The Making of a Great Sword!

Discussion in 'Crafting & Gathering' started by uosylence, Feb 12, 2018.

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  1. uosylence

    uosylence Avatar

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    I want to make a great sword to use for myself. For that purpose I have developed the following Crafting Skill Levels:

    GM Blacksmithing
    GM Blacksmithing Masterwork
    GM Blade Weapon Masterwork
    GM Alchemy
    GM Enchanting Alchemy
    GM Weapon Enchanting

    Can I make a great sword weapon with this? Lets look at the math. (many of you have already done this, but I'm new, having only played for two years.)

    If I want to make a really great sword it will take three levels of Blacksmithing Masterwork, and three levels of Alchemy Enchanting. At my levels of all Grand Master, the math for the master working looks like this:

    First Round 95% Second Round 82% Third Round 45% (success rates for each successive round)
    .95 x .82 x .45 = .350 or 35% success rate - so the rest of my swords (65%) will have broken.
    I will successfully make a sword with 3 masterworks 35% of the time and the rest will break.

    The same exact math applies to my Alchemy Enchanting, so I am also successful 35% of the time and the rest of the time the swords break.

    If we extend the math to complete 3 rounds of each Blacksmithing Masterwork and Alchemy Enchanting the math is:
    .35 x .35 = .1225 or 12.25% success. The rest of the swords (87.75%) will break !!

    However, there's more math necessary. If I am going to do 3 enchants and 3 masterworks to a sword I have to have an exceptional swords to begin with or my durability will be completely used up. At GM Blacksmithing, I am successful at making exceptional swords 25% of the time, so the math extends to :
    .1225 x .25 = .0306 or about 3.1% of my swords will be potentially useful.

    However, that's not the end yet of course. Since the traits that get assigned to my swords through Masterworking and Enchanting are random, I play several rounds of roulette with each and every sword in an attempt to get stats that I want on it. It would be generous to say this can happen to 25% of my swords.

    The bottom line here is that at Grand Master in EVERYTHING, I am using to craft a sword, I only have less than a 1% chance of making a great sword. Something is wrong with this concept. Especially when MOST of the swords (88%) get broken in the process. How is that being a Grand Master?

    So maybe its designed to be this way for a great sword so you have to make 100+ swords to get 1 great sword. How about a "good" sword for a GM Crafter? Lets say you take out the third Masterwork and the third Enchant, and just make a "good" sword instead of a great sword. That math is as follows:
    .95 x .95 x .82 x .82 x .25 = .15 so I have a shot at having 15 swords in 100 be "good". Again, when you apply the random factor of stats, lets say 25% of those swords have what I want and that is generous. So I end up with 3 or 4 "good" swords out of 100. Wow. Its just so sad. :(
     
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  2. Cordelayne

    Cordelayne Bug Hunter

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    Now THIS is how you make a GREAT sword:

     
  3. Cora Cuz'avich

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    [self-moderating]
     
    Last edited: Feb 12, 2018
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  4. redfish

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    Aku ! You will be defeated !
     
  5. Cordelayne

    Cordelayne Bug Hunter

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  6. Cora Cuz'avich

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    That thumbnail image makes it look like it's going to be the best swordmetal video ever.
     
  7. Alrik Doom

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    Welcome to the SotA Logic, where you work hard for nothing!
     
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  8. Curt

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    So how much more effort is it to make it of meteoric iron compared to normal iron?
    Suspecting that's when a sword gets more + the relative value of the materials decrease
     
  9. Waxillium

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    You’re not aware but a copy of yourself in another dimension is having fun.
     
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  10. Elnoth

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    GM just means that you can mentor others. It is by no means what defines a crafter as endgame.

    If you bring the enchant skill up to 125, and the masterwork skill up to 120 (and wear a wayland loop) that 12.25% chance to make a triple MW triple enchanted item increases to 17%. This means that you end up with 40% more items surviving to this level compared to someone at GM levels.
     
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  11. Barugon

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    I only have GM Carpentry and GM Carpentry Salvage and I can make great bows for myself. I have a 100% chance, no breakage, and I could do it long before I had any GMs. The way I do it is to use special materials and NO masterworking or enchanting.
     
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  12. uosylence

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    you would need to make 100+ of meteoric iron and 88 will break. That can be done - its not any harder but awfully expensive.
     
  13. uosylence

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    Copy that! I thought GM meant Grand Master...... My mistake. GM really stands for Go Mine for another year.
     
