Ravenloft: Prisoners of the Mist

Suggestions, Feedback & Bug Reports (OOC) => Module Feedback and Suggestions => Topic started by: Dante101 on December 25, 2019, 08:03:49 PM

Title: Time Spent on Crafting
Post by: Dante101 on December 25, 2019, 08:03:49 PM
Earlier this week, the dev team asked for feedback on what we - as a community - would expect a character / player to spend dedicated to crafting to gain mastery.  The discussion never really generated any feedback on the specific question and the thread was locked, but I think a critical piece of information was missing from that discussion: the rate in which characters gain experience in crafts like smithing, woodworking, or leatherworking as it stands today.  So I did a bit of math, and would like to share my estimate with the community based on my experience with a new character so far.  In this case, I'll use woodworking with the goal in mind of reaching crafting level 35 (34000 exp).

My assumptions:

15 minutes of travel time to get to the crafting area (VoB, Vallaki, etc.) from wherever the character is
5 minutes of travel time to resources; 5 minutes back to the crafting station
2 seconds of active gathering per material (wood, in this case) -- assume 3 APR, 1 chunk per attack
50 units of crafting material collected per trip to gather materials
7 seconds to saw each chunk of wood into usable planks
100% yield on carpentry
Crafting items that use 2 units of wood per attempt
25 average exp on success; 2 exp on fail (assume 50% success rate, for simplicity) = 13.5 exp per attempt; this is roughly in line with what I'm seeing with the current system
14 seconds per use of the woodworking station
80% player efficiency (assume they may be pulled away, some time missed between queuing actions, etc.)

The Math

900s (travel time) + 300s (travel to resources) + 2*50s (active swinging at trees) + 300s (travel back to station) + 50*7s (carpentry time) + 25*14s (woodworking time) = 2300s

2300 seconds spent processing 50 units of materials towards woodworking. Based on my experience as outlined above, one averages about 13.5 exp per attempt.  25 attempts made with 50 units of wood yields... ~337.5 exp per trip.  Based on the above, that's ~0.1467 exp per second.

You need 34,000 exp to gain crafting level 35, to the point where one can 100% reliably craft sought after arrows.  Meaning...  34000 exp / [0.1467 exp/s] = 231,765s of crafting time dedicated.  But that's at 100% efficiency based on the above assumptions!  Apply a factor of 80% player utilization, and that number jumps to 289,706.

That is over 80 hours of time spent dedicated strictly to a single craft to gain what I would call "capability."  To get to crafting level 35 with reasonably common materials, where one can reliably craft sought after (but not the strongest!) ammunition without fail.  For reference, I've seen woodworking DCs as high as 60.
Title: Re: Time Spent on Crafting
Post by: Phantasia on December 25, 2019, 08:04:55 PM
Pride and accomplishment.
Title: Re: Time Spent on Crafting
Post by: Khornite on December 25, 2019, 08:25:32 PM
That is over 80 hours of time spent dedicated strictly to a single craft to gain what I would call "capability."  To get to crafting level 35 with reasonably common materials, where one can reliably craft sought after (but not the strongest!) ammunition without fail.  For reference, I've seen woodworking DCs as high as 60.

I've had entire semesters in college that were shorter than 80 hours...
Title: Re: Time Spent on Crafting
Post by: SardineTheAncestor on December 25, 2019, 09:49:12 PM
80 hours? I've spent way more than that on crafting and related pursuits.

I literally have chatlogs of me at near full efficiency taking like 2 hours at the carpenter building, 3 or more if I'm doing stuff IRL. And this isn't something I've only had to do between 20 and 30 times. And those are only the big jobs -- the ones that actually yield experience worth noting. I also have a +6 modifier to the craft in question.

This, and I need to work with other crafters' materials (had a smith working with me since I began), who spent hours of their time gathering and processings them as well. I easily spend more time at the crafting station than I spend in the field when I prepare for a "crafting day" as this is not something you just do on a whim.

