It’s all a bit new in here! Crafting guides are long! It’s gonna take me a while to get them all written up and tested.
I will release each guide as it is completed, meaning some of these links don’t work yet!
If it has a red border, don’t bother clicking it.. unless you enjoy reading 404 pages..
Crafting Skills for New Players
Welcome to Rift! If you are new around here and are just after someone to tell you which 3 professions to choose.. then I strongly recommend you just grab the 3 gathering professions; Mining, Foraging, and Butchering.
This will allow you to grab all different types of materials as you explore the world.
Be sure to visit your craft trainer often, to continue levelling up your gathering skills. You can find the trainers in your home city and then later in Tempest Bay.
Try to do some craft dailies, especially once your skills are level 375+, as these dailies will give you a decent amount of crafting currency.
If you are short on storage you can create a Bank Alt. Get this alt to the main city and park them near the bank, then send over all your materials gathered using the mail box, be sure to log your bank character at least every 28 days so you can grab the materials from the mail and sort them.
When you reach higher/max level, hopefully you will have a decent enough grasp on the game to make a more informed decision about your crafting journey. At this point, you can unlearn a gathering skill to replace with a craft skill, or you can spend credits to add a skill slot, or you can keep your 3 gathering skills and use alts to train the craft skills.
If you do not want to spend credits, then my recommendation is that you unlearn Butchering and Learn Dream Weaver instead. Put all the other crafts on alts, and relearn Butchering on an alt too!
Keep your mats in the bank!
You can craft items using materials stored in your bank. You do not need the materials in your characters bags!
This includes items in your Shard Vault, so you don’t have to keep mailing mats to your alts. The Shard Vault is available for credits only. It is only 32 slots big and cannot be expanded, so you will need to be selective with its contents.
The Crafting Skills
The 12 Crafting Skills are split into 3 main categories.
You technically have 5 Crafting Skill Slots when you create your character, however the Survival and Fishing skills are given to every character straight away and you cannot unlearn or replace these 2 skills.
This leaves you with 3 empty skill slots to choose skills for. It is entirely up to you which skills you choose, there are no wrong choices! However, some skills do work together better than others.
The 3 Gathering Skills are how you will acquire the majority of your materials to craft with. Each of the Crafting Skills uses materials gathered in differing amounts. For Instance, an Artificer will use more of the materials gathered by Mining and Foraging than by Butchering.
Runecrafters mostly use their own special materials, created by Rune-breaking items.
Dreamweavers will mostly use Dream Ribbons, created when they break down artifacts. They will also use materials from all the gathering skills.
Fishing feeds mostly into Survivalist, though some other higher level recipes from the other craft skills also need fish.
Usefulness at Max Level
Every player has different priorities at max level, some are here just to raid, others want to collect all the things, some build dimensions. Thus every player will have different needs at max level, so there is no true ‘best crafting skill’.
Most of the skills craft something ‘useful’ for end game raiders. This may be a one and done item, or consumables that you keep needing to craft. All of the skills craft Dimension items. Most of the skills craft some kind of fluff item. Some of the skills craft minions and/or pets!
Only the 7 main crafting skills are able to pick up the level 70 Crafting Rift quest.
- Crafts metal ores into bars.
- Crafts a few rock themed Dimension items.
- Crafts Hides into Leathers.
- Crafts a few fur and bone themed Dimension items.
- Crafts Timbers into Lumber, and refines Plants.
- Crafts a few plant themed Dimension items.
- Crafts the Gedlo Curry Pot, providing useful buffs to group members in all level 70 content.
- Crafts a few food themed Dimension items.
- Crafts a few costume and fluff items.
- The only useful item at level 70 is the ability to fish up Tenebrean Eels, which are required by Survivalists to create Gedlo Curry Pots.
- There are a few dimension items, including some Schools of fish.
- Crafts the BiS Chondritic Ranged Weapon for Warriors, Rogues, and Primalists.
- Crafts weaponstones for Warriors, Rogues, and Primalists. Used to temporarily buff level 70 players for raids/group content.
- Crafts a large selection of weapons, unlocking many wardrobes!
- Crafts the BiS Chondritic Ranged Weapon for Mages, and Clerics.
