Shroud of Souls Console Primer: Masterwork Professions and Lockbox

On the release day of “Shroud of Souls” on consoles, we will be talking about the feature that might be of most interest to endgame players: Masterwork Professions. We’ve already previewed Loadouts, Story, Queue and Item Levels as well as the Stronghold changes. So click through if you’re interested in those areas.

New Recipes

The mid-module brings a complete new line of Masterwork recipes. They can be bought from the Artisan for 20 Tier 2 resources (Gold Nuggets for Jewelcrafting for example) if you already own the Masterwork II Recipes for the given profession. So it’s a system that builds on the old one, new players have to go through the full upgrade process.

The exclusive group that will make it to the top will find intriguing rewards. Masterwork features item level 480 gear, artifact gear, new Stronghold weapon sets and exclusive interior for the Guild Hall. You can look up all the items in our database and use our Character Simulator to plan with the new gear. We just finished adding everything in time for the console release.

Resource Acquisition

The acquisition of resources was slightly changed for Masterwork v2. The Explorer’s Charts are back, this time in the three Storm Kings Thunder areas, but you’ll also need stuff from the new temporary merchants in Strongholds and from running endgame PVE dungeons. Especially Hati in Fangbreaker Island developed into a farming spot to get Manticore Manes that are a valuable sell on the Auction House on PC.

Keeping all five temporary structures up in the Stronghold is an alliance wide effort, but can be done as the costs are not really that high. So with proper planning, Masterwork players should be able to find what they need at any time. If your alliance struggles to keep the merchants up permanently, you should focus on the Double Guild Mark events so members can buy the stuff after trading in their GM.

You still need resources from multiple profession for recipes by the way. So players either do it all by themselves or need a reliable network to trade with. You should also look up our Cheat Sheet linked below to calculate the resources you need to a given item.

Masterwork v1

With new recipes added, the acquisition of the old ones gets slightly easier. The temporary structures in Strongholds allow to bypass the grueling 20% chance during the update process by investing Guild Marks and buying the resources directly. This does not work all the way up to the last tier of resources, but should save you significant time and frustration nonetheless. For Jewelcrafting for example the required Gold Ore shrinks from 1,266 to 150.

Old Explorer’s Charts get reduced to 1,500 Guild Marks as well, making it easier to amass the basic resources. While this should be helpful, it doesn’t actually make acquiring Masterwork v1 easy. The devs themselves stated they still want the system to be hard to achieve. So if you were hoping to at least get the first recipes as casual, sorry. It’s still a massive task and requires a well organized endgame guild or a huge amount of AD.

Lockbox of the Nine

The lockbox that is coming with “Shroud of Souls” is the Lockbox of the Nine. We have all sorts of articles up that describe and rate the items, as well as giving a decent idea about the drops rates. Just click through and have fun with the data!


That’s our primer for the “Shroud of Souls” update that hits consoles today. We hope you feel properly prepared now! Make sure to post any further questions or remarks in the comments below or visit the corresponding thread on our message board.

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