Goblin Squad Member
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So while looking into crafting, it seems to me that it is rather difficult to reach the second rank of the refining skills. The bottleneck in this case is because of the Crafting achievements required and their relative difficulty to acquire in comparison to Adventuring or Combat achievement points.
Crafting a Common, +0 item will get you 1 Crafting point - but only one . In order to gain more Crafting points, you must craft either a Common +1 item, or an Uncommon +0 recipe. (More difficult recipes would grant you more achievement points, but it is unlikely you can learn them at rank 1 of your skill.) This means you must either conveniently find the correct recipe as a drop, or have a friend find it and get it to you.
You must have 3 Crafting points in order to move up to the second rank of that Refining Skill. So you must obtain at least 2 recipes within your discipline before you may advance to the second rank. (For reference, you cannot Smelt Steel Plates as a level 1 Smelter, and that is the material required for the most basic armors.)
Another way to handle this problem is to branch out into 2 other Refinement trees - craft 1 Common +0 item with each, and you will then be able to access rank 2 in each of the skills. This is a very XP-expensive way to handle the issue, but it seems like it may be what those without huge support structures will end up needing to do.
Perhaps I am overreacting, but these strike me as rather large hurdles to get over when you are at a level that you cannot even craft simple armor. (I have not yet examined the other crafting areas for similar problems, as the demand for armor is the most particularly high, but I suspect the issue of reaching 'basic' equipment is not limited to the skill.)
So you need either a huge support system to advance with any kind of efficiency, or you need to stretch yourself incredibly thin with XP and generalize in your crafting choices.
I'm not sure if this is the game working as intended or not - it does SEEM like meaningful choice, but to some degree it strikes me as arbitrarily difficult.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Training weaponsmithing rank 1 didn't even give me a tier 1 +0 recipe. With the current system if you get every crafting achievement for a skill you still only have enough to get to rank 12. If they want people specializing in a profession I think incrementing crafting achievements will have to be added. So crafting 5 and then 10 more t1+0 items would get you 3 crafting points for example.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Do I get it right - the main issue is gaining 3 ranks in crafting and only one given for an uncommon item?
Specialisation might be good - but if I recall level 1 is 229XP - we are talking 456 XP 'wasted' to get these extra 2.
456XP is prohibitive if you start with 1000. But just sleep over it. It is <5 hours wasted to gain 2 more skills level 1.
Yes - my son has to wait right now as he got gems I collected yesterday night but he doesn't even have the XP left for jeweller 1. But by lunch he will be fine.
I did smelter 1 yesterday. I will do at least one of Armorsmith or Weaponmaster. That would mean just 229 wasted and I'm sitting on 700+XP gathered overnight. Have a lie in and it will be even a lot more.
Ignore everything if I got the crafting wrong. Just starting out myself in a more organized manner myself.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I'm working my way through this as a refiner - I don't see it as impossible. Refiners and Crafters will dabble in side tracks. It might make it pretty expensive for a Fighter, say, to also be a renowned Armorsmith.
The #1 problem I have is that recipes don't work much of the time. I don't mind spending 229 xp to unlock Gemcutting in order to use a +2 recipe. It's much more disappointing to spend the xp so you can learn the recipe, then find that it's bugged. I could have spent the xp on a different skill (to find a different recipe was bugged, no doubt).
Recipes will need to be fixed sooner rather than later if the crafting economy is to work. Other than that - we're all in the same boat, working under the same rules. As a refiner I'll be training crafting skills to get crafting points for advancement maybe as often as I train refining skills on the side.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Here is how it is done easily
Forrester 1 (don't think this is even needed) - gather 5 pine logs and 5 yew saplings
Train up sawyer 1 - craft some pine bars and yew staves - one is common, one is uncommon
There are other ways that are much more difficult. But a sawyer 1 could be 'multiclassed' in if this is what keeps you from progress.
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Goblin Squad Member
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If sawyer grants you 1 common and 1 uncommon recipe at the first rank, I would argue that each of the refining skills should do so. Certainly that would make things easier.
