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I would like to propose something that might assist the state of crafting in the game. At the moment crafters are just a part time affair there is not much chance a character can get much satifaction playing for example just a carpenter or just a smith , when other characters can, once she/he has what they want can get it all repaired anytime for a few silver coins.
This spoils the crafting system as it caps production of items and therefore reduces crafting to a part time occupation .
The idea i want to put forward is as follows,
The higher the quality the more times it can be repaired ,every better quality item can be repaired upto say 3 times before it drops a grade in quality .The lower the quality however the less times it can stand being repaired for example.
perfect 3 times ,excellent 3 times,very good 3 times, and at good the item drops one repair factor down to 2 and this then again drops to 1 when the item becomes bad until at the lowest it is just junk and can no longer be repaired and is broken.Maybe magic or very rare items can get an extra repair factor etc..


While this might not be ideal as i have no idea how differcult it is to implement something needs to be done about durability of items and the repairing of ,the old system in Gobaith , while not perfect had more going for it than what we have a present with our "ever "repairable items.
At the moment aside from those few crafts that make a fortune selling to the merchants there are almost no specialist crafters doing business.

The first thing my fighter would do if this was in effect was to again store her best weapons/armor back in the depot rarely to use like they were done pre-VBU because some things like her drow bow is almost irreplaceable.. at least for her. I am really hoping this idea is not started.

I still prefer the idea that a char can go to the original crafter OR the NPC for repairs. Either that or the crafters in a town get a share of the NPC everytime someone pays for repairs though I would recommend a certain skill needs to be reached. It makes no sense the crafters don't get a profit from repairs.

As far as making crafting a profession why not take more from the NPC that sell? Allow crafters to sell what they do now to NPC's but take away half what NPC's sell only allowing it for crafters. This would include clothes, armor, carpentry items, even seeds for farmers. Starter items keep for NPC's so new players won't get discouraged... the rest only sell by a crafter.

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Example using tailoring alone:
Grey, green and red skirt can buy from any NPC. Black and blue skirt only from a crafter
Grey and green hat from an NPC. The rest of the hats from a crafter.
All robes and cloaks from crafters but the basic greys.
Shirts and pants can be also added and only the most basic leathers can be bought from NPC's
All tools to start the craft should be bought from NPC's in order not to discourage new players from beginning the craft.

IF this takes effect, in clothes alone it will eventually be a matter of prestige to wear those colors that can be bought from a crafter.

As far as tools, I would say any to start a profession should be bought and repaired.
Advanced tools and professions need a crafter.

Juliana D'cheyne wrote:The first thing my fighter would do if this was in effect was to again store her best weapons/armor back in the depot rarely to use like they were done pre-VBU because some things like her drow bow is almost irreplaceable.. at least for her. I am really hoping this idea is not started.

This points to you considering your equipment more important than your life,as only death damages your equipt items the way to fix this is dont die.
This is one of the issue's crafter characters have with the system as it is ,your fighter type can run into a dragons maw and die as many times as you wish , and yet never will you need a new suit of armour or new cloak etc ever! as a few silvers will sort this out.
As for going to the original crafter for the item repairs, that make no sense as any decent tailor should be able to repair for example leather shoes no matter who made them so long as the shoes are not too badly damaged or worn out.
Nor do i see getting profits from the repair npc logical at all, why should they do the work so others get the coin!
Nor do i see limiting the items sold by npc merchants helpful as most items should be available as they are now ,just not at any great quality ,
which allows crafters ingame to sell better items to the players ,but those in need should be able to get the item needed if no crafter is available to sell it.

While items can be repaired for next to nothing certain specialist crafters will not flourish except in a hybrid form,for an example i have bought two suits of armour from a smith over the last 4 game (and only because i wanted a change not because i had worn out the old one)months who exclaimed how nobody buys armour these days except for me..this is not a pleasing thing to hear from a master smith.

Juliana D'cheyne wrote:The first thing my fighter would do if this was in effect was to again store her best weapons/armor back in the depot rarely to use like they were done pre-VBU because some things like her drow bow is almost irreplaceable.. at least for her. I am really hoping this idea is not started.

