I suppose I should have played another game during the periods of stale content instead of finally ranking up masterwork. Whatever, I'm not even surprised anymore when stuff gets neutered.
Froger - Barbarian - Original Main - The Freak Core - Xbone Jade - Cleric - Healer Main - The Freak Core - Xbone Magnus - Fighter - Tank for queues - The Freak Core - Xbone Loverboy - Ranger - Alt - 9 3/4 Unbuffed - Xbone Nomnomnommm - Wizard - Alt - Droppin Crits on Fools - Xbone I Am The Wall - Paladin - Alt - Droppin Crits on Fools - Xbone Xeros - Rogue - Alt - 9 3/4 Unbuffed - Xbone RIP bad name - Warlock - Alt - 9 3/4 Unbuffed - Xbone Bardholomew - Bard - Alt - 9 3/4 Unbuffed - Xbone Sirona - Cleric - Alt - 9 3/4 Unbuffed - Xbone
Wow, really? I think this is Neverwinters way of saying thankyou for all those players who spent time and money on this game paying the employees salaries, but we don't appreciate those mastercrafters out there. The mastercrafters spent so much in AD getting our mastercrafting maxed in every category, waiting on the 2x professions, so we could use our stacks of explorer kits saved up in our inventory. Some of us stuck around after the first upset in mastercrafting, when you lowered our success rate at crafting an item, and now this? If you don't compensate your players who are the mastercrafters on this game, you will lose many players to other games. I've been here since the release on ps4, have seen the changes. Spent countless hours on this game. My toons name doesn't get recognized anymore in the rewards channel, when I open a lockbox of legendary status. Now this? I think compensation should be something everyone at Cryptic/Neverwinter should look into.
The Chultan Masterwork - Blacksmithing II is available in the Antiquity Exchange of The Artisan in the Stronghold for 1 Statue of the Great King. This should be 1 Fullered Yklwah Blade.
The Chultan Masterwork - Leatherworking II is available in the Antiquity Exchange of The Artisan in the Stronghold for 1 Statue of the Great King. This should be 1 Mounted Tyrannosaur.
The Chultan Masterwork - Armorsmithing II is correctly available in exchange for 1 Statue of the Great King.
I see that you correctly removed the requirement of a Stronghold Armament [class specific] from the Outiftter - Artifacts - Weapons store. The Stronghold weapons now only cost their Guild Mark and PVE or PVP stronghold currency amounts, which is fair.
I don't see any other place that all the craftable Stronghold Furniture from Masterworks 2 and 3 have been moved to. Are these unobtainable now?
There is no compensation for partially finished Masterworks quests. (I know other people have mentioned this but I feel like they haven't directly named it like that.) These quests have multiple steps and take a long time to complete; often when multiple materials are required you tend to focus on one in a round of double guild marks -> guild marks discount -> double professions events (a time span of several months), hand in those materials for partial quest credit, then focus on the other required material for the next while. The quests ask for a lot of compound materials: while you only see 1 quest item to hand in, this item is made up of 50 base materials of 10 different types, which are made with several different professions. In-depth example of the work involved in 1 MW quest, expand to read:
I just finished my Masterworks Artificing II tasks. This is a set of 4 tasks that require several materials for the first three, then a final product to hand to one of the Stronghold NPC members. Like other Masterworks quests, some later tasks required materials that were required for an earlier task, but when you complete that task you don't just have to show it to The Artisan, you have to hand it in. So every time a progressive material is asked for, you basically need to do the previous one all over again and then some more. The material that I needed the most is called Lacquer Branch. Now, Lacquer Branch used to come from the Pirates Skyhold Charts. I ended up needing 32 Charts to collect all my Lacquer Branch. This was not a matter of bad luck, this was a relatively normal distribution of this material in this particular chart. A chart costs 1500 GM, 1200 when on sale. That is a total of 38 400 Guild Marks when on sale, keep in mind that 50 000 is the max that you can hold, which I assume you consider to be more than a player will ever need. Each of these 32 charts requires the player to walk through a zone map, in this case the now vaulted Pirates Skyhold map, and interact with 6 nodes which are spread all over the map. So basically I had to traverse most of that map 32 times. This all had to be done in the time span of a double professions week (of course, this took me two of those double Stronghold -> double Professions weeks rotations, several months apart, because I didn't buy enough charts the first time), because I would have needed double the amount of charts if I hadn't. I couldn't use the mount speed bonus Guild Boon, as that can't be used at the same time as the Treasure Hunter Boon - again, not using that means I would have needed double the amount of charts again. Collecting the materials of 32 charts took several hours of running up and down the map. And that's just one material. To put this more in perspective, with the recent levelling overhaul you have added map / fast travel access to the end of every map, so that levelling players who don't have VIP don't have to walk all the way back to the start of the map even a single time. So the thing that was so inconvenient that you patched it out, I did that 32 times for only part of my needed materials. I still needed to collect a lot of materials relating to Alchemy, and a bit of Tailoring stuff, and more, and craft everything, before I could finally finish my Masterworks II Artificing quest. Here is the page with the items/materials required for all masterworks quests up to IV, if you'd like to inspect the full list of final materials required or see other masterworks quests. I think the questlines are nice to have, this is an RPG after all, but all the running up and down maps for several hours is nonsense and I'm glad that it's not required to unlock the recipes anymore. Doing it once or twice, also as a means of tutorial, would be fine though.
I feel like it's a bit strange that we have this whole workshop where artisans are actually walking around in as NPCs, but the masterworks quests are becoming very impersonal with buy-out as the only option. This change is not in the spirit of what you made Professions into with Mod 15.
Alchemy Masterworks 1 has a recipe to make 4 Oil of Vitriol with 12 Iron sand. This recipe has been removed. The only recipe left to craft that is the level 20 Alchemy recipe that uses 3 Brimstone to craft 1 Oil of Vitriol. Oil of Vitriol is required to make Soda Ash (level 20 Alchemy recipe), which is required in most other professions' level 20 materials. For example: the level 20 Blacksmithing recipe for Cobalt Ingot. Removing this easier way of crafting more Oil of Vitriol at a time might have an unintended impact on level 20 non-masterwork crafting.
BUG: It's not recognizing that I'm buying the Chultan Armorsmithing 1 book to buy two. Took 300k AD from me before I realized it was taking the AD still.
Feedback: The exchange for the 1-3 recipes are underwhelming. It should be something of value at the very least for the Level three. Like possibly Legendary Tools. Or AD to buy the Chultan ones.
Second while I have spend millions of gold and millions of AD getting all my Mastercraft to 5 I'm not going to super complain about that part. But I feel like this is a step backwards. And as someone who loves to craft I honestly preferred the quest because they were fun and made it look like you knew what you were doing. Though there were a lot of bugs with them I would agree especially the not being able to turn in +1's to finish the quest.
Third, @cryptic39#8917 I see quoted that Sharandar maps will be hidden for a little bit and brought back later. Is that will be brought back later on Preview or brought back later on Live? Because if this doesn't come out at least with the Mod 22 I'm going to be greatly disappointed especially since it was originally supposed to come with Mod 20 almost 8-9 months ago let alone it was really supposed to come out with Undermountain and the Level 80 which would have made the MOST SENSE. And since it seems Cryptic actually had that planned and partially programmed to the point where part of the reason this seems to have been delayed was because of the fact there were too many items from Undermountain tied into the VI and VII recipes that you had to start from scratch.
Lastly, with the removal of the quests to get Mastercraft the Adamantine level 18 items (includes Shimmerweave, Oak and Drake Leather) should be just either cut out completely and should focus on the Hardsteel level of 18 items only. Or lower BlackIron level items to level 13 and move Adamantine level items to level 16. Use this opportunity to clean up the mess that the level 20 level squish caused. I've been half tempted to create a spread sheet with the new organization and ilevel and how it should appear but I haven't really had the time for that in my life. Thank you guys though for making a game I love and I've been playing since Console launch. I know that Covid has made programming difficult and meetings so you have my sympathy and understanding but please stop making some good progress than taking 2-3 steps back with things like this.
All those complaining about how much it cost to grind out the entirety of the Master Work tree and the AD you invested which you feel has been lost this needs to be said. If you made it to MC5 and did not make that AD back ten fold you really should have thought out the crafting better. I have easily made back the investment ten fold if not more. You should have made back your investment. I understand most are most upset they will not be able to make millions more when the new master crafting hits by selling to those who would otherwise have to grind MC1-5 before being able to do the Sharandar MC which is to come. Some people with this change will still not do the crafting so the customer base will be there it just may be a bit more competitive.
My only concerns are with the 294k guild marks I invested in maps Thursday when the double hit is if I can exchange them. I mean I can obviously take the hit and I won't be upset not having to grind out 245 maps in older areas. Had I known this was coming I would have invested all of those marks in the hundreds of Sharandar maps I purchased. It is about my only concern with the changes other than the bugs being worked out.
