New Crafting Costs

[Diyon]

Something I keep hearing about the new crafting is that it is very time/material costly. While this is true, I would like to put out a clarification on this for people in general that may not realize it:

Crafting a greensteel weapon requires less time and material value than to craft a high end crafted weapon.

Difference: The cost for the green steel is exactly the same everytime. Once you've "paid" the cost to get the crafting lvls, making something after that costs relatively very little.

For instance, Player A and B decide they want a nice weapon. Player A spends 10X time and 10Y material to make a green steel weapon. Player B spends 30X time and 30Y material to make their high end crafted weapon by getting all those crafting levels. (Note these are arbitrary numbers used here) Player A obviously spends less on their weapon.

However, lets say they want to make a second weapon now. Player A spends another 10X time and 10Y material. Player B only has to spend, say, .5X and 1Y material to make a second weapon (its going to be a fraction compared to getting those crafting levels to begin with. And now for efficiency, Player B has started to catch up on cost efficiency.

It may take a few items, but for every additional item Player B makes, the better his cost efficiency is going to be. In the long run, their overall costs are going to be rather low comparatively.

I realize many may already realize this, and obviously, greensteel and other things are not exclusive to doing this and are often preferable depending on circumstances. But I just wanted to remind those that say crafting is too costly that it is only costly once. After that, its cheap.

[Matuse]

It's very very very very costly, however. At least an order of magnitude more expensive than the ingredients to make a dual shard tier3 greensteel item.

To max out your crafting under the current cap will realistically take 25-30,000 decons. Assuming those are level 12+ items, which will vendor for about 1k platinum apiece (that's actually lowballing it substantially, particularly if you have a character with decent haggle)...

That's 25 million platinum worth of decons. Minimum. Honestly, 55-60 million platinum would be a more realistic figure.

At current prices on Cannith, that's 50 large devil scales (if we go by the 25 figure).

That's not even factoring in the TIME spent running thousands of quests to acquire those decons in the first place.

On the old EQTraders forum, there was a saying:

Question: How do you make a small fortune with crafting?
Answer: Start with a large fortune.

That goes quadruple for DDO's system.

[Ebuddy]

I've dabbled in the new crafting system... worse time-sink grind in this game so far. I'd rather run Shroud over and over again (which can have some measure of variability from time to time) to make useful GS items and use the leftover loot to twink (or buy) my lowbies as they level.

This is one update to DDA that I won't partake in....

[PauLDaBriggs]

I've dabbled in the new crafting system... worse time-sink grind in this game so far. I'd rather run Shroud over and over again (which can have some measure of variability from time to time) to make useful GS items and use the leftover loot to twink (or buy) my lowbies as they level.

This is one update to DDA that I won't partake in....

Yeah, I have to agree. I started crafting, all excited by the idea, but.. just.. no. DDO started out as a very grindy game, with having to repeat adventures repeatedly just to level. It became even more grindy with the raid loot system - so much so that running the Shroud 20+ times is considered normal. With TRs, DDO actually managed to become an *endlessly* grindy game. Why add yet another ridiculous grind to the game?

[Wizard_Zero]

Yeah, I have to agree. I started crafting, all excited by the idea, but.. just.. no. DDO started out as a very grindy game, with having to repeat adventures repeatedly just to level. It became even more grindy with the raid loot system - so much so that running the Shroud 20+ times is considered normal. With TRs, DDO actually managed to become an *endlessly* grindy game. Why add yet another ridiculous grind to the game?

Even as "grindy" as this crafting system is, other MMOs are a TRILLION times worse. Anyone that played WoW (A true never ending grind) or other MMOs knows what I'm talking about. The grind for better gear is what keeps most MMO players playing, as much as most people hate it, it's an addiction (Most people don't know they are addicted either). People always want more and better.

Within a month, you can get to level 40 in all your schools just playing the game normally, meaning running quests as you normally do and then deconstructing all the loot you get.

At the end of the day, the "grind" is your choice. No one is making you do quest over and over, or craft. You can just meet new people and enjoy the quests or whatever. An MMO is what you make of it.

[Diyon]

It's very very very very costly, however. At least an order of magnitude more expensive than the ingredients to make a dual shard tier3 greensteel item.

To max out your crafting under the current cap will realistically take 25-30,000 decons. Assuming those are level 12+ items, which will vendor for about 1k platinum apiece (that's actually lowballing it substantially, particularly if you have a character with decent haggle)...

That's 25 million platinum worth of decons. Minimum. Honestly, 55-60 million platinum would be a more realistic figure.

At current prices on Cannith, that's 50 large devil scales (if we go by the 25 figure).

That's not even factoring in the TIME spent running thousands of quests to acquire those decons in the first place.

On the old EQTraders forum, there was a saying:

Question: How do you make a small fortune with crafting?
Answer: Start with a large fortune.

That goes quadruple for DDO's system.

I think you've overestimated the number of decons there. I've decon'd about 1000 or so items and I'm almost at 40 in one, mid-high 30s in the other two. Also the the time spent running quests? What else were you doing in this game? NOT running quests? lol.

And even going at 50 large devils scales, lets look at that. That's maybe lets say 5-7 full GS items. Once I've paid for those crafting levels I can literally make hundreds of items at very little additional cost.

[Tanks]

It is a time-sink, to some degree. No argument there.

BUT...

