Lets Discuss: Cannith Crafting & You.

[Unreliable]

Hello, many people that I know have been aproaching the new Cannith Crafting system with different perspectives. There are a few people that I know who have not touched the new crafting system and are selling any and all ingrediants that they get, and there are some people (especially guildies) that I know who have been making it their best effort to get as many essences as they can and level their crafting into the low-mid 100's.

So pretty much the purpose of this thread is to just quickly explain what you have done with this new crafting system. Have you leveled crafting with the essences you got but yourself but not bothered to spend money or items to go the extra mile to level it futher? Have you purchased as many essences you can and reached the cap of 125/125/125 or close too it? Have you not bothered with crafting at all and sell your essences when you can? Have you not bothered with crafting and are hoarding your essences for when it is out of beta? Or after U11?

So I will explain what I have done and then you can explain what you have done

Pretty much I spent 2 months gatherering gear and deconstructing. I bought a large ing bag for my FvS and decided to make him my crafter. I deconstructed nearly 4,000 items and saved the essences until just a few days ago. I also bought a few essences myself, very few, only a thousand or so at the most... and I do not buy them unless it is convenient for myself when trading other items away. Anyway, I got to around levels 35/35/35 just by deconstruction and a few days ago used about 80% of my essences to level to 70/70/70. I have spent at most 50,000 platinum on crafting and only traded a few items for essences. So its pretty much taken me 2 months of collecting and deconstrucing my own gear to get to 70/70/70. I am wondering if this is good? Is it bad? Did I not use my essences properly? I got around 14,000 greater essences in total (or a little less actually, most of my 4,000 items were high end level 5 deconstructables) and managed to get to 70/70/70 and still have some greaters left over. Some of my guildies have gotten above 100/100/100 but they tell me they have spent loads of plat to get ingrediants. I think for the duration I will keep going the route I am going and only trade for a few essences when it is convenient for me and will keep deconstrucing my gear that I get myself to level crafting. I am really not in much of a hurry to level crafting.

Anyway, thats pretty much what I have done over the past 2 months with crafting, so what have you done? I think it could be interesting to see how different people are approaching what Turbine might think to be a huge DDO revelation.

[phillymiket]

I started to hoard items and de-construct but that lasted about as long as sending my haggle bard to pawn brokers.
I'm just too lazy.

2-3 times I've gathered all my essences and put them on my crafting toon (choose my fighter figuring there may be feats associated with the skill in the future and she would have one or two to spare w/o too much gimplatude).

In the low 40s for all schools.

But I paid little attention, except for the last crafting session, when crafting for max xp/min cost.

The next few sessions will yield better results, I think.

[Maxelcat]

Simple.

Where we (the guild) send all of the collectables to one toon to sort them out and do the "banking" when crafting came out we did the same thing. all essences went to one toon, and is comfortably in the mid 60s just from what we have gang provided.

[Victorhammer]

I am guessing I am using the crafting system the way it was intended. I am just deconstructing what I find that is not sellable. And using essences that I find. Now I am playing slow maybe 10 hours per week and as a new player have only made it to level 12 so far. I do maybe 5 quests a week. Every quest is new to me.
My crafting skills are 30 26 and 28. I am able to make ML11 items I can even make some ML13 items. I use a mix of items I buy off the AH and items I make.

Essences are my main shortfall and often I am buying stuff from the AH because I am short on the essences I need to make the item I want. How ever it is rare to find the perfect item on the AH. So I wind up replacing my bought item with a made item as soon as the required essences find their way into my backpack. My crafting is going up by maybe 2 levels for every step in level increase I get. I am not in any race with anyone just enjoying the experience of the game. Making items is going slower now that I have to remake each item when I want to boost it.
That has trippled my essence use, enough in fact that I stopped using essences just for the level up process.

I also find that most essences that drop in quests drop in the optional chests. If you skip the optionals you are missing more than 1/2 of the essences along your quests. Not to mention the extra junk to deconstruct one can find in the optional chests.

[Kinerd]

Decon everything that's worth less than 10k (on each character), consolidate all essences to a single character, nothing more. Somewhere in the 40s in each school. Enough investment to make me happy in general and annoyed with the awkward, clumsy nerfs.

[Dwane_Diblie]

I deconstruct items as I get them and collect the Essences. When my cllecetables bag starts to overflow in to my invantory I will clear asmuch invantory space as posable and then do a round of hand in and deconstruct everything I get from that. I then go to the Craftign vendor and make sure I have 1:5 Greater to Lesser Essenecs for everything. Then I go craft shards. I keep an eye out for shards I need but then everything else goes in to the cheapest shards I can craft just to level. I then deconstruct what I do not want to keep. Start again.