Still there are many players who have reached this level recently like me, and others who already spend a lot of AD and are still in the process of upping the MW live currently. the fact is that few MW things give a return today, and the investment is huge. I spent part of 2020 and 2021 gradually evolving the profession, especially now in 2021 after M21 where there was nothing to do, I spent my entire AD stock evolving the professions, even if I wanted to try to recoup the investment there would be no time for this, because as I said there are not so many ways to generate good profits, only small profits that would take months to get close to the amount I already spent on it. I think these changes are bad for everyone except for the ones who did this on their release. I'm not here saying that the current system is fine, on the contrary, but as far as I could see in the preview this change is a big disaster, and one of the problem that bothers me the most is still there, which are level 20 items being better than those of the MW. the progression of the profession system is terrible in live and even worse in preview.
Echoing sentiments above: What will happen to those of us who are sitting on multiple explorer cases for 2x guild marks? Will they be able to be turned into the Workshop retainer or Merielle?
And to those complaining all how it's a slap in the face and a punch in the nads to have MW be easier to grind: Stop crying. No one forced you to spend zen and astral diamonds, y'all did that of your own wallet's whimpering and volition. I can't imagine anyone who's completed masterwork didn't have at least an inkling in the back of their minds that this would happen eventually, especially after recent reworks of other features. This "I guess my hard work was for nothing" sort of argument is pathetic and doesn't work in the real world, so to think it'll work in a game is hilarious at best and pitiful at worst.
Regrettable for me is the way they use to "improve" things ignoring everything that has happened before, there are many ways to make changes in the system much better than this, and even for them to monetize on top of it in a healthy way. Regrettable for me is how in players we are more and more used to the lack of consideration of cryptic to the point of using arguments like yours. And this repeats itself more and more, there's no way to trust anything they do that way. which encourages me to get new MW weapons that will arrive, if we have no way of knowing if they won't put better weapons in the next trial that is coming, which encourages me to run to finish leveling our guild to level 20, if we're waiting for a change in the imminent SH that can do exactly what they're doing right now with the MW. every time they make changes that ignore and devalue our previous efforts, the more the credibility of their intentions is put to the test, and even though I love this game so much, and have 8,000 hours of gameplay in a 4 year period, I can't to wipe out this kind of attitude to know that it can be done in better ways, and to see them doing this kind of thing for me is regrettable
Not sure what is it with this game, but it too often feels like the devs pick out the 3rd or 4th best option probably simply because it's faster or more convenient to implement. Same for the devaluation of Masterworks and attached resources. You can't tell me there wouldn't have been a way to keep old levels somewhat relevant and resources intact and still make it easier for new players to get to the latest MW tiers.
And let's be clear: MW has long been broken because new stuff was added vertically which made it progressively harder to keep up for newer folks. This absolutely had to stop. But taking away ADs that players have stored in their banks in the form of MW resources and Explorer's Charts was uncalled for. Yeah sure, MMOs evolve and stuff gets nerfed and whatnot all the time, but this is not the smoothest of experiences for those heavily invested in MW or Explorer's Charts.
And of course it's absolutely hilarious to announce this in the midst of a Stronghold week with an upcoming x2 Professions. You know, THE event sequence to stock up on Explorer's Charts, farm, and profit. It's staggering how little administrative oversight and/or understanding of ingame implications the dev team seems to possess. It's either ignorance or indifference, both equally bad. So you literally could not announce this two days earlier? I would absolutely be thrilled had I turned in my Guild Marks on Thursday for Explorer's Charts that are now discontinued.
There should be a way to:
Exchange discontinued Explorer's Charts for versions that are still in the game (2:1 or 1:1 depending on the GM costs)
Exchange discontinued resources for new ones.
for sure they go the easy way out, i'm currently testing New World, and the profession system there is very well fitted, it involves item collection and special resource drop from level 1 to 100 which is where i am at the moment, apparently it goes to 175, but so far I have little to complain about the system, you can see that they thought about what they were doing, the way the professions are interconnected and how the simple act of killing mobes and opening small boxes across the map has weight on the craft and it is amazing how the recipes of the same profession are interconnected, making the player always need basic resources of low level even at high level making different ways to farm around the profession. What makes me sadder is that you can do it just like in Neverwinter, but as always they choose to try to "fix" what already exists by going the easy way and making it even worse, this happened when level 80 arrived at M16 in beginning of 2019, bringing items of level 80, current level 20 being higher than the last level of MW. How did that go at the time? I'm not ideal, it's impressive at least, and even more impressive is that we spent almost 3 years with this problem in the game to receive these changes that not only worsen the system but remain with the same problem as the M16.
Let’s try to look at this as maybe a step in the right direction. I’ve often thought the MW quest were poorly designed and inaccessible to most. If this change allows for more master-crafters so be it. I feel like this aspect of the game should have been that way from the start. Yea the folks who have been master crafters will lose out myself included. What I truly hope for is more and diverse recipes. Just like drops in the dungeons this aspect of crafting needs attention. I hope the devs will include this in new updates.
I always try to be optimistic about changes, whoever has seen my comments on past topics such as the M16 change, and the latest M20 knows that I am an advocate of beneficial changes, no matter if it will negatively affect me in the short term , I'm not like some who complain about Xuna's nerfe just because she bought one, I want things to work well, and in a balanced way, but as I just commented in the post above, this mundane is not going in the right direction in my view.
To go in the right direction in my vision of a professional systems enthusiast there are many basic things that could be done. For example: 1st - fix the biggest problem of the system that are the items of the current level 20 of profession, which broke the system in the M16 with the addition of the level 80 that brought basic recipes superior to the MW.
2nd - after adjusting the line of evolution of the profession and MW, some recipes should be reformulated so that basic resources are needed for advanced MW recipes, creating a network of dependence between professions and between their own recipes. A very random example just for a better understanding. Imagine that in alchemy, to make 1 Antler Glue, it would take 5 Bone Glue in addition to the current resources, and to make 1 Fish Glue it would take 5 Antler Glue in addition to the current resources, and you would follow that line until you reach the Baselisk Glue that would be an item required for MW 1 recipes for example, the quantities here are just illustrative, but do you notice how, despite seeming stuck, this makes each new recipe automatically strengthen the relevance of the basic items? Many can say, wow what a hassle, will I need to make 10 crafts just to make a base resource for an advanced recipe? I say no, because it is at these times that we have the AH, a scalable system like this would bring work for several players of various levels of profession to be able to make the market rotate.
3rd - Remove the profession from Stronghold. having the professions linked to a guild, and still requiring to be Guild Hall 12 is simply meaningless. link recipe levels to in-game maps. This is something I've seen that they're trying to improve, putting the recipes for chult and we'll receive the Sharandar recipes, and that's great, we need to admit the good stuff as well, however it still needs a rank 12 guild to start this system, put it this for other maps, could be leveling woods, look at this idea. With all the changes I suggested above implemented, we would still have 5 MW levels right? so why don't we actually split these 5 levels into 5 sets, removing those MW II-III revenue sets. and adding each set of recipes to some leveling map and bringing new Explorer's Case to those maps, but not the Explorer's Case we know, I suggest something like a collection instruction, when activating a quest that asks us to fight local mobes to drop the items, after we drop the total of the quest, it concludes and we use another instuon, it would be at least more dynamic, however it can be done in different ways too, I just think the current Explorer's Case model is very stuck, another thing that could be Implemented on all maps to which there is connection to professions is to add a reasonable chance to acquire items for the corresponding recipes within the nodes that are scattered across the map.
Here's an example of map layout:
Masterwork I - Neverdeath Graveyard Put an NPC with the sale of the MW1 cookbook and some basic features maybe for sale, and the new Explorer's Case from Neverdeath Graveyard, Vellosk and Ebon Downs. (I could put these items up for sale with seals and guild mark, that way I would have two farm sources for these things and it wouldn't be mandatory to have a guild).
Masterwork II - Icepire Peak It did the same, putting resources from the base profession to sell, only now at a higher level, and the new Explorer's Case by Icepire Peak, The Chasm and The Whispering Caverns
Masterwork III - Undermountain NPC with slightly better features for sale and new Explorer's Case from Undermontain maps, (interestingly I've seen them in the preview)
Masterwork IV - Evil Elemental You already understood what would be done here.
Masterwork V - Chult Masterwork VI - Sharandar
I want to make it clear that the NPC for selling resources and Explorer's Case using seals and GM, may not be something infinite and may suddenly have a daily or weekly purchase limit, this would make the resources less abundant in the market, and make the most common node farm. This part here are just ideas of how it could be done, the important thing is to understand that a certain control is needed so that everything is balanced, and maybe the new Explorer's Case can also be traded, so that players who do not focus on craft can enjoy somehow with the system, and giving more farm windows to players who will focus more on crafting, another idea that can be approached in this sense is not to put the new Explorer's Case to sell, but to be acquired via mission the same NPC that sells the basic resources, it could be a repeatable mission in por example, you take one mission and after an hour you can take more. Aiming at monetizing the game (something I would like to be more visually focused), companions with craft resource drop boosting skill similar to Ramoraz could be sold which drops additional relics to voniblood, a mount with similar effect can also be developed , and quest reset tokens to remove the Explorer's Case quest timeout if it's a low price can be exited. as I said, I don't really like this type of monetization, but I know it's necessary. Profession x2 events would be much more fun because we could do it in groups since the goal is to kill enemies, and with the escalating system getting more and more impactful in the game, these farm areas in active scale areas, group farming can be something necessary if they place elite monsters to complete these quests. A small drop chance of these Explorer's Case could be added to elite mobes and heroic encounters that could be added one day on leveling maps, but I definitely think adding small areas of elite mobes to each map to farm Explorer's Case and also to do your own objective after opening the Explorer's Case would be very good not only for veterans but also for new members to know that there are danger areas on these maps.
to do a lot of good things we can guarantee, these 3 points I mentioned are super important for a good profession system to start to be elaborated, what I put in later are more loose ideas with things that could be implemented after these 3 points were solved .
