Article 1: All Core Crafting Basics Article 2: The Essential Core Crafting Strategies You Need to Succeed Article 3: How to Craft Great Core Gear Article 4: Crafting Cores with a Purpose Article 5: Crafting Your First Core Article 6: When to Take Chances While Crafting Article 7: The Most Under Rated Core Gear Article 8: The Best Core Gear You Can Craft Article 9: The Deadliest Cores: Four Horsemen + 1 Bonus Core Recipe
At this point since cores have been released, quite a few people now have them available at high levels but they aren't quite sure how to go about crafting the cores they want. This should be a very helpful guide for those of you trying to understand core crafting.
This article was updated for accuracy and comprehensiveness on 12-7-15.Cores are the most powerful type of Gear in Game of War. Far more than Regular Gear and Relic Gear. Cores are only activated for a limited time, but they can burn targets you never thought were burnable.
Cores are ultra customizable so that you can adapt your attack to any type enemy. They give you the ability to adapt to more situations, more effectively. For example, by having an infantry attack gear set, a ranged attack gear set, and a cavalry attack set, you can rotate between which set is more effective for whoever you are targeting or whoever is targeting you. Since most players will have only a few Core sets, use them only when engaging in a very difficult battle. If a player isn't geared for War when you hit them in Cores, you have a very high chance burning them significantly. The only exception is a potential Monster Gear Trap..
You have to unlock the level of research equivalent to the level of core you are trying to craft. (Note: It's probably best to wait for the debuffs to be available for researching before crafting too much Core Gear.
One of the most difficult parts of Crafting Cores is obtaining the more difficult pieces to complete a recipe. Often times you will have 3 of the 4 required pieces at Legendary quality, but the 4th piece will only be Rare quality.
Finally, as you probably know already, the gear is timed, so you lose your materials that you used to craft the gear but you get to keep your gems.
I will briefly mention the percent chance you have of getting a certain level core when you try to buy them:
Common (500 gold): 33% chance for each level 1-3
Uncommon (1,800 gold): 33% chance for each level 2-4
Rare (4,500 gold): 33 % chance for each level 3-5
Epic (2,500 gold): 16% chance for every level 1-6
As I'm sure you guys already know, other ways to get cores are from daily quests, looting resource tiles, attacking monsters, battles in general, dig sites, the dungeon, and events.
Since this article was originally published, Game of war has made a couple of changes to the Core Crafting layout within the Forge. After clicking on the Forge in your Stronghold and selecting the “Craft Core Equipment” tab, you will come to a screen that looks like this:
Notice that there are two tabs, Cores and Pieces. The “Cores” tab is highlighted, showing that it is active.
Below the Cores tab are six subdivisions of types of cores. Each type represents an equipment slot. The general guidelines for each slot are:
The superimposed helm, sword, and plate armor, represents Core Sets. Clicking on this icon allows you to scroll down through Core Sets. If the Core is highlighted, it means you possess the item in your Forge. If it is grayed out, you do not have it. Here is an example:
The number in the bottom right of the individual Core icon shows how many of that item you have in your Forge.
The changes to the Pieces tab are a little bit more extensive. Here is a screen shot. Again, note that the “Pieces” tab is highlighted, signifying that it is active.
There are now seven subdivisions under the Pieces tab. They are listed below with a brief description.
This sub-tab is a catch all. It gives access to all pieces available in your Forge inventory.
The subsequent tabs subdivide the Pieces based on their characteristics. These guidelines apply to each of the next five sub-tabs: If the specific characteristic appears in the Piece in any amount, it will be included under that tab. This means that any Piece, regardless of Troop type or sub-type, will be included under a specific sub-tab if it possesses that characteristic. It also means that a single Piece might be included under multiple sub-tabs. Pieces under any tab are always listed in alphabetical order. Continuing from left to right, these sub-tabs are as follows:
Crossed Swords: Attack
Pieces with Attack stats, regardless of type, can be found under this sub-tab. This includes any Piece with Troop, Infantry, Ranged, or Cavalry Attack stats.
Red Cross: Health
Defense Symbol: Defense
Troop: Attack, Defense, Health, Debuffs
This sub-tab is slightly different. It characterizes each Piece based on troop sub-type. Any Piece with any characteristic of that troop sub-type will be included. For example, Infantry is the first Troop type listed. All Pieces with Infantry Attack, Defense, or Health can be found here. It will also include all Pieces with Infantry Attack, Defense, or Health Debuff. Pieces will be listed in alphabetical order, irrespective of its characteristics. The order of the sub-types is Infantry, Cavalry, then Ranged. Unfortunately, this can make the Cavalry, and especially the Ranged, Pieces somewhat difficult to get to under this sub-tab.
This sub-tab contains each of the Pieces relevant to creating Core Sets. Again, they are grouped by specific Set. Core Sets are grouped with the most recently released Set at the top and get progressively older (by release date) as you scroll down.
First and foremost, you need to have the cores researched for each level.
Each level of the Core needs to be researched before you can begin combining that level Core. Crafting refinement allows you to create a stronger Core. Each Core and each Piece has a minimum and maximum stat. The refinement allows you to have a higher combined stats of all Pieces combined. In the Crafting tree, you can also Research Gathering Pieces, better Crafting speeds, extra Piece slots (first 3 are given to you), Duration and Luck, and a fourth Gem slot for specific equipment Pieces.
At VIP Level 16 you will be able to combine all your Cores and Pieces. Otherwise, you will have to do it manually.
The reason for combining Pieces only to purple is because you need far more Pieces than Cores in order to complete a Core item. It takes 42 Pieces to make a complete Core Set. You can make 4 Core Sets using purple Pieces or 1 set using all gold. An all gold set requires combining 168 purple Pieces.
Remember it takes 7 (there are seven gear slots) of each piece when making a complete Core Set. If you have 4-6 gold of each Piece and enough purple to combine for the rest, then you should look at making that perfect Core Set. Perfect Core Sets are to be saved until that special target comes along that's heavy in Power.
Pro Tip: For most targets, gold cores and purple pieces are just fine.
Combine all of your cores and pieces. Move all purple and gold cores and pieces that you plan on using to the top before you start combining. To choose the ones you plan on using you need to have an idea of what type of core you want to craft (will discuss more below). Don't have any pieces of low-quality at the top.
Scroll down to where you see Cores (or Pieces) that are unavailable.
Tap a Core (or Piece) that is dark and therefore unavailable. An option to Swap it will appear. Tap the button.
Now you will select the Core you want to Swap Arching Legs with. In this case I will choose the Imperial Battle Skirt.
To finalize the Swap, you will have to pay in Gold unless you have a Swap Core item.
Aching Legs Core has now been placed among your available cores 
Pro Tip: It's best to use alliance funds for obtaining the Core and Piece Swaps.
Core Strategy contributed by Mslegacy and CREED XS
Article 1: All Core Crafting Basics Article 2: The Essential Core Crafting Strategies (Coming 12-10) Article 3: How to Craft Great Core Gear Article 4: Crafting Cores with a Purpose Article 5: Crafting Your First Core Article 6: When to Take Chances While Crafting Article 7: The Most Under Rated Core Gear Article 8: The Best Core Gear You Can Craft Article 9: The Deadliest Cores: Four Horsemen + 1 Bonus Core Recipe
