Revised Crafting and Trinkets

With the new update dropped, I can finally post! 🙂

Amidst the new gear evolutions, revised dodge mechanic and amended interface, the first major feature which caught my attention, as well as being highly discussed on the forums, would be the trinket crafting system.

On first glance, the new crafting system with conversion might seem to be confusing and players might be uncertain as to what to do next. Not to worry as this post is dedicated to helping you understand the new trinket crafting system (at least for this update).

Stay calm and read

Upon updating, you’ll immediately be greeted with this screen below, indicating that all of your trinkets have been converted to a ‘chance to craft’ of the same trinket tier. If you’ve not gotten the message, you might want to restart your game as it sometimes does not show up upon first loading.

Trinkets to be converted and recrafted

The first thing to note is not to panic.

I say this as you’ll immediately notice that all your trinkets will be gone from not only your character, but also your inventory. Fortunately, these can be crafted back quickly via the new crafting system.

Where did me trinkets go?! (Also, a ‘coming soon’ 6th slot?)

The system itself has a spunky new User-Interface (UI) that allows a larger number of craft-able trinkets with their required ingredient on the bottom right of each box. This allows more information to be fitted within a single vertical-scroll, which breaks out from the side-scrolling mould of the previous system.

Revised UI showcasing ‘free’ trinkets as well as crafting ingredients needed

TL;DR: Don’t panic! And read the rest of this post 🙂

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Quick Breakdown

To understand the new system, we first must note that there are a couple of basic things which have been modified (think of it as a quick TL;DR but at the start of the post):

1) Converted Craft-able trinkets do not require materials
Yes, these are all free and clicking the ‘craft’ button will immediately bring you back to the regular crafting UI panel. Some of you might be wondering about the ‘+’ sign, but I’ll explain that a bit later below.

2) Certain Crafting ingredients have been merged
Right from the changelog, certain materials have been merged together due to the new crafting system

For mission based ingredients:
All monsters eggs (not the shards) are converted into Feathers of the same element.

For ToE based ingredients:
All Minerals are transformed into Elixirs of the same element.

3) Crafting ingredients have been drastically reduced
No more painful consumption of 12x T4 trinkets to form a single T5.

4) Crafting mechanism changes
Crafting is now heavily randomised in terms of types of traits and their numerical bonuses, which I will cover below. However, there are certain ‘certainties‘ as to how the system assigns traits to the crafted trinkets.

5) Trials of Elements has been modified
This is a big section, which we shall delve into at the end of the post.

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Crafting

Reading the message at the start of the screen, you can now re-craft all your trinkets here. This is assigned as 2x tries per trinket in your possession before the update (ie. for a person with 2 x T4 trinkets, he/she can re-craft 4 x T4 trinkets now).

This can be easily accessed in the crafting panel which indicates how many ‘free’ trinkets you can craft per tier per element.

Free re-crafted trinkets do not show ingredient numbers

As for T4, T5 trinkets with weapon-dependent bonuses, these are kept fixed upon crafting as they are if they once were previously (ie. trinkets with Dual blade bonuses will be retain the dual blade bonus when re-crafted). However, numerical bonuses are random within the range as designated per tier.

Previously a T4 with dual blade bonus, the new T4 trinket retains this property

Done re-crafting all of your trinkets? Great! 

Crafting new trinkets from scratch though (ie. non-converted ones) is a different ball-game as you’ll realise that you are starting to consume ingredients.

You’ll first notice the extent of randomness of this system, which acts on two types:
– Randomised trait type (now with nice fancy icons)
– Randomised numerical bonuses

For a T5 trinket, it is necessary to use a T4 or T5 trinket as a ‘base’ material

Beyond T1 trinkets, you also need a trinket of one tier lower or equal to the trinket you are planning to craft as a ‘base‘ material, as input via the ‘+’ sign. This means that crafting a new T4 trinket requires either a T3 trinket or an existing T4 trinket. The trinket for the crafting, however, will be destroyed in the process.

As explained either, there is a non-randomised element in the system, which is actually how traits and to some extent, numerical bonuses are assigned. Below is a breakdown of the types of traits you can find per trinket:

Tier-1
Either Elemental attack or armor bonus

Tier-2
Either Elemental attack or armor bonus
1 x Random trait (weak %)

Tier-3
Both elemental attack and armor bonus
1 x Random trait (weak-moderate %)

Tier-4 
Both elemental attack and armor bonus
Random Weapon trait
1 x Random trait (moderate-good %)

Tier-5 
Both elemental attack and armor bonus
Random Weapon trait
2 x Random trait (moderate-good %)

Randomised traits for T2-T5 include all of the traits except for Damage over 3s, and the recent Wanted Challenge point bonus. However, it does allow for interesting combinations like enhanced bloodrage/brawler chances or introducing the much-needed HP/Hit to characters with none of that gear.

