Increasing Rarity of Crafting Ingredients and incorporating Expert Crafting

[Reyna_Balmore]

Not only make things a bit more challenging and more time consuming to make with some risk involved, but also massively increasing the potency of the items. Finally giving us the ability to craft Green / Blue / Purple consumables.

No longer will items be obtained from tokens / scrips, such as platinum fish, highland cabbage, and workbench resin. Instead these items will be obtained from certain monsters around the world (There are too many cool monster designs that go mostly ignored), raids / extreme / savage / ultimates , big fishing, and gathering.

I think it would be really cool to not only make Green combat gear as we are now, but to go beyond that and give us the option to make some legendary stuff through a grindy task. I know this may not appeal to many, but I think hardcore crafters may like such an idea.

[Eclipse12187]

I agree that crafting needs some form of difficulty but expert crafts are not the way. In my opinion there’s nothing “expert” about having to adapt on the fly, not to mention the absolute reliance on rng skills such as rapid synthesis will make crafting fun and engaging.

As for your idea about expanded rarity, imagine as a brand new crafter you have to make a set of HQ white gear, meld it to get ready to remake the exact same set but at a green rarity now, repeat for blue and purple rarity. It adds a lot of busywork asking for a brand new level 80 crafter to push through all of that if they haven’t been working on it from the beginning of the expansion.

In regards to battle gear using the same system, will it follow the same ilvl structure? Will it get added stats or extra guaranteed materia slots? Will it invalidate raiding, tome, or relic gear. If you can get top tier stats and gear via crafting without raiding or grinding out tomes then what’s the point? If my crafted gear puts me on par with savage raiders the only point to raiding would be achievements or mounts.

As far as consumables go the existence of higher rarity food or potions invalidates any lesser ones. Much like how a grade 3 tincture invalidates a grade 2. It would drive up the prices of grade 3s if there were multiple tiers and for the most part people would either get the top tier one or no potion at all. Honestly if there were multiple tiers of crafted items or gear, on top of having to deal with the rng of expert crafts, I’d probably drop crafting and gathering in its entirety. For me, expert crafts were not fun. If there was a condition forecast showing a few steps in advance I could plan around then I might have found it more enjoyable.

[Reyna_Balmore]

I agree that crafting needs some form of difficulty but expert crafts are not the way. In my opinion there’s nothing “expert” about having to adapt on the fly, not to mention the absolute reliance on rng skills such as rapid synthesis will make crafting fun and engaging.

I have no solution for this, other than a rework to the system to make it more challenging and a "meet stat requirement and copy / paste macro"

As for your idea about expanded rarity, imagine as a brand new crafter you have to make a set of HQ white gear, meld it to get ready to remake the exact same set but at a green rarity now, repeat for blue and purple rarity. It adds a lot of busywork asking for a brand new level 80 crafter to push through all of that if they haven’t been working on it from the beginning of the expansion.

My idea is that the difficulty won't be harder than the white gear, but instead the items will be harder to obtain. Such as items being available from certain dungeon chest like manor varnish and items being available from savage tier fights, that are of course tradeable if you don't like doing that kind of content.

In regards to battle gear using the same system, will it follow the same ilvl structure? Will it get added stats or extra guaranteed materia slots? Will it invalidate raiding, tome, or relic gear. If you can get top tier stats and gear via crafting without raiding or grinding out tomes then what’s the point? If my crafted gear puts me on par with savage raiders the only point to raiding would be achievements or mounts.

Hmmm, maybe these can be the same stats as raiding / relic gear, but have an equivalent of difficulty to obtain the items and to craft it (Crafting difficulty still in progress on how to make it more challenging) or probably make it top tier looking glam that's both class specific for combat classes and crafters / gatherers.

As far as consumables go the existence of higher rarity food or potions invalidates any lesser ones. Much like how a grade 3 tincture invalidates a grade 2. It would drive up the prices of grade 3s if there were multiple tiers and for the most part people would either get the top tier one or no potion at all. Honestly if there were multiple tiers of crafted items or gear, on top of having to deal with the rng of expert crafts, I’d probably drop crafting and gathering in its entirety. For me, expert crafts were not fun. If there was a condition forecast showing a few steps in advance I could plan around then I might have found it more enjoyable.

