The Grand Crafting Adjustment Thread

[Randnum]

I will throw my weight behind you!

In addition to the above, we have a single issue to contemplate when it comes to crafting. It looks like multiple issues but it is just the same one multiple times. In order to make crafting useful, we need it to become a step in player advancement again, and not everyone may want that.

Cursed Gear is made while Abjurations are earned, we still see this a bit, but not much.
Food is complex and wears off when you die (which is a lot) making the rarest and the best food inefficient.
Crafting pop items like the Hakutaku Eye cluster is not really seen anymore.
Crafting items used for weakening bosses is not relevant except if the item is 'strong' enough to be highly required for the fight.
Items intended to be Rare/EX can't be crafted except through synergy, which many players apparently do not like?
Augments are completely disconnected from regular crafting in almost every way.

The issue, basically, is that for crafting to be relevant, crafters must be needed or give a meaningful advantage in more parts of the game, but this then means that an inability to find crafters to do the things that give this advantage would become a time sink and possibly annoy players.

Would it help crafting if the game's best gear for a Beastmaster required a Khimaira Jacket, Black Beetle Blood, some random lower level items, and finish it off by adding two Rare/EX items dropped from the bosses through a single Synergy? Yes. Would it also annoy players that would prefer for the awesome new jacket to simply drop from the boss? Also yes.

My actual suggestions for this are simple though.

1. Make more bosses with powerful Aura effects (hopefully will see this in Adoulin) and lots of varied items players can use to nullify these Auras.
2. Make it so that food doesn't wear off when you die. We know it's possible, Medicated doesn't wear off (also make Antacid more available)
3. Make food better to help cooks, and make more synths of all kinds that don't require subcrafts but instead require ingredients made by other crafts (we can see how well this works out for lower level players in the case of things like Copper Ingots).
4. Consider having more boss pop items craftable or work like this:
Regular enemy drops Tavnazian Ram Meat, which has 1 in 5 chance of popping boss when traded to ???.
Crafter could make Tavnazian Ram Steak, which has 100% chance of popping boss when traded to ???.

Choice then becomes a matter of which is more convenient to you, farming for a while, or knowing a crafter (or yourself) to speed up the process.
5. Minor, but for Alchemy, notably, upgrade the effects of Stat potions (e.g. Intelligence Potion) to some percentage increase, even if it's percentage of base or doesn't work in Abyssea, so they are somewhat relevant.


We as players could come up with any number of things, but what will always hold crafting back is the fact that every suggestion must be one that non-crafters see as a help, or a convenience, instead of getting in their way...

[Economizer]

Cursed Gear is made while Abjurations are earned, we still see this a bit, but not much.

Abjuration gear tends to highly favor getting the HQ gear the first time, since you don't know when you'll see the abjuration again if it is truly rare.

If crafters want the NQ of these to sell, such as the products they get when leveling, they'll beg SE to allow an NQ piece of uncursed armor be allowed to be upgraded via a Synergy recipe and the HQ variant of cursed armor, which would allow players to buy the NQ now and upgrade to the HQ later when they have the funds, or in many players cases, lie to ourselves that we'll someday be able to afford the HQ while not feeling bad about wasting the abjuration on a crappy version of what we really want.

Crafting pop items like the Hakutaku Eye cluster is not really seen anymore.

These only really worked when it was gear many people wanted. Hakutaku Eye was popular for players because the Optical Hat was sought after, whereas Shrimp Lanterns catered to a very small and elite group of players, which in turn made the market roughly non-existent (it didn't help that it took three very high level crafts).

These days you have a few options to bring something like this back. One thing you could have is of course, new pop items and mobs.

Another you could have the old pop items augment older gear via Synergy. An augmentable Optical Hat that takes a Hakutaku Eye Cluster to augment it (or some tatter inspired Synergy split of one) would boost the price very easily.

Yet another could be a high-quality version of the drop that has a chance of dropping (the only clue I have on where Sublime Breastplate drops currently is a rumor that Shen can drop it for example), or will be guaranteed to drop when the old drop and the pop item are traded together. So for example, if you trade you Optical Hat and a Hakutaku Eye Cluster, you can fight Hakutaku again for a new super version.

Crafting items used for weakening bosses is not relevant except if the item is 'strong' enough to be highly required for the fight.

This is also a contradicting market too. If the fight doesn't require the item but is helped by it, the toughest groups will skip it to save money, and the weaker groups will be too poor to buy the item at any amount that would provide enough gil to pad out the crafter's pride.

Basically, groups that can afford such an item don't need it.

We as players could come up with any number of things, but what will always hold crafting back is the fact that every suggestion must be one that non-crafters see as a help, or a convenience, instead of getting in their way...

Speaking of which, I'd like to see an equipment piece that boosts the kill credit players get on Magian Trials by like one per kill, that could be crafted. It wouldn't be anywhere near necessarily, but it would be a nice little item to have.

[Rustic]

Abjuration gear tends to highly favor getting the HQ gear the first time, since you don't know when you'll see the abjuration again if it is truly rare.

If crafters want the NQ of these to sell, such as the products they get when leveling, they'll beg SE to allow an NQ piece of uncursed armor be allowed to be upgraded via a Synergy recipe and the HQ variant of cursed armor, which would allow players to buy the NQ now and upgrade to the HQ later when they have the funds, or in many players cases, lie to ourselves that we'll someday be able to afford the HQ while not feeling bad about wasting the abjuration on a crappy version of what we really want.

You want to improve the "use" of NQ cursed pieces- do things like give them the option to be traded in for a solid chunk of guild points, regardless of what the normal item is. If your HQ's are being bought and your NQ's are being either traded in at a good clip towards 150K/200K guild items or even for a stack of HQ signing crystals...well, then there's that much more of a useful market for them. Upping their odds of successful desynthesis would help as well- if you could salvage something expensive with some reliability, people would be cracking their hexed jackets hoping for a Penelope's Cloth or the like. Say, 10K GP per, once per day, minimum Veteran skill to turn in?