The real cost of crafting leveling

[ElrondElfKing]

I've been reading the forum threads on crafting leveling guides and something is really bugging me- the actual cost in dollars of leveling.

Assuming you are leveling from level 1 to 371, and a current exchange rate of 15,750 DDO points for $100 (sale going on) = 157 DDO points per $1. The normal exchange rate is 11,000 points per $100 (if memory serves) = 110 DDO points per $1, so considerably more expensive than my calculations below.

RESOURCES NEEDED (crafting minimum level shards only):
1. 100 % Crafting Experience Elixirs at 40 DDO points x 2 each (the consensus seems to be that no more than 2 are needed) = 80 points or roughly $0.51. Peanuts. I don't know why people are agonizing over the cost differential between 100% and 75% elixirs.
2. 35% Crafting Success Boosters at 150 DDO points for a stack of 25 (consensus seems to be that 25 are enough) = roughly $0.95. Again, why are people agonizing over the cost differential between the 35% and 10% boosters.
3. Cannith Essences. Here's the kicker that perplexes me. The consensus seems to be that approximately 50,000 of these are needed if using items 1 and 2 above. A stack of 1000 essences is 895 DDO points, or $5.70. Multiply that times 50 stacks = $285!!! WHAT? At the normal exchange rate of 110 DDO points per dollar, that comes to $406.

Cannith essences drop from chests a few at a time. I don't know how many lives it would take to collect enough.

Stacks of 1000 go for 1 million plat on the auction. So 50 of these for 50 million plat? I'm grinding out my second life, and I only have a little less than 1 million plat.

Dissolving items. From a very quick test I conducted, I was getting 4-6 essences per dissolution. At an average of 5 essences per dissolution, you would have to dissolve 10,000 items.

This is insane. Am I missing something?

[C-Dog]

...
RESOURCES NEEDED ...

First, you don't "need" all that, and certainly not from the DDO Store. What you need is a spare Character Slot and a Shared Bank, and a willingess to create/delete multiple drones that can run the Crafting Tutorial. OR, alternately, a toon that has enough Cannith favor to simply buy the boosts for plat from the Cannith Patron.

You only "need" those items if you want to absolutely minimize the time to grind up to crafting level 300++.

Dissolving items. From a very quick test I conducted, I was getting 4-6 essences per dissolution...

This is insane. Am I missing something?

That low ML items produce MUCH less essence than high-level.

A ML 1 item will produce 1 essence, occasionally 2. A ML 10 item will produce roughly* around 4-8 or so. A ML 20 will produce 15-30 or so, and a ML 30 might produce 25-40 or so. I'm guessing yours were around ML 8 or so - close?

(* VERY rough estimates. Note that the ratio of ML:Essences is not a simple one - it starts @ about 1:1 for ML 1, then drops through most of heroics, climbs again toward end heroics (high-teens), and then explodes once you get over 20.)

So - if you're running favor runners and grinding ML 5-6 Harbor/Market droploot, yes, very slow. If you have a toon in Epics who's bringing home ML 25-30 items, MUCH better return on time invested.

Stacks of 1000 go for 1 million plat on the auction...

Well... some sellers have an asking price of 1,000/essence - the fact that you're seeing those prices implies that those offers are not flying off the shelves. I'm guessing that if you start to haunt the AH, you'll see (much!) lower prices that don't last very long at all.

[Mornyngstar]

From normal questing and just dissolving as I go, I accumulate about 100k-110k per month of casual play. The trick is the high level items give you way more essence then the low level random gear. I do save out the slotted items that look good for future crafting so lose some potential essence that way. Currently I am sitting on 190k of Essence but have been away from the game the last few months. (I am not a hoarder just a collector lots of stuff!)

[ElrondElfKing]

I have one character on his second life at level 13, and another that lies idle at level 18, first life. I'm afraid it will take forever to grind 50K essences.

