Cannith Crafting More Info + Recap

[Dandonk]

My concerns were and are:

Will lower level items have lower power than currently?
Loss of flexibility.
Lack of high-end "carrots".
Unique effects are mostly meh.
What will happen to challenge gear and rune arms? Loss of masterful will hit these hard.

While there's a promise to look into lowlevel item power and runearms etc, and some of the clickies have been re-thought, there still remains flexibility loss, unique crafting effects that are underwhelming, and nothing to use the huge grind for once you start getting the level 35+ items you want.

I feel that cannith, as proposed, will be by far the lowest power of the three loot types, and that with a huge grind and resource cost.

I see this as a bad thing to happen to cannith crafting. We lose the good TR twink items and flexibility we have, and gain in return a large grind for some mediocre items that will only be interesting until we find something better.

I sincerely hope that you will find a way to add something unique to cannith that will make it worth it. As it stands, it's a nearly pointless use of dev time IMO.

You don't make such a large system change without planning for the longer term. That would be silly. So let's get it done right now, instead of relying on something that may or may not come later. With the time frames on revamps of systems, we may never see another update to Cannith crafting, so let's get it done right from the start.

I understand that I won't see top tier items from CC. I think this is a mistake (the availability of those could be limited by ingredients from raids, timers, and any number of other ways), but I think that CC should at the very least get something else instead to make the grind worth it, even in a couple of years.

My personal idea is consumables adding stacking bonuses to things such as hit, dmg, PRR, MRR, AC, MP, RP, spellpower. This would both add a reason to have crafting, even when the items start to be eclipsed by new and better named loot and a better supply of top end rand gen items, as well as make crafting something you continue to use after making the items you want.

[slarden]

Kindly post 3 random loots you own yourself (doesnt matter if you looted it yourself) that:
- Have 3 effects that go well together
- All 3 effects have a value that is at or above the max value for the non-mc range for that level.
- Have an augment slot
- Is Master Crafted (and thus is lucky)

I have zero such items, dont know anyone that does and dont believe I have ever seen such an item anywhere. If you dont have such items either your point is hypothetical. Claiming such items might appear in the future isnt an argument for the now either.

I have alot of alts so I have to settle for less than perfect gear often times. This character has 1 LGS weapon a 1 tier 2 LGS dex skills bracer. He still uses heroic GS boots with displacement clickies due to the massive cost of displacement clickies on LGS and the need to get other clickies instead (chaotic weapons, good weapons, etc.)

Here is what he wearing as far as random loot:











The ring and gloves I got from the exact same shroud run. Ring in a chest and gloves as an end reward. The belt from LE tempest spine. The goggles from the ASAH although the stats are kinda lowis, but still better than what I had. I don't remember where I got the helm, but it was from a raid when I had a treasure pot going.

So I see some items that can probably be improved with Cannith crafting, but not sure everything can be improved. For example the gloves display +3 insightful assassinate and +6 insightful combat mastery, but I am actually getting +4 insightful assassinate and +7 insightful stunning. These gloves might end up being better than what I can craft. And yes I know the new belt is better for dire charge but my current belt is kind of important too - this character is due for a gear refresh but I am waiting till U32 for that.

[Nuclear_Elvis]

Kindly post 3 random loots you own yourself (doesnt matter if you looted it yourself) that:
- Have 3 effects that go well together
- All 3 effects have a value that is at or above the max value for the non-mc range for that level.
- Have an augment slot
- Is Master Crafted (and thus is lucky)

Just to inject here - time and opportunity improve your odds. In large Guilds, we have tons of this stuff flowing into our Guild chests. I have at least 5-10 items right now that meet your criteria, rotting in our Guild chest for level 5+ gear.

My perspective is different, I realize, coming from a huge guild, but - consider my perspective to be the same you may have months from now given more time and opportunity.

[dunklezhan]

You can make those, just not at 100% success.

Changes my view then. Still dislike the 34 vs 40 limit, but I'm absolutely fine with top end recipes not being 100% even at max crafting levels.

[Aelonwy]

Thank you No Worries for each response. Even if its not what we want to hear, its great to have the continued discourse.

Further questions:

• Will banishing/smiting/disruption be returning to the random loot tables?
• Will ammo & runestones remain in Cannith Crafting? (Apologies if this was answered somewhere before)
• Can we please have the bound recipe crafted items made BTA instead of BTC? Inventory is already an issue in this game, let's not compound it.
• Why is Speed so important to have random only? If we cannot craft Speed may we at least have the full 30% Striding?

