EQ2 crafting system review (long)

[dulsin]

Level 19 Outfitter speaks

Crafting is an emercive event in EQ2. Gone are the days of click fests waiting for that ultra rare skill up. Now everything you do earns you exp for next level. There is no luck in leveling up, it is just sweat and grind just like in adventuring.

When you are crafting you have two things to worry about first you want to keep your crafting buffs up (more on this later) second you want to keep from dying. Each crafting art will have three events which you must counter or your work and your health will suffer. In smithing the events are “Day Dreaming”, “Poor Measurements”, and “Mislabeled Supplies” and they are countered by “snap out of it”, “readjust”, and “work with it”. If you do not hit the correct counter before the next tick you can ruin what you are working on or even kill yourself. As a level 16 cleric missing a day dreaming event will hit me for 183 damage. Answering the door could very likely cause my death if I do not abort my crafting efforts.

There are 2 buffs in the game for each craft, they very greatly from craft to craft in power and effectiveness. At this time there is no buff for armor smithing and the buffs for alchemy, jewelry, and woodworking take a huge amount of power. It is generally agreed that tailors and weapon smiths have the best abilities in the game and there is a general plea to have all the other crafts brought up to these standards.

Creating items is a long process. To make a single piece of chain armor you will need Iron Rings, Burlap Pattern, Burlap Padding. The rings are crafted from iron bars. The bars are refined from iron ore. All of your materials can be purchased from venders up to level 30 after you start on tier 3 items there are holes in the venders inventory which are probably an over site. The other materials can be made or purchased from other players but for everything I have looked at so far there is almost zero cost savings for this.

All crafted goods will be one of four levels of quality Crude, Shaped (all vendor goods), Normal (un-named), and Pristine. Pristine goods have a huge advantage over crude goods in effectiveness.

Each item has a primary component, which is critical to the quality of the final product. When making leather backpacks you must have a pristine rawhide leather plate to make a pristine quality backpack. Since venders only sell shaped quality goods the best you can possible make from them are shaped quality. In order to make high quality goods you will have to make the primary component from scratch.

EXAMPLE: Creating a Leather Backpack
1. Find sullied low quality pelts of any type. These can be “foraged” by clicking on dens that look like teepee arrangements of sticks. Alternatively you can just go kill dear and bears.
2. Refine the pelts. The refining process takes a pelt, chloral resin, and fibers. Result stretch of rawhide leather.
3. Make leather plates. The recipe is stretch of rawhide, chloral oil, and fibers. Result rawhide leather plate.
4. Final combine. Take the rawhide leather plate, rawhide cord, and fibers to make leather backpack.

If you have done everything perfectly you will be rewarded with a 6 slot pristine or normal backpack. Any poor results are carried over to the next step. It is very common to loose one step of quality on each combine when you are just getting started so the best final result is crude. When making backpacks crude and shaped results in a 4 slot bag while normal or pristine are 6 slots.

Once you make level 9 as an artisan you are required to choose which class of trades person you will become. Your choices are Outfitter (weapons, tailoring, and armor), Scholar (scrolls, jewelry, and alchemy), or Craftsman (woodwork, carpentry, cook). After you have chosen the other two skills are bared to you. When you hit level 19 you have to choose again further limiting what you can make. This is probably the most frustrating part of crafting for me. By level 20 it is required for me to limit my trade skilling to 1/9th the possible recipes I’m sure many others share my frustration since we crafters love to be self-sufficient making everything we need ourselves.

As a level 19 outfitter it is time for me to choose my final profession. I have been planning on doing armor but there are two very good armorers already in business in my city and the buffs are currently broken. I could be a tailor, which is in short supply and is needed by many more classes but I would not be able to make anything for myself since as a cleric I will want the heavy armors. I could be a weapons maker but as a cleric my interest in weapons is passing at best.

One final warning: Crafting is a long grinding experience and skilling up to level 50 as a crafter will take just as long as exping through an adventuring career. Crafting is not for everyone and hopefully the issues will be addressed before launch.

Summery:
Good Stuff:
· This is a very interesting sytem that is well thought out.
· The arts are designed for interdependence
· Crafter level directly maps to adventurer level. i.e. A level 9 artisan will be able to make appropriate equipment for a level 9 adventurer.
· Crafted goods are on a par with or better than dropped goods.