[C-Dog]

Depending what price (in platinum) you put on your time, you can also buy cheap trashloot off the AH. Often items are selling for the equivalent of only a couple/few hundred/essence, sometimes less.

But despair not, it will come, it all adds up.

And remember - that 50k estimate is (almost certainly?) re achieving Crafting Level 400. At CL 250, you can create every effect you want and ML shards up to 25 so long as ithey're BtA, and at CL < 300 you've got every ML shard you need. That last 100 is probably about half the struggle.

[spyder7723]

I have one character on his second life at level 13, and another that lies idle at level 18, first life. I'm afraid it will take forever to grind 50K essences.

It won't take long at all. Take your 18 to cap and decon all trash loot along the way. You will have all the essences you need to gain enough crafting levels to craft any bta shard you want.

[ElrondElfKing]

Depending what price (in platinum) you put on your time, you can also buy cheap trashloot off the AH. Often items are selling for the equivalent of only a couple/few hundred/essence, sometimes less.

But despair not, it will come, it all adds up.

And remember - that 50k estimate is (almost certainly?) re achieving Crafting Level 400. At CL 250, you can create every effect you want and ML shards up to 25 so long as ithey're BtA, and at CL < 300 you've got every ML shard you need. That last 100 is probably about half the struggle.

I just raised my level from 153 to 187 using the 5K essences I had in stock, so in all, not so bad. I had thousands of the old lesser essences I was able to trade in at the rate of 5:1, so that gained me some more essences.

[ElrondElfKing]

It won't take long at all. Take your 18 to cap and decon all trash loot along the way. You will have all the essences you need to gain enough crafting levels to craft any bta shard you want.

Thank you. I think that's the way to go.

[spyder7723]

Thank you. I think that's the way to go.

It really is. I would be shocked if you didn't have enough essences by the time you hit 30, unless of course you level by running slayers which have very few chests in comparison to regular questing. Tho it could be argued that it is actually faster to level with slayers and then spend time farming high level quests such as ravenloft and white plume mountain. And that actually might be right. I can level from 20 to 29 in less than 6 hours utilizing slayer and xp pots.

I think I'd look at it as a overall plan, accomplish many goals at once. Just brain storming here so no hard numbers. I would assume almost every one wants the named gear from ravenloft, and sentient xp. Plus it is much easier to run level 29/30 quests on elite with a 29/30 character than it is to be running a level 20 to 25 elite quest with a 20 to 25 character. So rushing to 29/30 then farming for RL gear, using extras for sentient food and vendor trash for deconning is probably the fastest way to accomplish all 3 goals. Add in a 4th goal of getting reaper xp Ann's it looks even faster.

All boils down to does a person want to accomplish goals one at a time or concurrently.

[cdbd3rd]

...

Stacks of 1000 go for 1 million plat on the auction. So 50 of these for 50 million plat? I'm grinding out my second life, and I only have a little less than 1 million plat.

...

You've gotten good feedback on your points already, so I'll just add mine about the plat cost of essences. I've set my own value on them at ~500p per essence. If I find them on the AH for that or lower, I buy them.

As mentioned, higher level items give a considerably better return on item level/value than lower. (An issue I've tried campaigning against in the past)

Obviously the best value you'll get on essences is deconning what trash loot you get yourself.

Cannith Crafting isn't a sprint. Keep at it and you'll get there.

[Saekee]

save up all essences and boosters for a special crafting booster weekend. Really, wait wait and wait. The go crazy. You will run out of essences in ten minutes...

The real cost is the time going to a decon machine and crunching away. Calculate THAT in minutes...

Aim for around 270 CC or so just so you can make insightful shards. Then things get easy for heroics. CC a ML 20 gearset and target named gear for cap play anyway

[spyder7723]

save up all essences and boosters for a special crafting booster weekend. Really, wait wait and wait. The go crazy. You will run out of essences in ten minutes...