Somewhere someone (apologies to creative person) suggested a system by which we could use gems to craft augment slots onto crafting blanks (at least) did anyone at Turbine read this idea? Was it too far beyond the scope of possibility?

[mikarddo]

Just to inject here - time and opportunity improve your odds. In large Guilds, we have tons of this stuff flowing into our Guild chests. I have at least 5-10 items right now that meet your criteria, rotting in our Guild chest for level 5+ gear.

My perspective is different, I realize, coming from a huge guild, but - consider my perspective to be the same you may have months from now given more time and opportunity.

So, in a huge guild (say 750 people) you have maybe 10 such items to spare? Is that in total for the entire guild? In that case it doesnt impress me much

Just one build replacing gear every 3 levels in just 10 slots would need in the order of 100 items - so 10 spare items that may or may not fit the build in question leaves lots of room to craft the remaining pieces.

Ie, both RGL and CC has a place to fill. If CC was to be able to simply craft MC loot RGL would have no place.

[Nuclear_Elvis]

...The flexibility and variety of lootgen was a problem that needed fixing, IMO. When I started playing in 2011, and for years after that, lootgen had limited slots for stats and skills. Strength only came on bracers, gloves, belts and rings, for example. And Jumping only came on boots, belts and rings.

Lootgen was then changed, and all of a sudden slotting went out the window. Seemingly anything went anywhere. For my money, this was much less interesting and engaging. Then lootgen was changed again, to what we have now, where we're back to limited slotting. To me this is a welcome correction.

You seem to prefer the "anything anywhere" school of thought. That was a very short-lived feature of lootgen. For most of DDO's history, lootgen slotting has been very limited.

You are forgetting to add - the current/soon-to-be-former Cannith Crafting system embraced this loot generation design, to enable/allow Flexibility in Cannith Crafting. It has become part of the long-term expectations from those who spent hours upon hours crafting with their characters. "Anything Anywhere" - well, actually, what is wrong with that, for Cannith Crafting? What is wrong with that, for Random Loots, even if some of the slotting would be more rarely applied? Let's use a little logic here - you get a +5 to Strength "magically" from a gear item. So, in this virtual world we play in, there's some magical way to boost a statistic. Why is that same magic not capable from other gear all the same? Logically, if some Master Craftsman out there can imbue a bracer, why can't he imbue a ring also with the same Ability?

I can understand that you have a preference, but what is it based on? It's based on your personal preference of the way you'd like to see the game designed. For the high level Crafters here that have spent 40+ hours (or much, much more) grinding away at Cannith Crafting, you must consider that the new crafting system could nullify the value of all that time/effort spent, as there are many crafters who will find this new Cannith Crafting system to be Dead on Arrival (DOA).

We would simply agree to disagree on Random Loot. The Design change was hasty, poorly implemented at the time New Loot released, and has been controversial ever since then. There are many players not even here to bolster my argument - they've simply left the game and the Forums, semi-permanently or permanently.

[mikarddo]

I have alot of alts so I have to settle for less than perfect gear often times.

So I see some items that can probably be improved with Cannith crafting, but not sure everything can be improved. For example the gloves display +3 insightful assassinate and +6 insightful combat mastery, but I am actually getting +4 insightful assassinate and +7 insightful stunning. These gloves might end up being better than what I can craft. And yes I know the new belt is better for dire charge but my current belt is kind of important too - this character is due for a gear refresh but I am waiting till U32 for that.

Lots of alts should favor crafting as thats on demand and in large quantities.

Some items being able to improve and some not with CC sounds about right to me.

Wrt. max level gear I am more worried that the U32 stuff might eclipse CC than RGL.

[Nuclear_Elvis]

So, in a huge guild (say 750 people) you have maybe 10 such items to spare? Is that in total for the entire guild? In that case it doesnt impress me much

Just one build replacing gear every 3 levels in just 10 slots would need in the order of 100 items - so 10 spare items that may or may not fit the build in question leaves lots of room to craft the remaining pieces.

Ie, both RGL and CC has a place to fill. If CC was to be able to simply craft MC loot RGL would have no place.

It's a snapshot in time, yet - gear is constantly flowing in/out of chests. It's not just 10 items, that was an estimate from a snapshot in time. We hit the max in our chests continuously, for both Member and Officer chests, with gear flowing in/out. It's like a Fed-Ex distribution center (you wouldn't accuse Fed-Ex of only moving 10 packages a day? ) As for our numbers, we lost about 1/3 of the guild (~250) from the month of lag, but that's another topic for other threads, so we don't have all 750 active (about 400-500 active as of today).

