Introduction

Crafting some equipment for your Lord can give you useful boosts for both combat (like Artillery, Distance and Cavalry Attack), economy (like Food and Wood Gathering Speed) and development (like Construction and Research Speed).

Explaining the Basics

In the Forge building you can craft equipment for your Lord. Each equipment piece you can potentially manufacture requires a unique design that specifies the boosts and the required Steel and materials.

Design Fragments and Designs

By killing beasts you can acquire design fragments which can be synthesized in the Armory to designs. The higher the beasts you kill, the higher the design fragments that have a chance of dropping. You get a random design when synthesizing fragments, so it might take a while before you get the Designs that you want. As an alternative you can bid on Designs in the Auction House or on equipment in the Black Market.

Materials

Materials can for example be acquired by killing beasts and rallying red guard camps. There are several other ways to get materials, which are described in a separate guide. You need lots of them for the higher level gear, so keep attacking those beasts and red guard camps.

Steel

Steel can be acquired by completing the Daily Rewards and can be found in the Bonus Red Guard Chests. You can also get it via some special events. Keep an eye out for it, because you need large amounts for higher level equipment.

Forge

The Forge building is where all actions relating to Equipment is taking place. Upgrading the Forge will result in increased crafting speed and decreased steel consumption. The Forge exists of various sections: Armory, Enhance and Craft.

In the Armory section you can see the amount of Design Fragments you have of each Grade, and you can synthesize or sell them. Selling them can for example be a viable option when you are no longer interested in Grade 1 Designs, although you won't get much for these and you can also decide to still craft these to get points for the daily rewards and dismantle them afterwards. You can also see an overview of all Designs you have, which you can also sell (but it might be worthwhile to hold on to them, in King of Avalon a way was increased to sell them for credits later on in the game). You see an overview of all your equipment, where you have the option to Replace the equipment you are wearing or Dismantle equipment you no longer need. When Dismantling equipment you get the same materials and steel you used to craft it, and also get any attached gemstones back. You also see overviews of all Gemstones and Materials you posses. Gemstones are very important and we will dedicate a separate guide to them shortly.

In the Enhance section you can Enhance equipment. You need another design of the same type to enhance equipment, and there is also a Steel cost. Personally I find the steel cost way too high compared to the additional benefit you get from enhancing.

In the Craft section you can Craft equipment. In the Craftable tab you find a list of your currently available Designs, and in the other sections you find for each of the 6 equipment slots a list of all possible equipment. In case you do not have sufficient materials when about to Craft you can use the Get More button to purchase materials, but the gold prices are quite high (the rarer the material the higher), and material requirements are high.

How the Boosts Work

Your Lord needs to be equipped with gear for the corresponding boosts to work. When exactly the Lord should be equipped with the gear depends on the type of boost. For Research and Construction the Lord should be equipped with the corresponding gear at the moment you start the activity. Afterwards you can change your Lord's gear. For combat, troop load, gathering boosts the Lord should be equipped with gear during the activity.

Different Equipment for Different Activities

Realize that you can have multiple different equipment pieces for the same slot, for example one Helm to help with Construction Speed, another to help with Trap Building Speed, and another one for Combat.

What Gear to Focus on

Compared to some other games you can't really do anything wrong when crafting equipment, because you can always dismantle equipment and get all materials and steel back, so I suggest as soon as you have a scroll that gives you some benefits and you have the materials to craft it, craft it. Work towards having a complete economy set (headgear and boots for construction and research speed, weapon and ring for resource production and armor and necklace for resource gathering speed), and a complete combat set. Afterwards you can improve piece by piece as you get better scrolls and more materials.

Special Equipment

Realize that the designs for the best equipment sets are not available by slaying beasts. Some need to be purchased for real money or can only acquired via special rewards. The orange gear designs are the highest one you can get from slaying beasts. An exception is the Opulence set. This one comes on various colors, highest orange. They cost little material and steel to craft, but to my knowledge there is no way to get these without spending real money.

For the yellow gear sets (Duelist, Fortune), these cost a huge amount of gold to craft, not to mention getting the designs. At this stage I see no way to get them without spending real money.

Conclusion

I hope the above gives you some guidelines how to Craft and what to Craft. If you have any questions or tips to share, let us know.