As someone who really enjoys the MW element of the game here are my comments;
Context and Rationale - I think it would be helpful to provide a bit more context about the changes - what is the rationale? (presuming allowing more people to access, redundant recipes?), how does this relate to the rewards and progression CDP (summary points on return on investment and professions comes to mind - whilst also balancing this with the fact its a MMO and things always change). Providing this alongside implementing changes may help bring existing MW'ers with you.
Couple of points
Essence of Focus (MW1 Alchemy) - this has been taken out and is no longer needed for Distilled Philospher's Focus. This was a major use for the green and blue professions supplements for MW's to make the +1 version of MW goods. It is kind of redundant now? Offering green and blue supplements in exchange for recipes has little practical use now (unless they are purple quality). Also consider how this links in to current events such as Gond - one of the benefits of Gond was the green profession supplements.
Clarity - it would be good to explain the Travelling Merchant exchange for recipes in a bit more detail and consider/change the rewards offered.
Complexity - personally i like the complexity of MW and the tons of materials needed. Changes that 'dumb down' Masterworking would personally be a negative but i may be in a minority. Many of us have being asking for more professions bag space - i guess we should be careful for what we ask for! Or how it is implemented.
Recognising Effort - I would echo previous comments on providing those at MW5 some recognition even if this is title etc. You could get flavourful and provide an additional 3% focus to those workshops that are already established in the market?
Thanks,
Efnis
(And the Imaginary Friends)
a lot of things don't really make sense and we lack clarity in things, if the idea is just to make it easier for new players, some gift packs could be given exodically. the fact for me is that if the MW is easily accessible to everyone, it doesn't make much sense to invest time in it because it loses its value. imagine if being a surgeon were something simple, without complexities and accessible to everyone? There may not even be hospitals, as they all have 1 or 2 doctors in their homes. MW in its essence must be something difficult, because if not such recipes become just new levels of base recipe, and not a Masterwork, whoever disagrees with this does not understand the idea behind being a master at something
Feedback: I love that you guys are taking care of the MW. It was long overdue. I'm glad that now the rest of the players can at least try to get in to MW crafting. That's how you should deal with monopoly. Everybody that invested in MW in the past got the value of the investment back times 100 i think. Crafters earned hundreds of milions of AD on MW sets and now are crying that it's not fair to take that thing away. Well it is. I'm glad you are opening the doors to MW for newer, less welthy players. Change my mind.
maybe you're not seeing the problem in all of this, and as your words sound selfish, there are many who are investing in MW today and will lose their investment, that's not how monopoly is resolved, no matter how long it's been like master and how much she already earn with it. it took me 2 years to start investing in it and I definitely haven't got my investment yet. there are several ways to solve monopoly by helping beginners to enter the advanced market, the problems in MW are structural and it is not about being or not difficult to do only, but having a well-structured system, something that we do not have at the moment , so we need changes, but not like this.
When someone wants to be an engineer he doesn't ask the government to revoke all engineering degrees forcing all engineers to go back to college and start again just to make it easier for new students to enter the market, this is not a logical path, and for more than this is a game, concepts of specialization, profession and market are the same, this alone should be enough for them to see that the path is wrong.
Using the same analogy as engineers, what we need are more accessible universities and a cohesive, structured curriculum.
To think that this is "the fix of the fixes" is not working because M15 was the "fix of the fixes" already, and thats basically Neverwinters history, a long list of "the fix of the fixes". However, I can acknowledge that its easier to start and advance crafting and specifically MW now, which is fine. I am just genuinely surprised how people defend it every big change after every big change as something great and everybody else is just an HAMSTER who doesn't get the "bigger picture" or whatever. To heavily invest yourself into MW (again) after all those overhauls is masochistic and yeah, don't do it
I sent this same text as a reply to a post above, but I believe it can serve as feedback and I decided to repost it with the appropriate color, maybe someone reads it.
Feedback: I always try to be optimistic about changes, whoever has seen my comments on past topics such as the M16 change, and the latest M20 knows that I am an advocate of beneficial changes, no matter if it will negatively affect me in the short term , I'm not like some who complain about Xuna's nerfe just because she bought one, I want things to work well, and in a balanced way, but as I just commented in the post above, this mundane is not going in the right direction in my view.
To go in the right direction in my vision of a professional systems enthusiast there are many basic things that could be done. For example: 1st - fix the biggest problem of the system that are the items of the current level 20 of profession, which broke the system in the M16 with the addition of the level 80 that brought basic recipes superior to the MW.
2nd - after adjusting the line of evolution of the profession and MW, some recipes should be reformulated so that basic resources are needed for advanced MW recipes, creating a network of dependence between professions and between their own recipes. A very random example just for a better understanding. Imagine that in alchemy, to make 1 Antler Glue, it would take 5 Bone Glue in addition to the current resources, and to make 1 Fish Glue it would take 5 Antler Glue in addition to the current resources, and you would follow that line until you reach the Baselisk Glue that would be an item required for MW 1 recipes for example, the quantities here are just illustrative, but do you notice how, despite seeming stuck, this makes each new recipe automatically strengthen the relevance of the basic items? Many can say, wow what a hassle, will I need to make 10 crafts just to make a base resource for an advanced recipe? I say no, because it is at these times that we have the AH, a scalable system like this would bring work for several players of various levels of profession to be able to make the market rotate.
3rd - Remove the profession from Stronghold. having the professions linked to a guild, and still requiring to be Guild Hall 12 is simply meaningless. link recipe levels to in-game maps. This is something I've seen that they're trying to improve, putting the recipes for chult and we'll receive the Sharandar recipes, and that's great, we need to admit the good stuff as well, however it still needs a rank 12 guild to start this system, put it this for other maps, could be leveling woods, look at this idea. With all the changes I suggested above implemented, we would still have 5 MW levels right? so why don't we actually split these 5 levels into 5 sets, removing those MW II-III revenue sets. and adding each set of recipes to some leveling map and bringing new Explorer's Case to those maps, but not the Explorer's Case we know, I suggest something like a collection instruction, when activating a quest that asks us to fight local mobes to drop the items, after we drop the total of the quest, it concludes and we use another instuon, it would be at least more dynamic, however it can be done in different ways too, I just think the current Explorer's Case model is very stuck, another thing that could be Implemented on all maps to which there is connection to professions is to add a reasonable chance to acquire items for the corresponding recipes within the nodes that are scattered across the map.
Here's an example of map layout:
Masterwork I - Neverdeath Graveyard Put an NPC with the sale of the MW1 cookbook and some basic features maybe for sale, and the new Explorer's Case from Neverdeath Graveyard, Vellosk and Ebon Downs. (I could put these items up for sale with seals and guild mark, that way I would have two farm sources for these things and it wouldn't be mandatory to have a guild).
Masterwork II - Icepire Peak It did the same, putting resources from the base profession to sell, only now at a higher level, and the new Explorer's Case by Icepire Peak, The Chasm and The Whispering Caverns
Masterwork III - Undermountain NPC with slightly better features for sale and new Explorer's Case from Undermontain maps, (interestingly I've seen them in the preview)
Masterwork IV - Evil Elemental You already understood what would be done here.
Masterwork V - Chult Masterwork VI - Sharandar
I want to make it clear that the NPC for selling resources and Explorer's Case using seals and GM, may not be something infinite and may suddenly have a daily or weekly purchase limit, this would make the resources less abundant in the market, and make the most common node farm. This part here are just ideas of how it could be done, the important thing is to understand that a certain control is needed so that everything is balanced, and maybe the new Explorer's Case can also be traded, so that players who do not focus on craft can enjoy somehow with the system, and giving more farm windows to players who will focus more on crafting, another idea that can be approached in this sense is not to put the new Explorer's Case to sell, but to be acquired via mission the same NPC that sells the basic resources, it could be a repeatable mission in por example, you take one mission and after an hour you can take more. Aiming at monetizing the game (something I would like to be more visually focused), companions with craft resource drop boosting skill similar to Ramoraz could be sold which drops additional relics to voniblood, a mount with similar effect can also be developed , and quest reset tokens to remove the Explorer's Case quest timeout if it's a low price can be exited. as I said, I don't really like this type of monetization, but I know it's necessary. Profession x2 events would be much more fun because we could do it in groups since the goal is to kill enemies, and with the escalating system getting more and more impactful in the game, these farm areas in active scale areas, group farming can be something necessary if they place elite monsters to complete these quests. A small drop chance of these Explorer's Case could be added to elite mobes and heroic encounters that could be added one day on leveling maps, but I definitely think adding small areas of elite mobes to each map to farm Explorer's Case and also to do your own objective after opening the Explorer's Case would be very good not only for veterans but also for new members to know that there are danger areas on these maps.
to do a lot of good things we can guarantee, these 3 points I mentioned are super important for a good profession system to start to be elaborated, what I put in later are more loose ideas with things that could be implemented after these 3 points were solved.
