Backpack vs Small Bag recipes, and complexity in crafting

This is an issue that bugged me when I did crafting pre-release, and am surprised to see its still in the game, now that I've resumed crafting.

A Small Bag is harder to make and requires much more raw resources than a Backpack, even though it should be easier and require less resources. This is because you need a whole coil of rope (!) to make a small bag. I'm not sure why both have the same amount of slots, although you can wear a Backpack as a backslot, making it more valuable in that way.

Now I've never done weapon crafting, and I've noticed that a coil of rope has the same recipe as a bowstring, except that the bowstring requires an added 1 wax. So, if looked in this light, then a coil of rope isn't much different than a bowstring. However, I'm not even sure why a bowstring requires 5 spools of thread, and why a whole spool requires 4 raw cotton and 2 wax. Maybe this is for balance reasons, and because people grow cotton. I don't know. Me, I don't grow cotton; I just gather cotton from the wild.

In any case,

2 animal hide + 1 curing salt -> 2 leather
1 leather + 1 curing salt -> 2 leather straps
3 leather + 1 leather strap -> 1 backpack
(at least) 3 animal hides + 2 curing salts -> 1 backpack
(needs 2 crafting tables/skills)

4 raw cotton + 2 wax -> 2 spool of thread
5 spool of thread -> 1 coil of rope
2 animal hide + 1 curing salt -> 2 leather
2 leather + 1 coil of rope -> 1 small bag
(at least) 10 raw cotton + 1 animal hide + 1 curing salt -> 1 small bag
(needs 4 crafting tables/skills)

Now, I'm not even sure why all of this isn't done with two different sets of crafting and refining skills, either. You have to use 4 crafting tables/skills instead of 2. One could assume you could either have a cloth/fabric pouch with a cloth/fabric cord (not a coil of rope), or a leather pouch with a leather cord (not straps).

This is an area where I think more realism could help, because even though its simpler just to use coils of ropes or straps, having cords in game could cut down the amount of raw materials used to create 1 cord. A single leather, for instance, might be stripped into 10 leather cords. 1 spool of thread (or two) + wax might be consolidated into one cord. That would prevent an overly complex, resource and skill consuming process to make just a single Small Bag.

 

there are other sources of coils of rope. check the docks.

 

Yea, I know... this is what I did in pre-release; just went around stealing rope from the docks and from mines, because you find it in mines also. But I would have thought taking rope from the docks is going to be stealing, and besides its something that becomes tedious, since you have to go out of town and back in for the ropes to respawn, depending on how many small bags you want.

In the end, I think they should rethink the recipes a bit.

 

Utilizing fabric scraps makes cotton much more efficient, though you have to have a lot of cloth salvagables to make it worthwhile; 12 scrap plus 1 cotton plus 2 wax gives 1 spool (it should be two, same with the leather recipe, but c'est la vie; been that way since before my account was made and I doubt they'll ever change it) meaning you can get 5 spools from 5 cotton and 60 scraps. When salvaging crappy cloth crud I've looted from sacks, barrels, or just low level mobs, I still typically get 6-9 scraps per item, so it shouldn't take long to get the scraps, either. Cheaper than doing it with only raw cotton by purchase price if it vs sell price of the cruddy cloth stuff, too.

This all said, the recipe could probably just require the use of a strap, and have coils of rope be added to the straps catagory, if it's not already. That way you can even just make them with all leather if you have a ton of it, or use any cotton you're growing to make them just like before.

 

Good luck with that. They don't care and won't listen.

When crafting a leather chest pieces, it still takes enough animal hides in leather to house a small Native American village, circa 1800's (and that's if you're using NORMAL leather). A forest of wood is needed to make a long bowstave. Hell... you need enough ingredients to make pie dough to make 15 batches of it in real life.

You know we've been barking up this tree for years, and during times when they actually had the manpower to make this happen, DURING A TIME WHEN IT WOULD HAVE BEEN IDEAL TO DO SO (The item database refactoring they did years ago)!

 

Last time I calculated on this it was the other way around due to the wax. Has it changed?

Hmm, looking through this...

http://sotawiki.net/sota/Spool_of_Cotton_Thread

Ingredients

Loom Shuttle x 1
Wax x 2
Raw Cotton x 4​

Creates

Spool of Cotton Thread x 2​

Ingredients

Loom Shuttle x 1
Wax x 2
Raw Cotton x 1
Fabric Scrap x 12​

Creates

Spool of Cotton Thread x 1​

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Wax IIRC is 4g from Crafting Supplies NPC
Raw cotton you can get for 4g from a good supplier, or at the very least slightly above that.
https://shroudoftheavatar.net/itemSalesStats?item=Raw+Cotton

So to yield 2 Spools:
A) no scraps
Wax x 2*4 + Raw Cotton x 4*4 = 24g
B) with scraps
2 * (Wax x 2*4 + Raw Cotton x 1*4 + Fabric Scrap x 12*1) = 48g

Yup, same old result. If the wiki pages are still accurate then it is still more profitable to sell the scraps to buy more Raw Cotton and use that recipe due to the wax.
Even if you buy your Raw Cotton for 5g each that is still A) 28g vs B) 50g. I think that it only breaks at a cotton price of >10g.

