Forums » Crafting and Gathering

Ability to craft any item?

    • 1468 posts
    April 29, 2017 5:59 AM PDT

    How about this for an idea? A crafter can make any item that drops in the world but there would be no recipes for how to do it. In order for a crafter to make an item they would have to experiment with the ingredients they have available. If they get it wrong they lose the ingredients and if they get it right they make the item (if their skill is sufficiently high enough).

    I know a lot of people will say this is a terrible idea because it will remove the need to camp mobs to get special items but by using the experimentation system and the fact that you lose your ingredients on any unsuccessful combine it would be massively expensive. It could take years for crafters to work out how to make all the drops in the game and there might be some items that crafters never work out how to make. Crafters might get some hints in game on how to make certain items by completing quests or be reading lore in the world.

    To me it makes perfect sense. For the item to exist on the mob it must have been made by someone in the first place so why can't player crafters also learn how to make it?

    You could mix in the perception system so that if you had a low perception and tried to do a combine you wouldn't notice the magical properties of some of your ingredients and the combine would fail on the other hand if you had a high perception you would notice it and the combine would succeed.

    I just think it is a bit weird that NPCs have items that must have been made by another NPC for them to exist. Unless the lore stated that these items were somehow summoned into the world. So if NPCs can make the items why can't players? If making the items was a sort of secret that had to be worked out certain crafters who discovered how to make certain items could keep it secret from other crafters and make a tidy profit from doing so. The better the item the harder it is to discover how to make it.

    I wrote a few more idea down here for what I thought of the system:

    https://www.pantheoncrafters.com/resources/craft-any-item.9/

    • 160 posts
    May 15, 2017 12:11 AM PDT

    I think the perception system could be important here.  For instance, if you get a combination of items ALMOST right, you might get a message "it seems like this would work a little better with more "____"" sort of thing.  Or "it didn't mix well, perhaps try more heat".....etc. etc.

    I think absolutely no recipes would be bad (you need something to "prime the pump" so to speak on how very basic crafting works), but the idea of a LOT of recipes just waiting to be discovered/invented sounds great...for instance, someone who discovered something useful could make a good bit of money, and deservedly so, but there would have to be ways to make their advantage not permanent.  Other crafters might buy one of the items and, using their perception of course, use a bit of reverse engineering to figure it out eventually.


    This post was edited by corpserunner at May 15, 2017 12:21 AM PDT
    • 1468 posts
    May 15, 2017 2:38 AM PDT

    corpserunner said:

    I think the perception system could be important here.  For instance, if you get a combination of items ALMOST right, you might get a message "it seems like this would work a little better with more "____"" sort of thing.  Or "it didn't mix well, perhaps try more heat".....etc. etc.

    I think absolutely no recipes would be bad (you need something to "prime the pump" so to speak on how very basic crafting works), but the idea of a LOT of recipes just waiting to be discovered/invented sounds great...for instance, someone who discovered something useful could make a good bit of money, and deservedly so, but there would have to be ways to make their advantage not permanent.  Other crafters might buy one of the items and, using their perception of course, use a bit of reverse engineering to figure it out eventually.

    Yeah the perception system would be a good way to give hints and tips as would quests and lore found in libraries and other areas of the game.

    When I said no recipes. I meant for items dropped from mobs. Normal player made items would obviously have a receipe and would be found like any other normal item but if you were trying to make an item that dropped from a mob you should absolutely have to work out how to make it yourself using the experiementation system and the perception system along with other hints and tips (maybe by gaining faction with that mob and talking to NPCs on that faction for some info).

    The idea is to make it possible to craft any item but to make the hardest items it should takes years or perhaps never be discovered. It would be great if there were undiscovered secrets in the game when it came to crafting and that is what I am trying to propose here. A system which would act as a money and time sink but would also result in some of the greatest rewards available to crafters.

    As to how to make sure that someone doesn't keep a crafting recipe secret for ever hopefully there will be so many items that one person knowing how to create one item won't ruin the game too much. After all if they have spent millions of plat on trying to discover these item recipes then they should absolutely be rewarded for that.

    I like this discussion though so if anyone else has any ideas that would be great :). I'd be interested to hear what the devs think about this as it would be the first time it has been done in any MMO as far as I am aware and could be a big selling point for people interested in crafting.

    • 10 posts
    May 15, 2017 11:13 PM PDT

    I feel this is a really good use of the preception system.  I personally would love to see preception play a role in crafting in a similar fashion.  I think it would be pretty cool if preception also played a role in a cartography type trade skill.  Like my character is good at making maps, however, my preception will affect the level of detail of that map. Not just the level of detail though, the accuracy of the map, the scale, the correct placement of landmarks in relation to other landmarks in the region and so forth.

    • 1468 posts
    May 15, 2017 11:28 PM PDT

    dpmguimaraes said:

    I feel this is a really good use of the preception system.  I personally would love to see preception play a role in crafting in a similar fashion.  I think it would be pretty cool if preception also played a role in a cartography type trade skill.  Like my character is good at making maps, however, my preception will affect the level of detail of that map. Not just the level of detail though, the accuracy of the map, the scale, the correct placement of landmarks in relation to other landmarks in the region and so forth.

    I agree. I think the perception system is key to a lot of crafting related skills and could be used in so many different systems that it could make crafting in Pantheon so much different when compared with other games and frankly it is the one system that has me really excited (I mean there are lots of things that have me excited but perception is the most important one).

    • 33 posts
    July 6, 2017 7:25 PM PDT

    I have mixed feelings on this. I like the idea in general, but at some point it really would affect the balance of the economy in uncontrolled or unforseen ways. Not to mention, if you have thousands or items in game how many different recipes would have to be created with unique ingredients. Would take forever to implement well and I want to play now! :)