Dragon Age: Inquisition Crafting & Customization Q&A

BioWare has published a community Q&A in which creative director Mike Laidlaw and producer Chris Pickford answer a barrage of community questions concerning crafting and customization. Here’s how they preface it:

Before we dive into your questions, let’s talk about Inquisition’s crafting at a high level. Our goal in allowing you to create your own armor and weapons was twofold. First, we wanted you to have a lot of opportunities to customize your look. Second, we wanted to encourage experimentation and, if things were really cooking, targeted creation.

One example we always used when describing the goals of crafting was that of the dragon hunter. We wanted you, as a player, to have the tools necessary to build armor and weapons custom-tooled toward hunting one of our massive namesakes.

To that end, we developed the concept of the schematic. A schematic determines the shape of the blade if you’re crafting a sword or the shape of the core armor if you’re crafting protective gear. Each schematic takes some combination of metals, leathers, and cloths, and the materials you choose to use determine the effectiveness of the gear, any bonuses built into it, and the visual appearance. A serpentstone blade, for instance, will be a dull greenish color, and onyx will be a shiny black.

Once you have a core piece of gear, you may also be able to upgrade it. If an armor can take upgrades, they will change the shape of the armor as well as add new properties, but will inherit the color scheme of the core body of the armor. Similarly, if you install a new hilt or pommel onto your sword, it will smoothly unify to match the rest of the blade’s color scheme.

Oh, and you can name any gear you create, of course. Perhaps you’re a Chumbawamba fan and want to call your war hammer “Nugthumper.” Who are we to deny you such simple pleasures?

And a couple of questions and answers that dive into the specifics:

If I choose not to craft, will I still be able to find unique or powerful weapons and armor? Evgeny Negurista, VK.com, Russia

[CHRIS PICKFORD, PRODUCER]: Absolutely, the game doesn’t rely on crafting as a necessary component. There are plenty of shiny things to find in Thedas!

[MIKE LAIDLAW]: One of our goals is to let you play the game you want to, so if you want to loot only, loot on!

How will the inventory of your backpack be managed in DAI? Will it be determined by number of slots or weight of objects? Bejita Saiyajin, Facebook, France

[CP]: Inventory is determined by number of slots. We found this worked better because for most people, it’s easier to keep mental track of a straightforward number. Additionally, as you power up your Inquisition, you can improve your inventory slots via Inquisition customization.

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Will there be new materials to the series to craft items with? Askold Sivoronsky, VK.com, Russia

[CP]: Yes, we’ve had to expand the number of crafting materials to cover all the gameplay improvements we wanted to make. There are even some materials that allow characters to wear armor that isn’t necessarily allowed for their class. but it’s very rare.