[...] the Adamantine level 18 items (includes Shimmerweave, Oak and Drake Leather) should be just either cut out completely and should focus on the Hardsteel level of 18 items only. Or lower BlackIron level items to level 13 and move Adamantine level items to level 16. Use this opportunity to clean up the mess that the level 20 level squish caused.
NONONO don't remove them they're about the prettiest crafted items in the game! They're appearance library stuff!
Since I know AD reduction is a problem that they are also trying to solve, here are some suggestions in this regard.
1 - The NPCs from the craft maps I suggested selling items with seals and GM may have part of their required value in AD, for example, to buy a Horn Glue, you need 10 seals + 100 AD, or 10 seals + 100 AD + 100GM whichever is best for the system. (only illustrative value)
2 - The quest reset tokens for Explorer's Case farm can be sold in AD at the NPC's own shop.
3 - some primary items for various recipes (item does not exist, needs to be created) Example: Let's put the hypothesis of creating 2 new items for the Alchemy profession, the elementary Essences and the Energy Conductor, this energy conductor would be like an orb that would be crafted in some profession perhaps in alchemy itself at low levels, and it would take some reagents and some AD to craft, 1k for example, this conductor would be energized with various elements in recipes of various levels of the base recipes, at this time we would need of the smallest elemental fragment that would be dropped in elite mobes and leveling-specific map nodes. Adding a higher drop rate to maps of the evil elemental would be interesting.
1 - 4 - Recipe: Power Conductor, (Some resources and an AD value)
5 - 8 - Recipe: Air Elemental Orb, (1 Energy Conductor + 10 small Air Fragment + Miscellaneous Resources + AD value)
9 - 12 - Recipe: Earth Elemental Orb, (1 Energy Conductor + 10 Small Air Fragment + Miscellaneous Resources + AD value)
13 - 16 - Recipe: Water Elemental Orb, (1 Energy Conductor + 10 Small Water Fragment + Miscellaneous Resources + AD value)
17 - 18 - Recipe: Fire Elemental Orb, (1 Energy Conductor + 10 Small Fire Fragment + Miscellaneous Resources + AD value)
19 - 20 - Recipe: Orb of the Four Elements, (10 Energy Conductor + 5 Air Elemental Orb + 5 Earth Elemental Orb + 5 Water Elemental Orb + 5 Fire Elemental Orb + 5 x more Miscellaneous Resources + 5x em value AD)
So finally We would have the general reagent for crafting higher level base rows, for early MW levels all with small AD rates, and this whole process can be repeated at MW levels with the addition of the Supreme Four Element Orb, which would use all the items mentioned above plus new items from the Explores Case, all subtitled Supreme.
MW I - Revenue: Supreme Energy Conductor, (10 Orb of the Four Elements + 40 Energy Conductor + Miscellaneous Resources + AD value)
MW II - Recipe: Supreme Elemental Orb of Air, (1 Supreme Energy Conductor + 10 Elemental Orb of Air + Miscellaneous Resources + AD value)
MW III - Recipe: Supreme Earth Elemental Orb, (1 Supreme Energy Conductor + 10 Earth Elemental Orb + Miscellaneous Resources + AD value)
MW IV - Recipe: Supreme Water Elemental Orb, (1 Supreme Energy Conductor + 10 Water Elemental Orb + Miscellaneous Resources + AD value)
MW V - Recipe: Ultimate Fire Elemental Orb, (1 Ultimate Energy Conductor + 10 Fire Elemental Orb + Miscellaneous Resources + AD value)
MW VI - Recipe: Four Elements Orb, (10 Ultimate Energy Conductor + 5 Ultimate Air Elemental Orb + 5 Ultimate Earth Elemental Orb + 5 Ultimate Water Elemental Orb + 5 Ultimate Fire Elemental Orb + 10 x more Miscellaneous Resources + 10 x value in AD)
This way a good amount of AD would be removed from the game in several layers to create very important and valuable items and less for simple items, as some recipes may only take one fire elemental orb and not necessarily the four element orb. .
The point here is that in addition to providing a significant removal of AD from the game, this makes the diverse features I mentioned, which may also be from other professions, become much more relevant to the market.
You may have noticed that I didn't mention at any point in the post about the Adventures panel that are currently in the game to collect resources, as it is, I think they should be removed for a better long term profession structure, to make some resources scarce can be very beneficial to the market. But take it easy, we can still use that panel in another way. I have two suggestions for our whorkshop adventures:
1 - Adventures as a bonus: adventurers would be chosen only by their bonus, and in the 3 slots on our panel we could choose which bonuses we will have. The commission multiplier could make the price of craft stores on maps cheaper, the speed multiplier could reduce the waiting time of quests where we get the Explorer's Case things like that. of course this would need tweaking, perhaps a set of 3 adventurers cannot be modified within 24 hours or a week unless an AD fee is paid, and its effects could be inactive if a gold fee not held every 24 hours. something along those lines.
2 - the other suggestion is to have the Adventurers as temporary companions for collection, in some menu we would summon them to be by our side, and that would make him drop resources previously defined in the workshop, as if we were making an escort for them. So if I define that an adventure will collect Basilisk Hide in the workshop panel, when I summon it and start killing mobes it would collect these resources in exchange for a gold cost, I don't know if this could be done with the 3 slots, we would have 3 NPC following us, this could get confusing, but it's still an idea.
Maybe a third option joining a little of the two ideas works, where one slot would be for the adventurer who can be summoned, and the other 2 for bonuses only. anyway they are just ideas to keep the adventurers, the most practical and fully functioning way would be to remove them.
> @dillygirl said: > NONONO don't remove them they're about the prettiest crafted items in the game! They're appearance library stuff!
Then at that point they should follow my secondary advice and lower their levels. I do like the look of the Drakeskin stuff myself but having two level 18 requirement tiers when the older one isn't tied to MasterCrafting anymore doesn't make sense. So if they want to keep them they should do the drop Blackiron to 13 and Adamantine to 16
Thank you for your reports and thoughts on the Masterwork changes thus far.
As an announcement: Sharandar Masterwork should now be available on Preview for further testing. Feel free to try it out, and please let us know what you think.
Items that utilize materials that you can no longer attain are bugs!
*Reminder: anything on Preview is subject to change.
---
Some of the following updates have not yet made it to Preview, but we’ve also made further adjustments based on your feedback.
Besides addressing obvious bugs like 9750 focus requirement on the Chultan Wootz Ingot, having recipes that require ingredients that no longer can be acquired, and infinite Chultan Masterwork – Armorsmith book purchases:
Two titles are being added and will be automatically granted to your character if they meet the requirements when logging in, post patch.
The Artisan’s Apprentice – Character has completed at least one Masterwork V quest.
The Artisan’s Successor – Character has completed all Masterwork V quests.
We’ve also made adjustments to the costs of the Chultan Masterwork and Masterworker’s Tools and also adjusted Temporary Structure costs to better match the recipes that they come from.
For folks wondering about deprecated Explorer’s Charts: An exchange will be available at The Traveling Merchant for players to exchange materials earned from deprecated Explorer’s Charts.
For folks wondering about Stronghold Furniture: Stronghold Furniture will remain in the old Masterwork II and III for the time being, but this may not always be the case.
@cryptic39#8917 also just signed into preview and while the scrolls are back at the Generalist am I missing where you get the Sharandar recipes at? I talked to the Artisan and people in Sharandar and can't find out where to get the books. Am I missing something?
0
arazith07Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,719Arc User
Preview screen covers up the 'close' button when previewing the stats of +1 items before making them.
0
arazith07Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,719Arc User
@cryptic39#8917 also just signed into preview and while the scrolls are back at the Generalist am I missing where you get the Sharandar recipes at? I talked to the Artisan and people in Sharandar and can't find out where to get the books. Am I missing something?
Talk to the NPC to the far left of the main quest giver's stage. He'll have a quest that gives an enchantment, talk to him again for different stores.
0
arazith07Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,719Arc User
Mastercraft armor equip bonuses seem rather lack luster considering the effort it takes to get to the level of crafting required.
why is there a 500K astral diamonds cost for the books why can't you make the books available for free ?
So to get all the books and start testing I would have to copy my character and transfer whatever AD that character has many , many times over ( as currently my account on live isn't so AD rich ) . It would just be easier if the books were free or at least a nominal fee of 1 AD . After all we are testing it out for you for bugs etc
1
darthpotaterMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,261Arc User
I get that you need to make masterwork professions more accessible for new players, but I think giving something unique to people who already have MW V that makes a little difference could be good.
For example a legendary crafter or something with a little more % than the other crafters. Is like a trophy for the hard investment in the past, but nothing that give them a huge advantage
"For folks wondering about deprecated Explorer’s Charts: An exchange will be available at The Traveling Merchant for players to exchange materials earned from deprecated Explorer’s Charts."
But the charts themselves are useless? I suggested trading the charts back for the Guild Marks (or even a reduced amount if you are worried that they bought them during a SH event). I don't understand the problem with doing that. Guild Marks are bound to character and don't really affect the economy, so why punish people by obsoleting something they have earned?
