Crafting Viability

[Infant]

I would ask you to consider this from the perspective of a newbie - I know vets like you or me could easily afford 1,000 deconstructions, but what about the newbie who is on his first character (presumably 28-point build)? The newbie is not going to get one thousand weapons of a consistent crafting school from end-rewards and chest-loot through-out the life of their character, much less from buying things from the auction house.

Maybe it isn't intended to be for newbies? I assumed that it could/should be helpful for them, but it's not given. IMHO, it would be nice to see a system which allows new people to craft gear which is considered to be basic and necessary by many, rather then include an "easy button" for the geared-out people out there. Ideally it would allow both easy crafting basic equipment and more time-consuming for powerful equipment for vets. Dunno what the developers' idea behind it was...

Infant

[sirgog]

I would ask you to consider this from the perspective of a newbie - I know vets like you or me could easily afford 1,000 deconstructions, but what about the newbie who is on his first character (presumably 28-point build)? The newbie is not going to get one thousand weapons of a consistent crafting school from end-rewards and chest-loot through-out the life of their character, much less from buying things from the auction house.

The newbie won't be making a +4 Holy Burst Silver Khopesh of Greater Lawful Outsider Bane anytime soon, correct.

They might, however, be able to craft a +3 Holy Silver Khopesh of Lawful Outsider Bane in a reasonable timeframe (we'll need to see on that). That weapon will out-DPS a Mineral 2 against Elite Horoth. Or even if that is out of the question, they should at least be able to craft a +2 Silver Khopesh of Righteousness (which will break DR post-U9) to use for a while.

[Infant]

Hi Sirgog,

Or even if that is out of the question, they should at least be able to craft a +2 Silver Khopesh of Righteousness (which will break DR post-U9) to use for a while.

how difficult/time-consuming/plat-consuming would that be? If that could be obtained by a newbie (who did his research) "on-the-way-to-20", then that'd be already nice.

Thx,
Infant

[dakkon75]

Starting from scratch with the appropriate crafting levels, I had to deconstruct 23 various weapons that give up good ingredients, plus 4 efficacy scepters, to even have the amount of ingredients needed to make the lowly +1 holy mace.

I know I am quoting myself here but if you look at the types of vendor fodder I had to use to make even a lowly +1 holy, I should have just sold them and bought one off the AH.

I love the idea of this system but in reality the numbers and xp needed, need to be looked at in a very serious manner.

As I stated in my OP, if I need to deconstruct even close to the amount needed to make items it would just be better off vendoring them and buying them at the AH.

Which would straight out destroy the whole reason the crafting system should be in the game in the first place.

[Alabore]

New players wont have the time to burn sitting in the crafting hall for hours. Not when they could level up in half the time needed to gain enough crafting xp

Assuming they are interested in levelling up.
When you start implementing crafting in a game, you are adding a whole new dimension.
Maybe they are not levelling up in character levels, but they are still levelling up.

Problem here is, you can't hit wilderness to farm for raw ingredients, such as ores of tin and copper or rowan/ash branches.
This kind of crafting is still tied to some traditional questing.

But a player could choose to devote some time to questing and some time to crafting.
This game does not feature a true end game; when you hit 20, you either reincarnate or farm epics.

Stopping longer at lower levels does not make you necessarily weaker.
Actually, it might give you a marginal edge, when you can craft some low level gear, to farm quests with.

[fuzzy1guy]

Actually a wilderness area would be a good easy place to farm.

Rares. They have stuff to deconstruct too. And better rates than some quests for time/items.

[Creadance]

You realise that the scarcer ingredients drop in chests and as end rewards right?

On Lamannia noone runs quests to get this loot.

On Live, we'll spend a lot more time in quests than on deconstruction.


I'm not certain how the drop rates will turn out, but it's too early for 'DOOM AND GLOOM' imo. The store only blank trinket, OTOH, is very poor form.

I had to Run quest and outdoor area's just to get items to deconstruct and the Scarcer drops where far and few really not worth it.
By the way AH and venders are all sold out on the test server right now.

