Crafting the Items You Want to Keep

Finding the right Artefact in Starforged Ascendant can be the beginning of a much longer relationship with that item.

Crafting lets you shape promising equipment, improve the pieces already supporting your build, develop Power Cores and Augments, create new Artefacts and prepare increasingly ambitious Mission Items.

At the centre of the system is Nanomass, supported by a range of specialised Matrices that let you influence what your crafting actually produces.

From broad rolls to specific outcomes

Artefacts have two built-in properties tied to their base identity, plus up to four rolled Affixes that can be developed through Crafting.

Those Affixes can affect Stats, resources, recovery, defence, offence, speed, utility and other parts of the build.

You can approach a craft with very little targeting and accept a broad pool of possible outcomes, or spend Matrices to progressively narrow the result.

Matrices can target different parts of an Affix:

• its Affinity
• its Property
• its Form

Using one Matrix narrows the pool.

Combining two narrows it further.

Supplying all three can identify a specific legal Affix.

That creates a spectrum between cheap experimentation and deliberate item building.

Sometimes you want to see what happens.

Sometimes you know exactly what the build needs.

Developing an existing Artefact

Once an Artefact has the right foundation, Crafting gives you several ways to keep working on it.

You can:

• Add Affixes
• Force a specific legal Affix
• Reroll an Affix value
• Reroll its tier
• Remove an unwanted Affix
• Reforge an Affix into something new
• Upgrade the Artefact's Item Level

An item with the right Skill but mediocre supporting Stats can become worth investing in.

A strong Affix with a weak roll can be improved.

A property that no longer suits the build can be removed or replaced.

There are also hidden Unknown Affixes that can be added and later Deciphered, creating another path for discovering unusual Crafting outcomes.

Stability

Every craftable item begins with 100 Stability.

Most major Crafting actions consume some of it.

Smaller changes may cost only a few points. Larger actions such as forcing an exact Affix or raising Item Level can consume considerably more.

Stability stays with the item, so every major change becomes part of its history.

An Artefact can be carefully polished across several inexpensive crafts, or pushed aggressively toward a particular result.

Reaching zero Stability does not destroy the item. It simply closes off Crafting actions that still require Stability.

That makes a heavily developed Artefact feel finished because of the choices made along the way.

Power Cores and Augments

Power Cores and Augments also have their own Crafting progression.

Their normal progression reaches Level 10.

Crafting can push them further to Level 15 using specialised Power Matrices and Augment Matrices.

Each Overcap attempt normally increases the item by one Level, with a chance of gaining two Levels at once.

Crafting also provides Absorb.

Power Cores, Augments and Mission Power Cores can transfer their stored EXP into another compatible item.

That means an old item can still contribute to something better you have found.

Several source items can even be absorbed together, letting accumulated progression feed directly into the piece you actually want to keep.

Refabrication

Crafting can also create a new starting point.

Refabrication lets you produce a Weapon, Armour or Drone Artefact using the appropriate base Matrix.

The new Artefact is created around the Character's current progression level and begins with full Stability, ready to be developed through the rest of the Crafting system.

This gives players another way to pursue a missing piece when the build needs a particular foundation.

Crafting Missions

Crafting extends into the Mission system as well.

Mission Items can be developed with Secondary Objectives, Power Core progression and Mission modifiers that increase the challenge and influence the rewards available inside the Mission.

A crafted Secondary Objective can create another reason to enter the Mission, pursue a specific resource or chase a particular kind of reward.

Mission modifiers can push enemy quantity, enemy quality, item quantity or item quality higher.

Mission Power Cores can continue gaining EXP without a hard level ceiling, supporting the infinite-scaling Mission system and increasingly difficult endgame content.

The harder you push the Mission Item, the more demanding the activity becomes and the stronger the reward opportunity can become with it.

Build the item, then build the challenge

Crafting connects two sides of Starforged Ascendant.

It helps turn good equipment into equipment built around your Character.

Then it lets you create Missions capable of testing what that Character has become.

Find the foundation.

Shape the Artefact.

Develop the build.

Then craft something difficult enough to prove it works.