The Crafting System enhancement thread

[Elagneros]

Recently, we've had a number of people suggest different enhancements to the crafting system as it exists now. Most of them tended to be rather vague suggestions. Anyway, last night I came up with some pretty good solid ideas of how to enhance the existing system. It's pretty ambitious, and I have to admit, it's kind of bold of me to suggest these ideas when i'm not going be coding any of it (and I wouldn't know where to begin anyway, my scripting skills aren't that great). But I am offering some concrete examples here, and I hope the dev team likes the basic concepts enough to seriously consider at least some of them.

Basically, I think the system as it exists now should be ok as a starting point with a few tweaks here and there. These ideas should make craftede weapons and armor more popular, and also because of the customization, could lead to a lot of increased trading among the player base.

Warning: the next post is pretty looooong.

[Elagneros]

Adding abilities requires XP and gold to be spent, as well as components that can be found throughout the realm.

To add abilities, the crafter must be one crafting level higher than the level required to make the base item. So a crafter must be at least Journeyman to add abilities to an apprentice item, Craftsman for Journeyman items, etc. For Master Artisan items, the character should earn a set amount of XPs (I suggest 10,000) as MA to begin adding abilities to items. A waiting period might also be a good idea.

There is a slight chance of failure when adding abilities to items. If failure occurs, the crafted item and components are destroyed, but only half the gold and XP is lost. This can be either a fixed chance (say 5-10%), or variable depending on level, with failure occurring at higher chances with low level items and lower changes with high level items.

I think it would be best for crafted items to cap at +4, with +5 and better items available only as weapon drops. It would also require little change to the existing system.

Abilities need to be added at a matching crafting station. That is, MA abilties can only be added at an MA station, Artisan at and Artisan station, and Master Craftsman and lower at a Master Craftsman station. Naturally, a higher level station can add a low ability, such as making MC stuff at an MA station. I suggest not putting in the time limit for making MA items on the station both with the time limit for making the base items, and because of the chance of the item being destroyed.

Abilities can be added at any time, that is a crafter can add an ability one day, and maybe add another ability a week later. Of course, the chance for failure kicks in every time a crafter attempts to add a new ability.

Weapon abilities

Base crafted items for martial weapons should be fine the way they are now. A typical Crafted Silvery weapon is +4, +2d6 damage, +1d6 piercing damage (slashing on piercing weapons), 1d6 massive crits, keen for melee weapons, and +4 Mighty for missile weapons. I don't know about Exoctic or Fletching items, but I suppose the Exotic weapons are similar, and I believe the Fletching items go up to +4. MA whips are +4, +2d6 slashing, 1d6 massive crits. Again, this is good. Crafted gauntlets (for monks) are only +3, +2d6 bludgeoning, +3 Str. I suggest boosting this to a +4, since monks really don't have all that much in the way of good weaponry besides Storm Kama and Hands of the Lost Order.

Enhancement bonus, bonus damage, massive crits, keen and kighty abilities should be considered "hard-coded" in the base item and not adjustable.

Added abilities for weapons

Elemental damge

Added elemental damage comes in 7 varieties:

Fire - requires alchemist's fire
Cold - requires coldstone
Electricity - requires quartz crystal
Acid - requires acid flask
Sonic - requires thunderstone
Positive - requires holy water
Negative - requires skeleton's knuckle

Amount of damage depends on crafting level:

Journeyman: +1 damage, 1 component
Craftsman: +2 damage, 3 components
Master Craftsman: +1d4 damage, 5 components
Artisan: +1d6 damage, 7 components
Master Artisan: +1d8 damage, 10 components

Bonus racial damage

In addition, crafters can add bonus damage to specific targets. This is elemental damage as above, plus another component for the racial type. The components are exisiting toolset items where possible (there's a few that would have to be added). The type of target is based on faction (this was mostly derived from exisiting job bonuses and faction items):

Last Alliance vs. chaotic, component: slaad's tongue
Ancient Ones vs. vermin, component: fire beetle belly
Northern Coalition vs. undead, component: skeleton's knuckle
Mystral Ascendancy vs. outsiders, component: rakshasa's eye
Shadow League vs. dwarves, component: dwarf beard hair
Ragnar's Kin vs. elves, component: elf ear
The Circle vs. goblinoids, compoment: goblin spittle

In the case of The Circle, there were no exisiting job bonuses or faction items that suggested a specific enemy type, so I picked goblin, since they're the most immeditate enemy to the faction. Downside is that the toughest goblin opponent in the game is only CR 8 or 9, but then TC members can only make MA Fletching items or Whips (see below). Similarly with AO, the toughest vermin are only CR 14, so racial bonuses for both these factions wouldn't be that great at upper levels.

