Crafting woes

those are the only way to make those particular items. you need a mold, which they dont have in this release!

 

These are the two things that caught my attention I want to address as I am a crafter myself who loves the complexity of the system going into SotA like many others.

As someone who proclaims that they do not like crafting or the job aspect of it, I simply say that this is why we crafters exist and what makes the economy in gaming great. Crafting isn't made for you, it's made for crafters, so why complain about an aspect of the game you won't really be taking part in when there are people such as myself who do that job to provide players like yourself with what you're looking for?

SotA has a very deep crafting system. We knew it was going to be like that from the beginning which was one of the main appeals for people like myself. At the moment, it does need tweaked so I don't expect the recipes to remain the same throughout the alpha and beta. Same with resource nodes (which I don't care much for to be honest) and gathering I expect will have massive changes by release. It's a process and they are trying to do 100 things at once to appease players so it's going to take time. Balancing crafting can be a delicate issue because one wrong move can have massive effects on the economy so I don't expect major changes happening quick without a lot of thought into the process.

 

i just dont make scimitars (no scimitar blade molds, or halberds no halberd blade head molds) I just adapted! on what your saying about me not being a crafter, yes i am not, but im giving it a try, things were going quite well until molds started not to exist, i make my own wood stuff as well. Yes im not big on crafting, i am big on supplying myself with weapons and armor i may need! It is becoming a workload on top of a real job work load, which turns me off from crafting more. I would think the devs that are making this game would want to show off all the things you can make (knowing that when the real game starts, you will need crafting points in crafting to get more or make better stuff. I feel like from what you typed there your telling dont even bother crafting!? I may enjoy it, who knows? I understand they have a lot on their plate, but the molds were in, in the last release, i cant see how hard that would be to put a mold in the game that they already have or how badly that can effect other aspects of the game?

Understand i may not be as close to the devs as you so i have no clue ryme or reason to wht they are doing?, but i see a lot of other basic things that need to be done, like new monsters, load times for instances, fixing the double death penalty when dieing in an instance. Yes the world looks nice, yes the items and houses look nice, some of the fighting mechanics and sounds need to be fixed, prices need to be dropped or increased etc.. but why take away something you already have? Why make the people who like crafting have to gather so much from so little resources we get? That could make the "up, and coming" crafters say forget this. You may like all the extra stuff, great! I personally do not like the ridiculous amounts of resources to make something as simple as leather armor! I made my first magical sword today and im damn proud of it! So maybe i am starting to like crafting? I dont know? I do know there are too many resources to make simple crap, i dont feel like spending a month gathering crap constantly. Yes this is the alpha or whatever, i do understand that. I have just changed my weapons to swords (which i dont like very much but had no choice but to do) So basically im feeling like i am being told this is what you can use, whether you like it or not! (not fun and i dont enjoy being forced to play something i dont want too!) Thats just my opinion, yours may differ.

 

Thank you sir.

Your answer expedited my productivity which will lead to decorating my home sooner.

You win the gold medal.

 

no prob i hope that was the right recipe lol, im just guessing off the top of my head, i would have to look at my recipe book to get the exactness of that.

 

It was, I just had to play around with how much I needed of what until I got it right.

 

cool

 

Thats like today I happened to figure out how to make short swords w/copper hilt and gems. Great for dual wielding, especially with a 10% bonus haste on the blade! I'm digging the crafting, but the amount needed of resources is a bit much.

 

I'm not saying not to bother with crafting at all but why would they dumb crafting down for the few who don't want to put the work into it when it's that work that crafters enjoy about crafting? That would be like saying that combat should automatically build decks and execute special attacks because some crafters don't like the idea of having to learn a combat system while resource gathering.

As for why the mold isn't in this release, I don't know. I've been having to buy hallys from kobolds since we can't craft them at the moment. Could be something that is being redesigned or might have been overlooked for the moment so they could get the release out. There are a few missing things at the moment such as the epic cloth armour.

