Forums » Crafting and Gathering

Crafting Molds

    • 259 posts
    June 14, 2018 7:16 PM PDT

    As I look back over my crafting career, I think back to the release of EverQuest. It was my first introduction to Tradeskills in an MMO. You were hunting to gain experience for the character you were building. While doing this you collected items to sell for coins. You needed coins to be able to buy gear, weapons and spells etc. that you needed as your character gained levels. It was cool being able to craft items from the things you collected while hunting. This combination allowed you to adventure and craft at the same time. What more could you ask for, I was impressed to say the least. I decided that I would try a few different Tradeskills with different characters, to see if I could find one that stood out to me. One that I could really enjoy doing besides just adventuring.

    I was playing a dwarf cleric at the time, which is why I chose to play a dwarf cleric in P99, and I decided to try my hand at making armor. I found that the Blacksmithing trade allowed you to make both armor and weapons. I gave it a try and really enjoyed it.

    The first thing you needed to do was to find the ore you would use to craft your item. For some reason I could not find the ore I needed to start my career.  Asking others and doing some research I found out that I had to break down a larger piece of ore. Okay, now how do I do that? I was told that I needed a chisel to use in the forge along with the larger piece of ore to create the smaller versions I needed. Great, after looking for a chisel all over my starting town, I couldn’t find one. Back to asking around again and I was told that you could not purchase one here, that you had to travel to a different town to purchase your chisel. So, I very careful made the long run to the town that sold the chisel I needed and made the return trip back to my starting town. I was finally ready to start my crafting career. I put the ore and my new chisel in the forge, hit combine and like magic I had two smaller pieces of ore. These smaller pieces were then combined with water in the forge to create your first complete item, metal bits. These were the foundation of your smithing career and were used in many recipes to increase your skill level and create items used by other crafters of different Tradeskills

    Once your skill was high enough you could start attempting armor recipes. This is what I had been waiting for, making my own armor. For the first time in my gaming career, not counting mud’s and top down 2D games, I was able to create 3D items in a 3D world. I just finished my first visible set of banded armor for my Paladin. Feeling pretty good!

    This so captured my attention that I have crafted in every MMO I have played since EverQuest and will do the same in Pantheon. I am currently reminiscing in P99 with a cleric crafting my armor and playing a Paladin through the original EverQuest world reinvented by the team at Project 1999, a huge kudos to you all!

    Back to the topic I want to discuss about crafting, Molds. When you started to craft armor in EverQuest you needed to use molds in your armor and weapon recipes, I loved this idea. A different mold for each different armor piece. And for your weapons a mold for each section of your weapon. You gathered a pommel, hilt and blade mold then combined them with your metal and water to create a weapon. To me this gave blacksmithing a real world feel. Some current MMO’s don’t use this technique for crafting. I would like to see Pantheon follow in this tradition. From what we have seen so far Pantheon is going to have quite a robust crafting system. I’m eagerly awaiting the next information release on the subject. What are your thoughts on Crafting Molds?

    • 3 posts
    June 15, 2018 8:56 AM PDT

    Something I think would be neat would be if you create your own molds. Perhaps creating a sword takes, 3 iron ingots but as you get more effecient (skill ups) you get the idea to start using molds and you can create the mold which will reduce the number of materials it would cost since you have a more efficient way of making it, causing less waste.

    Or perhaps a trade skill class that their main focus is creating templates/molds etc to be sold to other crafters who can make their combines require less materials. This would be a cool way to have crafters reliant upon one another the way adventurers are. Essentially going it alone as a black smith will be possible, but slower/harder because it will require more materials. But if you cooperate within a group of craftsman, you can help one another advance at a quicker / less expensive rate. Sort of like solo adventuring vs group adventuring. 

    • 259 posts
    June 18, 2018 7:08 AM PDT

    That's kind of an interesting idea. I never thought of creating our own molds. I like that.