Damage amounts by item levels:

Apprentice: +1, 1 component
Journeyman: +2, 2 components
Craftsman: +1d4, 3 components
Master Craftsman: +1d6, 5 components
Artisan: +1d8, 7 components
Master Artisan: +1d10, 10 components

Also a single race based components is required in adition to the elemental components.

If allowing all elemental components to the faction enemies makes things too complicated, then I suggest the following elements by faction:

Last Alliance: electricity
Ancient Ones: negative
Northern coalition: positive
Mystral Ascendancy: sonic
Shadow League: cold
Ragnar's Kin: fire
The Circle: Acid

Other weapon abilities

Vampiric regeneration requires vampire hearts (I suggest using the 2x2 heart from the toolset). This abiltiy can only be added to the more powerful weapons:

Master Craftman: +1, 5 hearts
Artisan: +2, 7 hearts
Master Artisan: +3, 10 hearts

Poison, disease, ability drain, stun, slow, wounding, etc (no vorpal though...too powerful). The various on-hit abilites can be added, though there's a lot of different possibilities here. I suggest the following save DC for the levels:

Craftsman: 14
Master Craftsman: 16/18
Artisan: 20/22
Master Artisan: 24/26

Poison could require various types of weapon poisons as components in similar proportions to component requirements aas listed above. As for the other abilities, I guess components would have to be added depending on which ones the devs want to add (and these can be added gradually).

Armor abilities

First off, I suggest bringing the AC bonus for MA shields and armor up to +4 to bring them in line with the very few level 20 items that exist in the game. Crafted Imbued Cloth should have damage resistance upped from 10/- to 15/- to make it more equal to other level 20 armors. Otherwise, the base items for armor should be fine the way they are. Crafted belts might also have some of these abilites, since they only offer a Con bonus, where all the other stat boosting crafted items have better abilties. Also, maybe chain mail could be added to the Armor craft list since only cloth, leather, hide and plate can be made right now.

Elemental damage immunity can be added to armor.

Apprentice: +5%, 1 component
Journeyman: +10%, 3 components
Craftsman: +15%, 5 components
Master Craftsman: +20%, 7 components
Artisan: +25%, 10 components

The armor can also have save bonuses vs. energy types as well:

Journeyman: +1, 1 component
Craftsman: +2, 3 components
Master Craftsman: +3, 5 components
Artisan: +4, 7 components
Master Artisan: +5, 10 components

Armor can have specific bonuses to AC vs racial types based on faction:

Last Alliance vs. chaotic, component: slaad's tongue
Ancient Ones vs. vermin, component: fire beetle belly
Northern Coalition vs. undead, component: skeleton's knuckle
Mystral Ascendancy vs. outsiders, component: rakshasa's eye
Shadow League vs. dwarves, component: dwarf beard hair
Ragnar's Kin vs. elves, component: elf ear
The Circle vs. goblinoids, compoment: goblin spittle

Journeyman: +1, 1 component
Craftsman: +2, 3 components
Master Craftsman: +3, 5 components
Artisan: +4, 7 components
Master Artisan: +5, 10 components

Regeneration can be added to armor. Regeration requires vials of troll blood, the amount depending on how many hps regenerate per round:

Master Craftsman: +1, 5 components
Artisan: +2, 7 components
Master Artisan: +3 10 components

Save bonuses vs. poison or other similar attacks can be added. The save bonus and number of components should be similar to the energy save bonuses.

Spell resistance

Spell resistance can also be included as an armor ability. Suggested SR by levels:

Master Craftsman: 12
Artisan: 16
Master Artisan: 20

Components should come in a ratio like that of regeneration.

Limits on abilites

Crafted items should have a limit on how many abilites can be added. This limit should be based on level:

Craftsman and lower: 1 ability
Master Craftsman and Artisan: 2 abilities
Master Artisan: 3 abilities

Light Generation

Any crafted item that can be worn can be made to give off light. This ability does not count against an item's ability limit. Adding light requires light gems, and the brightness of the light depends on how many gems are added and the level of the item.

