Refining

Refining

Refining is the middle stage of the crafting cycle. It converts gathered resources, scraps, and other inputs into materials and components used by Production skills. The historical Crafting Sigil places Refining between Gathering and Production, although current recipe dependencies form a network rather than six isolated pipelines.

Disciplines

Discipline	Typical inputs	Principal outputs and destinations
Smelting	Ore, coal, scraps, molds, and special ingredients	Ingots, sheets, wire, bindings, blades, and heads for Blacksmithing and other skills
Milling	Wood, scraps, Creosote, and special ingredients	Timber, boards, poles, handles, bowstaves, and Heartwood for Carpentry
Tanning	Hides, scraps, Curing Salt, and additives	Leather, straps, trophies, dyes, and components for Tailoring and other skills
Textiles	Cotton, scraps, Wax, and additives	Thread, cloth bolts, straps, and components for Tailoring and other skills
Butchery	Carcasses and fish	Meat, fillets, fat, bones, sinew, and Cooking ingredients
Agriculture	Seeds, water, planter space, and time	Cultivated crops for Cooking, Textiles, Alchemy, and other recipes

Agriculture is historically categorized in the Refining ring even though planting, watering, and harvesting behave differently from station-based material processing.

How refining works

Obtain the exact raw resource or recyclable scrap.
Learn the recipe where required and use its matching Crafting Station.
Supply the discipline's tool, fuel, additives, and quantities.
Refine the material, then follow its recipe backlinks into Production or another refining step.

The recipe is authoritative. Similar materials are not automatically interchangeable, and a recipe listed under a refining discipline is not necessarily classified as a Refined Material for skill training.

Refining skills

Smelting, Milling, Tanning, Textiles, and Butchery use a common four-skill pattern:

Skill role	Effect
Proficiency	Raises the discipline's refining level
Batching Materials	Increases the permitted batch count for qualifying recipes
Swift Refine Materials	Reduces time for qualifying recipes
Efficient Refine Materials	Adds a chance for bonus material from qualifying recipes

Release 50 introduced the specialized batch, speed, and efficiency skills for conventional refining.^[1] They apply to recipes classified as refined materials, not automatically to every trophy, component, artifact upgrade, or conversion performed at the same station. Agriculture instead has area-based sowing, watering, and harvesting skills.

Materials and components

Refined Material lists recorded ingots, timber, leather, thread, pulp, and scraps. Further recipes may turn those materials into Crafting Components. A component's form matters: a metal sheet, blade, binding, wooden handle, cloth bolt, or leather strap can carry a different bonus from another component made from the same base material.

For equipment choices, use Material Crafting Bonus, Armor Enhancement, Weapon Enhancement, Focus Enhancement, and Jewelry Enhancement. Their release labels indicate when records were checked, not when materials were introduced.

Version and verification

When testing a refining record, note the game release, station, tool, recipe classification, exact inputs, skill level, batch size, output, and bonus results. Generated recipe lists can mix records from widely separated releases.