It is absolutely mind blowing for me to read opinions like “there is no point to mastering any of the crafts besides herbalism and alchemy” or “you will never make your money back in those other crafts.”
In my opinion, we don’t have a lot of master crafters because people either give up on the tedious grind of crafting or they just don’t want to invest the time that it takes to master the crafts.
Yes, because most of the time you are AFK at a table playing cookie clicker, as we covered above.
Your entire argument is predicated on attacking a point we do not support.
I don't know how many times we have to repeat ourselves.
We are asking for:
1) more bulk crafting, so less time idle at the table
2) more group adventures & cooperative efforts based around this layer of progression
3) doors to be re-unlocked which were locked in an update (for seemingly no reason) at night
Inconvenience is not fun.
Challenge is fun.
We did not pick up crafting to burn hundreds of hours well over the 1,000 mark so we could feel validated.
We did it because we wanted to help our friends and have alternate progression
anyone could help out with.
None of us did it to idly click on a table or anvil or cauldron. I hope, at least.
Anyway, please acquaint yourself with our beliefs and allow us to come to an agreeable conclusion.
Reiterating a few things:
1) It's true I make very little profit off my craft. I rely on others to get me the materials because I simply don't have the time to invest. Their generosity still barely leads to any profit for me, even though they're rich enough to not ask for a share!
2) Night time business in Barovia is confirmed as being conducted in these shops because there are night time workers specifically designated for night time shifts.
Notice I said very little, not no profit. The reason is the craft I chose, the current cast of characters who need what I can make & how often they are online at the same time as me, and the fact that my craft is a
massive gold and time sink in which I would profit more from using my rogue skills, which I need to be able to craft at night, anyway.
It is imperative you read what I am saying for what I am saying. I did not say "no profit" or "you cannot profit." I did not say "you will never make your money back." Dante did not say it, Khornite did not say it, Iridni did not say it. We mentioned it was a gold sink and I said I make very little profit. Profit implies I made my money back somewhere along the way, and that I have an excess, even if it is very little. We also did not say anything about the other crafts being useless, and I will quote that below in the rest of the compendium:
Crafting won't be valuable if you make it feasiable for people with jobs and a family to get to mastery.
So your solution is for us to all become NEETs?
Yeah, I really don't appreciate that sentiment at all, as someone who struggles to get onto their crafter often and make the time count. I do not value the time spent bashing the crafting stations. The best time, for me, isn't that leveling up process where the numbers increase and I'm sitting on a low risk area, often with no one around to keep me company. The times I really enjoy, are getting with like-minded players and going on adventures. It is so fantastic the friends you can make in these pursuits. It feels good coming out of the shop with an extra level or two but there's nothing relaxing about inventory tetris, while on the other hand it is exhilarating to fight in Perfidus for adamantine and horns, even if our group leader (that's you Khornite 
) has made a system to minimize risk while we're there and keeps us organised and on-task. Literally nowhere else in PotM can you get such an experience over a long-term session and yet, it's not even as dangerous as it seems because of the methods we use and how high level we are now.
Again, I have to reiterate, the fun in this, the highlight in this, is absolutely not the time spent at the crafting station! It's the journey you get up to with others.
Fun and value are not derived from pouring endless idle hours into something. PotM Cookie Clicker was surely not the goal of the crafting system. The goal was to provide players with objectively very good equipment, because Soren didn't like the idea that you might never get the drop you want. Enchanting reinforces that. You progress your character and your gear in the direction you choose and you need other players to help you do it. That's a good effect of the system. But I would really rather we found another way than making it painstaking. How about more bulk craftables, for instance, to minimize the time we spend AFK in craft saloons?
these [...] behaviours shove players away and incentivize them going to more convenient places like Dementlieu for OOC reasons rather than IC reasons. In Dementlieu, it's already about a 2 minute walk to get to the dye vendor from the entrance of the city. Two transitions. Zeklos and Krezk have major low-level crafting hubs and dye vendors. To get to Krezk from Zeklos, you risk running into some of the most powerful outdoor mobs in the game which can be found patrolling when not in "sleep mode" idling, but still their spawns are very close to the road. You also have to spend around 5 minutes at a full running pace just to get to Zeklos from the Vallaki outskirts. This makes the region so unattractive [...]
