aion Item can be morphed into 2 pieces of Aion Item, and 1 Aion Item morphed into 2 pieces of strong rawhide.

To morph armor fluxes you need
1) One armor flux the level above the the fluxes you want to get
2) One catalyst, which is sold by NPC supplies vendors of all crafts. Catalysts go from 599 kinahs to 239 000 kinahs a piece depending of the level you need.

One flux and a catalyst will provide 3 fluxes of the level under it.

Example: to get 3x Aion Item (green), you need one Aion Item (blue) and one Aion Item. This recipe will grant you the 3x Worthy Major Accessory Fluxes. As it stands, morphing is a viable solution for certain fluxes type, and those with entrepreneurship will quickly find a way to use the system to their advantage.

Show me the money
I will keep this short since I haven’t played the market long enough to make a definite assessment. I’ve crafted about 30 green pieces so far. I can tell you blue items sell extremely quickly, even with a premium price on them. It’s easy to assume people are ready to pay a premium for the best gear they can find on AH. The profit margin on blue items is very high, so much that depending how many green items you had to make before getting a proc, you might end up more than enough money to keep going. Green crafted items are superior to mob drops and even Abyss gear of the same level in the first few tiers, therefore it can sell well, but with a much lower profit margin than blue gear. Whereas you can make an easy 300k profit selling blue gear, you’ll be lucky to make 50k with green items. The issue resolves around the fact than even though crafted green is better than mob drops, it is only marginally so, whereas the price difference can be huge. A green mob drop will sell for 50k whereas a green crafted item (of same level) will sell for twice as much, if not more. Most people are too broke at this stage of the game to afford paying double price for an only marginally better item. Over the next months, this should stabilize when money is easier to come by.

Once you hit expert though, it is said to be entirely worth it, as the crafted gears is so much superior than any available kind that they will not only sell well, but the chance of proc’ing gold gear is also something to look forward to!

Conclusion
I hope this short guide helped to answer some of your questions. I’ll make sure to keep it updated as much as possible as the game evolves over the next months! Do not hesitate to post in the thread and ask your questions, or point out mistakes that were made in the guide.

Sincerest regards,
Haladia

Written by Haladia (Sorcerer, Ariel-Asmodian)