The difficulty of crafting is still up the in the air, but having higher tiers of good wouldn't completely invalidate the lesser tiers due to supply and demand. Even when there's going to be an abundance of the higher tier food, the lesser tier would just naturally phase out just like older foods of prior patches.

[tdb]

It's kinda hard to make a crafting system which is both realistic and has good replay value, because "meet stat requirements and copy/paste macro" is more or less how crafting in real life works. You acquire the skills and tools, learn the steps for making an item, and then repeat those steps to make more copies.

Tying crafting and combat content together is controversial. Raiders want exclusive rewards, so crafted equipment has to be inferior to the top raid equipment. On the other hand crafters want to feel relevant too, so it can't be too much inferior. And since crafted gear has to be inferior, it makes no sense to put the materials in the top raids. The materials can't be bound so as to require players to complete the raid to obtain the gear, because not all raiders want to craft.

Scrip materials are already intended to make the process of obtaining them more complex. Instead of just going out and gathering the material or killing monsters, you have to gather a bunch of other materials, craft a collectable item, turn it in, and then get the material you need for what you actually want to craft. Custom deliveries are an effective shortcut for those who only occasionally craft things, but if you want to spend most of your time crafting you'll need to grind the normal turn-ins too.

[Nabril]

Not only make things a bit more challenging and more time consuming to make with some risk involved, but also massively increasing the potency of the items. Finally giving us the ability to craft Green / Blue / Purple consumables.

No longer will items be obtained from tokens / scrips, such as platinum fish, highland cabbage, and workbench resin. Instead these items will be obtained from certain monsters around the world (There are too many cool monster designs that go mostly ignored), raids / extreme / savage / ultimates , big fishing, and gathering.

I think it would be really cool to not only make Green combat gear as we are now, but to go beyond that and give us the option to make some legendary stuff through a grindy task. I know this may not appeal to many, but I think hardcore crafters may like such an idea.

So basically you just want to drive up the price of everything. The rarer the ingredients, the higher the price. Not everyone wants to pay 20 million gil for a weapon. Hell, you can get a medium house for that. It it's bad enough that us crafters are being forced to spend millions overmelding just to craft the new stuff. I've already overmelded by 460 set and I can't craft the new equipment until I overmeld again? Only to dump that gear next expansion? No. Crafting doesn't need to get anymore "difficult" than it already is.

[tdb]

It it's bad enough that us crafters are being forced to spend millions overmelding just to craft the new stuff. I've already overmelded by 460 set and I can't craft the new equipment until I overmeld again?

False. I've not spent a single gil on materia and I was able to macro-craft the i480 combat gear and hand-craft the new i490 crafter gear when the patch hit. Both give 100% HQ results from NQ raw materials. Once I'm done upgrading my gear to i490 I can probably macro-craft the i490 stuff too. My melds for the i460 items were VIII in the guaranteed slots, then VI+IV+IV for overmelds because those grades give an around 20% chance of success and are much easier to obtain than VII and VIII. In some cases I used even lower grades because of stat limits. For the i430 accessories I had VI in the guarandeed slot and some lower grade materias for overmelds. At the time there wasn't much use for yellow crafter scrips so using them on the IV and VI materias was a cheap way to get those melds. Grades I through III are available from the Ixal.

[Sqwall]

False. I've not spent a single gil on materia and I was able to macro-craft the i480 combat gear and hand-craft the new i490 crafter gear when the patch hit. Both give 100% HQ results from NQ raw materials. Once I'm done upgrading my gear to i490 I can probably macro-craft the i490 stuff too. My melds for the i460 items were VIII in the guaranteed slots, then VI+IV+IV for overmelds because those grades give an around 20% chance of success and are much easier to obtain than VII and VIII. In some cases I used even lower grades because of stat limits. For the i430 accessories I had VI in the guarandeed slot and some lower grade materias for overmelds. At the time there wasn't much use for yellow crafter scrips so using them on the IV and VI materias was a cheap way to get those melds. Grades I through III are available from the Ixal.

