The tale of the three forks : the Cannith Crafting Update pass

[IronClan]

The only random thing that should be is % roll to see if you succesfuly created shard or wasted mats, not to see if you created +x or +y or what slot is it or whatever.


Yeah, because current check random junk, nothing better that stuff we already have dropped, after each run, AKA current system 2 weeks after new random items were added is soo much better.
After 2-3 weeks of looting legendary random item chests, chance to get something replacing items already farmed is lower than winnin that billion dollar lottery, so why bother.

Your post is so far along a fictional narrative that there's probably no use in replying. If you're not looking at loot that your own fault and I can't help you with your "woe is me the statistical chance of me pulling triple max roll items is not good enough to make me mouse over it" issue you have.

I pulled a Stunning item the other night that had 3 near max rolls which are all useful.. I've also made hundreds in shards selling decent items I've pulled. I consider this when i imagine you refusing to look at random items and I laugh. Of course you're only "refusing to look" on the forums to prop up your narrative... in the game you're mousing over stuff like everyone else is.

Sorry man the games not going to go back to only Named items being worth looking at, that was extremely unhealthy for the game, and populations appear to be healthier since they dropped that paradigm and put some Random loot exlax into this games constipated loot system.

[IronClan]

Note: cov's being duped or not is not important, most dupers get bored and leave in my experience (they have nothing to do) in any case, the reason why my suggestion has multiple stacks of stuff is that this makes duping or not less of a factor. Duped Fall of Truth COH's? Who cares you also need a thousand (or whatever) new raid runes and/or thousands of Remnants... For the same reason that TF crafting takes Ingots Scales and Phlogs, having multiple costs creates micro economies and more varied reasons to run content.

The added ingredients just make the opportunity cost higher and "sink" plat and COV's and remnants etc. out of the economy.

Coming up with "rare" and costly ingredients that people actually value is half the battle to making a crafting system that can make powerful stuff and keep it in check.

Using these rare drops to encourage running more varied content is also desirable, they did this with old cannith crafting and yes I've run Threnal because I needed the widget in the end reward, or Litany or whatever. So it does work, it's not much of a thing these days because almost no one uses Cannith crafting regularly.

[Ligraph]

Note: cov's being duped or not is not important, most dupers get bored and leave in my experience (they have nothing to do) in any case, the reason why my suggestion has multiple stacks of stuff is that this makes duping or not less of a factor. Duped Fall of Truth COH's? Who cares you also need a thousand (or whatever) new raid runes and/or thousands of Remnants... For the same reason that TF crafting takes Ingots Scales and Phlogs, having multiple costs creates micro economies and more varied reasons to run content.

The added ingredients just make the opportunity cost higher and "sink" plat and COV's and remnants etc. out of the economy.

Coming up with "rare" and costly ingredients that people actually value is half the battle to making a crafting system that can make powerful stuff and keep it in check.

Using these rare drops to encourage running more varied content is also desirable, they did this with old cannith crafting and yes I've run Threnal because I needed the widget in the end reward, or Litany or whatever. So it does work, it's not much of a thing these days because almost no one uses Cannith crafting regularly.

I get your point (especially about the duping), but I would prefer crafting ingredients for legendary level gear to be in legendary missions, epic in epic, heroic in heroic. Now if the devs make FoT legendary, or Abbot, then using CoHs and Litany drops would be awesome. But until then, it seems like just another grind, same as clicking buttons at a crafting machine.

If the only grind the devs were going to implement was "clicking on buttons at a crafting machine" or something similar, then this idea would work fine with me, but I would prefer crafting mats dropping from content be used to make gear which has a power level near the content the mats drop from. It also makes grinding for crafting mats a bit interesting, not just mass faceroll.

[Vellrad]

Your post is so far along a fictional narrative that there's probably no use in replying. If you're not looking at loot that your own fault and I can't help you with your "woe is me the statistical chance of me pulling triple max roll items is not good enough to make me mouse over it" issue you have.

I pulled a Stunning item the other night that had 3 near max rolls which are all useful.. I've also made hundreds in shards selling decent items I've pulled. I consider this when i imagine you refusing to look at random items and I laugh. Of course you're only "refusing to look" on the forums to prop up your narrative... in the game you're mousing over stuff like everyone else is.

