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Author Topic: Smelting, Smithing, Gilding: The Slow Crawl  (Read 4109 times)

PrimetheGrime

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Smelting, Smithing, Gilding: The Slow Crawl
« on: June 14, 2020, 07:27:23 AM »
I'd like to begin this feedback with a disclaimer that I will be talking about the crafting systems for Smelting, Smithing & Gilding so those of you that don't want the process spoiled should not read the following.

Having spent the past three and a half months in isolation (Thanks Covid), I have become intimately aware of a problem with the crafting system as it is now; Smelting, Smithing and Gilding. Not only do I find either craft exceptionally grindy to the point that you spend just about every waking hour at a deposit, smelter or anvil but it's also a heavy money sink, especially if you're just starting out with a new character. Whilst I have not been doing this craft for nearly as long as other veterans and legends of crafting (Gods bless you, I don't know how you do it), I feel I now have an understanding of the problems with the smithing system and how it might be rectified. 

How it starts

To run those who haven't introduced themselves to smithing or smelting, you start the same as any beginner in crafting with no experience and thus a -5 to any of your crafting until you succeed once which will take away that -5 from that recipe that you learn, giving you a chunk of crafting xp to keep you going. Your stats matter immensely when you get started in crafting. (God help you if you have a -1 in strength or con.) And so if you have positives in your attributes, you can nullify somewhat the -5 previously mentioned, but even someone with a solid +1 or +2 will find it quite the grind to get to the point where you can capably work your materials. First, you need to be able to smelt your ore into ingots, that's the first hurdle and once you pass the initial 5-6 levels, it does get easier, if only a little. Starting copper, you'll be at this for a good week or so depending how quickly you can break down the copper deposits (Which can take more than half an hour per rock depending on your apr), moving from this you have the big push into smithing once you have got a significant amount of copper to work with. You're going to start with something low DC so that you have the best chance of succeeding, thus making it easier to grind out, because make no mistake you will be grinding this. From my own experience and having +1's and +2's to my attributes, this process of copper smithing and smelting took around a week and a half to get to the stage where I could competently succeed in smithing with copper.

The grind continues

Now it becomes a little tougher. You need to find deposits of iron to crack into and go through the -5 process all over again, grinding your smelting and smithing (Your smelting will always be higher) This process will take a longer period of time, or it did for me when I was doing it. Around a month and a half with breaks to collect the coin necessary to fund my operations. During this, you are at the mercy of the iron deposits, which can be criminally unfair to you at times, see the image below (this took around 10-15 minutes to mine)


Now, we move into steel. You need to either hunt down coal deposits or buy it from select smiths because not every one of them have charcoal (How in the world doesn't the dwarf smith seller have charcoal to purchase? This seems like a missed opportunity, especially because Dvergeheim is where the gilding pits are!) To get to the point where I could capably smith and succeed with steel took another month and a half. Now, keep in mind this was during isolation. I was spending practically 12-14 hours a day on this, either mining, smelting or smithing (or walking my ass up and down the mountain roads encumbered with oxen).

This whole process is agonisingly long for the ability to make simple steel weapons, something that really isn't the bees knees at all in comparison to the weapons you can find around (I know, crafted weapons are better in the long run once you've decked them out, I'm getting to that) and it doesn't need to be this long. If you're looking to challenge players, sure, that's fine, but forcing them to spend just about every waking hour of their time smithing is going to make them not want to play the game. Sure, I could just not craft, but I found it important to my character and I don't believe one should be punished for that.

Gilding

And finally, we move onto Gilding. Firstly, having to grind all the way to smithing level 30 just to have the privilege of gilding is a pain in the ass due to the reasons above. You can't work gilding, not even on copper before reaching smithing level 30, meaning you first must grind up to 30, then come back to grind out gilding and despite requiring that initial time sink, your smithing level doesn't make any difference to your gilding mechanically in the slightest. Instead, you now begin the biggest money sink of all. Not only do you need your smithing level at 30, you need to have acid to soften your metal (a low cost, no trouble here) and mercury (The big money, 110gp) alongside a gildable metal (such as copper). Your initial DC for a copper gilded iron dagger, is 18. Unless you have a positive to your scores, you have no hope in succeeding this until crafting level 5, and failures will give you the barest minimum to work with, (around 10 and under from my experience). So not only is this particular craft a slow grind, it's an expensive one. I've already racked up over 60k just to reach the double digits, and I'm still only working with copper. Furthermore, the amount of CXP you gain for failures can be as little as 2-5, with success cxp slowly lowering as your level rises (At level 10, my usual CXP was 35, at 11 it is reduced to 26) Meaning even if you do gain several successes, you're still having to spend 110+gp per success, which is a maddeningly slow grind, and one that you eventually need to halt to go and collect more money to pay for the expenses.