Bugs: - The armorsmithing mafia strikes again! Just like in the stronghold I can buy the armorsmithing recipe multiple times in Sharandar to keep the new scamming tradition alive.
- Bronzepin has the option to turn in commisioned scentblockers for 980 credits but they are not in the craft list.
- Related to the previous bug. While searching for "scent" to find the scentblockers since I could not find them manually I found several "hidden" recipes which don't appear in the list but are extremely broken. Here is a picture to illustrate it:
The Luminescent Fortification potions crafts Faded Elemental Earth (did not actually craft to check the output) and claim to allow me to use 3 tools and 2 supplements but it does not work. Also I crafted the hidden legendary scentblocker and it's not related to the commissioned one since I could not turn it in. Unsure if there are more hidden recipes only findable via specific search queries since it's tedious to check.
- I hesitate to put this on the bug section but most of the recipes are basically copy/pasted from chult MW but mapping old materials to new ones which is fine for the most part. I was going to comment about this on cyan feedback but some recipes like Woven Whisker and Crystalline Ornament have requirement so high that I think they qualify as a bug. Woven whisker is basically recycling the Jute Macrame recipe while lowering the output from 3 to 2 and going from needing 15 samarachan jutes (chart material) to using 15 Displacer Beast Whiskers (rare drop from 1st boss of VoS). Displacer Beast Whiskers and Shard of Dawn light are similar to Manticore pelt/hide in which both drop from the 1st boss of their respective dungeon with relatively low drop rate but you never needed 15 of the manticore material for a single item craft which then gets used a lot. Crystalline Ornament uses 3 Woven whiskers and needs 12 Shard of Dawn light requiring close to 40 mats from the 1st boss alone. I think some of the items that utilize material from the VoS bosses should be reconsidered or their drop rate should be significantly buffed.
- Semi related to the previous bug entry. The tailoring recipes just like the Tenterground building seems to have issues. Fey fibers seems to be just Chultan Silk Threads with Cocoon->Hair and Water->Tears the difference is that you received 4 Chultan Silk Thread but now only 1 Fey Fiber. I believe that Fey Fibers recipe should have been giving 4 of them to then feed them to the Chultan Silk equivalent (Woven Fey Leaves) which requires 4 Fey fibers. Then Fey'd Fabrics seems to have been added by mistake since it's a duplicate of Fey Fibers but never used at all from what I could see so this one should probably be removed. Already mentioned but Whiskers requirement should be toned down.
- Chultan Masterwork Alchemy with the activation of Sharandar recipes gained the rank 5 & 11 recipes that use materials from the now gone like the dodo charts of undermountain. These should probably be removed since they are uncraftable and were added to complete the alchemy quest of Sharandar that also went away like the dodos. The awareness potion is the only potion giving me 210 free focus for some reason so that feature should be kept .
- Sharandar Masterwork Alchemy has 6 distilled items that use the Essences of X from MW2 but these are deprecated items.
There are a lot of recipes to digest but just did a relatively quick sanity check on the recipes and ended up with 2 main concerns. The 1st one is that as usual some of the materials from charts are way overrepresented while some are barely used at all this include the new Salt-Marsh Crystal item from the SH Vendor which don't get used at all outside of commissioned items. I don't count commissioned items when looking for how much items are used since in all honesty you will rarely craft that and there is no real incentive atm to do the credit quest outside of the 1st time if you want the unbound barkshield. My 2nd concern is that rare boss drop items which are historically used in low quantities because of their inherent rarity are used in high quantities in this iteration of MW. For example in MW3 wizard and cleric weapons got toned down from using at most 3 fartouched residuum to using only 1 and now in Sharandar we are using a lot more boss material on intermediary resources which are high on the crafting chain and that will then get used again while going down to the final end product. This makes the use of these boss items grow very fast.
As for the materials: Dryad Hair => Fey Fiber and Lacquered Leaves => Well represented Hardened Blight Bark => 3 end products in alchemy, 1 tool in tailoring => Weak representation Feywod Log => Feywood Lumber => Well represented
Troll's Earwax Resin => 3 tool, 1 supplement => Weak representation Silvertongue Moss => Beads of Light and Silver Vines => Well represented Soulfire flies => 9 tool, 4 resources but only 1 unit used in each => Semi weak representation
Salt-Marsh Crystal => Not used outside of commissions => Very Weak representation
To mitigate this I would - In Ear 'n Tears swap Weeping Willow's Tears to Troll's Earwax Resin. Now we have ears and the tears is terebinth. - In Salty Tears Varnish swap Weeping Willow's Tears to Salt-Marsh Crystal. Now we have tears and salt. - In Feywood Lumber swap Soulfire flies for Hardened Blight Bark. Make the wood even harder than a dwarfs head. - In Frozen Dawn's Dew lower the shard from 4 to 1 and then add 4-8 shade leaves. Now we have life, light, and frost. - In Woven Whiskers lower the whiskers from 15 to 1 and then add 8-12 soulfire flies.
Hardened Blight Bark is still on the weak side and could be added in other places.
For Boss Materials I would at the very least look at - Frozen Dawn's Dew => 5 boss items - Silver vines => 1 boss items but gets used by Beads of light double dipping on all the ingredients. - Beads of Light => See Silver Vines. - Crystalline Ornament => Uses Beads of Light, 3 Woven Whiskers, 12 Shard of Dawn light. Massive use of boss items. - Thorned Ornament => Uses Beads of Light, 3 Woven Whiskers, and 6 mobs drops - Woven Whiskers => 15 boss drops
- As per tradition outside of the weapons and maybe 1-2 rings the MW gear seems lacking.
- One last suggestions is that some resources like let say Silver Vines which basically acts like the Scintillant glass on the old Brilliant beads should be upgraded to produce 5 like Scintillant glass instead of leaving it at 3-4 like the old obsidian shard/soulfired obsidian that they were based of. Also as mentioned before Fey Fibers back to 4 and Woven Whiskers from 2 to 3. Basically the numbers required by items to craft and the number produced should probably be tweaked a bit to adjust to the new MW.
I'm unsure if the goal is to make it as difficult as before or even more difficult so all my suggestions were to more/less keep the same status quo difficulty wise. There is a lot to digest so probably there are more bugs or good suggestions to find.
While confirming that charcoal is indeed no longer craftable found another legendary item that is supposed to be removed. So probably all 7 removed legendary items can be found and maybe other removed recipes.
to get the quest from Stryker Bronzepin you first have to speak to the artisan then to the master of coin who then directs you to Stryker who is in Sharandar
Comments
Jade - Cleric - Healer Main - The Freak Core - Xbone
Magnus - Fighter - Tank for queues - The Freak Core - Xbone
Loverboy - Ranger - Alt - 9 3/4 Unbuffed - Xbone
Nomnomnommm - Wizard - Alt - Droppin Crits on Fools - Xbone
I Am The Wall - Paladin - Alt - Droppin Crits on Fools - Xbone
Xeros - Rogue - Alt - 9 3/4 Unbuffed - Xbone
RIP bad name - Warlock - Alt - 9 3/4 Unbuffed - Xbone
Bardholomew - Bard - Alt - 9 3/4 Unbuffed - Xbone
Sirona - Cleric - Alt - 9 3/4 Unbuffed - Xbone
Jade - DC - Shadows of Gauntlgrym - PC
The Chultan Masterwork - Leatherworking II is available in the Antiquity Exchange of The Artisan in the Stronghold for 1 Statue of the Great King. This should be 1 Mounted Tyrannosaur.
The Chultan Masterwork - Armorsmithing II is correctly available in exchange for 1 Statue of the Great King.
I see that you correctly removed the requirement of a Stronghold Armament [class specific] from the Outiftter - Artifacts - Weapons store. The Stronghold weapons now only cost their Guild Mark and PVE or PVP stronghold currency amounts, which is fair.
I don't see any other place that all the craftable Stronghold Furniture from Masterworks 2 and 3 have been moved to. Are these unobtainable now?
There is no compensation for partially finished Masterworks quests. (I know other people have mentioned this but I feel like they haven't directly named it like that.) These quests have multiple steps and take a long time to complete; often when multiple materials are required you tend to focus on one in a round of double guild marks -> guild marks discount -> double professions events (a time span of several months), hand in those materials for partial quest credit, then focus on the other required material for the next while. The quests ask for a lot of compound materials: while you only see 1 quest item to hand in, this item is made up of 50 base materials of 10 different types, which are made with several different professions. In-depth example of the work involved in 1 MW quest, expand to read:
- again, not using that means I would have needed double the amount of charts again. Collecting the materials of 32 charts took several hours of running up and down the map. And that's just one material. To put this more in perspective, with the recent levelling overhaul you have added map / fast travel access to the end of every map, so that levelling players who don't have VIP don't have to walk all the way back to the start of the map even a single time. So the thing that was so inconvenient that you patched it out, I did that 32 times for only part of my needed materials. I still needed to collect a lot of materials relating to Alchemy, and a bit of Tailoring stuff, and more, and craft everything, before I could finally finish my Masterworks II Artificing quest. Here is the page with the items/materials required for all masterworks quests up to IV, if you'd like to inspect the full list of final materials required or see other masterworks quests. I think the questlines are nice to have, this is an RPG after all, but all the running up and down maps for several hours is nonsense and I'm glad that it's not required to unlock the recipes anymore. Doing it once or twice, also as a means of tutorial, would be fine though.
