SwagVault MMO Blog

Vanguard Guide: Complications

During the course of completing a recipe complications will crop up. The likelihood of getting a complication is driven in large part by your station action skill.

Complications are a random chance during each action. In general you should expect to see 3 or 4 per turn. If you have a high station skill you may only see 2 per turn, if you have a low station skill you may see 5 or 6 per turn. Since complications are a random chance per action you should do as few actions as possible during a recipe. In other words try to do the highest AP cost action that doesn’t waste AP by providing more progress than needed to complete a step.

There are three boxes to the right of the crafting stages that show any active complications (Figure 6.2.3). Mousing over the complication will describe how many turns it lasts and it’s nature. Some cause subsequent actions to cost more AP, some cause progress loss, some quality loss. Some complications are actually beneficial and will increase quality or progress. Bad complications tend to be red, orange ones are detrimental but can probably be ignored, green ones are beneficial.

Selecting an active complication will bring up all known resolutions.

Resolutions can be tool, utility or station based actions. Your ability to remove a complication is driven primarily by your problem solving attribute and secondarily by the appropriate process skill (utility, tool etc) for the chosen resolution. Whether it takes one, two, three or even four applications of the resolution is driven by those factors.

Not all complications are bad, some provide beneficial gains others are merely annoyances that typically can be ignored. Learning the difference will be extremely important where an A versus B or C grade result is concerned.

Example 1: Minor Friction complication lasts 5 turns and causes a 33% increase in AP cost. You could choose to ignore it and do a 100pt AP progress action instead. This would result in a 166pt deficit (33% of 5 turns * 100pt). If instead you applied the lowest cost (35 AP) resolution 3 times you’d only lose 140 AP. (3 * 35pt action is 105AP + 35 AP due to the increased cost during those 3 actions). If you clear the complication you save 26AP but you risk having another complication appear. If you ignore it you lose 26AP but may be in a position to simply complete the recipe. You could further decide to only do low cost actions while the complication is up to further mitigate the cost. Some complications cause progress loss that can affect steps you’ve completed within the current stage. When this occurs the previously grayed out step will relight and you will need to return to it. They will not re-open steps in completed stages. These complications can also cause negative progress, when that occurs you will likely need more than the normal 33, 50 or 100% progress for that step. These are by far the worst complications. Recognizing them and ensuring you have effective utilities and tools to attack them is essential in becoming a successful crafter.

Note: Complications are random, a build that averages 2 or 3 complications per recipe could experience 4 or 5, a build that averages 4 or 5 could experience only 2. There is no rule that says you can’t get more or fewer than some target number.

There is no harm in completing a recipe with an active complication, it is not required that they be removed.