- Crafts weaponstones for Mages, and Clerics. Used to temporarily buff level 70 players for raids/group content.
- Crafts Earrings/Necklaces/Rings that will be good enough for your fresh level 70 until you can get better ones.
- Crafts a large selection of weapons, unlocking many wardrobes!
- Crafts the BiS Chondritic Helm for Warriors, Rogues, and Primalists.
- Crafts a large selection of gear, unlocking many wardrobes!
- Breaks down Artifacts into Dreamribbons.
- Crafts Dream Orbs, used to permanently buff gear.
- Crafts Artifact Thief Catchers, used to catch squirrels during Unstable Artifact Events.
- Crafts many Dimension items, especially lighting, and particle effects.
- Crafts Dimension Keys!
- Crafts the BiS Chondritic Helm for Mages, and Clerics.
- Crafts Insoles, temporary buffs to help you run faster out of the red.
- Refines Cloth into Bolts of Cloth.
- Crafts Bags. — These are actually useful for players that are still levelling up, a novelty!
- Crafts a large selection of gear, unlocking many wardrobes!
- Crafts Runes – Permanent buffs for gear, useful for level 70s.
- Crafts a bunch of fluff items, you can jump higher, breath underwater, or create special effects around your character.
- Crafts Vials – Temporary buffs to help you while you raid.
- Crafts Reliquarys, permanent items that buff you for a short time.
- Crafts a bunch of fluff items, making you small, big, or sheepish!
- Crafts Dyes, which are single use. Many of the credit only dyes can be found here, crafted with old materials.
General Training and Levelling
Each craft skill starts at a Novice skill tier. As you craft or gather to level up, you will hit a block every 75 levels where you will need to go back to your skill trainer to train the next tier and continue progressing. You are able to train for the next tier up to 5 levels before you hit the max level for that tier.
For instance, you can train for Expert tier from level 145. If you get to level 150 and haven’t trained for expert, then you will not be able to level past 150. Go to your trainer and train to continue levelling.
The trainers in your Home City can only train you up to Master level. After that you will need to visit the trainers in Tempest Bay to continue levelling all the way to Visionary.
All of the crafting skills have levels from 0 to 525.
Levels 0 to 300 are all part of the original Mathosian zones.
Levels 300 to 375 are Storm Legion.
Level 375 to 450 are Nightmare Tide.
Level 450 to 525 are Prophecy of Ahnket.
Levelling up your crafting skills has nothing to do with your characters actual level. Even a level 1 character can level a skill to 525 as long as they have the materials to do so! This makes crafting on alts super easy, just mail them the correct materials and level those skills up!
Levelling up gathering skills is a little trickier. As you will need to be out in the real world gathering the materials, you will need to be able to stay alive in even the highest level zones. It is easier to train your gathering skills as you level up. You will gain skill points from any material that is at the same or higher level than your current skill, so you will never be bottlenecked in a low zone trying to find 5 more bits of Iron to level! This is explained in full on the individual skill pages.
| Skill Level | Title | Char Level | Expansion |
| 0-75 | Novice | 0-20 | Mathosia |
| 76-150 | Skilled | 20-30 | Mathosia |
| 151-225 | Expert | 30-40 | Mathosia |
| 226-300 | Master | 40-50 | Mathosia |
| 301-375 | Grandmaster | 50-60 | Storm Legion |
| 376-450 | Savant | 60-65 | Nightmare Tide |
| 451-525 | Visionary | 65-70 | Prophecy |
Fishing is the only skill that is truly tied to your characters level. Unlike the other gathering skills, while Fishing you will need to fish in the right level zones. If you are fishing in a zone that is obviously too high level for your character, then a ‘Fish Bot 9000’ will appear and kill you.
XP gain per craft
Recipes in your book will be coloured depending on the amount of skill points that recipe will give you when you craft it.
Orange – Requires one craft to gain a skill point.
Yellow – Usually gives a point with 2 crafts, but may take 3.
Green – Requires 3-5 crafts to gain a point.
Grey – Will never give a skill point.
The Cadrift crafting guides will always have you crafting an orange recipe if there is one available for that level. However, it may be easier for you to use yellow recipes sometimes if you have oodles of those materials.
Green and Grey items should only be crafted if you actually want the crafted item.
