Introduction:

WithModule 6: The Thirteenth Eclipse, Turbine is proud to introduce a newfeature - an early version of Stormreach’s first crafting feature,called the Eldritch Device. The Eldritch Device allows players tocreate and upgrade items, and to create their own raid loot, usingother items collected from their adventures! Much is still unknownabout the devices, and their full potential and power remain a mystery.The greatest scholars in Stormreach are committed to studying thesealtars to find out more.

Getting Started:

Ingredients

Right:Various raw ingredients. Clockwise from top left: Green Briar Twigs,Lammanian Lily Petals, Locust Husk, Chipmunk Funk, Glistening Pebbles,Bitterscrub Fungus. Left: An assortment of manufacturedingredients. Clockwise from top left: Ore of Travail, Filaments ofToil, Red Taper, Wondrous Scarab, Wondrous oil, Wondrous balm.

At first, you’ll need to collect a few Raw Ingredients,like pebbles, arrowheads, or chipmunk funk, to begin using the firstEldritch device in Meridia. Using these raw ingredients, you’ll manufacture higher level ingredients, like taper candles, oils, and ores. These are Manufactured Ingredients to be used in other recipes you’ll discover along the way.

In addition to raw ingredients you can use Special Ingredients,which can be found in chests, to use in some important recipes. Whileyou’re collecting the other ingredients, you’ll want to watch out forthese special ingredients. For example, in the chest of each pre-raiddungeon, you’ll receive a Shavarath Stone of Might, Victory, Battle,Foresight or Strategy. Collect all five of these stones and you cancombine them to create the Signet Stone. You’ll need a Signet Stone tocreate your first piece of raid equipment or weapon!

Energy Cells

Top: A depleted energy cell. Bottom: A charged energy cell.

In most recipes, you’ll usually need to include an Energy Cellto power the device, though some recipes contain enough magic on theirown to power the altar. Energy Cells can be purchased from a vendor andare also found in the raid. For your first real recipe in creating anew weapon, you’ll need an Eberron Energy Cell, which can be purchasedfrom vendors in the game. Later recipes require a Shavarath Energy Cell,which can be collected during your adventures. While there is only onetype of Eberron Energy Cell, there are three types of Shavarath EnergyCell: low, medium and high.

Use a +6 to +10 weapon to recharge depleted energy cells!

When you find an energy cell, it may be charged ordepleted. You can recharge energy cells by combining an empty cell withany weapon whose plus value is 6 through 10, depending on the type ofcell. This is a great opportunity to put some of those unused itemsthat you’ve been storing away in your bank to good use !

The Eldritch interface.

The interface

The Eldritch Device interface is simple, and easy to use. There arefive slots to accept ingredients and components of your recipes. Tocreate a recipe, simply drag ingredients from your inventory to a slotin the Eldritch device. If your ingredients are not appropriate to theparticular device you are working with, you will receive a messagetelling you that your item is not able to be used in the device.

Creating manufactured ingredients

First, drag an Eberron energy cell to a slotin the device, followed by four raw ingredients. In this example, we’regoing to use Glistening Pebbles, Green Briar Twigs, Chipmunk Funk and aLocust Husk, and an Eberron energy cell. After placing the ingredientsin the device, click the “Mix Magically” button and you will noticethat the recipe failed. This means that unfortunately, the combinationof raw ingredients we’ve used does not produce anything special.

Let’s try again, but this time instead of aLocust Husk, lets try a piece of Bitterscrub Fungus. Don’t forget yourenergy cell! Click Mix Magically, and viola! You have one “blue taper”candle. Congratulations!

By repeating steps like these withother ingredients, you can continue to manufacture better ingredientswhich will in turn, allow you to make something REALLY special.

Creating an item

After you’ve created enough manufacturedingredients, you can use them to make weapons and iequipment. The itemsyou make from manufactured ingredients are called “blanks”… in the newmodule, all blanks are green steel. Usually these are baseitems which you can upgrade later, but have some neat effects evenbefore you upgrade them, such as increased dice damage! For thisexample, we’ll be creating a Warhammer!

