Building a minimal viable economy - update


Pathfinder Online

Grand Lodge Goblin Squad Member

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So - I was about to build up a minimal viable economy for fighters/wizards - later on rogues and clerics

Here is the experience so far:
I did base the whole operation in Phoenix Pass. This alows good access to iron and coal which are necessary for weapons and armour.

I originally assumed XP is the bottleneck. I learned since that this is the truly easy part.

Crafting - for what I want - level 3 smelter, armoursmith and weaponmaster you need 6 ranks as crafter. This means 6 common/uncommon tier 1 items to be crafted.
This means you will have to take a few level 1 crafting feats to do this quickly. Good ones are sawyer (common and umcommen = 2) and tanner.
You don't get extra craftin on different levels aka steel blanks level 1 and copper bar level 2.

This is not a true problem - it just means 2 1/4 hour extra per craft that you learn in addition.

This leads to ingredients. I said I selected Phoenix Pass as it offers ore and coal. But it completely lacks hides as far as I can tell so far. I finally found a reliable hide source - 8 hexes away. So this is an issue. The bright side - this allowed me also to find and confirm reliable sources for copper and even the elusive hemp. All these do exist - but depending where you are you might have to either trade or walk a long way to gather.
I think this is very good long term as it forces interaction and travel - it can be frustrating short term if you wander aimlessly. The copper source I picked up from a posting here on the boards. Hides I'm still looking close to a place mentioned here - but I found an alternative one.

Apothecary - if you need this, then Thornkeep is currently the only option as they have the wrong trainer.

This leades to crafting / recipes and the next surprises. First it seems you need a minimal number of crafting ranks for some recipes to show up. Train weaponsmith 1 and nothing shows up. I now have weaponsmith 2 and 3 ranks and now I can see the dagger as recipe. So just because it is as level 1 doesn't mean it will show up.

Now to get to level 3 you also have to craft an uncommon item first. For weaponsmith this is a dagger as easiest bit to do. A dagger takes 6 (?) hours - or was it 600 minutes ? - I'm now crafting my first +1 dagger and that takes with my weaponsmith 2 a total of 32 hours. So plan this well ahead.

This leads to armoursmith. The banded steel hide does not only take a long time to craft - it also means you need to gather 20 beast hides, refine them and then spend 30-40 hours to get your first armour crafted to be allowed to get to level 3.

I now have strips - but I left my beast hide source after I gathered around 15 and so I need to go back before I can do anything.

Are there shortcuts / alternative / faster ways? Possibly - but I'm slowly working out a reliable way to build up an economy as well as a the right steps to do and not being stumped and have to go back.

Working in a group helps - but my connection problems yesterday pretty much negated this.

The proper steps as far as I can tell is:
Step 1: Gather all the ingredients you need. No value in starting crafting if you haven't done that. Spend the time to gather enough at far away places. Nothing more annoying then to walk back 30 minutes to get the 1 extra beast pelt you need for the next step.
Working together helps here. Especially if you know where to go and don't have to wander and search until you find the right hex.
The only ingredient I haven't seen yet is adhesive - but maybe Hammerfall is very lucky and you find lots in swamp areas.
So the first XP are best spend on gathering skills/feats and maybe some fighting to take on some simple enemies.

Step 2: Learn refining next. Learn multiple refining feats. This gives you enough crafting ranks. Refining tends to be quick. You want 4-6 craft ranks thanks to refining.

Step 3: Now start crafting a tier 1 of what you want later as tier 3.

Off course some of the above can be done in parallel to optimize it and some can be helped by other players - for example gathering.

Specialise as crafter - I think in the early stages - DON'T. Be able to do multiple simple items. Specialicing comes in when you get recipes and want to go to tier 2 items. But anything tier 1, +0 is not worth to specialice in a single player/character. Redundancy and the crafting point gain outweight heavily the resources spend.

So what next?

My Weaponmaster waits for his +1 dagger to be finished tomorrow. I just hope this wasn't stupid as I'm not sure it counts to advance and I might have to do an extra 6 hours to do a +0 dagger - maybe.

My Armoursmith has steel plate and 5 refined hides but lacks 1 hide. That means 10 beast pelts or equivalent. If anyone tells me which direction from Rathlen to go? I know one hex further away but would prefer not to go that far.
Once this is done he will have to make a banded hide and steel to advance to armoursmith 3 and finally be able to produce chain shirts only with local ingredients.

Swords also will be much less depedent on beast pelts as 5 hides produce 25 and will last for several sword.

So far I really like the whole economy and the interplay. It is hard to start up as you have nothing and a lot depends on some bit here, some bit there, etc.

But with more experience this will be solved. And also more players will pool together.

Special thanks to Albadeon who gave me some beast pelts and +3 strips. Sorry the connection was so atrocious and I could hardly interact.

