Time to get Crafty!

[aegiskleais]

Time to get Crafty!

So who here crafted? I mean anything; be it alchemical potions, armor, enhancements, bombs, traps, etc... To me, there has always been a disconnect between buying goods and crafting them. Traditionally I think that it should be cheaper to craft items than to just out and out buy them, and in order to prevent an economic issue, the amount an item sells for has to be somewhat proportional to the buying cost (or the cumulative effort of the crafting process)

But I always found crafting to be too costly. It was very time-intensive, expensive, and yielded objects that really didn't feel that worthwhile to be crafted. Orens were so hard to come by in the first place, it made them doubly valuable.

For example, a costly item, such as a Fire Run, might be 1500 orens, and you might need 3 of them. That's an amazing amount of money for that, but if you look at what items it takes to craft it, you'll find that it MORE effort to go that route. So rather than scout and scrounge for stuff, especially when it seemed like you were restricted to HAVING to find something in the wild, or it was impossible to find more of it because the monster type that drops it is no longer in the chapter you're playing, you just end up feeling like the easier route is always to just buy it.

Same deal with low-cost items. A Samum bomb, for 30 orens, didn't have the oomph in battle to warrant my time to craft the item. The collection process, time taken for getting all the ingredients needed, just didn't seem worthwhile when you saw its use in battle. I don't know, maybe it was just me, but I felt disconnected.

With TW3 being open-ended, and allowing me to travel to areas where certain resources when I want to and need to, all they need to do in order to make crafting seem worth while is : (a) make the item's effect in battle commensurate with the complete cost of crafting (including time taken) and (b) Make the truly powerful and useful items have a particular rarity or difficulty in obtaining them.

What are your inputs on crafting? Do you do it? Is it not worth your time? Do you find that you can make do with no need from potions, upgrades, etc?

 

[StaGiors]

I like crafting, mainly because it is fun to try and gather resources and turn them into items. That said I agree that for some items, the ones you could buy, I didn't feel like spending the time to craft, and I do not think it was even worth it. Potions are part of the lore and are very interesting to play with, so I make them for that reason, not because they are that useful. I think some balancing is due in TW3, and I do hope we do not need to farm every single thing to make enough orens to craft, the Dark Mode armors for example.

 

[aegiskleais]

For me "Time is money". If an item is WORTH crafting it either (a) has great utility in my day to day operations, (b) is worth the crafting because it sells at a great price, or (c) is significantly cheaper to craft than to purchase, giving me incentive to put the footwork in. I WANT to want to craft, but the current dynamics of crafting relegated it to the back burner. For me, all orens went towards weapon/armor (which didn't offer as much depth as I wanted), but orens were hard to come by in the first place.

I would love to see a dynamic economy. You might find someone who pays a premium price for certain things. You might have a skill around how well you barter. When you attempt to barter, and fail, the chance for subsequent success lowers AND prices go up, so you really have to be a master of your craft. Also, just because a Fire rune sells for 1500g at place A doesn't mean it will at place B. You should be able to add a bunch of items to a cart and then haggle for a price. If the bill is 1000g, you have a high chance to walk out for 990g, but go beyond that and you better have good bartering skills. Feasibly, a 15% reduction for mastery might be doable, but you gain skill, even as you fail attempts.

Heck, on top of that you could add charming and intimidation to the mix. Of course, both affect your reputation as well, but... let's just say there are many different ways to go.

 

[Shadowhide]

I would love if crafting was more costly than straight-up buying, but yielded better items or quality than in the shop, for example, Silver Sword on merchant costs 1000 Orens and deals X damage, but if you take your time getting the (hard to come) materials you get the same sword but with X+ damage or a cool effect, bleeding, poisoning etc, depending on the material used (as in, base materials on the swords plus a slot for an even rarer material that gives the bonus effect).
That way, it would absolutely make me interested in exploring the darkest corners of the world for said materials, and in crafting itself over the usual, hey I'm gonna sell all my ingredients because it won't matter whatever I craft if my sword is duller than a worn-out broomstick.

That's my opinion, what do you lads think?

 

[aegiskleais]

I would love if crafting was more costly than straight-up buying, but yielded better items or quality than in the shop, for example, Silver Sword on merchant costs 1000 Orens and deals X damage, but if you take your time getting the (hard to come) materials you get the same sword but with X+ damage or a cool effect, bleeding, poisoning etc, depending on the material used (as in, base materials on the swords plus a slot for an even rarer material that gives the bonus effect).
That way, it would absolutely make me interested in exploring the darkest corners of the world for said materials, and in crafting itself over the usual, hey I'm gonna sell all my ingredients because it won't matter whatever I craft if my sword is duller than a worn-out broomstick.

That's my opinion, what do you lads think?

I like it. Store-bought is the base in effectiveness; Crafted items can vary in better-than-store-bought quality. That way it promotes you doing for yourself, because what you create is superior to what you can just outright buy. So those who need to squeeze every bit of performance will find that crafting not only gives them superior value, but could even then sell their items for a better profit than a store-bought item. A simple "Crafted" marker next to each item (as well as its crafted quality - Normal, Superior, Exceptional, Rare, Epic, etc.) could provide incremental bonuses.

Buy a Samum bomb for 25g might do decent damage to a harpy, but craft one yourself with Epic quality and it could do massive damage to a group of harpies. Of course, the work needs to justify the end result, but it has a lot of potential!

 

[StaGiors]

Not sure about crafting being more expensive. After all, a craftsman making a sword on his own, requires him to buy the necessary ingredients, so that he can make it. You bringing it to him would reduce his cost, so it should reduce the price as well. From a realistic point of view that is. I think the extra time taken to find ingredients to craft said item, should be awarded with some extra stats, that is a good idea, and one that would definitely "make" more players to try crafting.