Conclusion

To close, the Smelting, Smithing and Gilding system as I have experienced it has brought me a chunk of hard work and very little gain for said work. In comparison to crafts such as Alchemy and Herbalism, which have near instant rewards upon a success, smithing and it's sub crafts don't give you that same rewarding feeling, forcing you to grind much higher before you gain something worth coin enough to sell to other players or to use yourself. I would recommend increasing the CXP gain for successes, lessen the cost sink of gilding or to lower the DC requirements in general (especially for gilding). Perhaps other smiths currently handling the system could weigh in on this, but if anyone has told you that this is an easy craft or that it's no trouble to get through? They're lying to you. Thank you.

ObsidianOrb

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Re: Smelting, Smithing, Gilding: The Slow Crawl
« Reply #1 on: June 14, 2020, 07:56:40 AM »
Herbalism is way too easy, and powerful. If anything it needs to be brought in line with the harder crafts. Also, potions can stack to ridiculous numbers, it doesn't take long to make a stack of 30+ cure light wounds potions, meaning that any character can walk around with a field hospital worth of potions, and chug them like theirs no tomorrow.

PrimetheGrime

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Re: Smelting, Smithing, Gilding: The Slow Crawl
« Reply #2 on: June 14, 2020, 08:40:01 AM »
Herbalism is way too easy, and powerful. If anything it needs to be brought in line with the harder crafts. Also, potions can stack to ridiculous numbers, it doesn't take long to make a stack of 30+ cure light wounds potions, meaning that any character can walk around with a field hospital worth of potions, and chug them like theirs no tomorrow.

Not really the point of this thread, but herbalism takes a bit to get going, gets very good mid to high level and then remains great. So long as the low level dc's and cxp arent downgraded, that what would hurt the most and is generally unnecessary. People will always grind out a large amount of potions to stock up and be prepared. increasing the difficulty doesn't stop those already at the high levels of crafting from doing what they want.

Khornite

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Re: Smelting, Smithing, Gilding: The Slow Crawl
« Reply #3 on: June 14, 2020, 09:29:57 AM »
Smithing is apparently going to be getting an overhaul in the near future. As far as gilding goes, it's already been made infinitely easier than where it was in the past. Template costs for smithing and material costs for gilding have also been decreased to a third of what they once were. I won't point it out and spoil it for you, but smithing is very easy and very fast to level (even if not as fast as it used to be) after you get a few levels in it, I encourage you to experiment with it a bit more or find a mentor in game to speed things along. Just looking at your post here, there are several different paths that smithing PCs might have recommended that could have made your experience much less of a slog.
« Last Edit: June 14, 2020, 09:36:04 AM by Khornite »
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Khornite

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Re: Smelting, Smithing, Gilding: The Slow Crawl
« Reply #4 on: June 14, 2020, 09:58:45 AM »
Herbalism is way too easy, and powerful. If anything it needs to be brought in line with the harder crafts. Also, potions can stack to ridiculous numbers, it doesn't take long to make a stack of 30+ cure light wounds potions, meaning that any character can walk around with a field hospital worth of potions, and chug them like theirs no tomorrow.