[Deathdefy]

I have deconned everything with a level 5 suffix / prefix that I have found, and a few level 4s and lower because I incorrectly guessed the level of the item. I've sold almost all of the elemental essences I've found (never made a shard), have just levelled with what I've found for arcane, and have actively bought things to decon from the auction house for divine.

As a result, I'm 47 arcane / 93 divine / 19 elemental.

I'm continuing to follow this progression, though I'd really like to be able to make +5 enhancement shards, so am thinking about investing some plat into ah purchases for arcane.

[Vyder]

I decon everything except weapons. I sell the weapons and buy essences on the AH when i see a good deal. Crafting lvls are all just under 40. I will craft again when i have around 500 of each greater essence.

[dunklezhan]

Decon everything that's worth less than 10k (on each character), consolidate all essences to a single character, nothing more. Somewhere in the 40s in each school. Enough investment to make me happy in general and annoyed with the awkward, clumsy nerfs.

pretty much this, I'm in the 50s in all three schools, I think 61 in Arcane.

[Lithic]

Crafter: Main character (Star)
Levels: 119/117/116
Reserves: 30k greaters, 50k lessers
Plat spent: I don't want to talk about it.
Enthusiasm for crafting: Fading fast
Chance to Earn back money spent: Snowball in Hell
Number of Nerfs to Unbound Crafting as a source of income: 8 and counting

[PurdueDave]

I made a FVS my crafter. I craft casually and am at level 30-40 or so on all three.

I deconstructed or sold at a discount ~75% of the items I had around for new characters when crafting went live. I have not sold essences, bought essences, nor bought items just to deconstruct. I have bought items to key for crafting. I have sold keyed DR breaking weapons and mithril armor.

I deconstruct almost all non-weapon items I loot and non-DR breaking weapons below ML 12. Those that aren't deconstructed are stuff that's good for new players (auctioned at base, usually) or useful items (kept or auctioned). I don't vendor non-weapon items unless I'm desperate for backpack space and in a hurry. I may vendor weapons at ML12+.

The only item I made a beeline to craft was superior brilliance V. I've crafted some weapons to replace several rarely used ones. I've crafter shards to increase my level. I have yet to try and twink a character through crafting because I haven't made a serious new character recently. I probably have an average of 80 greater and 300 lesser essences per type.

[akiraproject24]

Ive carelessly dumped millions of plat on items and essences without much income aside from the occasional big sell on the ah. Ive hit like 74/78/46 (i didnt care about elemental for a long time) Ive not been smart about anything crafting wise and made a +5 anarchic burst handwrap of greater lawful outsider bane only to find it neg lvld my monk (loot gen wraps dont do this) so as those wraps had a lg slot i just deconstructed it and made +5 holy of greater lawful outsider bane only to find out they dont quite work right enhancement doesnt apply correctly the bane enhancement bonus doesnt apply correctly and there is some issue with the holy effect on the wraps with my holy burst tod ring and im not recieving all the damages I should be. All in all I have high hopes for it and continue to deconstruct...but I wont make any finalized items until they work out whats broken.

[Altaweir]

I'm a casual player. I was very enthusiast for Cannith Crafting because I'm a slow&patient guy and I could eventually hope to achieve something for all my toons. Moreover, you don't need to group to craft and you can do it ten minutes a day if you can't play more... Well, that was the idea. I had modest goals - mainly creating utility items that are sometimes hard to get on AH, like straight +stat items.

Fortification at 100? Well, something already looked odd but I was stupid enough not to see the pattern (pattern being something like "if it's really interesting, place it beyond reach of casual players.")

Since then, Cannith Crafting difficulty has become so steep it's hopeless. Perhaps a powergamer can achieve excellence there, but I'm not even sure. Large Demon Scales as ingredients? 400-favor ingredients? Turbine has gone completely crazy. Crafted items ML are worse to their random counterparts (not a big deal if you're level 20 and don't care, but I'm not and DO care). Crafted weapons can't receive Risia recipes. The list goes on and on...

I've ran four toons dry of any plat to sustain essence and ingredients purchases on AH, but thanks God Turbine made changes for the worse so fast that I learned the lesson, and stopped. Including DDO store purchases, of course.

At least now I'm millions of plat wiser. And I crafted those Blindness Ward googles of Battle Skill myself

BTW, you may have a look at my sig, there's a possible solution for the current Dragonmark debate. Snowball in hell, I know...

[lugoman]

Decon everything I get on 4 toons and send essences to 1 to be the crafter. At about 50/50/50. Main hindrance is greater essences. Crunching stuff gives me to many lesser and not enough greater essences to craft with any regularity.

