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Neverwinter Crafting: What's the point?
kingslayer74
Member, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Hero Users Posts: 75
I've been playing this game for a while now and I've reached the conclusion that as a PvE player, the crafting is pretty lame and pointless.
1) Crafting is way too slow...
It is so slow to level up that by the time you have gotten to where you can use that level 15 uncommon weapon/armor/implement that you're now level 30.
2) You get mob drops that are better than what you can craft...
Most of the items you can make have stats that are inferior to what you get from mobs. I could understand final boss fights dropping really nice gear while you're leveling towards 60, but mobs dropping better than what you can craft? Seems backwards.
3) Once you craft something it's worthless...
Sure, you can craft your heart away at making armor, weapons, implements but for what? By the time you've made them your toon has way out leveled them. So you think you'll sell them on the AH. For pennies? You spend all that time crafting your way to make a level 30 uncommon or rare weapon/armor/implement and yay you can sell it for near nothing in Astral Diamonds on the AH. Only Epic items sell for any profit on the AH.
So, to recap crafting in Neverwinter:
1) Your toon out levels the items you can craft way too quickly, thus crafting is way too slow.
2) What you finally can craft is garbage compared to what random mobs drop.
3) All that blood, sweat, and time poured into crafting an item will net you nothing: you can't use it and you can't sell it for profit.
So, tell me...why is crafting in this game again? Seems like it was a waste of developer resources.
1) Crafting is way too slow...
It is so slow to level up that by the time you have gotten to where you can use that level 15 uncommon weapon/armor/implement that you're now level 30.
2) You get mob drops that are better than what you can craft...
Most of the items you can make have stats that are inferior to what you get from mobs. I could understand final boss fights dropping really nice gear while you're leveling towards 60, but mobs dropping better than what you can craft? Seems backwards.
3) Once you craft something it's worthless...
Sure, you can craft your heart away at making armor, weapons, implements but for what? By the time you've made them your toon has way out leveled them. So you think you'll sell them on the AH. For pennies? You spend all that time crafting your way to make a level 30 uncommon or rare weapon/armor/implement and yay you can sell it for near nothing in Astral Diamonds on the AH. Only Epic items sell for any profit on the AH.
So, to recap crafting in Neverwinter:
1) Your toon out levels the items you can craft way too quickly, thus crafting is way too slow.
2) What you finally can craft is garbage compared to what random mobs drop.
3) All that blood, sweat, and time poured into crafting an item will net you nothing: you can't use it and you can't sell it for profit.
So, tell me...why is crafting in this game again? Seems like it was a waste of developer resources.
Post edited by kingslayer74 on
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I've just opted to buy them from someone that has gone to the trouble of leveling and and buying it for my alts.
Weaponsmithing is useful because you can craft epic grade weapons for yourself. Since they're BoP it makes it necessary.
Same reason it's in STO. Players wanted it.
Nebula coffee is the best coffee
Everything else is just **** useless besides maybe leadership which is going to be nerfed soon, I am just **** sure. :P
WTB Class Reroll please
This epic fail is NOT "crafting."
I think players wanted actual crafting NOT a stupid fiefdom over indentured servants. If I recall, during alpha and beta testing, the cries were for about 50% wanted WoW style crafting, and about 50% wanted interactive crafting ala EQII and Vanguard. I don't remember a single player expressing a desire for serfdom.
But, since this travesty existed and was already in STO, Cryptic simply changed graphics/labels/descriptions, and BINGO *cough* "crafting" *cough*. [I think I just threw up a little in my mouth]
indentured servant (noun)
a person who is bonded or contracted to work for another for a specified time, in exchange for learning a trade or for travel expenses
craft (verb)
to make or fashion with skill, esp by hand
Encounter Matrix | Advanced Foundry Topics
It's just a shame they wasted so much time scripting, creating graphic icons, developing inventory requirements, etc. all for nothing.
If my toon is going to spend hours crafting, then I would at least like to have the item I made be useful either to actually use (there's a concept) or sell on the AH for some profit. These crafted items do neither with the exception of the aforementioned gemmed shirts and pants. Beyond those there's nothing worth making.
Ugh. I'm just disgusted with it being such a waste of players' time.
