Intro
I did a few searches and it seems some people have similar ideas as me as far as crafting goes, many people reference Star Wars Galaxy’s crafting system, which I am not familiar with, but from brief descriptions sounds like an alright thing to be based off of rather than the ‘standard’ method of crafting you find in many games. Many of the threads I found on here were quite old so instead of necromancing them back I thought I’d just start a new thread to share my ideas for PO, as suggested in the goblinworks FAQ.
My basic theme for gathering and refining is resources being useful from low level to high level. With crafting, the basic idea is generic recipes with outcomes depending on materials instead of specific recipes with specific requirements and outcomes.
Gathering
For resources that can be gathered, there could be different quality levels for these resources. It could be in two tiers with low/high quality, or three tiers with low/medium/high quality (or low/high/excellent). So when you go gathering ores, you could end up with low or high quality iron ore in different quantities depending on the place and circumstances
Refining
Now that you have iron ore, it needs refined into iron metal that can be used in crafting. In addition to the ore, there would need to be some other reagent added in for the refining process. As a final product you would end up with either low or high quality iron metal. Either low or high quality could be obtained as an end result based on how much extra reagent you use during the refining. Both high and low quality ore would require reagent added in to refine, with high quality ore requiring less reagent than low quality ore to end up with low quality metal, and if you add even more reagent or some other circumstances you can end up with high quality metal as the product. This way, even low quality ore can be refined down to high quality metal if you are willing to pump in enough extra time/money/skill into the production.
Crafting
So after refining materials, you can use them in crafting final products. And this process I think should be very interesting with a wide variety of outcomes possible. The ‘standard’ crafting format might have many different specific recipes that progress from low to high level, such as first making a ‘copper shortsword’ then an ‘iron shortsword’ then ‘ubermetal shortsword’ then ‘omnimetal shortsword’ sort of progression. Each step has very specific material requirement and a very specific outcome. While this works as a system, it is very boring. I like a more generic ‘shortsword’ recipe that allows you to place any parts into the recipe that meet the basic requirements for the recipe, and the final outcome of the recipe depends on the materials that you used, and the skill level of the crafter.
So what I see happening is maybe a weapon crafter decides to select a basic or martial weapon recipe, selects high/low quality metals/leather/cloth/wood that are needed to meet the requirements of that weapon, and the properties and quality of the materials used determine the damage, hardness/hp(or durability of that system is being used), weight, crit chance, crit modifier, etc. As the crafter levels up and gains more abilities/skills, I see exotic weapons being opened up, as well as “exotic modifiers” that can be added into the items creation. If you have ever seen dwarven/elven weapons, or perhaps you remember the ‘mercurial longsword’, these would take your basic/martial weapon being created, and have the final product be an exotic weapon with special properties being added to it. Additional slots for decoration or masterwork components could be added through unlocking new skill as well.
In addition to practical items like iron/steel/adamantine/mithril/others being crafted, unpractical/decorative items should also be able to be created using these generic templates, like if you wanted to make a golden or silver(different than the anti-werewolf silver weapon) decorative longsword with precious/breakable gems as something to wear, or to sell to other players for them to wear, or even rich NPCs who want new weapons/armor to wear as a sign of their wealth rather than to actually use in battle.
This generic crafting template can be used on everything from weapons/armor to food/buildings/structures/potions, basically anything that could be crafted could also fit into a generic template with varying materials available to be used in those recipes.
Enchanting
Much like how refining has a chemical reagent that allows the ore to be refined to metal, enchanting a masterwork item into a magical one can use a standard ‘magical reagent’ as part of the materials used to create these powerful items.
I see there being one generic reagent that is used in all enchantments, and depending on the type of enhancements being placed on the item, different secondary reagents being required.
So maybe you are enchanting up from masterwork to +1. You’d need a certain amount of the basic reagent, and maybe a little bit of the ‘enhancement bonus’ reagent. If you go up to +2, you’d need more basic reagent and even more ‘EHB’ reagent. Maybe you want to add ice damage, so you’d use some more basic reagent, and then some ‘ice’ reagent. Or ice resistance would require basic reagent and ‘ice’ reagent as well.
Basic reagent could be refined from many sources that could be gathered with or without combat, while other specialized reagents could be refined from items you might see as material components in D&D/Pathfinder in order to cast spells. Things like gryphon feathers, dragon blood, rare gems, claws/teeth/horns, all sorts of stuff you’d get from killing powerful and possibly magical monsters.
So, now that I’ve said my piece, I can at least be satisfied that my input has been made.
Also, just.. please PLEASE dont make crafting anything like Neverwinter Online's crafting...