Finding Your Skill Trainers
Defiants will be introduced to crafting during their first visit to Kelari Refuge in Freemarch.
Guardians will find theirs in Argent Glade in Silverwood.
In both these areas there are a few introductory quests and you can talk to trainers to learn new skills, as well as use the crafting stations.
There is the option to grab the Mining/Foraging/Butchering skills before you reach these larger questhubs, you can find trainers for the 3 gathering skills at Divine Landing and Ark of the Ascended.
When you reach your Home city of Meridian or Sanctum, you will find a large area dedicated to crafting. Here you will be able to train up to level 300, use the crafting stations, and start to pick up daily quests to earn crafting marks.
Once you are ready you can then move on to the Tempest Bay crafting area. This will see you through to end game. Here you can train all the way to 525 skill. You can pick up dailies for all the skill levels from 300-525.
Throughout these guides it will always be the Tempest Bay Skill Trainers that you are expected to be using, unless otherwise specified.
A quick Note about Margle Palace: Having created the Marvellous Modern Hub of Tempest Bay, Trion tried to go one further and build a whole city with a craft area inside it, they then placed this city, with its hundreds of NPCs and mobs, under an ocean.. and thus the Lagfest was born. No joke.. the lag was baaaaaad, so bad they even turned all the NPCs into sheep to see if they could fix the lag. It did not work, but at this point it did not matter, the players had given up using Margle Palace already and demanded that Trion just put the questgivers in Tempest Bay.. and they did. Everyone liked that very much, so much so that they didn’t even bother attempting with a ‘Tempest Bay Replacement’ during the Prophecy of Ahnket xpac, instead they just added the new higher level craft dailies to Tempest Bay.
Salvaging
All of the craft skills used to be able to ‘salvage’ gear. This would break down the gear into its parts, giving you small amounts of wood/metal etc back so you could use them to craft more items.
Salvaging also gave unique crafting materials that could only be obtained by salvaging epic/rare items. These materials were used to create enhancements for other gear items.
Salvaging was removed from the game at the end of the NMT expansion (16th November 2016).
Gear and weapons can still be Runebroken for Runecrafting mats. This does not give any other types of materials.
Crafting UI
To open up your craft book the default key binding is , (the comma key).
Each recipe will tell you which craft station you need to stand near to craft that recipe. The Augment recipe pictured to the left requires a Forge. It is written in red because I’m not near a forge! It will turn white when I am close enough to a forge to use it to craft.
There are 5 different crafting stations
Forge – Used by Mining, Weaponsmith, and Armorsmith
Workbench – Used by Foraging, Artificer, and Runecrafter
Loom – Used by Butchering, and Outfitter.
Laboratory – Used by Apothecary
Dream Focus – Used by Dream Weaver
Fishing and Survival do not need a craft station, you can stand anywhere to craft these.
Crafting Currencies
Grandmaster Craftsman’s Marks – Only stack to 500, try to spend them before you hit this!
Master Craftsman’s Marks – Only stack to 1000, try to spend them before you hit this!
Artisan’s Marks – Can be endlessly collected.
Crafting Marks are mainly earned by completing the daily crafting quests.
Small amounts if marks can be looted from fishing caches.
you can loot small amounts of marks while participating in crafting rifts.
There is a large bag of crafting marks on day 4 of the rewards calendar.
You can spend you currency on new recipes! Most of these are available in the Rift store, so you don’t have to travel around the world hunting for loads of different NPCs.
There are a couple of NPCs who’s recipes are not on the store….
- A vendor in Alittu called ‘R23-JK’. Find him at /setwaypoint 4032 6363 – This dude sells the recipes for the BiS level 70 Chondritic Helms, and ranged weapons. He also sells recipes for Crafting runes and Reliquarys.
- ‘Smokey’ the Rune Upgrade Recipe Trainer in the Choreburg district of Margle Palace, Draumheim /setwaypoint 5887 5576 – Sells many rune recipes, but all for NMT level 65 stuff, useless at end game.
- Bob – A recipe vendor in Margle Palace, Draumheim. /setwaypoint 5873 5543 – Again, this one sells NMT level 65 recipes, including the amender recipes.
Crafting Dailies and Weeklies
Try to do your craft dailies each day.