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One positive I can think of, The summer event crafting was worth it for me. The food buffs were worth crafting. Actually, Im starting to run low on my food buffs since I use them every day.
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Yup, this is the only crafting I have ever done in the game. It was fun and useful, they way crafting should be!
Kaylee Krankenwagen, level 60 GF | Tavandruil Wayfinder, level 49 GWF | Aldith Langley, level 51 HR
I do not understand why game developers make crafting so worthless, when for a large group of players it's often the playstyle they enjoy the most. I appreciate that items that require grinding for should be worthwhile, but when crafters grind for resources shouldn't they be able to make comparable items?
Why not have crafters provide items that have fun and unique skins that could be applied to other items? Or potions and weapons that are only available through crafting and not carbon copies of dropped weapons, or make stats customisable during the crafting process.
Allowing the addition of the crafters' names allows them to build reputations amongst the player base.
Add the Foundry into the mix: enable crafters to be able to build a public instance that acts is their shop front, with a personal TP, that stocks their items. Syncing it to the main TPs means that other players can still access items in the usual manner, but those crafters who build a reputation for good quality items receive personal shoppers at their own vendor.
Personal TP vendors could allow an exchange system. Instead of paying with astral diamonds, for example, they could drop off a bag of gems, or a stack of furs etc.
All the above would make crafting a worthwhile and enjoyable pastime.
Everytime someone types that it makes me want to just put off eating and punch said person in the face.
You never Needa bag of gems, that's just there to get you profession resources faster than the normal resource finding exercises.
Leadership: AD (and don't forget), gold! Gold is going to have a much higher value when Shadowmantle is released. Also, this is from the recent Preview Shard patch notes. "This profession now has a chance to drop Refining Stones in the various boxes given as rewards for some tasks for use in Item Refinement." Snazzy.
Tailoring: People keep saying Pants/Shirts for your class (which is true), but they're much cheaper to simply buy. I leveled it to refine my High Vizier and Shadow Weaver gloves. Also, I heard that there will be new pants and shirt tasks in module two.
Artificing: Fabled Orb, that's it for me.
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Thanks for the info, I'll just keep on with the resource grinding
That crafting system created a working economy for DAOC. What we have in this game is a pointless pastime for a pointless bunch of helper monkeys, while the player is off playing the game.
Before it went to pot, Lord of the Rings Online had a great system in place with regards to crafting, particularly end-game gear. Turbine set up a player's ability to get end-game gear in one of three ways:
1) You could Raid and earn it through group content (to encourage Raid/Group content this gear had the best stats)
2) You could craft end-game similar gear (though slightly different/inferior the items were serviceable or you could actually sell them for profit on the AH)
3) You could skirmish to earn in-game monetary content to buy similar end-game gear (the most inferior of the three statistically but still serviceable end-game gear)
That satisfies all types of player-bases. The people who are hardcore raiders have access to end-game gear. The players who enjoy the crafting and social interactions with other crafters could get end-game gear. And solo and casual players who had real lives and couldn't spend eons of time in Raids til 3:00am could solo their way to end-game gear. All three types of gear had slightly different stats but all were comparable in the end and players had a sense of accomplishment for getting their gear and had a sense of satisfaction of results regardless of which path they chose to get their gear.
In Neverwinter, you just go to the AH and drop hundreds of thousands of AD's to get your end-game gear. I have a 60 rogue completely tricked out with all Epic gear in Neverwinter, granted not nearly has high GS as some others, but still...the fact that I've never run an end-game dungeon and just simply bought it all of the AH? How does that encourage me to want to run end-game content?
So, in addition to the Neverwinter Crafting being absurdly useless, there's the fact that gear progression in Neverwinter is absurdly broken. The fact that you can simply buy your end-game gear off the AH which should have NEVER been allowed from day one. Doing that discourages incentive to run end-game content.
What it should've been was as you get closer to level 50 you start getting blue (Rare) gear as quest rewards and each zone gives you a piece of armor, weapon or implement. For example you get your helm from one zone, your armor from another zone, your boots from another, and gloves from yet another...all from end-zone boss fights. That would have given you the blue gear that would allow you to gain access to the dungeons that have the epic (purple) gear that should be Bind to Account. That way you can't just simply buy your end-game gear off the AH but because it's bound to your account you can run one class to get gear for your other classes, giving you incentive to keep running the end-game dungeons to gear up your alts.
