Is crafting worth it? : EverQuest 2 General Discussions

I was wondering how important tradeskills will be in the game? Will it be worth it to spend what i'm sure will be massive amounts of time to become a master craftsman?
By 'important' I mean, will what I make compare to the item drops off mobs? Or will EQ2 become similar to EQ1 in that so many people are farming and selling item drops that tradeskills eventually become phased out for the most part because it's cheaper and easier to simply buy the items?

Just wondering what you guys thought.

Lets put it this way. There will always be really nice mob drops. But beyond a mob drop, you cannot get very good items unless they are crafted. So 90% = player made 10% = mob drops.

Besides that crafting is almost always much more valuable in the beinning of any game. At the beginning you can usually craft stuff that is to good for your level.. where as later you might only be able to craft stuff for your level or below

It will take a while before mob drops drown out player crafted items in a new game, but if what Wyv said is true then that may never happen in EQ2. Of course knowing SOE future expansions might and probably will change that.

Actually, any game without item decay will always suffer item drop over crafted item problems later in the game's life. Let me explain. A level 10 mob drops a good sword that is much better than a player item level 10 sword. The mob drops it every day, once a day. Now a year later, there are 365 of those swords in the game, and there will always be that number. It will increase as time goes by. The only way to counter that problem, is to add item decay. But you cannot really have an item based game with item decay can you? Now, they have added a currency hole in that you have to repair your items, but they cannot be destroyed through battle. Everquest has taken ideas from a bunch of different games and added it to its own. When you die, your items go through decay. When it hits 0, you cannot wear it anymore. Unlike daoc (where the idea came from) in which the item can be permantly destroyed if you use it past a certain durability point.

Personally, I think they should have items be destroyed and/or the durability lowered as it is repaired so eventually the item is useless and discarded. But that wont happen in EQ2.

Good points.
I guess I dont mind the system in EQ1 too much, it's just the difference between a new game and one that's been around 6 years.
If i think really hard (and i mean REALLY hard- college parties fuzz most of my memories of that time), i can remember going from newbie town to newbie town selling banded armor for 1p per AC.
I can see where EQ2 will most likely travel the same road, I'll just enjoy it while it's still fresh i guess.

Bah - didnt know i wasnt logged in there. Not used to being able to post as a guest lol.

There will always be a need for crafted items in the low to mid game, so you will always have a market there. I'm only lvl 15 but as far as I've seen weapon/armor drops are pretty rare, you have to purchase most of your gear, and it's cheaper to buy from a crafter than the vendor.

I havent gotten one, but under the recupies there seems to be some recycling skills. If so, down the line you may be able to get some hinge-like action for making items strictly for vendors. Anyone have a recycle skill that can confirm?

Also, in DAOC the only items I have ever had any problem with decay have been L50 items and artifacts. Everything else does infact decay, but I give all my noob alts L40 gear at L1 and it lasts them until they need to upgrade. We will have to see what happens as mor epeople break the L30 barrier.

Hrm.. Accualy item decay first started in Ultima Online. It came about because OSI realized that too many people were getting Uber l00t and just storing it in thier houses. Normally you try and provide enough of an incentive to sell the item to an NPC based economy such as lots of money. And THEN you have players who have amassed too much money. Then you provide items/special things that cost a LOT of money so you can create a player money sink in the player economy... Sorry I got carried away.. I was a Dev for a free UO shard..

Oph

Somebody has to craft, but not necessarily you or me.

This is how i would work it if i was in charge

Item Decay:
Weapons and armour (or activable items) would definately decay and risk being destroyed.
So you have a sword that when brand new, has a condition and a durability: 'Fine Honed Sword' becomes 'Fine Sharp Sword' becomes 'Fine Dull Sword' and finally 'Fine Blunt Sword' - at this point you could continue to equip it but it would be doing less damage each time it went down. So you go and fix it up and it becomes 'Sharp' again, but its quality goes to 'Average' - and so on until its quality becomes 'Worn' - using it then risks it breaking. If it breaks its only good for melting down into a lessened quality metal bar.

Item Repair:
Items made out of different materials would last longer in the different stages or whatever (repairing should also cost you a fuel and metal cluster, and a certain skill in the relvevant repair class, magic items would need to be worked on by a high skill and using imbued raw materials, and maybe special ingredients - uber items maybe even need items that are no-trade)

Crafting:
Player crafted items would always be of a higher quality than anything you could buy from NPCs. Though it would never happen - the aim would be to make a fully working player economy whereby if the merchant NPCs weren't there, nobody would care - because low level crafters would be honing their skills and outfitting low level characters with items. As they get better, they make better items for better characters, or uber quality low grade items.

I seem to remember in UO you could have a makers mark too, this would be great if you could do a similar thing - and perhaps have the option (with uber money and some very rare no-trade mob drop items) to craft unique named items.

Thoughts?

Well, what has been stated about EQ2's implementation of item decay is not totally correct. It is true that items never become unreparable and that item decay is more a way of keeping down inflation then anything else. But where the statements have been off is that in EQ2 items now need to be attuned. This is true of most items at least. What this means is that to use an item you need to attune it and once attuned it becomes no-trade. The player can use it for ever but once they out grow it they either delete it, sell it to a NPC vendor, or store it for no good reason. This does put a small amount of cash back into the economy but not much.

I think SOE's intention is to push players to buy more player made items. They also removed much cash making ability that used to be available by doing tradeskill writs and wholesaler tasks as well as reducing the buy back price NPC vendors offered. This pushed tradeskillers to sell to players instead of to vendors.

In my opinion though, this has caused a bit of a problem on smaller servers. The problem is that the demand is no where near the supply capacity. Take for instance a tailor. In one night a tailor can produce 100 bags real easily. But he will be lucky to sell 10 bags a night to players. Sure they made it so that you would recoupe your costs but only on items bought from a vendor. So you either have to gather your own supplies or take a loss when selling to a NPC. In effect, you remove the ability to level your crafter without loosing money to do it. May not sound to bad until you are a tier 4 crafter and loosing 10g per tradeskill level. And it gets worse at tier 5.

So back to the original question ... yes, crafters do produce good items and in many cases better then common to slightly rare dropped items. But there is really no motivation anymore to craft a significant amount other then the pure addiction to crafting.