Rise of the Tomb Raider expands crafting skills

Many moons ago myself and many, many others devoted far too much time to skinning the digital carcasses of Azeroth, leveling up crafting skillsets and trading stacks of the same digital pelts on a digital auction house for digital gold. Crafting was a weird but enjoyable pastime within the context of World of Warcraft. It was something you could do without much thought but still had a tangible function and benefit.  However, raid schedules, real life and the fact I was burnt out helped to sink my enjoyment of the game on the whole and I’ve been off the Warcrack for years now.

That said, I still sometimes get smacked with the urge to just grind and harvest, so the reveal that the new Rise of the Tomb raider would be expanding the crafting element of the game to allow for advanced gear upgrades and ammunition is a welcome one.

“What we've tried to do is make it so that the systems reflect the survival,” explains game director Brian Horton in this month's OXM. “So, resources you acquire from animals now have a direct correlation with things you can craft. The antlers or pelt from a deer – each of those are a resource, all of which have different recipes that will upgrade weapons and help craft ammunition. We've just built a more robust system to allow for the survival stuff to have relevance".

It’s easy to be impressed with how the 2013 reboot of Tomb Raider was handled, offering a nuanced Lara who became realistically brutal within her circumstances and it’ll be interesting to see how the follow-up will expand that precedent. So much of the previous game did credit to itself by including realistic reactions and provided a non-surface reasoning for why everything was happening that the previous method of collecting drops felt a little out of place with its survivor theme.

Rise of the Tomb Raider releases for Xbox One and 360 on November 10th and PC and PlayStation 4 in 2016.