At higher levels, each craft daily will give you one skill point, so even if you don’t work on your crafting in any other way, you will still progress.
Dailies tend to not care what your character level is, but weeklies do.
I believe you need to be at least level 62 to be able to pick up the Savant level Weeklies in Draumheim.
You need to be level 70 to pick up the Visionary Weeklies in Alittu.
The weeklies all award Crafting Rifts. All the crafting rifts have a chance to drop the Crating Station Dimension Items.
If you level to 300 and complete the Mathosian weekly, you can then level to 375 and pick up the Storm Legion Weekly, and then do NMT and PoA weeklies too. So you can earn all 4 crafting rift lures in one day as you level.
Level 0 to 300 - Mathosia - Master
Defiants will find a crafting quest giver in Meridian at /setwaypoint 5999 5250
Guardians will find a crafting quest giver in Sanctum at /setwaypoint 7403 2990
When your skill level is exactly 300 and you have not trained the Grandmaster tier, you will be able to pick up a weekly crafting quest from the same questgiver. This awards the level 50 crafting rift lure. Not every craft has a weekly quest. The level 50 Crift doesn’t give anything special, it is just nice to see it!
You can complete this weekly quest on every skill that you have at level 300, earning multiple level 50 Crift lures each week.
Level 300 to 375 - Storm Legion - Grandmaster
As soon as you hit skill level 301, your craft dailies will now be found in Tempest Bay.
Pick them up from Romas Periga, just outside the crafting room in Tempest Bay /setwaypoint 12775 11665
When your skill level is exactly 375 and you have not trained the Savant tier, you will be able to pick up a weekly crafting quest from the same questgiver. This awards the level 60 crafting rift lure. Not every craft has a weekly quest. The level 60 Crift doesn’t give anything special, it is just nice to see it!
You can complete this weekly quest on every skill that you have at level 375, earning multiple level 60 Crift lures each week.
Level 375 to 450 - Nightmare Tide - Savant
As soon as you hit skill level 376, your craft dailies will be picked up from Elena Lyra, on the other side of the entrance to the crafting room in Tempest Bay /setwaypoint 12771 11684
You can pick up these same dailies from find the Daily Crafting Questgiver in Margle Palace, Draumheim /setwaypoint 5840 5520
You will also be able to pick up a weekly quest while your skill level is between 376 and 450.
The weekly questgiver is in Margle Palace, Draumheim at /setwaypoint 5863 5521 – Not every craft can pick up weeklies. You can continue to pick up the weekly as long as you don’t go over skill level 450 or train for Visionary.
You can only complete this weekly quest once each week, even if you have multiple skills at the right level. You can choose which skill does the quest, so you can use materials you have lots of. You can only earn one level 65 Crift lure each week (per character).
There is also a second weekly quest that asks you to create 2 Congealed Dreams. This is a recipe that you will need to buy in the store with crafting marks. This quest awards Fragments of Madness, Fragments of Darkness, A very large bag of crafting marks, or Notoriety with 3 of the NMT factions. It can only be completed once a week, even if you have multiple crafting skills at this level. The Congealed Dreams are expensive to make and this quest is really not worth doing unless you are trying to earn those old raid marks to buy wardrobes.
Level 450 to 525 - Prophecy of Ahnket - Visionary
When you hit level 451, your daily craft quests will again be picked up from Romas Periga, just outside the crafting room in Tempest Bay /setwaypoint 12775 11665
From level 500 you can pick up a Weekly Crafting quest in Alittu from ‘R23-JK’. Find him at /setwaypoint 4032 6360 – Only the 7 main crafting skills can pick up these weeklies. You can only pick up a single weekly quest each week, even if you have multiple skills at the right level. You will be given a list of different quests, one for each crafting skill you have, choose the one that you have the most materials for! Once you choose and complete the quest the others will not be available.
There is also a second weekly quest. This quest awards Celestial Remnants, Tower Fragments, A very large bag of crafting marks, or Notoriety with 4 of the PoA factions. It can only be completed once a week, even if you have multiple crafting skills at this level.
Where is the XP?
Up until the start of the PoA expansion, every crafting daily gave player XP… This was a lovely way to level up alts! Players parked them up in Tempest Bay, then sent mats from their mains to level up a craft profession, and then complete the crafting quests each day. This gave players many level 70 alts with little work.. so Trion stopped it by removing XP from all crafting quests.
