For today's Dev log, I'll be talking about the crafting system in Synthaar. Crafting is a critical part of getting your foot in the door in the trade business within the galaxy. Most items that your characters will use need to be crafted, either by yourself or through a specialist who will sell their goods. Items such as weapons and armor, medicine and general tools, and even robotics will be craftable in Synthaar. In the upcoming 0.2.5 update, a preview of crafting will be available allowing you to create weapons and armor, however we'll be going through the general process of what is both done, and discuss what is yet to be completed but will be in Synthaar. 

A common workshop in Synthaar

In order to get started with crafting, you'll need raw materials. Materials such as metals, ores, oil and gasses can be harvested out of the ground using extractors and drills. These materials have concentrations throughout the planet, which affects the available resources you'll find on a lot that you own. If you're looking to get into crafting and manufacturing, you'll want to consider the resources available to you before you purchase a lot. Using the overlay function, you can view the concentration of materials throughout a planet.

Copper is abundant here, but in this particular lot, it is only at 27% concentration

Resources can also be purchased at a vendor and general shops. In the future, cities will harvest these resources which will affect their availability and pricing, allowing for a healthy commodity market to engage with. After you have your resources, it is time to do something with them. You'll be able to purchase a workbench for the different types of crafting that will be available. The original planned crafting types are for Weaponsmithing, Armorsmithing, Tailoring, Medicine, Robotics, and General Engineering. These types will also come with an associated skill that the character will need to rank up before crafting more advanced items. 

Once you've picked the type of crafting you want to explore, you'll need to research a template. Templates are available at certain ranks of the associated skill, and take some time to research. Many items have multiple tiers, which allow you to continue researching in order to create even better versions of that item in exchange for using more complex recipes. Governments can pass laws that restrict the level of weaponry allowed legally, which means you'll want to make sure you check the type of your weapon before going to certain worlds. 

The initial potentially researchable templates for a novice Weaponsmith

Once a character has researched a crafting template, they know it forever, and they may be able to teach it to others at a faster pace than they might on their own. The template is only the first step in the process, however. Once you have a template known, you'll need to make a schematic using it in order to turn it into something real. A schematic keeps track of what kinds of materials you used, any experimentation you've done on the object to make it even better and customized, as well as color customization for things like clothing and armor. 

This schematic makes your created object more than just another template. It dictates its quality, its attributes, and what it takes to create. This schematic can then be downloaded onto a disk for other characters to use and create the item so long as they have the right resources. It will also be usable in factories at a later date, where mass production of your designs can be done. These schematics can also be sold to NPC tradesmiths which they can then use to create more items of the same design. This creates an economy where the knowledge of how something is made can be just as valuable as the end product itself. 

Configuring which items to use in which ingredient slot, which will be required to make the schematic later.

Experimenting and Customization makes items you design pretty unique compared to others

Once you complete creating the schematic, now you can create objects with it. Schematics are by default stored in the workbench itself, but can be retrieved with a data disk to be sold or traded. When installed in a workbench, you'll get the option to start a craft order for that item, where you can dictate how many items the characters should create and adjust their priority. Characters will automatically retrieve the resources if they're available to them and work on crafting the item. Characters will gain skill points when creating schematics and crafting items. The final touch of an object's quality will depend on how well the character constructed the item, giving it a bonus to its stats, or a debuff. Always be sure your crafters are happy, healthy, and skilled enough for the job, or you mind end up with a cool design that is ultimately unusable. 

The craft order screen, allowing you to create craft orders, as well as dictate their count and priority.

Crafting is just one part of the three pillars that drive Synthaar's gameplay: Power, Wealth, and Legacy. You might engage with it and become the master Crafter of your field, or you might befriend local traders and crafters to supply your characters with the goods they need to succeed. It is also a critical backbone of the mechanics of combat, as the stats of weaponry and armor are key to victory or defeat. Because combat relied so heavily on crafting to be done, I tackled it to get those items ready for the coming introduction of combat, which I will record a Dev log about when the time comes. For now, this crafting system in its first form will be available in the upcoming 0.2.5 due to be pushed out soon. 

I hope this Dev log on crafting has been an intriguing system. You'll note designs that are new and familiar, as I designed new concepts around ideas I've seen from other games. I look forward to showing more off about this system and others. Stay tuned for future Dev logs regarding the development of Synthaar! Thank you so much to those who have been interested and downloaded the game thus far. I deeply appreciate your support. If you'd like to be a bit more hands on, consider checking out our Discord for more information, or check out our Subreddit, or even visit my BlueSky to catch random development musings and screenshots. Last but not least, please consider wishlisting Synthaar on Steam, which can be a significant help!