LostVale guide

Crafting

Stations, learning recipes, the queue, quality grades and material tiers; ore by its real geology, the long chains from ore and fleece to steel and dyed cloth, alchemy, glass and the pack.

Stations and the queue

Every recipe is made at a station: by hand anywhere, or at a campfire, workbench, carpenter’s bench, mason’s bench, bloomery, forge, anvil, kiln, loom, spinning wheel, tanning rack, alchemist’s table, kitchen hearth, bread oven, brewhouse, quern, windmill, saw pit, jeweller’s bench, fletcher’s bench, saddler’s bench, glassmaker’s furnace, honey press or druid’s altar. A station counts when you stand within reach of it. Stations are crafted as kits, held in hand and set down with the strike; build mode’s remove takes one up again. Shops in town have their trade’s stations set up, and you may craft at them too.

Open the inventory (I) to craft. Choose a recipe and how many batches to make, and the work joins the queue:

• Each batch takes its ingredients when it starts, and the queue stops early when they run out.
• Cancelling a job gives back the ingredients of the batch in progress.
• Each batch takes the recipe’s time (shorter with the Artisan’s crafting speed) and gives the recipe’s experience.
• Some work gives more than one thing: the honey press gives honey and crude wax.
• A windmill’s stones turn only in a wind: nothing in a calm, the full pace in a fresh breeze, a little more in a gale.

Some recipes ask for “any” of a kind (any log, any stone that knaps, any herb) rather than one item.

Learning recipes

The crafting list shows only what you know. A recipe is learned:

• from the start (the first tools, a fire, a workbench, sticks, twine);
• by handling a material: holding an ingredient teaches the recipes that need it (a copper ingot in the pack teaches copper tools and arms);
• by finding its station: standing near one teaches its recipes;
• at a level.

Quality

Weapons, tools and armour can come out of the work finer than common. The grades are Common, Fine, Superior, Masterwork and Legendary.

• The chance of rising each grade is 8%, plus the Artisan’s fine work chance, plus 1% for every level you stand above the recipe’s.
• Each grade is harder than the last (a fifth harder per grade), unless you have the Masterwork ability, which makes each grade as likely as the last.
• Each grade adds 10% to a weapon’s damage, 10% to armour, and a quarter to how long it lasts.
• Merchants pay more for finer work and less for worn.

Material tiers

Tools, weapons and armour are made in tiers of metal, each harder to win than the last:

A tool’s power decides what it can break: a flint pickaxe cannot win iron ore from hard rock, and gold wants a strong pick.

Ore by its real geology

A pickaxe quarries stone true to the rock it strikes, and ore turns up by chance in the rocks that really carry it:

The rock under your feet follows the province you stand in (see The Isles), so a smith goes looking for the right country.

The long chains

Much of what you need comes at the end of a chain of stations:

• Metal. Ore is smelted in the bloomery: copper, tin, lead and silver into ingots, iron into a bloom that is worked into iron. Copper and tin make bronze, lead and tin pewter. Iron goes to steel at the forge. The anvil makes tools, weapons and armour from ingots, with planks and leather for hafts and grips.
• Wood. Felled trees are bucked into logs by their grade (see Building, timber); the saw pit and carpenter’s bench turn them into planks, beams and everything wooden.
• Cloth. Flax is retted in water and spun into linen thread; fleece is spun and woven into wool cloth. The loom makes over 90 garments, undyed or in dyes, striped, checked, tartan or knotwork-bordered. Nettles and plant fibre give twine and rope.
• Leather. Hides are tanned on the rack into leather for armour, saddles, bags and grips.
• Food and drink. Grain is ground at the quern or windmill and baked in the oven; barley is malted at the kiln and brewed into ale; honey is pressed and brewed into mead; and at last there is the water of life, uisge beatha. The kitchen hearth cooks dishes from what the fields, herds, nets and hunt give.
• Stone and clay. The mason’s bench dresses stone; the kiln fires brick, roof tiles, lime, charcoal and pottery.

Alchemy

Potions are brewed at the alchemist’s table and bottled in glass phials and jars.

• Drunk, they restore health, mana or stamina at once, raise (and some lower) your powers for a while, and cure afflictions: poison, burning, chill, curses and sickness.
• Oils are brushed on the blade in hand rather than drunk: grave-silver against the dead, cold iron against the Sidhe, beastbane, and giant-killer’s oil.
• Toxicity: drink too many too fast and you sicken until it ebbs (see Staying alive).
• Strength follows how fresh a potion is (and a finer one is stronger). Light fades a tincture in clear glass; amber or cobalt glass keeps it longer, milk glass longest.
• The jar or phial comes back empty when what it held is used up.

Simple remedies (a healing poultice of yarrow and comfrey, a honey salve) are made by hand.

Glass

The glassmaker’s furnace melts sand into clear, frosted, bullseye and opaline glass, panes and mosaic, and with metal colourants into nine colours: ruby, cobalt, amber, gold, green, azure, murrey, rose and opal. It blows phials and jars in clear, amber, cobalt, green and opal glass too. Glass is a building material: light through a coloured window colours the room.

The pack

You carry:

• Worn gear: head, shoulders, chest, cape, legs, wrists, boots, gloves, two rings, and both hands (weapons and tools in the main hand; shields, torches and talismans in the off hand).
• A 48-slot pack and an eight-slot belt (the hotbar).
• Storage chests you set down, saddlebags on your horse, a cart’s bed and a ship’s hold.

Everything has a weight. Your gear travels with your character from world to world.

The tables below give the number of recipes at each station and the items of each kind, read from the game’s own content.

Written from the game's source and content as of commit 02e81b2 (2026-11-01).