[Guide] crafting the Spine of Dagon dagger

With crafting revamp being right around the corner (sorta of, it's more like few more months to go) this might be your last chance to acquire the legendary Spine of Dagon, a Tier 3 raiding crafted dagger.

Post crafting revamp you won't be able to craft this dagger, but every crafted weapon will stay in game and become a legacy item with both sentimental value and great stats.

SOD has not only awesome, raw DPS alone, but also it can be gemmed with Bel's Mirth which can proc spell penetration, making detonation truly DA BOMB.

Getting this dagger is no easy task, but it's within a reach of any dedicated player provided that he has both the time and the patience to get it.

In this guide I will simply assume that you want to get the materials necessary to get this project going. Actual crafting (it happens in T3 raid) is a whole different topic.You need a T3 raiding guild for that.

To craft the dagger you will need:

Spine of Dagon = 1 Cromite Ingot, 1 Eventide Ingot, 1 Well-Honed Spire, 100 Superior Hilt Piece 

Well-honed Spire is actually a simple, blue crafted dagger. You can craft it yourself or get it off the trader for cheap.

Well Honed Spire (blue dagger)
6 Sourmetal Salts, 4 Tussah Silk, 6 Iron, 3 coal oil, 5 superior hilt piece, 4 plain hilt piece 

100 Superior Hilt Piece and 4 plain hilt pice  - you can buy this from crafting materials NPC. 

Now here comes the hard part: you will need materials for  Strange Malleable Alloy

Strange Malleable Alloy
10 Shards of the Exiled God 
10 Black Gold; - to craft you will need 50 Black Silver, 50 Gold 
10 Darksteel; - to craft you will need10 Tin, 40 Duskmetal 
10 Purlwire;- to craft you will need 10 Magnetite Powder , 10 Copper, 60 Silver, 20 Duskmetal 
10 Royal Gold;- to craft you will need 60 Illustrium, 20 Silver, 20 Gold 
10 Tumbaga; - to craft you will need10 Illustrium , 50 Copper, 40 Gold 
10 Zhemrian Bronze; - to craft you will need30 Black Silver, 10 Tin, 30 Copper, 30 Gold 
10 Aqua Regia; Humanoid drop 
20 Crystalline Flux; Bought at 15 Silver per CF 

You will need to craft 2 of Alloys.  Here is the list of all materials for two Alloys:

Black Silver - 50 + 30 = 80 x 2 = 160

Gold - 50 + 20 + 40 + 30 = 140 x 2 = 280

Tin - 10 + 10 = 20 x 2 = 40

Duskmetal - 40 + 20 = 60 x 2 = 120

Magnetite Powder - 10 = 10 x 2 = 20

Copper - 10 + 50 + 30 = 90 x 2 = 180

Silver - 60 + 20 = 80 x 2 = 160

Illustrium - 60 + 10 = 70 x 2 =140

Aqua Regia - 10 = 10 x 2 = 20

Crystaline Flux - 20 = 20 x 2 = 40

The most important part of crafting is getting the two Ingots. Ingots are items that are archetype specifics

Priest = Atlantium Ingot
Mage = Eventide Ingot
Rogue = Chromite Ingot
Soldier = Acheronian Steel Ingot

For Spine of Dagon you will need 1 Cromite Ingot and 1 Eventide Ingot.

So to sum it up here is the complete breakdown of every single base material that is needed to craft and gem up the Spine of Dagon:

Name	Need
Shards of the Exiled God	20
Superior Hilt Piece	105
Plain hilt piece	4
Sourmetal Salts	6
Tussah Silk	4
Iron	6
Coal oil	3
Black Silver	160
Gold	280
Tin	40
Magnetite Powder	20
Copper	180
Silver	160
Duskmetal	120
Illustrium	140
Aqua Regia	20
Crystaline Flux	40
Thrusting Marquise Peridot	1
Moonstone of Bel's Mirth	1
Brutal Brilliant Royal Onyx	1