[Linenoise2]

Considering the horrid return from deconstruction, I would find it better to simply sell it to vendors to get platinum to use toward purchasing shroud mats from the auction house. As another person wrote, he got 30 good beams from deconstructing a holyburst weapon, and yet it costs 1,000 good beams to make that same holy burst effect; yes, it really is that intensive, illogical, and unreasonable.

This is my assessment as well.

I understand why the crafting system requires so many ingredients. The idea is to prevent everyone from making 'Super Kickass Great Sword 3.0(tm)' right out of the gate. A logical concern. The problem, however, is that the crafting system ignores efficiency. Essentially, in order to craft the items you want, you will have to deconstruct every bit of random loot your find. This means that you will surrender a large part of your characters income for a lower return. Instead of selling my ToD loot for ~25-75k platinum I will be deconstructing the loot for ~100 random ingredients (if even that much).

I am most curious to see what this does to the vendor/AH market.

[Arctigis]

The newbie won't be making a +4 Holy Burst Silver Khopesh of Greater Lawful Outsider Bane anytime soon, correct.

They might, however, be able to craft a +3 Holy Silver Khopesh of Lawful Outsider Bane in a reasonable timeframe (we'll need to see on that). That weapon will out-DPS a Mineral 2 against Elite Horoth. Or even if that is out of the question, they should at least be able to craft a +2 Silver Khopesh of Righteousness (which will break DR post-U9) to use for a while.

I'm L39 Arcane and L36 Divine. I've just managed to make a holy shard, a +4 shard and a LOB shard (GLOB and
Holy burst are much higher level). I've spent 8000TP - swigging + xp elixirs and liberally using +15% items.
Those shards are also all BTC. Now I just need to be lucky enough to loot a silver Khopesh or pay the 200K
plus price for one from the AH... You need to be ~L35+ in _both_ divine and arcane to craft holy and lob.

I'm not disagreeing with you regarding the quality of this item, I've already said that it does provide the
opportunity to create some nice items. The issue is how long it would take you to get there should you only
rely on deconstruction and loot. It's more efficient to farm Shroud or Amrath for large ingredients. There are
a few highly desirable and/or interesting effects (blood rage, life stealing, greater foci, meta enhancers etc.)
diluted by +skill, +stat, +potency etc. 'flavour' (flavour being my opinion only)

To pick up one of you're earlier points, I'd estimate the deconstruction required to level 1-75 would be
much closer to 10000 items (perhaps more) than 1000 e.g. if you deconstructed the prefix off a holy
weapon you'd get approximately 5% of the reagents required to remake it. That's 20:1 for a single recipe.
Greater Twilight requires 4096 Arcane Charges. 4000 arcane charges would cost you 2000TP in the store
or you could break down approximately 250+ items to get those. Extreme example but most shards around
that level use at least 256 of the minor reagents.

I actually like the system, it just needs tweaking to be less grindy (IMO of course).

[Arctigis]

Hi Sirgog,



how difficult/time-consuming/plat-consuming would that be? If that could be obtained by a newbie (who did his research) "on-the-way-to-20", then that'd be already nice.

Thx,
Infant

It righteousness a craftable suffix? I didn't notice it. Pure Good is higher level than Holy.

[zorander6]

Personally I probably won't craft anything on Live, not too impressed by the crafting. I want my vorpal paralyzing icy burst flaming burst longsword of righteousness darn it. :P


I get 2 hours a week to play if I'm lucky. Not enough time to make trying to craft something worthwhile.

[patang01]

Yep, I've had several drops. It's generally extremely low rent versus what you will need to craft anything
useful though.

I noticed that as well; I get 6 or so materials from completion of quest but can deconstruct one of the random items in the same loot table for more. Very wacky. I suggest giving at least about 100 for quest completions

[Seikojin]

I think the component return on deconstruction should get a bonus based on your crafting level for the particular 'school' you are deconning.