The real cost is the time going to a decon machine and crunching away. Calculate THAT in minutes...

Aim for around 270 CC or so just so you can make insightful shards. Then things get easy for heroics. CC a ML 20 gearset and target named gear for cap play anyway

A cannith crafting station on the guild ship saves tons of running time. So does teleport scrolls, which even low skill point classes can umd at level 30. unfortunately there is no way to speed up the actual decon process.


Edit to add: for anyone starting up the crafting process of the game, while deconning trash loot watch for and save anything with an empty green. Those are the best cause they can hold any of the augments except red.

[EllisDee37]

1. 100 % Crafting Experience Elixirs at 40 DDO points x 2 each (the consensus seems to be that no more than 2 are needed) = 80 points or roughly $0.51. Peanuts. I don't know why people are agonizing over the cost differential between 100% and 75% elixirs.
2. 35% Crafting Success Boosters at 150 DDO points for a stack of 25 (consensus seems to be that 25 are enough) = roughly $0.95. Again, why are people agonizing over the cost differential between the 35% and 10% boosters.

Really only one 100% potion is required. As someone else mentioned, you'll blow through all your essences in 10 minutes. If you're starting at level 0, your very first success jumps you up to like crafting level 80. Have 40 TP on-hand to buy a second potion if needed to finish your session, but don't actually buy it until your first potion expires.

Definitely agree with only needing a single pack of 35% boosters. I recommend one pack (25 count) of 35% boosters, then run the tutorial 5 or 10 times for another pack (25 to 50 total) of 25% boosters, getting 5 BTA 25% boosters each tutorial.

Finally, if you have the cannith favor -- which you'll need anyway for the cannith marks to apply a third effect to crafted items -- buy like 50 10% boosters for plat.

The final goal is crafting level 321. This lets you attempt ML34 shards at 3%. You can either stop here, or if your potion is still going and you have the essences, craft a bunch for later use. The only reason to level beyond 321 is to get a higher % on ML34 shards, and once you reach 321 you're only making ML34 shards to level, so either way you slice it, 321 is pretty much the finish line.

Once you reach 321, ALL boosters you have left can be freely "wasted" on the ML34 shards, and you no longer need to stress about maximizing crafting xp so you don't have to wait for a bonus weekend or spend TP on an xp potion. (But a free 75% potion from the tutorial never hurt...) Before 321, I tried to aim for 35% boosters on 3% to 30% shards (38% to 65% with booster), 25% boosters on 35% to 65% shards (60% to 90% with booster), and 10% on 90% or above to guarantee 100%. You very quickly develop a feel for your preferred cutoffs, and no matter the cutoff you choose, you'll feel quite relieved every time you switch over from store-bought 35% boosters to freely farmed 25% boosters, so you can't really have too many 25% boosters to switch to.

3. Cannith Essences. Here's the kicker that perplexes me. The consensus seems to be that approximately 50,000 of these are needed if using items 1 and 2 above. A stack of 1000 essences is 895 DDO points, or $5.70. Multiply that times 50 stacks = $285!!! WHAT? At the normal exchange rate of 110 DDO points per dollar, that comes to $406.

Others have explained that higher levels get more essences, but they haven't explicitly described the scale of it.

When setting up my Collectable Valuation Project, I wanted to set the price to a scale of essences, but for that I needed a basic value for them so I tested a baseline essence rate from epic dailies. So I took one of my gimp characters (all my characters were always gimp) and true soloed epic dailies for almost exactly 1 hour. The results from that test:

Did a daily epic run tonight to test:

Tobias EH => VON3 EN => Spies EN => Mirror EN

Total time to log in, run the four quests, decon all the loot and rebuff (to be ready to go the next day) was 60:32, and I generated 699 essences. EH Tobias slows me down a solid 5 minutes compared to EN, but it's probably worth it for the Ornate Charms.