The things you mentioned are indeed being done. Things are being balanced and repriced, crafting is being changed (hence things disappearing while they work out kinks in the system that need to be more balanced?) so exactly what you're asking is in the process of being worked on but it's not a simple process when you consider trying to balance out items and prices while continuing to work on and add more items to the game.

With resource gathering, there does need to be some changes to it, but it's not meant to take mere seconds. There are a lot of people who make characters based solely around resource gathering as well as was the case in UO as well plus it's a great way for new players to make money because people like myself who don't want to spend the time gathering will buy raw materials from them instead. I got my start in UO by mining my butt off in Minoc and selling to the blacksmiths in town who needed the ingots. The same I am hoping will happen with SotA.

 

Okay let me try to explain what I would like to see:

Molds for blades do not exists in the real world and therefore just complicate things in the game.

When you want to make a blade to a sword you normally you take a few wrought iron ingots (lets call them iron ingots in the game) and forge them to iron rods. You take a few iron rods and forge them into a blade.

Since the crafting hardly are implemented at the moment it would be much better if they introduced a new blacksmith recipe that creates iron rods and then use different number of iron rods to create different blades, just as you create things in SotA. This will also open up for creating blades with different attributes depending on how you mix rods of different materials.

 

My point is that I think and really hope that some of the "mold" recipes are not in this this release because they are remaking the recipes and hopefully remove the use of molds from to make a more realistic approach to make swords.

 

That's not terribly different than now, only the activity should probably be at the blacksmith table instead of the smelting station. While casting a sword blank is a bit of a bad idea, for any large project (like outfitting an army) blacksmiths would certainly be working with a template or "mold" to try to keep the swords as uniform as possible. Also, bronze doesn't need to be worked like steel (no carbon) so you are free to cast it directly with a mold.

It's more like the developers are trying to cram 2000 plus years of metalworking into a single streamlined system, which means there are going to be compromises.

 

Simply put, no!
You would have blacksmiths making rods and forge rods in to "templates" then a sword smith would take the template and make a sword out of it. Historically there have been at lot of trial and error with different alloys to get something you actually would be able to cast to increase the output. Bronze is one alloy that have been casted into sword but never got really popular for different reasons. But you cant cast templates of iron swords, you simply don't get the same strength and casted iron are much more brittle then iron that have forged.

Here is a video from a good sword smith, he uses modern metal and chemicals personally I like to use more period correct materials.

 

In the past, I was a Flintlock long rifle shooting, tomahawk/longknife throwing, 'Possum skin hat wearing re-enactor, using 1700's clothing and camp gear to teach early American history here in Kentucky and Southern Indiana. I brain tanned my own deer hides for leggings and rifleman's frock, cut out the patterns and sewed the garments up with waxed sinew (artificial!). I assisted a truly gifted old man with blacksmithing of tools and equipment, and know the basics of creating the weapons and household articles we see in this awesome game. I've sawed, carved, whittled, hammered, and glued wood, to make rustic furniture for hunting and fishing cabins similar to some of the structures seen in game. I can even make a "survival" stick bow, and arrows with fire hardened tips to take small game in an emergency... or just for fun with grandkids.

I would really love to see a crafting system that actually resembles how it is done in our real world. Just something to think about.

Thanks!

-Sam

 

The problem is that you have copper, bronze, iron and bunch of non-weapon grade alloys being forged into weapons with the same process. Even then, we have iron, not steel, blades, those went out favor before most of traditional medieval swordsmithing showed up.

 

Yes I know there there is really different manufacture methods depending on metal. Copper for example where folded and not forged, but still no mold used. Bronze there is some casted swords that I have read about but they was not that popular. Iron and steel that where forged, again no mold.

Add to this that if you are using a mold you are not a blacksmith you are a smelter and it's here it's really confusing for those new to SotA crafting.