Now, if you're using a bunch of mobility consumables and spells, zooming around the map with Haste, yeah, maybe it takes only 5 minutes to get to where you want to go. But the wagon ride from Mist Camp to Har'Akir is 3 minutes and you can't haste through this. Then I spend however long getting to the oasis, killing the hostiles I need to get to the resources safely, then I get back, another 3 minute wagon ride, then another 3 minute wagon ride to Dementlieu and if I'm lucky I meet someone who has materials for me since arrows are where the good XP is, then 2 hours just disappear, etc.

Anyway -- I'm not saying your math is wrong, or arguing against your point, since I know well that not every route is equal, and eventually only a few routes are worthy of XP. But I did not spend a mere 80 hours gathering & processing materials for crafting over the past nine months playing Esmeralda. I probably spent hundreds, close to a thousand. Probably more because I can do it while I'm doing other stuff in the background at home.
Title: Re: Time Spent on Crafting
Post by: Dante101 on December 25, 2019, 10:02:30 PM
The point I'm trying to make is that it takes far more time than it should to be able to make anything worthwhile.  The intent is to set some sort of baseline for the discussion, since I think quite a few of the veteran players don't quite understand just how drastically the xp gain was reduced.

This analysis is based on loads of assumptions as listed; and it sounds like you're talking about leveling beyond the crafting level of the 30s if you're going out to Har'Akir.
Title: Re: Time Spent on Crafting
Post by: SardineTheAncestor on December 25, 2019, 10:11:47 PM
I think I'm at level 35ish. It really slows down after 30. I don't know a lot about the other crafts, but I do know that woodworking is basically zero progress ever, unless you have a smith (and once you hit the 20s or so, an alchemist) to help out, as bow templates are expensive and carrying them around is heavy, which leads to us dumping them all over the place.

I'd say that to get to 30, 80 hours seems like a low estimate, but if that is what you experienced in your case then I'll take it. But I logged on for 4-5 hours just to craft and RP, some days, starting in Zeklos with my friend who was a smith, running up and down the Vallaki region for all the resources we could find, even up to Mt. Baratak for ox horns. It took Esmeralda months to get there and it was my main pursuit. 6 months or so after that's over and I am still far from truly mastering this craft (can't reliably make the top tier of weapons).

EDIT: After checking ingame, I'm actually only level 32 currently, which really stings in the context of how high the modifier is...
Title: Re: Time Spent on Crafting
Post by: Dante101 on December 25, 2019, 10:14:01 PM
Yeah, fair enough. I should preface this by saying my character was made during NCE and is only woodworking 6. I assume once I breach 20 it'll slow down like mad.

There used to be a method in the past to make decent experience by making composite bows. That no longer seems to be the case.
Title: Re: Time Spent on Crafting
Post by: herkles on December 25, 2019, 10:14:49 PM
That sounds miserable. I wonder what can be done to to reduce the amount of time spent on crafting where it is worthwhile?
Title: Re: Time Spent on Crafting
Post by: SardineTheAncestor on December 25, 2019, 10:18:25 PM
They can be great XP, the only problem is you burn wood faster and those templates get expensive as a low level. That lends further to your point, that a low level is burning thousands of gold and hundreds of hours on a pursuit that won't benefit them until well over a thousand hours of playtime later.
Title: Re: Time Spent on Crafting
Post by: zDark Shadowz on December 25, 2019, 10:34:03 PM
I feel like there needs to be some kind of toggle between the current system, and the system MAB77 proposed of granting more XP but putting a cap on the XP. So if there were people that wanted to grind for multiple hours they could for higher gains, but casual players could get their fixed amount a day at a pace that suited them.

If there is a crafting XP cap I'd prefer if it had like a 21H RL timer since the first craft to reset that cap fully so people werent inclined to spend more than 3 hours a day on it. XP pool gradually reducing until it was empty, with the one pool applying to all crafts rather than each individual one.

A reducing cap makes sense in that you learn less the more mentally exhausted you become doing the same monotonous practice, but doing it daily is optimally ideal in terms of any type of studying after appropriate resting.
Title: Re: Time Spent on Crafting
Post by: immasturgeon on December 25, 2019, 11:11:03 PM
With MAB's suggestion I think that's the point of his change no?

