Can someone check if my understanding is correct?

I just wanted to check if I understand everything about R34.

1. As a blacksmithI have to buy fuels and moulds which I have to buy so need money
2. To get money I need to adventure because the cost to make something doesn't pay for the resources used to make it.
3. To craft something I have to get my own ores, can't buy them because 2 above.
4. To get the ores I need to head to the mine where I need a fairly decent adventure level to survive.
5. In that mine, I may well die which means I will lose some crafting xp and possibly de-level my crafting skills.
5a. If it does lose xp I will need to mine more to build up the xp since actually making things gives very little (and will need more ores)
6 in order to fight in that mine I will need either some armour which I have to make because I can't afford to buy it or some reagents which I can't afford to buy.
7 before mining I will need to obtain some food for focus and health regen or stand around between fights for 5 minutes
8. if a mob spawns before i'm full of mana / health there is more chance of me dying (see 5 above)
9. I can either make the food myself or buy it from other players meaning I will need cash (see 2 above) or I can steal stuff from town which will effect my virtues for theft.
10. I can't grow my own crops yet for cooking because agriculture is not fully implemented.
11. After all of this and several hours of mining I can now possibly make a piece of equipment
12. If i want decent equipment I will need to masterwork and enchant it (needing silver and gold to be mined).
13. When putting masterworks and enchants on it it reduces durability so its better to do this on Exceptional gear which even at grandmaster i only have 25% chance to make so will need roughly 4 times the materials to make the item.
14. Once i have this and have made an exceptional item the masterworks and enchants are random and could be useless to my build.
15. 14 is dependent on if the item breaks. If it does break I have to start again

So to sum up on the whole Risk Vs Reward trend that is happening at the moment.

Risks:
Losing levels due to skill decay in dying.
Last few releases mines in general have gotten harder (higher mobs, lower spawn rate for ores)
Breaking equipment resulting in higher costs
Running out of food during mining could result in death due to lower regen rates.
Stealing for "food" could mean my virtue is effected.

Rewards:
Maybe, possibly something you might potentially want to wear.

Is all of that about correct?

 

Crafters already had it bad enough. This is just a slap in the face to be honest.

Things are worse all over, though.
For adventuring, I now need:
1 Repair Kits - because things break
2 Reagents - already ridiculously expensive to adventure
3 Food - because regen rates just became worse
4 Potions, probably since regen rates just became worse
5 Teleport/Recall scrolls since walking across Novia just became that much more of a slog
6 Optional - CotOs bought with rl cash to alleviate slow gathering rates, equipment durability rates, low carry capacity, reagent burn rate, etc.
7 Patience to wait out the increased 'downtime' between fights
8 More patience to re-grind LOST xp due to dying since skill decay is implemented at the same time survivability is seriously affected by regen changes.

In order to finance all of the above to even -be able- to go kill anything, you have to earn a certain amount of gold per hour to break even. This is already difficult to do unless grinding trivial content which is the only thing that really turns a profit.

This skill decay being linked to death thing is only going to cause one thing - people are going to try to avoid dying at any cost. Because it will set them back hours or days of 'work' - yes, work, this game as currently implemented is 'work'. You work to grind money to pay for adventuring to get skills, you work to grind money to craft, you work to grind money to pay rent, etc.

I don't really object to the grind, but once I've earned it, it should be mine, I should keep it.

Dying costing skills is a bad idea. There are other ways to make death more meaningful if people think that's necessary. I personally don't - its already pretty inconvenient - but I could see there being merit to it. Not like this, though.

How will this change playstyle?
Well, death is to be seriously avoided now.
- No more goofing around in town / falling off of buildings and getting killed
- No more exploring new zones
- No more trying challenging encounters
- Certainly not going to risk death in a PvP scenario, as the risk now FAR outweighs the reward. Probably wont even duel.
- No more helping people to do any sort of boss/large group content where I'm at risk of death

I mean I just don't get it. What are we trying to achieve with this kind of decay?