I feel like it's a bit strange that we have this whole workshop where artisans are actually walking around in as NPCs, but the masterworks quests are becoming very impersonal with buy-out as the only option. This change is not in the spirit of what you made Professions into with Mod 15.
Alchemy Masterworks 1 has a recipe to make 4 Oil of Vitriol with 12 Iron sand. This recipe has been removed. The only recipe left to craft that is the level 20 Alchemy recipe that uses 3 Brimstone to craft 1 Oil of Vitriol. Oil of Vitriol is required to make Soda Ash (level 20 Alchemy recipe), which is required in most other professions' level 20 materials. For example: the level 20 Blacksmithing recipe for Cobalt Ingot. Removing this easier way of crafting more Oil of Vitriol at a time might have an unintended impact on level 20 non-masterwork crafting.
Feedback: The exchange for the 1-3 recipes are underwhelming. It should be something of value at the very least for the Level three. Like possibly Legendary Tools. Or AD to buy the Chultan ones.
Second while I have spend millions of gold and millions of AD getting all my Mastercraft to 5 I'm not going to super complain about that part. But I feel like this is a step backwards. And as someone who loves to craft I honestly preferred the quest because they were fun and made it look like you knew what you were doing. Though there were a lot of bugs with them I would agree especially the not being able to turn in +1's to finish the quest.
Third, @cryptic39#8917 I see quoted that Sharandar maps will be hidden for a little bit and brought back later. Is that will be brought back later on Preview or brought back later on Live? Because if this doesn't come out at least with the Mod 22 I'm going to be greatly disappointed especially since it was originally supposed to come with Mod 20 almost 8-9 months ago let alone it was really supposed to come out with Undermountain and the Level 80 which would have made the MOST SENSE. And since it seems Cryptic actually had that planned and partially programmed to the point where part of the reason this seems to have been delayed was because of the fact there were too many items from Undermountain tied into the VI and VII recipes that you had to start from scratch.
Lastly, with the removal of the quests to get Mastercraft the Adamantine level 18 items (includes Shimmerweave, Oak and Drake Leather) should be just either cut out completely and should focus on the Hardsteel level of 18 items only. Or lower BlackIron level items to level 13 and move Adamantine level items to level 16. Use this opportunity to clean up the mess that the level 20 level squish caused. I've been half tempted to create a spread sheet with the new organization and ilevel and how it should appear but I haven't really had the time for that in my life. Thank you guys though for making a game I love and I've been playing since Console launch. I know that Covid has made programming difficult and meetings so you have my sympathy and understanding but please stop making some good progress than taking 2-3 steps back with things like this.
To go in the right direction in my vision of a professional systems enthusiast there are many basic things that could be done. For example:
1st - fix the biggest problem of the system that are the items of the current level 20 of profession, which broke the system in the M16 with the addition of the level 80 that brought basic recipes superior to the MW.
2nd - after adjusting the line of evolution of the profession and MW, some recipes should be reformulated so that basic resources are needed for advanced MW recipes, creating a network of dependence between professions and between their own recipes. A very random example just for a better understanding. Imagine that in alchemy, to make 1 Antler Glue, it would take 5 Bone Glue in addition to the current resources, and to make 1 Fish Glue it would take 5 Antler Glue in addition to the current resources, and you would follow that line until you reach the Baselisk Glue that would be an item required for MW 1 recipes for example, the quantities here are just illustrative, but do you notice how, despite seeming stuck, this makes each new recipe automatically strengthen the relevance of the basic items? Many can say, wow what a hassle, will I need to make 10 crafts just to make a base resource for an advanced recipe? I say no, because it is at these times that we have the AH, a scalable system like this would bring work for several players of various levels of profession to be able to make the market rotate.
3rd - Remove the profession from Stronghold. having the professions linked to a guild, and still requiring to be Guild Hall 12 is simply meaningless. link recipe levels to in-game maps. This is something I've seen that they're trying to improve, putting the recipes for chult and we'll receive the Sharandar recipes, and that's great, we need to admit the good stuff as well, however it still needs a rank 12 guild to start this system, put it this for other maps, could be leveling woods, look at this idea. With all the changes I suggested above implemented, we would still have 5 MW levels right? so why don't we actually split these 5 levels into 5 sets, removing those MW II-III revenue sets. and adding each set of recipes to some leveling map and bringing new Explorer's Case to those maps, but not the Explorer's Case we know, I suggest something like a collection instruction, when activating a quest that asks us to fight local mobes to drop the items, after we drop the total of the quest, it concludes and we use another instuon, it would be at least more dynamic, however it can be done in different ways too, I just think the current Explorer's Case model is very stuck, another thing that could be Implemented on all maps to which there is connection to professions is to add a reasonable chance to acquire items for the corresponding recipes within the nodes that are scattered across the map.
Here's an example of map layout:
Masterwork I - Neverdeath Graveyard
Put an NPC with the sale of the MW1 cookbook and some basic features maybe for sale, and the new Explorer's Case from Neverdeath Graveyard, Vellosk and Ebon Downs. (I could put these items up for sale with seals and guild mark, that way I would have two farm sources for these things and it wouldn't be mandatory to have a guild).
Masterwork II - Icepire Peak
It did the same, putting resources from the base profession to sell, only now at a higher level, and the new Explorer's Case by Icepire Peak, The Chasm and The Whispering Caverns
Masterwork III - Undermountain
NPC with slightly better features for sale and new Explorer's Case from Undermontain maps, (interestingly I've seen them in the preview)
Masterwork IV - Evil Elemental
You already understood what would be done here.
Masterwork V - Chult
Masterwork VI - Sharandar
I want to make it clear that the NPC for selling resources and Explorer's Case using seals and GM, may not be something infinite and may suddenly have a daily or weekly purchase limit, this would make the resources less abundant in the market, and make the most common node farm. This part here are just ideas of how it could be done, the important thing is to understand that a certain control is needed so that everything is balanced, and maybe the new Explorer's Case can also be traded, so that players who do not focus on craft can enjoy somehow with the system, and giving more farm windows to players who will focus more on crafting, another idea that can be approached in this sense is not to put the new Explorer's Case to sell, but to be acquired via mission the same NPC that sells the basic resources, it could be a repeatable mission in por example, you take one mission and after an hour you can take more. Aiming at monetizing the game (something I would like to be more visually focused), companions with craft resource drop boosting skill similar to Ramoraz could be sold which drops additional relics to voniblood, a mount with similar effect can also be developed , and quest reset tokens to remove the Explorer's Case quest timeout if it's a low price can be exited. as I said, I don't really like this type of monetization, but I know it's necessary.
Profession x2 events would be much more fun because we could do it in groups since the goal is to kill enemies, and with the escalating system getting more and more impactful in the game, these farm areas in active scale areas, group farming can be something necessary if they place elite monsters to complete these quests. A small drop chance of these Explorer's Case could be added to elite mobes and heroic encounters that could be added one day on leveling maps, but I definitely think adding small areas of elite mobes to each map to farm Explorer's Case and also to do your own objective after opening the Explorer's Case would be very good not only for veterans but also for new members to know that there are danger areas on these maps.
to do a lot of good things we can guarantee, these 3 points I mentioned are super important for a good profession system to start to be elaborated, what I put in later are more loose ideas with things that could be implemented after these 3 points were solved .
When someone wants to be an engineer he doesn't ask the government to revoke all engineering degrees forcing all engineers to go back to college and start again just to make it easier for new students to enter the market, this is not a logical path, and for more than this is a game, concepts of specialization, profession and market are the same, this alone should be enough for them to see that the path is wrong.
Using the same analogy as engineers, what we need are more accessible universities and a cohesive, structured curriculum.
I am just genuinely surprised how people defend it every big change after every big change as something great and everybody else is just an HAMSTER who doesn't get the "bigger picture" or whatever.
To heavily invest yourself into MW (again) after all those overhauls is masochistic and yeah, don't do it
Feedback:
I always try to be optimistic about changes, whoever has seen my comments on past topics such as the M16 change, and the latest M20 knows that I am an advocate of beneficial changes, no matter if it will negatively affect me in the short term , I'm not like some who complain about Xuna's nerfe just because she bought one, I want things to work well, and in a balanced way, but as I just commented in the post above, this mundane is not going in the right direction in my view.
To go in the right direction in my vision of a professional systems enthusiast there are many basic things that could be done. For example:
1st - fix the biggest problem of the system that are the items of the current level 20 of profession, which broke the system in the M16 with the addition of the level 80 that brought basic recipes superior to the MW.
2nd - after adjusting the line of evolution of the profession and MW, some recipes should be reformulated so that basic resources are needed for advanced MW recipes, creating a network of dependence between professions and between their own recipes. A very random example just for a better understanding. Imagine that in alchemy, to make 1 Antler Glue, it would take 5 Bone Glue in addition to the current resources, and to make 1 Fish Glue it would take 5 Antler Glue in addition to the current resources, and you would follow that line until you reach the Baselisk Glue that would be an item required for MW 1 recipes for example, the quantities here are just illustrative, but do you notice how, despite seeming stuck, this makes each new recipe automatically strengthen the relevance of the basic items? Many can say, wow what a hassle, will I need to make 10 crafts just to make a base resource for an advanced recipe? I say no, because it is at these times that we have the AH, a scalable system like this would bring work for several players of various levels of profession to be able to make the market rotate.