So what if only items that can be crafted by players dropped in value after being repaired?

This is one of the issue's crafter characters have with the system as it is ,your fighter type can run into a dragons maw and die as many times as you wish , and yet never will you need a new suit of armour or new cloak etc ever!

This is a very severe issue imo, and is being addressed.

And as for Juliana, as nice of an example that is, I feel it only pertains to tailoring. Even since merinium and elements were added to some armors and the price was never adjusted, people still seem to only (mostly) buy them from players because they know the quality/durability will be poor from merchants. In the end, this wont at all fix the problem Ufedhin describes, even if npcs sold NOTHING that crafters could make.

@Boomer, some items are crafted by players now that require pure elements to make...those items are also hard to come by and won't be used often if they drop in value. Also to limit the "repair and not drop in value" to simply player made item may be difficult to script. That would take the advise of a dev.

@Ufedhin To say to a fighter char "never die" is not reasonable.. yes it may be desirable they never go to the cross and have reduction in equipment worn but there will be testing of various fighting styles/weapons/armor/number in groups etc. and that testing is part of the fun of being a fighter along with the roleplay involved.

Having had a crafter, fighter, other professions I see far less problems with crafters now then I did pre-VBU. As far as specialization, even the crafts themselves require multiple areas of expertise or to buy, ask another crafter for products. For instance to tailor asks for copper ingot, carpentry for iron ingot in some areas.

At the moment crafters are just a part time affair

Except for requiring a fighter to get between towns without a teleporter I don't see this either as far as the basic premise for desiring a change. I have had a full time crafter, non-fighter and did quite well post VBU, in fact earned more coin then my fighter and don't feel I am alone though have to admit most crafters appear to have some fighting ability also.

This is a very severe issue imo, and is being addressed.

All I can do is repeat.. depending on how it is addressed.. I have no problem again storing my char's best items in the depot but hope It won't come to that. Having spent quite a bit of gold for repairs in order to wear some favorite items, I think fighters are dunned enough for this privilege. They could just as easily wear cheaper items and sell when done also. Even with loss of items and bag pre VBU, how many fighters actually bought weapons from crafters (yes, I know the armor was bugged at that time...but weapons and accessory armor wasn't)? How many fighters became Smiths in order to make their own armor? Didn't we prove before this didn't work?

As far as I know.. (and please correct me if I'm wrong) the Repair NPC was supposed to increase his pirce for a item every time you ask him to repair it.

What a post from the guy with the richest Galmairian Char.
However I thought, how did he became that rich? He sells usefull things to players they can't create themselves (Alchemistry). If you want to get more customers, I would suggest to rise the rate of rapair costs and put let's say half of the magical weapons out of the treasure/loot lists. So only a crafter could create it.

Juliana D'cheyne wrote: yes it may be desirable they never go to the cross and have reduction in equipment worn but there will be testing of various fighting styles/weapons/armor/number in groups etc. and that testing is part of the fun of being a fighter along with the roleplay involved.

Juliana im looking at it from a different side, the testing of new weapons and armour combinations i would think should take place in training in a non deadly fighting situation not in the field so to speak,and as for not dieing this should be a primary concern yes even for fighters and promote good rollplaying, tactic's and/or groups should be incouraged to overcome differcult dangerous foes and not this" i will go head to head with the Merinium Golem i might just win!,kind of thinking and if i die 'oh well its not that bad and a few silvers will be all thats lost",that seems like ooc play in my view.
However it is a side issue to what i am talking about, your armour and other items after stompings from the Golem when you die should start to get rather worn out and being able to get repaired over and over agan back to its perfect state is not helpful to crafters whom really have nothing much to do once everyone has the perfect set they want.

Salathe wrote:This is a very severe issue imo, and is being addressed.

I did not know it was being looked at good to know it is .

Juliana D'cheyne wrote:I have no problem again storing my char's best items in the depot but hope It won't come to that.

I can't imagine how a suggestion such as Ufedhin's reverts us back to pre vbu, or causes you hide away items in your depot. Pre vbu, there were 3 major reasons to put away items forever in your depot.