While the stack numbers are high, actually getting that many potions is the hard part. With healing potions, sure, you can have 30+ small healing potions easily, but chugging then when they're needed (like in combat) is actually just going to invite more damage to come your way. Even at higher levels with Heal potions, using them in combat is going to invite more attacks of opportunity and can actually leave you worse off than before you drank the potion. There have been plenty of times where I've seen someone in combat chug a healing potion only to get smacked once or twice and then have to chug another, and another, and another, only to drop unconscious. Herbalism has the problem of resources, everyone is wanting herbs, so getting them is sometimes the hardest part. The biggest hurdle with herbalism at the mid and high range is that you'll only get exp from a certain group of potions, so you have to prioritize their creation, and some of those potions will take you to multiple domains (and seasons) in order to get those materials. Of all the crafts, I think herbalism is actually the most well done.
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Iridni Ren

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Re: Smelting, Smithing, Gilding: The Slow Crawl
« Reply #5 on: June 14, 2020, 10:48:18 AM »
Spoiler: show
If the discussion of herbalism is to continue, please start a separate topic.

Prime has taken the time to write out a fairly detailed post on a very specific subject, so let's respect that by talking about the points he's actually wanting addressed.


I have futzed with smithing on both my current PCs. I don't think it's too impossible. Boring, yes.

Gilding...I'm not ever going to bother, and I can't see anyone but the most powerful PCs with high ability modifiers considering it.

If I were a gilder, however, I can also see being upset that the barrier to entry was lowered after I went through such torture myself. Still, this is a game and so most aspects of it need to have some element of fun, including along the way. Prime is spot on, particularly about gilding, that this craft is all about the destination. As I have said before, imagine staying 2nd level in your capabilities from the time you started playing POTM until you hit 20th. And then becoming a 20th level PC. That's what the craft is like.

All I can say is those who become master gilders clearly derive their fun from other activities than I do :D

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Khornite

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Re: Smelting, Smithing, Gilding: The Slow Crawl
« Reply #6 on: June 14, 2020, 11:07:40 AM »
If I were a gilder, however, I can also see being upset that the barrier to entry was lowered after I went through such torture myself.

It is a bit frustrating, I won't lie. Back when I first started gilding, mercury could only be bought for like 1000 each vial and the only material was silcer. You basically had to level up to level 10 on failures alone. I dumped 300k into gilding alone and even had other PCs sponsoring me learning it cause so few people bothered with gilding. That said, the same "the beginner stuff is useless" point applies to nearly all crafts outside of herbalism. There are ways to quickly blaze through the intro levels and get to the useful stuff but posting it here would kind of spoil the fun of experimenting. In the last three days, by experimenting, getting a partner to help, and doing some ic and ooc research, I cleared 20 (from lvl 10 to lvl 30) levels in woodworking. The same is possible with smithing and leathercrafting.
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Better Dread than Dead

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Re: Smelting, Smithing, Gilding: The Slow Crawl
« Reply #7 on: June 14, 2020, 11:28:36 AM »
Enslave Muses to your will. I recommend having at least five chained to the smelter while you’re at it.

Kleomenes

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Re: Smelting, Smithing, Gilding: The Slow Crawl
« Reply #8 on: June 14, 2020, 12:09:39 PM »
Enslave Muses to your will. I recommend having at least five chained to the smelter while you’re at it.

Can confirm, excellent technique. You may loose friends over it though unless your smithing RP is top notch.

slash

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Re: Smelting, Smithing, Gilding: The Slow Crawl
« Reply #9 on: June 14, 2020, 01:36:16 PM »
Enslave Muses to your will. I recommend having at least five chained to the smelter while you’re at it.

Sadly the bonus doesn't stack :,(

Anyway, I've leveled up a  smith to mastery relatively recently. I made a point to do it on a poor character (typically I never carried more than around 500gp) to see how tto grind would be for the average Joe. In my personal experience, the grind for smithing is in a good and satisfying place. I can understand why others wouldn't like it, but honestly smithing is one of the cheapest crafts to level and has a niche for specific types of martial and mundane characters.

Gilding, however -- that is the biggest nightmare of a craft I've ever done, in any game. It is insanely expensive to level up even a little bit. Admittedly, I only ever gained a few levels in gilding because the beginning was so expenisve, so maybe if there was a cheaper alternative for leveling up for the first couple of levels, it would be better.