It would make things easier - but the whole crafting isn't meant to be easy.
I'm just checking out that I should be able to make an apprentice staff.
Needed: 5 Pine Logs, 8 Bloodstone, 18 Anthithesis
Step 1: Sawyer 1 refines 5 pine logs to pine batons
Step 2: Gemcutter 1 refines 5 lesser vital (Bloodstone or Onyx work) to Lesser Vital gems
Step 3: A sage 2 uses 18 Anthithesis essence and 3 lesser vital to create a crimson crystal
Step 4: An Artificer 2 now uses 1 lesser vital gem, 1 pine baton and 2 crimson crystals to craft an apprentice staff
Turns out I crafted some pine batons, my son already crafted some lesser vital gems, we should have anthithesis essence - just need to check we have enough. So just sage 2 and artificer 2 needed. And the server seems down :(
So all in all 4 different crafts are needed to make the staff at level 2. I would argue it isn't too much if you are forced to 'multiclass' into more than 1 speciality area. This will likely never work anyhow. This is not TT RPG where you benefit if you single class.
I'm currently a gatherer (specialising on mining) and smelter / armoursmith with character 1 with sawyer 1 thrown in because you just need it and fighter 1 because gathering is dangerous and some skirmisher because the club is broken and I only had a bow left and some rogue because stealth and perception is useful when gathering.
The second character will be wizard - and he will now do the missing sage/artificer. My son is an elf and is doing the gemcutter and essence gathering.
And as I said - sawyer 1 works - so does tanner 1 - albeit getting 15 beast pelts might be A LOT more difficult right now as spending some 229 XP for another craft.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I am not attempting to make the case that crafting should be easy - I love the depth added by the crafting system. However, if one refining skill grants you one uncommon recipe and one common recipe, all should - otherwise it has an unseemly advantage in the ease of advancement. This is in the interest of balance - I'm not suggesting that things must be 'fair' but the system becomes obtuse and unpredictable without consistent progression throughout.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I am not attempting to make the case that crafting should be easy - I love the depth added by the crafting system. However, if one refining skill grants you one uncommon recipe and one common recipe, all should - otherwise it has an unseemly advantage in the ease of advancement. This is in the interest of balance - I'm not suggesting that things must be 'fair' but the system becomes obtuse and unpredictable without consistent progression throughout.
Except... each of us crafters will have to dabble in multiple crafts and refine skills to get enough Crafting Points. So there's no reason we can't dabble in one of the nice ones. Not every craft has to be an easy one.
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Goblin Squad Member
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There is one more aspect to it why I prefer the current system.
It prevents a pure single skill crafter.
Why is this good? Simple - any such single skill crafter would be to 95%+ an alt that only is there for a single purpose. I feel it is good that the system prevents this. But off course YMMV.
Most true crafter player should enjoy to have at least some breath to offer. Maybe I do injustice to players who are fine to do nothing else but being best in a single craft. But that could be done by a bot and you could program it on day 1 and would know which level would be reached when if you do nothing else.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I agree. That's my point. There is no reason things must be fair, but there is every reason to make them cookie-cutter. It makes the system predictable and transparent - which it should be, because in case you haven't noticed, the vast majority of the complaints people have in the game are that they have no idea how to do things.
I am all for variety, but predictability counts for a great deal when you are learning to play a game, and the easiest way to prevent growth of a game is to make the learning curve wildly steep. Every exception to a rule makes it a steeper hill to climb.
If it were significantly harder to find Essences than Iron Ore, I would be fine with that. Decrease drop rates all you want - Golarion doesn't have a population of 1/4 casters anyway. But when it comes down to the mechanical system, a level 1 Smelter should gain access to the same sorts of recipes as a level 1 Sawyer. Steel Blanks and Steel Ingots are both Common,+0 recipes. There is no reason that any refining skill should gain access to an Uncommon +0 recipe immediately, any more than they should automatically be given a Common +1 recipe immediately. Recipes are drops for a reason, and having one tree of skills inherently require more recipes - and thus play time - in order to advance is both unfair and counter-intuitive.
