Goblin Squad Member
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This is how I hope crafting will work similar to:
Each recipe dictates x number of y materials. However no specific materials are specified. The crafter can/must select how many of each type of y they want to use. Each material has it's own strengths, weaknesses, and other stats and the final properties of the craft are determined by the resources chosen. Finally, depending upon the recipe, additional optional items can be added for effect.
Each material has a subset of categories it can be used as an crafting material for. Iron can be a "Blade", "Shaft", etc...
To illustrate:
Sword "Z" costs 8 blade, 2 shaft, 2 cloth, and a single optional slot. For the blade, the crafter chooses 1 silver ingot to allow the sword to damage creatures vulnerable to silver, but this greatly decreases the strength and durability of the sword, so they counter this with a single ingot of mithril (they only use 1 because of the extreme cost of mithril), from there they use 6 iron and one optional carbon/charcoal to make a steel alloy. For the shaft the crafter chooses 2 oak. For the cloth, the crafter chooses one leather and one silk to wrap the handle with (no idea what properties that would give...just illustrating). This provides a sword with base stats that can also kill creatures vulnerable to silver (without the mithril it would have been slightly weaker than normal steel sword due to the silver).
Masterwork weapons have slightly boosted stats and are the crit versions of normal weapons (Crit chance increases with skill).
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Goblin Squad Member
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I like this idea quite a lot. I've always wanted an MMO that allows for a healthy helping of uncertainty. If there are an x amount of interesting crafted items that start out as mysteries, that players have to discover through experimentation, that would just be superb. It would be great if the first person to "discover" a crafted sword/tapestry/meal/spell/wheelbarrow etc. got to name it, though I'm not sure what sort of tech that would require.
Essentially, I'm interested in seeing a very open any mysterious world where players really have to work to understand it, and are rewarded for their innovation and adventurousness.
I've seen a few other games that even turn player housing and transportation into a crafting endeavor. I like the idea of having to go gather the lumber needed to build your new cabin in the woods, melt down sand for the cabin's windows, spin thread and skin a bear for the rugs, and forage for berries to put in the pies you set out on the table. As long as crafting stays a truly optional part of the game, I don't see any reason why the depth of it need be limited. Detailed crafting offers a lot of opportunity for immersion in a way that many other traditional MMO game systems can't provide.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Sword "Z" costs 8 blade, 2 shaft, 2 cloth, and a single optional slot.
This!
I love the idea of recipes requiring some amount of some class of material, but allowing the specific type of material to be chosen by the crafter. So that a bag that requires "6 cloth" could use rough burlap or fine cotton or silk or even something more exotic.
To be honest, this strikes me as another case where a wiki effort to lay out the actual data for this would be appropriate. I wonder if there's any chance they'd use it if we produced it?
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Goblin Squad Member
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To be honest, Saga of Ryzom uses a system similar to this..it is the best crafting system I have ever encountered which is why I used it as a base in this. This system allows crafters to design weapons to the character, a character who is designed to tank with an uber parry instead of armor would want their weapons to maximize parry chance...this can be done if different materials have different values and properties then recipes can and should target certain properties and values.
The very best recipes in Saga of Ryzom utilize rare materials from rare spawns and are kept secrets by those who develop or learn them. My wifee is a master sword crafter who has a recipe she will not share...she developed it via trial and error over years. And she also has recipes that were handed down to her from players that are no longer in game...so she really is the last of a legacy.
As for naming items, I hope each crafter can name their own crafts as they craft them...and add "inscriptions" that cannot be changed or altered, they are part of the weapon and are seen upon inspection of that item.
I would love to work on a wiki for this type of system (but only if the devs showed interest).
Goblinworks Executive Founder
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That sounds a lot like the crafting of SWG; each slot required a type of material (which could be as broad as "inorganic" and "organic", or as narrow as "Class 6 radioactive", with 'mineral', 'ferrous metal', 'nonferrous metal' and 'structural organic[bone or wood]' being common). Each material has different properties, and each crafted item gained different benefits from those properties; electronics would be more effective if crafted from metals with high 'conductivity', and food would be more nutritious if made from things with high 'energy content'. They killed the idea by including a 'overall quality' statistic and making it the most important for most things.
