Update 32 on Lamannia: Cannith Crafting Preview

[Ellihor]

My best crafter is around lv 70 on each school. Do you think I should level them all to 150 before the update or should I save the essences and do the levling after it? fyi I don't have many collectables if that changes something

[BigErkyKid]

Me and my seldom-used but handy army of 5 dual boxes would be fine with it. Personally though when the level cap was 20 the game had alot of more casual-friendly loot options including festivals and cannith crafting. Cannith Crafting should be casual-friendly at least for bta. Maybe implement your idea for unbound, but I am guessing it's too late for a major change like that.

Now they need to make festivals have current gear and the game will be more casual-friendly again.

This is way too grindy to be casual friendly. Getting all the mats, not restricted to PED, but in general, has always been quite difficult. The way to go is to do TRs and be a bit OCD clicking on collectibles, but still takes time for that.

This cannith crafting is just throwing a bone to the old crafters, I am not sure anyone newish to the system has a shot at it. I have a bunch of collectibles in a mule, but I am not excited by the prospects of having to go to a bunch of heroic quests to click on bookshelves.

[slarden]

My best crafter is around lv 70 on each school. Do you think I should level them all to 150 before the update or should I save the essences and do the levling after it? fyi I don't have many collectables if that changes something

That is the same level roughly as my guild leader and I did a quick compare and I would say if you spend time now getting some TP from favor, use that to buy 1-2 crafting xp and some crafting success boosts you should wait.

despite what others are saying I am convinced it's easier to level with the new system, but you must use the essence-only options and save all collectibles and shards for actual crafting items you want.

also 10% success booster is available from house c vendor. Use that for some recipes and use the 35% boosters for the crazy low % ones - 3% chance = huge xp so 38% chance at that still worth it if you do the math.

xp pot for 30 min = 40 tp. 25x 35% success booster = 150tp

For someone like you that is probably no more than a few hours of leveling on a TR so these store options work for people that can't afford to spend real $.

[slarden]

This is way too grindy to be casual friendly. Getting all the mats, not restricted to PED, but in general, has always been quite difficult. The way to go is to do TRs and be a bit OCD clicking on collectibles, but still takes time for that.

This cannith crafting is just throwing a bone to the old crafters, I am not sure anyone newish to the system has a shot at it. I have a bunch of collectibles in a mule, but I am not excited by the prospects of having to go to a bunch of heroic quests to click on bookshelves.

They would need to lower collectible cost on bta to make it more casual-friendly agreed, but it only means they can make less stuff not that they can't progress.

I started this game with ftp and was very casual at the time cc came out and I got into that system and it was a driver for me to stretch and try new things. I found it very friendly because I could do it at my own pace and it didn't require others to help me. The new system seems much easier and faster.

If you are using collectibles to level you are doing it wrong. Save those for actual recipes. Use only essences to level.

[lotterholt]

So someone pulled this the other day and I want one, but the odds of me getting the lore and insightful con on the same item is pretty darn low. Can I craft this?

I am really hoping the new system will let you craft 99% of items that will drop from the random loot table, otherwise what is the point?

[slarden]

So someone pulled this the other day and I want one, but the odds of me getting the lore and insightful con on the same item is pretty darn low. Can I craft this?

I am really hoping the new system will let you craft 99% of items that will drop from the random loot table, otherwise what is the point?

Best possible kinetic lore 23/electric resist 57/ ins con +7 with 2 slots (excluding glitches on lam)

[Thrudh]

Not at all. Here is a way to make me happy:

- Drop all previous ingredients from high end recipes. Let it be used on the old ones.
- Set extreme difficulty encounters as optionals in all new quests. Those encounters drop with high likelihood some collectibles.
- For some of the most powerful items, set the optionals in raids.

There. A system gated by difficulty, it now increases the value of optionals. You feel you are heading into a nightmarish challenge to obtain that awesome artifact to craft...

Much more satisfying that the current farmville.

I agree with BigErkyKid. Therefore it must the right thing to do.

[cdbd3rd]

....
- Set extreme difficulty encounters as optionals in all new quests. Those encounters drop with high likelihood some collectibles.
- For some of the most powerful items, set the optionals in raids.....

...I am hoping you're not really suggesting that.

Raiders & power-gamers already have several crafting systems; Green Steels, Thunder-Forged, etc. CC has been from the get-go a casual-friendly system with minimal 'special ingredient' farming required. Above all else, CC should retain that characteristic.