Anyway, that's just my two cents.
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zDark Shadowz

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Re: Smelting, Smithing, Gilding: The Slow Crawl
« Reply #10 on: June 14, 2020, 02:26:46 PM »
OP's smithing XP was slow due to advancing stages without fully mastering copper, for which making larger higher DC weapons would have yielded far more XP per craft than iron or steel at the same DCs while still using a far more easily gathered material. (assuming from the statement you actually tried working with iron instead of skipping it entirely)

For example, at a certain level copper longswords take 4 ingots at DC 20 for 56 XP, whereas 4x iron daggers at DC 20 totalled to 52 XP (13 each). It was 4x faster to work with an easier to acquire ingot.

Keep making copper weapons till you can do copper katanas, somewhat reliably (15-25% failure cha then move directly to steel greatswords, steel katanas, and on to armourcrafting with steel. You'll see gains of 60-180 XP per craft when striving to make things moderately difficult for your level and moving on to more difficult things at feasible success/attempt ranges.

You'd be a master smith in two months max, additional time added for melting electrum for smelting till you have enough to perfect-smelt adamantine in bulk.

Gilding you don't need to have more than 6 or 7 gilding to start succeeding with any metal, so make copper gilded copper daggers and you are good (this is the expensive one, 5 or 6 levels is like 27k in acid and mercury) but since you don't need to perfect success this craft, there's no reason to master it, just use more ingots till the gilding is done.

... and if this post reveals too much then sorry, but this is just how I did smithing fairly quickly after the changes had been made to slow down the XP. Its basically information based on XP gained, materials used etc, rather than telling folk where things are or their item statistics so.. should be fine imo.

There are ways to speed up certain aspects (finding where the different iron seams hide in different regions, using power attack to mine, outsourcing bags upon bags of ore to other miners) but doing this craft solo is a couple months to perfect master, and one month to be making all the gilded steel equipment you and your adventuring party could ever need, and thats with a 40h week work schedule holding someone back.

Most of my time spent was working out what gave better XP rather than grinding so people should be able to do this far quicker than me when they know what to do.

And finally - doing any craft with a small modifier is punishment :) The higher your modifier to it, the more XP you can get per success/attempts. Higher modifier people will level up crafts at far higher rates than people with a lower modifier. Thats not to say its impossible, (aside from people so badly gimped in gilding they need to fail copper crafts for the first one or two levels before they have a chance to succeed).

The XP rate of a craft is a curve that aims toward 0 as it approaches the point where your DC is equal to your actual level before modifiers. Being able to successfully make crafts at higher XP numbers at greater success rates due to crafting at a much larger difference between actual level and DC is what accelerates any craft.
« Last Edit: June 14, 2020, 02:36:29 PM by zDark Shadowz »

Hathor

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Re: Smelting, Smithing, Gilding: The Slow Crawl
« Reply #11 on: June 14, 2020, 02:34:13 PM »
I don't have any strong opinions but it's worth pointing out. A comparison to alchemy and herbalism is made in the OP, however it should be noted that these are consumables which likely balances out their "immediate value". Gear persists and can be enchanted, which is probably taken into account for balancing.

Iridni Ren

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Re: Smelting, Smithing, Gilding: The Slow Crawl
« Reply #12 on: June 14, 2020, 02:35:36 PM »
Enslave Muses to your will. I recommend having at least five chained to the smelter while you’re at it.

Sadly the bonus doesn't stack :,(



No firsthand experience, but I've heard many times it does.

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Re: Smelting, Smithing, Gilding: The Slow Crawl
« Reply #13 on: June 14, 2020, 03:30:26 PM »
My experience with smithing thus far can be described as follows:

1) Hours of mining copper/logging for the seams to reset. I tend to do this semi-afk while going on an OCD/panic-attack induced cleaning binge.
2) Freedom of Movement limping to the crafting hall because ain't nobody got time for that.
3) Cranking up some smooth jazz while I angrily yammer at the smeltery for only having 25 pages of capacity.
4) Focus that anger into the metal on the anvil to craft like a bazillion thingamabobs.
5) Leave the worthless goods on the anvil to trigger other crafters, cackling maniacally as I exit the building.

All in all, pretty zen. It is a substantial time investment but the endgoal is well worth the investment. If it is changed to be easier, then it sort of kills the journey/experience of reaching that goal.