[Narmolanya]

I have one crafter, a level 14 sorc. Any loot I pull on my crafter I deconstruct on all my other characters I continue to sell items as normal. Our small guild funnels all essences to my crafter.

I was late to start crafting as I wanted to see how it was going to pan out for a while before I started crafting, so I have only been doing it for less than a month. I have not purchased a single essance at all. My levels are 46/42/44.

I will continue doing what I have been until I cap or crafting becomes a completely fruitless effort. I realize crafting is still in beta so I am not going to go crazy trying to level it up. I will NEVER buy ingredients from the DDO store to craft, ever.

[hit_fido]

Anyway, thats pretty much what I have done over the past 2 months with crafting, so what have you done? I think it could be interesting to see how different people are approaching what Turbine might think to be a huge DDO revelation.

Pretty much the exact same experience here - a deliberate effort to focus on increasing crafting on one character and sticking with it without spending that much. Same approach, deconstructed up until I started hitting the 2500 item limit in the bag, then made shards. "Cash flow" is basically break even because every now and then you will find an item worth putting on the AH; I'm not losing cash by deconstructing almost everything instead of selling it. Your post and others here lead me to suspect that most players putting a concerted effort into it can hit respectable levels. The most casual players can probably expect the same slow rise in crafting as in their levels which shouldn't be a cause for complaint. The most hardcore will reach levels far higher, far faster - and be rewarded for that selling any top demand unbound shards that the majority of players wont be able to make anytime soon.

I'm curious what the general "buyout" consensus is for greater essences across servers. Personally on Orien I have been buying any greater essences off the AH listed for ~200pp per essence give or take 25pp. Oddly, people are listing lesser essences at about the same cost as greaters, 500pp or even 1000pp per essence.

[pseudomasochist]

I starting crafting for levels a few weeks after it was introduced, deconstructed almost all loot for a while, and hit 59/52/59 with about 750 shards created and 2500 items deconstructed. Gathering loot onto one character for decontruction became a chore and the deconstruction process slow and tedious so having the crafting hall closed down was almost a blessing. I haven't been back since crafting was reopened.

Having the perfect greater bane weapon for each situation was what made crafting attractive but the slow, dull leveling and high level recipes now requiring expensive ingredients makes the whole process appear not worth the time and trouble. If Cannith crafting had only one of those drawbacks, boring leveling or expensive recipes, it probably would still be interesting but both? No thanks.

[cru121]

I've been crafting on my first and only character, lvl 15 warchanter. I've been deconstructing what I found AND occasionally buying cost-effective items to deconstruct on the AH. I've developed rather slowly until the update with named items hit Lamannia, at that point I spent perhaps 200k on the AH on essences and items to reach levels needed for ML15 beaters (+4, holy/anarchic, bane). Mission accomplished. Since then I've been progressing rather slowly, now I'm around ~40 in each.

But, I've also got a throw-away favor runner on an alt server, that I got to level 5. By brokering stuff from the AH I've earned some plat. Just for the kicks, I've spent around 100k for crafting, and that was enough to get to ~25 in all schools. This allows pretty good twink equip for a lvl 5. Few more levels would allow +3 ability items (ML5 when crafted) and +2 battle skill item.

[Rawel_San]

Spent: about 2.5 mill plat so far + deconned all gear I got except the week when crafting hall was closed
Levels: 79 arcane/71 divine/70 elemental
Reserves: around 400-500 of each greater except good. Waiting to get 500 good before another session
Enthusiasm: fair to middling.

I've made my +5HB of GLOB beaters which makes me very happy and I made lots of extremely nice twink gear
for lowbies. The amount of essences needed at these levels makes me less then super happy and at this moment
I'm not aiming higher then 91/91/91 to be able to make all bound shards I need. If more interesting bound
shards are implemented I will keep leveling as long as the cost doesn't become prohibitive.

[samho]

...snip...

I like Lithic's style.


Crafter: The first character ( nonfaithness ) I've created since I've back at U9.
Levels: 118/117/119 (3965 crafted, 11878 deconstructed)
Reserves: 8K greaters, 15k lessers.
Plat Spent: I'm still 6M in red right now, go figure Crafting following every release could cost a significant amount of money.
Chance to break even: Hmmm, still thin, very thin but there's always a hope, isn't it?
Enthusiasm for crafting: Fading, especially after 10.1/10.2 change. So I'm hoping Update 11 can give something nice / useful.

I might give more detail about my thought of current crafting system (Especailly for high end crafting) at the current stage, but that would be another post.