I agree with BigErkyKid.....

edit:
Okay, I am caught up on the thread now. I guess you are kinda serious about hiding some drops in raids & such. That would be a great disappointment if that happens.


I am not currently planning on updating my Llama for this, so am relying on threads like this for info. I see long-time crafters are concerned about the numbers of required collectibles. I saw what happened with collectible turn-ins at NPCs, and will hate to see those kind of inflated numbers in CC.

2nd edit: I am reading that new crafted shards are not re-deconnable? Sincerely hope that changes.

[PsychoBlonde]

What are the odds that RNG produces something better than some of this CC stuff? Really, what are the odds? Because just saying that it is "possible" doesn't cut it.

Based on my IG experience, pulling a 15 DEX / 7 INS DEX / 60 HAMP is extremely unlikely. Heck, even a 15/7 ability alone is very unlikely. So saying people can do better by waiting for random loot to drop that stars aligned combination is hardly a consolation. In addition to the fact that star aligned combinations are just a matter of plain luck, not of successfully beating a challenge.

Let me put it this way: the more powerful the stuff (loot, PLs) gated behind grind is, the more this game becomes a grinding rather than challenging game.

This CC update is going to bring in a lot of grind into the game, basically running old eberron epics for tokens to turn into eberron fragments (and old eberron quests are vastly outdated in terms of power), and looting as many quests as possible otherwise (to level your crafter).

Frankly, unless they start putting collectables in end game chests with drop rates tied to difficulty, I see absolutely no room for CC being a nice addition to the game.

As far as I can tell, there's no way on the new CC to make double stat items (like 15 Con/16 strength--several of which I already have). I'm kinda hoping they intend to KEEP it that way, too, as that's a good way to distinguish random loot from the CC stuff.

Pure +6 stat items and similar were very rare in the old system, too.

[slarden]

I agree with BigErkyKid. Therefore it must the right thing to do.

Few people on Sarlona raid more than me and I haven't found an LE encounter I can't solo with full scaling so it would be no problem for me.

However, we already have Shroud crafting gated by raiding. We have thunderforged crafting gated by raiding. Most of the best armor in the game requires raiding.

I don't see why we can't have this crafting system work for the whole community regardless of whether they raid and regardless of the difficulty they run. It was that way in the old system with the exception of a few unbound raid items and unbound ingredients that rarely dropped below the highest difficulty.

[PsychoBlonde]

oh, and apparently you cap out around 381ish? I can't get any higher without spending a TON of the newer collectibles (which are a PITA to get right now).

The devs said that some "endgame" style recipes weren't implemented yet, so there's going to be some stuff out at the fringe there later on.

[lostgunman]

As far as I can tell, there's no way on the new CC to make double stat items (like 15 Con/16 strength--several of which I already have). I'm kinda hoping they intend to KEEP it that way, too, as that's a good way to distinguish random loot from the CC stuff.

Pure +6 stat items and similar were very rare in the old system, too.

You can do some Dual stat items, mainly very specific ones. I think Cha/Dex can be done on a ring. (I know rings can use Dex as a suffix)

[mr420247]

Just got 1 question can u craft a stat w the matching insightful stat or not

If so great if not meh wont waste my time

[lostgunman]

Just got 1 question can u craft a stat w the matching insightful stat or not

If so great if not meh wont waste my time

Yes you can. Made a few to see how big a difference they were...really nice, but REALLY expensive in terms of collectibles.

[BigErkyKid]

Few people on Sarlona raid more than me and I haven't found an LE encounter I can't solo with full scaling so it would be no problem for me.

However, we already have Shroud crafting gated by raiding. We have thunderforged crafting gated by raiding. Most of the best armor in the game requires raiding.

I don't see why we can't have this crafting system work for the whole community regardless of whether they raid and regardless of the difficulty they run. It was that way in the old system with the exception of a few unbound raid items and unbound ingredients that rarely dropped below the highest difficulty.

It is not about raiding or not, it is about how you gate power.

MMOs use power as a carrot for people to run stuff. What you need to do to acquire that power defines the game. More formally, in game theory a game is defined by a set of possible actions and their corresponding pay offs.

In DDO there is already a lot of power to be gained simply from grinding. PLs, ePLs, those are being acquired at light speed by merging through quests with no risk of failure. Even more, horrible drop rates moved people to raiding ENx20 for a while.