Take that system, but don't make it always about better/worse. Metals in particular have tradeoffs- harder metals are more brittle, higher-yield strength metals less able to withstand fatigue failure (harder to break with one blow, but less able to withstand repeated flexing) Harder leather is less supple; stiff leather gloves are unusable. Overall, rarer materials should be better than common ones, but a war club made entirely from the lightest material isn't going to be very effective; a pick with a adamantine-covered lead core, on the other hand, should punch through steel armor, and be difficult to parry, at the cost of being heavy, slow to swing, and thus easy to dodge.
Potential tradeoffs, off the top of my head:
Reduce armor mitigation/more damage before mitigation (better vs armored/better vs. unarmored)
Easier to parry/easier to dodge (fast, light weapon vs heavy, slow weapon)
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Goblin Squad Member
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Damnit, Daniel, you beat me to the punch. Looks like I'll have to take out my exposition in some other way:
Seconded on the SWG crafting system (Well, SWG pre-CU, anyway). Giving that weapons in SWG also degraded and were permanently destroyed when durability hit 0, that lead to a rather vibrant economy, even without items lost on death.
So yeah, great starting point for crafting. I must add that, in my opinion, there SHOULD be better/worse materials; just put the better materials out in nullsec, the good materials in lowsec, and the okay materials in highsec. (On a side note, anyone have a better idea for what to name the hexes, without just using EvE Online's naming system? How about "Civilization", "The Fringe", and "The Wilderness"?)
That doesn't mean that, within one of these groups, there can't be different materials with different benefits. I'm picturing tiers of materials, with groups of materials in each tier. For metals, for example, Tier 1 can have copper, tin, and zinc, which can be alloyed into Bronze, Brass, and Copper. Bronze has the best durability, while Copper has the best damage, and Brass is the best at holding enchantments. I'm just making rough guesses; someone who actually knows something about metallurgy could probably describe this better. Anyway, then the mid-tier metals could be, say, Iron, Tungsten, and Gold, with different pluses and minuses for each. So a low-carbon Iron could be in the "high-durability" niche; that makes it a flat-out better material than Bronze, but debatably better than the other metals (though still an easy pick over the Tier 1 metals.) And out in the wilderness, at Tier 3, you can find, say, Mithril, Aluminum, and Adamantine.
Have similar tiers and groups for the other materials (wood, gems, cloth, anything else), and that would make a more varied crafting system.
Other thoughts:
If the devs REALLY wanted to go into detail, they could use SWG's material system; where not only does each group of materials have general properties, but the specific material itself has unique properties. So not only does all Iron generally have high durability, but each node of Iron, since it has different mixes of other metals/minerals, would have unique stats. That would make harvesting and crafting REALLY complicated, but that could be a good thing. Look what it did for SWG's economy.
Also, there's refining. I like one thing about LOTRO's crafting system: There are different kinds of iron, that can be refined different ways. Metal-crafting tiers 2 and up work with iron, just different kinds of iron. Barrow-Iron, Rich Iron, Dwarf-Iron, Ancient Iron, Khazad-Iron... you get the idea. And each of those can be refined, usually, into two kinds of steel. So I'd like to see this kind of system; where not only do different kinds of ore have unique stats, but the stats can change based on how they're refined.
I'm just talking about ore and metals in this post, but I could see similar things with wood, cloth, and the like.
Someone mentioned the importance of keeping a really high amount of uses for low leveled materials even at high end levels of play. While scaling up the crafting resources requirements by using rarer and more expensive materials - remember to ALSO maintain plenty of low leveled resources at a high level. New players should still be able to contribute to supply and demand for players of any variety and I hate seeing reduced demands for different ore types such as in WoW.
This can cause the problem of experienced players killing starters for things like copper and tin for bronze but I imagine with a security structure similar to EVE it should be fine.
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Goblinworks Executive Founder
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Offer the ability to make plate mail out of solid unobtainium, with Bahamut Leather lining or only plate the outside of the armor panels, making most of the suit out of materials which are cheaper and offer only slightly reduced benefit. Does it really matter if the buckle on the adjusting strap is only steel, or if the weight in the pommel of your sword is lead?
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Goblin Squad Member
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Ideally, Steel is going to be the common denominator, although access to Mithril, Cold Iron and possibly even Adamantite should also be available, although with a much reduced chance. Steel 60% weapons and armor consist of of the market, Mithril 15%, Cold Iron 20% and Adamantite 5%, just as a quick example. Wooden weapons would be relatively rare and generally chosen only by Druids, and possibly not even then!
