Guild Wars 2 Crafting Guide, Build - What Can These Disciplines Do?

Guild Wars 2 has a pretty complex crafting system, but with a few initial tips, you will be able to start getting a hang of it really fast! Read about all the crafting disciplines and learn the basics of creating items thanks to our GW2 Crafting Guide!

GW2 Crafting Disciplines

There are nine crafting disciplines in Guild Wars 2. Three of them craft different types of armor (Armorsmith, Leatherworker, Tailor), the next three create certain kinds of weapons (Weaponsmith, Huntsman, Artificer) and the last three are used to make the remaining craftable items (Chef, Jeweler, Scribe).

Each character can have two crafting disciplines active at the same time. You can increase it to four if you buy Additional Crafting Licenses from the Gem Store. If you switch to another discipline, your progress on the old one will be saved, but you will have to pay some silver to access it again later.

Every character profession in Guild Wars 2 can only use a single type of armor, which makes crafting armor pretty easy since you’re only going to need a single discipline. Weapons are much trickier since depending on build, your character might need a completely different type. For example, in different situations, Guardian might need a sword, scepter, longbow or multiple other weapon types. To craft every single one of them you would need access to all three weapon crafting disciplines.

To make sure that you have enough crafting materials, you should always pick up all the drops that you get from monsters as you play the game and spend some time gathering. Salvaging obsolete items is also a great idea. You really can earn a huge amount of mats simply by running around the map not even farming specific items.

GW 2 Crafting Station

To craft an item you have to visit an adequate crafting station. All nine crafting disciplines have their respective stations. Before approaching the station, you have to learn the discipline from the proper Master Craftsman NPC.

At the crafting station, you’ll see a window with 5 tabs on the left. They are Discovery, Production, Bank, Material Storage, and Wardrobe. Clicking on them opens different panels, which are all the options that you have in the station.

Discovery

The Discovery panel allows you to find new recipes that you don’t know yet. On the left, you can see all the materials and components viable for crafting. In the center, there are four slots in which you can place the ingredients.

When the components that you placed inside amount to a complete recipe, you will be able to craft the item. You can press “Craft” and discover the recipe, get the item as well as some bonus experience.

The recipes are pretty straightforward, so you should be able to easily guess what components add up to a full item. They are all pretty similar, so you can follow the general rule that you can see in the already unlocked recipes. If you have any problems with that, feel free to look for them on the Internet, you can effortlessly find a site that lists them. 

There are some exceptions called Unique Recipes. They can’t be learned through discovery. To get access to them, the player has to get the special Recipe Sheet.

Production

After you enter the Production tab, on the left you will be able to see the list of recipes known to your character (unless you filter some of them out). The recipes are color-coded with red ones being out of your reach, orange is near your level, then yellow, green, blue, white and finally grey – the last ones don’t give you any experience anymore. As you level and skill up your crafting, the recipe color will change.

Opening a recipe will show you the necessary components. Most of the gear recipes require two item components and either some monster parts, an inscription or insignia. If you click on the magnifying glass icon next to a component, you will be able to see the recipe for that element. Crafting from raw materials (the ones that you can gather) to weapons or armor pieces is usually a multi-stage process.

Some important recipes will be grouped under the Refinement category. They allow you to use the raw materials to set up some advanced ones like ingots or planks. They can later serve as materials to create the weapon or armor components and then the finished items.

If you want to craft multiple items and you don’t mind using all the resources that you have on you, you can click on “Craft All” and create as many items of that type, as you have materials. Make sure to look at the recipe color on the left though, if you care about experience gains, you won’t want to craft the items that are too low level.

As we already mentioned, through crafting stations you can also access the bank and the material storage. You can also look at the unlocked skins and change the ones that you have equipped. Next, to the crafting station, there should be an NPC vendor who can sell you some of the necessary materials. Having everything in one place sure is a great quality of life boon. However, a big portion of the mats has to be gathered or bought from other players through the trading post. The second option is a bit more likely - you probably don't want to spend the whole day looking for materials that don't even cost that much. Buying is just much simpler and more convenient, especially if the price is reasonable.

GW2 Crafting Professions

As we already said, there are nine crafting classes that can be divided into three categories. Now let’s take a closer look at them.

Armor Crafters

Tailor – tailors create the light armors that are later used by the scholar professions (Elementalist, Mesmer, Necromancer).  The materials they use are based on different tiers of cloth and leather – these are also the materials that they can refine. Moreover, Tailors can also create runes and bags.

Leatherworker – this discipline is responsible for crafting the medium armors – the equipment worn by adventurers (Engineer, Ranger, Thief). Leatherworking uses leather and cloth as crafting materials. These artisans can also craft runes and packs.

Armorsmith – the crafting class that creates heavy armors for the soldier professions (Guardian, Warrior, Revenant). Their main materials are ones that they can refine into ingots, but they also use cloth. Armorsmiths can also craft runes and boxes.

All the armor crafting disciplines use insignia for creating high-level items.

