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Sharing my masterwork crafting experience :P
hugienwn
Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 54 Arc User
Hey all,
I had a hard time finding info on masterwork crafting when my guild, Civil Anarchy, unlocked them, so I thought I would share some information about how it worked out for me in case it proves helpful to anyone else in deciding whether or not to bother pursuing these quests. I don't have exact numbers in terms of how much AD was spent, but I do have ballparks, so I'll share those approximations as well to give a sense of the investment likely required. I should also disclaim that my approach here was very much "p2w" -- I didn't have the patience to craft my way through the 20% success rates until the last task (where you have to craft a t3 success -- can't buy the last item on AH). I'll try to be transparent about how much things cost, as I hope that that info is helpful as a way to at least establish an "upper limit' of sorts for how much it costs to "p2w" a masterwork profession by buying as much as possible & crafting as little as possible. :P
Once you pick which masterwork profession you wish to pursue, the ensuing questline has two parts: the initial set of quests is in pursuit of a first batch of masterwork recipes, and the following set of quests requires you to craft items from the initial set's masterwork recipes to eventually unlock a second batch of masterwork recipes. The items we talk about as masterwork items -- Rosegold rings, Electrum necklaces, etc. -- are craftable via the second batch of recipes, which is effectively the reward for that profession's questline.
- collecting a large number of ordinary reagents
- crafting 3 different "special" items (meaning they're only craftable during certain time periods, like any other special professions task)
More details on the tasks themselves here: http://neverwinter.gamepedia.com/Masterwork_Professions#Jewelcrafting
This first batch rewards a white quality masterwork tool to use in crafting the second batch of quests, as well as the recipes for completing those quests. All of the items needed for the first batch's tasks can be purchased off the AH for fairly cheap if you don't want to wait for the special crafting tasks / if you don't want to hunt down 500 Perfect Gems.
Since I'm not a professions person, I bought all the items for this first batch, probably for about ~100k AD in total. Onward!
...to be continued...
I had a hard time finding info on masterwork crafting when my guild, Civil Anarchy, unlocked them, so I thought I would share some information about how it worked out for me in case it proves helpful to anyone else in deciding whether or not to bother pursuing these quests. I don't have exact numbers in terms of how much AD was spent, but I do have ballparks, so I'll share those approximations as well to give a sense of the investment likely required. I should also disclaim that my approach here was very much "p2w" -- I didn't have the patience to craft my way through the 20% success rates until the last task (where you have to craft a t3 success -- can't buy the last item on AH). I'll try to be transparent about how much things cost, as I hope that that info is helpful as a way to at least establish an "upper limit' of sorts for how much it costs to "p2w" a masterwork profession by buying as much as possible & crafting as little as possible. :P
How It Starts
Once your guild's stronghold and marketplace reach the requisite ranks (I believe it's GH12, Market6), a new NPC -- the Artisan -- shows up. A new quest also becomes available from the Master of Coin, who is trying to convince the Artisan (whom she knows/suspects to be a masterful crafter) to share his secrets with the guild. Once you run a few trivial back-n-forth errands, you'll be prompted with the opportunity to help the Artisan out -- e.g. pursue a masterwork profession. You may only have one masterwork profession questline active at a time, so choose wisely which one your rank25 professions is worth choosing! Note too that there's nothing stopping you from unlocking the first set of masterwork recipes for each profession without finishing any single masterwork questline; you won't be able to make the "good stuff", but you'll be able to harvest ingredients from nodes, use them to make reagents, and sell them to people who are trying to finish their masterwork questlines.Once you pick which masterwork profession you wish to pursue, the ensuing questline has two parts: the initial set of quests is in pursuit of a first batch of masterwork recipes, and the following set of quests requires you to craft items from the initial set's masterwork recipes to eventually unlock a second batch of masterwork recipes. The items we talk about as masterwork items -- Rosegold rings, Electrum necklaces, etc. -- are craftable via the second batch of recipes, which is effectively the reward for that profession's questline.
1st Set of Tasks
The first batch of quests for Jewelcrafting require:- collecting a large number of ordinary reagents
- crafting 3 different "special" items (meaning they're only craftable during certain time periods, like any other special professions task)
More details on the tasks themselves here: http://neverwinter.gamepedia.com/Masterwork_Professions#Jewelcrafting
This first batch rewards a white quality masterwork tool to use in crafting the second batch of quests, as well as the recipes for completing those quests. All of the items needed for the first batch's tasks can be purchased off the AH for fairly cheap if you don't want to wait for the special crafting tasks / if you don't want to hunt down 500 Perfect Gems.
Since I'm not a professions person, I bought all the items for this first batch, probably for about ~100k AD in total. Onward!...to be continued...