I would also like to take this opportunity to point out that both "bazillion" and "thingamabob" are not pinged by the spell check and that entertains me.

SardineTheAncestor

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Re: Smelting, Smithing, Gilding: The Slow Crawl
« Reply #14 on: June 14, 2020, 04:14:33 PM »
I think the journey and experience can be more than preserved, but improved, by making them more interesting. Any kind of carpal tunnel inducing semi-afk grind (something all crafters experience) is not real gameplay.

The good news is, adamantine is generally a group effort, which means RP. The bad news is, it's still pretty repetitive, but it's less repetitive with friends.

A lot of crafting is pretty painful without help. Smithing is no different. This doubles up when there are people who don't know that power attack exists (or that they can hire high str characters to do this work for them), that you can put items into your crafting containers without picking them up, or that many dungeons below level 10 have everything up to iron in them.

One thing included in the update is a DC shuffle, meant to make it take much less time to get to steel. From what we know, it will not affect the overall time it takes to get to adamantine. MAB teased it a while ago, mentioning that it will also include more materials for all or most of the different crafts (so new armour, clothing, weapons, everything).

It will never get easier. Ore will not get lighter, crafting containers will not become more spacious, FoM will not let you run while encumbered, travel times will not be reduced, adamantine will not become more common. The time investment for a character to create useful stuff (steel, which also happens to be endgame for many classes, but a variety of new materials are coming in that could change that) may be reduced, but it's not becoming strictly easier.

In fact, I'd say the competition has potential to make it more difficult and time consuming, since if more people do end up getting involved in crafting (smithing in particular) as a result, it might be more difficult to profit from these crafts. It is not always easy finding people who want your stuff. When I was able to play my woodworker actively, she wasn't even able to sell all the arrows and bows she had, despite having almost no competition, and before long she was forced to reduce the prices on certain things to the point she would've made more money using her rogue skills. The secret is she doesn't even do alchemy or smithing so she can't even make the stuff herself, thus she needs to buy or bum it off others, and even in the latter case, if we were talking strictly as if time was money, if I never took the chance that one day for the fun of the RP, my character would be so much richer right now. I only continue to pursue it because it helps out other people.
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Chaoshawk

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Re: Smelting, Smithing, Gilding: The Slow Crawl
« Reply #15 on: June 14, 2020, 09:41:55 PM »
I would like to see especially the earlier levels of smithing be less tedious since most of the stuff you make there are worthless until you hit steel where a lot of newer characters or characters with magic such as clerics do not need silver or platinum, yet. I understand in the pipeline there's new things or adjustments to be made, but the time spent on this craft is far more for far less than alchemy or herbalism even with adjustments that made herbalism a little harder to get started on.
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Marcus Weyland

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Re: Smelting, Smithing, Gilding: The Slow Crawl
« Reply #16 on: June 14, 2020, 10:14:03 PM »
I don't know if this is a good thing or a bad thing. I always assumed smithing and leatherworking required more investment because their products were permanent, as opposed to herbalism and alchemy.

Somehow I simultaneously think crafted gear is too strong, and also that crafting requires too much effort. No, I can't explain it any better.

SardineTheAncestor

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Re: Smelting, Smithing, Gilding: The Slow Crawl
« Reply #17 on: June 14, 2020, 10:58:12 PM »
@Chaoshawk: The way I understand it, those first few tedious levels where all you can make is gear that's literally worse than what the Misty Being sells you will be much quicker to work through. Steel is to assume the DC of Bronze.

@Marcus Weyland: It's an intentional part of Soren's design that enchanted gear is the best for most characters. The reason is because enchanted gear will inevitably be obtained by a character eventually, if they're trying for it, whereas rare loot might never be, due to bad luck. You don't need to look any further for your explanation than Soren's posts; he wanted to eliminate that crushing feeling of doing the same dungeon 80 times and not getting the desired item.
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Marcus Weyland

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Re: Smelting, Smithing, Gilding: The Slow Crawl
« Reply #18 on: June 14, 2020, 11:10:17 PM »
@Marcus Weyland: It's an intentional part of Soren's design that enchanted gear is the best for most characters.

I understand the reasoning, though it doesn't change my opinions, and I don't want to derail.