3rd - Remove the profession from Stronghold. having the professions linked to a guild, and still requiring to be Guild Hall 12 is simply meaningless. link recipe levels to in-game maps. This is something I've seen that they're trying to improve, putting the recipes for chult and we'll receive the Sharandar recipes, and that's great, we need to admit the good stuff as well, however it still needs a rank 12 guild to start this system, put it this for other maps, could be leveling woods, look at this idea. With all the changes I suggested above implemented, we would still have 5 MW levels right? so why don't we actually split these 5 levels into 5 sets, removing those MW II-III revenue sets. and adding each set of recipes to some leveling map and bringing new Explorer's Case to those maps, but not the Explorer's Case we know, I suggest something like a collection instruction, when activating a quest that asks us to fight local mobes to drop the items, after we drop the total of the quest, it concludes and we use another instuon, it would be at least more dynamic, however it can be done in different ways too, I just think the current Explorer's Case model is very stuck, another thing that could be Implemented on all maps to which there is connection to professions is to add a reasonable chance to acquire items for the corresponding recipes within the nodes that are scattered across the map.
Here's an example of map layout:
Masterwork I - Neverdeath Graveyard
Put an NPC with the sale of the MW1 cookbook and some basic features maybe for sale, and the new Explorer's Case from Neverdeath Graveyard, Vellosk and Ebon Downs. (I could put these items up for sale with seals and guild mark, that way I would have two farm sources for these things and it wouldn't be mandatory to have a guild).
Masterwork II - Icepire Peak
It did the same, putting resources from the base profession to sell, only now at a higher level, and the new Explorer's Case by Icepire Peak, The Chasm and The Whispering Caverns
Masterwork III - Undermountain
NPC with slightly better features for sale and new Explorer's Case from Undermontain maps, (interestingly I've seen them in the preview)
Masterwork IV - Evil Elemental
You already understood what would be done here.
Masterwork V - Chult
Masterwork VI - Sharandar
I want to make it clear that the NPC for selling resources and Explorer's Case using seals and GM, may not be something infinite and may suddenly have a daily or weekly purchase limit, this would make the resources less abundant in the market, and make the most common node farm. This part here are just ideas of how it could be done, the important thing is to understand that a certain control is needed so that everything is balanced, and maybe the new Explorer's Case can also be traded, so that players who do not focus on craft can enjoy somehow with the system, and giving more farm windows to players who will focus more on crafting, another idea that can be approached in this sense is not to put the new Explorer's Case to sell, but to be acquired via mission the same NPC that sells the basic resources, it could be a repeatable mission in por example, you take one mission and after an hour you can take more. Aiming at monetizing the game (something I would like to be more visually focused), companions with craft resource drop boosting skill similar to Ramoraz could be sold which drops additional relics to voniblood, a mount with similar effect can also be developed , and quest reset tokens to remove the Explorer's Case quest timeout if it's a low price can be exited. as I said, I don't really like this type of monetization, but I know it's necessary.
Profession x2 events would be much more fun because we could do it in groups since the goal is to kill enemies, and with the escalating system getting more and more impactful in the game, these farm areas in active scale areas, group farming can be something necessary if they place elite monsters to complete these quests. A small drop chance of these Explorer's Case could be added to elite mobes and heroic encounters that could be added one day on leveling maps, but I definitely think adding small areas of elite mobes to each map to farm Explorer's Case and also to do your own objective after opening the Explorer's Case would be very good not only for veterans but also for new members to know that there are danger areas on these maps.
to do a lot of good things we can guarantee, these 3 points I mentioned are super important for a good profession system to start to be elaborated, what I put in later are more loose ideas with things that could be implemented after these 3 points were solved.
1 - The NPCs from the craft maps I suggested selling items with seals and GM may have part of their required value in AD, for example, to buy a Horn Glue, you need 10 seals + 100 AD, or 10 seals + 100 AD + 100GM whichever is best for the system. (only illustrative value)
2 - The quest reset tokens for Explorer's Case farm can be sold in AD at the NPC's own shop.
3 - some primary items for various recipes (item does not exist, needs to be created) Example: Let's put the hypothesis of creating 2 new items for the Alchemy profession, the elementary Essences and the Energy Conductor, this energy conductor would be like an orb that would be crafted in some profession perhaps in alchemy itself at low levels, and it would take some reagents and some AD to craft, 1k for example, this conductor would be energized with various elements in recipes of various levels of the base recipes, at this time we would need of the smallest elemental fragment that would be dropped in elite mobes and leveling-specific map nodes. Adding a higher drop rate to maps of the evil elemental would be interesting.
1 - 4 - Recipe: Power Conductor, (Some resources and an AD value)
5 - 8 - Recipe: Air Elemental Orb, (1 Energy Conductor + 10 small Air Fragment + Miscellaneous Resources + AD value)
9 - 12 - Recipe: Earth Elemental Orb, (1 Energy Conductor + 10 Small Air Fragment + Miscellaneous Resources + AD value)
13 - 16 - Recipe: Water Elemental Orb, (1 Energy Conductor + 10 Small Water Fragment + Miscellaneous Resources + AD value)
17 - 18 - Recipe: Fire Elemental Orb, (1 Energy Conductor + 10 Small Fire Fragment + Miscellaneous Resources + AD value)
19 - 20 - Recipe: Orb of the Four Elements, (10 Energy Conductor + 5 Air Elemental Orb + 5 Earth Elemental Orb + 5 Water Elemental Orb + 5 Fire Elemental Orb + 5 x more Miscellaneous Resources + 5x em value AD)
So finally We would have the general reagent for crafting higher level base rows, for early MW levels all with small AD rates, and this whole process can be repeated at MW levels with the addition of the Supreme Four Element Orb, which would use all the items mentioned above plus new items from the Explores Case, all subtitled Supreme.
MW I - Revenue: Supreme Energy Conductor, (10 Orb of the Four Elements + 40 Energy Conductor + Miscellaneous Resources + AD value)
MW II - Recipe: Supreme Elemental Orb of Air, (1 Supreme Energy Conductor + 10 Elemental Orb of Air + Miscellaneous Resources + AD value)
MW III - Recipe: Supreme Earth Elemental Orb, (1 Supreme Energy Conductor + 10 Earth Elemental Orb + Miscellaneous Resources + AD value)
MW IV - Recipe: Supreme Water Elemental Orb, (1 Supreme Energy Conductor + 10 Water Elemental Orb + Miscellaneous Resources + AD value)
MW V - Recipe: Ultimate Fire Elemental Orb, (1 Ultimate Energy Conductor + 10 Fire Elemental Orb + Miscellaneous Resources + AD value)
MW VI - Recipe: Four Elements Orb, (10 Ultimate Energy Conductor + 5 Ultimate Air Elemental Orb + 5 Ultimate Earth Elemental Orb + 5 Ultimate Water Elemental Orb + 5 Ultimate Fire Elemental Orb + 10 x more Miscellaneous Resources + 10 x value in AD)
This way a good amount of AD would be removed from the game in several layers to create very important and valuable items and less for simple items, as some recipes may only take one fire elemental orb and not necessarily the four element orb. .
The point here is that in addition to providing a significant removal of AD from the game, this makes the diverse features I mentioned, which may also be from other professions, become much more relevant to the market.
You may have noticed that I didn't mention at any point in the post about the Adventures panel that are currently in the game to collect resources, as it is, I think they should be removed for a better long term profession structure, to make some resources scarce can be very beneficial to the market. But take it easy, we can still use that panel in another way. I have two suggestions for our whorkshop adventures:
1 - Adventures as a bonus: adventurers would be chosen only by their bonus, and in the 3 slots on our panel we could choose which bonuses we will have. The commission multiplier could make the price of craft stores on maps cheaper, the speed multiplier could reduce the waiting time of quests where we get the Explorer's Case things like that. of course this would need tweaking, perhaps a set of 3 adventurers cannot be modified within 24 hours or a week unless an AD fee is paid, and its effects could be inactive if a gold fee not held every 24 hours. something along those lines.
2 - the other suggestion is to have the Adventurers as temporary companions for collection, in some menu we would summon them to be by our side, and that would make him drop resources previously defined in the workshop, as if we were making an escort for them. So if I define that an adventure will collect Basilisk Hide in the workshop panel, when I summon it and start killing mobes it would collect these resources in exchange for a gold cost, I don't know if this could be done with the 3 slots, we would have 3 NPC following us, this could get confusing, but it's still an idea.
Maybe a third option joining a little of the two ideas works, where one slot would be for the adventurer who can be summoned, and the other 2 for bonuses only.
anyway they are just ideas to keep the adventurers, the most practical and fully functioning way would be to remove them.
> NONONO don't remove them they're about the prettiest crafted items in the game! They're appearance library stuff!
Then at that point they should follow my secondary advice and lower their levels. I do like the look of the Drakeskin stuff myself but having two level 18 requirement tiers when the older one isn't tied to MasterCrafting anymore doesn't make sense. So if they want to keep them they should do the drop Blackiron to 13 and Adamantine to 16
Thank you for your reports and thoughts on the Masterwork changes thus far.
