Ryan: Hi, I'm Ryan, I'm the CEO of Goblinworks.
Stephen: And I'm Stephen, I'm a game designer at Goblinworks.
Ryan: Okay, so, today we're going to talk about the crafting system, which is one of the major system's we're adding just before we go into alpha test. I'm going to ask Steve two questions and he's going to try and explain how the system works. So, why don't you give us a quick overview of how the crafting system works.
Stephen: Okay, so it's changed a little bit since the last time we've had a blog post about it, but essentially we have three stages of crafting: we have the raw materials, the refining stuff, and the final crafted item that you can use. So each of these is sort of represented by a different group of skills. The harvesting/gathering system provides you the raw materials - you also get some from creature drops, and you'll get them from a few other places, but mostly they come in through gathering skills and your knowledge skills which let you get better loot from creatures when you're opening creature chests. Then once you've got these raw items, you can't really do anything with them until you've refined them into things like ingots, or planks, or what have you. Those are used in the final crafting system which takes those and turns them into a crafted item that you can attach to your character and do things with.
Ryan: So how do I convert the raw materials into the intermediate crafted stage?
Stephen: You're going to take them to a facility (which is what we're currently referring to the crafting or refining buildings [as]) which will be in your settlement, you can build them, you can upgrade them. There will be a few of them in the starting towns, like Thornkeep, that will probably max out into their efficiency and what things you can do there. So long term you're going to want to build them in your settlement for maximum speed and for the maximum number of recipes you can make.
Ryan: So a couple of times in blogs, we have talked about the idea that we are dividing items into these Tiers: Tier 1, Tier 2, and Tier 3. Could you talk about what a Tier is and what the mechanics of a Tier are?
Stephen: The central feature of a Tier is a comparison of attack bonus to defense bonus. A Tier 1 character is going to have the lowest possible range of attack bonuses, the Tier 2 character is going to have the middle range, and the Tier 3 character is going to have the upper range. We've adjusted pretty much every other stat to match that. What this does is essentially divide your play into 3 distinct periods. When you're a newbie, up to about level 8, in the first month, you'll be Tier 1, you'll be using Tier 1 things. Then you'll start graduating into Tier 2 about the time you hit level 8. That [Tier 2] will take you through level 14, at which point you start using Tier 3 things, but Tier 3 things are going to be extremely expensive, so you may find yourself going back down to Tier 2, which is sort of your mid-line for everybody, and you'll only go up to Tier 3 when you have the money to risk stuff or something very important to risk it on.
Ryan: Am I going to be able to craft all three Tiers in the NPC settlements?
Stephen: Probably not. The Tier 1 stuff you will definitely be able to craft anywhere, including NPC areas. For the near future, Tier 2 [will be craftable in NPC areas], but we may start gradually weaning that away. Tier 3 you'll never be able to craft in NPC settlements. The goal is to move you into settlement crafting once you have the opportunity.
Ryan: When I'm crafting something, what is it that I do that determines if something is a Tier 1, Tier 2, or Tier 3 item?
Stephen: It comes down to materials. There are Tier 1, Tier 2, and Tier 3 materials; Tier 1 materials are incredibly common, Tier 2 materials are less common, and Tier 3 materials are extremely rare. Also for a lot of Tier 3 materials you have to go to very dangerous locations to get them, or fight very dangerous monsters to take them as salvage. Our numbers right now are that a Tier 3 item is about 1/250 as common as a Tier 1 item, so you're not just going to be slinging these around the auction house for slightly more than a Tier 1 item. So when you're crafting we've also worked to make sure Tier 1 items are always useful all the way up. So when you refine items, even at Tier 2 or Tier 3, you might need some lower Tier materials to flesh out the refined item.
Ryan: What's a refined item?
Stephen: A refined item is the middle step of crafting. This is when you've taken some raw materials and put them into a job to turn them into something that has a + value on it. You'll essentially take a bunch of iron ore and a bunch of charcoal and turn it into a steel ingot of value +0 to +5. The refining step is where you determine what that + value is, which is an important thing because when you go to the crafting system those + values translate directly into power.
Ryan: What do I do that affects the + value?
