my friend is a crafter but also new i have had a quick look on the pd website under magic items and have had a good read but its a very big list and knowing if anything is usefull is hard so are there any items a new player would want to look out for?
thanks mike
Search through the items and get a good overall idea of what skills you want to expand
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It depends on what your mate wants to do as his crafter. Iād take different recipes if I was looking to sell my starting items than I would if I was playing a loyal group/national armourer or a crafter for hire or a crafter/mage or a crafter/battle tank etc.
Massively depends what you want to do. What sort of characters does your friend want to be able to equip? Do you want to equip a group or trade?
A couple of untested thoughts:
More people can use one-handed weapons than any of the other stuff - you get all the ambidexers and shield users, plus the people without any combat skills who still fight, so for general selling that may be a good place to start.
Pick a theme. If you say āIām a weaponsmithā or āI make magic items for battlemages,ā youāll be more memorable, and memorable is good for a trader, because it makes people come back. If I was going for that sort of thing, Iād probably claim blacksmithness and be able to make one or two types of magic weapon (probably one-handed, per the above) and one or two types of armour.
Do note I may be wrong. 
far as im aware he want to craft armour and weapons we dont like the idea of character death so any items to make us tougher would be great or items to help us kill stuff quicker also welcome
thanks mike
Iāll second the voices that suggest the character pick a consistent set. It lets you create a link with an audience and establish a theme. Generally, a group you are part of makes for a good themeā¦ whether armourer, weaponsmith or wandmaker.
If youāre going for armourer or weaponsmithā¦ look at what you group has most of - heavy/medium or lightā¦ one hand, paired weapons, greatwhatsits.
Then pick your first four in line with that theme:
1st item - This has to be a 0-cost product. This is your Apprentice peiceā¦ a mastercrafter basically forced you to make six of these things a year for far too long, just to prove that you were worthy to train with them. Boring, but functionalā¦ something everyone in your group would want if you have the time.
2nd item - This is in the 0-10 cost bracket - a Journeyman product. This is what you made for your trainer when they finally let you try with real materials, to prove you were better than an apprentice. Base it on your apprentice item, but betterā¦ it means something to you that you can make this and give it to people.
3rd item - Your Masterpeice. This one you made to prove that you are now the equal of your mentor. Something in the 20-30 cost range, you shouldnāt expect to make this one often but youāre damned proud that you can - worth saving up the materials to make your group leader one of these.
4th item - Your Magnum Opusā¦ your enduring contribution to the craft, the pinacle of perfection that you dream of creating. You may or may not have made one yet, but you understand that people will line up to your door and beg you to do so again once you show it off at Anvil. Something in the 40+ cost rangeā¦ something worthy of a Senator, a General, a Cardinal or a Archmage. No, lets dare to say it: something worthy of an Empress-to-be.
Too many words, perhaps, but I think thatās how I would make myself a crafter.
On the other hand if you are looking at a small group, and they are mainly looking at becoming a crafter so the two of you can have more fun in combat, you probably donāt want to be going for a themed list. Itās great for establishing yourself as a crafter, but on the other hand you can each only carry one magic sword whereas if you pick a magic sword, armour and a talisman which come to less that 40 materials in total, itās perfectly possible to really kit up two characters with magical kit.
(To the point some of my more combat oriented friends claim the best starting warrior build is half crafter. -But Iām not an expert on that area.)
Hi all I chose a banner, some heavy armour, a one handed weapon and a massive weapon as my first four.
Now Iām toying with either choosing more patterns or getting two handed.
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thanks guys a lot of good info there but i would also like to know what items would be good for to use like a special sword shield etc as im not a crafter so i can look out if anyone is selling them
thanks mike
Another option Iāve seen done is going for three free to make items and an item you can be sure to source in group. This means you can gurantee you can equip your friends in armour and with swords. (Being able to create 4 Biting Blades and 4 Warriorās Plate is an example.)
cheers dude yeah this was what i was getting at i like the idea of having a guranteed item build not trying to find materials as me and my friends have pick our pr to help the crafter so we have most things for general items so some items require rare stuff but makking free basic items is better than trying to make things that are epic but hard to resourse is there any other items you would sugest? im going to look those up now
thanks mike
For my money I donāt think it is worth spending lots of XP on extra ārecipesā. There are lots of crafters in game and you can trade your skills for theirs with a bit of legwork (and I find that legwork is usually fun,as it involves meeting people and chatting).