Think people are levelling too fast? Just reduce the XP that mobs give, problem solved.

Want death to be more punishing? Then add more rez delay or add a penalty to doing it. Take a % of pooled xp, even. Don't mess with locked skills!
If someone's got no pooled xp ,they're already struggling enough, no need to make it worse.

I know I personally play these games because I like to see my character grow and progress.
Getting set back every time I attempt something new is going to get old, really really fast.

 

From an NPC vendor correct, from a player very incorrect. You are not supposed to craft anything for NPC's.

Unlikely. When master crafting, you are given options. One of those is highly likely to benefit a the player that would have chose that item type.

True

 

Tahru, there isn't much you can craft at the moment that a player will buy for more than the cost of raw materials, the only exceptions really are consumables. Even with the ore prices dropping, you still can't sell finished products for more than just selling the raw materials.

Course maybe now you'll be able to sell food.

 

I have sold probably 100k in furniture in the last month and many have asked for weapons.

 

I was talking about from players. I don't think I've sold anything I can craft to an NPC. The cost of selling to a player doesn't cover the cost of actually making it.

Furniture is very different as you don't need to spend mats to masterwork, enchant or get exceptional on it. People will always buy deco.

 

Between the R33 economy problems and how you are getting you fuels and materials, that is possible. Ore is too expensive to buy and expect to make a profit making anything at all. Currently, the only way is to gather it yourself. Also, the fuel prices, especially for wax, very a lot. I actually buy wax from a POT because the NPC towns are always jacked up in price.

 

The crafting and economic discussion aside, I think the point is that crafters *have* to adventure to get materials. Unfortunately the way things stand now it is in almost every case better to sell the raw materials, if profit is your objective.
I'm not sure on the prices of things like wood, but furniture I can see being borderline as you don't need to get exceptionals, you don't need to mw or enchant, and you can't break it.
Adding punishment to crafting skills for adventuring death just seems over the top to me - they've got separate xp pools for a reason, they are separate activities.

 

True, and it is also true that you may make more money vendoring salvageable drops and selling raw materials than you can make crafting. But when crafting, we experience another fun side of the game. Crafting may never be a profession for the wealthy, but its fun that we can get and give virtually anything we want, when we want. Our stories and social interactions with the community are well worth any sacrifice.

 

Scoff and I have just worked out what it would cost to get a Meteoric Iron Epic Chestpiece with 3 enchants and 3 masterworks on it - a really great piece of gear.
Looking at material costs for doing this against breakage rate, and assuming you actually got enchants/masterworks that you wanted and not really poor selections.
We're assuming grandmaster level in both blacksmtihing and enchanting.
We're also assuming no failures making any of the component pieces costing additional fuel and completely disregarding any cost for animal hide to make the straps.

1 Meteoric Iron Epic Plate Chest
Requirements:
8 Meteoric Iron Sheets ( drills down into 3 Met Ingots + 1 Coal ) = 24 Met Ingots & 8 Coal
4 Meteoric Iron Bindings (drills down into 1 Met Ingots +1 Coal per 2 bindings) = 2 Met Ingots, 2 Coal
Leather Strap - will value at 16g due to the cost of curing salt to make hides to leather, leather to strap.
3 Coal
---------------------
Totals:
26 Met Ingots
13 Coal
16g (strap)


26 Met Ingots = 52 Iron Ingots, 52 Coal, 26 Tungsten, 26 Tin
Breaks down into:
Iron ingots: 204 Iron Ore, 52 Coal
Plus the 52 coal to make the meteoric ingots, and the tin and tungsten.

