Too Much Crafted Trash and Crafting Specialization

I haven't heard any specifics of what specialization might entail.

One thing that I think would be nice is if the chance to create Exceptionals got a significant bump.

Currently I have a couple or three crafting professions in the 90ish zone and the odds of creating exceptional items sits at about 24-25%.

What this translates to is wasting a ton of gathered materials creating normal durability gear that can't hold masterworking + enchanting because the durability with those boons ends up being pathetically, barely-usable low (that is if you have graduated to solid enchants that take a bigger toll on durability than the low-tier enchants).

So a crafter needs to make about 15-20 times as many items as you need so you can get 3-5 masterworks with increased durability. Then you gamble on the percentages to masterwork + enchant.

The amount of waste feels very out of the ordinary to me. But where this really strikes me with dread is when I decide to collect Elven Hilts, Lich Skulls or Troll/Dragon parts and end up with marginal (but very very expensive to make) equipment because of the durability vs. masterwork/enchant effects. What's the going rate to sell to an NPC vendor a durability 20/20 +11 bone armor set, 150g?

 

Or possibly a reasonable salvage rate where you get something half way worthwhile on your ingots and rare mats for salvaging your non-exceptional crafting items.

x7 scrap on a 10 bronze ingot item falls a bit short of reasonable salvage. lol

 

Awesome. I'm definitely behind the ideas, especially on the salvaging of your goods.

Also, those special mats to craft things like the Lich Skulls, troll parts, etc as well as Tier 2+ craft materials... some additional ideas:

1.) More types of mats which you can substitute and get the same effect. Example, Creature "X" also drops a skull which can be substituted for a "Lich Skull" when crafting bone helms.

2.) A turn-in NPC/crafted goods sink - Once you craft what most would consider "junk" goods when trying to make a bunch of exceptionals, you could turn in batches to an NPC for trade. The NPC could offer static crafting material rewards, randomly generated crafting rewards that changes every "X" of hours, or an option to get random crafting goods (even recipes or specials only available from this option).

3.) Like #2, could use the old "BOD" system from Ultima Online as well. Save up your excess "junk", get BODs and turn them in for random rewards (usually crafter specials) or have the reward stated on the BOD w/o the randomness. Either or.

This would also help get rid of excess crafting junk, create chase rewards/incentives, add a bit of excitement to a very dull and boring process of repetitiveness, as well as give players more to do, more to sell/trade, more to collect, etc.

 

I think we can all agree that salvaging an item that cost 10k + in mats and getting 12 metal scrap back is kind of ridiculous. If something takes 10 bronze/silver/gold ingots to make, we should at least get a couple of those ingots back.

 

I guess an alternative would be if the NPCs would offer an acceptable price for the crafted "junk" items. E.g. all resources get a reasonable price tag and the value of end products is calculated based on these values. E.g. you need 10 ingots and 4 coal to create a metal ankh than the price could be 10 * 50 gold per ingot + 4 * 5 gold per coal = 520 gold as base value for the metal ankh.

Maybe for enhancing/masterworking the calculation is changing to make a difference between the skill of the crafter…maybe per added skill point = +100 gold to the items base value. E.g. enhancing the above ankh with +2.2 int will add 220 gold and the new base value would be 740 gold.

NPCs offer depending on the product and their own profession something between 50% and 75%...with the above example something between 370 and 555 gold.
This would still be a loss but an acceptable alternative to the gambling of salvaging the item with just the possibility to get some valuable items back.
Oh and my used values are of course just some random numbers.

 

The best way to keep all the trash from existing is to stop it from being made in the first place. Down the the RNG, seriously, its time. If I have to make 50 items to get the item I want, the other 49 I can either sell to npc for <1% of cost, or put on a vendor and hope someone buys it. This is why all vendors are full of crap. A better system would be to make it so I don't have to make the extra 49 items to begin with. Increase material cost as appropriate but allow greater control of outputs, particularly at levels so far beyond GM that you've invested enough XP to GM it 10 times over. I've never understood this intention to make players create crap that nobody wants and will never wear/use. If its about material sink, then adjust costs.