And as for RGL having no place - what's wrong with it having a lessening position over time, and especially inside Guilds that could potentially craft equal/better gear? That then lends toward the Social aspects of DDO, that players would want to socialize and communicate with each other about what gear they want crafted.

Have we all forgotten Gary Gygax's quote, "D&D is a Social Game." -- ?

Seems like we have, and that some statistical troll wants to preserve their loot system design.

[Gremmlynn]

With the changes listed in the OP and the fact that ML shards fill in a lot of the blank spaces.

Will deconstructing items still give xp and if so, will it still be capped at 5xp or will this be expanded to whatever the level of the deconstruction is?

This could also help fill some of those blank spaces.

[Gremmlynn]

And no deathblock? I don't craft deathblock often, but on occassion I've had a character with that hole in his gear set up needing to be filled.

Deathblock seems to be one of the effects that's not listed as it's both a static effect and isn't exclusive to either rangen or crafted. As we know it drops and it doesn't appear on the rangen exclusive list.

Adding the list of static effects, such as this, that aren't exclusive would be nice.

[searcher15]

I don't know ONE person or seen ONE screenshot of an item anywhere (game, forums, auction house) that is truly a lucky random loot.
Let me define what is the LUCKY loot:
It's an item that has:
1. A 3rd effect on it
2. All 3 effects are relevant to your build
3. All 3 effects are in the masterful craftsmanship range
4. All 3 effects are at the max value of the range.

Actually, one high stat is enough, because I can't get it anywhere else.

If CC crated item allows +14 ability, and I can get random gen with +16 or more, I'm obviously going to choose the one with higher value, regardless if other effect is useful or not.
Random loot items with high stats may be crazy rare - but if it exists, someone, someday will have one for sale.
Crafted items may allow up to 3 effects, but if the effects stay below the "max" you can get, the crafted items will be reduced to role of "hole fillers". And for that role, we could really use some flexibility.

[Faltout]

With the changes listed in the OP and the fact that ML shards fill in a lot of the blank spaces.

Changes listed in the OP are:

The 50% success mark will now be 15 levels below the recipe as opposed to the 10 levels it is currently.
To go along with that, players will now be able to craft recipes they have at least 1% chance of success, instead of being limited to 50% and above.

The ML shards exist at 50, 60, 70, 80, 90, 100.

So, with the above in mind, at level 70 you have 0% chance to craft level 100 shards (70+15 = 50% success, 70+15+15 = 0% success), you are 20 levels above the level 50 shards (group 2) and you have the ML shards to craft. How many ML shards can one craft without reincarnating? Is the xp still declining depending on how many times you craft the shard? Does the xp still depend on the success chance of the shard and does the success chance increase with each successful crafting of the shard?

And while level 70 is perfect for my example (30 levels below 100 so 0% success chance), a little lower or a little higher does not change things dramatically, since 1 more level will only increase the success chance by 3.3%. In which case it's still 30 shards to level (29 failed, 1 successful) assuming the 1 shard will level you.

[NoWorries]

Changes listed in the OP are:

The ML shards exist at 50, 60, 70, 80, 90, 100.

So, with the above in mind, at level 70 you have 0% chance to craft level 100 shards (70+15 = 50% success, 70+15+15 = 0% success), you are 20 levels above the level 50 shards (group 2) and you have the ML shards to craft. How many ML shards can one craft without reincarnating? Is the xp still declining depending on how many times you craft the shard? Does the xp still depend on the success chance of the shard and does the success chance increase with each successful crafting of the shard?

And while level 70 is perfect for my example (30 levels below 100 so 0% success chance), a little lower or a little higher does not change things dramatically, since 1 more level will only increase the success chance by 3.3%. In which case it's still 30 shards to level (29 failed, 1 successful) assuming the 1 shard will level you.

Also the XP curve is changed quite a bit from the old system which can be seen by how much XP it takes to get to 150 now vs how much it did before.

Setting a character to level 70 and crafting ML shards, I had no problem getting to where level 100 shards were above a 40% chance, at which point it seemed most beneficial to focus on those and leveling continued quickly. It did not take an excess amount of recipes or failures to do so.

An example like this, which looks at one of two areas where the big group of recipes is the furthest spread out (and the other one being even lower where there is an easier leveling progression) would instead lend to the argument that if anything needed to be changed on recipe difficulties, it is that another group of some sort would be needed at 85. Since once you do start working on the 100s, every major group shows up in 25 level gaps providing a continuous feed. This wouldn't suggest that all recipes need to be spread out over the whole spectrum.

However, I didn't see any real difficulties getting through this leveling zone.