So to make the chestpiece and not do anything to it, you need:
204 Iron Ore
117 Coal (104 for the ingots +13 used in making sheets binding & final combine)
26 Tungsten
26 Tin
16g (for the strap)

Now! You're going to need this to be exceptional, so multiply it all by 4 due to the 25% exceptional chance:

816 Iron
468 Coal
104 Tin
104 Tungsten
64g (Straps)

Ok, now we're going to talk 3mw and 3ench - irregardless of what actual effects we get
Probabilities at GM:
95% x 82% x 44% Enchanting = 34.27% chance to survive process
95% x 82% x 44% Masterworking = 34.27% chance to survive process
Chance to survive the whole deal: 11.74%

So if we want to equate that up to 100% to ensure that we actually get a chestpiece out of this, based on these chances, we need to multiple our material costs by the same factor as the percentage, to reach 100.
100 divided by 11.74 = 8.517
So lets now multiply all of our material costs by 8.517 to see how much we'd need to pull this off.

6949.87 Iron
3985.95 Coal
885.76 Tin
885.76 Tungsten
545.08 gold, for straps.
--------------------------------
COST BEFORE SILVER AND GOLD ORE
Assuming this is how many chestpieces you will have to make to survive breakage, lets assign some costs
Lets say you can sell Iron Ore for 40g, which is pretty much what I'm seeing at the moment (low end)
Tin and Tungsten we'll value at 50, cause you can vendor them for that much
Coal we'll value at 6g since that's the bottom npc rate.

Iron Ore: 277,944.8 gold
Coal: 23,915.7 gold
Tin 44.288 glold
Tungsten 44,288 gold
Gold from straps (as above) 545.08
-----
Total: 391,031.6 gold
This is before silver and gold ore!


Each masterwork costs 20 silver ore and 5 coal, (5 ingots)
Each enchant costs 20 gold ore, 5 coal, and 10 mandrake root (5 ingots + mandrake cost)

Obviously some are going to break on the 1st go, some on the 2nd go, and some on the 3rd go. The ones that break earlier you obviously can't enchant/mw again so you wont 'lose' those materials.
It also depends on which you do first. Gold is cheaper than silver currently but also has the mandrake root cost.

If you assumed everything only broke on the 3rd attempt (thus needing the full silver/gold/mandrake cost)
You'd need 3*8.517 enchants and 3*8.517 masterworks, or 25.51 "attempts" with each.

25.51 MW attempts = 510 silver ore, 127.55 coal
25.51 Ench attempts = 510 gold ore, 127.55 coal, and 255.1 mandrake root (which vendor sells for 4g each)

broken down into

MW attempts: 510 Silver Ore, & 765.3 gold on Fuel
ENCH attempts = 510 gold ore & 1020.40 on fuel

Again, this is slightly overestimated because things can blow up on enchant #2 sometimes, thus negating the need for enchant number 3, but we've also cut out animal hide cost and ignored refinement failures costing additional coal.

So how much is gold worth? 30g low end? Silver? 50g low end? (Having checked various vendors)
With those rates, the enchanting will cost you 16,320 gold and the masterworking will cost you 26,265 gold.

Again, this is based on just selling the materials to players or in the case of tin/tungsten, to NPCs, and based on buying coal/mandrake at standard npc rates.

Grand total: 433,616.90 - for a single chestpiece with 3 enchants/3 masterworks.
And you still have to beat the RNG to get the enchants you want.


Now I've done this exercise partially to illustrate how ridiculously expensive it is to craft a truly nice item, and partially because we've actually got this chestpiece.
Bear in mind this is the cost for ONE piece to statistically survive. So there's no 'almost as good ones' to sell to recoup some cost. They all exploded.

Now is there anyone who's willing to pay 433,616 gold for this?
Anyone?

Crafting a really nice item is a lot of grinding, its a lot of expense, and its a lot of hard work.
That's what risk and reward is about.

Losing crafting skills while dying adventuring...just...ugh, its already time consuming enough and expensive enough to try and make anything without being further punished by having to deal with additional grinding and expense just to keep your skills topped up.

Sorry for length of post

 

For reference and if anyone wants to make an offer....

 

What you described, and what Scoffer screenshot is what I would expect is meant to be a high-end rare in the game. It is meant to be expensive to ensure its rarity.