I'd be in favor of reducing the grind, though would like to see changes made to the experience awards, rather than DCs. It's odd to RP no longer being able to make something that people used to rely on you for, and I think we got plenty of that kind of mandatory awkward explanation RP from the Herbalism DC tweaks a while back.

Iridni Ren

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Re: Smelting, Smithing, Gilding: The Slow Crawl
« Reply #19 on: June 14, 2020, 11:44:05 PM »
@Marcus Weyland: It's an intentional part of Soren's design that enchanted gear is the best for most characters. The reason is because enchanted gear will inevitably be obtained by a character eventually, if they're trying for it, whereas rare loot might never be, due to bad luck. You don't need to look any further for your explanation than Soren's posts; he wanted to eliminate that crushing feeling of doing the same dungeon 80 times and not getting the desired item.

I don't think that's the reasoning, and in any case, the result is ultimately more important than the intent.

The result (and I personally believe the intent as well) of enchanted adamantine gear is to both buff mundane classes and give high levels something to keep going for. The XP cost in effect makes the climb to 20th a longer journey, and those who make it, ultimately more powerful. A fully enchanted 20th level fighter is stronger than a 20th level fighter without enchantment and (consequently) is more nearly matched with a 20th level caster.

Enchanting is also a much more difficult choice for casters because we don't tend to benefit as much from it.

(As smelting and smithing adamantine with an eye toward enchanting is the end goal of those two crafts, I don't think discussing it veers very much off topic.)

In game I was just told the going rate for an adamantine long sword gilded with platinum (suitable for enchanting but not including the cost of enchanting) was almost 170K. There are a few loot drop items that go for that much, but not very many weapons at all. If the idea with enchanting is to make sure everyone has the gear most appropriate for her, then we should be able to craft Rings of the Hierophant :D

More to the point, then, commanding prices like that makes the craft well worth mastering for those who complete the slog--although I would submit such prices also lead to grinding behavior on the part of other PCs to accumulate such wealth as to buy such gear.

This doesn't seem particularly healthy for several reasons on an RP-focused server, but that's all I'm going to say for now as I've said it many times before  :mrgreen:
« Last Edit: June 14, 2020, 11:46:31 PM by Iridni Ren »

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Re: Smelting, Smithing, Gilding: The Slow Crawl
« Reply #20 on: June 14, 2020, 11:59:17 PM »
This is a recurring debate. The issue of reducing the grind is always foremost in my mind. The problem here being that the grind is by design as a deterrant to having too many grand master crafters at once. Taking the grind out requires new mechanisms to replace it. So far the alternatives proposed didn't seem to garner the favor of our playerbase, so the grinding will remain until a suitable alternative can be agreed upon.

Here are some of the ideas that were proposed, but ultimately rejected. I won't go into details and there is no need to debate them further. I am only listing them as a point of reference. If you have other alternatives to propose send them my way.

- Multiply crafting XP gains by 5 or more while inducing a crafting XP soft cap.

- Increasing crafting XP, but making it character level dependant.

- Increasing crafting XP, but making it feat dependant.
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Chabxxu

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Re: Smelting, Smithing, Gilding: The Slow Crawl
« Reply #21 on: June 15, 2020, 12:28:41 AM »
This is a recurring debate. The issue of reducing the grind is always foremost in my mind. The problem here being that the grind is by design as a deterrant to having too many grand master crafters at once. Taking the grind out requires new mechanisms to replace it. So far the alternatives proposed didn't seem to garner the favor of our playerbase, so the grinding will remain until a suitable alternative can be agreed upon.

Here are some of the ideas that were proposed, but ultimately rejected. I won't go into details and there is no need to debate them further. I am only listing them as a point of reference. If you have other alternatives to propose send them my way.

- Multiply crafting XP gains by 5 or more while inducing a crafting XP soft cap.

- Increasing crafting XP, but making it character level dependant.

- Increasing crafting XP, but making it feat dependant.

What's the problem with having multiple grandmaster crafters at once? It means it won't always be the same people getting the RP, and it makes the crafts accessible to more people.

