Upgrading, crafting, mining

A refining smith takes the weapon you are wearing and some black iron ore, and after a wait gives it back with one stat raised, or unchanged if the refine failed. Talk to Piersym in Bichon Castle, Maddox in Sabuk Keep, Jack in Desert Mud Fortress or Borg in Bichon Province and choose refine.

How to refine

1. Wear the weapon, and fight with it until the smith says it is owed a refine. You get a notice when it is ready.
2. Carry up to five lumps of black iron ore. Purer ore gives a better chance.
3. Carry 50,000 gold.
4. Choose how long and what to improve, and press Hand it over. The weapon leaves your bag.
5. Come back when the wait is over and collect it from the same kind of smith (see collecting).

How long, and what it does to the chance

The chance

• It starts at 60%, less 5 for every refine the weapon already has.
• Each lump of ore adds half its purity. Five lumps of purity 30 add 75; a lump of purity 10 adds 5.
• It can never go above the best possible chance, which is 90%, less 1 for every refine the weapon has, then moved by the wait in the table above.
• The chance is fixed when you hand the weapon over, and the collecting counter shows it.

What a success adds

Earning the next attempt

• A worn weapon earns a tenth of the experience you earn. Pickaxes earn nothing.
• A new weapon is owed its first refine almost at once. After that it needs this much weapon experience:

• A weapon can be refined 17 times.
• A failure costs nothing but the attempt. The weapon comes back as it went in, the gold and ore are gone, and it has to earn the next attempt.
• The smith holds at most 5 of your weapons at once.

Choose waiting here (or your smith's word for it) to see what you have in the pot. Your weapons wait for you through logouts and restarts.

You are told whether it worked. Any smith with a collecting counter will give it back.

Once a weapon has all 17 refines, Piersym, Maddox and Jack can push it further with oils and fragments. This happens in the conversation itself, not in a window.

Every special refine costs one Oil of Conservation and one Oil of the War God, plus one of these:

• The figure in brackets is the most that stat can be raised by special refining.
• The same smiths change a weapon's element for 100,000 gold, if it already has one.

Some top-end gear has holes, called sockets, that take a gem each. You can set a gem anywhere by dropping it onto the item in your bag, or at a socket bench where you pick the hole yourself. Mr. Kang (weapons), Linda (armour) and Amy (jewellery) in Bichon Town all have one, as do the weapon, clothes and jewellery shops in Shandam.

The rules

• A gem fits a hole of its own colour, and anything fits a colourless hole. A colourless gem fits any hole.
• Setting a gem in a full hole swaps the old one back into your bag.
• Nothing can fail and it costs nothing. You need room in your bag for a gem that comes out.
• Take the item off first: you cannot socket what you are wearing.
• An item has at most 3 holes.

Which items have holes

The gems

The same gem gives a different stat depending on what it is set in.

A Socket Punch adds one colourless hole, up to the limit of 3. Drop it straight onto the item in your bag: the bench has no hole to aim it at.

A few rare rings gain levels, and every level is a free stat. Fido in Bichon Castle has the bench. Choose Level Up, Upgrade or Reset; all three open the same window.

Levelling a ring

1. Wear it. It earns 5% of the experience you earn.
2. Or feed it copies of the same ring: each is worth 150, plus everything that copy had earned. Feeding costs 10,000 gold a copy.
3. When it levels, open the Spend tab and press Spend the attempt. It cannot fail. Spend it before feeding again: the bench will not level it twice.

What a spent attempt can give

• Which rings level: only the Crushing, Dusk, Occult and Radiant Rings, all level 82. Anything else is refused.
• A copy must be plain: the same ring, not worn, not locked, with no added stats and no gem.
• One level per feed. Copies past what the level needs are not lost, but they will not buy a second level today; the bench asks before feeding them.
• A ring tops out at level 9. A stat that has reached its most is not drawn again.
• Reset costs 500,000 gold and gives nothing back.

Everything you wear wears out. Choose Repair at any smith or shopkeeper who mends: Mr. Kang, Linda and Amy in Bichon Town, Ronnie in Bichon Province, and about sixty more.

The rules

• The price is about a quarter of the item's shop price for mending it from nothing; less for less wear.
• Mending costs a little capacity for ever. Each repair takes a fifteenth of the missing durability off the item's maximum. Mending often, before things are badly worn, costs less of it.
• Any smith mends anything that wears, whatever their shop sells.
• Up to 20 items at a time. If one of them cannot be mended, nothing is.
• Paying from the guild's funds needs the rank permission for it (leaders and officers have it), and every repair is written in the guild's ledger.

An oil mends what you are wearing on the spot, wherever you are, and costs the items no capacity. Right-click it in your bag.

An oil is not used up if nothing needed mending. Lennard in Bichon Town sells them. The smiths have no separate “perfect repair”; the oils are it.

Open Crafting from the menu, or type /craft. It lists the recipes you know, and you can make them anywhere: no fee, no wait and no failure.

• When a recipe asks for a purity, the least pure lumps that qualify are used first.
• Locked items are never used.
• What you make can roll extra stats, just like a drop.
• You need a free bag slot for the result.

Recipes are taught. Amy in Bichon Town and the jewellers in Shandam teach rings; Ronnie in Bichon Province teaches smelting.

A copper ring needs level 7 to wear and a gold ring level 20.

Mining has no window. Hold a pickaxe as your weapon, stand in a mine facing the rock, and swing. What you dig out goes straight into your bag.

1. Buy a Pick Axe (a weapon shop sells one for 700 gold) and wear it.
2. Go into a mine. The table below lists them.
3. Walk into the rock. You keep swinging after you let go, until you move or press the right mouse button. Or hold X to swing at whatever you are facing.

• One swing every 1.4 seconds.
• Every swing rolls every row of the mine's table separately, so one swing can bring up two things.
• A pickaxe loses durability four times as fast as a sword: a plain Pick Axe lasts about 2,500 swings between repairs.
• If your bag is full, what you dig drops at your feet, kept for you.
• You cannot mine on a horse.
• Standing on the rubble you have dug pauses your timed buffs. Rubble clears a minute after the last swing.

Pickaxes

Every mine is one of a few kinds, and the kind decides what can come out of the rock. A chance of 1 in 20 means one swing in twenty, on average.

Islands with a cave have their own mines; see Islands.

Every lump of ore you dig has a purity from 3 to 30, chosen at random. Hover it in your bag to see it.

• Refining: each lump of black iron ore adds half its purity to the chance. Purity 30 is worth six times purity 5.
• Crafting: some recipes ask for a lowest purity, like the gold ring's 5.
• Shops show the purity of ore on their shelf, and a shop's own ore is purity 10.
• Ore never wears out. Lumps stack only with lumps of the same purity.

Hold Alt and the left mouse button over a fresh body to skin it.

• A body takes 2 to 5 cuts depending on the creature, 0.6 seconds each.
• What you skin is yours alone. If your bag is full it stays in the body.

Fishing and herb gathering.