Lets assume we’ve already created enoughmanufactured ingredients to create our blank. We need: One “Ore ofTravail”, one “Red Taper”, and one “Wondrous Oil”. We’ve also alreadycreated the signet stone we need to create the blank, and we have acharged Eberron Energy cell.

Just as before, drag your ingredients, signetstone and the energy cell into the proper Eldritch device, and clickthe combine button. If you’ve gotten the recipe right you shouldreceive a bright shiny green steel Warhammer!

Upgrading your item

Imbuing a Shard of Power.

Upgrading your item.

A Shard of Power, Before.

Now that you’ve made a weapon,you’ll likely want to upgrade it! Upgrading an item is asimilar processto gathering and creating ingredients and items. In order to

upgrade your item, you’ll have to combine itwith a Shard of Power that has been imbued with a certaincharacteristic. You can collect Shards of Power during your adventuresin the Shroud and combine them with other manufactured ingredients,like an essence, a focus (pl. Foci) or a cloudy gem, to give the sharda special characteristic that will apply to your weapon.

In our example, we are going to forge thefollowing items to imbue our shard: One Shard of Power, one InferiorFoci of Fire, one Cloudy Gem of Escalation, one Diluted MaterialEssence, and of course a Shavarath Low Energy Cell.

Green Steel Warhammer, with all three upgrades.

Once you’ve already imbued your shard, you then canplace it into the eldritch device along with an energy cell and yourweapon, and you are now the proud owner of customized raid loot!

As you progress to the later phases of the raid, you can continue the upgrade process to further upgrade your weapon, choosing either the same type of effects (all fire for example) or mixing it up (such as combining some fire with earth in a higher tier of upgrades), it’s your choice! Additional upgrades require higher quality imbued gems, but the scholars say that if you can figure out just the right combination of effects, your equipment will be granted a special bonus ability.

Unlock special spells for your weapons by specializing your upgrades!

Other uses of the Eldritch Device

The Stones of Change

Lessereldritch devices have also been discovered by the Twelve, called“Stones of Change”. While these stones lack the power of the eldritchdevices of Meridia and The Shroud, a number of uses have been foundthus far. These stones of change do not seem to require energy cells topower their recipes.

Dragonshard Combinations – Khyber orSiberys Dragonshards and Dragonshard Fragments can be placed in a Stoneof Change to combine them into larger versions. For example, 10 FlawedSiberys Dragonshards can be combined to form an Imperfect SiberysDragonshard, or 1,000 Khyber Dragonshard Fragments can be combined toform 10 Tiny Khyber Dragonshards, suitable for low level castings ofTrap the Soul.

Binding and Attuning of items – Anyequippable item can be placed into a Stone of Change with a number ofKhyber Dragonshard Fragments to bind the item to the user and prepareit for the later addition of Eldritch Rituals. Binding and attuning anitem requires (minimum level of item ^ 2) Khyber Dragonshard Fragments,so a minimum level 12 item would require 144 fragments. An item that isbound never takes permanent item damage when repaired, but can nolonger be traded.

Eldritch Rituals – An attuned itemcan have one line of Eldritch Rituals placed upon it. Thus far, theonly ritual that the Twelve have found is called the Adamantine Ritual,which increases the hardness and durability of an item. This ritualrequires Adamantine Ore and Soul Gems: Essence of Earth (produced bythe Trap the Soul spell), and can be placed on an item up to five times(though later applications increase only the durability of the item).In future modules, many more Eldritch Rituals will become available,but placing an Eldritch Ritual on an item will remove any others thatare currently on the item.

The Twelve have placed a Stone ofChange in the marketplace next to the Lordsmarch Bank and one at thebase of their tower for common use.

It is suspected that once the scholars fully understand the powersof the device, we’ll even be able to change effects on existing itemsas well as shatter shards into fragments, but these are dangerouspowers which must be studied further, before we can attempt such deeds.