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Re: Smelting, Smithing, Gilding: The Slow Crawl
« Reply #22 on: June 15, 2020, 12:33:44 AM »
I understand the reasoning, though it doesn't change my opinions, and I don't want to derail.

I'd be in favor of reducing the grind, though would like to see changes made to the experience awards, rather than DCs. It's odd to RP no longer being able to make something that people used to rely on you for, and I think we got plenty of that kind of mandatory awkward explanation RP from the Herbalism DC tweaks a while back.

From what we know now, the adamantine DCs aren't slated to go up, just steel is going down. I agree though that experience reward changes are the best way to do things while keeping the progression intact but I remain optimistic for MAB's update, since there still are going to be early levels where you do a bit of practice on tin, copper, and bronze, and iron, but steel will be much more accessible. Not only that, but there's going to be more options, too, and some of them will be alternatives to steel.

I don't think that's the reasoning, and in any case, the result is ultimately more important than the intent.

I agree that results trump intent. But this is pretty much what Soren said word for word, in another thread long ago (which I cannot currently find). It's possible I'm misremembering, but even if I am, the design is very clear that enchanted stuff is the best. I'm not entirely satisfied by the design either, I'm just acknowledging that there are very, very few cases in which you would, if you had access to every item on the palette, choose even the very best loot over enchanted gear. We're talking about combat mostly, but that's not to disregard the fantastic skill bonuses on some enchanted gear, too.

In a different thread, Soren also expressed he was not entirely content with the results of the way the system is designed and where enchanted loot stands (very much within the context, when considering the part about wool): https://www.nwnravenloft.com/forum/index.php?topic=38759.msg486460#msg486460

The result (and I personally believe the intent as well) of enchanted adamantine gear is to both buff mundane classes and give high levels something to keep going for.

Enchanting is also a much more difficult choice for casters because we don't tend to benefit as much from it.

If the idea with enchanting is to make sure everyone has the gear most appropriate for her, then we should be able to craft Rings of the Hierophant :D

More to the point, then, commanding prices like that make the craft well worth mastering for those who complete the slog.--although I would submit such prices also lead to grinding behavior on the part of other PCs to accumulate such wealth as to buy such gear.

This doesn't seem particularly healthy for several reasons on an RP-focused server, but that's all I'm going to say for now as I've said it many times before  :mrgreen:

Right on the money, it's more for mundanes than casters, thus no spell slot items which are just too invaluable. Casters can benefit from enchanting but like you said, they want levels more for the most part, and if everyone had rings of the hierophant the forums would probably get lit on fire from all the complaints. I guess it's limited to certain slots for a reason; while you can wizard at critical mass without any gear at all, there are some relevant bonuses in there for them, and earning back XP on an in-demand caster isn't really a tall order.

I also think that tedious grinds just sets most people up for disappointment, especially in a game where progression is very much finite. We're not an MMO where the max level continually rises, harder content comes out, and a competitive PvP season with balance updates keeps things fresh; our updates are completely different, they're more breadth based. I don't think in ten years time that a region more brutal than Sithicus will be added, for example. But that's okay, since we aren't following a race to be the server first kill on a dungeon when it comes out. Even still, party combat & logistics like what's found with the adamantine stuff can be a fun team building experiment, so people like me will always revisit it from time to time, even if it is a bit tedious, because we're there for the people, not the part with the clicking on rocks.
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Re: Smelting, Smithing, Gilding: The Slow Crawl
« Reply #23 on: June 15, 2020, 12:43:20 AM »
What's the problem with having multiple grandmaster crafters at once? It means it won't always be the same people getting the RP, and it makes the crafts accessible to more people.

Might be they don't want to over-saturate the market with certain types of crafted gear.  Makes them less valuable.

Just a thought, not a criticism btw.

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Re: Smelting, Smithing, Gilding: The Slow Crawl
« Reply #24 on: June 15, 2020, 12:52:16 AM »
Might be they don't want to over-saturate the market with certain types of crafted gear.  Makes them less valuable.

Probably not the case, assuming you're referring to adamantine. The bottleneck with adamantine tends to be the supply of rocks, rather than waiting for a smith. After all, most groups on the server have one or two of the existing grandmaster smiths on speed dial.