Runes, Glyphs, Shards, and Fractures Oh My! Crafting in 0.5.4

Crafting has seen some pretty major changes in 0.5.4, so this post is here as an introduction to the new mechanics. This is also a general introduction to crafting for new players and those in need of a refresher. In the previous post about crafting I went over some of the design goals for the system, now this post covers more detail about the mechanics.

There are four main types of items that go into crafting. Equippable items, which are worn by your character that can be improved through crafting. Affix shards each represent a single tier of an affix that can be on an item. Now to the new ones! Runes are items that directly affect an item. Glyphs support Runes, and affect the outcome of a craft. In Eterra glyph parchments are wrapped around Runes when they are used together.

Shards

Affix shards allow you to add or improve specific affixes on an item. You can acquire them in two main ways; direct drops in the world from enemies, barrels, and chests or from equippable items shattered with Runes of Shattering. World drops will give a good quantity of shards, but shattering allows you to get specific shards you want.

Fracturing

When Shards and some Runes are applied to an item they add fracture chance. As more fracture chance is applied to the item the chance a fracture will occur increases, and the potential damage caused to the item increase. There are three tiers of fracture:

Tier 1: Minor Fracture - a minor fracture locks the item, but has no effect on it’s affixes.

Tier 2: Damaging Fracture - a damaging fracture will reduce tier of affixes on the item by a random amount, then locks the item.

Tier 3: Destructive Fracture - removes all affixes from the item, then locks it.

The later tiers of fracture can only occur once fracture chance has built up on the item. 25 for a damaging fracture and 50 for a destructive fracture. Each affix adds 5 fracture chance, so you can make some good progress on your item before you risk damaging it.

Runes

There are four Runes as of 0.5.4, but more will be added in the future.

Rune of Shattering - Destroys the equippable item and returns some of it’s affixes as shards.

Rune of Refining - Rerolls all affixes within their tiers on the equippable item, and adds two fracture chance. For example, if an affix has a value of 14, and it’s range is from 12-20, a Rune of Refining could bring that affix to anywhere between 12 and 20.

Rune of Cleansing - Removes all affixes on the equippable item, and lowers it’s fracture chance to between 5 and 15 (unless the item’s fracture chance started lower than that)

Rune of Removal - Removes a random affix on the equippable item, and adds two fracture chance.

Glyphs

There are two Glyphs in 0.5.4 and, like Runes, more will be added later.

Glyph of Stabilizing - Makes a Rune or Shard add 80% less to 40% more fracture chance than usual. This gives it an element of risk, but on average crafting with Glyphs of Stabilizing will result in less fractured items.

Glyph of the Guardian - If a fracture is caused by the craft, the tier of fracture is reduced by one. That means if an item would have gotten a minor fracture, instead it does not fracture at all. If an item would have gotten a destructive fracture, instead it only receives a damaging fracture, preserving some of your crafting progress on the item.

That covers all the general information required to start crafting, so with that, good luck and happy crafting!

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Very useful information! Thanks! I presume some of these info will be worked into an in game tutorial of crafting at some point?

Edit: maybe to throw in the other question that I asked earlier on discord. Why are shards actual things instead of being directly added to our crafting panel? If the thinking is for trade, why are the shards not removeable after adding to the crafting window? This seems to make an accidental right click very high stakes for valuable shards.

If these thinking are valid, would it not make sense to allow shards to go directly to the crafting panel when picked up. And allow players to take it out from the crafting panel as and when they wish to trade specific shards?

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Once I farm the mats I will make an updated crafting guide video … soon tm :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:… thanks for the update info… it really helps.

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Shards going directly into the crafting window is something that we have debated and could change. It’s not from a trading perspective. If there is something that you could use them for outside of crafting, we would make them able to be removed for sure. I expect that you will be able to sell them directly in the bazaar and won’t need to remove them and then place them in the bazaar.

The main reason that shards do go into the inventory right now is because we are a little concerned that people will pick them up and not know what happened to them. Part of that problem is just bad tutorialization (which we do plan to fix once the systems are a little more set in stone).

The crafting panel is also account wide right now so currently I don’t think that there is a reason to take them out of your crafting window.

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I see! That cleared things up for me. I am inclined to say that my preference would be to have a proper crafting tutorial and have the shards added directly to the crafting panel - but yes. This could wait :slight_smile:

Inverse is true for me… I picked up a shard and went to look for it in my crafting window only to realize that I had to click on it to move it there first.

Same for me. But I think that’s because we have some implicit understanding of the game to begin with. I would agree with Mike that a fresh player would more likely expect that picking something up would go to the inventory (in the same manner as weapons, armour, etc).

Thanks for this post, I was wondering how it all worked. Also +1 from me for wanting them to just go straight into the crafting menu.

I wonder if having the crafting inventory be a tab on the equipment inventory would be a possibility?