Reagents are a huge range of things; most often they are plants that contain some magical essence, but almost as frequently they are harvested from various magically inclined monsters. The exact source of a reagent usually does not matter beyond defining its type, as the part of the reagent used is the fragment of magic contained within that is distilled out.

There are many different ways to make a potion. Consequently, the materials are sorted into categories. These categories include curative, reactive, and poisonous. These each come in the standard material rarities: common, uncommon, rare, very rare, and legendary.

Reagents can't be salvaged once they have been combined into another form (such as potions, essences, or ink).

Reagants can be assumed to weigh 0.2 pounds each.

All curative, reactive, and poisonous ingredients are interchangeable. This is intentional to drastically simplify the crafting process and tracking thereof. Individual names are included only to deepen the immersion of the finding and buying ingredients, and can be treated as interchangeable by their label if preferred.

While ink has many uses, crafting is mostly concerned with magical ink which has the power to hold the arcane words of scrolls. This is synthesized by alchemists from the magical properties of reagents, as it is concerned with extracting their magical properties, the exact nature of the reagents used do not effect the final ink beyond its potency.

Magical ink is not typically found or harvested on its own, though it may be found as loot, and in some instances a GM could rule that some blood collected from a fiend, celestial, or dragon could be counted as such. It is generally created from reagents or purchased from alchemists that create it from reagents.

Magical ink can't be salvaged once they have been combined into another form.

Magical ink can be assumed to weigh 0.1 pounds each.

While reagents are substances that contain a glimmer of magical power that can be harnessed through refinement, essences are more purified forms of magical power. These come in three types: Arcane, Divine, and Primal, as well as in the five normal rarities (common, uncommon, rare, very rare, and legendary). These essences are the pure stuff of magic that makes things work.

You can get these by rendering down magical reagents, salvaging magic items, harvesting them from magical monsters, or through the hard work of spell casters. Or you can find them as loot from people that have already done one of those harder steps. The rules for rendering them down from materials are contained within each branch of crafting, while the rules for creating them yourself are under Enchanting, as it is their domain and skill set needed to do so.

While all branches occasionally use essences when extra magical power is needed, they are the primary material of Enchanters, and their pricing can be found in that section.

Essences can be found as loot during the course of your adventures, but can also be harvested (from monsters), salvaged (from magical equipment), synthesized (from reagents), or created from the raw power of a spell caster, though the method is long and arduous.

Essences are flexible in their exact nature. There are many paths to each desired outcome, and this flexibility is represented in Essences. While the traditional way to make a belt of hill giant strength may call for a hill giant heart as its essence, an enchanter may substitute a dragon heart as their primal essences to make a belt of dragon strength that just has the same statistical effect.

Essences can be assumed to weigh 1 pound each.

You also may be able to salvage magical essence from unwanted or broken magical items, though such a reclamation process can be difficult, and rarely results in more than a fraction of the essence infused into the original item. An item returns one essence equal to its rarity when harvested. The process takes 2 hours to complete, and doesn't work if the item is currently attuned to any creature. An essence can only be salvaged from permanent magic items; a permanent magic item is one that recharges or doesn't have a limitation on its charges or uses. A magic item with charges or uses can only be salvaged while it is at full charges or uses.

The item becomes nonmagical after the essence is salvaged from it. If it required magic to function or exist, it is destroyed.

In addition to harvesting essences from magical monsters fully intact, a more approachable and incremental way is to combine several reagents to get an essence. You have to combine several reagents to get an essence. You have to combine three reagents of the same rarity to gain one essence of that rarity. You can combine reagents in the following ways:

This process takes 4 hours, and requires alchemist's supplies and a heat source.

Another potential source of an Essence is being created by a spellcaster. This process is long and arduous, and typically only suited to downtime. A creature with the spell casting feature can create 1 essence during 1 workweek (5 days, 8 hours per day); this process can't be completed faster and for the duration they are considered to have spent all of their spell slots.

At 1st level or higher a caster can make a common essence in this way; a caster 5th level or higher can make an uncommon essence this way; a caster at 11th level can make a rare essence in this way, and a caster at 17th level or higher can make a very rare essence this way. Legendary essences require special rituals, more casters, and take far longer; they are exceedingly hard to make.