Crafting new T4 or T5 trinkets will give you receive randomised weapon bonuses. As clarified, even from a T4 to a T5 trinket in the new system, will not retain its original weapon bonus.

However, there is a chance to get the rare ‘All Weapon bonus‘ which would most likely bestow an ‘S’ grade on your trinket. Speaking about grades…

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Grades

Trinket Grades are dependent on the traits when crafted, which can be attributed to both trait type and numerical bonus. This means that certain traits (eg. All weapon bonus) and high numerical % bonuses might instantly give it an ‘S’ grade. The grades extend from ‘S’ (best) to ‘E’ (worst).

Due to the initial release of this system, crafted trinket grades will be S, A, B (ie. the top 3 grades). This means that chances of getting a decent trinket with good trait types and numerical bonuses are much better during this update.

If you’re not satisfied with the traits or bonuses on a certain trinket, you can re-craft the same tier trinket to alter the grade and magical properties of the trinket itself. For example, this can fix an undesired weapon type for a T4 trinket, instead of crafting a new T4 with 8 x T3 trinkets.

Existing tier trinkets can be re-crafted with new properties, but beware of a possible grade drop

However, crafting trinkets from ‘S’ grade will randomise the new trinket’s grade due to the change in traits. This means that the new trinket will no longer retain its original grade, and might promote or demote it entirely.

Despite being able to equip up to 5 trinkets now, the change in this system might result in an unsurprising slight reduction in global numerical stats, but with an increase in traits instead. This will undoubtedly get raised if you have crafted new higher tier trinkets that can be more easily crafted from the revised system.

Moreover, due to this randomness in the trinket crafting system, you might have noticed that your holiday/event trinkets have the potential to be much better than existing tier trinkets due to their higher-than-average fixed stats. One such example is the Delicious Emblem (Easter 2016), where the attack and armor bonuses are higher than your regular T3 nature trinket.

The Easter trinket boasting better %s than your current T3s

TL;DR: Crafting system becomes flexible in the sense that you can re-crafting existing trinkets with the same number of ingredients. However, global stats might drop and holiday trinkets might be more favoured.

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Crafting Recommendations

Here are some advice pointers which are purely from early-update observations. Do treat these with a grain of salt for now:

– T3 trinkets should be your baseline trinket tier as it has both elemental attack and armor bonus

– If you want a specific weapon bonus and you can craft it to T5, get it to T5 first and if its wrong, re-craft it to get better bonuses

– Reworking T4 trinkets again for the ‘correct’ weapon type bonus might prove to be less fruitful as weapon bonuses might change upon T5

– For crafting T4 to T5 trinkets, work on those with the ‘wrong’ weapon bonuses first, since there’s less to lose even if you get the ‘wrong’ bonus again.

– Best to craft within this period since trinket grades are set to be within S, A, B grades, meaning you get a better chance of getting decent-good trinkets

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More ingredients and ToE

So let’s say you’ve finally used up all of your existing ingredients and want to farm for more materials. Let’s head over to the new revised ToE.

Revised ToE with certain waypoints giving gems as rewards

ToE has now transformed into a weekly event which is due to reset every Tuesday. The waypoints, still till 75, no longer need energy to run, but now provides fixed crafting materials per waypoint. Like the old system, certain waypoints have enhanced rewards and drop gems and mission-based ingredients as well.

Since all of the ingredients per week are fixed, there is no longer a need to do continuous farming…which might be both a boon (for busy people pressed for time) or a curse (for those with loads of time to play). With the removal of the energy requirement, there is also a difficulty revision in ToE, possibly enabling more people to reach the dreaded WP 75 (still with a legendary chest).

Also, VIP rank immediately clears waypoints and gives you the ingredients and rewards at the start of every week. Although these waypoints cannot be redone, it does saves time since ToE is now a week long, instead of two and getting to WP75.

The dreaded WP75 with the old legendary chest

TL;DR: ToE now does not require energy and is a weekly affair. This results in a fixed set of ingredients every week.

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Okay, that’s about what I’ve gathered from the new system.

Do let me know if there is anything which I missed out. And in the meantime, I’ll look into how I can explain the new dodge system.
Thanks! 🙂