Some tips:
- look for bargain offers on trader, anything under 20g per 1 shard of Exiled God is a good offer.
- farming the rare mats like Black Silver yourself would take forever. Look for cheap mats on trader or buy crafted materials like Royal Gold straight from trader.
- need Tussah silk? Cannibal cave mobs drop it.
- need Sourmetal Salts? lvl 70 caster can drop a cache with it. Purple Lotus Swamp is generally the best for it, but there are other places, like Khesh with lvl 70 casters.
- want to craft everything yourself? Here is the recipe list:

Recipe Name	Ingredients	Batch Yield	Last Known Drop Location
Black Gold	5 Black Silver 5 Gold	5	Brokk the Smith at Atzel's Fortress
Royal Gold	2 SIlver 6 Illustrium 2 Gold	8	Brokk the Smith at Atzel's Fortress
Darksteel	2 Tin 8 Duskmetal	2	Brokk the Smith at Atzel's Fortress
Zhemrian Bronze	3 Copper 1 Tin 3 Black Silver 3 Gold	4	Brokk the Smith at Atzel's Fortress
Tumbaga	5 Copper 4 Gold 1 Illustruim	2	Brokk the Smith at Atzel's Fortress
Purlwire	1 Copper 6 Silver 2 Duskmetal 1 Magnetite Powder	1	Brokk the Smith at Atzel's Fortress

I have researched this guide as best as I could, but if you found a mistake please let me know in the comments!

The workbench - crafting the crafting system

Welcome to the new segment of the assassin's hideout: The workbench. As you can see in "labels" I have created a separate "crafting" tag. I am going to definitely get into new crafting system. The old system (aka "teh turd") that we currently have is by far THE WORST crafting I have ever experienced in any MMO. Funcom have started new crafting system from scratch, but it is not like they had a big choice. Crafting was very much forgotten part of Age of Conan ever since Khitai hit the live server. The reason was very simple: basic Khitai blue armor pieces were superior to whatever crafted could have created. That and the simple fact of how rare and hard to attain the recipes are. Master crafters (aka people with most valuable recipes) were leaving the game at a rate that was higher than the recipes drop rate. Soon pretty much people with rare recipes were rare (oh how ironic).

I won't go deep into details about new system (you can get all the info here), but I would like to give you piece of my mind.

First of all: I like it. It is everything that I have hoped for and penned out in "Where is my crafting" post. I am sure that I will now invest time and resources into developing my crafting.

The random element and the time based system
I very much like the concept of "critical success" where I might end up with better item that I have hoped for. This is what makes crafting exciting. The game director also hints at possibility of adding special place in game that will speed up crafting. Speed up? Oh yeah, it is time based system, did I mention that I love it? No more spiting out 1 million artistry points for grinding gems for 1 hour. And, of course, with time based system FC can allow crafters to create some very powerful items while not allowing the marked to be saturated with them. But back to the "crating center" this place is supposed to speed up crafting. I think it is great that crafters can hang out in one place (even if artificially "forced" to). Some sort of market place for buyers and sellers would be dreamy.

Lack of recipes
I hated the idea of farming recipes. Yes, I can understand that if anyone can get recipes then no one will be able to sell item, but AOC took it to extreme. I don't want to camp mobs to trigger an even in Tarantia Commons so I might have a CHANCE to get recipe. This is why Game Director says: no recipes!! It is all about player's knowledge of the system and the resources that he has. I can understand the frustration of current top crafters, ones that have collected it all(TM). While I sympathise with them (I wouldn't like something like all of my AA's going into waste either) what AOC currenlty has to offer in terms of crafting system is sub par and people shy away from it. It has to change. The game has to change sometimes. I loved my 1.4 Age of Conan when armor stats hardly mattered. It was great. But people complained that the stats contributed now enough to the power and the progression. Then came patch 1.5 that made the stats matter. I had two choices: accept and embrace or quit. I have chosen to stay. I very much feel that this is similar change. Well, kinda. Someone will get shafted in this scenario because recipes will be gone. I am just glad that I ain't the one.