The type of essence produced depends on the source of the spell casting levels as per the table below:

Special Cases Explained:

• Sorcerers produce a type based on their subclass: Dragon ro Wild makes Primal, Divine Soul makes Divine, and Shadow makes Arcane.
• Warlocks likewise produce a type based on their subclass; Archfey makes Primal, Celestial makes Divine, and all others make Arcana.
• A half or third-caster would generate essences at 1/2 or 1/3 their character level, respectively.

Ingots are chunks of metal that can be used to craft things. They are assumed to be relatively pure and weigh 2 pounds each. The default ingot listed in all the crafting tables is an ingot of Steel. These cost 2 gp per ingot. There are cheaper metals, such as Iron; pure Iron can't be used to craft weapons and armor, but can be used for other items, resulting in a cheaper item. On the other end of the spectrum, more advanced metals such as Mithril and Adamantine can be used conferring special properties, but being far more difficult to work with and costing more.

Ingots can be assumed to weigh 2 pounds each.

Metal items can be converted back into ingots quite efficiently, but require a forge to do so. With a forge and 2 hours per item, a metal item can be rendered down into its component ingots. Advanced metals may require special tools to smelt.

Creating ingots from ore is largely out of scope for most adventurers, but you can create ingots from ore with a suitable facility. For more defails see the Components and Materials table under Blacksmithing.

Hides, scales, and carapaces all tend to be harvested from monsters. Leather is a product of hides that can be processed from what is harvested from the monster.

The GM determines if a monster provides hide, scale, or carapace. Hides do not come in different sizes, rather larger creatures simply provide more hides, and monsters that are not large enough to produce one hide provide only hide scraps.

Scales are likewise abstracted; each increment is simply an arbitrary unit of scales that the unit of scales covers. Scales can be much larger or smaller from different-sized creatures.

The system does not attempt to say how many scales a creature provides or how many literal scales make up scalemail, but rather provides a number that is then consistently used.

Creatures are harvested using a Survival check with its DC listed below. If the DC check is failed, the harvest does not fail entirely, but instead they get 1d4 hide scraps in place of any hides, carapaces of one size smaller, and half as many scales.

The term 'parts' is used to refer to gears, wires, springs, windy bits, screws, nails, and doodads. Parts can either be found or salvaged or forged from metal scraps (or even straight from ingots by a Blacksmith for those that really want to be industrial about it.) The exact nature of each item making up this collection is left abstracted.

In addition, metal scraps are collections of salvaged material that generally fall into the category of things 'too small to track' which can then be used for the creations of tinkerers. In addition to all of this, occasionally tinkers will use ingots … particularly ones of tin (which is their namesake, after all.)

Like other crafting branches, there are also named components for more iconic pieces of gear - the stock of a crossbow, for example, or other items. The cost for these items can be found on the common component table, and are generally minor.

Lastly, Tinkerers use essence when constructing things that push beyond the mundane principles of plausibility, crafting magical properties into their inventions.

In almost all cases, named components (such as a “wooden stock” for a crossbow) can be simply abstracted out as a minor cost, but as always, the level of abstraction is up to the GM.

The other main way to acquire parts is to salvage them. What can be salvaged is determined by the GM, but in general common items provide parts, uncommon or expensive items may provide fancy parts, and esoteric parts are only found from esoteric sources at your GM's discretion. Tools, vehicles, and complex items generally return 1d4 metal scraps and 1d4 parts for a Small or smaller item, 2d6 metal scraps for a Medium-sized item, 3d8 metal scraps for a Large-sized item, and more for larger items, though they may return less of rare types of parts.

Commonly available in its lowest quality (firewood), higher quality woods are often found in rather exotic locations. Wooden branches (including wood scraps) are assumed to be of a useful wood that can be worked, while firewood covers everything else, with more useful woods falling into categories such as 'quality branches' or rarer options. Wood scraps are assumed to be scraps of common branch quality wood, and consequently can't be salvaged from forewood.

Wooden branches can be assumed to weigh 2 pounds each.

For the most part, wood can't easily be salvaged. Wood carving is not necessarily a reversible process, and wood can't be smelted down.

You can render wooden crafted product into wood scraps equal to 4 x the number of branches used to create it.

A quality branch refers to one that can be made into more precious objects, particularly bows. It is nonmagical in nature, but typically yew when dealing with bows, although ash, mulberry, elm, oak, hickory, hazel, and maple can be used under broader definitions.