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2nd Set of Tasks
The second batch is where things get nasty. These are masterwork crafting tasks, and your masterwork tool is only of white quality, so even if you have all your other assets at purple for these tasks (which you had better), you will only have a 20% success rate in crafting towards a rank 3 result (and you need a rank 3 result in order to obtain the quest requirements at each step). Your success rate can be higher if you have a Forgehammer of Gond artifact, but those are expensive and I didn't have one.It's now worth noting that unless you're going to buy absolutely everything off the AH and do no crafting whatsoever ($$$), you will likely want to spend some guild marks to buy Explorer Charts from the general store vendor in your SH. In the "scrolls" tab, you will find a few different Explorer Charts, each of which lets you farm 5 locations in a given map to collect a random masterwork ingredient. You can and should buy many scrolls for a given map at the same time if you want to farm, for instance, lots of Gold Ore in the Whispering Caverns. Explorer Charts cost 3000 guild marks each.
For the Whispering Caverns farming, I find that Gold Ore (which, luckily, is what's needed for Jewelcrafting tasks) drops most frequently by far, followed by Concentrated Residuum and Slaked Lime. From a chart, I tend to get 3-4 gold ores, which is nice. If you don't have the marks to be able to buy charts & farm, you can buy the farmable items directly off AH: Gold Ore is 10k a piece.
The second batch of quests for Jewelcrafting are:
- creating 12 Gold Nuggets; each one requires 2 pieces of Gold Ore + 1 rock salt (cheap from professions vendor) to attempt. Returns 1 Gold Ore + rock salt on tier 2 result.
- creating 6 Gold Ingot; each one requires 3 Gold Nuggets + 1 Concentrated Aqua Regia to attempt. Concentrated Aqua Regia was something I had to purchase off the AH at about ~150k AD a pop, which sucks. Returns 1 Gold Nugget on tier 2 result.
- creating 1 Newly "Minted" Gold Coin; each one requires 1 Gold Ingot + Concentrated Aqua Regia to attempt. Returns 1 Gold Nugget (!!!) on tier 2 result.
- finally, the one that will make you want to kill all the things: creating 1 Set of Newly "Minted" Coins, a bind-on-pickup legendary result required to finish the questline and unlock all your fancy rosegold rings and electrum necklaces. This sucker requires 1 gold / 1 silver / 1 copper newly "minted" coin per attempt, and returns 1 gold / 1 silver / 1 copper ingot on tier 2 result.
More info here: http://neverwinter.gamepedia.com/Masterwork_Professions#Jewelcrafting
For the first task, you can buy a Gold Nugget for about 45k off the AH (current price at time of post). For the second, a Gold Ingot runs about 333k. For the third, a Newly "Minted" Gold Coin runs about 600k. For the final, the remaining coins are ~200k for Silver and ~150k for Copper, though be warned that there aren't a lot of people making/selling Newly "Minted" Silver/Copper coins.
Getting through 2nd set:
I was fortunate enough to have a Pure Feytouched sitting unused when our guild unlocked Masterwork Profs, so I decided to sell it and use the ensuing few million AD as my Masterwork Profs investment. This saved me from the pain of the first few tasks which, at 20% success, suck pretty bad. That said, I did take the time to dump all my toons' marks into Explorer Charts (they're account-bound!) and farm as much Gold Ore as I could on my crafting toon, so I was able to generate a few Gold Nuggets from Gold Ore that way. But I bought probably ~10 of them. (I'm impatient.) I seem to remember Gold Ore and Gold Nuggets being cheaper when I did these -- like, half the price listed above -- so I'd guesstimate those last ~10 Gold Nuggets were about 200-300k AD.Gold Ingots suck to craft if you don't also have access to masterwork alchemy (via an alt or guildmate), because the need for Concentrated Aqua Regia w/o any means to recoup it on a failure means a lot of AD down the drain per attempt (since each CAR costs ~150k). So, I decided to bite the bullet and buy the 6 Gold Ingots outright from the AH. This is where a significant chunk of my remaining proceeds from the Pure Fey were directed... since each Gold Ingot runs about ~333k. just in time for the coin tasks!
A single Newly "Minted" Gold coin felt cheap compared to the 6 Gold Ingots from the previous tasks! Just buy it. Don't put yourself through the torture of making Ingots after Ingots, then failing at the coin and NOT getting an Ingot back as a tier 2 result.
The set of Newly "Minted" Coins is obviously the biggest and baddest boss of all. Buying 1 of each coin to attempt the task puts you back ~900k AD (it was closer to ~800k when I was doing it). The good news is that a tier 2 result is FINALLY a little less sucky; you get 1 of each Ingot, which I would recommend SAVING (unless you need to sell them to buy new coins for future attempts).
In total, it took me 6 attempts to successfully craft the Set of Newly "Minted" coins. Most of that came from $ -> Z -> AD to buy coins.
