Integrating Crafting and Gathering. Ideas?

[Shurrikhan]

As a crafter, I like having better gear to make every few levels. That's what I took up crafting for in the first place. I want a steady stream of stuff that I can make which is actually useful in my own gameplay. It's boring to make stuff just to sell it, or to make stuff to turn in (or worse yet, make stuff just to destroy it again if you're leveling desynth as well). I hate leveling just for the sake of leveling alone. I'm leveling it in order to make my own gear and supplies, so I want plenty of chances to do so along the way.

And for crafting and combat classes alike, when I level up, my biggest reward is seeing what new pieces of gear that unlocks for me. (Well, it usually is, anyway, except in a few cases, where an important new skill is unlocked.) It's rather disappointing when I level up and realize there's nothing new at that level. It hardly seems like leveling at all in those cases.

I will agree it's hard on inventory space, though.

I guess to put this in perspective, just as my experience as a gamer, I'd prefer to be have a larger range of both opportunity and leniency, as much as that might sound paradoxical. In other words, I like having new gear to make (or, as below, upgrade) every few levels; I just find it unituitive that just because a piece of gear is better, say wool over linen, every player develops a wool allergy until precisely the required level that allows them to equip it. They shouldn't receive it's full benefit beneath that, sure (or to put it another way, the gear shouldn't hold them back when their skills match its quality, but neither will they fill it out beneath that, nor will it fulfill them above it), but it shouldn't somehow not be clothing.

For instance, let's take an old 1.x forum idea of composite items, in which the near finished components (removed later in 1.x) retained a portion of their added quality, rather than solely adding to the chance of the final product being upgraded to HQ state (in other words, each item could "HQ" in a variety of ways, by part in addition to gestalt). But, let's take that further. You can now attempt to replace pieces of already completed gear, or add atop it. You have a leather jerkin that you want to turn into scale mail? Add scales atop it. There may be restrictions, or certain parts may need to be removed (very successfully, in order not to damage the whole) to make space for the new parts, but you can upgrade most items.

The issue with this would be a return to the 1.x crafter item bloat, especially in the hands of poor crafters (who might make the wrong sub-item, such as a body for a shoe when intending to make a boot, and now needing to wait until they have the ingredients for the rest of the shoe in order not to waste the sub-item made in error), and additional steps (which make crafting more involved, and more exp-efficient per raw material, but far less immediate). That first bit can be mitigated through intuitive UI, but the second is a point of preference (though it too may be mitigated through something alike to "quick-crafting", in this case "whole crafting").

At the same time though, by returning to "optimal level" requirements in place of hard requirements, you're not stripped naked when you continue leveling a level 12 crafter and only have your 18+ gear left after spring cleaning. (And, *evil villain hand kneading* the added inventory requirements for making the intermediate components gives me an excuse to introduce crafting tables, on which you can temporarily store and easily share materials, which I might later integrate into camp/tent functionality).