One final observation:
I think in the past, the high cost of crafting has been defended on the grounds that it is a necessary gold sink, on a server where rich PCs will have millions of gold coins and inflation is a real problem.
This makes sense for top grade gear (adamantium or gilded weapons, exotic leather or wood, demon/devil horns, etc.), and I agree that inflation is a problem. But it is negative to make low craft levels pay for this issue.
So if a concern with making low level crafting pay more is that crafting ceases to be an effective gold sink, then I think it would be better to make high level crafting cost more to balance it out, rather than continue with the current climate where smithing won't pay out until you reach steel full plate lined with exotic leathers or silver-gilded steel.
To expand further upon this idea (and to continue using Smithing as the main example):
Currently, there are two costs to crafting: the cost of templates and the effort required to acquire the resources.
The "effort to acquire the base resources" is what I mean when I think crafting can benefit from measures to extend and expand PC markets. (i.e. create a market where PCs can mine iron ore and sell it for profit.)
The cost of templates is, AFAIK, the main "gold sink" aspect of crafting. But all templates cost the same; the difference between crafting a copper full plate and an adamantium full plate is (a) the effort referred to above; and (b) the crafting DC. If you ignore these, however, the main effect of this gold sink is to be a flat tax across all craft levels.
I would propose that one way to shift the "gold sink" towards taxing higher craft levels would be to lower the cost of templates and instead make the crafting cost variable by material by introducing a "tooling cost". This tooling cost would be paid either by purchasing further "tool" craft components or simply making the craft recipe require a certain amount of gold to produce.
In other words:
CURRENTLY:
If I want to create a copper full plate and an adamantium full plate, the difference in cost would be:
Copper full plate = one full plate template + copper ingots
Adamantium full plate = one full plate template + adamantium ingots
I forget how much a full plate template actually costs; but I hope this demonstrates what I mean as it being a "flat" tax, or cost.
SUGGESTION (numbers are purely illustrative, I've not done any calculations to check that this is balanced)
* Lower full plate templates cost significantly so that the template itself is no longer such a flat cost; for the sake of argument, I'm going to use a flat cost of 1g for templates here.
* Copper is easy and cheap to work. So copper working tools would cost 30gp each per ingot.
* Steel is expensive to work, since it is an advanced metal to produce; so steel working tools cost 300gp to produce per ingot.
* Adamantium is expensive to work, so adamantium working tools cost 3000gp (or whatever) each per ingot.
So:
copper full plate = 1 full plate template (now very cheap) + copper ingots + 30 gp per copper ingot (so 180gp effective "gold sink" cost)
steel full plate = 1 full plate template + steel ingots + 300 gp per ingot (so 1,800 gp gold sink)
adamantium full plate = 1 full plate template + adamantium ingots + 3000 gp per ingot (so 18,000 gp gold sink)
In terms of "tool" costing relative to the current cost of templates, again just spitballing here, but I would rank the balancing so:
- Copper weapons and armour, being the "starter level" of the craft, would be much cheaper to craft than currently (e.g. reduce cost to between 1/5 to 1/10)
- Bronze would be cheaper than currently (1/2 to 1/3 the current cost)
- Iron weapons would be the same cost (cost as per current templates)
- Steel would be more expensive (2 to 3 times more expensive than currently)
- Adamantium would be 10 to 50 times more expensive than currently.
Gilding is already pretty expensive due to mercury so I don't know where this would sit.
The main effect of all this is that it would make copper and bronze more accessible and cheaper to make. (Ok, I know IRL bronze was more expensive than iron, but that horse already bolted with the ready availability of tin on PotM.) Compared to currently, Smiths would find it easier and cheaper to get to the point where they can start making stuff that people will actually buy; but making the stuff that people actually buy would be more expensive.
I realise this is potentially a complicated solution to implement in coding terms, just throwing the idea out there.