In terms of non-metallic materials, Hard Wood, Soft Wood and various magical woods, plus leather from mundane and magical beasts, plus the obligatory dragon scale/dragon hide/dragon bone/dragon lower intestine materials should also come into play.
This isn't to say that the 'better' materials should be denied to the average player, but the resources are powerful, and in turn should not be handed out willy-nilly. Making or finding your very first Cold Iron sword should feel epic, because it's relatively rare and potent against Fey and Demons.
A player walking around in Adamantite Full Plate, with a Mithril Tower Shield and an Adamantite Sword should pretty much have a 'Badass' sign hovering above her head. We're talking top tier stuff here.
On the other hand, nothing should stop players from being able to take that +1 Sword and enchant it to the nines to make it a suitably epic weapon in and of itself, but access to those rare materials can make a weapon even better than just magic alone can offer.
I guess what I'm asking for is a lot like Kit-Nyx's post about rare 'patterns' being found only through trial and error, and not just for weapons, but for most 'combat' crafting reciepes, be they potions, magical staves, wondrous items or otherwise.
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Why just combat recipes? Should include all recipes, for example a trap can use spider silk instead of string to be harder to detect but easier to disable if detected etc...
With clothes, might have different weights and color options with different mats.
Instruments suffer from durability(because the bard), and so different mats affect it.
Castles/dungeons can use different mats that affect how hard it is to destroy(which should always result in rubble and ruins) as well as some mats take enchants easier which can be used to block detections/passwall and other such spells. Or help them.
Don't forget barding for mounts btw.
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Goblinworks Executive Founder
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Does it really matter if the buckle on the adjusting strap is only steel, or if the weight in the pommel of your sword is lead?Yes, it does in real life so it should here as well.
Well, mithril armor has no protective properties in real life, and there is an advantage to using lead -as a weight- compared to steel.
I'd like to see some mechanism where each material has offsetting advantages and disadvantages, such that there is no one best metal or material. I'm fine with there being tiers of materials- mithril and adamantine should be simply better than steels, which are better than copper and iron.
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According to gygax's world builder adamantite is 5/12ths the wieght of mithral and is harder. And it is less conductive. Oddly enough mithral is the second heaviest of his magic metals.
The funny thing is most fantasy lore see harder as better but the truth is harder holds edge but is brittle and flexible is less likely to break but doesn't hold an edge.
A diamond sword can't be scratched and would never lose edge but would shatter at the first strike.
That is why katanas are the best swords, they are dual tempered to have a hard edge yet flexible back. This gives them the curve and prevents them from being double edged. The question is how well magic metal would handle the dual states.
Another idea is to say harder metals retain condition better but have lower durability.
And if the smith could chose hard vs flexible would be nice since a metal staff doesn't need to be hard.
Does anyone know a list of metals in the Pathfinder universe? Can't seem to find one. Hopefully they're all accounted for in the game.
I love the mecanics of dwarf fortress for making an object. In this game, you can choose the base material (say steel). And you can do a *steel short sword* (* means very good facture) you can after encrusts it with gems... and now you have *steel short sword -encrusted with opals-* (the decorations have quality too, - is "fine")
After a while you decide to carve a write on the blade, so your sword becames *steel short sword -encrusted with opals- ad with a *fine incisions of a dwarf in a forge* and the write -I'm so proud of you, my son, and i give you this sword. Make this weapon the weapon of your first killing-.
And this can do (maybe without a 3D model for every option) a very unique sword. The price vary, too.
Now all your object can have a soul. enjoy
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Goblinworks Executive Founder
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Clearly, the world builder is wrong. Frodo/Bilbo's mithral chain shirt is the ur-example; it is so light that it goes unnoticed until it stops a fatal blow, even though a number of other characters interacted with Frodo- including carrying him and providing medical attention.
I would give mithral a high elastic coefficient, making it hard, difficult to work with but also resistant to damage, including shattering. I would distinguish it from adamantine by making mithral significantly tougher and more malleable, but giving adamantine a radically higher elastic point, but lower yield point. Given a long piece of mithral stock, one could bend it into a loop with enough force, and it would stay that way; the same force applied to a similar bar of adamantine wouldn't even bend it permanently, but a little bit more would shatter the adamantine bar, while mithral would deform a lot more before experiencing fatigue failure. Adamantine equipment would be very hard to damage, but would tend to fail catastrophically after only a little bit penetrated their 'hardness'. Mithral equipment would take damage more often, but be able to take a lot more of it before breaking.
