Crafting guide?

[recursev]

Just downloaded the mod this past week and have been loving it. I'm now on Nightmare difficulty with my Sorcerer.

One thing I cannot seem to find online is a guide to crafting, or even a comprehensive list of recipes. I've crafted a couple of things but the results were pretty lackluster; rare/unique/set items seem to be way better. Is crafting worth it? I've heard the better recipes don't drop until the higher difficulties- will I have to wait until I get to Torment to truly craft something good? So far I've just been stashing away every magic item I've found until I get to the Anvil quest on Nightmare, but I'm wondering if it's really worthwhile.

Also, a question about spells... do they have level caps? Some of my first level spells seem to be unable to progress beyond level 17. Is 17 the cap for all spells?

Thanks!

[Wendigo]

The documentation has a chapter on crafting recipes, albeit incomplete.
https://mod.diablo.noktis.pl/doc/

At the lower levels, crafting is important for two reasons:
1. Selling crafting materials nets you higher profits than selling the items whole
2. Filling stat gaps you may need to equip particularly sweet items you find. Even with the most basic recipes it's generally not hard to get +20 to a particular stat, or more if RNGesus decides to add multiple affixes of the same stat (or ALL-stat)

As you progress, the later recipes are essential to building a complete character. Keep in mind that when you craft an item it overwrites all old affixes, even on previous crafted gear, so you can simply stock up crafting materials for a while and then do a whole bunch of re-rolls on it until you get something special.

The level cap, or rather "the level at which you can't read books anymore" for spells is 15, but items that add to a particular spells level will defeat this (it is also not hard to get +spell level with the right recipe). There is no theoretical upper limit to a spell level pumped this way but anything above 20 is pretty rare. Note that some spells have such ludicrous MAG requirements that even the documentation doesn't know what the requirements for them are. There are two quests, The Chamber of Bone and Horazon's Sanctum, which have a book you can read to immediately grant you 1 level in Guardian and Golem respectively, usable once per difficulty; saving those quests until you have 11 or the easiest way of getting those spells to level 15 (the quests will not give you more than 15 levels in those spells).

Welcome to the forums!

[recursev]

Thanks for the info! Definitely have some reading to do now.

[SkyrosX2]

I played a LOT of sorceror, and let me give you two important tips:
1-Your first character will NOT beat the game (unless you REALLY decide to spend HUNDREDS of hours investing on it). Generally, your first caracter will get to the last difficulty (maybe not even that) and then be used to farm good stuff for other chars, who will be able to beat the game. Sorceror is a very good char to farm for others, the best imo.
2-In order to get Golem and Guardian (two VERY important spells for sorcerer) in the Max Level, you should use a trick. What you do is you do NOT finish the quests that give +1 level to these two spells. You read books until you get them to level 11. Then you go to each difficulty and finish the quests. 4 difficulties will give you 4 levels, get them to the max level.
The reason for this, if you haven't figured out already, is because it requires a stupid amount of Magic (almost impossible) to read the books and get them from level 14 to 15. So, instead, you only read up to level 11 (which already is a bit hard, but doable), and then get the last 4 levels from the quests.

[Juggernought]

Selling crafting materials nets you higher profits than selling the items whole

Not sure about it. I've seen a 50k staffs, salvaged for 17-22k materials

[Wendigo]

That is true. I think they didn't invest in mid/end-game crafting nearly as much as they did in the base idea, so crafting becomes a bit more dodgy in the later difficulties... but usually by then you're drowning in gold anyway. My apologies for not making it clearer that my advice was geared only towards the earlier levels.

[jamineal]

Not sure about it. I've seen a 50k staffs, salvaged for 17-22k materials

The post says, "at the lower levels."

[Juggernought]

The post says, "at the lower levels."

you mean normal difficulty? ok, let's check it.
Barbarian, normal game, flawed stone costs 125, regular 375, azure oil 625, crimson 1250, arcane token 833

hmm.. 5% profit. salvaging seems pretty randomized. i guess, what if we take 100 items or more

[Wendigo]

I don't mean to be harsh, but now you're just skewing my words in the worst possible light. When I originally said "At the lower levels" I, at least, thought it wasn't too much to assume a few key points: namely that the player was newer, playing normally, and actively equipping one or more characters to actually survive. Yes, in your sample and even a larger sample, the profit margins for selling crafting values is only slightly above what you would get for selling them wholesale, but it's not a big leap of logic to assume the player is also going to want to hold onto the top, say, 10% of the items to actually use. [It's also not a huge leap of logic to assume they don't want to micro-manage their profit margins and will probably be keeping the materials they do craft for actual crafting, but that's beside the point.] Your sample does an excellent job of pointing out that the most playable items are also the ones with the lowest conversion profit/loss ratio, so if we remove them under the (likely) assumption the player might want to use them, that profit/loss ratio becomes a heck of a lot more favorable. Of course a player is more likely to hold onto a White Ring of Regen than Rags of Atrophy!

If you'd like to have a discussion on the objective value of crafting that's all great, I'll help where I can, but please do accept that my original advice was not provided in that context.