1) The items were impossible to obtain without a GM being involved. So if its gone you cant work to get it back.
2) There was no real way to show off the item

And most importantly

3) When you die, it is likely this item is gone forever.

All of these issues are addressed in the VBU.

1) All of these items can now be made, or looted from treasures/monsters. Possible (but hard) to acquire solo.
2) Paperdolling allows you to wear your gear with pride.
3) You dont lose anything upon death.

With a suggestion like Ufedhin's, this in no way creates an urgency to store away your items. It still currently takes ~10 deaths for an item to shatter. If the quality goes down once each time you repair thats 2-3 good go's at using the item before its down to good/normal. Thats 20-30 deaths before the item becomes obselete. If durability has a chance to drop upon repair (lets say 50%) that could be 40-60 deaths an item lasts. With Ufedhin's exact proposal, thats 3 repairs before it downgrades, thats upwards of 30 deaths before dropping from perfect to excellent, and then 30 more before dropping to very good, and even then thats 30 more until its just good. Thats 90 deaths before having an item degrade to the point it really needs to be replaced. I can't imagine how your first reaction to this is hide away your high quality items because they are in urgent danger. Comparing this idea to pre vbu is very unfair. One death meaning the permanent loss of an item is nothing compared to what is being discussed here. I won't say what is currently being planned, but it wont be as generous as the 90 death allowance ufedhin proposed. But it will absolutely not be as dreadful as the pre vbu state where items are gone when you die. Hopefully your not thinking that upwards of 90 deaths is still too harsh, if anyone has died 90 times since january with the same set of gear all the way through, they should be forced to get replacements.

And the fact remains, that players simply make a one time purchase of goods and then never visits a player craftsman again. Since february the only person to ask me about buying something was ufedhin (coincidentally). It's pretty bad for crafters at the moment to sell to players. This absolutely has to be addressed in a way that allows crafters to continuously sell to players. And as far as I can imagine, the only way to do that is create circumstances where players need to replace armor.

And as a fighter, I don't like this at all, there are multiple locations in the game where a fighter could farm atleast 5 gold an hour. I could spend a night farming gold off of monsters only and have enough money to repair my gear for months. There are low level monsters that commonly drop items which can be sold for an easy 30 silvers. Having only an infinite repair NPC doesnt provide a serious (or interesting) challenge for fighters to sustain themselves. Once I acquired my best set, I felt that I *beat* the game and my ingame time dropped considerably. Atleast the pre VBU state provided busy work for fighters/crafters in the form of replacing gear.

So why not keep it simple and just make repairs a player function? Make it possible to restore item to full quality and durability by taking some additional resources, and just making it a function of the crafting window of a player crafter?

I believe having NPCs for repairing and also NPCs selling all the items had the intention to make the game easier for new players. Imagine a newbie wanting to try out the game, having very limited funds, and that newbie can't find any player for a long time, since either nobody is online, or around to help, or capable to help. The repair NPC is a workaround for that. Also, the merchant NPCs do sell all items (or rather, most of them!), but players usually use this to have a look at items, and do not buy them for the high cost and bad quality. There is an exception for some very rich characters who buy items from merchants for Quest reasons solely, which is fine imho.

While all what was said by the previous posters was said is true - the baseline being that crafters can not sell anything any longer, we have to (currently) keep in mind that this is also due to a stagnant number of accounts. While this should not and will surely not be a reason to not make changes here, those changes should be modest. It would be hostile if, say, 20% of your playtime went down the tube for having to repair / regain your equipment, especially because this would include finding crafters, and before that also finding the money to pay them. Still, modest changes appear vital to enhance the game experience for everyone.

Tyan Masines wrote:I believe having NPCs for repairing and also NPCs selling all the items had the intention to make the game easier for new players. Imagine a newbie wanting to try out the game, having very limited funds, and that newbie can't find any player for a long time, since either nobody is online, or around to help, or capable to help. The repair NPC is a workaround for that.

A solution to this is would be that the NPC can only repair items which are not to expensive. It is without much effort possible to say that the repair npc can repair any item with the worth =< 2 gold and everything else needs player crafters.

