Crafting in North Centoria
All roads lead to North Centoria, the hub where you’ll return time and time again throughout your journey in Sword Art Online: Alicization Lycoris. The merchants here are selling weapons, armors, and materials, and there are those who can create new equipment for you.
Be forewarned, though, that buying materials here can be very costly. For instance, a piece of Hardslate costs 3,000 gold — and that’s something you can obtain for free if you’re often killing Golem-type mobs in Deusoldort Desert. Additionally, you’ll find so many weapons and armors from treasure chests — such as those in Cordea Plains in the early game to those in Eastavarieth much later — that buying them in North Centoria won’t be necessary.
Instead, save your gold for the merchants on the street on the left side. The blacksmith, craftsman, cook, apothecary, and clothier all require a bit of gold to make new items for you (provided that you’ve got the materials). Availing of the services of these NPCs will, in turn, raise your “trust” levels with them (more on this in a while).
Note 1: When you speak to blacksmiths or craftsmen, you’ll notice a button that lets you “confirm minimum.” This simply shows you the minimum possible rolls/affixes that an item could get.
Note 2: Bows have the highest damage out of all the weapons in Sword Art Online: Alicization Lycoris. If you truly want to get one crafted, save up and get the Thornshot from Sodem. It costs 4,100 gold, 1x Crimson Barb, 6x Mysticstone, 4x Antler Piece, and 1x Colossal Soulstone. You can refer to the aforementioned compendiums on the main page to find out where to get these materials.
Crafting on your own
Anyway, higher trust levels with a craftsman unlock new recipes, allowing you to use objects like the forge, crafting table, synthesizer, or cauldron to create items. The difference between self-created items versus craftsmen-made items is that the ones you make won’t cost gold. Likewise, there’s a possibility that the ones you create will have higher rarity (which means slightly better stats or more affixes). This is based on your crafting level and a little bit of luck.
Unfortunately, as mentioned, all of this is an agonizingly slow process. As far as I can tell, you can only craft (or order an NPC to craft) one item at a time. Let’s just say it becomes a nuisance once you’ve reached level 50 and it takes you several minutes just to make a dozen wooden swords.
In any case, one of the key features to take note of is Thoven (or Sodem) the Blacksmith’s capability to strengthen your gear. This becomes your primary means of increasing your DPS for a chosen weapon. For instance, I immediately upgraded my Starfall Bow obtained from Sunhorn the Vanished to +5/maxed out once I had the necessary materials.
Important: Save scumming
Since we’re on the subject of crafting, now would be a good time to discuss something that happens under the hood in Sword Art Online: Alicization Lycoris. I’m talking about how the game autosaves when you craft new stuff. Yes, it autosaves when you’re in town making items, but it doesn’t autosave after boss battles (funnily enough).
Anyway, you might think that autosaving means you’d waste your materials if you get a bad roll. Well, not necessarily if you “save scum” (aka. reload your save until you get the desired result). First, go to your default Steam folder. Then, go to “userdata\<your user ID>\1009290 (the game’s ID)\remote.”
You should then see several folders containing a number of files. The important one here is the folder named “SAVE-TMP.” This is your main save folder so create a backup of all the files therein. Do this before you craft.
Next, go ahead and make an item. If you didn’t achieve the desired result (and you wasted a lot of materials), exit the game, and copy the files in your backup folder to overwrite those in the “SAVE-TMP” folder. Load the game and you should still have all your materials prior to your crafting session.
The clothier and cosmetics
One last thing: don’t forget that the clothier in this area lets you create dyes from limestone plus various resources you’ve found (ie. Red Dye Flower). This is one of the ways you can have more customization and cosmetic effects for your characters.
Sword Art Online: Alicization Lycoris is available on Steam. For more information, check out our guides and features hub.
