Become a Top Artisan! Complete Manufacture Guide

Contents
 * 1) Introduction
 * 2) Types of Manufacturing
 * 3) The effects of Dex, Luck, Skill level and Minigame to manufacturing
 * 4) Preparations
 * 5) Basic Manufacture Principles
 * 6) Increasing Skill
 * 7) The Artisan Logo
 * 8) Luxes and the Gambler's Dilemma
 * 9) Q&A
 * 10) Conclusion

1. Introduction After the success of my previous Level-up Guide (thank you for that!) I was asked a few times if I could write up a guide for manufacturing as well, so here goes! This guide will attempt to teach you everything about manufacturing, from gaining exp and snatching the top spot as artisan up to everything I know about luxes and effects of stats on manufacturing. A lot of manufacturing aspects are still mysteries but I will attempt to prove my cases as much as possible. If you have any questions regarding this guide, please leave a comment to this post or contact me ingame - I will be more than happy to explain.

2. Types of Manufacturing The first thing that I feel needs to be explained is that there are actually two types of manufacturing in this game and there are significant differences between them:

1. "Quantity-based Manufacturing" This type of manufacturing is used for any manufacturing ability where you can produce more than 1 of said item in one batch. There are only 3 skills currently in the game that work this way: Prescription, Cooking and Crystal.

Properties: - Items are not unique - you can make thousands in 1 batch which will all take 1 inventory spot - Experience is based on the amount you produce and is capped at a certain amount - Manufacture rate (in %) affect the amount of items you will produce (for example: a 200% manufacture rate will cause a batch of 1000 hp pots to become 2000) - You can not produce a MG or PG on these

2. "Quality-based Manufacturing" All other manufacturing abilities (all weapons, armors and accesories) fall under this category where you can only produce 1 per batch.

Properties: - Items are unique - every item you produce will have its own stats and its own inventory slot - Experience is based on the level of the item you produce and is also capped at a certain amount - The amount you produce is unaffected by manufacture rate, as it will always be 1. Manufacture rate will have other effects on these items (will be discussed later) - It is possible to produce MG or PG items

For the remainder of the guide, I will refer to Quantity and Quality based items, so make sure you understand this difference before you continue with this guide.

3. The effects of Dex, Luck, Skill level and Minigame to manufacturing Now that you understand the difference, it's time to prepare for manufacturing. The first question you should ask yourself though is: "What do I need?". In order to understand this, you need to understand what the different factors of manufacturing do for you. There are four different factors:

a. Skill Level Skill level increases the manufacture rate. You also need a certain amount of skill to unlock manufacturing for a specific item (like you need 70 weapon manufacture skill to create a Lv85 weapon). For quantity based manufacturing, higher skill level will (almost) always result in more products created with the same amount of mats. For quality based manufacturing, having a higher skill level increases the average manufacturing quality of the items you produce. Having higher skill will NOT result in a higher High Grade chance, nor in a higher minimum/maximum of the item you produce.

b. DEX There are varying different opinions about the effect of Dex on Manufacturing, but in my opinion, DEX does absolutely nothing for manufacturing, both quantitive and qualitative. I have done a comparison between about 1000 products with 700 DEX and 1000 products with 2300 DEX for manuing and found NO increase in average quality, NO increase in minimum/maximum quality and NO increase in High Grade chance between these two values. I believe the reason DEX is still visible in the artisan info (which is why people theorize Dex still matters) is because back in NDoors' time, DEX DID affect the MG/PG rate, but this was removed.. This removal was never processed in the artisan list. I do not have definitive proof that Dex does not matter, but I have never been presented with definitive proof that it does matter, so based on my own findings I conclude DEX does not matter.

c. Luck Luck does nothing for quantitive manufacturing, but should increase the chance of crafting a Master or Perfect Grade item for qualitative manufacturing. The reason I say should is because the difference between low and high luck manufacturing isn't notable at all. I've seen about the same amount of MGs/PGs being produced with low luck as I've seen with high luck. I've had plenty of cases where high luck resulted me in no luxes and cases where high luck gave me plenty of luxes and vice versa. This leads me to believe that the current Lux formula is either broken entirely, capped at a certain amount of Luck, or Luck plays almost no role in it. As of writing this post, I am still trying to get this sorted out with GMs and Developers. If I find anything new, I will update this part. Just like with DEX, I have no definitive proof that Luck plays a notable role, just like I have not been presented with definitive proof that it does not matter. For the time being, I would like to believe it matters, even though I hardly see a difference.

d. Minigame Minigame increases the amount of items you produce with up to 10% for quantitative manufacturing, or increases the quality of the item you produce by up to 10% for qualitative manufacturing, depending on the score of your minigame (up to 10000 matters, anything above that will make no difference). There are rumors that minigame increases the chance of making a MG or PG, but this has not been proven (kind of the same reasoning as Dex/Luck)

Based on this information, out of these four features the order of importance is Skill > Minigame > Luck/Dex for Quantitative Manu and Skill > Luck > Minigame > Dex for Qualitative Manu. Keep this in mind for when you start preparing for manufacture, which I'll cover in the next paragraph:

4. Preparations for Manufacturing Now that you know what you need for manufacturing, let's begin with equipment you can get for manufacturing, Note that I do take DEX into consideration even though I personally believe it does not matter.

