Weapons Crafting

Weapons crafting is a vital system in Lagrange Point, and near as I could find, heretofore basically undocumented in English. The player needs progressively stronger weapons to advance through the game, but the strongest available for sale are only Rank 2. The rules aren't too difficult to explain, but they can lead to some complicated recipes as they compound rank upon rank. If you want a quick tl;dr, just remember that combining two weapons of the same rank yields a weapon of the next higher rank. That's woefully incomplete, but it will allow you to progress.

Part 0: Understanding How Weapons Relate

First, to better understand the weapons, let's lay them all out by their relevant properties: damage type, targeting, and rank.

Now, we can see that the weapons all fit a tidy pattern: each combination of those three properties contains exactly one weapon. And, with the exception of Rank 6, the inverse is also true: each weapon possesses a unique combination of properties.

To address the table's footnotes real quick:

Just as the interplay of these properties is indicative of the weapon itself, so too does it govern the results when combined. Three rules determine the outcome, one for each property. Let's begin with the simplest.

Part I: Targeting

This one can be described with an equation: $$W_{new}=W_1\oplus ︎W_2$$ If you're not familiar with Boolean notation, that's an XOR. If that doesn't mean anything to you either, I've drawn a Punnett square to be absolutely clear.

In plain English, what I mean by that is, if the two weapons you're combining have the same targeting, the product will have All; if they have different targeting, the product will have One. Easy as that.

Part II: Rank

The most important aspect of this rule, I summarized back at the top of the page: combine two weapons of the same rank, and you'll get a weapon of one rank higher.

What happens when you combine two weapons of different rank? That's not something you're likely to do very much, but generally, it will yield a weapon somewhere between the two; at best, it'll be the same rank as the higher of the two components. For the specifics, see the table here.

What happens when you combine two weapons of max rank? You get a Rank 1 weapon back. I don't know which Rank 1 weapons can be acquired in this way, but it's an awfully wasteful way to go about it. If you really want to try it, maybe save right beforehand.

Part III: Damage Type

This one is actually complicated. The damage types of the component weapons determine the damage type of the product. If there's any logic to the interrelation, it's lost on me. Just refer to the table.

Appendix: Tips

At low levels, this process remains pretty easy—you could even do it in your head if you wanted to. But if you want a Rank 6 weapon, that means you need to craft two Rank 5s, which in turn means four Rank 4s, which means you first need eight Rank 3s...it becomes a lot to manage. So while you plan your crafting out, have a pen & paper handy, and keep a couple things in mind:

• Try to use weapons you already have as ingredients. If you picked up an R3 weapon you don't need from a chest, that's the equivalent of four base R1s. If you're going to be replacing a character's weapon, see if you can use their old one in making the new one. You won't always be able to, but as flexible as the recipes are, you often can, and every time you do, that's time, money, and inventory space saved.
• Buy the highest-rank ingredients available to you. When it's available in a shop, that's always the cheaper option—the fee for crafting is the same as the cost to purchase, except you already had to spend money on the components, too. This does mean more walking around, but between saving money and reducing inventory space required, you might find the extra time spent worthwhile, especially if you've already gotten time-saving travel item the HydroWing.