The Quick Guide to Making Items

Creating items is a powerful tool in any patrolee’s arsenal. Item creation requires the person who makes the item to have either the enchant item (for spells) or consecrate item (for miracles) skills to a level at least as high as the spell or miracle you’re putting in the item, as well as knowledge of how to cast the spell or miracle. This knowledge can be via ritual or ceremony, however the level in the ritual or ceremony skill must also be at least as high as the spell or miracle. An item cannot be both magical and miraculous.

As you learn more levels of the skill you can make items that contain more powerful spells or miracles, make them keyed to a specific race, or ensure that they can never be removed from you. You can only upgrade an item that you created, and you can only ever upgrade an item. You can never selectively remove effects from an item: if you want to give your item keyed to elves to a non-elf, you would need to destroy the item and remake it anew.

Creating your own items has most of the same advantages and disadvantages as using items created by other people, however there are some unique to creators alone.

Advantages

You can upgrade an item once you have more skill.
You can use additional skill levels to add more powers to an item.
Casting using items always costs less mana/standing overall than casting normally.

Disadvantages

You permanently store some mana/standing in the item when you create it (except for scrolls), how much depends on exactly what type of item and how powerful the spell/miracle is. This mana/standing never returns unless the item is destroyed or single use items are used up. If you lose the item, the mana/standing is gone forever.
Creating items can take a lot of time between missions.
Using items is less flexible than casting normally.

Different types of Item

There are additional things to think about for each type of item when creating them:

Potions: A low level (level 4 or lower) potion can be created as a ubiquitous item (without any material cost). It costs half the usual amount of mana/standing that it would to normally cast the effect to create the potion, and this returns after the potion has been entirely used up. High level potions can be created with materials with a cost, however they are the cheapest items to make in terms of material cost.

Scrolls

A low level scroll can be made as a ubiquitous item. It does not cost any mana/standing to create a scroll, however you do need to know the runeset of the enchant/consecrate skill that you are using to create the scroll. This means if, for some reason, you are a Justice ceremonialist with the Consecrate Item Life skill, you need to create scrolls in Life runes.

An item creator can have one ubiquitous scroll for each level of enchant/consecrate that they have. For example, if you have a single enchant level 2 skill, you can have 1 level 0, 1 level 1 and 1 level 2 ubiquitous scroll. These can be split up and/or put together: for example instead of a level 2 you can have 3 level 0 scrolls, or instead of a level 1 scroll and a level 0 scroll you can have a level 2 scroll. If you had enchant 10, you could create 66 level 0 scrolls if you wanted to!

You can create as many additional scrolls as you like, however these must be made using materials with a cost. They are still cheap to make, with materials costing the same as potions.

One-shot items: It costs half the usual amount of mana/standing to create a one shot item, and once they are used the mana/standing used to create it returns. You can put the spell/miracle back into the item again afterwards, as it doesn’t destroy the materials like scrolls or potions.

Charged items: When creating the item, each created charge costs half the usual amount of mana/standing to normally cast the effect, with another half of the normal mana/standing to charge the slots. You can charge the item with the same time as a ritual/ceremony as normal to cast the spell/miracle. This means that the first casting costs the same as casting the spell/miracle normally, however every other casting costs half as much as usual. As a result this is a good pick for spells/miracles you will be casting multiple times throughout a day.

Daily Items: It costs 2/3rds of the usual amount of mana/standing to cast the spell. There are not many upsides to using this as an item creator, as the normal upsides of a daily item are covered by you being able to either recharge charged items or recreate single use items.

Permanent items: It costs 4 times the usual amount of mana/standing. They are incredibly powerful items, however the cost is a big downside. The mana/standing costs start to add up quickly, and the base items are the most expensive of any item. This said, the costs can be worth it for a spell/miracle that you want to have active at all times.

Extra Options

If your skill in enchant/consecrate item is higher than the highest level of spell/miracle you are putting into an item, you can use your excess skill to add extra powers to it. These powers cost varying levels, and you can put as many of them on an item as you like (or can afford)! For example, if creating an item of a spell of level 1, but you can create items of level 4, you have 3 levels of options to play with. Scrolls can never have one of these options.

Keyed: For 1 level, you can make any item other than potions be only able to be used by a particular guild, race or class. You can add an additional key for an additional level, however only one for each type of key (guild, race or class). Especially useful for Illuminati, Bladesingers and heirlooms.

Bound: For 2 levels, you can make it so that any single use, daily or permanent item cannot be removed from you whilst you live. Given that it can’t be removed from you, you can only make a worn item bound, such as rings and amulets. This can be a good way to prevent thieves from stealing your items, however it can also be a good way to get stuck to a less good item, a bound ring of permanent weakness is not a nice gift to give.

Hidden: You can make it so that any item does not appear to be magical/miraculous to those who do not know how to make such items. To be able to identify a hidden item, you need to have at least the level of skill in enchant, for magic items, or consecrate, for miraculous items. This does not need to be in the path or school of the item. This costs 1 level per level of skill required (e.g. 1 level of hidden requires level 0 of enchant/consecrate). Useful for necromancers pretending that they only have items of legal schools, or people who want to look like they really just enjoy wearing expensive jewellery.

Rapid Attunement: You can make it so that the time it takes for an item that requires attunement to be able to be used is shorter. This costs 1 level to happen by dawn the next day, 2 levels to take only 4 hours, 3 levels to take only 1 hour or 4 levels to take only 15 minutes. Useful for hot-swapping powerful permanent items, or for passing a charged item of mana/standing gift around those not using it.

Temporary: You can make it so that an item stops functioning and returns the embedded mana/standing back to you after an amount of time. This costs 1 level to return it to you after 1 year and 1 month, and 2 levels for any amount of time, chosen when made. This is useful for those who do not want to lose their mana/standing permanently in the case of losing an item, or for limited term contracts when selling items.

Attaching: For 3 levels, you can make it so that an item starts attuning to you rather than the other way around. This means that an item will attune to the person holding an item even if they do not claim it. In game terms, this is most commonly seen in cursed items, forcing themselves upon you for having the misfortune of picking them up. You may not have wanted to attune to that demonology item that you found, but it wanted to attune to you.

Written by Peter
Updated by Charlotte