EG:
You are level 35/35/50. You go to break down a +1 holy warhammer of bone breaking. You need good comps, so you choose to take the prefix apart. When you do, your experience in dealing with divine enchantments is soo good, you extract more of the beams and possibly some of the (insert higher tier good element here) components from it as well.

What should the ratio be? Well you could take your Crafting Level vs the level of the prefix (in this caase), and drop a 1% bonus per level above the items prefix in the return of comps.

[kernal42]

They might, however, be able to craft a +3 Holy Silver Khopesh of Lawful Outsider Bane in a reasonable timeframe (we'll need to see on that). That weapon will out-DPS a Mineral 2 against Elite Horoth. Or even if that is out of the question, they should at least be able to craft a +2 Silver Khopesh of Righteousness (which will break DR post-U9) to use for a while.

Probably not.

Not due to crafting difficulty, of course, but rather the difficulty in finding a silver khopesh blank. Those have already begun, and are likely to continue, to fetch exorbitant prices on the AH.

-Kernal

[olBillDoor]

I think the component return on deconstruction should get a bonus based on your crafting level for the particular 'school' you are deconning.

EG:
You are level 35/35/50. You go to break down a +1 holy warhammer of bone breaking. You need good comps, so you choose to take the prefix apart. When you do, your experience in dealing with divine enchantments is soo good, you extract more of the beams and possibly some of the (insert higher tier good element here) components from it as well.

What should the ratio be? Well you could take your Crafting Level vs the level of the prefix (in this caase), and drop a 1% bonus per level above the items prefix in the return of comps.

This is what I was thinking. The more skilled at crafting you are the more stuff you should be able to pull from an item.

[MadFloyd]

Thanks for all the feedback - it's very helpful. The balance is still a work-in-progress. If you think it's stingy now, you should have seen it last week. :-)

[Bozone]

I'm not on Lam, so this is only based on what I've read on the forums.

It sounds to me like a new player will have to choose between trying to get some platinum for his characters or getting crafting xp and mats. The amount of deconstructing sounds like a new player would have to deconstruct everything he loots to be able to craft anything usable. Therefore, he would hardly be selling any items, meaning he is just covering repair costs for his adventuring?

I suspect new players will not be crafting much. That's a shame, IMO, as getting the gear is perhaps the hardest part for new players. And experienced players don't need this as much; they're typically fairly well geared, so this will allow them to tweak their gear.

[Alabore]

If you think it's stingy now, you should have seen it last week.

^^^
See?
They are erring on the side of caution.

...

If you gents could add ways to crunch shards back into essences, without having to burn through blanks, it would be nice... but I see good reasons not to, too...

[dkyle]

Thanks for all the feedback - it's very helpful. The balance is still a work-in-progress. If you think it's stingy now, you should have seen it last week. :-)

Any comment on whether the ingredients in the store are simply to speed up previewing on Lamannia, or if we should expect to see them on Live?

A lot of my balance concerns rest on the answer to this question.

That, and silver shouldn't be essentially free, given how much potency it adds to some weapons.

[patang01]

Thanks for all the feedback - it's very helpful. The balance is still a work-in-progress. If you think it's stingy now, you should have seen it last week. :-)

Thanks for the feedback - if you only balance it to make sense, where you get the equivalent mats for the material level (say 4) instead of 1-4 being something, and 5-8 being all the same (30ish) it would make more sense.

Let me feel like I'm crunching all those items for a reason - not just to get a piddle. Plus what's been said about the shards already.

Also - make end rewards dole out more mats than it's worth for me to pick one of the items and crunch it instead.

I love the system tho so I hope you won't restrict what we can craft; only make it feel like an accomplishment. I get that you need to make money (you're a business) but selling the mats in the store and making the ingame grind stingy cheapens the accomplishment.

I have 10 mules full of stuff; lets not make it feel like I'm recycling soda pop cans for the effort.

Oh tiny request; let us deconstruct named items for mats only. I have tons I will never use but I hate to simply destroy them because I need space.