[By design] Enchant vs. Masterwork XP usage per use

By most accounts, I think this is a bug. Happy to be wrong, but it looks fishy. The images exist, but I am having trouble with them while posting. Maybe they are working, but we'll see.

Bludgeon Enchant 64. Enchanting a wand.
Initial XP 805488
Final XP 803768
1720 into skill @ 0.2135%

Enchant subskill Armor 70
Initial XP 806464
Final XP 805871
593 into skill @ 0.0735%

Is Masterwork too high? I thought it should be 0.1% after level 50 or so.
Is Enchant too low? Same thing.
Something does not seem right... but it is taking a lot of gold at these very low XP usage rates for enchant.

 

The enchanting subskills are, presumably by design, significantly harder to level up than any of the masteworks or main enchanting skill, as the xp transfer rate is a LOT lower. Noted this when they were first implemented months ago and it hasn't changed,so assuming working as intended? If not then I can see a lot of angry people who've burned thousands of gold ingots trying to level them despite having pool in the millions ...:X

 

I believe it is by design as a masterwork only works on a single specific thing, such as plate only, or chainmail only. Where enchant armour works on cloth, chain, plate, and leather.

 

Yeah, I kinda thought along the same lines due to the non-specificity.

 

As one who has GM'ed the Blacksmith Skills and all the enchant skills, I can state that it takes 10's of thousands in Silver and gold ingots to get your skills to GM and it is worse if you do not have a large (6 Million plus) experience pool to drain from as you raise your skills. At one time I had over 9 Million producer pool experience saved up and I used that to run through skills faster using fewer resources. This is the route to take if your worried about using a lot of resources moving forward.

 

Rather than speculate intention, I have bugged the behavior to bring it to attention.

 

I would imagine it is working as intended too (due to the non-specificity as others suggested)... but here are a couple things that might be causing the disparity of your findings:

1. Although skill points are being taken from your pool to increase a "Training" skill, you also earn XP for crafting the item too. The amount that you earn from the enchantment/masterwork attempt may vary depending on your % chance as well as how many times you have attempted that recipe before. Those 2 skills had different starting points so I would assume the % chance on each was different. This may be cause for a different "net" decrease in your pool on each attempt.

2. The size of your pool will affect the amount of points that a skill will accept per attempt. I don't know which one you did first, but if the masterwork was done first, your pool would have been bigger and thus more points used per attempt. If you had done this the other way around (enchantment with higher pool than when you did the masterwork), you may see different results in net points spent.

These 2 factors, especially if both are contributing, may be cause for a several hundred xp point swing differential and could be skewing the end results you are finding. We would have to do more testing with 1) Equal skill starting levels and 2) Equal starting pool for each one and 3) Use an unused, equally difficult recipe for each one. Number of Exceptional Item creation disparities might be an issue here too if this was a test of other crafting skills... but you can't get those on a MW/Enchant so I didn't include them.

Now, having said all of that, it is possible that the formula or some coding is wrong and the Enchantment may not be using as much as it should. I think that would be something that @Chris would need to look into.

 

Yesssssss. Thank you for saying this. There is no wrong way to do it, but your strategy is one I like to preach.
IMHO the best way to level it is to get the biggest crafting XP pool you can. Millions sounds crazy, but once you start to save gathering XP (you'll need the ore anyway) you'll see how it really adds up if you lock skills. Once you start to use it to gain levels: the larger the XP pool, the more it XP it consumes. And because you still need the same amount of XP in the end (no matter how you do it) you have used fewer mats to get there. Since most materials at that point are for gaining and not for profit, it's worth it. /IMHO.

Same goes with combat XP. If you don't have a large XP pool and you are trying to GM something it tries to be conservative as to not consume all of your XP. You'll see small XP subtractions and as a result the progress bar fills up more slowly. But if you have a lot of XP at your disposal you'll gain more from each successful skill progression/raise. Of course you'll see your XP pool drop much quicker.

In the end, same amount of XP is needed for everybody (depending on the skill) but the time/attempts/materials used is scaled.

 

@Lexie Maybe you are missing what I am pointing out. It is not about the amount of XP that is needed. It is the rate of XP added to the skill per use with the same size pool... compare the Masterwork to Enchant and it is different. This percent going into the skill from a nearly equal pool is the point I am making.
Is the current draw into the Enchant subskills and Masterwork subskills correct? They are clearly different, so can you please ask if they are at "As Designed" levels? Thank you.

 

@Bzus please check this and confirm. Thank you.

 

@Chris @Bzus @Lexie Can someone actually check this please?

In short to make sure the possible problem is clearly understood:
Same crafting XP pool, same level of skill (nearly in my example), very different XP draw into the skill during a use. Masterwork vs. Enchant comparison. Thank you.