If you mostly pick low cost items that a lot of people will want you will probably be busier than if you focussed on high end items. Items costing more than about 20 resources are ones Iād class as pretty pricey and wonāt see huge demand.
EDIT: By the way, do your mates all have a single fighting style you all want to use? That makes your choices much easier.
Items which anyone can use are of course popular to buy, but I donāt know if so many people make them because they are not so eye catching. Bondrings, for example, are cheap and dead useful.
Yeah, Extra Recipe is expensive compared to taking Hero Points, Chirurgeon or something else thatās always available to your character. One of the best ways to keep everyone alive IMO is for everyone in the group to take Chirurgeon or Stay With Me so you cna stop people bleeding to death. Combine that with the Bondring TimB mentioned and you can be pretty hard to TPK, as thatās ā1/day, save That PC I am Bonded To from bleeding or restore 3 hits, with 5s roleplayā.
If you want to make things to help reduce the death rate in your group, your best bet is to make cheaper things and issue them to everyone, and to make sure everyone has VENOM-removal potion. Empireās a game where cheap basic gear goes a lot further than saving up for powerful spong. Bear in mind that āfreeā items are in fact quite costly if you want to mass-produce stuff. The extra monthās crafting time on them is a month during which you could have made another cheap item.
Armour:
Warriorās Plate: 2 month 0 resource +1 Hit Heavy Armour
Soldierās Harness: 8 Ambergelt +1 Hit Light Armour
Mithril Shirt: 6 resource +1 Hit Medium.
Winterās Breath: 10 Resource 1/day get 3 hits back Light.
If you take Warriorās Plate and one of the others, every downtime youāll be able to make 2 armours that give +1 Hit, just from your personal Resource. You can wear the Medium Armour as thick leather or Norton plate over mundane chainmail or the Light Armour as a gambeson under your nonmagical plate, for example. If you have your mates take some Mines/Forests, you can easily churn out 3 items a season.
Since items last 4 seasons, you can for example have one PC take an Orichanchum Mine and one a Weltsilver Mine. You make a Knightly Redoubt (+2 Hits Heavy) for one PC in your first season, another PC in the other, then make 2 more and sell those at a profit.
Thatās what we were afterā¦ Cheers
cheers jim great insight into it i will be chatting with my friends to see what we want to do
thanks mike
Thought Iād hijack/resuscitate this thread rather than start a new one on a similar subject as Iām considering an artisan path myself.
Iām coming with a friend who may take a herb garden or a mana field, if I take Oakheart Shield as my third item and Iāve got an Ambergelt forest, my shield is going to need replacing for the second event- would I be able to get the 6 Weltsilver I need with my 18 rings, or am I going to be left using a regular shield at the second event? Iād have one spare ambergelt, do resources have similar values (ie could I swap it straight one for one)?
Consider a Business grants 10 crowns and a forest 10 resources and that will give you a rough starting idea as to costs.
Selling Crafted items often involves swapping the ribbon over to its new physrep.
Ah, okay- so as long as weāre just two of us pottering about on our own and using our personal resources ourselves, weāre going to be pretty broke. Good to know, thanks!
There is some mileage selling magic items but broadly if you use all your resources on self-empowerment that is your wealth gone.
I reckon that a yearās worth of personal resource can probably be traded into the ability to kit one person out fully with decent quality magic items, and that one artisanās time can be fully employed by four characters if theyāre all doing this. The exceptions are military units (if they are sent to aid the Imperial army), herb gardens (which are all about the uptime healing / potions) and congregations (which give you Synod votes: liao is not a massive source of income).
Itās possible to be a hell of a lot richer than this, of course.