Feedback - Unbound Crafting

[Mystera]

Trust me, not everyone, as a matter of fact; percentage wise I would say maybe 5-10% could get to 75 in a week. The majority of people will not have the resources, i.e; greaters, lessers, and collectables to get to 75. I don't know what crafting level you are at, how often you play, or how many characters you have. That said, do you actually realize how many items have to be deconstructed, made into shards, then rinse and repeat to acquire enough resources? Not to mention, the time spent running quests to get said items etc.

I think that the resources required to get anywhere near mid 50's is ridiculously high as it stands now, not even mentioning 75. I am in the mid 50's on divine and arcane, and I can tell you that if I was to have vendored all the items I deconstructed it would have to be somewhere in the 1.4-2.0 Mil plat range. All the money that people gained via THE EVENT selling dowsing rods is mostly gone. I didn't sell many at all compared to most.

They need to lower the resources required just a bit to level. Yes, it should be semi-difficult and semi-expensive, but when is enough enough? I like the crafting system and I like that they are trying to evolve. They just need to iron some things out. Hopefully they will!

Probably too conservative on the plat required to level. My experience, which matches Shades, is that it took me 10mil plat to hit mid 40s and 15mil plat to hit lower 50s by deconstructing L4 and L5 items I bought from the AH on the cheap (yes I prudently shopped). To hit 75 will be a heck of a lot more plat as the XP curve is exponential and not linear (which is why 10mil plat got me to the mid 40s while 15 mil plat only got me to the lower 50s).

[Merrill_Greeneshade]

Probably too conservative on the plat required to level. My experience, which matches Shades, is that it took me 10mil plat to hit mid 40s and 15mil plat to hit lower 50s by deconstructing L4 and L5 items I bought from the AH on the cheap (yes I prudently shopped). To hit 75 will be a heck of a lot more plat as the XP curve is exponential and not linear (which is why 10mil plat got me to the mid 40s while 15 mil plat only got me to the lower 50s).

I still think that unbound crafting in this first release is going to be near worthless to players who have a toon that can run IQ or least Vale content. Last night I gave an alt, who had not crafted at all, 100,000 plat. I was curious to see how long it would take if I just tried to buy my way to level 30 in one school. At level 30 a crafter can make, for every toon on their own account, every item that could be made by another crafter as unbound, most at 100% success.

If they had someone else make it for them it would at least cost them double the large essences if not more assuming that the high level crafter is going to try and make a profit.

I started at a little after 6pm my time and just bought off of AH those items that I knew would give me elemental type essences at a decent cost. I was far less frugal with these purchases than I was on my main toon. I spent the 100k, filled my mailbox, decon'd all that I'd purchased, created shards until my essences ran, decon'd those shards, and then did one more shard round for more xp.

202 shards created / 245 items deconstructed (These numbers would be way less if I hadn't tried to just burn up all the shards I had made from the 100k without a ton of regard to efficiency).


By 7:30 I was level 22 Elemental. So in about an hour and a half I got to 22 on what is in my opinion the hardest school to level in by a bit. Divine and especially Arcane have way more options on deconstructable level 5 items. Even at 22 I could craft the equivalent of what a 50ish crafter could do unbound.

If I'd done this with Arcane school gear instead, I probably would have hit the high 20s in even less time.

So I think it is safe to say that with about 300k plat and 3 hours of your time you can get to 25-28 in all schools.

Another 100k and you'd quickly reach 30.

The reason I quoted Mystera is that I wanted to add that while it probably took me more like 5million plat to hit the high 50s and 60s, I think that he is correct in his feelings on post 40 crafting. That's not going to be for everyone.

30 though, is very attainable. I don't think that simply doubling the level of every shard is the best way to introduce and implement this system. It should definitely be harder on the buyer and seller using the unbound system, I just don't think this is the way to do it.

For players who play a couple hours a week and are very casual, crafting will probably mean little to them anyhow. But for anyone who's run a character up to 20, we all know that it isn't that unreasonable for those toons to have 3-400k plat on them. If serious players are burning 10-15 MILLION plat, even 500k isn't unattainable for a player with a high teen/20 toon that enjoys the game enough to spend their free time playing it...regardless of whether or not they work a full time job, have a family, etc. etc.

[Kachajal]

I would love to see a lot more crafting options - particularly clicky effects - available for crafting items. This is something I was really excited about when I first heard of this system, namely changing all of my clickies to a single item type for a vast increase in convenience, but I was sadly disappointed.

Also, this is quite necessary to allow anyone to get such items in the first place. As it is, those items will never be available, as they're instantly bought and deconstructed. If this isn't done, we'll have a lot less variety available.

Also, I can't wait to see the level requirements fixed. As it is, some recipes end up *much* higher level than random drops, making them very undesirable.

Other than that, this seems excellent from what little I've seen of it. Very fun, and I like that it is not directly linked to character level. This is the sort of crafting I've wanted for a long time.

