1. Making a basic weapon/armor
You can use the "craft weapon" and "craft armor" skills to make unenchanted versions of all the arms and armors available in the game. The piece you craft is identical to a store bought counterpart, which is why "craft weapon" can be safely skipped. With decent Appraise you can buy special weapons for less gold than it would cost you to craft them yourself, so it's a no-brainer. Armor OTOH is quite expensive and the Craft Armor skill will save you a couple thousand GPs over the course of your campaign. In order to craft you need a recipe, some gold and 1-2 pieces of the chosen material. Recipes are not shared, meaning you need a recipe for Mithral Full Plate and another recipe for Adamantine Full Plate. Once you have that just move your guy close to a blacksmith's workbench, open your Armor Recipe Book and click the appropriate recipe. Voila, you now have a new armor. Notable armors include:
- Mithral Full Plate: maximum AC for characters with medium armor and a +3 dexterity bonus. Mithral armor counts as one weight class bellow normal, so this armor is useable by characters without the Heavy Armor feat (eg Druids).
- Adamantine Full Plate: if your DEX is low you may want to trade the +2 maximum bonus for 3/- damage reduction.
- Mithral Breastplate: 5/5 AC/Max Bonus light armor. -1 penalty.
- Mithral Chain Shirt: 4/6, no penalty.
- Zalantar Light Shield: can be used by an Arcane caster without adding any failure chance.
- Mithral: Highcliff - 200 trade bars
- Adamantine: Leilon - 300 trade bars - Stoneskin / Greater Stoneskin / Premonition are Arcane spells that provide DR/Adamantine, so losing 1 enchantment slot might be worth the wizard slaying capabilities
- Zalantar: Thundertree or New Leaf - 70 trade bars
- Cold Iron: Phandalion - 40 bars - MUST complete quest first - ► Show Spoiler
- Darksteel: Conyberry - 50 bars - MUST complete quest first
2. Enchanting your new piece
"Enchanting" means adding up to three modifier to a weapon or piece of armor (including shields). This is done via the "Craft Magical Arms and Armor" feat, which can be acquired as early as level 6. Any spellcasting class can take this feat and no specific spells are needed, only the proper recipe and gold. Just give your weapon/armor to the guy with the "Enchantments Recipe Book", move him close to a Magician's Workbench, open the book, click the recipe and then click the weapon/armor. For weapons you will typically want a base enhancement (+1/+2/+3) and two forms of extra damage. I recommend Sonic and Acid since resistance to these damage types is quite rare. Armors and shields will probably want the base enhancement (up to +4) and two resistances like fire and lightning. In some places you will read that special materials take an enhancement slot, well:
2.1 Special materials and enchantment slots
This may or may not be true, so save your game before comitting a bunch of gold to a weapon piece. One important detail: once you fill up all three slots you can no longer upgrade your base enhancement so for your next piece you're gonna have to sell the old one and start from scratch. Due to the gold cap on merchants you may want to hold on to your old gear until Nya comes along. There's no point in sticking to Iron gear and past a certain point you will have access to more advanced enchantments, leading to weapons like this:
Damage vs Evil is very consistent and Keen has the same effect as the "improved criticals" feat. OTOH the "Mighty" property of either Composite or Shederran Longbows does count towards the limit. The same can be said for Zalantar and Adamantine weapons. It seems the key is looking if the material adds any numbers bellow special properties and if it does then it probably counts towards the limit.
2.2 Enchanting Arrows
Arrows can be enchanted as if they were weapons but with one exception: they cannot receive base enchantments (eg +3), but you can buy +3 arrows and enchant them further. Make it so there is no overlap between bow and arrow enchantments or the damage won't stack. Late game you can upgrade your archers into machine gunners and give Zehir the Omaha Beach experience:
3. Annoying Wondrous Items
If something is neither a weapon or armor then you craft it via the "Craft Wondrous Items" feat. Unlike arms and armor, this one is a massive pain in the *** since it requires you to collect a bunch of junk + one or more valuable stones + a resource (eg Mithral) + one usage of a specific spell + a bunch of gold. So if you miss something in the list then have fun walking the map searching for it. Use Lilura's item list to avoid aimless searches, but it's still a massive pain in the *** regardless. Rule of thumb: don't sell animal skins OR precious stones you find in your adventure. Your pain will be rewarded with various stat sticks and the joy of repeating the process once you acquire the recipe for a better stat stick. To craft you must put all materials in the recipe guy's inventory, open the book and select the recipe. Some tips:
- The required spell needs to be memorized by someone, not necessarily the person who took the feat. So a Wizard craftsman can still craft an Amulet of Natural Armor, you just need a druid in the party to memorize Barkskin.
- Scrolls and wands don't count, you need to be able to cast the required spell at will.
- Grab all the 2nd level "+ stats" (eg: Bull's Strength) spells as soon as you can
- You may need to hunt specific creatures OR buy their skin from trophy salesmen (like the Druid's sister in Samargol and the Adventurer's Guild in CRK)
If your main party can't cast a specific spell for whatever reason then you can temporarily hire one of the cohorts to cast it for you. You can even take it a step further and have the cohort take the required feats, completely bypassing the "feat tax" of crafting. Remember you can train cohorts to catch up at the Adventurer's Guild, but it is very expensive to do so. Dismissed companions will stay in your Merchant Headquarters in Crossroad Keep, so it's pretty convenient to use temporary craftsmen. Since Umoja can cast Barkskin from the moment you recruit him he is one of the best candidates for the job of temporary craftsman.
5. OC Crafting
This enchantment doesn't even exist in Storm of Zehir
IT WORKS!!! I WAS RIGHT! My memory isn't too terrible and Obshitian never bothered patching it. Here's the deal: the crafting recipes of the Original Campaign will work in Storm of Zehir!!! You just need to find a Magician's Workbench that allows you to put items inside it, such as the one inside Neverwinter City and various other trade outposts. This is probably an exploit, but then again, why didn't they remove essences from the game? If you want to use any of the OC crafting recipes you must farm the various elementals that roam the map for essences. This is the only way to get a +5 weapon. Remember the Original Campaign was much more strict with crafting prerequisites, so in order to use this "feature" you need spells to be cast by the same character who owns the relevant feats.