Sorry man the games not going to go back to only Named items being worth looking at, that was extremely unhealthy for the game, and populations appear to be healthier since they dropped that paradigm and put some Random loot exlax into this games constipated loot system.

I made 400 shards during first 2-3 weeks.
Now apart from winning lotteries nothing sells.
Last item I managed to sell was +14stat (don't remember which)necklace of false life 50 or 54 (which is quite nice combo). It took 12 days to sell and sold for 4 shards.
So your server must be full of idiots overpaying for extremally popular items, or your 'I keep earning hundreds of shards on decent items all the time" is a fairy tale.
Good for you that ddo is now diablo clone, but I never understood why bother with clone instead of original stuff.

[UurlockYgmeov]

So additional thoughts after spending the day questing with guildies and pugs and discussing this topic.

Vanity Nameplating
As much as I know this is probably asking the night to be day, I still want to be able to put my name on the items crafted - even if it is just a vanity nameplate (Uurlock's Helm of Mighty Resplendent Halfling Glory) and reserved only for the max level possible of crafting. :P

Only the highest level crafters would be able to add their name to the name of the item. SO instead of being an Alluring Helm of Wizardry, it would be 'Uurlock's Alluring Helm of Wizardry'.

Material Crafting
Want Material Crafting as a part of new Cannith Crafting. Material Crafting allows the crafter the ability to modify / add base material to crafted objects. The more powerful / rare the base material the more powerful the crafter needs to be (higher level crafting).
Things like Magesteel, Planeforged, Spiritcraft, blueshine, would require something like level 30-50 (existing crafting levels).
More exotic would require 80-120, and the most exotic would require level 150-200.

Would need base 'ingot' to craft + crafting level. The base 'ingot' (ore) would be obtained by deconstructing items made out of desired base material (so a mithril chain shirt for mithril ingot(s)). Yes, another crafting ingredient - but would go into green bag, not be bound, and also go into shared crafting bank. Deconstructing items for the base material would give 1# of ingots (ore) per 2# weight of the original item, nothing else would be given back from deconstructing the item.

• Adamantine
• Blueshine
• Bone
• Byeshk
• Cloth*
• Cold Iron
• Crystal
• Darkleaf
• Darkwood
• Densewood
• Dwarven Iron
• Feyleather
• Flametouched Iron
• Flesh
• Force (material)
• Gem (material)
• Glass
• Ice
• Leather (material type)*
• Light
• Magesteel
• Mithral
• Planeforged Steel
• Rust
• Silver
• Spiritcraft Leather
• Spiritforged Iron
• Steel (material)*
• Stone
• Wood*

*base material types.

Clicky Crafting
As part of updated Cannith Crafting include the ability to craft clickies. Base level required to craft a ml:9, one use clicky of 1st level spell (from the allowed list) is crafting level 30.

What is required to craft a clicky is base crafting level + special ingredient; so as example an invisibility clicky needs 10 potions of invisibility per use (click).


Higher crafting levels allow for more uses per day, higher caster level, lower minimum level, and higher level spells.

An example would be:
so at crafting level 30: one click of level 1 spell, cast at level 1, with a minimum level of 9.


every 10 crafting levels higher - allows for increase of 1 step better

• +1 per click per day
• +1 per caster level
• +1 per spell level
• +1 per drop in 2 minimum levels

example (Protection from Elements(level 5 arcane), 3 uses per day, minimum level 1, cast at level 10):

• +4 to drop to minimum level to 1
• +3 for 3 uses
• +5 for level 5 spell
• +10 for 10th level caster
• would require stack of 5x100 level 10 protection from elements potions (one stack of 100 for each energy type).
• (4+3+5+10=22 *10 +30 (base)) = level 250 crafting level

NO rare spells like raise dead, teleport, dimension door, true seeing, displacement (except such as true seeing which would require a Stave of the Seer as consumable ingredient for)


Augment Slot Addition Crafting
As part of updated Cannith Crafting include the ability to add augment slots to crafted items. Low level crafting would be able to add a single colorless or yellow to an item.