Bad stuff:
· The crafting process takes a LONG time. Making a full set of armor could take hours.
· You are limited to a single craft by level 20.
· Foraged materials are hard to come by.
· Many buffs are missing from the game or vary greatly in effectiveness compared to other crafts.
· There are many holes and broken recipes to fix. (normal beta complaint)

Weaponry (usually on Forge):
Basic Annealing - 10% Max Power, lasts 4.1 ticks
+6% DUR, Rounded Down, Reduces Chane of any ticks of less than 'Normal' (-10 DUR, +50 State).

Basic Tempering - 5% Max Power, lasts 1.1 ticks
-1 DUR, +10 State to all ticks. Possibly increases chance for a 'Great' tick (-0 DUR, +100 State). Modifies 'Great' tick to +1 DUR, +110 State (might be a bug with regards to increase to DUR)

Heavy Armoring (usually on Forge):
No Buffs Available at this time.

Woodworking (usually on Woodworking Table):
Light Curing - 20% Max Power, lasts 7.5 ticks
-22% DUR rounded down, +15 State to 'Normal' and 'Great' ticks. Modifies 'Bad' tick from -50 DUR, +0 State to -39 DUR, +15 State. Possibly decreases chance for ticks below 'Normal' (I don't think it does).
Basic Seasoning - 20% Max Power, lasts 1.1 ticks
+10 State to all ticks.

Alchemy (usually on Chemistry Table):
Exothermic Reaction - 20% Max Power, lasts 1.1 ticks
+20 State to all ticks. Increases the chances for a 'Bad' tick.
Solvolysis - 20% Max Power, lasts 1.1 ticks
+2 State to all ticks. Increases Chances for a 'Bad' tick.

Runecraft (usually on Work Bench):
Round Brilliant Cut - 10% Max Power, lasts 4.1 ticks
-1 DUR to all ticks. That's all I've seen. The Work Bench sucks.
Mind over Body - 10% Max Power, lasts 1.1 ticks
-50% DUR, -33ish% State to all ticks. Turns the standard -10 DUR, +50 state to -5 DUR, +33 state. Turns the +100 state to +65 state.

Light Armoring (usually on Sewing Table & Mannequin):
Simple Beveling - 5% Max Power, lasts 4.1 ticks
+1 DUR to all ticks. Decreases chance of any ticks of less than 'Normal' (-10 DUR, +50 State) (actually -11 DUR since the skill itself costs +1 DUR).
Overhand Stitch - 5% Max Power, lasts 1.1 ticks
+10 State to all ticks.

Arcana (usually on Engraved Desk:
Scratch Notation - 20% Max Power, lasts 7.5 ticks
-15% DUR to all ticks (-10 DUR, +50 State becomes -9 DUR, +50 State) (-50 DUR becomes -42 DUR).

Hieroglyphic Lettering - 10% Max Power, lasts 1.1 ticks
+10 State to all ticks. Very limited testing done. (Could Add Durability Loss)
(Buff information quoted from Velindial and Elyne beta crafters of Qeynos)

Caralon of Qeynos

[Valquiss]

Thanks for the good journal and review! One of the most interesting points that I learned here is that artisan level is mapped to adventurer level, so that the stuff a level X adventurer needs can probably be acquired from a level X artisan. This is great, because it adds a level of logic to the game that allows people to trust artisans at least a little more, and even a warrior who doesn't know much can hunt up an armorsmith of his own level and ask for some help buying armor. That's kinda cool. It will also provide a very good standard to apply when judging if artisan products are still effectively in demand at any stage, or if they are getting supplanted by dropped items.

Thanks again, and happy crafting!

Oh, and I understand the natural desire to be self-sufficient (I feel it too) but I'm entirely willing to buy into a community of artisans. It isn't as though adventurers are self-sufficient either, right? :)

Val

[Moonshade]

EXAMPLE: Creating a Leather Backpack
1. Find sullied low quality pelts of any type. These can be “foraged” by clicking on dens that look like teepee arrangements of sticks. Alternatively you can just go kill dear and bears.
2. Refine the pelts. The refining process takes a pelt, chloral resin, and fibers. Result stretch of rawhide leather.
3. Make leather plates. The recipe is stretch of rawhide, chloral oil, and fibers. Result rawhide leather plate.
4. Final combine. Take the rawhide leather plate, rawhide cord, and fibers to make leather backpack.

