Conqueror’s Guide to Crafting
There are essentially two types of craftable items in Conqueror’s Blade. First, there are those that directly benefit your hero; not just personal weapons and armour, but also mount and siege equipment. Then there are weapons, armour and horses for your troops, which are created in the form of Unit Kits. Each requires the help of a specific NPC, which are to be found in the thoroughfares of busy fiefs, eager to do your bidding.
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As well as the right NPC, to craft any item you also need some currency (to pay them), and the required amount of resource or material to build what you need in volume you need. Raw resources can be found throughout the game’s open world, but will need to be processed into craftable Materials before they can be forged into something useful. Other craftable items will require supplies that are issued as rewards for quests or from battle, or that can be salvaged from hero items you no longer need. If time is short or some items are in limited supply locally, there is always the Market or a nearby Smuggler.
Basic Resources
There are eight basic resource types (Food, Horses, Copper, Cotton, Hides, Iron, Stone and Timber) to be found in the open world. With the exception of Food and Horses, these can be further categorised by quality, from Common (represented by white text), Uncommon (green), Rare (blue) to Epic (purple).
Exotic Materials
In the process of collecting basic resources - which are available in across all regions - there is a chance that you could also pick up a small number of Exotic Resource units - some of which are specific to Rare and Epic-level resource sites in specific regions. These are necessary for creating Rare and Epic Materials:
Materials
Once you’ve collected the required resource units from the open world (or from the Resource Market), these can be taken to a Refinery Overseer and transformed into Materials, which are the processed units necessary for crafting.
Materials are categorised in the same way as Resources, by type and quality. To create an uncommon Material, only common or uncommon resources are necessary, with less required if they are of a higher quality. For example, to end up with a unit of Seasoned Wood (uncommon), you would need more Pine (common) than you would Cedar (epic). However, to create a higher quality of wood, Exotic resources are necessary, such as Yew.
** Refinery Overseers in the western regions (Ostaria, Ungverija) will craft Composite Wood, while those in the eastern regions (Maoyang, Liangyun) will craft Varnished Wood.
Unit Kits
In order to maintain a unit at full strength it needs equipment. Collectively, a fighter’s weapon and armour is called a Unit Kit, for which one is required per fighter. Unfortunately, when a fighter dies in battle, their Unit Kit disappears with them, so you need to equip each new conscript with a new one before it can join a battle. For basic Militia-type units, these can be replenished easily with Bronze after each battle, but Unit Kit replacements will soon put a drain on your income and as you start to reinforce more advanced units that require better quality equipment, you’ll find crafting Unit Kits as the only sustainable option.
Unit Kits require Materials to create, ranging from Raw Iron and Seasoned or Varnished Wood for the basic Militiaman’s Kit, to Epic-quality Copper, Iron and Leather for the Vassal Longbowman’s Kit. The only part of a unit’s equipment that has to be sourced separately are the horses for cavalry units, which must be acquired from Stables in the open world (or from the Market). Be aware that like some Exotic resources, some horse breeds are region-specific.
Hero Equipment
Unlike units, which, in effect, require mass produced weapons and armour, a hero’s equipment is more refined. To reflect this it’s crafted with the assistance of a Smith and requires a different set of Materials than those that are sourced in large volumes from resource locations in the open world. These so-called Hero or Item Materials are more engineered than for Unit Kits and can be acquired as rewards, either from finding loot stashes in the open world, from completing some quests (Weekly, Fief, Daily Sign In, etc) or as part of the spoils of war from events and seasonal campaigns. For level 30 items, a Schematic - a kind of blueprint - will also be required.
In addition to crafting, Smiths can also be approached to salvage Hero Materials from personal weapons and armour you no longer need, which costs 100 Bronze per item.
Siege Weapons
Despite being classified as hero items - on the basis that they are deployed by and used directly by players rather than indirectly by their units - siege weapons are built using the same Materials as are used in Unit Kits; typically wood, copper, iron, stone, hides and fabric. Each artillery piece is forged individually by the Artillery Craftsman, with Optimal-grade items costing 1000 Silver.
Hopefully, this guide has given you a good grounding about resource and material gathering and the crafting of Unit Kits and hero items. As the crafting system evolves (such as will as part of Season III: Soldiers of Fortune), we hope to keep this guide up to date to ensure it contains everything you need to know. If you find it lacking, please don’t hesitate to let us know via the usual community channels.