• Add 1st slot
• +10 colorless
• +20 yellow
• +30 blue/red
• +40 green/orange
• +50 purple

• Add 2nd slot
• +50 colorless
• +60 yellow
• +70 blue/red
• +80 green/orange
• +90 purple

• Add 3rd slot
• +100 colorless
• +110 yellow
• +120 blue/red
• +130 green/orange
• +150 purple

examples:

• to add a single colorless slot to a crafted item would take crafting level 10. A single yellow would be crafting level 20.
• to add two colorless slots to a crafted item would take crafting level 60 (10+50).
• to add a colorless and a yellow to a crafted item would take crafting level (10+60).
• to add three purple slots to a crafted item would take crafting level 290 - so would not be possible if maximum crafting level is only raised to 200 (50+90+150).
• most (based upon assumption that maximum crafting level would only be raised to 200) could fit would be something like green(or orange)+yellow+colorless or two blue (or red) and one colorless.

Rules:

• none really.
• would prefer to see this require something rare like gems (yes - those useless things) being required - something like 1000 pp per required crafting level. So to add a single yellow slot would require 20,000 pp worth of random gems. At maximum would require 200,000 pp worth of gems. This would actually make random gems worth something! Initially gems would be not very scarce, but given time maybe gems would become valuable random loot again.
• Adding augment slots would not affect minimum level of the item!! Augment gems are already not as powerful at level already so this is already factored in.
• 2nd / 3rd slots might require something like purified dragonshard fragments.

3rd Effect Addition Crafting

As part of updated Cannith Crafting include the ability to add 3rd (and possible 4th effects) to crafted items. This would be available to only the highest level crafters. 4th effects would only be possible on two-handed items (quarterstaffs, etc).

Expanded Runestone Crafting
Existing Strengths:

Strength	Minimum level	Difficulty class	Level to craft
Minor	3	24	8
Lesser	8	29	38
Greater	13	34	68
Major	18	39	98
	ADD:
Epic	23	65	150
Legendary	29	99	200

[EllisDee37]

That's a common sentiment around here, you want to have your cake and eat it. But that comes with a steep price that you will have to pay, either:

1. fill all slots with max roll items rapidly and no longer have loot as a motivator to log in and play DDO thus making "crafting" a very short term wish fulfillment system that harms the game.

Or

2. Pay a massive cost to create a "guaranteed max roll item" that basically replicates some of the play hours that would have been required to find the item with luck of the roll. If this cost is too easily paid then refer back to 1, this cost needs to be SO STEEP that most of the players can not afford more than a few crafted "max roll" items per year.

Or

3. Crafted loot is pretty sub par and is not desirable to veteran players (aka 90% of the existing player base). thus development effort directed mostly towards a minority of players that many will complain about (including me).

Pick your poison.. er "cake"

Or, as was already mentioned repeatedly, have crafting be one step below max. Then crafted gear has a high value as placeholder loot, with lootgen having high value as the final loot. Simple solution, problem solved.

The value of "one step" would be a judgement call by the devs for each individual effect. Maybe Stat +12 insightful +5 as the cap for stats, for example. Now, if you plan on a +14/+7 int item for a wizard, you can at least easily craft up a +12/+5 to wear while you look for it.

If it's weaker than lootgen then what's the point?

As a placeholder until you win the lootgen lottery.

[Ligraph]

lots of stuff

I really like the material crafting idea. Either Wood, Cloth, and Steel ingots should be purchasable from vendors, or material crafting should replace blanks.

I would prefer it if base ingots were purchasable, and deconstructing for base items was changed to work one effect/slot/whatever at a time.

[UurlockYgmeov]

Or, as was already mentioned repeatedly, have crafting be one step below max. Then crafted gear has a high value as placeholder loot, with lootgen having high value as the final loot. Simple solution, problem solved.

As a placeholder until you win the lootgen lottery.

randomness has no place in crafting, period. I cannot state my opinion (and the opinion of everyone I talked to over the last couple of days concerning this).

---

General Statement of Opinion to Thread:
If you want random - play the lootgen lottery. Otherwise, pay the grindmonkey his dues, and get some crafting levels.

[EllisDee37]

I cannot stand ANY randomness in a crafting system. Total purpose of cannith crafting IMHO is to avoid the random loot gen lottery.

Agreed. This is why eveningstar challenge gear was a failure.

