Could someone explain Greensteel to me?

[HunterjWizzard]

So I've finished 4 out of 5 flagging quests and hope to be doing my first shroud-run this weekend. I am looking immensly forward to TRing, but I do want to have a nice assortment of greensteels in the bank first.

I've tried reading the DDO wiki article on green steel and it... just... sort of makes my head hurt. The crafting steps sort of make sense, but the wiki skips very neatly over how you are supposed to obtain a blank item.

[AZgreentea]

This is a great Green Steel builder:

http://crafting.cubicleninja.com/

You make the blank by combining ingredients from the flagging quests (they come from other places too, like the Shroud end rewards) into the altar in Meridia in a certain way.

You need a certain amount of Twelve favor to access the altar, which can be done by completing all flagging quests on Normal. Then you will be given a mini quest similar to the Cannith Crafting tutorial in order to assemble the flagging stone for the Shroud and start your Greensteel Crafting.

[Feralthyrtiaq]

Google "DDO Game Guide" and download/install it. I believe it comes from perfectweb.org.

It gives you the opportunity to build different GS items by picking the effect from a list of available options and tells you what you need to make it from flagging to GS Blank to Shroud to Finished GS item.

Finish your shroud flagging. After you have all 5 stones from the flagging quests you will get another quest that takes you into the basement of the building in meridia for a short crafting tutorial. Also, clicking the crafting device in the basement will open a barter window.

The barter window has a search field. If you type in "Goggles" it should give you the recipe for a Goggle blank.

[ka0t1c1sm]

DDOwiki has a flagging guide to walk you through the first Green Steel tutorial quest when you finish the 5 quests and get your Shavarath Stones HERE (http://ddowiki.com/page/Eldritch_Device_Tutorial), and blank recipes HERE (http://ddowiki.com/page/Altar_of_Fecundity_-_Manufactured_Ingredient_Recipes).

With the Altars now using the barter UI, the recipes for the manufactured ingredients are built in.

[ka0t1c1sm]

Here are a few other Shroud crafting planners.

DDO Shroud Loot Planner (http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~delallea/ddo/shroud/)

DDO Online Crafting Planner (http://www.perfectweb.org/ddo/crafting/base_crafting.php)

ddocrafting.com (http://ddocrafting.com/)

My favorite is the downloadable DDO Game Guide (http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=137347) mentioned above.

[HunterjWizzard]

Thank you folks, that should be enough to get me started. I had already found the cubeninja one, that guys planners have saved me more effort and wasted more productive hours at work...

[jortann]

Check out this thread here... http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=335486

Its more of a step by step walkthrough... with explanations

Good luck!

[IronClan]

Strongly recommend the http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~delallea/ddo/shroud/ link already posted by Ka0t1c.

Why? because it shows you every possible effect on one screen and greys things out or highlights them when something you choose eliminates another effect from being possible, or makes another effect mandatory due to your current selection.

Basically you can quickly get a feel for whats possible whats impossible and then the whole thing starts to make a tiny bit of sense. As good as the other planners are they put things in lists and menus that aren't visible until you drop them down so when you choose something you wont necessarily remember that it eliminates another effect from being an option. If you never see the effect in the drop down (because you choose a tier 1 that eliminates it from contention) you could miss out on the ideal optimum setup for your gear especially if you're crafting a gear puzzle with a HP item, an SP item, a couple popular clickies (Raise dead and Displacement)... That's where it's possible to really mess up... either wasting ingredients or possibly crafting redundant items, that could have been avoided by just switching the tier effect of one of your pieces to another piece of gear, and (for a fake example) getting displacement clickies on an item you can swap out without losing SP or HP. (note a realistic example would have required me to go craft-plan 2 clickies and a HP and a SP item item so apologies for the fake example)

[BOgre]

Be aware though: you say you're looking forward to TRing and hoping to have some gs item(s) first... Building GS isn't a quick process. If you have only one character running shroud once every 3 days, it may take 3 months or more to aquire enough ingredients for your first item. You can speed that time up in various ways, with a bypass raid timer item from the ddostore, by having multiple toons flagged and running the raid to collect ingredients faster, by having the cash to buy Large ingredients you may be missing, etc.

So, you'd be wise to plan which item you feel is the most important, which you'd like to make 1st. This tends to be a MinII hp item on a belt, goggles, or helmet, depending of course on what other gear you have and which slot you intend to wear the gs in... many new players dream of their first GS LightningII greataxe or some such other weapon, but that might not be the best way to go for your very first item.

Furthermore, there are dozens or maybe hundreds of posts here about new players making a mistake in gs crafting and then wanting their costly ingredients back. It's VERY easy to make a mistake, even with the new barter UI. So plan out your item perfectly, double check the recipe with another planner, and set aside some time with zero distractions before hitting the altars.

One final thing: don't craft IN the shroud raid, during the raid. If you don't have access to crafting altars on your guild ship, and simply MUST use the altars in the raid, WAIT untill the battle is over. You can use portals inside the final area to get to all the altars and craft your item at your leisure, as opposed to messing around during the active raid. Crafting while 11 people wait for you is a good way to get blacklisted.