To those in disbelief: I understand that it's Barovia, but why would tavern doors be unlocked at night, but other businesses lock, despite some of them having specifically designated night shift workers that appear in there as the sun sets ingame, but you can't access them without breaking and entering? The only way to do business in these places is to bash or pick your way in, or just log in on the interior while it's night time. Something is wrong.
If everyone is using crafted equipment at low and high levels, that doesn't have any relation to the value of how rare a crafter is. It relates to how useful the gear is. It would still be popular with more active/master crafters.
Mindlessly clicking on the alchemy tool, then on the table 100+ times during a cram session is boring to the point where you can literally feel your brain cells becoming an hero. And you don't even get EXP off of that after level 25. It's mind break levels of boring and there's no reason why it can't be done in bulk.
Agreed. It's that cookie clicker mechanic that I'm talking about too.
Khornite's already done the grind, so I'd think he would know. No disrespect intended but we both have invested well over 1,500 hours just into crafting. His character is a mundane and has at least 2 of the more tedious crafts tackled. We're not the ones who will benefit from this change. I'm personally closing in on the point where I only do special orders, and a lot of that success has been thanks to him and other generous crafters who have put in the time.
that doesn't make it easier to master the craft, it just removes a useless step that serves no actual purpose.
Make it easier, you'll have more crafters. On the extreme end, you can also make it so painful that there's only grandfathered in crafters still lying around.
Bolded for relevance.
I think we've been clear it's not about easy, it's about the tedium being unnecessary. Why would herbalism have bulk crafting but none of the other crafts, for example?
Yeah, we'll get more crafters if the system isn't tedious. And that's fine, because, as I said in a previous post, that will not reduce the power of crafted items. They will still be very useful. There will still be viable choices between them. If there's a direct correlation between crafting becoming less tedious and more about gathering reagents with a party, and more people becoming crafters, this means more people doing more things that leads them to RP with others openly, in an outgoing manner. That sounds great to me. It's fantastic, and I love it. That'll be my standpoint as final, because I like seeing people get involved, taking part in roleplay that involves mentorship, helping each other out, and you know what? I even like going into Perfidus "casually" for the sole sake of gathering materials with my friends who are enthusiastic about going and helping. Because there's nowhere else on the server that offers that experience, like I said. Yeah, it might seem out of character, and I certainly sympathize, there are much more "gothic" themed locales we could have chosen, but if we want to do something like that, that's the only adventure experience for it at a certain point. It's layered progression, not just slow progression in one direction, and it's really cool, even if it needs a tune-up in that area specifically and more places on the server should be built like that.
This is one of those instances where "it's realistic" is just not fun. If something isn't fun in a game, at least streamline it so that it takes less time. I think most people just want to see the crafting process itself at the tables sped up a little bit so that we can get back to roleplaying and less time idly clicking at a table while we read a book or watch a movie. Leather working is another great example. It requires three whole crafts and again, while realistic, is just too much of a pain in the neck for most people. There's no reason why it couldn't just be merged into two skills like smithing is.
You're missing the point. I'm talking about the actual crafting process. At the tables. Specifically why things cannot be made in bulk. There's filters in place already by the gold requirement. I've probably sank near a MILLION gold into smithing and gilding, there's no better filter than that.
No one is saying crafting is useless, crafting is one of the most useful things you can do for a character on this server.
If my character needs potions? I can brew them myself without having to HOPE a merchant has what I want. I need varnishes? I can make them myself. I need money? I'll go whip up some weapons and armor for people and go buy more herbs for more potions so I can dungeon.
If we were saying crafting has no profitability, why have we given away tens of thousands (in Khornite's case, hundreds of thousands) of gold worth of equipment to not just other crafters who could supply us with what we need, but also other players, some of whom we didn't even know? Sometimes we just drop all our stuff in the Mist Camp and wait to see how the pile has depleted by the time we come back! Would we do that if we weren't profiting somehow?
And that's not the point, anyway. The point is the inconveniences add no barrier that a real challenge could. The gold sinks offset profits but do not remove them entirely, as we have stated. And the time sinks would be a lot more forgivable if they were spent on related challenges, of which cookie clicker is not.
The people who are coming in and saying crafted items are useless are
not us and I would like for us to stay on topic so the devs know what this thread is about.
Locked doors which should not be locked, unless you intend to lock all taverns, because of immersion and realism.