Both mithral and adamantine require specialized equipment to smelt and force; forced-air coal forges simply don't heat those metals enough to work them, and hammering white-hot adamantine against a normal steel anvil is a great way to ruin an anvil.
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Mithril is 50% the wieght of steel which would be light. Frodos shirt was a simple weave, I've worn heavy chain and its not that heavy, half off would be barely more then heavy clothes(and I'm a superfly weight,5'9" and 130lbs with a 28" waist). Make a simple weave at half off and I wouldn't even notice.
Adamantine on the other hand is harder and more mallable(requires 3k degrees as oppossed to 3500 degrees) but it wieghs only 25% that of steel. Either one would get the results in frodos shirt. But as far as pathfinder goes I have no idea how they differ.
Btw chain is vulnerable to piercing(funny, frodo got pierced) while plate is weak vs bludgeoning( it actually protects better then chain but nowhere near as good as against other dmg). Leather protects from light blows, rocks, branches, etc. Other armor falls in.between. it would be interesting for armor to account for the different dmg types especially if light weapons atked faster then hvy weapons.(this would mean most people would carry multiple weapons using the one that's best vs the opp)
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Goblin Squad Member
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it would be interesting for armor to account for the different dmg types
For a weak example, but the only one I can think of, look at Runescape. There are three main ways to do melee damage: Slash, Stab, and Crush. Different armors provide better or worse defenses against each, but there are tiers of armor that are flat-out better than lower tiers. Also, enemies have those three melee defenses, and since you can't see what those defenses are, there are some arguments on the wiki and forums about which damage types creatures are actually weak to. This means that a certain short sword (the Leaf-Bladed Sword) is one of the best dragon-slaying weapons in the game, simply because it's one of the best Piercing weapons, which dragons are very weak to.
And what about multiple magic damage types? Or ranged damage types? Actually, ranged is pretty much stuck with Piercing, unless you want to make Ranged defense its own defense type... I guess avoiding/using armor against a dagger strike could be different than using it against an arrow.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I realize it would probably take a lot of work, but I'd really like to see a system where a lot of the damage done by an arrow is done when you have to pull it out, and that a silk shirt makes that process a lot less painful. I'm not sure whether a silk shirt really does a lot to protect against the piercing damage of a rapier.
it would be interesting for armor to account for the different dmg typesFor a weak example, but the only one I can think of, look at Runescape. There are three main ways to do melee damage: Slash, Stab, and Crush.
I'd like to see a rock, paper scissors element like this with armour that's good, average and bad against each attack type.
Rock, paper, scissors is always great. No one thing is the right answer. Situational is always win. (and by forcing players to specialize or be a jack of all trades, it means tactics play a bigger role as well in terms of simply pitting the right people against the right targets)
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Arrows can also be bludeoning if given flat tips.
Slash=slashing
Stab=peircing
Crush=blugeoning
Padding is worn either as basic armor or underneath heavier armors(real knights have lots of padding under the plate) and that wwould protect vs bludgeoning as well as temp(hot/cold). Magic dmg is fire, acid, cold, electricity, and sonic.
Fire and cold are just extreme temp so would have limited protection by armors like padded and plate or scale.
Electricity runs on conductivity so steel/iron bad, adamantine(not sure how pf version works so running with gygax) good.
Acid is hard to protect against so want just lots of stuff to soak it up before it reachs skin. Padded, leatther, plate, scale, not chain as acid would flow through holes.
Sonic is almost impossible to protect against without magical silence or lots of sound insulation which is useless if it has holes for like your head. But it is also the least dmging(reality wise anyway).
So sonic is a good low dmg spell that hurts everything but the others do more dmg but depend on the defenses.
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Goblinworks Executive Founder
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Magic cold is different from the temperature effects of lack of heat, just like magic fire is different from ionized gases released from a chemical reaction, and magical lightning is different from natural electricity.
Magic damage in general shouldn't be attenuated by mundane armor of any sort; the same properties that help retain heat to protect against external cold exclude heat which would help with internal cold, such as that caused by magic.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I guess what I'm asking for is a lot like Kit-Nyx's post about rare 'patterns' being found only through trial and error, and not just for weapons, but for most 'combat' crafting reciepes, be they potions, magical staves, wondrous items or otherwise.