I want exactly the same randomness in cannith crafting as I want in greensteel crafting, for exactly the same reasons.

randomness has no place in crafting, period. I cannot state my opinion (and the opinion of everyone I talked to over the last couple of days concerning this).

If you want random - play the lootgen lottery. Otherwise, pay the grindmonkey his dues, and get some crafting levels.

I can't figure out why you quoted my post with this response. It's unrelated to anything I said.

[UurlockYgmeov]

Agreed. This is why eveningstar challenge gear was a failure.

I want exactly the same randomness in cannith crafting as I want in greensteel crafting, for exactly the same reasons.


I can't figure out why you quoted my post with this response. It's unrelated to anything I said.

apologies, I must have misunderstood your last post. I thought (and rightly so) we were on the same page concerning randomness. edited post to adjust that.

[mikarddo]

An interesting debate here. It will be fun to see what the devs come up with.

Will we only see low power items that are easy to make or will high power items that are in some way harder to make be added?

Will things be dirt cheap as in adding 3 slots for. 200kpp or costs 1000s of coh, raid runes or whatever?

Will we continue to craft shards or change to crafting full items as ML determines the values of the effects not the sum of different power level shards?

Will crafting use existing ings that may be compromised from duping or new?

Will craftings be bound or unbound?

Lots of good questions have been raised with proponents on both sides.

[Ligraph]

Yeah. Thanks to Uurlock for starting this.

[mikarddo]

Agreed. This is why eveningstar challenge gear was a failure.

If Eveningstar challanges had given a known combination of effects with only the values of the effects being somewhat randomized it would probably had been a success though. The failure was more due to the rare odds of getting the *effects* you wanted at all. Thus the comparison is flawled in my opinion to the point of being misleading.

Being able to craft for example a ML 30 Prudent Helm of Deadly with Insightful Prudent and knowing that you getting 11-14 wisdom AND Deadly 10-13 AND Insightful Wisdom 3-6 for certain with a chance for Masterful, Wonderous, Slot(s) etc would be nothing like Eveningstar Challenge randomness. (Numbers may be tweaked as needed). Infact, its not that far from the "placeholder" idea except with a bit of variation and an actual chance for something good.

I prefer that to the pure "placeholder" idea where you know you are getting 12 wis, 11 deadly and 4 ins wisdom and nothing more ever which would be a short lived system as you craft what you need early and once and thats it compared to crafting something useful early but (almost) always being able to go back and trying just once more to see if you can get an even better crafting done to upgrade the one you are wearing. It keeps the system alive for much longer with much more activity. Heck, it might even make crafting about making items you actually want rather than making 1000s of shards you have zero intention of using to skill up and then making a relative few shards you do want to use. Blasphemy, I know.

I also prefer it to the idea of needing 100+ CoH, 5000+ Raid Runes, CitW weapons, 5000+ remnants or whatever is deemed "rare and expensive" to craft the good stuff as that makes crafting bound to raiding rather than being ortogonal to it.

[Gremmlynn]

Crafting is almost literally skill-less. The sole prerequisites to crafting are some plat to buy deconstructors, etc, and being able to obtain an item from a chest to deconstruct.

I appreciate MMOs need grinds/time-sinks, but the ones that are raw time sinks with no skill component - like literally "how much did you play this week?" and "how much of it was spent clicking buttons on a crafting interface?" disgust me.

Crafting, unless there is some skill based element, like "do a raid to get a key component", should be bottom of the pile in terms of rewards and priorities.

I would use it solely as a mechanism to help new and casual players play with others in end-game-ish content, offering easy to get gear that's not close to the best of the best.

Making it a system with powerful rewards means adding some sort of treadmill - which can't be skill-based since it's intended to be a general a non-raid reward crafting system and therefore higher tiers must simply require more time investment.

Asking players to spend dozens of hours turning off their brains and clicking on nonsense interfaces is offensive and just rubbish design eliciting the worst of the worst in bad MMO design stereotypes.

I grinded up to ~130 divine, and ~100 arcane and elemental and feel dirty even thinking about that waste of my time - even within the context of a recreational game.

I see no reason players, aka paying customers, shouldn't have the choice of grind or skill. Loot isn't there to reward "winners", it's there to reward playing the game at all.

