Guild Wars 2 Crafting Guide – Materials Farming and Recipes

The art of crafting has made its way as an integral part of Guild Wars 2.

In GW2, the crafting system resembles that of Minecraft. This means that when crafting, you might not even have a bit of an idea of crafting an item unless you randomly start throwing in various crafting materials.

In this guide we’ll go over the various aspects of Crafting, including the basic mechanics, the Crafting Disciplines and what they can craft, the Recipes, and Crafting Materials.

Crafting Mechanics

The crafting interface has two main tabs, Production and Discovery.

Production:
The Production tab is where you will be producing things via crafting from the recipes you already know. At the start of the game, where it is difficult to learn new recipes, you will be given a set of basic recipes by default, from which you can immediately start low-tier production.

The Production tab itself is subdivided, with the key divisions being Refinement, Crafting Components, and Insignias or Inscriptions.

Refinement:
The refinement area is where you would further refine raw materials you obtain. Read the Crafting Materials section of this guide for more details on Raw Materials.

Crafting Components:
This is the section in which you make the building blocks for the gear you are about to make. This section takes all the refined materials and the vendor bought materials in it.

Insignias and Inscriptions:
Insignias and Inscriptions are used to give various bonus stats to the gear you make. The bonus stat directly depends on the name of the Insignia or Inscription.

Insignias are meant for crafting Armors, while Inscriptions are meant for Weapons.

Some of the prefixes, along with their bonuses, are given below:

Resilient – +Toughness

Precise – +Precision

Healing – +Healing Power

Festering – +Condition Damage

Vital – +Vitality

Mighty – +Power

Pillaging – +Power, + Precision

Ravaging – +Condition Damage, + Precision

Vigorous – +Power, + Vitality

Read more about Attributes (Power, Vitality, Condition Damage, etc.) in our Attributes Guide for Guild Wars 2.

Discovery:
The Discovery tab is where you learn new recipes. As stated earlier, this works very similar to the crafting mechanic in Minecraft. You will have to learn new recipes by combining and experimenting with different crafting materials.

Crafting Disciplines

There are various crafting types, or known as Crafting Disciplines, that a player can attain. Players can take on a maximum of two Disciplines at one time. However, a player can also choose to switch to a new Discipline at any time.

If the player wishes to change back to a former Discipline, he/she can do so by paying a small fee. Note that all the progression you do in any type of Crafting Discipline is saved, irrespective of whether it is being used or not.

Each Discipline has 400 skill levels. There are many Recipes that require a specific skill level to use. This means that there are possibilities that you may discover a Recipe, but not have the necessary skill level to use it to craft the item.

The Disciplines are:

• Armorsmith
• Artificer
• Chef
• Huntsman
• Jeweler
• Leatherwork
• Tailor
• Weaponsmith

Armorsmith:
Can craft Heavy Armor, Runes Upgrades, and Inventory Boxes