It is not a idea I really like, unless there is a clear logic behind how things work together.
"Take 1 of 100 items, join it with 1 of 100 items, watch the result (and get some strange results unrelated to the powers of the components) and record it" is one of the reasons why I dislike alchemy in Skyrim.
A automatic record of the results (success and failure, fully detailed), with a easy to browse list of them, could mitigate that, but mixing something that damage my health with something that make me more resistant to fatigue should not cure my wounds.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I take your point and agree, but two volatile gases, one explosive and the other just as necessary as fuel when making fire and you get water...which we use to put out most fires.
While I agree everything should be the sum of it's parts, it is not always possible to predict the consequences of that equation.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Agreed from me too. Being able to use common sense for the recipes should be a given, and recorded server-side for your account. But being able to start applying different items together and then being able to record the results would also be a nice touch, be it working out the right ratio of metals to make an alloy that you find more useful or combining components into a staff for a unique power-set in the item, so on and so forth, would add a touch more playability to the crafting classes, rewarding people who go that extra mile to learn as much as they can about the variety of items they can make.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Personally, I am sick to death of random-chance recipe gains.
I think PFO has a great opportunity to make it very simple, but also produce the same end results that rare random chances was supposed to produce - namely, a distribution among the players such that it wasn't common to see every blacksmith with all the blacksmithing recipes. Using the Skill System to open up new recipes gives you a clear path to get your desired result, and creates a clear opportunity cost for anyone else to get it.
If you do any kind of random combinations producing new things, then you're going to have 1 of 2 things happen:
1) The whole list is on the web in a day or two, or
2) You have to make the result random each and every time you do the combine.
The first completely destroys the original goal, the second makes the system unusable.
Please, give us a clear path to get the recipe we want, and use the cost of training the skill to control its rarity, rather than making us dance with the random number generator.
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First on skyrim discoveries are recorded on the ingredients, just mix ingredients with same effect to make usable potion. Weird secondary effects are bad but that's just how they represented poor skill.
Here's my idea,
One when crafting a sword the craft page says you need 4 bars of metal and 1 wood or metal with optional 2 decorative.
The metal bars could be whatever metal you want be it adamantine or mithril or steel
In the example I use 1 adamantine (+40 durability +10 condition 0% conductivity) and 3 steel(+30 durability(10 each) and +60 condition(20 each) 100% conductiviy) and 1 duskwood with 1 diamond and 1 silk wrapping.
The durability and condition of each gets added and the condutivity gets averaged leading to a total for the weapon(70 durability and 70 condition and 75% conductivity)
The other stuff can provide unique attributes or enchantabiliy
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Goblin Squad Member
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I just want crafting materials to be somewhat realistic, as opposed to say WoW, where they have to constantly create new materials for higher level content. No matter the level, steel(iron) should be the default material for metal items (aside from jewelry). At low levels or in civilized areas, make the veins less pure and out in the wilderness and dangerous areas make it more pure. Higher level items require better steel which depends on higher purity iron...however, if you are willing to spend the time, you can refine low-quality iron into a higher quality (and losing some material in the process). It would give value to lower skill miners as their product would still have value to higher skill crafters. You can do this with all materials really and it scales a lot better than having to add new materials all the time.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I just want crafting materials to be somewhat realistic, as opposed to say WoW, where they have to constantly create new materials for higher level content. No matter the level, steel(iron) should be the default material for metal items (aside from jewelry). At low levels or in civilized areas, make the veins less pure and out in the wilderness and dangerous areas make it more pure. Higher level items require better steel which depends on higher purity iron...however, if you are willing to spend the time, you can refine low-quality iron into a higher quality (and losing some material in the process). It would give value to lower skill miners as their product would still have value to higher skill crafters. You can do this with all materials really and it scales a lot better than having to add new materials all the time.
I wholeheartedly concur. Avoid the feedback-loop of having to come up with ridiculous-ium to replace last tier's stupidname-ium.
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Goblin Squad Member
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First on skyrim discoveries are recorded on the ingredients, just mix ingredients with same effect to make usable potion. Weird secondary effects are bad but that's just how they represented poor skill.
Sorry, but it is not true (unless there are difference with the game in other languages).
