General opinions on crafting?

darwinsdog

Hi there,

I'm just curious what everyone thinks about the crafting system. I've been leveling a hunter/ranger as my main, and I figured that I would do leatherworking to get some cool armor. As I went on, I found that by the time I could use the gear I'd made I already had better gear that I'd found. On top of that I don't see anything that is generally useful in there (like the armor kits in WoW). Since then I've switched my focus to leadership since money, XP, and AD are always useful.

Is it worth it to level any professions (besides leadership) to max? Are the high level items worth it?

beckylunatic

You highest level armor-crafting allows you to reinforce your T2 set bracers for some modest stat boosts. These are BoP, thus must be crafted by you if you want them.

Your highest level weapon-crafting allows you to make T2.5 weapons, which may be BiS depending on class. These are BoP, thus must be made by you.

Levelling at least three professions allows unlocking more slots, even if you only use them for Leadership.

Certain crafted items can be sold for profit. Commonly people will say this can only be done with enormous investment in tools, but you can discover niches of items demanding fewer resources that will sell for more modest amounts.

Crafting experience is gained very slowly compared to character xp if you're actively playing, so as far as personal use goes, it's unusual to get useful items for your first character made by your first character. It can be nice for gearing alts if they use the same crafts.

jorifice1

Depends.
There are a few items at LvL 20 that may interest you.
You can produce some nifty weapons from special components that you find in Dungeons. I've never bothered, but they are supposedly among the best in the game. Unfortunately, they are BoP. You can also make Slotted Purple Pants and Shirts under the Armour skill. Also note, Leadership is VERY slow to level and difficult to open up slots. Every other Profession will Level faster and open up those slots MUCH more easily. You also get that last slot open when you get your third Profession to LvL 20. So Leadership would make a terrific third, or even fourth, Profession for you Character, after his Weapon, Armour, and Alchemy (which can supply you with some nice A.D. just with the stuff you find while leveling).

radiick507

I have all Crafting Departments at Max Level on my main toon and about 5 Crafting Slots on my second toon, the highest is Level 14 in Leadership. As previously posted it has became very handy equipping my second toon. On my main, I usually always have 6 slots doing Leadership jobs and the other 4 simply gathering components or making stuff to sell or again equipping my other character.

The only problem is gaining AD is that is is in rough state, there are times I can't refine them for use until the next day and so on. Think it is Maxed at 24000 per day.

I also use my second character to gain Leadership and in some times simply gather the resources I need via any of the other crafting specialties.

Some players don't bother at all while others like me find it relaxing and non-bothersome. It's up to you to use them to whatever means you deem necessary.

cheesegromit

I think it's worth leveling two other professions to 20 if only to unlock the extra slot for use with leadership. Otherwise crafting is a disappointment in this game. The mechanics are decent enough but as noted crafting progresion is not well balanced compared to character progression.

tinukeda

$0.02: Most of the crafting system is pretty much not worth the time/effort/cost, other than for the super high end stuff (but how many times is anyone going to use those on a given character anyway?). I wouldn't even bother crafting gear for alts; the greens/blues you find while leveling are more than adequate, not to mention they only last a few levels anyway.

The best side of the system (for me so far) has been the income generation crafts: Leadership and pants/shirts. The initial investment was indeed fairly large but it's on pace to pay itself off a lot faster than I'd thought it would (probably ~30% recouped in the last month or so).

malevolent215

I'll pretty much give a ditto to Tinukeda. In my experience high level crafting just isn't worth it unless you have ridiculous time invested into the game and have collected a lot of Epic crafting materials.

Leadership has always been worth it. Besides that, I feel the midlevel crafting is where it is most valuable since you are still using mostly green and blue materials that you will come across on a semi-regular basis. Pretty much tl/dr: 10 Mid-level blues will net around the same sell price as 1 Epic... but the blues are cheaper to make for most people.

ontrix1

Leadership and Alchemy are nice to level. Once you get to level 20 on Alchemy, keep on crafting and you learn new potions that can add boosts to stats better than the potions you find around the world.

As for Leadership, as someone mentioned, AD is always nice though the numbers you get are low until you hit level 20 and then you can get 1600AD for some quests.

charononus

Leadership is best if you have an alt army. You level leadership up and can hit close to or cap the refinement bonus each day and get other things that can be sold. For a main if you are going to play it regularly I'd level up weaponsmithing then that classes armorsmithing, followed by leadership. Like most things in this game it's priorities and goals for what you do with them. For me 6 alts blasting away at leadership is a nice ad boost for logging onto the gateway a couple times a day.

eldarth

Despise it. It's not "crafting" -- it's indentured servitude. There is no craft involved, just ordering slaves to toil for their lord. But then I've always voted for "interactive crafting" of actual useful items.