Make one of everything - there’s a 3x first time craft experience boost.

Armoring and weaponsmithing are separate trade skills so that’s why you can make steel weapons but not steel armor.

If steel weapons are worse than your current weapons, you likely need to level to 100 in your trade skills (specifically mining and weaponsmithing) to make star metal weapons.

Also, you can make named weapons at 50 weaponsmithing that are typically pretty good, but the material cost is high.

Lmk if you have any other questions!

As stated, but important to say again clearly. Dont bother crafting yourself gear during leveling, huge waste of time

If you're going to max a craft look up guides and try and do it as economically as possible.

Crafting sucks right now. S10 may change that with perk charms but who knows.

You have just discovered why most people don't craft their leveling equipment. You will quickly out level what you can product unless you put time into leveling your crafting.

Crafting gives XP so you just keep outpacing it

Steel requires lvl 50 armoring / weaponsmithing / arcana / engineering.

Gold jewelry (same tier) requires 50 jewelcrafting

Level up the skills by making the gear you can.....

It's not so much that it's complicated but there are a lot of things that aren't indicated.

Beyond basic material/augment/minor card/infusion/upgrade :

You can use advanced components instead of certain basic ones (gilded lumber as lumber, reinforced leather as leather, durable cloth as cloth, hybrid stone to make stone powder, focal shard as cut gem (made with lustrous ink)

There's soft and hard cap, caculated item per item (so not globally), most of them a unreachable except for some like crit (60%) movespeed (6%) etc. and diminishing returns are not the same for weapons/tools (stats above the soft cap is divided by 12) and piece of gear (divided by 8)

Upgrade does not affect crit and movespeed stats, and upgrade is not calculated in the same way for weapons/tools and piece of gear, I won't details that unless you want the exact formula for stats calculation

Offhands tool boost main hand weapon like the gear (spyglass boost off hand weapons)

Some augment aren't craftable, you can only find them in specific place and craft near them

etc.

The annoying part about crafting is it’s tedious with all the sub crafting parts and not being able to sort materials by stat or anything easily.

You are right it’s not exactly complicated. It is tedious.

My issue is I have to start at the crafting station for the final object. Look at all the parts I need to make. Figure out which ones come from what other crafting station and then move to one of those stations. Find out that part takes multiple parts. Go to another crafting station. Figure out if I need to process a raw material for it to show in the crafting options for this part….finally make one part. Go repeat at least 3 more times.

They should implement assigning the people you recruit to crafting stations and manage the whole process through one interface and have the NPCs manage crafting.

Also give a preview not of just the stats but how hideous a mess of mottled orange and purple the clothing is going to be.

A non-exhaustive list of issues I've seen people have:

1. Item level is confusing.  It used to be important, now it only matters on harvesting tools.  

2. No idea where to get things.  There used to be basic information in the codex, there isn't anymore.

3. Version differences.  The game's community is small.  You are more likely to find old information than new if you just google it.  This problem is exacerbated by certain loud, unhelpful individuals whose only comments on Reddit are that Reddit sucks and you should go to Discord, without ever answering the question asked.

4. Poorly communicated advanced crafting in-game.  The game does not teach you subsitututions like reinforced leather for leather.

5. Incorrect information from the community.  For instance, I've seen people here on Reddit recently say that you shouldn't use the same material more than once on an item.  This is incorrect, and I'm not entirely sure if it was ever correct.

6. Augments are weird because not all types have all tiers, and it's kind of unintuitive that it's sometimes best to have multiple augments of the same type of different tiers.

7. Minor cards are a pain in the ass.  To get an ideal item, you may have to change the card 3 times during crafting.

Probably it's about gear score, which is required to clear certain gates but is only vaguely described as "upgrade your gear to get a higher gear score" rather than being given an in depth breakdown of exactly how gear score is calculated. Like if you had a lore entry that said "gear score is calculated by -" and then gave a breakdown of the math behind it I think it'd be easier. Once you already understand how it works it's not that complicated; simply add spells, charms and infusions to gear to make that number go higher.

I'll also say that while generally things are pretty straightforward it's not always obvious which parts come from which station. Like oil, if produced from an animal comes from the tanning station, but if it's from a plant it comes from the alchemy table. This is all of course different from oils used for cooking which come from a cooking station. Fortunately your traveller's handbook(?) has a list of crafting components so you can go look up where to make something if you ever get lost... but I'm not sure they tell you that's the case either.

I agree, its not complicated just has a depth to it that many players are uncomfortable with. Personally I feel that it is fantastic and pretty intuitive. I love the steps from taking raw materials, refining them creating the different components, and then putting them all together.

I was a bit confused if there was other crafting in the game as you pickup so much fur, chitin and hides -- I was thinking making armour etc ..

but yeah just Alchemy.

