The Usefullness of Cannith Crafting

A big component of DDO these days is crafting.  There is a myriad of crafting mechanisms in the game today ranging from greensteel crafting, to trapmaking, to using augment slots, applying eldritch rituals with the Stone of Change, and to the latest mechanism released with the Temple of Elemental Evil crafting.  Those are just a small sample of the different types of crafting you can do.  There are so many different crafting systems now that it is hard to imagine that when the game was first released that crafting wasn’t available.

One of the more common and larger crafting systems is the Cannith Crafting system.  This system is perhaps the most common method of crafting because it doesn’t rely on obtaining ingredients from specific quests.  Players can loot ingredients for this system while doing their regular adventuring and can break down any loot items they receive that they don’t wish to keep for even more ingredients (assuming that the item isn’t named).  This system allows a character to develop Cannith Crafting levels with the higher levels being able to craft more powerful shards that be applied to weapons, armor, and other equipment.

For me, this crafting system has been quite useful.  My main crafter is Erdrique (Level 10 Rogue) who is currently around level 90 in all three schools of Cannith Crafting (maximum currently is level 130).  This crafting mechanism has served me well because it has allowed me to make customized gear for Erdrique as he moves through his various heroic true reincarnations.  In fact, many players who are on the heroic true reincarnation train tend to make use of this system because it does give you flexibility with your gear as you move from one class to another.

However, using I have also found that the Cannith Crafting system has allowed me to “twink” out some of other lower level characters.  Besides using it for customizable heroic true reincarnations, using it to “twink” lower level characters is probably the next useful aspect of this system.  I have been able to use Erdrique to create unbound shards for my other characters.  I typically do this for increasing stat item equipment but I primarily do this for weapon upgrades.  Recently, I logged on with Harrgon (Level 11 Favored Soul) who I was preparing to take into Delera’s Tomb and noticed that he didn’t have a pure good weapon.  I then took a few minutes to log back on with Erdrique and to craft the appropriate unbound shards I wanted and dropped them into my shared deposit bag and then pulled them back out with Harrgon and I used the shards to upgrade one of his existing great swords (I converted a +3 acid greatsword to a +1 acid greatsword of pure good).  Now Harrgon was good to go .

Harrgon with his newly crafted sword taking on the ghostly skeleton’s in Delera’s Tomb.

So I have found Cannith Crafting to be extremely useful for gearing up my lower level characters and for my heroic past lives.  With that said, its usefulness fades at the higher and epic levels.  This primarily because the Cannith Crafting system hasn’t been updated to for quite some time and we are limited to only crafting +6 stat items and we can now get +8 and higher items in game as well as a number of other weapon effects that came out with the expansions that were not not added to this crafting system.  It has been mentioned that the DDO team wants to take a look at adding/revamping the Cannith Crafting system and I hope they can get the chance to do it because I find it a fun system and would like to see its usefulness extended into epic levels.  I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.

Thanks for reading everybody and happy hunting!!