Honestly, the general market is simply not mature enough to afford the mass creation of such goods.

One day it will be, unless everyone spends all their money on raffle tickets, but for now, those are talking pieces: Something you take out to flaunt to your friends.

-----

If you think it is too expensive to make, and you could not possibly find someone to buy it, then make less expensive stuff.

Personally, I only deal in "single enchantment" goods, since the cost of production for higher-end goods is beyond my means.

I make a sale once every couple weeks, which is perfectly acceptable by me.


(I use a spreadsheet similar to the one you described to price my goods as well)

 

NRaas, that's kind of the point that I'm making.
There's no benefit to crafting 'high end' stuff currently - certainly not if you're trying to make a profit doing it.
If profit was the objective, you'd sell the materials, which is why almost every vendor everywhere is loaded with raw materials.
People are even selling raw materials (and buying them!) for RL cash.

This is because changes to date have been to make these materials more difficult to get / require higher adventuring levels to get. Crafters cant afford to buy the stuff for gold cause they have no viable way to make gold.
One cannot simply buy materials, craft, and sell the outputs and break even due to RNG and breakage, in the current economy.
Until Crafting is a viable playstyle, I don't think it should be subject to additional penalties - its already pretty darn expensive (and difficult) to craft anything nice and you already have to spend a % of your 'adventuring income' to invest into levelling crafting at all.

 

A fascinating argument, thanks for the insightful and carefully researched numbers, but I'm not entirely clear what the argument is for. I'm not sure if making the game "easier" will make people want to buy your stuff. Maybe the current prices for resources are not right in such an early economy and will drop off as time goes on. From a slightly different perspective, you guys seem to be doing allright crafting what seems to be near end-game quality gear two months into the game. High quality gear is definitely a push-your-luck mechanic. Personally I think a +13 peice of gear is a good reward for:

Risks:
Losing very small amounts of XP when dying - speculation - don't even think this has been working up to now, so we'll see how much in R34, but not supposed to be much.
Last few releases mines in general have gotten harder (higher mobs, lower spawn rate for ores) - I find it pretty easy to get ore still
Breaking equipment resulting in higher costs - haven't had much of a problem with this other than purchasing new ingot molds and selling the broken ones.
Running out of food during mining could result in death due to lower regen rates. - speculation, and besides, not doing all sorts of things properly can cause problems in the mines
Stealing for "food" could mean my virtue is effected. - If you are able to make this type of equipment I don't expect you will need to steal to eat

 

I don't think it should be 'easier' - the point is that crafting already requires a huge investment of time and money, and must be supplemented by adventuring income in order to afford to do anything.
You can't sell the things you craft for anywhere near the investment because as you say, the economy just isn't there yet.
I'm saying crafters don't need additional cash sinks or xp sinks or anything-sinks, the system is already very heavily weighed against creating items of this magnitude.

 

Yes, that is an age-old problem, one that occurs in modern times as well.

Crafting is essentially a small business venture... But unlike in the real-world where Bank Loans, and Venture Capitalists exists to provide that initial influx, in the game we are left lacking.

The only choices we have are to acquire a wealthy Patron : Such as a Guild which will share resources and coin to offset your development costs.

Or as you mentioned : You can supplement your income by adventuring.

----

Of course, having some sort of enforcable Loan mechanic in game would be pretty sweet as well.

 

Nobody wants the game to get "harder" for them, but the developers need a free hand to finish the development of this game which is still in alpha.

Speaking realistically, I see a glut of raw materials and crafted items on the market all of which are overpriced so I go out and get my own. We absolutely need more sinks to skim that chaff.

 

Agree, having a loan mechanic would be cool - not sure how they'd work out those details but it would be neat.

 

Well said

 

Agree - the prices for raw materials far exceed what I could earn adventuring in the amount of time it would take to harvest them myself.
Hopefully this will straighten itself out in time.