Crifts
Crift lures are awarded from the weekly crafting quests. All the Crifts have a chance to drop the Dimension Crafting Stations. They are completely random and it does not matter which ‘plane’ or ‘craft’ you choose, i.e; A Fire Loom can drop from a water rift that was awarded to a Weaponsmith!
The Visionary Crift Lures are current content, you will see groups of players forming in the chat to close 20 of these in a row. When you have your lure, join a group and pop your lure when it is your turn. You can find more info here.
Master Crift Lure
Soulbound
Available at level 300
The Lure is specific to your crafting skill and will give materials that are useful to that skill (Mathosian level items).
Grandmaster Crift Lure
Soulbound
Available at level 375
The Lure is specific to your crafting skill and will give materials that are useful to that skill (Storm Legion level items).
Savant Crift Lure
Bound to Account
Available at level 376-450
You can choose a Lure from any of the Planes. Water is considered the easiest to complete.
Gives a variety of NMT materials plus a chance for the ‘Imperishable’ materials.
Visionary Crift Lure
Bound to Account
Available at level 500
You can choose a Lure from any of the Planes, Water is considered the easiest to complete.
Gives a variety of PoA materials plus a chance for the ‘Celestial Matrix’ and ‘Celestial Motes’.
Skill Trainers
Locations
Each of the Skills are learned from a specific Skill trainer. All of these trainers can be found in your home city of Meridian or Sanctum. They can also be found in many of the larger towns dotted around the zones.
Most players will just use the trainers in Tempest Bay.. these can be found around the canals.
Grandmaster Apothecary – Ekrana Fajron – /setwaypoint 12835 11665
Grandmaster Armorsmith – Pezon Staloj – /setwaypoint 12828 11687
Grandmaster Artificer – Culebron Brili – /setwaypoint 12816 11685
Grandmaster Butcher – Fortan Certe – /setwaypoint 12804 11669
Grandmaster Dream Weaver – Reva Song – /setwaypoint 12768 11598
Grandmaster Fisher – Plenigi Ripozi – /setwaypoint 12667 11550
Grandmaster Forager – Batos Sonis – /setwaypoint 12838 11668
Grandmaster Miner – Polvo Rojn – /setwaypoint 12831 11690
Grandmaster Outfitter – Ekbrila Cielon – /setwaypoint 12815 11666
Grandmaster Runecrafter – Mistera Venton – /setwaypoint 12809 11690
Grandmaster Survivalist – Rivera Vintro – /setwaypoint 12669 11543
Grandmaster Weaponsmith – Brava Batalanto – /setwaypoint 12837 11685
Learning a Skill
Skill trainers are used to train skills, just click to talk with a trainer, choose the ‘I’d like to train for’ selection.
This will then bring up their Recipe list, with the crafting tiers at the top. Novice should be highlighted in green, click ‘Train’ in the bottom left to train the novice skill.
Click again to train the first recipe. Then go craft that recipe! When the recipe stops giving you sufficient XP, you can return to the crafting trainer to learn more recipes. It is usually a good idea to check every 10th level for new recipes.
Lower level recipes will only cost a few silver. this will increase as you level up. The highest level recipes are a few plat each.
Unlearning a Skill
With only 3 skill slots and 10 possible skills, you may find yourself wanting to change what you choose. In this case, you can go to any skill trainer to unlearn a skill. Select that you would like to unlearn a skill and you will be given a list of all the skills you currently have, select the skill to unlearn and you will now have an empty skill slot.
You will no longer have access to the unlearned skill. however, if at some point you relearn the skill, all the recipes that you previously bought or learned will be there. You will restart again at level one, so you will need to level the skill up by crafting all the lower level items again before you are able to craft the high level items.
This makes ‘switching out skills’ cumbersome and expensive, it is recommended that you do not unlearn a skill, especially if you have already maxed it!
The best ways to learn more skills for yourself, is to put them on alts, or to buy some Trade Skill Extensions.
If you are a newer player that has levelled up with the 3 gathering skills and now you want to unlearn one to put a proper craft skill on your main, then it is best to unlearn Butchering and learn Artificer or Weaponsmith.
