Hello, everyone!  I'm EdgeCase, and I'm very happy to be able to tell you all about the update to Crafting coming in Update 17.  In general, this will look a lot like the existing crafting tiers, but with a few important changes.

What we’ve done with the Anórien crafting tier is to streamline and improve the new set of recipes, as well as making crafting inventory management less of a headache.  There are fewer materials and recipes and a much greater level of customization than previous tiers offered.

Crafted Armour

The new set of crafted armour will be very different from previous tiers.  All new crafted armour has 3 essence slots, and grants Morale rather than the typical main stat.  For example, here's the new heavy chest piece from the Anórien Metalsmith profession:

 

As you can see, this armour has been made with maximum customization in mind.  All pieces are tuned for survivability, while allowing you to add whatever other stats your build requires.

 

Crafted Jewellery

The new jewellery is similar to the new armour, but with both DPS and survivability in mind.  Here's an example:

 

This jewellery is similar to the existing Osgiliath jewellery, but with Morale instead of Vitality.

 

Farming

Farming has been simplified.  In Tier 9, a farmer would use their Westemnet Crop Seeds to plant a Bean Field.  They would then harvest the field to get Bean Crops.  They'd take those crops to the workbench, and make Bunches of Beans, ready for cooking.  There were 4 different kinds of farming products: beans, pears, mushrooms, and coffee.

In Tier 10, things are a bit more streamlined.  Farmers will use Anórien Crop Seeds to plant Anórien Fields.  These fields will be harvested to get Anórien Crops.  These Anórien Crops will be used to craft either Anórien Beans or Anórien Taters.  This change makes farming a little simpler, and means that there are less food items to keep in your storage.

 

Food

Food is a little simpler as well.  There are fewer kinds of new vendor ingredients, and fewer cook crafted ingredients.  In addition, there are only 5 new foods, including critical versions. 

“Cooked” food is food that increases your morale and power regeneration.  The cooked food in Tier 10 is significantly improved over the Tier 9 version, and only has one version.  A crit on cooked food just gives you more of the same kind of food.  What we've seen in the past is that some players don't want to bother with the extra effort required with making crit crafted food, and others feel that using anything but the best food is pointless.  For something as core to combat and adventuring as morale and power regen, we chose to make a single kind of cooked food that provides sufficient in-combat and out-of-combat regen for everyone.

“Trail” food is food that increases your primary stats, like Might, Will, or Agility.  The trail food in Tier 10 has two versions: one that gives a bonus to Might, Will, Agility, and Fate, and a critical version that also buffs Vitality.  The trail foods also give a significantly higher buff than they did in previous tiers.  This consolidation serves two purposes: it means that there are fewer items that cooks need to keep track of when making food, and it makes it easier to get a bit of a buff to stats that you typically wouldn't itemize for otherwise.

“Fortifying” food is food that improves your Resistance rating, as well as granting a small bonus to resist a particular kind of attack.  The fortifying food has two versions, a regular and a crit.  Both grant a bonus to resistance rating and a percentage resistance bonus against all resist types; the regular gives +2% and the crit gives +5%.

 

Other Items

The rest of the recipes in tier 10 should come as no surprise.  There are new weapons, pocket items, cloaks, and a number of new consumables.  However, several kinds of crafted item have not been extended to the new tier.  The rule of thumb is that anything that relies on a percentage value increasing with each tier hasn't been extended.  This means that there aren't new class consumables for most classes, crafting lore scrolls, or crafting tools.  In addition, due to the sheer number of items involved, there won't be a new tier of Minstrel instruments.  Existing recipes from previous tiers won't be affected, there just won't be a new tier 10 version for these items.

 

There will be two brand new consumables in tier 10: a pair of Scholar Beorning potions.

 

 

Gathering

Three professions are considered “Gathering” professions: Scholar, Prospector, and Forester. The gathering professions have been consolidated to require fewer items.  Each gathering profession now only needs one tier of refined material.  For example: in tier 9, a Westemnet Prospector would harvest skarn and smelt it into low-grade ingots, which were turned into mid- or high-grade ingots in turn. An Anórien Prospector will gather Anórien skarn and process that into Anórien ingots, without having to upgrade those ingots to a higher grade before using them to make final products.  This means fewer kinds of crafting material to keep in your inventory.

Also, all gathering professions now have Processing recipes in tier 10.

 

Legendary Items, Relics, and Essences

There will be no new recipes for LI, Relics, and Essences in tier 10.  There are already recipes for level 100 first age LIs in tier 9, so there isn't much reason to add the same recipes again in tier 10.

Relics and Essences are both systems that are already at a very high power level.  For now, there are no recipes for these in tier 10, but we plan on adding recipes for these at some point in the future.

 

Recipe Drops

There will be no tier 10 recipes dropped on landscape.  All tier 10 recipes will be acquired automatically once you attain the tier.  In future updates we will be adding more recipes to region reputation and guild barter, but not for U17.  Any new crafting guild recipes that are released in the future will only require Westemnet Master of the Guild reputation; we have no plans to add another tier of required crafting guild reputation.

 

General Crafting Changes

In all tiers, all crafting materials now stack to 500.  This includes everything: farming crops, logs, ingots, vendor items, journals, etc.

All landscape crafting nodes in all regions can be harvested from horseback.