Journeyman: Dim light, 1 gem
Craftsman: Low light, 3 gems
Master Craftsman: Normal light, 5 gems
Artisan/Master Artisan: Bright light, 7 gems

Factions and crafting

Because of class restriction in the factions, some factions are limited in terms of the items they can make (not counting arcan items in analysis):

LA/AO/RK: can make any MA item
NC/MA/SL: can only reach artisan as a leather crafter, can make MA in the other crafts.
TC: Can only reach artisan as a tailor and martial crafter, master craftsman as an exotic or armor crafter.

So of all the factions, TC is the most limited in terms of crafting, but can get to MA leather where 3 other factions are limited to Artisan. Still, that does put the faction at a disadvantage when crafting. Perhaps MA martial crafting could be made availabel to barbarians to even things out a bit?

[lordvan52681]

like the ideas (though I think Zing or Netrom are gonna have a field day with you for a while ). One thing though; NC allows fighters, so they can get MA in armor & weapons crafting. Just wanted to point that out.

[Death Dealer1]

also TC should be bonus vs. mages....since the arcane powers are what they strive against

[Elagneros]

like the ideas (though I think Zing or Netrom are gonna have a field day with you for a while ).

Yeah, I know Zing, Netrom, Flailer, TGPO, and DD will probably make the most critical comments here since they'll be the ones who actually have to code it, if they choose to do any of this (I have confidence in their abilities, though. ). But it doesn't have to be all added at once, probably the elemental stuff can be put in first since those components already exist, and once they're tested the other stuff can slowly be added depending on what the devs want to do.

One thing though; NC allows fighters, so they can get MA in armor & weapons crafting. Just wanted to point that out.

What I meant is Leather is the only craft here that they can't get to MA. They can make MA weapons (martial, fletching, exotic), armor and tailoring.

[Elagneros]

also TC should be bonus vs. mages....since the arcane powers are what they strive against

Yeah, that would be a good bonus, but the toolset doesn't have any bonus damage vs. mages ability. And an AC bonus vs. mages wouldn't really be that useful.

[Flailer]

Actually, I made a crafted weapons thread on the dev boards a while back and had a lot of the same ideas. You'd be amused to read it.

There's a lot of great things we can do to allow weapons and armor and shields to be relevant and on par with the best items in the game. And, it's always been the hope that the best gear would be available through crafting.

Just some random comments:

- Divine/negative/postive/magic damage on weapons won't go in without any restrictions (like vs racial, alignment, temporary property, etc)
- Regen with trolls blood - I like it.
- Adding specific damages or bonuses vs race based on faction, while cool, is probably a big headache under the system I was envisioning. But, a good idea and maybe there's some way to do it without going insane.

Doing the weapons, armor, and shield enhancements is 'easy' in a sense because you can just update properties in a predicatble way. Doing the other gear (belts, boots, all the arcane items, etc) gets a little more complicated. Have any suggestions for those?

Crafting, I think, is one of the coolest things in NS, but it definately cries out for some TLC. But, there's a lot of areas that are getting TLC at the moment... hopefully soon (and I don't use soon in the 'don't bother me about it' sense).

[Flailer]

Oh, and thanks for the time and thought you put into that post.

[Elagneros]

Actually, I made a crafted weapons thread on the dev boards a while back and had a lot of the same ideas. You'd be amused to read it.

Heh, well I suppose it's not that surprising. The stats for gear in this module follow a predictable pattern. I was following the same pattern, more or less.

There's a lot of great things we can do to allow weapons and armor and shields to be relevant and on par with the best items in the game. And, it's always been the hope that the best gear would be available through crafting.

Well, I'd think that the stuff dropped in the most epic area of the module would have the best stats, however these ideas I posted allow people to custom create all sorts of stuff that's almost as good as the best. I think keeping +5 and epic stuff as unique drops would be slightly better, since crafted items are relative easy to obtain, even the MA items which require a 12 hour real time wait. The custom crafting however, would increase trading among players, and would circulate some interesting swag as stuff is lost through faction raids.

- Divine/negative/postive/magic damage on weapons won't go in without any restrictions (like vs racial, alignment, temporary property, etc)

Well, I was definitely thinking that divine and magic properties should not be added except through intervention of the gods. I put in positive and negative beause there are weapons already that have these properties, and they matched up pretty well with the trap components. And since I also included positive/negative defenses on the armor, they would be balanced at least in PVP.

- Regen with trolls blood - I like it.