It still takes you 6 months RL time. . . but game time, gold, and resource hunting are all drastically reduced if you heed the soft cap thing.
Title: Re: Time Spent on Crafting
Post by: Dante101 on December 25, 2019, 11:56:25 PM
That all depends on just how much of a "boost" we expect to see from the changes when off cap, with the proposed idea; and how much of a penalty would be imposed when on the soft cap.

I think the exp gain per item is far too low as it stands today for crafts like smithing, leatherworking, and woodworking.
Title: Re: Time Spent on Crafting
Post by: Khornite on December 26, 2019, 12:53:26 AM
That all depends on just how much of a "boost" we expect to see from the changes when off cap, with the proposed idea; and how much of a penalty would be imposed when on the soft cap.

I think the exp gain per item is far too low as it stands today for crafts like smithing, leatherworking, and woodworking.

Smithing I think is fine on progression. You can BLAZE through to steel if you know what you're doing and ask around. Leatherworking and woodworking are brutal though. I straight up dropped those they were so slow.
Title: Re: Time Spent on Crafting
Post by: Iridni Ren on December 26, 2019, 02:06:41 AM
One of the many horrendous parts of crafting is inventory management.  A fluctuating cap is only going to make this worse.
Title: Re: Time Spent on Crafting
Post by: Ercvadasz on December 26, 2019, 02:09:35 AM
Actually i would say the 80 hours of estimation is really underguessing it. When i started ages ago on my char i spent i think the first month in the outpost though he was both doing mineing and woodworking. By the time you mined out everything the woods in the camp should have respawned, and by the time you cut down everything the mine's resources respawned too.(Helps a lot to be able to take an ox into a mine, and to have 2 OXEN! regarding carry cap.)

Around the first 20 or so levels you are completely fine being in the Logging camp. It will just get damn tedious and boring.
It depends further if you are pure woodworker or a mixed one dabblin in other crafts, mainly in smithing due to synergy.

In the Logging camp(Wachter outpost or what its current name is), you have access to tin, copper and iron. Also beech and oak.
This means that around the DC 25 woodworking stuff you are quite easily set.
(Oak+steel, iron etc shields)
The problem comes thereafter. Your main level progression will come from yew bows. Or arrows. (Oh and with the new recipes you can now make certain quarterstaffs and clubs! I think till like 36, is how high I managed to try. Not due to lack of the skill but lack of required materials.)
Yew and white stag are quite abudant, shadow wood is so so, but you can actually use these to advance in levels.
Arrows are a whole other dimension since firstly not only you need the alchemical ingredients(which there is a huge competition out for), you also need steel, and fitting wood. So you need three different kind of places usually to visit.
This actually gets even worse when you are able to reach 45 or such DC. Since then even arrows are mostly out of the equatation.

From there on out it is mostly bows. In which case you will need at least ASH, demon or devil horns, or spines.
The first two are a dungeon based spawns, so is pure luck if you are able to aquire it.(Someone hit them or not. Not taking Perf into consideration regarding this, for various reasons.)
The third one...well that is the most tedious one since it can be aquired in only one domain, and the creatures only appear when the outside spawn is completely low. Since nobody, or barely anyone visits that domain, it will usually take 3 IC nights but at least 2, to beat the spawn down so low, that they start to appear. (To make these creatures spawn mostly takes 3 IC nights! I actually have told this to some master bowmakers when they were complaining about the lack of spines.)
Now once you done with this, you can move on to palm....well...only thing that changed is now you need to go to a third domain, to get the wood. (The spine creatures and the ash can be found in the same domain, of course there is no woodworking table there though. so stock up travel to another domain to work and back again.)

I think the current level my char reached....Is around level 39? or so(and add +6 modifier ) took me easily around 200 or more hours to reach.(of course he does not use anyones "gifted" resources)
And actually i probably was sometimes quite unlucky and sometimes quite lucky. Uncovering recipes when you need to roll at least a 19 or a 20....yet failing about 20 times in a row when you only need to roll a 9.

