Green steel overhaul idea

[Aerendil]

Ahhh, green steel. Love it or hate it, it's one of those topics that keeps cropping up every now and then with ways to improve it, change it, or even in some cases to remove it. It's incredibly frustrating for the newer players trying to make their first green steel item, but who have literally no in-game guidance from NPCs or altars as to what to do after making their initial Shavarath stone. It's completely counter-intuitive, and as far as I can tell, the only information on GS construction recipes is actually outside of the game entirely, on player-made websites (such as DDO Wiki and others). Additionally, for those with green steel items already made, it can also be frustrating when wanting to upgrade an item slot (with Epic gear, or the ever expanding named loot from various quests) and being forced to re-craft an entire T3 item in a different slot.

However, with the advent of recent crafting procedures first in the Attack on Stormreach chain (Sora Katra cauldron), and then in Crystal Cove, and now in the upcoming Madness Reigns chain (Altar of Madness), there is obvious proof that the mechanics for updating greensteel construction is in game.
Combine this with the new Kundarak crafting mechanic, and the sky is the limit.

What I propose will be a solution to help those new to crafting greensteel, those wishing to alter greensteel items, and those wishing to destroy them altogether.

Part I : Green Steel construction

Edit the various GS altars (including Fecundity in Meridia) to work like Sora Kata / Crystal Cove / Madness in that the recipes for that particular altar are visible upon initial clicking. Players can then view a list of possible combinations and choose which item they want to craft. As a result:
Fecundity will list manufactured ingredients (eg. oil, taper, etc.) with their raw ingredients required (twig, funk, pebbles, etc.) as well as having a full list of GS weapon and item “blanks” for construction so that players can see which manufactured ingredients are required for their particular item/weapon they want to craft;
Invasion will list raw ingredients combinations for T1;
Subjugution will list manufactured / raw ingredients combinations for T2;
Devastation will list manufactured / raw ingredients combinations for T3, as well as final combinations* (see further, below).
These will allow players on each step to see what shard they want to craft, as well as what is required for the raw ingredients to go into them. The final combinations* I am referring to is the overall picture of the full GS item. In other words, if you wanted to make a fully-imbued T3 Longsword, you could click on the altar, narrow your search to longsword, and see a full list of longswords, from Min 2, to Lit 2, to Rad 2, etc. This would allow you on each step to see *exactly* where you wanted to go, and what is required for each imbued shard. This could either be placed on Devastation only (to avoid huge lists of recipes on each altar), or if this isn't too memory (aka lag) intensive, place them on each altar so players can see ahead of time what they want to craft and where they're going to end up. As already mentioned, this would function like Crystal Cove where it would interactive complete with a search feature or allowing you to drag your GS item to the altar's crafting list, making your crafting process far less confusing.

What this would accomplish is to create a far more intuitive and interactive crafting system than what is currently in place for GS, and lessen the amount of “doh, made the wrong blank by accident” scenerios that still crop up from time to time.

[Aerendil]

Part II : Green Steel alteration

This is for those with GS weapons and items already crafted, allowing for future versatility in changing things up with regards to slots.
Ever get to epic levels and think “oooh, I could really use that item.... but doh, my GS +45hp item is there. Now I need to farm shroud for another couple of weeks to re-craft an entirely new +45 item for another slot. Ugh.”. Or perhaps reincarnating, and finding that in your newer life you have no use for a Lit 2 longbow, but could really make use of a Lit 2 khopesh instead?
My proposed change would hopefully solve this.

Concept : this is where the crafting process could use a slightly bigger overhaul, although based on Kundurak construction and deconstruction, this should be very possible.
Essentially what would happen is that the player would use a catalyst item similar to those used in Kundarak crafting to dissassociate certain item properties, to then “disassociate” the shard(s) from the GS item by placing it back into the appropriate altar with the catalyst, popping out the appropriate shard from the GS item.

To avoid complications with strange or unusual error messages with GS weapon/item shard combinations, and ending up with a combination that suddenly doesn't work, I think the easiest solution here would be to pop out all shards during this process, returning your GS weapon or item blank as well as the imbued shards to your inventory, rather than trying to pop one out at a time and creating total chaos.

Suggestions for applicable altars / vendors would be in Meridia with the Altar of Fecundity and the (conveniently located) NPC there, as well as using the Altar of Devastation in Shroud (and catalyst sold by the skeleton NPC at the end of part 3).

Example scenerio: “Stabbingyou”, the creatively-named Rogue, decides that his GS Goggles with Aspect of Smoke II, is now getting in the way of his newly acquired Tharne's Goggles. So he trots off to Meridia, buys a catalyst, and disassociates the shards from his goggles. He now has the goggles “blank”, as well as the associated imbued shards, in his inventory. He then crafts a new GS helmet based on pre-obtained raw ingredients he farmed for the past week, and hops aboard his airship (or into a Shroud pug), and re-attunes the helmet with his imbued shards (provided he has the appropriate energy cells to for the combinations!). And voila, new GS helmet of Smoke II obtained!

The end result here would allow players to swap out their GS weapon and item properties as they advance in level and obtain newer gear for specific slots. It would be far less painful than starting anew, but still requiring some work and effort from the player in altering their equipment.

[k1ngp1n]

Much agreed to 1.

[Aerendil]

Part III – Green Steel deconstruction

So Stabbingyou now has his brand new Smoke II helmet, but really has no use for the GS goggles blank now in his inventory. Since I am going to assume the “bound to character” flag will still be applied to these disassociated items to avoid flooding the market with GS blanks all of a sudden, this leaves our poor little Rogue in a bit of a quandry. He can't sell it to other players, and vendoring it for a paltry few thousand platinum seems highly unfair, I now propose a third option : GS deconstruction.

Not nearly as glorious as one might expect, it would essentially work in the same manner as Kundarak deconstruction. The item is placed into an altar and, using another vendor-bought item, the item is then destroyed, yielding X amount of base ingredients as a result.
To allow for customization and alteration of GS items and weapons, I would see this applied not just to the GS blanks, but also to the imbued shards as well. In my scenerio above in Part II, there is no reason why you couldn't have a scenerio where the Rogue wants to keep his GS goggles, but would prefer to instead turn them into Min 2 Goggles. The end result there would have been discarded imbued shards, rather than a discarded pair of goggles. As a result, the GS deconstruction would apply to all “manufactured” GS items, allowing them to be reduced to X amount of raw ingredients.

Suggestions here (and obviously open to feedback/criticism) would be:
GS blanks = yield of 1-3 base raw ingredients, based on the item initially crafted and ingredients required. Naturally, it wouldn't make sense for you to luck out with a return of 2 chipmunk funks and a green briar twig, when your GS weapon/item only required 1 chipmunk funk initially.
Imbued shards = similarly, a yield based on raw ingredients based on initial ingredients required. T1 shards would yield small ingredients obviously; T2 = medium, T3 = larges. For the T1 shards, I would suggest 3 ingredients returned; T2 = 2; and T3 = 1, unless double-shard, in which case it would be 2.

What this would allow is some small amount of return for your time and ingredients invested, while not overpowering the deconstruction and allowing people to get rid of old GS gear and make a killing off of it. The idea is to lessen the pain of having to re-create or re-imbue new GS combinations, while still making it require some time and effort to do so.

So, this all said...thoughts/comments/criticisms?

[Aerendil]

Reserving one section for future alterations and changes based feedback*