Yup, I was thinking of using the pixie dust graphic for that, the one that's already used for the Wis boosting powder. It would also give players a reason to go to the troll pits (which right now is too far up on Giant Mountain for people to bother with XP there given the troll CRs compared to the giants and ogres outside the cave)

- Adding specific damages or bonuses vs race based on faction, while cool, is probably a big headache under the system I was envisioning. But, a good idea and maybe there's some way to do it without going insane.

Well, how was I supposed to know what you were thinking?

Though, from what little I know of using the toolset and scripting, faction bonuses would be kind of a pain to stick in anyway. The upside that it leads to more variation among the players.

Doing the weapons, armor, and shield enhancements is 'easy' in a sense because you can just update properties in a predicatble way. Doing the other gear (belts, boots, all the arcane items, etc) gets a little more complicated. Have any suggestions for those?

Well, I did mention that the crafted belts could get some of the armor bonuses too (like regen), because all they get is a Con bonus. Crafted Imbued Belts do go all the way up to +6 con, but they really aren't as good as the troll skin belts that have a +4 bonus and regen on top of it.

Light generation could probably be added to any of the items like I mentioned.

I suppose the arcane staves could have some of the weapon bonuses added to them, but they're already pretty good the way they are.

But the other crafted items don't need much of a boost. It's really the weapons and armor that aren't in any real demand because they're not as good as some of the epic stuff starting to appear now.

Crafting, I think, is one of the coolest things in NS, but it definately cries out for some TLC. But, there's a lot of areas that are getting TLC at the moment... hopefully soon (and I don't use soon in the 'don't bother me about it' sense).

Yes, I'm more or less under the impression that faction job are the #1 priority right now. We still have 3 more factions that need jobs, and the AO jobs I believe were never really finished.

Still, I think it's worth it to throw some solid ideas out there for the devs to work with. It would probably be best to add this stuff in a little at a time than all at once, like I said above start with the elemental properties, since the stuff is already dropped, and that's less work for the devs to do (the other stuff would require items to be created and then distributed into the treasure system). One thing the devs could do is add a component a week or so before the craft ability is added to the system, give some players the opportunity to collect some components first before they can be used for crafting (don't tell the players with the items are for either...let it be a surprise! ).

[Elagneros]

Another thought I had on this before:

There should be some limits on multiple elemental damages on weapons. I don't think we want everyone on the server to be running around with something like this:

Crafted Silvery Rapier
+4 rapier
+2d6 piercing damage
+1d6 slashing damage
Massive Crits 1d6
Keen
+1d8 sonic damage
+1d8 positive damage
+1d8 negative damage

That's a LOT of bonus damage. Even if the devs don't allow positive and negative, those two could be swapped out for something like acid and either electricity or cold.

So with MA items, I'd say the first elemental property gets the full 1d8. The second elemental only gets 1d4, and a third would get 2, which would look like this:

Crafted Silvery Rapier
+4 rapier
+2d6 piercing damage
+1d6 slashing damage
Massive Crits 1d6
Keen
+1d8 elemental damage
+1d4 elemental damage
+2 elemental damage

Which is a bit more in line with some of the level 20 weapons that exist now.

Do the same thing with the Master Craftsman and Artisan weapons; for MC cap the second damage type at +2, for Artisan cap it at 1d4.

Maybe a similar cap for armor with multiple elemental immunities. We don't really have any armor that blocks multiple elements to compare things too, but say:

Master Craftsman: 20%/5%
Artisan: 20%/10%
Master Artisan: 25%/15%/5%

might be pretty good.

[P. Fricebottle]

You really do have too much time on your hands Elagneros with all these insanely long posts. Personally I'd like just a few improvements to the MA items (like the massive criticals of 1d6 whats up with that?)

[Elagneros]

bump

[P. Fricebottle]

Oh yes, I read a little more this time around and you suggested that

If allowing all elemental components to the faction enemies makes things too complicated, then I suggest the following elements by faction:

Last Alliance: electricity
Ancient Ones: negative
Northern coalition: positive
Mystral Ascendancy: sonic
Shadow League: cold
Ragnar's Kin: fire
The Circle: Acid

I agree with some of it, but you put ancient ones as negative energy. Everyone seems to forget about Chirrem the brass (chaotic good) dragon and the other good dragon who is the leader of AO (I never remember his name). I'd suggest swithching Shadow Legion to negative energry, and Ancient Ones to cold.

[Death Dealer1]

SL weapons are cold based weapons anyway...MA should fall under negative and AO can have sonic

[lordvan52681]

agreed.