Arlen

There are eight slots. There it sits in front of you: the Bag of Crafting, filled to capacity with junk. Your inventory is also stuffed with red hearts, pills (maybe poison?), and cracked keys; your health is low, and the pressure is on. What do you need? There’s no guarantee of anything you’ll get…until you … Read more

The ultimate circuit recipe (Gregtech New Horizons) is one such example that causes a certain type of anxiety when you look at it. This is not so much due to the collection of ingredients but because of what lies behind them: a web of connections that stretches from the initial ore veins you mine to … Read more

So you want to build a fortified hall? Or maybe a bustling settlement. What you envision is that completed structure sitting on the horizon. What you don’t see is the mountain of stone, ore, and raw logs needed to construct it. It’s this gap between inventory and desire where most crafting plans falter. Plug in … Read more

But there’s nothing like quiet time waiting for Final Fantasy XIV to load so you can get into another round of crafting. One wrong move after clicking that start button and it’s all over, all your materials is wasted. It happens to us all. This applies even to veteran crafter who’ve made hundreds or even … Read more

There’s this particular type of panicky feeling that comes over you when you realize your crafting macro just failed on a recipe you’ve already purchased all the materials for. If you’re a crafter in Final Fantasy XIV you learn to fear this panic. The durability bar empties out, the item burns away and suddenly your … Read more

Eventually, every Black Desert Online player hit a wall where math replaces gut instinct. Sure, you have a fully humming cooking station churning out Witch’s Delicacy and stocking your warehouse full of vinegar. But then you look at your bank of silver and something isn’t adding up. Typically, there is a far larger gap different … Read more

ICARUS starts you off with just some basic tools and your wits, dropping you right into the simulation. You has to construct your initial shelter before sundown. But it’s not as simple as finding some sticks and lashing them together. You’ll soon see that crafting a Machining Bench require iron nails. This means getting ingots, … Read more

Sometimes when you place a big order, half way through, you realise you are low on something like Starflower stacks. If you’re a crafter in World of Warcraft and you’ve tried placing a guild batch without a spreadsheet, then you know what I’m talking about. Planning often breaks down between knowledge of the recipe and … Read more

Mortal Online 2 makes it so that you frequently end up with the materials for a single worthwhile sword but instead make three weak swords. That’s because the game doesn’t reward your gut instinct. Instead, it penalizes it by punishing you if skill levels doesn’t align with difficulty of recipe and heaviness of the materials. … Read more

In Pax Dei, it’s not just button-clicks; it’s a matter of supply chains. When crafting, you try to remember your supplies in your head until you have a chance to write them down. You stand by the forge and wait while animations play out, praying that everything goes right. Clan projects can be derailed by … Read more

It’s frustrating to come back from a risky mission in ARC Raiders only to find you have barely enough scrap to go out again. Because crafting is a logistical problem, it becomes an exercise in grinding. Trying to make advanced weapon modifications or prototype something new mean accounting for material shortages, squad coordination, station levels … Read more

When you’re facing down a top-level commission order in Ashes of Creation and you look at your inventory and feel a little short, well there’s a particular type of panicked feeling that settles over you. You’ve got the skill points, you’ve got the guild board slot, but your materials is spread out over nodes. Half … Read more