In comparision smithing is quite easy and a lot less tedious. You can work on multiple ingots at the same time, so smelting can go up easily. You can diverse your recipe unlock.
Weapons, armour, bracers, helmets...etc.
You need to unlock in each category a single one recipe and then you can do all of the mentioned category.
Example: You are now semidecently able to make bronze stuff. So you have say 40% chance to make a chain shirt.
You try to make a chain shirt of bronze you succeed. Now you got rid of the -5 DC malus for all bronze armour. So now you can also craft without any malus the Bronze Plates too. Which usually on the lowest skin level tier is just 5 points or 6 away from the Chain shirt. Racking in huge CP.
Getting to around the level where you can hit CP 55 or so is quite easy in smithing since the only real issue you face will be finding the appropriate skins. But even with many of the leatherworkers around, there are certain skins they do not favour, yet they still give you the same challenge rate for crafting purposes like say bodak skin.

Herbalism: In comparision i would say it is somewhere between these two. It is quite easy to get to level ~40 or so. But thereafter it gets terribly tedious since there are a lot of combinations. Herb spawn restriction. Which quite a number of folks are regularly farming. So it is actually do to all the competition why you are nearly unable to advance. (Also this is the place where sneakers and those with invis have a huge advantage, or the ones with haste/speed boost. Grab and hide or grab and run) Also since you are for a while now able to craft potions in batches, it is a lot easier than it used to be.

Leatherworking:
I would say without chitin is even worse than woodworking. Simply because the lack of resources. Dedicated leatherworkers will farm down anything that would let you advance. There are certain creatures who provide quite a challenge yet their fur does nothing extra.(Craig cats vs Dire Crag cats).
Your main issue here starts with the curing. DC 15 is easy to reach in regards to availability. However then comes the next step up. DC 25. It is the lack of creatures that is restricting. There are some common ones, but due to their availability it is first come first served...so most of the time they are farmed down the moment they appear. The others are placed in dungeons and parts that are well not that easy to overcome.
Curing is also only one part...since thereafter you need to boil....tedious and boring and cash sink. Then of course you need to make something out of these. And the DC scale starts again to show here. There is again a bit of a huge jump between the DC of certain kind of patches. Prolly is why i still did not manage to hit level 30 with this. And I have at least over a 100 hours wasted in this.
(When i started chitin was not that available! Allthough probably with chitin you can easily speed it up.)

Alchemy: I would say is quite balanced. Allthough here again on later levels the availability of monsters is what will get you held back. So it is why many places are not mentioned or shared where certain ingredients can be found.

Oh one thing regarding woodworking and smithing.
Probably, though it is just my estimation and guess, since i never managed to work with Adamantine, but weapons requiring woodworking and a metal ingot, are high enough DC to substitute the bowmaking for 45-60 DC-s. But that is just my guess based upon shadow wood and palm qs DC, and pam and steel DC. But as i was told getting Adamantine is even more tedious so not sure how much of a relief that is.
Title: Re: Time Spent on Crafting
Post by: Ercvadasz on December 26, 2019, 02:46:23 AM
Yeah, fair enough. I should preface this by saying my character was made during NCE and is only woodworking 6. I assume once I breach 20 it'll slow down like mad.

There used to be a method in the past to make decent experience by making composite bows. That no longer seems to be the case.

It actually is. But the CP gain you get scales via succecss rates. The CP you gain per successful creation of a composite bow is based upon the chance of you making one.
The higher the chance of not succeeding the higher the CP gain.
If i recall well you get around like 138 CP for a composite longbow if you have around 10-20% chance of success. But that gets down to like 50-70 CP when you have 50%. If my math was correct currently to get a single level in woodworking i need to succed with 20 bows of palm and horns and/or spine.
Or about 40 with ash and the same. and of course that is only if you succeed.
Title: Re: Time Spent on Crafting
Post by: Dante101 on December 26, 2019, 02:49:51 AM
Yeah, fair enough. I should preface this by saying my character was made during NCE and is only woodworking 6. I assume once I breach 20 it'll slow down like mad.

There used to be a method in the past to make decent experience by making composite bows. That no longer seems to be the case.

It actually is. But the CP gain you get scales via succecss rates. The CP you gain per successful creation of a composite bow is based upon the chance of you making one.
The higher the chance of not succeeding the higher the CP gain.
If i recall well you get around like 138 CP for a composite longbow if you have around 10-20% chance of success. But that gets down to like 50-70 CP when you have 50%. If my math was correct currently to get a single level in woodworking i need to succed with 20 bows of palm and horns and/or spine.
Or about 40 with ash and the same. and of course that is only if you succeed.