I don't know. To me, as a PVE player, it seems like Neverwinter developers have really skimped on the gear progression, the crafting, and group interaction. Fourth Edition D&D has "roles" where you had a Defender, a Leader, a Striker and a Controller. Each would fill a certain role in the group and a well-balanced group would be most successful. In Neverwinter Online, you can take 4 +1 into a dungeon and never miss not having a [insert role here]. I guess from ad-hoc pickup groups that's fine, but it really diminishes the specialization of the class roles in group content.
This is still an "ok" game, but it's not the D&D game I was hoping for. I'll keep reaching for that carrot dangling in front of me that it'll get better...
You need "Mark of Gratitude" * 3 per task.
I started with 40 and thought "wow, I can get 26k a day easy with leadership - then I/you run out of them".
There are 3 lv 20 green tasks that get you blue chest and 1.6k AD at a modest twice a day is 9.6k a day.
That is OK - but that is really it unless you are lucky to have 100's and 1000's of "Mark of gratitude"
1/2 the time the high lv chests drop healing potions and <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font>- the lower level chests and barrels actually sometimes have better loot like "Enchantments"-Yes, the higher lv chests do sometimes give great loot - but for me 60% at least are healing potions.
I suppose it is free though from needing materials to use - but I am seeing maybe 15K a day AD, not too shabby considering all the scrounging that goes on to do dailies = but the reward for lv 20 leadership is an illusion.
Forgot to mention Gold - Gold from leadership though is at a fantastic rate.
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Leadership is okay. Get some AD, some gold, maybe a chest or maybe some materials that you will use for some other leadership tasks.
After that?
I have recently started my first (hopefully) "real" character in the sense that I plan on keeping this character around and that when I get to the level cap I will maybe find a guild/group that doesn't mind me and we can do some dungeon runs together.
Part of this plan is to minimize excess XP gain. To that end, I avoid leadership and I keep invoking to a minimum. I opted to focus on leatherworking (character is a rogue).
A couple of things that I noticed, and this really bothers me, is that with leadership I get XP for recruiting extra helpers, but for leatherworking (and I assume other professions) I do not. The skill gain was never great for the time invested, but the time invested earned leaders something while leather workers just spend 18 hours for no skill gain.
Then, to make it worse, I have found that every leatherworking skill that allows me to add helpers (to reduce the time) requires that those helpers be of a minimum skill. If I am doing a task that requires a tanner I can only add tanners (or above) to help with the task.
I have never encountered a leadership skill with any of my other characters that wouldn't allow me to add a mercenary to help speed it along, no matter the required rank of the primary worker.
This means that leadership is not only useful for all and no matter your level, but that it advances faster than the other skills, too.
In order to advance leatherworking faster while doing best-available tasks, I need to keep recruiting more and more craftsmen (which gives me no profession XP) and keep on promoting those craftsmen (which also gives no XP).
18 hours X 4 skinners + 18 hours for 1 tanner = 90 hours to get a rank 2 craftsman with no XP gain for any of those hours invested.
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I know that part of it is how much someone plays; If you only play a couple of hours on weekends but keep up with professions through the gateway then maybe someone could keep a profession up to level in relation to their character, but I know that I have not been crafting at level for quite some time.
Heck, you can't even craft a level 9 shirt (the tier 1 shirt) until you get to talk to the craft lady at level 10. You have to earn a rank in the skill before you can craft the level 9 pants. Are you level 11 by then? 12?
Just starting out and already crafting behind your level.
Now I am pretty much just grinding out shirts and pants until I get to the point where I can start grinding out the next level of shirts and pants, and when I log out I set up a longer-term gathering task or mass-converting of a raw material.
Sometimes the items don't even make it to auction, instead being sold to the next vendor I come across for whatever they offer.
The items have little value to me other than being the easiest way to get to the next level of crafting.
Putting them on auction is the ideal, but between the other stuff that I am finding and the amount of shirts and pants that I am making, it's just not worth it to constantly run back to Protector's Enclave and I may not even have any available consignment slots if I did.
