While reading this guide you probably asked yourself: “Why should I bother crafting at all if it’s this complicated?”.

Part of that is already answered in the guide – crafted items can be significantly better than stock items. For example, in the first 3 hours of play after the patch introducing the new crafting system the author of this guide produced jumpjets with 50% more energy and plating that regenerates 9hp/s instead of 1hp/s.

There is another reason as well though:
If you craft extra versions of an accord frame item, you can use it in the faction versions of that battleframe. This goes for everything – weapons, abilities, passives, ultimates, armor.

For example, by default the Accord Engineer has a Sticky Grenade Launcher, a heavy turret, passive regeneration for his turrets, an energy field and a supply station.
By default the Bastion Engineer has a Tesla Rifle, 3 small turrets, an energy wall, a sentinel that repairs turrets and does damage, and some other things.

Now, if you craft an extra Sticky Grenade Launcher and heavy turret, you can replace the Bastion’s Tesla Rifle with the Grenade Launcher and the energy wall (or any other ability) with the heavy turret.

Once again, the author currently plays a Bastion with Sticky Grenade Launcher, heavy turret and 3 small turrets, and he is also planning to add the ultimate Anti-Personnel-Turret from the Accord frame.