Mixing 2 ingredient with the same effect don't make a potion with that effect and you get a not so descriptive name for potions that do several things at the same time.I am not interested in getting a potion called "Cure disease" that increase my constitution for 5 minutes, give me regeneration 1 and incidentally cure diseases with a CL of 1.
If I have a list of potion names names, the names should be descriptive and list all the effects. I should not depend on out of game resources to remember what that combination do and what is the difference between a Cure disease potion made with component A and B and one made with component A and C.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I am all for logical crafting. Tungsten has a high melting point and is therefore added to make alloys that need to resist high temperatures. However, I want the pluses with the negatives, tungsten is not often used in blacksmithing because it is extremely difficult to forge. Silver may damage some magical creatures but would seriously weaken the alloy.
I suggest we use material nuggets as the recipe base so we can mix and match a lot. A longsword blade could take 25 nuggets, so you can use all iron or mix in other metals to make an interesting alloy, but everything should have strengths and weaknesses (even if the weakness is only extreme rarity/cost as is the case for mithril) with steel as the base.
As an alternate idea, make each +1 on a sword take 30% more nuggets. The logic behind this is that you are purifying and only taking the best parts of each. A +1 longsword blade then would cost 34 nuggets, which will allow more properties to be added to the blade with greater precision. a +2 longsword blade would take 45 nuggets, etc...
Certain materials are naturally more difficult to forge and this is a good way to limit based on skill. Have skill determine the precision at which you can work with certain temperatures. This is not the only way, just a way that makes sense. A "level 1" smith can try to make a +4 longsword using tungsten and mithril, but the chance of success would be tiny. As they gain skill, their chance of success increases. I can also see merit badges which represent proficiency with a variety of materials as well as recipe groups (sword merit badge allow you all the sword recipes...mithril merit badge gives you a bonus to success and crit chance when crafting with mithril, the bonus will be based on the amount of mithril used, 10% mithril = 10% of the possible bonus. I would also like to see some merit badges that provide raw bonuses to equipment stats...the lightness merit badge represents your achievement in the study of how to minimize weight without compromising strength in your crafts...gaining this badge decreases the weight of all your crafts by 5%; the keen merit badge shows you know how to temper an edge well, damage +5%; etc...
The consequence of this is that it is logical to assume certain mixes will produce certain desired results and you would be totally correct in these assumptions, but even a list of 25 metals in the world that can be combined makes for a large number of longsword blade recipes that can be found, leaving ample opportunity for the master sword smith to perfect and optimize his/her recipes. Also, and perhaps more importantly, areas that a certain crafter specialize in provide bonuses that will help determine what materials that crafter will prefer to use. A crafter that trained up lightness could use materials most other crafters would turn away simply because of the weight...and make unique items.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I would like to add a request to please avoid random results.
I don't want a 50% chance to create a better item, or even a 95% chance. I want to know what I'm making before I go in, and either succeed or fail. I don't want a random chance that I will use more mats, or less, either.
Whatever goal is served in other games by using random chance, please find another way. If the goal is to make me use extra resources and take more time, then for the love of God just make it take more resources and more time.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I would like to add a request to please avoid random results.
I don't want a 50% chance to create a better item, or even a 95% chance. I want to know what I'm making before I go in, and either succeed or fail. I don't want a random chance that I will use more mats, or less, either.
Whatever goal is served in other games by using random chance, please find another way. If the goal is to make me use extra resources and take more time, then for the love of God just make it take more resources and more time.
Seconded, I am fine with a pass/fail system, but even that I'm not a fan of, I'd still rather a can make/can't make system, but I absolutely do not want a "crappy/good/great/awsome/OMG/EPIC" system.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I don't want a 50% chance to create a better item, or even a 95% chance. I want to know what I'm making before I go in, and either succeed or fail. I don't want a random chance that I will use more mats, or less, either.
Yeah, boy howdee. Nothing was as fun as not critting 7 times in a row in LOTRO with a 70% crit chance.
I like the SWTOR method. You have the materials and the recipe? Then you can make it.
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Goblinworks Executive Founder
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I just want crafting materials to be somewhat realistic, as opposed to say WoW, where they have to constantly create new materials for higher level content. No matter the level, steel(iron) should be the default material for metal items (aside from jewelry). At low levels or in civilized areas, make the veins less pure and out in the wilderness and dangerous areas make it more pure. Higher level items require better steel which depends on higher purity iron...however, if you are willing to spend the time, you can refine low-quality iron into a higher quality (and losing some material in the process). It would give value to lower skill miners as their product would still have value to higher skill crafters. You can do this with all materials really and it scales a lot better than having to add new materials all the time.