I made a composite shortbow that was 13 DC higher than my base crafting level... For 30 experience.  I make the same amount of experience crafting an oak barrel that's essentially free and doesn't require composite materials.
Title: Re: Time Spent on Crafting
Post by: Ercvadasz on December 26, 2019, 05:08:11 AM
Yeah, fair enough. I should preface this by saying my character was made during NCE and is only woodworking 6. I assume once I breach 20 it'll slow down like mad.

There used to be a method in the past to make decent experience by making composite bows. That no longer seems to be the case.

It actually is. But the CP gain you get scales via succecss rates. The CP you gain per successful creation of a composite bow is based upon the chance of you making one.
The higher the chance of not succeeding the higher the CP gain.
If i recall well you get around like 138 CP for a composite longbow if you have around 10-20% chance of success. But that gets down to like 50-70 CP when you have 50%. If my math was correct currently to get a single level in woodworking i need to succed with 20 bows of palm and horns and/or spine.
Or about 40 with ash and the same. and of course that is only if you succeed.

I made a composite shortbow that was 13 DC higher than my base crafting level... For 30 experience.  I make the same amount of experience crafting an oak barrel that's essentially free and doesn't require composite materials.

Well composite bow of that level usually uses beech and normal stag horn if i recall well.
Yes it does not give any good CP, beside allowing you to be able to use the beech as composite bow material.
The composite bow CP is also dependant on the material you use.
So if i recall well you should be able to actually get similar or more CP just by crafting a regular beech bow.
(Sorry have not been able to craft in a while so if there were some changes i may not know about them)
On the lower levels you just avoid the composite bows completely. It will start to net some better CP from the stag and yew.
Also remember to always do the shortbows, it is allways 5 DC lower, and once you succeed eliminates the malus from the longbows too.
And also if i recall well beside beech bows, the oak shields are a steady CP gain too. Should be around 38-54. With DC 28 i think. Basicly till you are able to make a +1 giving composite bow, just make beech, yew and ash bows. Easy and steady cp gain. Allthough tiresome and cash sink. But all three of them are in abudance if you know where to look. Basicly the recipe is quite easy. Every better wood gives 5 to the DC. beech->yew->ash->cobweb palm
Every used ingredient also gives 5 . Regular horn-> shadow wood/white stag/third one i forgot the name->devil horn, demon horn and spine. And finally the longbow also gives an extra 5 DC.
So if i recall well this is why the cobweb palm longbow with spine is 60 dc...or 65? (Cant recall if you add 20 or 25 as a base to all of this)
//there are also some other special ingreds, mighty addition etc...I think currently mighty 12 is the highest you can craft. I've seen a few back a fey years ago, and should also be able to make it although that was prior to the cobweb introduction which may have made it different. Last bow i made was somewhere around august//

When i started to make composite bows from ash and spine, i used to get around 120-40 cp or so. But i had to roll like 18 to be able to make one. Now i need to roll a 9 or so and i get 48 or so CP? (so about 40-50 tries to get one level on an average)
Title: Re: Time Spent on Crafting
Post by: Kaninchen on December 26, 2019, 08:13:45 AM
I will now not question arrow prices from people ^.^
Title: Re: Time Spent on Crafting
Post by: Iridni Ren on December 26, 2019, 09:49:34 AM
Actually i would say the 80 hours of estimation is really underguessing it. When i started ages ago on my char i spent i think the first month in the outpost though he was both doing mineing and woodworking. By the time you mined out everything the woods in the camp should have respawned, and by the time you cut down everything the mine's resources respawned too.(Helps a lot to be able to take an ox into a mine, and to have 2 OXEN! regarding carry cap.)

To expand on my earlier comment regarding inventory management and an XP cap, a player already has the two constraint dimensions of "Tetris" and weight. A cap will add a third-dimension constraint. Imagine your scenario with the two oxen.

You have decided you want your PC to bear down and learn to craft arrows. So you have max'd your carrying capacity in some way because you're gong to need it. You've put a lot of gear in storage to reduce your weight, bought bags for all the components you'll need, and gone off to Wachter with plenty of yew and alchemical ingredients because neither of those is easily obtainable nearby. Once you get loaded up with ore,  you aren't going to want to be running hither and yon either.