I just came back to the game after a year off and have about 5 lvl16-19 toons with hardly any greensteel Tier 3 items/weapons. The time it would take to craft all those Lit2/Min2 weapons/items (25 larges a pop) would be disheartening, to say the least. However, I've spent a bit of time in the orchard with my Sorc15 (now lvl16 from Orchard slayer xp) gathering items to disenchant while gathering taps along the way has yielded me the materials and capital to have spent about 600k pp out of pocket (plus the gear I disenchanted) so that I now have +4 Silver Holy of Lawful Outsider Bane weapons on all 5 toons (along with +4 Cold Iron Holy of Chaotic Outsider Bane, etc), taking quite a bit of gimp out of my old toons and allowing me to use the mats I get in the Shroud to create Tier 3 items rather than weapons. And I can now create nice stuff to twink any toon I choose to TR very inexpensively. It took me less than a week of steady casual play to accomplish this.

The Cannith crafting system has been a really good thing for me and has made my return to DDO much more enjoyable by enabling my melee toons to have semi-viable dps while I begin the journey toward Epic/end-game gear. :)

[Matuse]

I think you've overestimated the number of decons there. I've decon'd about 1000 or so items and I'm almost at 40 in one, mid-high 30s in the other two.

There exists screenshots of people who have hit the current cap of 75. One of them is 75 in one crafting category and the low 40s in the other two. He has over 16k decons (and shards made..which also means that he bought a lot of essences). The XP curve goes up rapidly post 40.


Also the the time spent running quests? What else were you doing in this game? NOT running quests? lol.

I wasn't stockpiling 8,000 drops for future crafting.

[MagicalDad]

Nah, that is typically indicative of someone using the low-end grind method, where you take several hundred lesser essences and continuously regrind them (Lesser Essence + DragonShard -> Shard -> Lesser and (some) Greater + 1XP, repeat). It gets you HUGE decon/shard counts, but consumes very little material, as the loss from each cycle is about 6-8%.

I am not sure about level 75, but you can get to level 50 w/ less than 1000 shards/decons, which is only about 1-2 mpp, and can still craft a +4 Holy Silver <whatever> of EOB - for roughly the price of a GS blank.


There exists screenshots of people who have hit the current cap of 75. One of them is 75 in one crafting category and the low 40s in the other two. He has over 16k decons (and shards made..which also means that he bought a lot of essences). The XP curve goes up rapidly post 40.



I wasn't stockpiling 8,000 drops for future crafting.

[Chette]

It's very very very very costly, however. At least an order of magnitude more expensive than the ingredients to make a dual shard tier3 greensteel item.

To max out your crafting under the current cap will realistically take 25-30,000 decons. Assuming those are level 12+ items, which will vendor for about 1k platinum apiece (that's actually lowballing it substantially, particularly if you have a character with decent haggle)...

That's 25 million platinum worth of decons. Minimum. Honestly, 55-60 million platinum would be a more realistic figure.

At current prices on Cannith, that's 50 large devil scales (if we go by the 25 figure).

That's not even factoring in the TIME spent running thousands of quests to acquire those decons in the first place.

On the old EQTraders forum, there was a saying:

Question: How do you make a small fortune with crafting?
Answer: Start with a large fortune.

That goes quadruple for DDO's system.

This is a huge overestimate, particularly because you don't need to max out your crafting in order to craft Min-II quality weapons. I do all of my crafting on one character, and have deconstructed about 2,000 items, not 25,000. So I've spent about 2,000,000 in platinum. I've also made 6 +4 holy silver of evil outsider bane items, including 1 that is bound to account. I haven't gotten around to making cold iron ones, but easily can. That's the equivalent of 6 mineral II weapons, which at a cost of 5 scales, 3 stones, and a handful of other larges, (not to mention the blanks which are worth about 500k each in materials) are worth well over 2,000,000 platinum each.

I'd say I've easily made my money back. Plus I sold all my old holy silver and metaline pure goods for about a 800,000 plat.

[somenewnoob]

It's not the cost that bothers me about crafting.....it's the BOREDOM. If I wanted to stand in the same place for hours clicking a button to level up a skill I would still play Runescape.

[Asketes]

I'm fairly sure they expected the majority of players to come up in crafting levels while they leveled a toon.

ie: send chest loot and end rewards to a dedicated crafter toon. level up over time

NOT buy there way to the max lvls...


I'm not complaining or arguing, merely stating how I think they see it.

[Chette]

It's not the cost that bothers me about crafting.....it's the BOREDOM. If I wanted to stand in the same place for hours clicking a button to level up a skill I would still play Runescape.

It really doesn't take much time at all. I mean, nobody sat around and deconstructed 1000 items at once :p

I have one character that I do all my crafting on. I chose her because she was the one I happened to TR just before the crafting system came out, and also because she can, and always will be able to teleport. I have just been playing as normal, except that when people normally take a break to sell/repair/boat buff, I do a quick deconstruct instead. It doesn't take more than a few minutes, you don't even notice it. I do this usually once every 2 hours or so. The only time it gets frustrating is if you can't teleport and have to run to/from the crafting hall.

They've really done a great job with the crafting hall, putting everything you could want there. Since my crafter is in a tiny guild with just my two friends and I, heading to the crafting hall is actually really convenient for me, as we don't have all the amenities on our ship, like the bank, mailbox, and auctioneer. If they would just throw a general vendor in there It would be the only place I ever had to go outside of quests, since we don't bother to boat buff.

[MatrimDaved]

It's not any more boring to me than selling vendor trash for Plat.

I'm just putting up my vendor trash on the AH, where it is selling for much more than it used to. If it doesn't sell I just use crafting to deconstruct it for essences.