If we are going to continue to have a system in which a seriously invested grandmaster artisan can't figure out how to put strength on their sword instead of int, then at the very least there needs to be something to do with all the garbage . The salvage system is not fit for purpose nor is the npc vendoring system. If you could get back even 50% of the value spent it would be a huge step forward. Still think its far better to stop all the crap from being generated to begin with, though.

Specialization or not, the core system needs to be fixed before specialization becomes a thing.

 

At least higher skill levels could get a choice of more than three random status. Making it four or five would help a little. But that might just be a band-aid on a broken leg.

The problem I see: sell "junk" for decent amount of gold -> item goes into loot pool -> player gets item in loot drop -> player sells junk to NPC for gold -> repeat... this would cause the item to constantly dribble gold into the economy while bloating the loot pool. Or at least it could if they don't mark the items to not go back into the loot pool a second time, and now I hope they do.

 

Honestly, I'd rather they just add an ingredient. So, say if you're enchanting instead of it costing 5 gold ingots + 10 mandrake for "random", make it cost 10 gold ingots + mandrake + "strength stone" - which you craft out of whatever. This could appropriately raise the cost of enchanting (and masterworking) while adding additional crafting steps (player time) and additional resources (ie cost) but allowing a more controlled result.

The player items as loot is a neat idea on paper, but the reality is every single item I've gotten, ever, has been a piece of trash (I mean how bad does it have to be, if vendoring it for pennies is best option?) that I immediately went and re-vendored. Most of the time, its unexceptional crap that you can't do anything with. If the original crafter thought it was so bad they sold it, what do they expect the next guy to do with it? And so on....

 

I don't know about everyone else, I've found useful things. In a chest, I found a Copper Longsword +2 with 21 durability on it that I could use. Me, personally, I go around adventuring and farming enemies with just plain NPC merchant longswords. So this was definitely a nice find for me and better than the normal chest & mob loot.

 

One thing is certain increasing price for crafted gear will not change much . Market will adapt and adjust prices accordingly. If tomorrow you could sell a crafted chest for 10k gold to NPC i can assure you the mats to make it will cost you 20k or more . The only thing this will do is mess up the economy . Lets look at recent events ... you can easily farm 50-60k gold/hour now in upper tears .. i expect a massive gold inflation. Anyway there are lots of other ways to make crafting more fun, interesting, rewarding and with lot LESS JUNK . This is the biggest problem with crafting atm THE MASIVE AMOUNT OF CRAFTED JUNK. Here is one way it could be fixed :

1.Introduce ingame a new NPC MERCHANT - gonna call it CRAFTER MERCHANT ...
2. Introduce ingame a new coin - CRAFTER COINS
3. Allow people to turn in crafted items and get rewarded with coins - for a plus 1 item can get 1 coin for a plus 20 item receive 20 coins.
4.When said items are sold to NPC add em to loot tables... loot problem partially fixed .
5.Add crafting items to the merchant.... crafters can spend coins to get those items.
6. Items like - Stardust ...- 1 Stardust costs 5 coins it will merge 2 gems (at an alchemy table) creating a special gems that allows more enchants then a normal gems . For example combine an earth gem with a fire gem ..create a new gem you can socket ..as a result you can now enchant a weapon with enchants from both earth and fire tree. the variety of enchants will be huge .... the only way they can give us more enchants is if they remove the random factor and switch to select enchant which would be bad in my opinion. But if you tie new enchants to new gems you can improve on the current system ...increase diversity .
7.The more crafting items are added on the merchant the more incentivised people will be to sell gear for craft coins.
8.Add gems on merchant for taming ... gives you access to taming enchants when at a craft table .
9.Add gems for gathering ...gives you access to gathering enchants when at a craft table
10. Add success runes for enchants or masterworks ...purchasable with coins from 1%-10% runes you can use to increase your success chance when making gear.

And i can keep going ..theres so much more that can be done to improve the current system , the example i posted is a tiny part ... best thing is it results in 0 gold inflation ..... the economy remains stable .... and we have decent way to remove the crafted trash thats plaguing all of our basements.