Goblin Squad Member

Hello,
after your connection was broken, I too decided to try setting this up alone amongst my three characters. I've moved the operation to Thornkeep, to allow for access to a working Apothecary for the future, as well as easier access to a potential market.

The current setup is this:

Albadeon:
Miner 5, Scavenger 4, Dowser 1, Forrester 1, Tanner 1, Weaponsmith 2

Albatwo:
Sawyer 2, Gemcutter 1, Smelter 2, Armorsmith 2, Weaponsmith 2

Albathree:
Smelter 3, Icongrapher 2, Sage 2, Artificer 1

I mostly play with Albadeon, the others serve as storage/refiner/crafter, but are never actually out in the field. Albadeon has done all the resource gathering and prospecting.

I believe there is only one hex on the map with a reliable, strong source of Pelts and Hemp (aside from the occasional drops in forest trash piles and as loot), but that has been either picked clean or is defective. It's near Marchmont, possibly the one you were referring to, as well. Fortunately, when the map opens up, I expect there to be much better access to it, especially in the lowlands SW of Talonguard, that we are currently warned against entering.

I leveled Albatwo in both Armorsmith and Weaponsmith before realizing that the atrociously long crafting times in combinatoin with the inability to have parallel queues on one char, necessitated the spreading out of time-intensive crafting over multiple chars. Thus Albadeon became a Weaponsmith as well.

Crafting times are currently bugged, along with the display of skills on your character sheet, in sofar as you cannot raise skills that receive a racial bonus. However, as crafting skills play a vital role in determining crafting times, dwarven crafters are stuck at a skill of 20. A dwarven Armorsmith 3 should have a skill of 40, and thus half the crafting time, than it currently does.

As far as I know, Weaponsmith doesn't have a common Level 1 weapon; Dagger is a common level 2 weapon. I've found a recipe for Introductory holdout weapon, an uncommen level 1 weapon, and crafted that but it wouldn't accept that as prerequisite for Weaponsmith 3 (instead it wants a common +0 Tier 1 weapon). So there is now a dagger being forged and will be finished tonight, thus hopefully allowing me to level to Weaponsmith 3. Fortunately for Thod, I think that finishing a dagger +1 fulfills both the +0 and +1 achievements, though.

I also didn't realize how big an influence the +X makes with regard to crafting time. My smelter was basically blocked up for the entire day, after I happily had him start production on my new-found Steel blanks +3 recipe that went so well with my other recipe of Soldier's scale armor, an uncommon level 2 armor. The crafting time of that in a +2 version is however prohibitive (like 200h) at my skill level, so I watered it down and started crafting a +0 version (still 44h, but better than the Hide and steel banded for which I had also not prepared the necessary ingredients). Sadly, I assume that will not have been a good idea, either, after my experience with the introductory holdout weapon showed me that an uncommon recipe might not be good enough to advance my Armorsmith Level to 3...

In that context, I apologize to Thod for giving him those +3 straps; I thought I was being nice at the time :-). If I had realized how much this could slow production down, I might have at least offered a choice of lower quality materials.

In hindsight, it was really a bad idea to happily use all my found +X recipes; if I were to start over again, I would probably start a basic economy with just the +0 common items. In fact, while I initially thought that recipes would be a much sought after thing, that will probably only be true mid-term, with a few exceptions. To start out with, you can safely ignore all refining and many crafting recipes, especially since our starting charcters will take quite some time before they can first make use of anything but the occasional +1 item.

Refining and especially crafting times are simply a killer, especially with the bugged skills. Also, I have only realized too late that uncommon recipes probably don't count for the achievement requirement to level up to Crafter 3. A tough blow that cost me a few hours on the weaponsmith, but potentially 44h on the Armorsmith... And if true, that should be made clear to all beginning crafters!

Also, this could probably have been planned out better in a crafting group. I didn't start my characters with this idea (in fact, the original plan was for this to be a group effort, only none of my group ever showed up...), so some things are a bit haphazard. While I agree that at least in the beginning our crafters should focus on several things at the same time, keep in mind that many actual crafting tasks take a loooong time to finish during which these crafters cannot craft or refine anything else. It is probably a good ideas to give most crafters level 1 or 2 in several crucial refinig skills, to have them train up their requirements but also to ensure a steady supply.

Goblin Squad Member

Attempting to work up my gathering refining and crafting skills to where in a pinch (like now, when my starter peasant clothing is no more than a soiled thread and a memory)I can craft my own basic gear.

But I know I am going to need cotton underlay for my leathers and I cannot it seems find which craft teaches that. I just blew a grand and change in xp taking another rank of weaver... only to get hemp twine.

Such a disappointment.

Goblin Squad Member

Weaver is right, only you need weaver 7(!) for coarse padding. I think, they intend to change that, though...

Goblin Squad Member

Geesh! One can hope!

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