You buy all the tools you will need for all those crafts. And you set to grinding.

Uh-oh. You just hit the XP cap for woodworking.

Here you have placed your PC into crafting mode, but the system determines that's enough crafting for now. You should go dungeon for a while. What do you do about quickly transforming all your equipment back to what you need for adventuring? Storage is in Vallaki.

Rather than "allowing more time for crafters to adventure and roleplay with others," a cap (if it has any effect) will hurt quality of life and result in more time spent figuring out and otherwise trying to manage system constraints.

Title: Re: Time Spent on Crafting
Post by: APorg on December 26, 2019, 11:31:44 AM
It's literally too early to definitively comment about any of that stuff.  We don't know the size of the XP buffer; we don't know how much Craft XP gain will be boosted by; we don't know what the penalty brackets of the cap would be... it was merely a loose suggestion and no numbers have even been broached, let alone finalised. Assuming the numbers will automatically fit your counterpoint is merely a type of Texas sharpshooter fallacy.

If the buffer cap is big enough and the XP cap brackets wide enough, then there will be plenty of time to anticipate XP caps; and if the base boost is large enough so that you would have to plough hard into the XP cap before you were effectively losing Craft XP, then most Crafters will be net winners.

I agree that Crafting shouldn't make inventory management more difficult, but it's not a given that an XP cap would, at least not in a way that would be detrimental when considered in balance against the base boost of Craft XP.
Title: Re: Time Spent on Crafting
Post by: Iridni Ren on December 26, 2019, 11:58:21 AM
I qualified "if it has any effect."

True, the cap could be set so it seldom comes into play. But it cannot be argued that an effective and meaningful constraint is not a constraint at all.

If we were told that inventories were going to shrink but not by how much, you could likewise say "we don't know the precise effect." But we do know the general effect. Likewise, it is predictable that a time constraint will make dedicated batch crafting in isolated places such as Ercvadasz describes less feasible in long stretches. That is the point of it.
Title: Re: Time Spent on Crafting
Post by: Ercvadasz on December 26, 2019, 12:00:17 PM
Actually i would say the 80 hours of estimation is really underguessing it. When i started ages ago on my char i spent i think the first month in the outpost though he was both doing mineing and woodworking. By the time you mined out everything the woods in the camp should have respawned, and by the time you cut down everything the mine's resources respawned too.(Helps a lot to be able to take an ox into a mine, and to have 2 OXEN! regarding carry cap.)

To expand on my earlier comment regarding inventory management and an XP cap, a player already has the two constraint dimensions of "Tetris" and weight. A cap will add a third-dimension constraint. Imagine your scenario with the two oxen.

You have decided you want your PC to bear down and learn to craft arrows. So you have max'd your carrying capacity in some way because you're gong to need it. You've put a lot of gear in storage to reduce your weight, bought bags for all the components you'll need, and gone off to Wachter with plenty of yew and alchemical ingredients because neither of those is easily obtainable nearby. Once you get loaded up with ore,  you aren't going to want to be running hither and yon either.

You buy all the tools you will need for all those crafts. And you set to grinding.

Uh-oh. You just hit the XP cap for woodworking.

Here you have placed your PC into crafting mode, but the system determines that's enough crafting for now. You should go dungeon for a while. What do you do about quickly transforming all your equipment back to what you need for adventuring? Storage is in Vallaki.

Rather than "allowing more time for crafters to adventure and roleplay with others," a cap (if it has any effect) will hurt quality of life and result in more time spent figuring out and otherwise trying to manage system constraints.

My character actually fairly if ever dungeons it is why his level after quite a few years is still considered in the mid-range.(Also because he received from DM Raven an RP ban for the TERGS:P on level 6, which i have respected)
(has not done a single dungeon in harakir, hazlan, sithicus, perfidus, the mists, and even in Ghastria, only done the bug hole)
Equipment wise, beside the non craftable stuff, he usually employs stuff he made himself.
With mineing....it is still not that hard. Allthough with certain restrictions regarding the kroffburg area it is a bit more troublesome. (The ghakis mines are more reliable regarding Iron then the first leve of dheim)
Gilding though is again a whole another matter. But it is again mostly because of the resource restriction.(He has basicly 0 chance of aquiring gold) Though the advancement in that craft is still better than it used to be. When i started i had to waste 250 ingots to advance a level. Since the failure provided only 4 CP. And copper gilding was not available.