[EllisDee37]

Being able to craft for example a ML 30 Prudent Helm of Deadly with Insightful Prudent and knowing that you getting 11-14 wisdom AND Deadly 10-13 AND Insightful Wisdom 3-6 for certain with a chance for Masterful, Wonderous, Slot(s) etc would be nothing like Eveningstar Challenge randomness. (Numbers may be tweaked as needed). Infact, its not that far from the "placeholder" idea except with a bit of variation and an actual chance for something good.

I prefer that to the pure "placeholder" idea where you know you are getting 12 wis, 11 deadly and 4 ins wisdom and nothing more ever which would be a short lived system as you craft what you need early and once and thats it compared to crafting something useful early but (almost) always being able to go back and trying just once more to see if you can get an even better crafting done to upgrade the one you are wearing.

Fair enough.

I also prefer it to the idea of needing 100+ CoH, 5000+ Raid Runes, CitW weapons, 5000+ remnants or whatever is deemed "rare and expensive" to craft the good stuff as that makes crafting bound to raiding rather than being ortogonal to it.

On this we agree.

[Deathdefy]

I see no reason players, aka paying customers, shouldn't have the choice of grind or skill. Loot isn't there to reward "winners", it's there to reward playing the game at all.

That's not good logic. I could equally say, "I see no reason players, aka paying customers, shouldn't have the choice of a fishing mini-game or questing".

The point is there are finite resources and every system that has merited some of those resources must be designed to reward a particular type of interaction with the player.

That isn't to say most systems aren't a hybrid of grind and skill - e.g. Busting out 20 EN MoDs is like 90% grind, 10% skill. TF Crafting from EH Deathwyrm was probably about 50% / 50% once upon a time.

Systems that reward clicking buttons involving no skill, no teamwork, no timely responses, no strategy, very very little thought, no long term planning like character design, and nothing but hours invested - like Cannith Crafting is, and probably will be again - are everything wrong with MMOs. Apart from lag and ladder bugs

I concede even these systems yield some enjoyment - heck everyone likes getting 'more powerful' regardless of how - and if good design MMO is considered to be providing an "hours invested = tier of reward" option for people who are really into that over a more interesting system, so be it.

For my mind, I know the designers can do better than the current system's mindless grind.

[Sikaril_Shadowblade]

Hey , I like most ideas for the crafting pass stated here but I really really HATE the "add Raid Runes" or other Raid Items to the cannith crafting cost
Not everyone raids so please stop with the wanting to make cannith crafting into something only raiders can do . Raiders already have Thunder-forged and
Green Steel and no I have NEVER been on a raid since I started playing back in 2010 and I should not have to.

Sikaril

[RD2play]

Or, as was already mentioned repeatedly, have crafting be one step below max. Then crafted gear has a high value as placeholder loot, with lootgen having high value as the final loot. Simple solution, problem solved.

The value of "one step" would be a judgement call by the devs for each individual effect. Maybe Stat +12 insightful +5 as the cap for stats, for example. Now, if you plan on a +14/+7 int item for a wizard, you can at least easily craft up a +12/+5 to wear while you look for it.


As a placeholder until you win the lootgen lottery.

For any gear below ML30 this would still mean instant loot saturation. I understand, I was in your camp earlier but We have a NEW ran-gen system and thus we need a new Cannith Crafting system that supplements, not replaces it. Don't underestimate the importance these systems will have for the longevity of the game.

[Vanhooger]

I don't like crafting much but it can be used to make raid popular again. Put rare crafring ing in raid with higher chance on harder difficulty, here you got a raid scene again.

[RD2play]

randomness has no place in crafting, period. I cannot state my opinion (and the opinion of everyone I talked to over the last couple of days concerning this).

---

General Statement of Opinion to Thread:
If you want random - play the lootgen lottery. Otherwise, pay the grindmonkey his dues, and get some crafting levels.

My opinion is that I would hate to see yet another new system put into the game being invalidated by a system added one update later. So where I do agree it should not be like ES challenge where its fully random. I am still an advocate for being able to control the effects you get and to some degree the power. but you should not be able to go and have 100% success to get the best values, even if the max is lower than the in-game max, as this only holds for level 30 items.