To make a potion you need to use an empty flask from inventory

i just hate how i will laugh at this but i could show this to a million others and none of them would have a single clue even if they did play subautica

Funny thing is I did die in my latest game while making a seamoth cause a gasp pod decided to pass underneath me as I was in the menu 😂

Just keep pressing buttons til they get something useful 😂

How do you do it?

Same thing happened to me and I had the same experience getting it to work again.

That is the neat part, you don't.

Allan_titan got blown up by crashfish whilst trying to escape gasopod

Allan_titan drowned to death whilst trying to escape gasopod

Allan_titan was crushed by water pressure while trying to escape adolescent ghost leviathan

Allan_titan tried to swim in lava while trying to escape sea dragon

Allan_titan was killed by stalker trying to escape reaper leviathan

Allan_titan was killed by isolation turret while trying to escape 4546B

Allan_titan died in a reactor core detonation while trying to escape reaper leviathan

Allan_titan died by radiation trying to escape Mesmer

Allan_titan was shocked to death by ampeel while trying to escape ghost leviathan

Allan_titan was killed by tiger plant while trying to escape sand shark

Allan_titan tried to fight back against reaper leviathan

Allan_titan burned to death while trying to fight sea dragon

Allan_titan died of dehydration while trying to escape reaper leviathan

Allan_titan didn’t seek o2 intake immediately

Allan_titan didn’t seek calorie intake immediately

Allan_titan didn’t fix structural integrity damage

Allan_titan forgot the power source

Allan_titan ran out of copper

Allan_titan forgot about the kitty keep calm poster and panicked to death

Allan_titan forgot his prawn suit

Allan_titan died while trying to recharge cyclops

maybe try unstuck or make a new save

Silly gamer doesn't he know trees dont grow in the safe shallows

Time to move to the floating island and live off the vegetation.

Punch a tree and craft a Crafting Table.

Others have pointed out the speed boost, but to answer the question you're most directly asking about: I'm pretty sure you automatically use the best of the surfaces within arm's reach (counters, crafting benches, tables, etc.) regardless of how you access the menu. As such, it shouldn't matter whether you use the hotkey or the interact menu, so just use the one you find more convenient.

Crafting on a place with "clean surface" gives a small speed boost, I think around 10% almost imperceptible with fast crafting recipes

I believe if you also start crafting something really heavy, say an anvil, on a low str/weak character you won't be able to wield it again if you put it down for some reason and would need to move it to a table to craft.

I seem to remember there being a slight difference in crafting speed based on the weight/size of the object you’re crafting that changes depending on where you craft it.

Tons of em. Old Alnaphar sets, two MC armors in Yulgar’s (retro labeled). Warlic has a whole list of them. Few can be found right from the travel map. Almost everything in UR boxes is MC and Z-Token stuff too.

"What Mastercraft means:

Mastercrafted items have extra power, versatility, or abilities which are paid for by having a higher price than normal items, instead of having penalties which would otherwise balance out the item's power so that it remained roughly equal to other normal items. A normal weapon with a trigger could deal 110% damage to undead, 95% damage to normal monsters, but a Mastercrafted weapon would deal 110% damage to undead and 100% damage to normal monsters, in exchange for having a higher price. That is Mastercrafting, partner. Accept no substitutes."

"Mastercrafting increases the cost of an item by 10% and yields one of the following:

1. Passive increase of one of the item's parameters (such as damage or BTH) by 5%
2. Enabling of the item to have a "free" trigger effect (generally increasing damage by 10%) without a downtrigger state
3. Reducing penalties associated with having expensive effects
4. Enabling the item to have a "free" skill without a compression penalty (but still having item compression pricing where applicable)
5. Combinations of the above or other similar effects

In other words, it gives the item abilities and whatnot in exchange for costing more, whereas normal items wind up being weaker if they have any of these."

Source: https://forums2.battleon.com/f/tm.asp?m=21935534

This game is based on a mathematical model that is fundamentally garbage, so much so that the developers break the "standard" weekly. Explaining it would be a hassle but now nearly every item in the game costs *1.1 gold in exchange for being 5% more powerful (this is relative to the item). Everything is measured in THE MELEE. A simple melee weapon swing in neutral-lean armor should deal 100% <expected damage>. The most basic mastercrafted (MC from here on) weapons deal 105% damage. A weapon could instead use the MC for +4.25 BTH (bonus to hit, AKA accuracy, expected to be at 85% normally), which would still equal 105% overall damage. Or an MC might be far more impactful like compressing 3 skills and a pizza oven into an armor without penalty. The armor might then also reduce <irrelevant thing> to gain <good thing>. And this is before even considering item synergy. There are even weapons that use MC to compress skills and toggles, and weapons that do the exact same thing but then re-apply additional MC effects depending on the weapon mode.