So has something changed beyond what the wiki pages reflects?

 

1) Actually have to track down those good suppliers. I'm new to the game, I'll admit, but finding those people? Not something I've been able to do. You also usually have to buy in massive lots, not in small batches. Less of an issue of you're PRODUCING massive lots of goods, too, but point still stands that you usually have to buy massive lots, which you might not have the cash to initialize the process. Or, you might just want to make a few.

2) "Me, I don't grow cotton; I just gather cotton from the wild." If you don't grow or buy your cotton, you need to stretch it out somehow. Doing as I noted does just that.

3) Tailoring XP for salvaging the crappy cloth gear, which won't sell anyways. Less of a factor when you're already high level or even max level in a discipline, but still a potential factor.

4) Strict gold value of all combined materials doesn't necessarily mean the cheaper is easier/better. Scavenging cloth items is pretty common, from my experience, so it's just free materials to throw into making thread. I'm not actually *spending* 12g on the scraps, after all. So 4g wax is all that I need to spend, in that case. Don't have to go running around to the vendors looking for decently prices cotton, able to do it literally anywhere with access to materials (bank or on person) and a tailoring station.

 

The link I provided does that for you
https://shroudoftheavatar.net/itemSalesStats?item=Raw+Cotton
click the person's selling to see who they are and in their profile it says where they are selling.
Then when you get to that town you talk to the Town crier to see if they have their name on the lot.

Where if I'm looking for something then I usually go to the Brittany neighborhood. One run through Brittany Alleys, or to one of the market POTs south of Brittany usually does the trick. Novia Market for instance.
https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/map//?map_id=1&poi_id=482&openPopup=true&z=5
Then whenever I find a vendor selling what I want I open the in game map and take a screenshot of Inventory+Map so I can more easily find them next time around.

But what is even easier is to just shout out in Universal Trade
-"Kinda new here, anyone know a vendor that sells Raw Cotton in smaller bundles?"
and people will usually help you out.

For instance, if you give me your usual hunting grounds / locations you are at, I could most likely give you a link to a specific vendor near to where you are.

If you want a few or a lot doesn't really matter, the calcs are the same. The wax price is what gets you.
Like I said you could even pay extra for the cotton, where even at 10g per you'd still be better of with buying them.

I don't grow cotton either, it is too easy to buy it compared to grow it. I rather spend an hour adventuring to gather some gold to buy the stuff. It helps the player economy and it is more fun for me. Win-win.

That I do though. I always scrap all the cloth and leather stuff when I have the opportunity.
But then I just don't use the Fabric Scrap.

I don't follow.

You said it would be more efficient and worthwhile, you even mentioned cheaper. With those recipes it is neither.

Did you mean that it was more convenient? I could see that as it is one step less.

Yea, but the 12g for the scraps is what you get when you sell them to an npc. Which is why I used that.

This is the part where I totally agree with you. Sometimes conveniance wins and you can't be bothered - that I get.

 

That IS a neat tool and all, but your average player? They likely won't even know the existance of that. New players like myself? Definitely not. It's also basically mandating an out-of-game tool to just do the most basic levels of crafting on the spot. No bueno. Even then, you still would have to go travelling around , and as I mentioned re. lot sizes, might have to buy a much larger batch than you needed in such cases. Typical 'small' lot size is 50 or 100, from what I've seen of the basic materials at many vendors. And shouting out in Universal would be nice, no doubt, but you gotta drop money on that orb first. Most in this thread, probably done that already, but new players? Not likely.

Wax is 4g per, same price as cotton, according to your market page thing. 4 wax 1 cotton vs 4 cotton 2 wax. Scraps aren't a *positive* return in that scenario, sure, but that doesn't mean you penalize the recipe for their value. The loot is free and easily found in a few minutes of scavenging. If your goal is to just make money via selling bags, sure consider it a factor against the end return from the bags (so if they take forever to sell higher return matters more, if you are just selling to NPCs or they sell immediately anyways, then it matters less), but if ease of production matters, which it does, or skill matters too (scrapcraft is two crafts to cotton's single, for ex) you have to factor the timesave value and/or the skillgain value as well. And, again, "Me, I don't grow cotton; I just gather cotton from the wild." If you don't grow or buy your cotton, scraps make sense. Bags will sell for much more than the materials, incl. scraps will, so while you get less overall gold because you aren't selling the scraps and buying cotton, you're doing it quickly and getting bags onto market quick, so you can get back to whatever else it was that you were doing. I think you've been at endgame level for so long it's warped how you address things a bit.

I said, and I quote, "Cheaper than doing it with only raw cotton by purchase price if it vs sell price of the cruddy cloth stuff, too." getting the like, 4 gold for the cruddy cloth stuff isn't worthwhile unless you're really strapped for cash (which I have been at times, I'll admit); you'll get more return from the scraps, ofc, but comparing the cost of scraps to the cost of bags, bags win. Selling scraps then buying cotton is just a lot more time and work to set up. "Convenience" is another way to say "saves time", and time is money, friend. Spending an hour+ to adventure and farm crap when you are wanting to craft, when you can just craft NOW, using easily obtained ingredients instead of selling them off, and getting back to whatever else you were doing before is more than just because you "can't be bothered".