Total AD spent, approximately:
~100k for the materials/items need in 1st batch of quests
~250k for 10 of the 12 Gold Nuggets
~ 2m for 6 Gold Ingots
~ 600k for 1 Newly "Minted" Gold Coin
~ 800k x 6 attempts at Set of Newly "Minted" Coins = ~4.8m
======
~7.6m AD
What you get afterwards
The good news is that once you FINALLY see that legendary result show up, things get much, much more reasonable. It's a big investment, but I've found that it can quickly start to pay itself back.For starters, you get that 2nd set of masterwork recipes (for the "good stuff"), and a shiny new epic (+40% quality) masterwork tool with which to attempt them. This means that your success rate for a tier 3 result is now suddenly 60% instead of 20% (THANK RNGESUS). Suddenly, making Gold Nuggets out of Gold Ore, and Gold Ingots out of Gold Nuggets, is MUCH less painful. And, you can use any Ingots you saved from earlier to make stuff that sells for much more than the ingredients' combined costs.
For example, Rosegold Duelist Ring (power/deflect/tenacity + 2 slots) is popular among BiS PVP'ers -- you can sell one for ~900k - 1m AD. Rosegold Assault Ring (crit / arpen + 2 slots) is going to become more popular as more guilds unlock the Power Boon; toons switching Offense boons from Arpen to Power will find themselves potentially lacking in Arpen. Assault rings sell for ~1.2m AD. The ingredients for one of these ring are: 2 Gold Ingots, 1 Copper Ingot (very cheap, like, 5k), and 1 Adamant Rivets (~60k). That means that the ingredients cost about ~720k, and that you can sell them at a profit of ~100-300k (taking out the ~100k AH fee). That's not a bad profit, IMO -- and it feels less expensive than it really is if you have Gold Ingots left over from your failed Set of Minted Coins attempts, like I did. :P
Closing Thoughts
1) I'm glad I stuck through it, but my wallet hurts. It's cool to be able to craft things that (some) people actually want!2) If I had had a Forgehammer of Gond, I'm actually not convinced that my wallet would hurt THAT much less, since I bought most of the ingredients instead of slogging through the low success rates; I think that it would help a lot more NOW in crafting the "good" stuff at 75% success rate instead of 60% success rate (assuming Mythic arti/tool); 75% vs. 60% feels a lot better compared to 35% vs. 20%, for some reason...
3) Buy Gold Ingots, even after you get the epic masterwork tools. F*** concentrated aqua regia.
Civil Anarchy | Nyv's Workshop for MW Professions | Better raid coordination with NWRaid.com
Still not sure if I'll do it, but I have a better feel for the time and cost involved.
I gave up in the early phase, and probably won't try taking it up again. Some of my guild farm simpler resources to sell for profit, but I don't know of anyone going "all the way".
Do you think that ultimately this endeavor makes sense? Looks like the prize at the end isn't truly worth the journey.
It's massive grind, constant failures, constant attention, or huge money - but are the items truly worth it? Can't you get similar quality items much, much more easily and at less expense?
Seems like these are slowly progressing early days, and the prize items are very-overvalued with "rare label" attraction and mystique, or collector value, so some people are spending a lot of money on the way.
Is this all a bit like the old dot com share market bubble, where ultimately none of it will make any sense, or is there something else I'm missing?
@lukejones77 : Honestly, I don't think it currently makes sense for the vast majority of players. The masterwork results just aren't powerful enough to demand the investment. I enjoy being able to make things that have that "mystique" to them, but unless the masterwork items/armor get a signficant stat/set buff, I don't think they will get much love from the playerbase. I may use my Rosegold Assault ring when our guild unlocks the Power boon, but outside of that, I'll just be occasionally making & selling them when I have AD lying around to afford the requisite materials for an attempt -- not seriously pursuing it. The demand just isn't there to be cranking them out and expecting them to be bought quickly, as the stats just aren't better enough.
Civil Anarchy | Nyv's Workshop for MW Professions | Better raid coordination with NWRaid.com
For example,I didnt know that I can make AD by simply donating purple profession workers to coffer and get resource maps with extra guildmarks until some other player post info about it.
Unfortunately, there are so many little things that can help new or clueless players advance but noone is willing to share those
If you do not want to buy the needed ingredients, my tips to you is just to do the first part of a profession, cancel the 2nd part and pick up the first part of another profession. By doing that you can make most of the needed parts yourself at a 20% chance (35% with forgehammer), plus you get to see what you can make in all professions (except the jobs you get when you master one).
Ask if any of your friends can help you make the material needed if you give them ingredients. It will be cheaper than buying.
zhentarim-warlock-companion
Pure -> Transcendent Plague Fire weapon enchantment giving 80damge/20 seconds for 500k+ AD is a joke.
plague-fire-weapon-enchant-r11-vs-r12
Assuming, of course, that Cryptic hasn't completely altered / nerfed / rendered moot the MW equipment by the time my guild reaches level 12 (I am SUCH a pessimist at this point).