In this series, I talk about various aspects of The Lord of the Rings Online. This series is meant for newcomers, but may also help veteran players find more to love about the game.
So, about Thirty lessons ago, in lesson Seven back in April, I discussed Craft Vocations. Now that we've progressed a good bit and you've had more time in the game, it's time to take the next step with crafting and discuss Crafting Guilds. These Guilds are for specific production professions and offer a variety of benefits. In this entry, we'll discuss what the Crafting Guilds are, where to find them, how to join them, how you benefit from them, and how they fit in the player economy of Lord of the Rings Online.
Production vs. Gathering Professions
Guilds exist for the Production professions: Cook, Weaponsmith, Metalsmith, Scholar, Tailor, Jeweller, Woodworker. There are no guilds for the Gathering professions: Farmer, Prospector, Forester. This is because The Gathering professions don't rely on recipes to create, rather they take naturally grown resources and work them into a usable form for the Production professions.
This means that every Vocation has at least one Production profession, sometimes two, and therefore everyone is able to choose at least one Crafting Guild to ante up their craft skills.
Master of Crafting Guilds
In order to join a Crafting Guild, you must first reach the Expert tier of your profession. Then, you must find a Master of Crafting Guilds. These NPCs are found throughout Middle-earth at crafting areas and often near a Master of Apprentices. Their only function is to give you access to Craft Guilds associated with your vocation, and then they will direct you to your nearest Guild Hall for more direction.
Guild Membership
In order to gain access to anything beyond Guild Initiate, you must either have a VIP account or purchase Guild Access through the LOTRO Store for 295 LOTRO Points per Guild. Once you've paid for it, however, it applies to all of your characters on your account. So if you prefer not to be VIP, you can simply purchase access to one or two Craft Guilds with Points earned through gameplay and call it a day.
Each character can be a member of two Crafting Guilds (since some vocations have two Production professions in them). It will take a lot more space in your inventory and storage for crafting materials, but for someone who enjoys crafting it is worth that.
Should you change your vocation and lose one of the professions you are in a Crafting Guild for, you will lose all advancement and reputation. If you must change after doing a lot of work, try to change to one that keeps one of your professions. (Or plan ahead before you start working!)
Guild Advancement
Here's where Guilds get a little complicated and/or grindy. In order to advance in Guild standing, and therefore access higher tiers of Guild recipes, you have to craft Guild Reputation Items. You know how various factions have items you can use that give you reputation experience? It's the same thing with the Crafting Guilds. The difference is that you can calculate how long it will take you to reach the higher levels.
The bad news? You won't be able to do it in a day, no matter how fast you can craft. That's because the Guild Reputation Item recipes have long cooldowns. The Small items have an 18 hour cooldown. The Medium items have a 2 day and 18 hour cooldown. The Large items have 6 day and 18 hour cooldown. Despite this, it means as long as you're timely with when and how often you craft each of the items you need, you can blast your way through the guild ranks in a month or less.
Improved & Legendary Recipes
So what are these extra special Recipes? The Improved Recipes will sometimes be to let you create a full stack of something at one time instead of having to stand at a crafting station for an hour, or will let you automatically make the critical version of an item without wasting materials attempting multiple times with uncertainty.
At higher levels, you'll be able to craft Legendary items. Depending on your vocation, this could be weapons or class items. It's not unusual for players to ask other players to craft these items, so it can often be a good investment to push through all of your Craft Guild ranks.
Guild Halls
When you choose a Crafting Guild to join, the Master will tell you where your Guild Hall can be found and send you there for instruction.
Despite the various locations and appearances, each of them are equipped with the same NPCs serving the same functions -- just with recipes aligned to that particular Craft.
- Guild Leader: Will offer the Guild Intro quest as well as barter sealed relics for guild items.
- Guild Item Recipes Vendor: Sells the recipes for the Guild Items by tier.
- Guild Item Trader: Will barter stacks of small guild items for larger guild items.
- Guild Improved Recipes Vendor: Sells the recipes for multi-output and critical versions of items by tier.
- Guild Legendary Recipes Vendor: Sells the recipes for Legendary Items, as well as items which can be bartered for sealed relics from the Guild Leader.
The Guild Hall locations are all separate before Moria. After Moria, you can find all of them in the same locations. If you don't know where your Guild Hall is, you can reference the wiki list pictured below, or hover over the name of your Guild's listing in your Reputation panel -- the hover text will tell you where your primary Guild Hall is located.
Player Economy
As mentioned above, players are always looking for items to suit their needs as they progress through Middle-earth. Rather than pay inflated prices in the Auction House or wait for the perfect dropped item, many of them will ask around for crafters who can produce Guild Recipe outputs. If nothing else, seek out an avenue that will let you produce something for yourself as you make your way through LOTRO -- it pays off, I promise!
If crafting isn't your thing, you probably didn't read through this entry -- but if you did, now you know what you can expect from your friends who invest in their Guild Crafting!
Did I miss anything important about Crafting Guilds? Tell me on Twitter with the hashtag #GamerReverieBlog, or tag me @spottedsnark!
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