Crafting worries me

[Mac_of_Prunus_XXIII]

Hi all,

I just wanted to post a question, because either i'm missing something, or crafting is worth worrying about (if this has been discussed before, my apologies).
I'm a heavy longbowman and lvl 4 armor smith. So far i found that the items you can make are far behind the items i can buy at my "combat level". Another thing that is bugging me, is the lack of craftable items per craft level. At lvl 4 i can only craft leather, which is of no use to me at all until lvl 5. At 5, i gather i can create a leather jerkin, which again, is of no use to me at all compared to the things i can easily buy in the marketplace.

So far the only conclusion i can make, is that it's far more profitable to just sell all craft items i loot and buy the things available to me at my present combat level.

It seems most people are trying hard to get their craft level up. So am i missing something, or didn't these folks do their math?

Loving the mod otherwise, see you all on the battlefield!

McP

[clickeverywhere]

You are correct. Especially with the influx of new players and the abundance of assist exp, there is no need for everyone to craft. You will not be able to make good items for yourself as you will go far beyond the level of the items that are currently craftable. Also, crafting is a work in progress so there are going to be many gaps. You can probably expect more craftable items in the future though. I'd suggest newer players just ignore crafting since you can probably rely on others to craft goods for you.

[Deofuta]

You are correct. Especially with the influx of new players and the abundance of assist exp, there is no need for everyone to craft. You will not be able to make good items for yourself as you will go far beyond the level of the items that are currently craftable. Also, crafting is a work in progress so there are going to be many gaps. You can probably expect more craftable items in the future though. I'd suggest newer players just ignore crafting since you can probably rely on others to craft goods for you.

Ignore crafting? One can easily level your craft by salvaging alone, and doing so provides a new player with highly sellable items that allows them to get some needed early gold. Its an easy thing to do that lends itself to the pace of the game. There is good profit to be found in leveling crafts (At least blacksmithing is).

[clickeverywhere]

It's probably more profitable to just sell the basic crafting goods. 1 crooked stick for 100 is not a bad deal.

[Deofuta]

It's probably more profitable to just sell the basic crafting goods. 1 crooked stick for 100 is not a bad deal.

I believe that in the end the prices balance out. So that selling metal/steel/Crossbows will be slightly better sells, as well as raising your craft level up at a steady rate. This will allow players a chance to make some exciting things when they are added in later on.

[Kong Ming]

WARNING:  Nerdy soap-box moment.

As for profitability, this is a misconception that exists in EVERY video game that uses a crafting system (WoW comes to mind).  Players like to think of crafting like one would think of a real-world profession.  This is a mistake.  In the real world, a profession is an uncommon (relatively speaking) skill that takes time and labour to produce a product that could not otherwise exist.  It is therefore an investment on the part of the laborer to earn a profit.  In a video-game however, it is just another game aspect and another way to develop your character.  There is no real skill involved and no significant time either.  Therefore the "labour" should produce no profit (and indeed it almost always doesn't).  Yes, there IS an investment involved (namely, the raw materials consumed), but with everyone making the investment, the profession isn't uncommon enough to yield the necessary demand, so there is no margin for profit.  If the professions were rarer, perhaps the prices would start to come close to profitable, but this isn't the case.  EVERY player has a crafting profession (presumably), and MOST (I would wager) choose to try and level it up.  So the raw materials are naturally going to be more valuable than the finished product since they also contain the inherent "experience" one receives from using them which the finished products do not. I don't see this as problematic at all, I'm just saying that this is the reason the pricing of all these items seems backwards.  It's simply a reflection of players' priorities.  We all want to make money of course, but I think most players care even more about leveling their characters in any way and as much as possible, even if they don't realize it.  Hence we have so many "craftsmen". 

Therefore, if you just want to make money, ignore the crafting professions (indeed, pretend your character just never got interested in them) and focus on selling raw materials in the AH to the "craftsmen".  Become a "gatherer".  Assume you can buy the crafted equipment you want for probably less than the cost of materials and unquestionably less than the cost of training the skill to the appropriate level yourself.  This is essentially identical to WoW, where many players eventually figured out that they should just train two gathering professions and ignore the crafting professions to make money more quickly.  Once players begin to diversify their priorities more, perhaps true "crafters" will be rare enough relative to the "gatherers" that their products will in fact be profitable.  Only time will tell.  Aren't virtual economies fascinating beasts?

[Isatis]

yup kong

and i'll add : the raw material will ALWAYS be high high priced because crafting GIVE something to the crafter (xp), therefore final product is normally underprice of raw mat. also, ONE guy is enough to craft EVERYTHING so intelligent house will just give raw material to one guy, lvl him and boom he's lvl 12 and he can make cool stuff, repeat three time and boom your house can have super cool wep.

[Conqueror_Worm]

Kong Ming, has it pretty much spot on. However we do have the additional problem in Nord Invasion that higher level crafted gear won't leave the economy unless the prices fall down to the default sell value. Your much better of selling your armor on the auction hall if you want to upgrade, this will also take a slice of crafters profits.

Most MMOs these days solves this to an extent with the system of binding gear to the character that equips it. Not a system I would like to see here, but I would like some sort of way to allow gear to be removed from the game. Perhaps trading it in for something other then gold.

[Ryu]

Hello. As a blacksmith all i can say is; most of the time you can't profit by selling your crafted stuff (well i can tell that as a blacksmith, armorsmithers are in a bit better condition). BUT (this is a big "but") you can have the high-lvl crafted weapons and armors before others do, thats it. I've kept telling myself "I never should've bothered with leveling the crafting..." If i didnt, right now i'd have full sets of legendaries all around. I was never lucky enough to get a drop of any legendary item (exept a couple of grinders lol), i had very rough start since i spent every penny and material i got to level my crafting from the very start, and only until recently i got my first legendary obsidian and then war pick. And do you know how i got my first legendary weapon? I bought it with the money i had by selling all my crafting materials lol. I also got my pick with the same way sadly :/.

Recently i tried to sell a sharpshooter bow but before crafting i made a topic about it. It costed around 500k+ to collect materials and what i got with the topic was nothing (maybe my fault too, didnt wait too long but for a reason). Closest offer(not to me) was 350k and when i tried to tell the buyer that only materials cost way more than that by showing the required material list (in a nice way ofcourse), my post was deleted (maybe he deleted his topic and created a new one to get rid of my post). I said what the hell, sold every material i have for it and bought the war pick with that money. The point i'm getting at is, people dont want to spend their money on crafted stuff. And "I never should've bothered with leveling the crafting..." is again what is left to me.

Hey Worm, for trading crafted items for something; how about an upgrade system for crafters that requires "upgrade points" which can be gathered by breaking crafted stuff into pieces? If we have something like that, crafters can be useful not only creating items, but also buffing them. That may also include normal market stuff(so we can buy-buff and sell), and legendary weapons(armors?) with massive amounts of "upgrade points" required to do it. That way, low-level or high-level crafted stuff can be used by crafters and again can be turn into money by upgrading items for people.

Anyways, i was bored and decided to write some useless shit which was in my head, sorry for discomfort hahaha.

[Galen_Thalheimer]

Ha, i actually like that -- real crafters would have reused materials if they could.

Maybe have an option of uncrafting an item -- still gets crafting XP, get like 75% of the raw materials back.  Although, that would lead to someone just crafting and recycling their own items. Maybe you can only reconstruct a different professions items.