Artisan

The Artisans are special kinds of merchant NPCs, introduced in Diablo III. They provide quest information, as well as numerous essential services such as crafting, item repairs, socketing and unsocketing, item enchanting, and much more.

There are three Artisans, the Jeweler, Blacksmith, and Mystic, all of whom travel with the Caravan, and all of whom are available to the player in each act of the game. Artisans were introduced in August 2010, and are succinctly explained in the Artisan Video, narrated by Jay Wilson.

Overview

Concept art of the Artisan Blacksmith.

Artisans are basically vendors, they provide the same function other vendors provide but with unique abilities and a possibility to be upgraded over time which will have a visual effect on the Artisan and his shop, check the gallery at the bottom of the page to see the transition.

They can Buy and Sell Equipment, however, there are different types of Artisans, and each one has its own unique set of abilities. All Artisans can Craft items for the player, provided they provide supplies and gold. Crafted items are standard, some are magic and some are rare magic items, But every crafted item has 1 or more random properties attached to it, that are finalized upon being crafted. Artisans will have recipes for crafting, but Unique recipes can be found in Sanctuary, from monsters and other sources.

Artisans are found throughout Sanctuary and are inaccessible to the player until he earns their trust by completing a quest or some other currently unknown way. Only then will an Artisan become accessible. After an Artisan is fully trained, he can be specialized in different areas of Expertise. For example if you love to use Axes, you can specialize the Blacksmith Artisan into Axes, meaning they will have more Axes for Selling and Crafting. The player's commitment to a specialization on an Artisan is not permanent, every specialization requires its own time and crafting material required and do not cancel each other out.

Types of Artisans

There are three Artisans in Diablo III. Each of these NPCs will be encountered during the course of the gameplay, and once their quest is completed they will join up with the Caravan and travel with the player for the rest of the game.

Blacksmith

• Abilities: Shop, Craft, Training
• Special Abilities: Creating Sockets in Armor and Shields (Only), Repairing
• Speciality: Weapons, Armor

Mystic

• Abilities: Shop, Craft, Training
• Special Abilities: Enchanting Items, Identifying Items
• Speciality: Magic Equipment, Runes/Charms/Potions/Scrolls

Jeweler

• Abilities: Shop, Craft, Training
• Special Abilities: Un-socketing Items, Gem Splicing (Combining Gems to improve quality)
• Speciality: Jewelery, Gems

Training

Three levels of the Blacksmith's wagon.

Artisans can be trained to higher levels, gaining a new title and improved wagon appearance each time. The maximum level is five (until the expansion?), and with each level the artisans learn new recipes to craft.

Training is not free; it costs increasing amounts of gold and materials, but players will always want to train up their Artisans, since this enables them to create higher level items from better recipes.

Specialization

In addition to being trained up, Artisans can be specialized in creating various item types. Jay Wilson spoke on this from Gamescom, in August 2010.[1]

Jay Wilson: After you’ve max leveled your Artisan, you can specialize them in areas. They’re not exclusive, if you want to just make axes, you don't omit the ability to make swords or armor. Each path is its own time and resource commitment. And you can specialize in item types that you like the best.

Another comment on the same issue: [2]

Moreover, you can specialize the three Artisans. The Blacksmith, for instance, can specialize in the crafting of axes. Then you will mostly see axes lying at his stall. Those specializations will not exclude other ways, however. If you are completely specialized in the crafting of axes, you can still try to make the Artisan learn another specialization, by gathering the right recipes and resources.

How specialization will work for the Mystic and Jeweler isn't yet known; perhaps the jeweler will know hundreds of recipes for rings and amulets, but will show more recipes for jewelry with good bonuses for melee combat, or spell-casting, or whatever your character desires?

Development

Artisans were revealed during GamesCom 2010, in Germany. No information has yet been released about their evolution during the game's earlier development.

Media

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  A Blacksmith has set up shop in this camp.

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  The Blacksmith started making a bit of coin.

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  THE LOOT! THE WONDERFUL, WONDERFUL LOOT!