If you have done everything perfectly you will be rewarded with a 6 slot pristine or normal backpack. Any poor results are carried over to the next step. It is very common to loose one step of quality on each combine when you are just getting started so the best final result is crude. When making backpacks crude and shaped results in a 4 slot bag while normal or pristine are 6 slots.

Good review! Just a note for completeness, you missed a couple steps in the backpack. For one, you can make the rawhide cord from another refined rawhide, chloral, and fibers. And you also need a tin buckle, made on a forge with its own set of pre-steps that I can't remember offhand. Just to show folks that, as you said, finished items take a lot of steps and give a lot of experience if they are of your current level.

[Grei]

Good review! Just a note for completeness, you missed a couple steps in the backpack. For one, you can make the rawhide cord from another refined rawhide, chloral, and fibers. And you also need a tin buckle, made on a forge with its own set of pre-steps that I can't remember offhand. Just to show folks that, as you said, finished items take a lot of steps and give a lot of experience if they are of your current level.
You can always buy the buckle and the cord from the merchant, Moonshade. :)

But for the tin buckle, the steps are:

Tin Cluster + Fossil Temper + Coal -> Tin Bar
Tin Bar + Fossil Temper + Coal-> Tin Buckle

Pretty simple and straight forward...but the buffs don't work on the Buckle step (or making studs or a couple of other things I've tried) as they're only for Weaponcrafting steps--though how is a Tin Bar a weapon, I still haven't figured out.

Grei

[DeWeasel]

...but the buffs don't work on the Buckle step (or making studs or a couple of other things I've tried) as they're only for Weaponcrafting steps--though how is a Tin Bar a weapon, I still haven't figured out.

Yeah, this kind of confused/annoyed me as well. On the other hand, it wasn't very hard to make some shiny pristine tin buckles for my rawhide leather bp's :) Took longer though :(

[Moonshade]

You can always buy the buckle and the cord from the merchant, Moonshade. :)

Sacrilege! Thanks for the recipe though :)

BTW: you do look hot in that leather Grei, but I think it's because you're standing so close to the forge :p

[Ngreth Thergn]

and if you want to break it down even more... you can make your own temper/oil/wash... This economicaly and result wise is no different than buying it, timewise is MUCH worse, and experience wise better.

[Niami DenMother]

... but the buffs don't work on the Buckle step (or making studs or a couple of other things I've tried) as they're only for Weaponcrafting steps--though how is a Tin Bar a weapon, I still haven't figured out.


Some things, such as buckles, studs and so forth are considered "artificing", and as such, use buffs that you'd traditionally think of as jewelcraft buffs - you're doing much more delicate work with smaller tools than you'd normally work with. ;)

These same artificing items are the ones that you'll see scholars getting for recipes in the iron line, as they do some of the more delicate metalwork to complement the larger pieces made by smiths.

[Grei]

Some things, such as buckles, studs and so forth are considered "artificing", and as such, use buffs that you'd traditionally think of as jewelcraft buffs - you're doing much more delicate work with smaller tools than you'd normally work with. ;)

These same artificing items are the ones that you'll see scholars getting for recipes in the iron line, as they do some of the more delicate metalwork to complement the larger pieces made by smiths.
Yes, I figured that out and posted about it in another thread. I was wondering where we first brought it up but never could find this thread...hence why I didn't follow up. :)

Soon as I get some more money saved up, I'll be back to working my way through the jewelcraft recipes--but with the tuning on combat, that's making things a bit more challenging.

Grei

[Drucilla]

The buffs at this point are moot, but as a tip what I had done (since I didn't know you could see via right click what the recipe was classified as) is this: I'd start by opening the machine. This brings up the recipes for that machine only. I select the recipe I want to use, but not start it yet. I then would hit "k" (opens the book), flip over to "tradeskills" and press all the buttons. You'll get the "you are not using arcana right now" type thing if it was the wrong one. Once I determined which two I needed (and after awhile memorized the propoer pairs and such), I'd pop those two on the hot bar, close the book and begin tradeskilling.

After awhile I just started to get the gist of Arcana uses this little picture and Weaponsmithing use that little picture...

Ah the mind of the Un-analytical :p