Stephen: You have to add more stuff and you have to have special recipes. When you first learn a refining [recipe], each recipe you get will be at the +0 value. So you make it at +0, if you're lucky and your skill is high enough you might occasionally get a +1 or +2 out of it, but you cannot make +3 or better with that recipe. You've got to go out into the world and you've got to find better recipes that can make the higher + value version of that item.
Ryan: Where do I get them [recipes] from?
Stephen: Creature drops initially. We might put them on various quests and stuff. We can basically put them anywhere as loot. Essentially, once you have a +3 version of an item, it is more expensive to make, it requires more materials to be used up in the crafting of it, and there's the rarity of the recipe itself, but that's the only way you can get +3 to +5 items, is by having the better recipes.
Ryan: And the + values of the intermediate materials, that's what affects the Tier of the final outcome?
Stephen: That's what affects the final upgrade value of the item. So if you want to make a longsword, just a basic steel longsword, you'll need a certain number of steel ingots, and maybe a certain number of leather strips, that you combine together to make your longsword. We'd average the + value of all these components together, so if you used a bunch of +3 ingots, it comes out as a +3 longsword. That's still a Tier 1 longsword, but it has 3 extra keywords over the +0 longsword.
Ryan: And those keywords, I would pick during the time that I'm crafting?
Stephen: Right. All of the keywords will come from a standard progression of +0 to +3, and in the long-term +4 or +5 would give you some selection options, but generally the keywords go up in a fixed progression that mirrors what the attacks that use them go up in.
Ryan: And the same applies to defense, so there's keywords for defense that affect the armor you wear.
Stephen: Those vary a little bit more. There's two different classes of keywords that straddle the line between medium and heavy armor, and light and medium armor, and cloth and light armor. So some light armor will have the lower set of keywords and some will have the heavier set of keywords, and certain [roles]' armor feats will want the lighter or heavier ones. So a ranger, which is good in light or medium armor, may want the light or medium keywords, so a ranger is actually good in certain sets of light, medium, or heavy armor, but they might not be as good in a set of light armor that's designed for a lighter class.
Ryan: How long is it going to take to craft an item?
Stephen: An item is sort of an overnight job for a lot of them. Potions and other consumables may come out really quickly, and once your skill goes up really high and your facility goes up really high that speeds up your crafting speed, but things like suits of armor usually take a day or two to be created, which will also come down as your skill goes up. If you're making something that's at the bleeding edge of your skill it can take several days for it to come out. You don't have to be online for this time, it sort of filters away in the background, but once you've queued up a days' worth of stuff you can't queue up anything else. If you queue up a suit of armor that's going to take 3 days you have to wait for it to fall under a day before you can start something else.
Ryan: So the basic process is, I assemble all the ingredients I need, and a recipe that I've got from somewhere in the world, and I go to a building in a settlement, and I start a crafting job.
Stephenb: Right, so you bring up this big window, which will have on the left a list of recipes which you can craft, in the middle it'll show you, if you pick that one what you'll need and what it's going to do. You'll click the various options on the screen, and it'll says "this needs X number of steel ingots" or "this needs Y number of pieces of leather". You click it and it'll give you a list of all those you have access to.
Ryan: So at the end, when a crafting job completes, what happens?
Stephen: In the end, when the timer runs out, it [the item] pops out into your storage location where you originally got the stuff from. Short term, it'll likely just go directly into your inventory, long term if you're crafting with the company's stuff it may go straight to the company bank, wherever it was scheduled to go to it'll pop out there. Then you'll have a finished item that someone can equip and start attacking people with.
Ryan: So when we start, because with all things in Pathfinder Online we're going to start with the minimal viable option, it'll probably go to your inventory, but over time there will be plenty of options as to where the job can deliver.
Stephen: That can be especially interesting because if you are working in several different towns, your crafting job over here is going to come out over here [same place], it's not going to show up at the safe area where you wanted to sell it. You'll have to be careful about, if I craft it here, I might not be able to get it to market, because there's not a good market in this town.
Ryan: So there could be a different value for crafting in different settlements because of the risk of transporting the goods from crafting location to settlement location.
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