As an announcement: Sharandar Masterwork should now be available on Preview for further testing. Feel free to try it out, and please let us know what you think.
Items that utilize materials that you can no longer attain are bugs!
*Reminder: anything on Preview is subject to change.
---
Some of the following updates have not yet made it to Preview, but we’ve also made further adjustments based on your feedback.
Besides addressing obvious bugs like 9750 focus requirement on the Chultan Wootz Ingot, having recipes that require ingredients that no longer can be acquired, and infinite Chultan Masterwork – Armorsmith book purchases:
Two titles are being added and will be automatically granted to your character if they meet the requirements when logging in, post patch.
- The Artisan’s Apprentice – Character has completed at least one Masterwork V quest.
- The Artisan’s Successor – Character has completed all Masterwork V quests.
We’ve also made adjustments to the costs of the Chultan Masterwork and Masterworker’s Tools and also adjusted Temporary Structure costs to better match the recipes that they come from.For folks wondering about deprecated Explorer’s Charts: An exchange will be available at The Traveling Merchant for players to exchange materials earned from deprecated Explorer’s Charts.
For folks wondering about Stronghold Furniture: Stronghold Furniture will remain in the old Masterwork II and III for the time being, but this may not always be the case.
So to get all the books and start testing I would have to copy my character and transfer whatever AD that character has many , many times over ( as currently my account on live isn't so AD rich ) .
It would just be easier if the books were free or at least a nominal fee of 1 AD .
After all we are testing it out for you for bugs etc
For example a legendary crafter or something with a little more % than the other crafters. Is like a trophy for the hard investment in the past, but nothing that give them a huge advantage
Caturday Survivor
Elemental Evil Survivor
Undermontain Survivor
Mod20 Combat rework Survivor
Mod22 Refinement rework Survivor
But the charts themselves are useless? I suggested trading the charts back for the Guild Marks (or even a reduced amount if you are worried that they bought them during a SH event). I don't understand the problem with doing that. Guild Marks are bound to character and don't really affect the economy, so why punish people by obsoleting something they have earned?
Co-Guild Leader
Ghost Templars L20
Alliance: Tyrs Paladium
Main: Cleric (Heals|DPS)
Alt: Warlock
Bugs:
- The armorsmithing mafia strikes again! Just like in the stronghold I can buy the armorsmithing recipe multiple times in Sharandar to keep the new scamming tradition alive.
- Bronzepin has the option to turn in commisioned scentblockers for 980 credits but they are not in the craft list.
- Related to the previous bug. While searching for "scent" to find the scentblockers since I could not find them manually I found several "hidden" recipes which don't appear in the list but are extremely broken. Here is a picture to illustrate it:
The Luminescent Fortification potions crafts Faded Elemental Earth (did not actually craft to check the output) and claim to allow me to use 3 tools and 2 supplements but it does not work. Also I crafted the hidden legendary scentblocker and it's not related to the commissioned one since I could not turn it in. Unsure if there are more hidden recipes only findable via specific search queries since it's tedious to check.
- I hesitate to put this on the bug section but most of the recipes are basically copy/pasted from chult MW but mapping old materials to new ones which is fine for the most part. I was going to comment about this on cyan feedback but some recipes like Woven Whisker and Crystalline Ornament have requirement so high that I think they qualify as a bug. Woven whisker is basically recycling the Jute Macrame recipe while lowering the output from 3 to 2 and going from needing 15 samarachan jutes (chart material) to using 15 Displacer Beast Whiskers (rare drop from 1st boss of VoS). Displacer Beast Whiskers and Shard of Dawn light are similar to Manticore pelt/hide in which both drop from the 1st boss of their respective dungeon with relatively low drop rate but you never needed 15 of the manticore material for a single item craft which then gets used a lot. Crystalline Ornament uses 3 Woven whiskers and needs 12 Shard of Dawn light requiring close to 40 mats from the 1st boss alone. I think some of the items that utilize material from the VoS bosses should be reconsidered or their drop rate should be significantly buffed.
- Semi related to the previous bug entry. The tailoring recipes just like the Tenterground building seems to have issues. Fey fibers seems to be just Chultan Silk Threads with Cocoon->Hair and Water->Tears the difference is that you received 4 Chultan Silk Thread but now only 1 Fey Fiber. I believe that Fey Fibers recipe should have been giving 4 of them to then feed them to the Chultan Silk equivalent (Woven Fey Leaves) which requires 4 Fey fibers. Then Fey'd Fabrics seems to have been added by mistake since it's a duplicate of Fey Fibers but never used at all from what I could see so this one should probably be removed. Already mentioned but Whiskers requirement should be toned down.
- Chultan Masterwork Alchemy with the activation of Sharandar recipes gained the rank 5 & 11 recipes that use materials from the now gone like the dodo charts of undermountain. These should probably be removed since they are uncraftable and were added to complete the alchemy quest of Sharandar that also went away like the dodos. The awareness potion is the only potion giving me 210 free focus for some reason so that feature should be kept
- Sharandar Masterwork Alchemy has 6 distilled items that use the Essences of X from MW2 but these are deprecated items.
There are a lot of recipes to digest but just did a relatively quick sanity check on the recipes and ended up with 2 main concerns. The 1st one is that as usual some of the materials from charts are way overrepresented while some are barely used at all this include the new Salt-Marsh Crystal item from the SH Vendor which don't get used at all outside of commissioned items. I don't count commissioned items when looking for how much items are used since in all honesty you will rarely craft that and there is no real incentive atm to do the credit quest outside of the 1st time if you want the unbound barkshield. My 2nd concern is that rare boss drop items which are historically used in low quantities because of their inherent rarity are used in high quantities in this iteration of MW. For example in MW3 wizard and cleric weapons got toned down from using at most 3 fartouched residuum to using only 1 and now in Sharandar we are using a lot more boss material on intermediary resources which are high on the crafting chain and that will then get used again while going down to the final end product. This makes the use of these boss items grow very fast.
As for the materials:
Dryad Hair => Fey Fiber and Lacquered Leaves => Well represented
Hardened Blight Bark => 3 end products in alchemy, 1 tool in tailoring => Weak representation
Feywod Log => Feywood Lumber => Well represented
Weeping Willow's Tears => Appears everywhere tbh => Very Well represented
Shade Leaves => 6 distilled, 2 tool, 1 weapn => Weak representation
Shadowdemon's Eyes => Lacquered Aged Leather => Well represented
Troll's Earwax Resin => 3 tool, 1 supplement => Weak representation
Silvertongue Moss => Beads of Light and Silver Vines => Well represented
Soulfire flies => 9 tool, 4 resources but only 1 unit used in each => Semi weak representation
Salt-Marsh Crystal => Not used outside of commissions => Very Weak representation
To mitigate this I would
- In Ear 'n Tears swap Weeping Willow's Tears to Troll's Earwax Resin. Now we have ears and the tears is terebinth.
- In Salty Tears Varnish swap Weeping Willow's Tears to Salt-Marsh Crystal. Now we have tears and salt.
- In Feywood Lumber swap Soulfire flies for Hardened Blight Bark. Make the wood even harder than a dwarfs head.
- In Frozen Dawn's Dew lower the shard from 4 to 1 and then add 4-8 shade leaves. Now we have life, light, and frost.
- In Woven Whiskers lower the whiskers from 15 to 1 and then add 8-12 soulfire flies.
Hardened Blight Bark is still on the weak side and could be added in other places.
For Boss Materials I would at the very least look at
- Frozen Dawn's Dew => 5 boss items
- Silver vines => 1 boss items but gets used by Beads of light double dipping on all the ingredients.
- Beads of Light => See Silver Vines.
- Crystalline Ornament => Uses Beads of Light, 3 Woven Whiskers, 12 Shard of Dawn light. Massive use of boss items.
- Thorned Ornament => Uses Beads of Light, 3 Woven Whiskers, and 6 mobs drops
- Woven Whiskers => 15 boss drops
- As per tradition outside of the weapons and maybe 1-2 rings the MW gear seems lacking.
- One last suggestions is that some resources like let say Silver Vines which basically acts like the Scintillant glass on the old Brilliant beads should be upgraded to produce 5 like Scintillant glass instead of leaving it at 3-4 like the old obsidian shard/soulfired obsidian that they were based of. Also as mentioned before Fey Fibers back to 4 and Woven Whiskers from 2 to 3. Basically the numbers required by items to craft and the number produced should probably be tweaked a bit to adjust to the new MW.
I'm unsure if the goal is to make it as difficult as before or even more difficult so all my suggestions were to more/less keep the same status quo difficulty wise. There is a lot to digest so probably there are more bugs or good suggestions to find.
While confirming that charcoal is indeed no longer craftable found another legendary item that is supposed to be removed. So probably all 7 removed legendary items can be found and maybe other removed recipes.
Recipes using deprecated items:
- Commissioned Blightblockers => Uses charcoal
- Commissioned Repellent => Uses charcoal
- All 6 distilled items => Uses Essences of X
- Hermit's Incense => Uses charcoal
- Commissioned Blight Slicers => Uses laminated Adamant blade (old MW)
- Commissioned Earth Mulchers => Uses laminated Steel blade (old MW)