The Danger of Crafting With Magical/Rare Resources -- (Dev) Replied

I love crafting and making things in games it makes the things I have more personal to me, but it has gotten pretty repetitive and not as adventurous when crafting.

When I thought about crafting with dangerous materials, substances or magic I was hoping there would be some mysterious danger to it. Usually when you fail at crafting in any other game you either lose that special resource, you have to try again or you get something you didn't want (not saying those aren't necessary.)

What if (for example, to add in some context) you get a rare Firestone from a boss at the center of a volcano, it is the last ingredient to make the cloak of fire that a mysterious tailor told you about. You get all the things you need ready to make it and something goes terribly wrong. Smoke fills the room and a fire demon appears holding the Firestone. You are forced to run out and call for help but the demon surrounds you with fire. Before you think the end is upon you, Lord British jumps through the wall of fire and strikes the demon down. He then gives you a good talking too, about how you should be better prepared when working with such dangerous items....

Sorry for the short story, I just wanted to paint that picture with my idea =)

Simplified Idea: Monster instances may occur when crafting with powerful resources.


Any expansion or criticism about my idea is more than welcome.

 

Generally speaking.. I like the idea of risks associated with resources of a a magical nature. I don't particularly care for the idea of that risk being a monster encounter. In following the theme of your example perhaps there would be an explosion that causes a lot of damage to you and destroys your tools.. or starts a fire if you don't take precautions.

Another danger I considered was perhaps a poison gas, electric shock or magical affliction of some kind.

Monster summonings just feels wrong since you'd expect there to be some sort of intelligence behind it. Like someone specifically put a magical trap on that piece of flint which is extremely unlikely and random. I mean, it's a rock after all. On the other hand.. explosions suit the nature of the flint being from a volcano. Perhaps melting into hot lava and cooling into pumic afterwards would be interesting.

As an aside.. scolding by Lord British.. most amusing. heheh

 

I would more like to see crafted items be the top of item tiers. Other than consumable items like food/potions, crafting armor and weapons is pretty low priority to non existent in other MMOs.

Start with quested items.
Then dropped items.
General crafted items.
special quest items.
boss loot.
rare crafted items.
raid drops.
Raid dropped crafted mats.

You can still get that great sword of smack from the raid boss, but you can get a better sword of smack if you can find a crafter to make one from the imbued stone found in the treasure pile.

 

Bowen makes a good point that "harvested" resources should only have affliction type dangers but they have to be detrimental enough to actually increase the value of the weapon and not just a minor inconvenience.

Maybe when using blackrock as a part of your sword and you hit it wrong it will explode causing health damage but even worse causes your hand(s) to be immobilized for a period of time. This would make your character unable to hold anything in his hand for a short period of time but still engage in other social things such as playing Knight's Bridge, organizing your bank, shopping at vendors, etc. Any sort of real inconvenience which I think is what Revenant was going for with his monster spawn will make the value of an item increase and give people more options for how they want to obtain such items.

 

Good ideas. We want to temp crafters with dangers when appropriate with risk/reward scenarios. This could be material or location based.

 

Thank you for all your input! =) Introducing more challenges and excitement in crafting is something I would enjoy. Whether its poison clouds, monster instances, or maybe something corrupts your crafting tool and you have to purify it so that you can use it again. Anything like that will make the crater think about getting prepared before crafting with a certain material or using a mysterious forge or tool that they found.

For example, you might find some ghostly sewing needles that allow you to make unique ghostly cloths, but there's a chance of awakening the ghost that lost those needles. Or you might find a hidden forge deep inside a cave that could give you a better chance at crafting something but you share a risk of alerting a horde of monsters if you use it.

Just throwing more ideas out there =)

 

@Revenant Shadow, ooh. Going with your ghostly example, that instead of fighting that ghost whose needles you use, you have to barter something, or talk your way out of it. So not everything ends up being combat based!

Some materials could also be rare not because they produce extra special items, but because they're so painful to work with!

 

I agree, not all situations should be about fighting. I would like to have the person crafting think about the dangers or consequences they might stumble upon when using certain materials or tools. There should be obstacles when crafting, instead of numbingly pushing the craft button over and over again...

For another example if a certain sword requires a really hot forge, you might want to think about keeping a bucket of water around it could cause a fire... =)

 

Maybe there is a law saying you can't mix those ingredients.
So you go criminal and anyone can attack you.