Progression and crafting: where the parts in a build come from

A new account in a build-craft game can see thousands of parts and make almost none of them. The gap between those two facts is the progression system, and it is described with a vocabulary — reputation, recipes, workbenches, tiers, resources, markets — that rewards being read once carefully.

The shape of a progression system

Most games in this genre run three progress systems at once, and confusing them is the usual source of frustration.

Account level: A single number rising with play. It typically unlocks features rather than items: access to the market, to crafting at all, to particular game modes.
Faction reputation: A separate track for each in-game group. Reputation unlocks recipes and workbenches, and it is the track that actually governs what you can build. Progress with one faction does nothing for another.
Seasonal progress: A battle pass or event track that resets on a schedule. It grants rewards but usually does not unlock permanent capability, which is why it should not be relied on as the route to a part you want to keep using.

A player who has levelled their account but ignored a faction will find the recipe they want still locked, and nothing in the interface explains the difference. The short version: account level opens doors, reputation fills the rooms.

A part's path from resource to build

1. Resources are earned Matches, daily tasks and disassembly produce base resources: metal, plastic, wires, copper, and a scarcer material gated by reputation or by a purchase.
2. A recipe becomes available The recipe is unlocked by reaching a reputation level with the faction that owns it.
3. A workbench is reached Recipes execute at a specific bench. A bench for a higher rarity tier is usually itself gated behind further reputation.
4. Ingredients are gathered Higher-tier recipes consume lower-tier finished parts as well as raw resources, so one item can represent a chain of earlier crafts.
5. The part is produced Often with a trade lock preventing immediate resale, and occasionally with a variable quality result rather than a fixed one.
6. It enters a build, or the market A crafted part can be fitted, listed for sale to other players, or broken down again at a loss.

Rarity tiers and why they multiply

Rarity tiers are colour-coded grades — commonly common, rare, special, epic and legendary, with names varying by game. Tiers do two jobs. They signal capability, and they define the crafting chain: a tier-four item is built from tier-three items, which are built from tier-two items, and so on down.

The consequence is that the cost of a high-tier part grows much faster than its rarity label suggests. If each step consumes three of the item below it, a single fourth-tier part represents twenty-seven first-tier crafts plus the resources for each. This is why experienced players compare the cost of crafting a part against its player market price before starting, rather than after.

Worked example

Craft it or buy it

Suppose a rare weapon can be crafted from four uncommon components plus a quantity of scarce resource, and the same weapon is listed on the player market by other players.

Add the market price of the four components, assuming you would buy rather than craft them.
Add the market value of the scarce resource required, at the going rate.
Subtract nothing for your own time — time is the resource the game is asking you to spend, and pretending it is free defeats the comparison.
Compare that total to the listed price of the finished weapon, remembering the market fee taken from any sale you make later.

Crafting is often the more expensive route for common items and the cheaper route for items whose components you already hold. The answer changes with every patch, because balance changes move both sides of the comparison at once.

Resource types

The resource categories that appear in most build-craft games, and how each is usually obtained. Names differ between titles.
Category	Usual source	Typical constraint
Common materials	Match rewards, disassembly of unwanted parts	Storage caps rather than scarcity
Uncommon materials	Daily tasks, raid or co-operative modes	Daily or weekly earning limits
Scarce materials	Limited modes, events, or purchase	Hard weekly caps; the real bottleneck
Component items	Crafted at a lower-tier workbench, or bought	Reputation gate on the recipe
Soft currency	Match performance and tasks	Spendable on market purchases and fees
Premium currency	Purchase with money	Covered on monetisation vocabulary

Player markets

An in-game market lets players buy and sell parts to each other at prices they set, with the game taking a percentage. That has three consequences worth understanding before using one.

Prices move. A balance patch that improves a weapon raises its price within hours, and a patch that weakens one collapses it. Treating a part as a store of value is a trading decision, not a gameplay one.

Fees are charged on the sale, not the listing, and they are the reason a part bought and immediately resold loses money. Trade locks exist precisely to prevent rapid turnover, and they are also a defence against stolen accounts being emptied quickly.

Buying with premium currency changes the arithmetic entirely, because the relationship between money and market price is set by the currency bundles rather than by the market. That is a monetisation question rather than a crafting one.

What to watch out for

Third-party sellers of accounts, currency or parts. These trades sit outside the game's terms, the seller has no obligation to you, and a recovered account can be reclaimed by its original owner. Fraudulent offers of this kind can be reported to the National Anti-Scam Centre through Scamwatch.
“Free resource” sites asking for your account credentials. No legitimate generator exists. The Australian Cyber Security Centre's guidance on protecting accounts is at cyber.gov.au.
Disassembling a part you may want again. Breaking down returns a fraction of the inputs, and re-crafting pays the full cost a second time.
Chasing a seasonal item as though it were permanent progress. Seasonal tracks expire; reputation does not.
Spending scarce resource early. The weekly cap on scarce materials is the true speed limit on progression, and an early misspend costs weeks rather than hours.

Before you commit resources to a craft

Confirm the recipe is the current one — recipes change in patches, and community guides lag behind.
Check the finished part's market price and compare it with the cost of the inputs.
Check whether the output carries a trade lock, if you intended to sell it.
Check whether the part suits the energy budget and tonnage of the build you have, not the build you plan.
Check the power score the part adds, and whether it moves you into a different bracket.
Check that the scarce resource spent is not the one gating something you want more.

None of this makes crafting a solved problem. It makes the cost visible before it is paid, which is the most a reference page can usefully do. The terms used here all have entries in the glossary, and the monetary side of the same system is covered in monetisation vocabulary.