Excellent question! This is something we will definitely be heavily testing for feel, but here some of the ways we imagine you can grow adept at crafting.
“Permanent” forms of improvement / progression
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Improving your overall profession skill. If you’ve maxed out your blacksmithing skill for instance, you will craft everything better than if you are only halfway leveled through your profession. (Leveling / skilling up in your profession will mechanically work the same as it always has).
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Getting better gear for your profession - through higher skill and/or other profession stats on the gear.
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Specialization in your profession - This is the largest source of improvement. The more you specialize in ways that help a given recipe, the larger bonus skill you will get towards that recipe, and thus the higher quality you will be able to make it at. (There is a lot to this system that we’ll discuss later!) There are lots of ways to earn specialization points, and doing so will be necessary to excel in your profession. Some of these sources can only be done once, while others will be repeatable.
- Some one-time sources for specialization points are likely to be: making recipes for the first time, certain discoveries in the world (an old book on a bookshelf about alchemy, an old buried tablet, a hermit scribe in a cave, etc.), special quests, completing certain profession achievements such as crafting your first max quality item
- Some repeatable sources for specialization points are likely to be: helping various factions and NPC’s in the world (through quests), finding treasures out in the world, fulfilling crafting orders for others.
Ways to become more adept and have a better outcome each time you craft
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Using higher quality reagents in your recipe.
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Using a new type of consumable reagent that we are calling Finishing Reagents. These reagents give you bonuses while crafting the recipe, and some of them can directly improve your skill, and thus quality, when used. An example might be a blacksmith using a special quenching oil, or a jewelcrafter using a special polishing cloth while cutting gems.
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Some crafting stats can improve the resulting quality crafted. One of these is Inspiration. The more inspiration you have, the better chance to be Inspired while crafting, gaining some bonus skill to be applied to the outcome. Basically a crafting “crit”. While we want the system to be largely about long term progression and opt in bonuses, inspiration provides a form of opt-in randomness. If you choose to specialize or gear towards Inspiration, you may be able to craft something at a higher quality than your current level of progression would otherwise allow (when you become inspired). The idea is this adds some additional excitement to the crafting process through variable outcomes, but that it is never required to be able to craft things at the highest level of quality.
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Optional reagents - Using most optional reagents will actually increase the difficulty of the recipe, and thus require a higher skill to craft it at a high quality. Conversely, if you choose to use an optional reagent that, for instance, lowers the item level of the item you are crafting, it will actually lower the difficulty of the recipe and make it easier to craft at a high quality.
Hopefully that answers your question!