Except that steel doesn't work like that. Steel is iron with a very specific amount of one or more specific impurities. At the most basic, steel is iron alloyed with carbon (from charcoal, graphite, diamond- it doesn't matter) the carbon increases harness, strength, and elasticity up to the point where you get pig iron, which is too brittle to work with. Other types of steel add other impurities- nickel, tungsten and cobalt are popular. High-speed steel is about 85% iron by weight, with about 1% carbon and the rest divided between various alloying agents. "Purify" it, and you get regular iron plus some slag.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I like the SWTOR method. You have the materials and the recipe? Then you can make it.
Nah, SWTOR still gives you critical successes that are better than normal successes (more stims, augment slot, etc.) Also, SWTOR's method of getting better recipes is horrible, in that you have a random chance (and fairly low at that) to get a better recipe when you Reverse Engineer something.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Except that steel doesn't work like that.
I would be perfectly happy for there to be a list of recipes for Smelting Alloys, and another list of recipes for Crafting Swords, but where the Sword recipe let you use any of a number of alloys as long as you were trained to work with that alloy. So, your Sword recipe would call for 2 Bars of Metal, and you could use 2 Bars of any Alloy, thereby getting the benefits and penalties of that Alloy.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I like the SWTOR method. You have the materials and the recipe? Then you can make it.Nah, SWTOR still gives you critical successes that are better than normal successes (more stims, augment slot, etc.) Also, SWTOR's method of getting better recipes is horrible, in that you have a random chance (and fairly low at that) to get a better recipe when you Reverse Engineer something.
I was simply referring to the part of SWTOR crafting I mentioned. Nothing else. You have the materials? You have the recipe? Then you can make it.
I could get behind some randomness in crafting. However, in all the themepark MMOs I have played, the uncritted version of the gear is trash. So you end up crafting 8 pieces of vendor trash to get the 1 good piece.
Of course, the second you add randomness and a potential crit version, then the normal one becomes trash. So, maybe this isnt a good idea to follow on.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I just want crafting materials to be somewhat realistic...Except that steel doesn't work like that. Steel is iron with a very specific amount of one or more specific impurities. At the most basic, steel is iron alloyed with carbon (from charcoal, graphite, diamond- it doesn't matter) the carbon increases harness, strength, and elasticity up to the point where you get pig iron, which is too brittle to work with. Other types of steel add other impurities- nickel, tungsten and cobalt are popular. High-speed steel is about 85% iron by weight, with about 1% carbon and the rest divided between various alloying agents. "Purify" it, and you get regular iron plus some slag.
I'm not an expert on metallurgy, so I wasn't familiar with the specifics. However, being wrong on the details doesn't change the sentiment - iron needs to be the core crafting material, used at all levels of skill. You might use other materials for alloys or whatever, each type of crafting should have one or two materials that are always used (iron for tools/weapons/armor, silver or gold for jewelry, oak or ash for wooden items, etc).
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Goblin Squad Member
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... iron needs to be the core crafting material, used at all levels of skill.
I totally agree. I've always hated how most MMOs make me go through thousands of years of human progress. It's just silly. Let's just say we're in the Iron Age and be done with it. Even crappy low-level swords should be based on iron. Copper is for jewelry and cookware.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Actually iron (not steel) weapons aren't better than bronze weapons and sometime are worse. The advantage was that iron is much more abundant that copper and tin.
We had people crating bronze weapon side by side with people crafting iron weapon for a long time.
Broadly, when I talk about making iron the default, I'm really saying steel. However, you can't mine steel out of the ground, and it isn't a raw material - it is a worked material.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Broadly, when I talk about making iron the default, I'm really saying steel. However, you can't mine steel out of the ground, and it isn't a raw material - it is a worked material.Actually iron (not steel) weapons aren't better than bronze weapons and sometime are worse. The advantage was that iron is much more abundant that copper and tin.
We had people crating bronze weapon side by side with people crafting iron weapon for a long time.
Sure, you mine pyrite, limonite and so on, then you refine them. But after you have learned how to identify and refine them it iron is way more common than copper.
Refining it did require a lot of work as blast furnaces were a late middle age invention (in Europe), but in the ancient time manual labour was cheap.