Inventory management is quite troublesome. Especially because during that time i started the Vardo were not allowed to sell vardo bags, so you could only find them, actually i only found out this year that they sell it again. So for quite a while i was walking around with the 4 60% bags i had and with the  20ish 40% bags. (Both ICly and OOCly i only learned during noticing an exchange this spring. I do not deal in OOC trading.) It is why i employed two oxen for the mineing. Rangers and druids are the ones that could do it with double rent and leading one normally and AEMPing the second.

Regarding storage, i cannot really say a thing since i never used the storage. As i was mostly hunting for fangs to finance the next level of one of the crafts, i never had money to actually store something. Also helped that during that time the Vallaki crafting hub was not closed for the night. Nor the VoB ones or KBurg ones. Allthough ash was also only available in VoB marshes.
Now the main issue is that basicly with WW you are better off staying in the Vallaki area. Simply because the elves are always open. Same with the smithing just dwarves. When previously it was better to stay in Lumber station(Wachter outpos) and then either move to Kburg or to Vob. Kburg was quite good for leather and smithing advancement due to the ghakis iron reserves, the hidden coal node and the crag cats and winter wolf pelts.(charcoal was not present that time)

I am not sure about what you two are referring to crafting xp cap, but if that is a new system. I am not sure it is a fitting idea. Especially if it would be mirroring the current XP system where there are hard and soft caps.
I am all for giving some CP boost for certain crafts, but giving them a malus for "overdoing" it, i would definetly be against. Some of the crafts like woodworking and leatherworking are already time consuming and tedious enough without needing to actually punish the players that give it a try.





Title: Re: Time Spent on Crafting
Post by: APorg on December 26, 2019, 12:21:01 PM
True, the cap could be set so it seldom comes into play. But it cannot be argued that an effective and meaningful constraint is not a constraint at all.

If:
* the first oxen or two are at +100% Craft XP because Craft XP has been boosted.
* the next couple of oxen at +0% because the soft cap effectively cancels out the boost.
* further oxen loads of good are at -50% effective Craft XP at full cap

Then it's only going to be counterproductive both in terms of Craft XP and inventory management after six or eight oxen if I choose to persevere, either in crafting or collectiong resources.  But the argument can reasonably be made that the benefit for the first few oxen loads is an appropriate and effective trade off for the penalty against persevering in the face of XP cap.

Of course the numbers I've brought up are made up; but I'm just trying to illustrate that a happy medium can probably be found.  Equally, there exists numbers for which your counterpoint would apply; but as long as the Dev team avoid those (i.e. make the Cap brackets wide enough), inventory management should not become a problem when balanced against the given boost.  You've illustrated a potential pitfall; but it's not demonstrably true in all scenarios.
Title: Re: Time Spent on Crafting
Post by: MAB77 on December 27, 2019, 05:08:18 PM
Regarding the inventory. It is certainly true that you might hit the cap before you used up all the resources you collected. Though at the same time consider that a greater XP reward per crafting attempt also means you would require far less resources to level up. You would not need to harvest and carry as much as before. I'm fairly sure players would adjust quickly to this new balance and learn soon enough just how much resources they need to carry for there needs. It might even be a good thing, there may be a market now for your left over resources, vs previously where crafters tend to only hoard resources for themselves. Those left over resources might also come in handy to use with the eventual master/apprentice system we are currently considering. I won't say more about this now, but it will be rewarding not to craft alone.
Title: Re: Time Spent on Crafting
Post by: HopeIsTheCarrot on December 27, 2019, 08:51:08 PM
I would like to emphasize my belief that the crafting system is best left as is. The only thing I haven’t enjoyed about the crafting system is how much it has changed over the recent years, particularly when it comes to DC’s. I think the crafting system is great and would love to see it remain consistent for a longer period of time.