I would agree with this to a certain degree. I spent maybe 1.2mil on materia and was able to meld up to req. for i480 crafts easily. Now yes I did spend a large chunk to just START crafting i480 Neo-Ishgard, but I made that back in an hour. I think it's all in how you look at it for crafting really. The stat requirements for the i490 was really me adding +65 craftsmanship and +45 control, and +18CP. Then I was off to the races with only 2 pieces of new i490 crafting set being used. Didn't even have to change my macros. Then I made an ENTIRE Gathering left side for myself. And then made Crafting LEFT and RIGHT side for myself from base mats. Only using 1 HQ mat for i490 (levinstrike was easy to get HQ and I could HQ the i480 mats easily)

[Reyna_Balmore]

So basically you just want to drive up the price of everything. The rarer the ingredients, the higher the price. Not everyone wants to pay 20 million gil for a weapon. Hell, you can get a medium house for that. It it's bad enough that us crafters are being forced to spend millions overmelding just to craft the new stuff. I've already overmelded by 460 set and I can't craft the new equipment until I overmeld again? Only to dump that gear next expansion? No. Crafting doesn't need to get anymore "difficult" than it already is.

If my idea drives up prices, than yes, why not. The effort put into an item should be worth a nice price should it not?

And "Us" crafters spend millions on overmelds? You're speaking for every crater with that sentence and that's flat out false. I spent only about 1.5m for my melds, because that majority of materia could be earn EXTREMELY fast through some crafting and gathering. My current 490 gear is free just from doing the content. Simple and easy with some effort.

Thanks for your response though

[Liam_Harper]

It it's bad enough that us crafters are being forced to spend millions overmelding just to craft the new stuff.

I'm max pentamelded on the entire 490 set including 16 tools and it cost me nothing. In fact I had a few hundred materia spare and I've been making profit. I simply planned ahead, kept my retainers on mats duty for Syrups and Tinctures (now Lemonade and Espresso), spent half an hour here and there grinding scrips and it added up to silly amounts over a month or two. Gathering is the same and I have more materia than I'll ever use, I've even posted the method several times. The problem is most crafters nowadays can't be bothered taking time to research or earn anything and stockpiling in advance probably never occurs to them.

So basically you just want to drive up the price of everything.

I love that people still bring this up. The easier crafting changes have effectively made the top crafters ten times richer than new and casual crafters. They were sitting on a billion or more gil. That sort of money is ten times harder to earn than in StB or HW with everything being cheap and easily obtained now, thus their wealth is at an untouchable level that the casual player can never obtain.
If crafting was harder at endgame, it opens up the opportunity for even casual players to earn decent gil with some effort. Right now, they can only ever earn peanuts and the rich players are quite happy sitting on their gil mountain. We really don't care about gil that much. We just liked crafting a lot.

[ForteNightshade]

So basically you just want to drive up the price of everything. The rarer the ingredients, the higher the price. Not everyone wants to pay 20 million gil for a weapon. Hell, you can get a medium house for that. It it's bad enough that us crafters are being forced to spend millions overmelding just to craft the new stuff. I've already overmelded by 460 set and I can't craft the new equipment until I overmeld again? Only to dump that gear next expansion? No. Crafting doesn't need to get anymore "difficult" than it already is.

Implying that crafting in Shadowbringers is anything but piss easy. Nowadays, you can get away with cheap melds and still HQ everything without any HQ mats. It's among the primary reasons prices for endgame crafted gear have plummeted compared to expansions prior. Well, that and the rampant botting that SE largely ignores.

I love that people still bring this up. The easier crafting changes have effectively made the top crafters ten times richer than new and casual crafters. They were sitting on a billion or more gil. That sort of money is ten times harder to earn than in StB or HW with everything being cheap and easily obtained now, thus their wealth is at an untouchable level that the casual player can never obtain.
If crafting was harder at endgame, it opens up the opportunity for even casual players to earn decent gil with some effort. Right now, they can only ever earn peanuts and the rich players are quite happy sitting on their gil mountain. We really don't care about gil that much. We just liked crafting a lot.

Case in point, I made my first 10M way back in Heavensward selling almost nothing but baby leveling gear and Chocobo Aprons. It helped get my foot in the door to eventually make the Ironworks set. I actually spent a fair bit of time figuring out exactly how to get the stats to make it while spending the least amount of money. All of that is gone nowadays as they all but throw gear at you and crafting has become absurdly easy to the point it'll barely take any effort at all to catch up.