Except for the problem again of finding a player online, that is a good work-around @Jupiter.

It appears we are concentrating not so much on crafters in general but Smithing? If so, has other aspects of this profession been looked at? It has taken quite a hit since the VBU with nice items removed to Carpentry and Goldsmithing and high end items requiring pure. Perhaps these decisions need to be discussed again also?

I would like to hear from other crafts, ones like tailoring and carpentry that I am not sure the repair function would have as much impact. I am looking at the high scores i.e. gold rush and know some of these chars are total crafters. Where is this coin coming from?

forty wrote:So why not keep it simple and just make repairs a player function? Make it possible to restore item to full quality and durability by taking some additional resources, and just making it a function of the crafting window of a player crafter?

I dunno, this sort of makes it an even worse scenario to me. Obviously, requiring elements or merinium makes this beyond difficult to deal with, so that leaves us with the basic materials. All the basic materials are very easy to acquire; wood, iron ingots, copper ingots, cloth, leather. Anyone should be able to acquire a thousand of any of these in a simple afternoon of serious effort. And we obviously cant have the materials required to repair be more than the materials needed to create, since players will just make new ones instead, so that limits quite alot of items to only needing ~3-4 of a basic material for a full repair, especially since in carpentry nothing needs that many pieces of wood. It seems to me, in the end this will be a much cheaper form of repair for fighters than the current state, and a very small income for crafters. That seems counter productive to the issue at hand.

Going with what I said above about being able to acquire over a thousand raw materials in an afternoon by any character, this means that fighters can very easily acquire the materials themself, removing the crafters need to use their own materials. This in the end, will leave players repair income to be nothing but a small service fee. Nonetheless, the two outcomes I see are a small profit for crafters, or a very small profit for crafter, and an overall easier time for fighters than we currently have now. And still little to no demand for new items.

I'd like the idea of their being two aspects to repairing; repairing durability, and repairing quality. If you repair one, the other has a % of going down. But to me that seems to be somewhat difficult to balance properly in terms of materials usage and % of downgrade. Perhaps... If you repair quality, it only gets a guranteed +1, but durability gets -2. And then when you repair durability, it goes to 10, but quality is -2. Lets play this out with a perfect brand new item (10 quality, 10 durability). I'll again use deaths as a measure along with # of repairs

Item is used to its near breaking point, 10 qual 1 dura. ~9 deaths total
It is then repaired for durability to 8 qual 10 dura. 1 repair total
The player wants the best, so they also repair its quality, 9 qual 8 dura. 2 repair total
The player then uses it again until its breaking point, 9 qual 1 dura. ~16 deaths total.
Repair durability, 7 qual 10 dura. 3 repairs total
Repair quality, 8 qual 8 dura. 4 repairs total
Use to breaking point 8 qual 1 dura. 23 deaths total.

At this point the item would become only good Probably around when I myself would ditch the item. The outcome is 4 repairs needed, and approximately 23 deaths total (depending on how much wear and tear your gear suffers). Still much more harsh than ufedhin's proposal. But more favorable than having players do infinite repairs for little to no cost and continue to stagnate the market. Perhaps a % modifier of quality downgrade being only 1 instead of 2, which will allows a chance for its quality to stay the same after getting a repair for both durability and quality.

And also in the end, I believe that players should still have to completely replace an item over time. Of course, Not as bad as it was pre vbu of course where some players would buy a dozen armors at a time to have themselves set up for a few months.

@Tyan You say that this is partly due to a lack of new player inflow. But I'd disagree. The situation seems to me that if more players come into the game, some will become crafters. It is reasonable to assume the crafter:fighter ratio will stay the same. if it does deviate in favor of crafters, then its still only a small amount of additional sales that you can count on one hand.

1) as i know most of the crafters are "multi - crafter" and often there are more then one ig at the same time
2) there are a lot of possibilities to make a lot of coins with crafting / gathering materials und selling them to NPC`s (several gold coins per hour)
3) carpentry tools (carving knifes / slicer) must be repaired often