The following things can be gathered to increase any of the four features discussed above. I will also mention the current optimal variants:

1. Rare Clothes (+Skill, Dex, Luck). Optimal is Necromancer (skill +38, luck +255, dex +255) - obtain through Random Boxes from Item Mall or buy off other players. 2. Rare Hat (+Skill, Dex, Luck). Optimal is Necromancer (skill +38, luck +255, dex +255) - obtain through Random Boxes from Item Mall or buy off other players. 3. Rare Cape (+Dex, Luck). Optimal is Seraph Wings (+160 Dex/Luck/Anything) - obtain through Random Boxes from Item Mall or buy off other players. 4. Recommender Necklace (all skill 3-6 increase, 6 being optimal) - obtain from NPC Reco by spending 300 Recommender points 5. Ring of Master x2 (optimal is HG with 5 luck up crystals equipped for 18 luck per ring) - can be crafted 6. Stats in DEX / Elixir in DEX (optimal is all in Dex) - put points into them through elixir or status reset 7. Luck Title (optimal is Collection Master title with 100 luck - obtain collection points. 8. Manufacture Guardian (optimal is Coonie with +20 dex, +40 luck, chance to obtain 200% manu EXP) - get through Ancient Keys or buy a Snake Pouch off other players. Brownie is an alternative 9. 100% Synchro Spirit (optimal is Fencer Hero / Amazing Raccoonie with 40 dex and luck) - obtain a spirit and increase synchro rate to 100% through waiting or Synchro Potions 10. Minigame Cushion (optimal is Forest Cushion with +4000 minigame points upon use) - obtain through Snake Pouch. Beach Cushion provides 3000 minigame points as alternative 11. Luck Cushion (only one is Egyptian Cushion, which adds 15 luck) - obtain through Random Boxes from Item Mall or buy off other players. Note that you can either use a minigame cushion or use a luck cushion. In general, use egyptian for gaining exp or for quality manu, use forest for quantity manu.

Do not worry too much if you can not get the optimal variant, this is just, as of now, the best to get. If I had to talk about essentials, I would say clothes, hat, luck cape, recommender necklace and Coonie are the most important to get.

If you have gathered everything above, congratulations! You are ready to manufacture optimally. Now let's discuss some basic manufacture principles:

5. Basic Manufacture Principles For this guide, I take it that you understand how to manufacture something - you know how the Make menu works, how you can enter quantities and how you can craft. I'm not going to discuss that here. Instead, let's talk about some other manufacture principles that are important to know:

5.1: Different types of skill levels Most of you are probably wondering how to get higher manu skill. It is important to understand that there are 3 types of manufacture skill in the game:

1. Basic Skill (up to 30) - obtained through learning books. 2. Equipment Skill (currently up to 82) - obtained through skill clothes, skill hat and skill necklace 3. Experience Skill (up to 80) - obtained through getting skill EXP

The first two can be obtained without crafting a single item in the game. The third can only be obtained through manufacturing items. TIP: Do not worry too much about Equipment Skill: Get one set of clothes/hat/necklace you are satisfied with, then focus on increasing experience skill. By the time you have reached your Experience Skill goal, it is possible newer clothing sets are out, which you can attempt to get then. It'll save you a lot of money compared to getting the highest skill / best stats of the current clothing set - it might be obsolete 6 months later.

5.2: Grades of Manufacturing (Quality Manu only) When you are creating a quality manu item, you will receive one out of 5 possible grades:

1. Junk Grade (1%-30% of base item) - Can only be created when your manufacture rate for an item is under 100%. The only purpose this has is to use for enchanting - the stats of the item are absolute garbage. Note: You CAN make a MG/PG with a manufacture rate under 100% 2. Normal Grade (100%-149% of base item) - Most common producted item. 3. High Grade (150%-199% of base item) - Higher quality item which always has an expiry date. When this date p***es, the item will not be destroyed, but will lose its quality until extended 4. Master Grade (200-249% of base item, red sparkles) - very rare item with high stats 5. Perfect Grade (250%-300% of base item, gold sparkles) - even rarer item with highest possible stats.

When you craft a Master or Perfect Grade, the entire server will be informed of this.

5.3: Expiry dates of Manufactured Items (Quality Manu only) ALL accesories you produce (clothes, hat, cloak, ring, necklace) as well as ALL high grade items and ALL armor sets above level 70 have an expiry date on them. ALL of these expiry dates can be extended with extension stones. Note that when these dates expire, the items will be destroyed (with the exception of HG, as stated earlier). If you want to reserve your item, either extend it for a long period of time or never forget to extend

5.4: TinTin (Quality Manu only) When you have created an item, it is possible to send it to TinTin, who will refund a certain percentage of materials (between 30 and 90% of the base mats). TinTin also has a random chance to provide 200% of the item's mats. Note that this stacks with all previously crafted items (if you get 200% on Asura spear, you get 200% asura mats, 200% templar mats AND 200% frost wyrm mats back). High Grade items add an additional +50% refund, MG adds +100% and PG adds +150% (though you will probably never TinTin a Perfect Grade)

Note: Accesories can NOT be Tintinned. If you want to dismantle accesories, go to Chiellini outside of Tarbiz and make Magical Nostrum out of it instead (or sell it to Angelet). This makes skill ups on accesories a far more costly job compared to weapons and armors.

