In the second part of the hands on, I may have said that GW2’s crafting system was rather familiar. Well, you can string me up and beat the candy out because I missed one key part of crafting: Discovery. But first, I want to talk about why Guild Wars 2’s crafting system is superior to your own.

I Can Craft Whatever I Like

First, crafting is incredibly convenient. While other games allow you the power to craft virtually anywhere you please, Guild Wars 2 does force you to use stations scattered over the main towns and villages. That said, I submit that the ability to remotely deposit your crafting resources, one that is available without the need for a cash shop item (which admittedly would sell like penicillin in the gonorrhea dimension), easily negates the inconvenience of crafting stations.

And inconvenience is a harsh word at that. When you can salvage your items on the field, and then transfer those items directly to your collections box (without taking up precious bank space), and then at your convenience teleport directly to a town and walk the twenty feet to a crafting station, withdraw your crafting items right there at the station and then immediately sell/deposit the goods you’ve made either to an NPC or on the open market, there is no inconvenience. Or about as inconvenient as having to pull that plastic tab out of your Furby before it will begin learning your voice (yes I’m making 90’s references).

2. Discovering New Recipes

This is the feature I wanted to talk about most, and one that I just dived into yesterday after I stupidly punched out my second part preview. Every skill has recipes that are gained as you level up, but each skill also has a set of recipes that can only be learned by “experimenting” with crafting materials and even some finished products. Any item you produce that carries another skill(level) tag is an ingredient for another recipe.

So let’s take a look at some examples. I’m a chef, which means I can bring food into this discussion as much as I like and none of you can complain that it is random. The most basic recipe offered to chefs is a loaf of bread. The bread, however, experimented with can be combined with butter to make buttered toast. Or you can combine bread with red meat and make a hamburger. Or combine yeast, flour, oil, and milk to make biscuits (don’t quote me on this recipe).

I suppose where this falls short is that the whole system is rather casual. When you add your first ingredient, the game tells you outright what could be combined and what cannot. For instance, adding bread to the pool will result in “9 unknown recipes left,” even with a notice as to what cooking level you would need to craft the recipe and have it added to your recipe list. The hand-holding side of this is that the game will just block you from crafting anything that isn’t compatible, or above your level. So you don’t have to worry about wasting ingredients while crafting or looking it up online, you can’t waste ingredients or have experimentation fail, the game won’t allow it.

I’m sure players will decry it as care-bear or hand holding on this feature (oh wait, I already did), but it is an interesting feature that adds an extra level of depth and exploration to crafting. It also gives an incentive to gather as many raw materials as possible, rather than picking one or two recipes still capable of offering crafting experience and leveling those.

Other than that I have no opinion