Crafting Costs

Last updated Tuesday August 8th, 2023 at 7:18:58 PM GMT+0000

Ark server admins are able to change the resources required for crafting nearly any item in the game. Some admins choose to setup a fibercraft server where everything just costs fiber, but most admins just need to fix some balance issues. This guide will help Ark server admins do exactly that.

This feature requires Beacon Omni. All users may use the feature, but only Omni users will be able to generate the Ark config lines from it.

Step 1: Choose an Engram

First, use the New Recipe button in the Crafting Costs list to select an engram whose crafting cost you would like to replace. In this window, the search field at the top allows for quickly finding items. Below that is the tag picker. Tags can be clicked to change how the list is filtered. Gray tags are neutral and have no effect on the filtering. Blue tags are required, which means the list will only show items that have all of the blue tags. Red tags are excluded, which means the list will hide items that have any of the red tags. For this example, select Narcotic and press Select or double-click it. By default the Load Official Values When Available box will be checked, which means the recipe will be pre-loaded with the normal ingredients. For the sake of this tutorial, uncheck the box. Click the Narcotic row, then click the Select button. This will create a Narcotic row in the Crafting Costs list, but because we chose not to load the default recipe, it has no ingredients. Next, some ingredients will be added.

Step 2: Choose Some Ingredients

In the Ingredients list on the right, press the Add Ingredient button. This time you'll be presented with a similar window, except there is a new section on the right. This window allows you to add multiple items at the same time. Find Narcoberry and either select it and press the >> to move it to the right list, or double-click it. Next find Spoiled Meat and do the same. The Selected Engrams list should show the two ingredients. Press the Select button to add them to the Ingredients list.

Step 3: Change the Ingredient Quantities

On the right side of each ingredient is a Quantity column and a Prevent Substitutions column. Click the quantity for Narcoberry, then after the row is selected, click the quantity again. This will allow you to edit the value. Increase it to 2. At this point the recipe is now a cheaper version of the default recipe.

The Prevent Substitutions column, when checked, will not allow ingredient substitutions. In this case, leaving it unchecked allows Ascerbic Mushrooms to be used in the place of Narcoberry, since the two are interchangeable. When checked, only Narcoberry would be allowed.

The Adjust Crafting Costs Tool

At the top of the project inside the Tools menu is an Adjust Crafting Costs option. This will option a tool that allows you to make quick changes to many recipes and ingredients.

The menu next to Target Recipes allows you to choose between changing All recipes, Selected recipes, and Tagged recipes. The Selected recipes option will show a Choose… button allowing you to select one or more recipes that can be changed. The Tagged recipes option will show a tag picker allowing you to include or exclude recipes based on your chosen tags. Blue tags will be required, red tags will be excluded. If no tags are chosen, this option will behave the same as All recipes.

The menu next to Target Ingredients behaves exactly the same as the menu next to Target Recipes.

Remember, recipes are engrams that can be crafted, and ingredients are the engrams required to craft a recipe.

The menu next to Replacement Ingredient allows you to optionally replace the targeted ingredients with another ingredient. For example, you could target red and blue gems and have them replaced with green gems.

The Cost Multiplier field allows changing the quantity of the targeted ingredients. Since this is a multiplier, values below 1 will reduce quantities, values above 1 will increase quantities, and 0 will set the quantity to 0.

When using a multiplier, the quantities may not be whole numbers. For example, a stone pick requires 1 stone by default. A 0.5 multiplier will result in a quantity of 0.5 stone. Since there is no such thing as half a stone, the Rounding menu allows you to decide how to handle this.

Multiplied Quantity	Round Naturally	Round Up	Round Down
0.25	0	1	0
0.75	1	1	0
1	1	1	1
1.4	1	2	1
1.5	2	2	1

If your goal is to remove ingredients from recipes, the Remove 0-quantity ingredients option can be turned on. This will, after rounding, remove any ingredient whose quantity is 0. 0 quantities may be desirable, since Ark will treat them as 1 quantity for every blueprint quality.

When clicking OK, for each of the targeted recipes Beacon will make changes to each of the targeted ingredients. This may take a few seconds, so a progress window will appear.

Setup Fibercraft Server

Also in the Tools menu you'll find a Setup Fibercraft Server item. This will open the Adjust Crafting Costs tool pre-filled with the settings needed for a fibercraft server.

To setup an easy craft server, use the same Setup Fibercraft Server tool, but change the Cost Multiplier field to zero. This will make everything cost 1 fiber, no matter the blueprint quality.

The Setup Transferrable Element Tool

The Setup Transferrable Element tool will automatically setup recipes to make it easier to transfer element between servers. The recommended choices will be chosen automatically, but you are welcome to make changes.

The Intermediate Ingredient is the recipe that will be used to make element transferrable. Pick something that players rarely use. Soap and Compass are common choices.

With the Intermediate crafts into 100 shards option, the intermediate will be crafted from 1 Element, and 100 Element Shards will be crafted from 1 intermediate. The default recipe of crafting 1 Element from 100 Element Shards will be unchanged.

With the Intermediate crafts into 1 element option, the intermediate will be crafted from 1 Element, and 1 Element will be crafted from 1 intermediate. This means it will be impossible to convert shards into element.

Tips and Tricks

The Crafting Costs editor supports copy and paste. You can copy ingredients from one recipe to another.
You can also duplicate recipes. Select a finished recipe, press the Duplicate button in the Crafting Costs list, and you'll be presented with the same multiple engram selection window. Select as many engrams as you want, and Beacon will clone the original recipe into all of them.

This editor affects the following Ark config key: ConfigOverrideItemCraftingCosts