These are the most important aspects of manufacturing and make sure you understand these before you continue. Now, let's talk about the one thing most people want to know: Skill ups.

6. Increasing Skill As stated earlier, there are 3 different kinds of manufacture skill. Reading books and equipping a clothing set is fairly easy so in this paragraph I will only focus on increasing experience skill level. If you plan to max out manufacture skills or want to learn how to effectively skill up: read this paragraph

6.1: Methods of Maximizing EXP Obviously, the first thing we want to look at is how we can gain as much EXP as possible while manufacturing to save us time and money. The following factors play a role in Manu EXP:

1. Manufacture Skill Books (Craft or buy from others): Basic Skill level increases the EXP you gain per item you produce. The difference this makes is quite notable: 30 skill levels will gain you almost 4 times as much EXP as 0 skill levels, so read your books! Most of the books cost no skill points either (with the exception of Crystal and all Accesories), so you can read them at any level you want. You will most likely hear 1 or more people say that you shouldn't read all 30 books at once because it will hinder you later on. This is because of the so-called "78 rule" which I will discuss later 2. Manu EXP Carpet: Some cushions provide you with a huge Manu EXP boost which stacks with ALL other buffs. From best to worst Manu EXP cushions: Egyptian > Halloween > Enchanted Forest > Everything else (no boost) 3. Manu EXP Buffs: Some buffs provide you with manufacture EXP:

a. Luminary Blessing: +100%, lasts for 48 minutes, plenty of ways to obtain b. Heart Candy: +100%, lasts for 48 minutes, plenty of ways to obtain c. Star Candy: +50%, lasts for 48 minutes, plenty of ways to obtain d. Rainbow Cake: +100%, lasts for 48 minutes, plenty of ways to obtain e. Divine Seed: +30%, lasts for 24 hours, obtain from Item Mall, giveaways or consolation from Keys f: Awakening Potion: +50%, lasts for 1 month, obtain from Item Mall or consolation from Boxes. There are also 1 and 7 day variants, which last, you guessed it, 1 and 7 days.

If you are going to buy either Divine Seeds or Awakening Potion, make sure to squeeze a few manufacture sets in to maximize its potential (don't buy them for just 1 manufacture set)

4. Server EXP Bonus: I did not mention this in the level-up guide (the difference is not as notable), but the Manufacture Bonus EXP boost that the server provides makes quite a difference for manufacturing. This can be either 150, 200, 250 or 300% and is determined by the Game Masters. You can see this in your notifications at the left of the screen every once in awhile. In general, NEVER manufacture for EXP unless it is 300%. At lower skill levels, manuing with lower EXP bonuses is alright and won't cost you too much, but if you plan to spam expensive weapons, armors or accesories, you will lose out on a LOT of EXP if you don't do it during 300%, forcing you to spend more time and money to get the same amount of EXP. 5. Minister Black Tortoise Weapon Bonus [For Weapons only!]: If you plan to max out weapon skills: become good friends with your Minister Black Tortoise - you will need him/her. A surprisingly unknown feature is the EXP bonus that Minister Black Tortoise can provide. The minister has 100% EXP boost to divide across the 6 weapons of the game, with 50% being the limit for a weapon. This will, just like a carpet, stack with ALL other buffs and will make quite the difference when you are making high-leveled weapons. Be aware that this takes 24 hours to change, so be on time if you need this service. I personally would only request it if you are going to make high leveled weapons (the difference between 10k and 15k exp is less notable than the difference between 180k and 270k) 6. Manufacture Questlines: In Hanyang you can accept a manufacture quest for every single type of item in the game (like weapons, armors, medicine, et cetera). They will require you to manufacture some items in exchange for some rewards and some skill EXP. It doesn't make a huge difference, but if you plan to manu the items anyway, there is no reason not to. Plus, some of the rewards are quite nice (25 miracle hammers for lv75 weapons for example) 7. Coonie: As mentioned earlier, Coonie has a random chance to double the manufacture EXP you gain, which essentially saves you 1 manu of mats per time this triggers. Coonie also has a chance to reduce manufacture time (most notable with Crystal Manu)

Now you know everything you need to start working on those manufacture skills. There is a notable difference between maxing Quality and Quantity manu, so let's split those:

6.2: Gaining Skill EXP (Quantity Manu) In order to work on Skill EXP, you need to know the following: - EVERY manufacture batch has its own EXP value (for example, 5 Weak HP pots has a value (say, 300 exp), 3 Average MP pots also has a value (like 3000 exp)