Crafting Masterwork gear in Dragon Age: Inquisition will provide you with some of the best weapons and armor in the game. Believe it or not, the best items in the game aren’t those acquired through fighting your enemies—instead, you’re going to have to craft them yourself. Even some of the best equipment you find through your adventures can be further upgraded and improved through the use of the game’s crafting mechanics.
That’s where Masterwork crafting enters the picture. Through Masterwork crafting, you’ll be able to create the weapons and armor in the style you want, with the stats you want, and upgrade it even further with a powerful Rune.
You might have noticed that almost all of the weapons and armor you find in the game are randomly generated. From corpses on the ground to treasure chests hidden in trapped chambers, much of the gear in the game is rolled through a random number generator. The good news is that even if you have bad luck in finding the gear you want, you’ll be able to craft exactly what you need by acquiring schematics.
Once you have the schematic you need, head on over to the Undercroft in Skyhold, or to the blacksmithing area in Haven (assuming you haven’t reached Skyhold yet) and you’ll find four benches for which to perform crafting and modifications: Craft Armor, Craft Weapons, Modify Armor, and Modify Weapons. At the crafting stations, you’ll be able to fill in the material slots with items you’ve scavenged from your adventures.
Each slot in the schematic represents an improvement that you can apply to the base weapon or armor, such as Offense or Defense stats. Through the use of metal, leather, and cloth, you can customize your gear with improvements such as increasing your maximum health or raising your critical hit chance.
For added effects, add a Masterwork material into the mix at the top of the schematic. This step is entirely optional, but allows you to greatly boost the potency of your gear.
Once you craft your armor or weapon, you can further upgrade them with pommels and blades for your sword, or leg and arm sets for your armor.
How powerful the weapons and armor you craft depend on how far you are willing to go with the game’s crafting system and how much time and resources you are willing to invest into creating particular pieces of kit.
The following video guide by KineticGTR will walk you through the steps of creating your own piece of armor or weapon.