[zehnvhex]

This is an inaccurate assessment of the future

Then why did you repeat it? Honestly, some people...

I mean I'm sure you have the resources to instantly **** out a full set of perfectly optimized random loot on demand for anybody in your guild at will. Everybody else all you'll have to do is dump X essence on your guild crafter every 3 levels and get a full suit of 10% below ideal gear. It isn't until you hit the 27+ levels where you actually spend more then an hour at them that you'll care about that extra 10% in efficiency and start hoarding gear and if they ever implement something worth doing at level 30, crafting will fall even more by the wayside.

So you're a little ahead of the curve in that regard. Most people don't have full kits ready for every TR and Cannith Crafting will do that for them. Occasionally you might find an exceptionally ideal piece that you want to hang onto but not many people are that willing to hang onto an entire TR cache of every possible assortment of level 9 twink loot. I'll gladly do 4% less dps then the next guy over in exchange for having 200+ inventory slots back.

The point is the same though. Cannith crafting needs to do something other then just be "slightly crappier loot" to have any sort of long term relevance. The most long term relevant items in WoW crafting for example were always item augments. Enchants, gems, augments and so forth. That and bags of course.

[zehnvhex]

Also the XP curve is changed

Hi NoWorries...

I'm wondering if since I'm just mashing these shards for the purpose of leveling would it be possible to add a UI element that I can toggle that just immediately deconstructs the shard I make? I dislike inventory clutter and I dislike the "Make 30 bronze swords so you skill up and can make 30 iron swords so you can skill up and make 30 steel swords so you can skill up and make..." style of crafting levelup.

I know there isn't much you can do about treadmill leveling given time and resource constraints but I'm really hoping you can let us skip a step in the grinding part by just letting me immediately break shards (or vendor them or whatever).

Thanks!

[Dandonk]

Cannith crafting needs to do something other then just be "slightly crappier loot" to have any sort of long term relevance. The most long term relevant items in WoW crafting for example were always item augments. Enchants, gems, augments and so forth. That and bags of course.

Indeed.

Item augmenting could be a good idea as well, but I doubt it's within the scope of this revamp.

[azrael4h]

Deathblock seems to be one of the effects that's not listed as it's both a static effect and isn't exclusive to either rangen or crafted. As we know it drops and it doesn't appear on the rangen exclusive list.

Adding the list of static effects, such as this, that aren't exclusive would be nice.

It looks like these lists aren't remotely complete, either due to effects being removed entirely without No Worries actually knowing about it (Smiting, Disruption, Banishing) or because the effect is generally not notable except against Beholders. And a lot of players use Spell Absorption items there where ever possible.

[mikarddo]

It's a snapshot in time, yet - gear is constantly flowing in/out of chests. It's not just 10 items, that was an estimate from a snapshot in time. We hit the max in our chests continuously, for both Member and Officer chests, with gear flowing in/out. It's like a Fed-Ex distribution center (you wouldn't accuse Fed-Ex of only moving 10 packages a day? ) As for our numbers, we lost about 1/3 of the guild (~250) from the month of lag, but that's another topic for other threads, so we don't have all 750 active (about 400-500 active as of today).

And as for RGL having no place - what's wrong with it having a lessening position over time, and especially inside Guilds that could potentially craft equal/better gear? That then lends toward the Social aspects of DDO, that players would want to socialize and communicate with each other about what gear they want crafted.

Have we all forgotten Gary Gygax's quote, "D&D is a Social Game." -- ?

Seems like we have, and that some statistical troll wants to preserve their loot system design.

If CC could make the same level of power as perfect RGL at will RGL would be pointless within weeks (atleast for level 1-25, maybe a bit later for higher levels). Thats the issue here. Whereas not giving out perfect items from CC at will means both system have a place - afterall, even your guild probably cannot produce 10-15 perfect RGL items on any given ML with the exact combinations wanted every day so crafting the missing pieces to fill holes will still be very usefull.

Besides, your very argument that having a lessened position over time applies just as easily to CC gear which indeed may experience a lessened position over time compared to RGL and even more probably to named loot - but isnt that the case for everything in an MMO? So, that one goes both way. Likewise the social element argument - there is just as much social interaction in sharing random loot as that will be in sharing CC crafted items. So I fail to see how your argument supports either way.

[Dandonk]

If CC could make the same level of power as perfect RGL at will RGL would be pointless within weeks (atleast for level 1-25, maybe a bit later for higher levels). Thats the issue here.

That's depends entirely on the cost of the highlevel items. They don't have to be as cheap and easy to find the ingredients for as they are currently.