As mentioned in an earlier feature spotlight on Item Properties, Blacksmiths and Tailors will gain the ability to craft armor and weapons that are imbued with special magical properties. This new ability will allow for a greater diversity of equipment that Blacksmiths and Tailors can create, while at the same time, add a little more challenge and risk to both professions. Choosing the right type of armor you wear and the weapons you use will be very important in Age of Shadows, as your effectiveness in combat will depend upon the strengths and weaknesses of your equipment. So, understanding the basics of magic properties and the process of creating them will help you make those vital decisions.

There are three basic factors to understand when it comes to crafting magic items:

Base Properties - All pieces of armor will inherently have base elemental properties. The values of these properties determine how much resistance the piece of armor will provide against certain types of elemental damage (Physical, Fire, Cold, Poison, and Energy). This means a suit of armor made out of plain iron can still provide some resistance to elemental damage. Weapons always have a base of 100% physical damage, which means that the damage they do is all physical 100% of the time.

Material Bonuses - The various types of colored ore and leather will add additional bonuses to the base properties of an item if you craft it by using the special material. This applies to both armor and weapons. For example, all Leather Armor Tunics start with the following base properties: 2% Physical, 4% Fire, 3% Cold, 3% Poison, and 3% Energy resistance. However, if you were to craft that tunic out of horned leather (horned leather is tougher than normal leather), a 2-3% bonus would be applied to each of those base properties.

Even the armor and weapons you find as loot on monsters can be improved by these special materials. While items made out of plain iron or leather don't have any additional bonuses to their base properties, if you enhance them with colored ore or leather, they will gain the bonuses that are inherent to the material you used. So that sweet halberd you found on the corpse of that Ancient Wyrm can be made even better! But be forewarned, there is risk involved with enhancing items. You could end up destroying the very thing you are trying to improve!

Runic Crafting Tool Bonuses - Blacksmiths and Tailors will also be able to create more powerful items by using a Runic Crafting Tool (Runic Hammer or Runic Sewing Kit). Runic Crafting Tools can add additional properties to an item, like bonuses that can increase your stats, your swing rate, or the damage you can inflict on your opponents (You can find more examples of item properties in the Item Properties feature spotlight.). The type of Runic Tool that is used determines the number of properties that can be added, as well as their intensities.

This new way of crafting challenges even the most accomplished crafters, making the results quite unpredictable. While you are certain to get a better item from crafting with a Runic Hammer, you cannot choose which bonus properties will be applied to the item.