Perilous Artisan
Crafter and gatherer - the one class that earns nothing by killing. It levels at the forge, the loom and the mine, and makes what everyone else fights with.
Overview
The Artisan is the crafting class. Every other class pays you for what you kill; this one pays you for what you make and what you dig up. Kills are worth exactly zero to it. Its passives make your crafts come out exceptional more often, hand back most of your materials when a craft fails, and sometimes make two of a thing for the price of one. Its forks are mostly Masteries, each one a big block of effective skill in a craft that you never had to train.
That last part is the point of the class. A Mastery does not push you past the 120 skill cap, it buys back the points you would have spent reaching it. An Artisan can be a real, cap-level smith or tailor and still have a big chunk of their 720 left for something else. Pick it if you like to work, and like the idea of one character that crafts at full strength without giving up everything else to do it.
Passive Bonuses
Always on, nothing to buy, no choice to make. They grow every Artisan level and max at level 14:
| Bonus | Per level | At level 14 |
|---|---|---|
| Exceptional: chance a craft comes out exceptional | +1% | +14% |
| Salvage: chance each material survives a failed craft | 5% | 70% (capped at 95%, so a failure is never free) |
| Double Output: chance a craft simply makes two | 0.25% | 3.5% |
Double Output stacks what can stack; anything that cannot comes out as a real second item. None of these care about PvP flags because none of them touch combat, so they never switch off.
Signature Procs
The Artisan has none. Every other class carries two procs that fire off its own attacks against monsters, and they exist because those classes earn their levels by fighting. The Artisan does not. It earns nothing from a kill, so it has no attack to hang a proc on. Everything it gets, it gets at the workbench. If you want a class that hits harder, this is not it; if you want the character who made the weapon, it is.
Fork Abilities
At levels 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12 and 14 you pick one of two, permanent for the build. Each costs Guild Crests (10 / 20 / 30 / 40 / 50 / 60 / 70). Ten of the fourteen are Masteries, and a Mastery always works the same way: +5 effective skill in its craft per Artisan level, +70 at level 14, capped at 120 like everything else.
| Level | Option A | Option B |
|---|---|---|
| 2 | Tailor Mastery - +5 effective Tailoring per level | Blacksmith Mastery - +5 effective Blacksmithy per level |
| 4 | Tinker Mastery - +5 effective Tinkering per level | Alchemy Mastery - +5 effective Alchemy per level |
| 6 | Fletching Mastery - +5 effective Fletching per level | Inscription Mastery - +5 effective Inscription per level |
| 8 | Cooking Mastery - +5 effective Cooking per level | Carpentry Mastery - +5 effective Carpentry per level |
| 10 | Enchanting Mastery - +5 effective Enchanting per level | Gathering Mastery - +5 effective Mining, Lumberjacking and Skinning per level, three skills off one perk |
| 12 | Mastercrafting - weapons and armor you craft gain +1 durability per point of Arms Lore you carry, and it is allowed past the usual 250 ceiling | Contractor - +10% chance on both contract rolls, crafting and enchanting alike |
| 14 | Quartermaster's Contact - +25% reward points from quartermaster quests | Harvester - 10% chance for a gather to pull double; its own roll on top of the guild bonus, so a guilded Artisan can hit both on one swing |
How a Mastery saves you skill points. Train Blacksmithy to 50, take Blacksmith Mastery to level 14, and you work as a 120 smith while the other 70 points sit in your 720 for something else. The cap does not move; what moves is how much of it you had to train yourself. That is how one character ends up a full crafter with skills left over.
How It Plays
Crafting. Pick the crafts you actually want to run and take their Masteries as you climb, then train those skills only as high as you need to reach 120 with the Mastery on top. Every craft you make pays XP by the material, and the better the material the faster it pays, so working in the good stuff is also the fastest way up. Exceptional results get more common every level, failures cost less, and every so often a craft hands you two. Mastercrafting at 12 turns Arms Lore into durability on everything you make; Contractor is the pick if you live on crafting and enchanting contracts.
Gathering. Gathering Mastery at 10 is three skills in one perk, which makes the Artisan the strongest miner, lumberjack and skinner on the shard at cap. Harvester at 14 adds a separate double-pull roll that stacks with the guild gathering bonus, and every resource you pull is XP, doubled for anything above iron, plain wood and plain leather.
Fighting. You can fight. You just do not get anything for it, and nothing on the class helps you do it. Guild Crests do drop off monsters, but they drop for everyone, so a fighter finding Crests is not a reason to be an Artisan, it is a reason to sell them to one. The Artisan is the character the rest of the shard buys from.
PvP. Nothing here is combat, but the Mastery skill bonuses are class skill mods and drop off while you are PvP-flagged; the crafting perks keep working. None of it makes you any better in a fight.
Coins & Leveling
The Artisan spends Guild Crests. It does not earn XP from gold or kills. Instead:
- 1 point for every material a craft consumes.
- 1 point for every resource you gather.
- Double, in both cases, for anything above the base grade. Iron, regular wood and regular leather pay single. Everything better pays double.
The XP thresholds are the same as every other class, doubling each level (see Classes). Fill the bar, then pay the Artisan Guildmaster the target level times ten in Guild Crests per level (about 1,050 for the full climb to 14). Fork abilities cost extra coins. Crests turn up as you craft and as you gather, monsters drop them too, and they are not restricted to Artisans: anyone can find one, which is what gives every other class something to sell you. Prism Coins cover any class coin you are short.
Not Locked In
Your first class is free and instant. Changing later takes a 2-minute channel (hold still, take no damage) plus a cooldown between swaps. Each class keeps its own level and forks, so leaving and returning does not reset your Artisan. Note that a Mastery is a class bonus, so its effective skill is only there while the Artisan is your active class.
One character can also hold multiple skill builds through the Personality system - two slots to start, up to five for gold or Ether Charged Powder, swapped with a 2-minute channel (a fresh slot starts your skills at zero to retrain). A crafting build and a combat build can share the same character, and the Artisan is the class that makes the crafting half of that cheap.