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  14. uosylence

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    I wonder what game my copy is playing. Seriously I am having some fun, but I will never be able to get the crafting xp to really be satisfied with my crafting results the way that crafting is working right now. It just makes me sad.
     
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  15. Elnoth

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    I'm hoping that they will offer more ways to earn producer XP, such as repeatable "daily" type crafting quests. Never heard of anything like this in the pipeline by the devs though :(
     
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  16. Spoon

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    @uosylence
    and others.

    So, testing an old suggestion of mine here.

    Would the process and end result feel more satisfactory if you could "front load" the system?

    For instance, if you have 25% for exceptional. Would it feel better if you could have a recipe which creates an Exceptional every time, but which cost 4x the resources and 4x the excecution time, although only one click and no random roll with no chance of failure?

    Similarly, what if you could front load the resources for exceptional+3x masterwork? Say for 25% and 35% respectively you load it with 12x resources+masterwork cost and it takes 12x the excecution time, but it then goes directly to the three rolls on the properties?
     
  17. Elnoth

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    Interesting concept spoon, but I would compare that to a night out gambling at a casino. I can go there with a bankroll of $500 I'm willing to lose, and play all night and either come out ahead or come out with nothing. By the same token, I can walk into the casino, put a single $500 bet down, and either win and walk out, or lose.

    Now since I would consider both a night out at a casino, and playing sota both as forms of entertainment, which method at the casino do you think would be more satisfactory? :)
     
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  18. Vodalian

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    One important part here is your idea of a great sword. You can make this item less than 1 % of the time. If that percentage was upped to 10 % for the same sword, no one would think of that sword as great, because everyone would have a few on their vendor. And +4/+4 would eventually be the norm for end game.

    There will always be people who go for that 1 % item, and that is what sets the bar for "great", not the stats them selves. You could say that +3/+3, or even +3/+2, was designed so that only crazy people would try because it's a small Power increase for a massive cost. But in a game like this, there are always enough people who are crazy, so the bar is set really high. It's tough to design around this mechanism.

    Personally I generally aim for +3/+2 items with good but not optimal rolls. It still takes a lot of ore, but eventually I get there. If I want to go higher I do like this: I craft until the new item is about the same as the one I'm currently wearing. Then I take the slightly worse of the two and try one more MW or enchant. If it breaks I still have the better one left.
     
    Last edited: Feb 13, 2018
  19. Uncle Sven

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    Yes. I would go so far as to say, take the materials for all 100 attempts, and make that the base charge. so 100 hilts( all the same materials) 100 blades 1500 silver ingots 1500 gold ingots 3000 mandrake root.
    and anything else I have left out 100 of each.
    Then let us choose all 6 bonuses! That I would work towards. That seems like a system I could count on.
     
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  20. Spoon

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    Funnily enough the front loading idea was something I had as a sidenote when discussing how to make crafting feel more like an exciting casino and not like a scary three-card-monty.
    This since players keep saying crafting feels like a casino - with me saying that nope casinos gives much more positive feedback loops than crafting in sota, so if the devs would take their lessons from casinos and gambling they could easily make crafting feel more fun.

    Unfortunately the whole thread was censored for some unknown strange reason so one can only see me quoting myself in other topics in reference to that discussion, but the discussion itself is gone.
    https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/f...uman-psyche-extra-credits.106783/#post-921235

    But the ideas was that what a casino does when it comes to things like a slot-machine is that it uses the skinner box principle while avoiding the loss aversion bias. It does this through
    A) small bet
    B) good probability of small win with small return
    C) very low probability of really high return

    What this means is that they create a Positive Reinforcement for hitting that skinner box.
    This since the cost is low making the threshold for the small bet lower, you get the Positive Reinforcement from every now and then getting a smaller Win, but you are really staying because you 'could' get that jackpot.
    Which means that even if you end up putting in 'just another coin' a lot longer than intended you still have that feeling of 'oh I was close to winning big'.
    Playing online poker fosters the same 'feels'.

    But in SotA crafting it is more of an double-or-nothing proposition, where you are forced to make high bets with multiple double-or-nothing calls, and only if that goes through you get a satisfactory result.
    That not only maximally triggers your loss aversion but it also actively works against the skinner box principle. Which is not good in a game made for entertainment and nothing any successful casino would touch with a ten foot pole.

    Hence I was advocating reversing this to more closely resemble the principles of a successful casino game.
     
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