[JOTMON]

Would like to see 2-3 alternatvies for crafting the same effect items.

some items require soulstones.. give some alternative that a non-soultrap caster can obtain without trading some caster.

A GEOB needs a LDS and a Demons blood. offer alternatives like 100 Planar shards and .........

Grinding for 1 specific item to craft an effect is annoying.

[Erikanudan]

I still think that unbound crafting in this first release is going to be near worthless to players who have a toon that can run IQ or least Vale content. Last night I gave an alt, who had not crafted at all, 100,000 plat. I was curious to see how long it would take if I just tried to buy my way to level 30 in one school. At level 30 a crafter can make, for every toon on their own account, every item that could be made by another crafter as unbound, most at 100% success.

If they had someone else make it for them it would at least cost them double the large essences if not more assuming that the high level crafter is going to try and make a profit.

I started at a little after 6pm my time and just bought off of AH those items that I knew would give me elemental type essences at a decent cost. I was far less frugal with these purchases than I was on my main toon. I spent the 100k, filled my mailbox, decon'd all that I'd purchased, created shards until my essences ran, decon'd those shards, and then did one more shard round for more xp.

202 shards created / 245 items deconstructed (These numbers would be way less if I hadn't tried to just burn up all the shards I had made from the 100k without a ton of regard to efficiency).


By 7:30 I was level 22 Elemental. So in about an hour and a half I got to 22 on what is in my opinion the hardest school to level in by a bit. Divine and especially Arcane have way more options on deconstructable level 5 items. Even at 22 I could craft the equivalent of what a 50ish crafter could do unbound.

If I'd done this with Arcane school gear instead, I probably would have hit the high 20s in even less time.

So I think it is safe to say that with about 300k plat and 3 hours of your time you can get to 25-28 in all schools.

Another 100k and you'd quickly reach 30.

The reason I quoted Mystera is that I wanted to add that while it probably took me more like 5million plat to hit the high 50s and 60s, I think that he is correct in his feelings on post 40 crafting. That's not going to be for everyone.

30 though, is very attainable. I don't think that simply doubling the level of every shard is the best way to introduce and implement this system. It should definitely be harder on the buyer and seller using the unbound system, I just don't think this is the way to do it.

For players who play a couple hours a week and are very casual, crafting will probably mean little to them anyhow. But for anyone who's run a character up to 20, we all know that it isn't that unreasonable for those toons to have 3-400k plat on them. If serious players are burning 10-15 MILLION plat, even 500k isn't unattainable for a player with a high teen/20 toon that enjoys the game enough to spend their free time playing it...regardless of whether or not they work a full time job, have a family, etc. etc.

I think I've only spent 2 mil plat to get to 74/69/66. I only decon L4 & L5 if get get them as drops. I'd never buy higher lvl AH/Trader gear ... cost isn't worth return on deconning higher lvl items. It's not all about the essences ... there's the decon XP as well. Also, ONLY decon pures whenever possible .. or items with a L1 splash effect. And learn how to convert a recipes essence requirement into something easy to use to compare them for skilling up. I went thru and made spreadsheets for all the recipes with bound/unbound, level, school, and materials (guess THOSE will need to be laboriously updated again ...). They let me sort by a school and level and total greater cost (where 1 greater and 4 lessers = 1.8 greaters, 9 greaters and 36 lessers = 16.2 greaters, etc.) so I could just use the cheapest recipes for skillups.

If I decon a L4 item I get 4 xp, 5xp for an L5. That same plat cost of buying items to decon could be 20-40 L1 decons (for 20-40 xp) or 5-10 L2 (for 10-20 xp) ... also alot more lessers and a good chance to get more greaters than the single L4/L5 decon. Also more time consuming, but definately cost effective and worth it if you take advantage of best times and places to farm. Any +1 loot event finds me running every char to ransack on same quest in 30 mins per char for 11 runs, 44 chests, usually 20-30 greaters, and a bank full of L1/L2 decon items. Plus the occasional ioun stone (pale lavender last +1 loot event). Same quest ppl are coin farming right now.

I'm not a power gamer, have a life. I find the crafting system to be relaxing, NOT a job to grind thru or throw away plat at in a rush to be first to the finish. I've done the power player/power crafter before back in EQ. That was a crafting grind and platsink compared to Cannith Crafting, but I took all 8 of my chars to max 250 culturals, plus a cpl of universal grandmasters in everything. Took about 3 years, lol, but enjoyed every minute of it!

Powerful shards SHOULD require powerful ingredients ... or at least enough of a mediocre ingredient to manifest the same power as a very rare ingredient in a recipe. No pain, no gain. However, I think that super rare drops (esp. raid caliber) should definately be out unless drop rates are increased accordingly to accomodate crafting demands ... but they won't since the non-crafters will just hoard the incrased drops for other toons or AH.

BTW, running DA on NORM during last +1 event, we were getting larges and boot mats ... so yeah, we ransacked that with lowbies as well.

Marjoram, KOTD
Orien