Crafting Cheevos
Master Crafter to Visionary Crafter
You will get a cheevo for each skill tier the first time you hit it.
Master Crafter
Grandmaster Crafter
Savant Crafter
Visionary Crafter
Master Gatherer to Visionary Gatherer
You will get a cheevo for each skill tier the first time you hit it.
Master Gatherer
Grandmaster Gatherer
Savant Gatherer
Visionary Gatherer
Apprentice Harvester to Extreme Harvester
Forage, Mine or Fish, many many times!
Apprentice Harvester – Harvest 250 times
Journeyman Harvester – Harvest 1000 times
Dedicated Harvester – Harvest 5000 times
Artisan Harvester – Harvest 10,000 times
Supreme Harvester – Harvest 25,000 times
Extreme Harvester – Harvest 100,000 times
Extreme Harvester – Harvest 1,000,000 times
Apprentice Crafter to Steadfast Crafter
Craft items using any of the crafting skills.
Apprentice Crafter – Craft 100 items
Journeyman Crafter – Craft 500 items
Dedicated Crafter – Craft 1000 items
Artisan Crafter – Craft 5000 items
Supreme Crafter – Craft 10,000 items
Extreme Crafter – Craft 50,000 items
Steadfast Crafter – Craft 500,000 items
Epic! to Epic Effort
Craft Epic level items!
Epic! – Craft 1 Epic item
A True Professional – Craft 10 Epic items
Now You’re Just Showing Off – Craft 50 Epic items
Epics for Everyone! – Craft 500 Epic items
Epic Effort – Craft 5000 Epic items
Most players will agree that the best way to ‘farm’ this cheevo is by crafting epic Apothecary items. At level 70, this would be the Healing or Mana Tonics, as these require the least amount of materials per craft… however, it is still an expensive cheevo to credit.
...Something Blue to Blue Is The New White
Craft Rare level items!
…Something Blue – Craft 1 Rare item
Feeling Blue – Craft 50 Rare items
Rarely Accomplished – Craft 100 Rare items
A Rare Feat – Craft 300 Rare items
Not So Rare – Craft 1000 Rare items
Blue Is The New White – Craft 10,000 Rare items
You will likely just get this pretty easily, but if you feel a need to ‘farm’ it, then the Visionary Potions from Apothecary seem a good candidate.
Legendary Crafter
Go learn to craft!
Master Crafter – Become a fully skilled Master in one of the trades.
Grandmaster Crafter – Become a fully skilled Grandmaster in one of the trades.
Revered Crafter – Become a fully skilled Savant in four of the trades.
Legendary Crafter – Become a fully skilled Savant in all of the trades.
It is likely that you would need to unlearn and relearn a bunch of the skills to be able to get these cheevos.
Of course the easiest way to do it is to buy the trade skill extensions so you have all the skills on the one character, however these are credits only.
Ouch, that's got to hurt
Salvage or Runebreak an epic item.
These cheevo is now a Legacy cheevo.
It was moved to Legacy when salvaging was removed from the game.
You can still earn it by runebreaking an epic item!
Recipe Stats
Is it free?
- There are a total of 3879 Recipes.
- 3568, that is 92%, of the recipes are available for free. Bought with platinum, looted off bosses, or even fished up!
- 19 recipes are available for credits only.
- There are 265 known recipes that are not available to keep – The vast majority of these are daily craft quest recipes, which are lent to you when you pick up a quest, but you don’t keep them!
- We have 27 recipes with an unknown source.. do you know how to get them?
- There are 251 Augments that you can craft… they are all completely useless.
Materials
- 1805 of the Recipes require Vanilla/Mathosian materials
- 913 of the Recipes require Storm Legion materials.
- 802 of the Recipes require Nightmare Tide materials.
- 359 of the Recipes require Prophecy of Ahnket materials.
| Skill | Amount of Recipes |
| Apothecary | 527 |
| Armorsmith | 544 |
| Artificer | 638 |
| Butchering | 37 |
| Dream Weaver | 232 |
| Fishing | 100 |
| Foraging | 49 |
| Mining | 45 |
| Outfitter | 542 |
| Runecrafter | 518 |
| Survival | 170 |
| Weaponsmith | 477 |