Resources
The amount of resources AOC has is absurd. Furthermore those resource drop like candy whenever you some much look at a mob. After 4 years I have 3 bank characters stuffed with resources. With the new system the resources will get "normalized" meaning that the amount will be manageable and their color will indicate their worth. Got blue resource drop? In current system it might be a common drop turd, but it new system this will indicate that there is some serious money to be made on it. Now here is a problem: I have 4 bank characters stocked fully with resources that I have been hoarding for the last 4 years. What will happen to those? They might get converted or trashed when the new system launches. I am just fine with either of the options. This is new system and some sacrifices have to be made.

Old items
Apart from T3 crafted items (like the still awesome Spine of Dagon dagger) AOC's crafting is out of sync with the current state of the game. Whatever blue items you can muster, be it armor or a weapon, a mere rank 1 faction item in Khitai beats it in every way. Not only current crafting item are missing the vital critigation stat (you NEED it for Khitai), but also other stats like protection, constitution or combat rating are not enough for the high end content. In other words: Funcom left crafting behind about 2 years ago. With the new system those items can't be ever made again, but will stay in game as "legacy" items. What is legacy? Crafter's epeen. For other people? Some old junk from the times the crafting sucked in AOC. Those items will still be in game, but rather for showing off than for being viable piece of armor/weapon.

The "knowledge" factor
The new system is supposed to be knowledge based which means that crafter will be only as good as his resources AND knowledge how to "blend" them. Just having great amount of resources (which you can buy with gold) won't cut it. I am already planning how I am going to keep track of my crafting recipes: evernote. Take a snapshot of AOC screen with my iPhone and send it straight to the proper AOC tag in my evernote. Yes, it's a shameless plug for *ekhm* EVERNOTE, but it is a free software and I am using it for EVERYTHING in my life that is related to data collection and retention. Hell, I am even using it to back up every single post of assassin's hideout and store my "I want this" list of in-game items. I am sure it will be great for storing and sorting crafting blending "recipes" as well.

To sum it up: in case you can't tell I am super excited for new crafting system. Bring it!

Where is my crafting?

I enjoy crafting. Or should I say: I enjoyed crafting in other games? Age of Conan has THE poorest crafting system I have ever seen in any modern MMO. Everyone can get to the Master level with ease and by doing so you are just another shmoo who can create some items and that is IF you are in a guild that has progressed your city enough.

I remember back in the "gem wars" era when at least gem crafting was exciting. Apart from broken stats it had the random element: you could get some average +dmg gem with stats like +5, but you could also get that sweet +8 which would sell for high profit. Right now if you don't have really rare recipe you are screwed.

The crafting materials are in fact more costly than whatever 80lvl food you could craft for it. For example food made from beguiler blood (mmmmm...demon's blood) costs 55s per 5 and that single vial of blood goes for 60s. Nice.

To top it off the recipes are so rare, how rare are they? They are so rare that items made from those are no longer on the trader because people who got them are long gone from the game. Like for example asuran daggers (which I am still using) are to die for. Hell, you have higher chances to actually raid for T1 and epic quest reward dagger than to buy off that shit on trader. That might be true just for my server, but still: there is huge marked of re-rolled assassins for those daggers and with the high demand there is little supply.


Well what would be the solution then? This is what I would really like to see:

each crafted armor has its own progress bar and as you craft more of these it you could level up both the recipe for the item and the item class itself. Leveling certain item would add some extra stats and leveling type of item would add extra stat to the pool of stats.


Example:


You have crafted that damn asuran dagger few times and leveled up in asuran daggers and dagger type of items. Here is what you could get:


+22 offhand rating (progression bonus) on asuran dagger

+3 stamina regen added to the pool of random stats for daggers. Whenever dagger is created in has a chance to have +3 stamina regen or +40hp or +12 magic damage etc.. from the pool of random stats.


This would be quite exciting and it would add another layer of specialisation among crafters. After you have leveled high enough you could create costly epic dagger that you could name (words like ass, twat, pwnage are bound to appear, but some creative people would want their crafted stuff to have other, cool name)


Whatever the revamp might be it would do nothing but good for the game because right now crafting is reduced to progression in the renown.

Don't get me started on pvp item crafting...where the hell is that?

One more thing: why the new factions doesn't have some cool crafting recipies? Seems like a perfect opportunity to introduce more stuff to the game.