Weapon Crafters

Artificer – this discipline can craft mostly magical weapons: staff, scepter, focus, and trident. These weapons can be used by many professions: Guardian, Elementalist, Mesmer, Necromancer, and Thief (but only with the Daredevil Elite Specialization).

The materials that they use are wood and metal. Other items that they can create are potions, sigils, and tonics.

Huntsman – the crafting class responsible for creating ranged physical weapons such as longbow, short bow, pistol, rifle and harpoon gun as well as the off-hand items: torch and horn. Funnily enough, some of these items, in specific builds, can be used by every single Guild Wars 2 profession.

The materials that they use are wood, leather, and metal. Huntsmen can also produce sigils and oils.

Weaponsmith – this discipline crafts melee weapons such as sword, axe, dagger, greatsword, mace, hammer and spear. They can also create shields, sigils and sharpening stones.

The items produced by Weaponsmiths can be used by every character, but they’re extremely important for Guardians, Warriors, Revenants, and Thieves.

Every weapon crafting discipline can craft and use inscriptions to create high-level weapons.

Remaining crafting professions

The third category is really made out of the disciplines that didn’t fit in any of the previous ones. Every one of them is kind of unique, but they all share the basic crafting mechanics.

Chef – this is the profession that crafts consumables – food and dyes. Unlike all the other disciplines, Chefs don’t have separate tiers of ingredients. They also can’t produce any type of gear. The Chef’s recipe categories are Cooking Ingredient, Dessert, Dye, Meal, Seasoning, Snack, and Soup.

Jeweler – the discipline in charge of crafting trinkets and accessories. They use metal, gemstones, and glass to create rings, earrings, and amulets. Those items can be equipped and used by every profession.

Scribe – this unique discipline is focused completely on the endgame guild content. They can create Guild Hall decorations, guild, and personal consumables and backpacks. This profession has been added in Heart of Thorns to introduce some more endgame content in form of customizing Guild Halls.

Scribes can use various types of materials, such as wood, metal, cloth, leather and multiple rare ingredients.

Crafting progression

When you successfully craft an item, you get rewarded with crafting experience and character experience. The weapon and armor crafting disciplines can get to the crafting level 500, while Chef, Jeweler and Scribe cap at 400.

Every discipline with an exception of Chef gets access to a higher tier of materials. They also have separate ranks, which unlock new recipes. Levels 0-74 is Novice, 75-149 is Initiate, 150-224 is Apprentice, 225-299 is Journeyman, 300-399 is Adept, 400-499 is Master and level 500 is Grandmaster.

Levels 1-400 can be leveled up pretty fast, but 401-500 are much slower. At level 400 you unlock the possibility to craft Exotic armors and weapons, while at level 500 you can create the most powerful tiers – Ascended and Legendary. These items are account-bound and cannot be traded.

Why learn crafting

Sadly, Guild Wars 2 as an MMORPG is not as focused on crafting as many other games of this genre, where crafters race against each other to get the weapon with the highest stats and power. Unfortunately, crafting won't really make you swim in gold. In GW2, this feature of the game is mostly used in one of these two goals.

Endgame items

As we already mentioned. The powerful weapons and armor sets from the Exotic, Ascended and Legendary tiers can be crafted. Exotic and Ascended items can be looted from Raid Bosses, Fractals, Dungeons and acquired through WvW and sPvP, but the only way of getting legendaries is crafting them in the Mystic Forge. Using it doesn’t require the crafting disciplines per se, but filling your inventory with all the necessary materials and components is much easier with the access to maxed out crafters.

Leveling characters

The character experience gains available through crafting have been used as the quickest way of leveling alts. The experience you can gain this way is not a flat value that can get outscaled, instead, it’s a fixed percentage of your levels progress bar.

Leveling a single discipline from level 1 to 400 will always grant you seven character levels. With a total of nine disciplines, it means that you can quest and grind to level 24 and then use crafting to easily get the remaining 56 levels (progressing crafts from 401 to 500 is more expensive and time-consuming, so we don’t recommend doing that). This is the quickest way of getting level 80 if you don’t have access to a Tome of Knowledge.

Guild Wars 2

Guild Wars 2 is an MMORPG developed by ArenaNet and published by NCSoft in 2012. The players can return to the world of Tyria, 250 years after the events from the first game. Guild Wars 2 has two major expansions: Heart of Thorn and Path of Fire.

This time you the community of players are able to choose their character’s race from Asura, Charr, Norn, Sylvari, and Human. At the same time, there are nine playable professions: Elementalist, Necromancer, Mesmer, Engineer, Thief, Ranger, Warrior, Guardian and Revenant (the last ones is only available through the expansions).

One of the games most celebrated features is the Living World system that uses the established and wonderfully designed Tyria. The whole surroundings are changing before the players eyes, the NPC characters arcs are well-developed and the story itself is absolutely captivating. Check out our other GW2 guides to learn more about the game and the professions in it!