I am a fan of Goblinworks, and I do not believe the developers are just getting this all wrong - frankly it seems to me this is most likely an oversight, and both of the Sawyer recipes learned at rank 1 are intended to be Common.
If I am wrong, and this is intended to achieve balance somehow - fine. But it is a touch irritating to have people automatically leaping to defend the situation when - if you look at the released spreadsheets - symmetry and consistency are present throughout the game, and there is no reason to assume that their intent was otherwise in this case.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Keign
Your original post started that it was too difficult to gain enough achievement points.
Now you argue sawyer should be made more difficult to reach the necessary achievement points to ensure balance and symmetry.
I'm lost sorry as it seems whenever I argue one question a different issue pops up. So what is more important - balance or it beng too difficult.
Or is the issue that it is just confusing right now and with not much experience and guides people are lost. that one I agree with 100%. I told my son to train jeweller to make gems - only to find out it should have been gem cutter instead.
I also still need to look at spreadsheets to plan what to do and how to do it. This in my view is the real problem. I remember when I bought civilisation that I got a large fold-out map with all the trees.
It wasn't symmetric, it was confusing - it was the best economic game I ever played. But they helped you to navigate the trees better.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Balance is more important, Thod.
My original subject was expressing the impression/opinion that progressing in refinement skills (in general) may be too difficult, that is correct.
You brought up the fact that it is apparently easier to gain achievement points as a Sawyer, and so I have now been addressing that - as I see it as a different, worse sort of problem. (I appreciate that you were attempting to help solve the 'difficulty' problem.)
I am fully in support of things being difficult. My main impression that led to the creation of this thread was that Crafting was significantly harder to advance in as a role in comparison to Combat, essentially a balance issue.
Without balance, your meaningful choices become less meaningful as you simply -must- play a certain way to be effective.
For the record I loved (and still love) Civilization - but I could always see the symmetry in the system. It was just as valid to be warlike as it was to be peaceful, depending on your available resources - one was not inherently more difficult than the other to advance.
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Goblin Squad Member
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The system should be designed for advancement to be slow and expensive. It seems as though hat is the way it should be working. I don't know if the crafting tree will take as long to max out as the class/role tree (approx. 2 1/2 years +/-), but if it does, I am okay with that.
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Goblin Squad Member
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There is symmetry in power and symmetry in the tree.
I'm just having the Civ map ahead of me. This is Civ II
Pottery on top gives you 0 new developments and is needed for seafaring as prerequisite.
The alphabet offers 4 direct progressions. Monarchy is a third level development that is needed as a second level prerequisite - Feudalism.
The beauty of Civ was - there was no single best way to develop. There were better and worse options. Long term / short term. Peaceful or warlike developments.
But the development tree certainly was not cookie-cutter or symmetric.
We can't tell yet if GW will manage symmetry in power. I guess this is what beta will hopefully achieve. You can't compare the impact of a sword with a wand or armour. There had to be asymmetry to reach a symmetry of power. At least that is what I feel is the only possible solution.
And I agree - symmetry of power is crucial. There I agree. How it can be reached - there I seem to disagree.
Is it too complex - not enough help out there? You didn't start your first CIV game in god mode and many players never got to high difficulty.
Lets revisit this in 2 month.
Oh - and in regard to fighters being easier. I couldn't go beyond fighter 1 despite being miner 15 and ended up dex 26 but Str 16 with a 'fighter'. I also only read the instructions afterwards and was mightily upset how impossible it was to go up as fighter.
Edit: the fighter example was my pre wipe experience
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Goblin Squad Member
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It is looking like it will take about that long to max out your first crafting tree. You need Crafting 121 for rank 20. If you get all the achievements in a given skill they give:
refining - (7 different skills)
all t1 - 8
all t2 - 16
all t3 - 32
crafting - (10 different skills)
all t1 - 12
all t2 - 18
all t3 - 24
So if you get 2 crafts to tier 3 and 1 to tier 2 you will have enough crafting achievements. You could do it more efficiently xp wise by getting enough t1 achievements but then you would need quite a bit of other training to get your stats high enough
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Goblin Squad Member
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The grinding monsters to get recipes along with grinding for components and grinding for gear is an artifact of the short alpha.