Even the most rudimentary concepts like establishing the value of elements does not exist in AQ. For example, you can pay gold for an ice weapon with a harm toggle that uses MC to enable the toggle, or you can get a really expensive gacha weapon that does the exact same thing, but uses the MC is a dumb way so you lose the ability deal ice damage in exchange for saving an unnoticeable 5% melee on the upkeep cost.

The "standard" has also been adjusted throughout the years and items are programmed separately (Flash limitation?) so even things that should be balanced may be skewed due to being outdated. For example, a weapon without a special might have *1.08, *1.09, +8%, or +9% damage IIRC. Multipliers are better than additive, of course.

What I'm trying to say is, AQ is very unbalanced and mastercraft means nothing. They game is functionally identical without the concept of MC items. Almost everything you get will be operating at a 105% baseline and be adjusted from that. Just look for items that do good things, do them well, and synergize with your strategy. Once you read 1,000 infosubs (item breakdowns, basically) you'll have an idea of how the devs try to make "balanced" but interesting items. Infosubs are found on the forum or The Gogg's Tavern.

I know roughly how it works, I think?

Each part (engine, bouncer, ect...) has prebuild characteristics which will stack with whatever materials you add. Engine is for speed, Plate is for power, Bouncer is for gravity, Booster is for boost, and Wings are for control. So regardless of what materials you add to an engine build, it will always have speed as a characteristic. A plate build will always have a power characteristic and so on.

Materials also have some prebuild characteristics. Soft materials contribute to speed, Hard materials contribute to power, and Tech materials contribute to control. Alien materials seem to unlock hidden characteristics depending on the build during my testing. I also couldn't definitively tell during my testing if chunks and masses actually change which buffs are applied or if they are just 'better' versions of the regular materials. Gravitanium allows you to travel on a specific surface without using energy, as far as I know you can't really predict which surface buff is going to be applied beyond the very first one which allows you to travel on water.

As for the actual buffs, here is what I've noticed. Speed is your base speed, basically how fast you're going forwards. Boost is how long your boost will last after landing tricks. Gravity is how high and far you'll be launched in the air. Control is how quickly the joystick will respond to your movements. Power is the only one I'm unsure of tbh, I don't really know what it does (it might have something to do with the different surfaces you can ride on??). Bond is which skills are unlocked by pressing the L bumper.

Depending on what materials you add, the build could change how the buffs are applied. Say for instance I wanted to make wings that had a speed buff, because speed isn't the wings natural characteristic I would have to add soft materials. If I wanted to make a plate that had control as a buff, I would have to add tech materials. To my knowledge and testing the only buff that will increase naturally (ie playing the game) is the bond.

Alien materials seem to unlock hidden buffs depending on the other materials added to a build so I'm really unsure of what the hell they do tbh. Gravitanium seems to be a bit like the alien materials as well but I don't have enough of the materials to keep running tests on so idk.

Rank seems to determine how the buff percentage increases. Rank is based on your level of engineering which you can increase by visiting more work benches around the map. So if your engineering level is low, your rank will be smaller and the opposite seems to be true. That's probably done that way so you can't grind out like 300 materials at the beginning of the game and be overpowered as fuck lol.

That's all I know about crafting from my own testing and experiments. Obviously I'm only one person so it's very possible that this information isn't accurate but I hope it'll give you some sort of help!

if you update to the latest version it shows you a preview while your adding stuff.

Sometimes the left hand side and right hand side has same material requirement and the system tell you can craft if you only have enough for one piece

It's not a hugely important or necessary aspect of the game but it can save or make you a lot of credits in the long run. As a subscriber you can have 1 crafting skill and 2 gathering skills per character, and at level 80 you are able to send out 8 companions on missions.

The quickest way to level your crafting skill up is to stand by your crafting trainer, have 8 level 50 influence companions crafting the highest level assembly component you have available, and whenever a new component schematic becomes available, purchase it and start crafting that. It takes like 2 hours to go from level 1 to level 700 which is the max.

For grade 1-10 materials, the most convenient way to obtain them is to just purchase them from the Jawa vendors for Jawa scrap, which you get from doing stuff like deconstructing gear or opening slicing lockboxes. For grade 11 materials, its not worth it to buy these from the Jawas so you should just send your companions out on gathering missions, or go to a planet like Onderon where you can manually gather materials from the ground.

SWTOR How to Craft Guide

If you're a subscriber, each toon can have three professions. Usually, you'd pick one crafting profession and two gathering professions related to the crafting profession you took. Then you just send your companions on little missions to get stuff or make stuff. It's a bit of a grind and can cost some money to get started, but it does eventually end up making you money.

Use the crafting guides available online like the one already linked and level up your companion relationships for faster "mission"/crafting times and success rates.

Swtorista has a crafting guide you could refer to, it’s a good way to get across the basics.