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Diablo 3 Offical Site: CraftingThe artisans amongst the world of Sanctuary are where you'll be doing your crafting. It's a system that moves away from the Horadric Cube methods of old, yet doesn't extend as distantly as current and contemporary crafting systems like we have in current MMOs. The system is designed to establish a social precedent like those games, but without the paired time-sink or skill allocation.
How it works is that you first need to gain the loyalty of a specific crafter so you can begin using them to craft items and trinkets. The types of artisans noted thus far are:
- The Blacksmith: crafts, repairs, sells and sockets armor and weapons
- The Mystic: creates potions, scrolls, and magical weapons (wands and staffs), as well as spell runes and charms. The Mystic can also enchant weapons and armor created by the Black Smith.
- The Jewler: creates and combines gems. Can also remove gems from items without damaging or destroying any of the components in question.
Here are some Q&As from the Crafting presskit that further illustrate the elements of the new system:
quote Blizzard
Q: What do the artisans offer?
A: Skilling up your artisans will unlock unique recipes, granting your character access to benefits that may not be found anywhere else in the world. The blacksmith crafts weapons and armor, and can add sockets to some items. The mystic creates scrolls, potions, magical weapons, spell runes, and charms, and can also enchant items. The jeweler crafts gems , amulets, and rings. The jeweler can also remove gems from socketed items and can combine gems to improve their quality.
Q: How do I find the artisans?
A: Finding the artisans will be part of the main quest. Each artisan has been fleshed out to include their own story and quest line.
Q: How do I use the artisans?
A: You'll collect loot as a reward for slaughtering the forces of the Burning Hells. Unwanted items can be salvaged in your inventory, converting these goods into raw crafting materials -- higher-level items are salvaged into higher-level materials. You'll then take those raw materials and hand them over to the artisans, putting them to work crafting or enchanting for you. Upon returning to the caravan after a lengthy foray, you may also find that the artisans have been hard at work plying their trade for your benefit.
Q: How do I salvage my items?
A: Players will find an item while progressing through the main quest that will allow them to convert unwanted gear into crafting materials from the inventory. This item will not take up any inventory space. This should be a more satisfying option for offloading unwanted loot than the alternative -- dropping things on the ground or making frequent trips to a vendor.
Q: Why are you including crafting professions in an action game?
A: Professions add depth to the item collection gameplay that drives the action of Diablo III. We want to provide players with an alternative way to acquire gear, potions, and other randomly found items. We also want to provide additional forms of customization for players -- adding jewels, enchants, or sockets to existing gear allows players to further tailor their characters. Many rare crafting recipes and materials are only found as world drops, enhancing the item acquisition process by increasing the diversity of items dropped by monsters.
This brings into play the concept of Runes and Gems from the old game, which I know are the source of a lot of unanswered questions:
Runes no longer are socketed into items. Instead, each character skill has a socket for runes, and the type of rune socketed into the skill will make modifications to this skill. I believe we've discussed this before, so I'll dig up the thread and post the rest of the relevant information there. (teaser: with the skill trees, numbers and types of runes, there will be over 700 differently functioning and designed skills to use in the game.)
Gems are going to be a big point of contention. As it stands, the number of gem tiers has escalated from five (chipped, flawed, standard, flawless and perfect) to
fourteen. Furthmore, only the first 5 tiers are dropped in-game, meaning the remaining 9 tiers need to be crafted or attained some other way. Gems still combine in groups of 3, so to craft one level 14 gem, you're going to need roughly 19,000 level five gems of the same type to craft ONE level 14 gem. It's causing a bit of an uproar, however, Mike Bashiok of Blizzard has regarded the fuss as follows:
quote Bashiok
Yeah, that's about right. I mean keep in mind none of this has been proven through actual testing but the current design is that yeah, it's going to take a lot of lower level gems to reach the very highest high end.
The gem-to-gem upgrade intent is not to have these huge gaps where you feel like you're lame unless you have level 14 gems in every slot, but as a long term goal for the hardcore min/maxers and PvPers who are going to be playing for a long time and be able to work toward those goals. It's something you can put a little time into just by upgrading the gems you pick up during normal play, so you're constantly able to keep working toward the goal of crating a level 14 gem.
Also the trading game and millions of people playing for months is going to make them a lot more attainable than they may seem when throwing out numbers like 19,000.
It's possible it may feel crappy or we need to add something to help jump gaps, or, who knows. It's all very unproven at the moment, but we think provides a nice long term goal anyone can work toward just by killing monsters and picking up gems.
And as a final a side note, it has been confirmed that armor dyes will exist in the game, though specifics have not been revealed.
Still thats a silly amount of gems. 