The current doubling of drop rates in legendary raids for higher difficulties was a step in the right direction. But this is a step back, since anyone trying to get all the power from the game will be incentivized very heavily to invest in crafting. A lot of recipes use low level quest collectibles which are stupidly easy to get, yet subject to bad luck and tedious to gather.

If I were to make this system accessible for everyone, not simply a silly grind, and include the challenge-reward framework, I'd do the following:

- Let the common not uber recipes use only common ingredients that drop everywhere (every end chest). This way people will be able to craft without much trouble. The stats on those items should be lower than they are right now

- Have special ingredients for crafting powerful items come from difficulty gated optional encounters. Extreme challenge optionals scaled to be fought at level 30.

This allows everyone to participate. A more casual player, or someone just interested TRing and what not can participate in the system and has a way to acquire decent loot without raiding or too much hassle. People seeking extreme challenges and further power can then try to beat those encounters.

Instead what we are seeing is a system that requires extreme grind. Maybe the levels are slightly better, but the ingredient cost is high. To be able to craft some stuff without waiting for years of TRs, people are going to be farming the locations of some of the ingredients. It is not a system that will be fun because it is too hard to participate, and even if you participate, to do so effectively and be able to craft a bunch you'll kind forced to go out of your way to get those collectibles. With the issue that getting the collectibles is not a fun task per se.

I may sound critical, but I am not irrationally so.

[PsychoBlonde]

All righty, I just checked and doing ANY kind of reincarnation, even a lesser, resets your crafting XP gain, so I was able to get TWO big hits in a row from the SAME recipe (over 2000 xp each--this was on a different toon than my main crafter so she's quite low-level)

So it seems like the very most efficient way to level (if you don't mind using some DDO store points) will be:

1.) Get COMPLETELY ready to reincarnate
2.) Buy a modest stack of 35% success boosters.
3.) Get a crafting xp pot.
4.) Make some easy stuff until you just barely get to 3% success possible on the next highest ML shard.
5.) Make that shard using 35% success boosters
6.) reincarnate
7.) Make that shard again

The only problem is that crafting XP pots don't persist through reincarnation, so you'll have to use a bunch of pots to do this--however, they're also fairly CHEAP in DDO points (or you can just do without the pots).

Note that this also assumes you were going to reincarnate ANYWAY--this is going to be rough on me because my crafter is also my most-reincarnated character already! I may wind up going for triple epic completionist on her after all!

[lostgunman]

BUT, if you just want to overhaul the currently implemented system (Which is a lot easier) then this way works, but needs some modifications to be better. It'll never be perfect, because everyone has a different definition of perfect...

[PsychoBlonde]

It is not about raiding or not, it is about how you gate power.

Eh . . . no. None of these items are going to radically contribute to toon POWER, only CONVENIENCE. I can do all the highest-level content already with the half-assed gear my lazy butt is willing to grind for.

Knowing how systems work and how to use them is a lot more important for character power than GEAR. It really is much of a prestige thing for people who like to play inventory tetris and assemble some sort of "perfect gear system" where they never have to swap items out. Not having to swap items in order to find all the traps doesn't make my character a better trapper, it's just mildly more convenient.

POWER per se is not really "gated" in this game. Being able to do several things at the same time and respond rapidly to changing situations is what's gated. But if you're just concerned with your ability to hit really frickin hard there's not going to be any change here.

[Mindos]

Pick me, I know!

It is a text issue due to being a percentage value and is on my list of things to fix.

This is a problem! NoWorries makes his new system, works on making it better as he should!
QA does its job, logging and listing problems.

Where is the dropdown box option for communication problem?

In an ideal production environment, NoWorries would either:
1. Work on his new system, tweaking and adjusting until ready- no need to share with others problems or steps, he's working on it continuously, or:
2. Log known issues with said new system with QA when going live, or live ish.

I just want more talk. This is how things get missed, forgotten, and lost...

[PsychoBlonde]

...or just their recipes?

I'm going through my crafter's gargantuan ingredients bag, where all of the shards I ever created while leveling are still sitting. I'm going through them right now and deconstructing them since it looks like old shards are going to disappear when the new update goes live. However, I was going to keep the flexible ones since they were going to become irreplaceable.

Then it occurred to me that they might ALL be disappearing in a few days. Is that so? Should I deconstruct every shard in my bag?


Thanks.

I would recommend deconstructing your old shards--some people on Lamma were having a problem where they couldn't get the old shards out of bags for some reason.

Hopefully they will have this fixed, but, well . . . best not to test it?