Its unrealistic to expect a viable player economy to arise in a sort=term server where trade relies on you being online at the same time and in the same place and direct swapping.
Apparently the idea in the game itself is there will be far less need for grinding.
I suppose one advantage of all this grinding for hours we do to find two recipes and a dagger is it stress tests the server :D
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Goblin Squad Member
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Having just been given a +2 copper bar recipe (unbugged) by a company-mate, I'm looking forward to +3 Crafting Points in 8 hours. That's another level I can advance when I have the xp to buy it. I think that's how it's supposed to work. Now I owe that guy big time.
I think the player economy will be much more robust in EE; we have limited numbers here and it's not for keeps. We need gear as our starter gear breaks.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Having just been given a +2 copper bar recipe (unbugged) by a company-mate, I'm looking forward to +3 Crafting Points in 8 hours. That's another level I can advance when I have the xp to buy it. I think that's how it's supposed to work. Now I owe that guy big time.
I think the player economy will be much more robust in EE; we have limited numbers here and it's not for keeps. We need gear as our starter gear breaks.
In alpha 7 once my fighter got reasonable plate and a +2 longsword he was able to use feats like whirlwind attack to good effect and start to churn through the lower level monsters.
There is a catch 22 with melee in Alpha 8 that your weapons and armor are getting eaten up faster than you can replace them. Because you are forever fighting low level mobs in the hope of replacing your nearly worn out gear you never get time to gather or craft either :D
For a while there I had a fighter with longsword feats using a club becasue both his longswords died. In the end I gave up on melee and now pop things with a shortbow with nothing other than basic untrained skills.
Of course what you "should" do in Alpha 8 is wander around as a group of archers or wizards though being in party does destroy any recipes you find.
I am definitely NOT building a melee character for EE.
I wanted to weigh in on this as well. I am already mapping the easiest way to farm crafting points. I guess I am a power gamer after all.
Actually, the issue is that it's SO MUCH EASIER to do certain things than others.
One of the main issues with crafting, unless I am missing something, is that the mob drops that are required for crafting (stuff like dead prey, broken weapons, etc) are so rare! It seems like you should get 1 of the types from each mob on average. I am talking about killing 10 mobs and getting nothing. If they dropped 'correctly', it would be easier. That being said, getting sparkles and ore are probably the only simple part of gathering crafting items. Plants are around, trash piles seem pretty rare, and the other stuff is ridiculous.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I wanted to weigh in on this as well. I am already mapping the easiest way to farm crafting points. I guess I am a power gamer after all.
We've had this discussion in my team's voice chat. The basic idea that we have come to is this: My commoner character is a commoner with a smelter focus, not a smelter who happens to be a commoner. Every commoner who does refining is likely going to need to get crafting points from a number of skills. So will experts who do crafting.
It's just like a roled Fighter who wants to be a medium-armored archer. If the player of such a character refused to get martial points from anything except archery kills, we'd shrug and accept that that is one way to slow your character progression.
I think almost all fighters will be using a mix of weapons to get martial points. As a commoner, I'll be using a mix of refining and crafting to get crafting points. I'm a commoner, Jim, not a smelter.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I developed a theory last night that Escalation Mobs do not drop any appreciable loot, as that is not their purpose. I wonder if that might be causing some of people's confusion about lack of drops.
I felt like I was getting a fair amount from Goblins and bandits, but zero from Broken Men and the like.
Could someone (who's not at work) test and disprove/prove that?
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Caldeathe I think that's maybe off. In my experience, I've seen a few yellow, red, and purple mobs (except for ogres) in normal hexes. I've seen a lot more of them in escalations. I think there's some drops from those advanced mobs. I picked up 3 trophy charms this morning, for example, from broken captains or commanders, and one recipe. Not sure of the rest of the loot - my inventory is a jumble.