You are so very much wrong in this. Leadership is painfully slow.
You are looking at it from the wrong angle. You dont really need to load up on workers to speed up production. In most cases production is pretty fast. For example Fancy leather pants, take only an hour to make and earn 500xp. Even if you factor in the production on the raw materials. That would simply add another hour and 60xp. (3 Exotic pelt curing tasks, 20mins each 20xp for 6 leather. You only need 5 for the pants), Factoring the time to gather the raw materials, simply adds another hour. (3 gather tasks, 2 pets each, 20 minutes and 20xp)
So for 3 hours production you would be able to gather the pelts, cure them, and make pants. For a total gain of 620xp. Or just a bit over 200xp an hour. Obviously if you earn cured pelts in other ways, the xp per hour increases drastically.
The best leadership can offer is War Games Training, a level 13 skill. That earns 240xp over 8 hours. Or just 30xp an hour. And unlike other trades there is no material or preproduction that can be bypassed to speed things up. Even if you dump more workers on the task. A best case setting, with a full array of purple workers would simply halve the time. And double your xp to 60xp an hour. Hardly a decent return for millions of AD worth of quality workers.
Leadership is simply not fast at all. And gets absurdly slow after level 12. The last few levels will take longer then any 2 other professions combined.
Why buy profession packs just to craft worthless junk? There is no incentive to buy them other than when the Lillend specials take place. Which, by the way, putting the Lillend in the profession packs is a blaring horn and red light alert that otherwise, people aren't buying the profession packs due to Crafting, outside of Leadership, being so utterly worthless and a waste of time.
Rather than throw in a special unique item that most people (i.e. those that are PVP or don't like the AI of the companions) are just going to AH anyways, why not fix crafting so you can actually craft something worthwhile?
Okay, maybe I am.
But leadership isn't working on the same sort of schedule that the other crafts are, either. I have no real need to get it to a certain point. Any time that I get to tier 8 leadership is a good time to get to tier 8 leadership.
Does it matter whether you are earning 100 ADs or 400?
I mean, it's all ADs (or gold or whatever), and it all goes into the big pile. ADs that you gain running tier 4 jobs are no different than ADs gained running tier 8 jobs, there just may be more of them.
But leatherworking? I need tier 8 by level 25. I need tier 13 by level 37.
If I fail to do that then crafting for myself becomes less and less an option.
Earning extra ADs for myself, however few or many, is never less of an option.
And yet despite your blueprint for how to maximize this or that, the players that focus on these other crafting skills are often behind their level in terms of what they can make (or at least the ones here complaining about it). I know that I have been grinding out pants but when you need many more hours of pants making to grind out a leatherworking level than it will take you to get to the next character level (and the next, and the next, and..) then there is a problem.
So yeah, leadership is still the only skill that just works.
It does exactly what it is supposed to do (get you AD, gold, chests, and leadership materials) no matter the skill and character levels.
The other professions have to do what they do within a limited amount of time in order to be fully 'working', and every one that I have tried has failed at that.
And it still doesn't make any sense to me that leadership rewards you for recruiting and leveling up craftsmen while the others (at least leatherworking, and mailsmithing if memory serves) do not.
It still doesn't make any sense to me that a leadership job may require a tier 3 worker to start, but that worker can be assisted by however many tier 1 workers to speed it along, but a leatherworking job that requires a tier 3 worker requires tier 3 workers to assist.
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I get that they have to prioritize where to use their own manpower assets.
I understand that a person assigned to one thing may not be available to do something else, and I know that crafting in this game was always supposed to be a side-thing, not a primary thing that people would do instead of adventuring.
Do I think that looking at (and tweaking) crafting should take time away from a new character class? Absolutely not.
Do I think that it is more important than, say, working on more guild things? Nope, and I am not even in a guild.
But if it means that the next three or four lockboxes all come out a little more slowly and stick around a little bit longer then I am all for that.
And I suspect that I play more than the average person, even if I am a casual player.
I know that this presents a challenge because my play time leads to faster character levels for me. This is built-in to their system. If I had a character that I rarely played working on developing their platesmithing then they wouldn't have this problem.
Don't play a character enough and they could max out multiple skills.
But the characters exist to be played.