That's 3632 seconds to generate 699 essences, which is so close to exactly 700 essences per hour that I'm comfortable declaring it exactly 700/hour and calling the difference a rounding error. Keep in mind I was soloing, not bothering with a hire, running on a gimp, and that hour (and 32 seconds!) included the time spent logging in, running all the quests, deconning all the loot, rebuffing and logging off.

It's worth pointing out that that same hour generating 700 essences also generates useful epic xp, either for leveling your character, an epic destiny, karma for epic reincarnation, or (for you when you first get there) all three at the same time.

After a week of only playing one hour a day on one character without ever needing to group with anyone and you're already at 5000 essences, and that's with the bare minimum investment. You can see how quickly essences pile up in epics, and why someone upthread estimated 100k or more essences per month of casual play.



In the end, leveling a crafter takes 190 TP (possibly 230 if you need a second potion), around an hour repeatedly running the crafting tutorial on freshly rolled throwaway alts (prefereably bladeforged or a veteran status character since they start much closer to the house kundarak crafting hall), a crafting bonus weekend, and an epic reincarnation's (or three's) worth of essences. If you're really cheap, you can farm up that 190-230 TP with throw-away favor farmers at 75 TP a pop, which is definitely tedious but not quite as bad as you might imagine.

My advice is to focus on stockpiling essences while you wait for a crafting weekend. If crafting potions/boosters go on sale before that of course buy them, but if they don't just wait until the crafting weekend is announced and buy them then. Either way, if you're a little short of the TP needed, that's where favor farming really shines. (It's terrible for generating 600 TP to buy an adventure pack, but if you only need 150 TP or less, favor farming isn't bad at all. A third circuit gets annoying, but just two 75 TP runs? No problem.)

Also, if the weekend is announced and you're short of your essence goals, you can very rapidly farm up an unlimited amount at a rate of 2500 essences pure hour, sustained, if you have the help of a couple friends. (The 2-man version is still pretty good if you can only convince one friend to join you.) These groups are much easier to get going once the crafting weekend starts.

I personally farmed up around 20,000 to 25,000 essences in three days using that technique when leveling my dualbox account's crafter, since the crafting bonus weekend hit when I only had like 10,000 essences. (That account only needed level 260-ish since my highest level dualbox character is level 21.) The bonus was announced on a Wednesday, I farmed up 8k essences each on Thursday, Friday and Saturday, then on Sunday I did a couple favor runs and spammed the crafting tutorial for boosters. Sunday night was a quick 10-minute crafting session and my dualbox crafter was finished. Yeah, that week of DDO was brutally grindy, and i think I took a week-long break from DDO to recover, but I never had to level another crafter again.

[ElrondElfKing]

You have given great advice. You are all truly masters, and head & tails above my skill. I don't think I'm ready to level from 20 to 29 in 6 hours, or farm 25,000 essences in 3 days, but as I progress my toon from his present 18 to cap, I hope I can get better at speed playing for xp and essences. You have all offered some great advice and a lot of tips that I will incorporate into my play.

For myself, farming and leveling right now is more about non-gimping my characters so I don't keep dying (can't farm or level if you're dead several times a quest), so that has been my main goal since getting back into the game a couple of months ago. I think this frustration was the reason I left the game, but this time I'll try to grind past my frustration until I learn how to create a character that is strong and viable. And I'm sure my lack of skill at the game is a major factor.

I just lesser TR'ed my level 18 toon to an Unbongwa build, so I'm hoping this makes me a little more viable as I level.

[rayworks]

Also, you get crafting xp from crunching items. Last time I was leveling my crafter, she was getting 5 xp per item crunched. The items were in the 18-20 ML range as I recall. It all adds up. Keep plugging away.

[ElrondElfKing]

So I switched to my 18 barb and have been getting 19-22 essences per item, which is much better than the 5 or 6 from my 13 fighter. I'll plan to cap this guy and use him to farm essences and gear for my primary character as he rides the completionist train.