Oh boy, here I go posting again

Hello. It is in fact yer boi Deus Blackheart posting again. This time I was advised that I should post it here as the discussion could be pretty damn interesting.

Crafting. You may love it, you may hate it, but ultimately it's a massive part of the game and an essential part of higher level content. Now for those of you that don't watch my streams (understandable) I've been engaged in a multi-month process of making 100 constantan knives skinned with the Kobold Chainsword skin, with each one given an Imbued Necromancy Jewel. The idea is to throw out all 100 with three enchants and three masterworks effects. Now this has lead to me farming up 2000 gold and silver and as such I have started to question my life choices but more importantly I've started to question why it's been so hard to farm up the gold and silver.

As a dedicated idiot, and also as someone who lives in a timezone that is alien to most folk here, I usually end up doing all this on my own. I actually enjoy this but it does lead me down some philosophical questions when I do. For one, I've found that collecting silver is a slow and painful process which has worked fastest for me in the Elysium Mines. For those of you about to start asking why I can't do Vikland, I don't pass the dps check to defeat enemies at a reasonable speed and thus can't go far without an errant fireball or arrow to my posterior. While doing the silver mining, I found that on average I'd get something in the region of 370-390 ore, and from that I'd end up with 95-115 ingots per hour long run. This was with both whisky's, an obsidian potion of precision, and mining gear. However something that caught my eye while going through my smelting is that there's a scrap based recipe and this has lead me down a dark hole of trying to optimize my smelting.

Silver scrap drops from one of two sources, one is silver jewellery and the other is apparently something in Blood Bay. The reason I say "something" is because according to the searchable API, it's the only place where it drops and in the last 7 days (at the time of this post) it's dropped 58.



Gold scrap has a similarly terrible drop rate.



For comparison, metal scrap drops at something akin to several times that.


Now this confused me. Metal scrap is used mostly to increase your output of copper and iron, which is pretty useful as you can also further refine this into such things as constantan, white iron, and so on. So why is it that silver and gold scrap have such awful equivalent drop rates? Silver and Gold are essential to making better weapons, armour, and other wearables. Given that scrap recipes have a 2/12-1 ratio (2 Ore/12 Scrap - 1 Ingot, not including coal and the ingot mould) this is generally considered pretty good when to you compare it to the 4/0-1 ratio that you get normally. Now far be it from me to know why, but the fact that gold and silver scrap have such low drop rates means that it's not exactly viable to actually do that, and this might lead some to the inter-player market, however being Scottish and living up to the meme, I am a bit of a penny pincher when it comes to big purchases.

Which leads me to the questions that I have:

1. Why is silver and gold scrap so rare, it would make it easier to make better gear with less grind which is not inherently a bad thing when after 1000 hours I'm not in the end-game.
2. How is it that some players can acquire so much, while even when I'm juiced up like a bodybuilding model and I have 127 in metic, I can get so little. (not complaining, asking)
3. Is there a way to fix this?

So here's the meat and tatties of this post; I would like to ask, as I have asked myself: what would the effect of increasing access to silver and gold scrap to the game. Not just in pure power, as players getting access to more powerful equipment with less grind could sound bad, but given power disparity between builds it could be a nothing burger and there's already powerful equipment available which has no level requirement to it, even then if you're crafting it by yourself you still have to earn the xp to be able to level the skills to make it.

Even taking similar builds into account, how does this have a knock on effect on the macro-economic model of the game's player economy, as basic supply and demand models would indicate that it would cause the cost of those resources to fluctuate, but would this be a bad thing? Eg: is the price of these resources being held high by the virtue of convenience to pay someone else to do the mining/smelting of those resources and how much is that time practically worth.

The big issue I have is that this: currently if you're a player who wants to get into crafting, you need to have a lot of resources to invest into what will be not just a loss but a massive loss for a long time. Selling enchanted/masterwork items to NPCs isn't worth the money as their cost doesn't scale for NPCs. Players are unlikely to want to buy stuff that is underpowered and as such you have an environment where crafting is needed for higher level content, but the barrier to entry can be massive. Excluding any gold cost from paying for picks and smelting equipment (as well as ingot moulds and advanced crafting chisels and such) you're looking at millions of XP, millions of gold wasted on coal (which is easier to get at an NPC than it is to find on most maps) and that's not countenancing the cost of enchanting materials which if you're not spec'd hard into farming can be a costly experience. It can lead to a reliance on already existing powerful crafters and it can put people off crafting entirely which by it's nature of supply versus demand, means that those who can craft powerful stuff can charge what they like and price players out of potentially higher end areas.

I have struggled as a Death Mage, and without pretty consistent help from experienced players giving me items that radically boosted my abilities (even just raw stats) I don't see how I would have gotten as far as I have, and those people generally found me through my stream. For someone else who isn't as social, doesn't stream, or even plays offline, this barrier seems needlessly grindy and complicated.

However fear not, for I do not come to you with only doom and gloom. For that is far to depressing, no I have a few ideas but the main one is to do with that scrap I mentioned. As stated before, there's something that drops silver and gold in Blood Bay and The Breach as shown above, but I would like to make the following suggestion: Have artefacts of wearable items (non-weapons) have a 30% chance to drop either silver or gold scraps, but this is irrespective of the level of the item. Players are already encouraged to break these items down for their gems and the ancient essence already so it would actually be a reward for doing so that makes enchanting/masterworking easier. It would be tied to a flat rate across all types of wearables and would require the player to sacrifice a rare item (relatively) for a chance at the resource, but it would be as a bonus and not as a primary source.

The reason for this suggestion is tied to how you can get scrap by breaking things down at the moment. Jewellery and chalices (I should charge rent given how they live there). For the most basic jewellery you can make it costs 5 ingots, and you might get like 2 scrap out of it. So you're spending 20 ore for the chance at maybe 2 scrap and you need 12 scrap to make one ingot. It's inefficiency is staggering, equally chalices are usually found in scenes but again rare to find, low scrap drop rate (from experience maybe 5 from a single one?) so my suggestion is making things easier but not radically so. I don't think it would flood the market but it's a subtle way to make it easier for more casual players on a material level, not an XP level to reach higher heights. For a more advanced player who is already at high level play this shouldn't make a real difference as this would likely be a mid level buff and an easing of the crafting barrier to entry. Ideally I'd like a lot more scrap but it's something I'd like people to discuss as my experiences cannot be universal and I'm mostly just hoping it doesn't take me months to make my own weapons and armour when I'm ready to upgrade my own set up as I have finally figured out that Death/H. Armour is bloody awesome and fun.

 

Lately I have been getting most of my silver and gold from encounters. I do run with a pet pig to keep the focus away from me. Wolf speed potions and the whiskys and precision/expedience potions and two mining rings. Dash around zone then leave. Took me well over 6 months to get all my masterworks up 120 or higher. Just to make my own gear. It's fun to experiment with the different imbued gems. I sell anything half decent really cheap and dump everything else into the loot table. I have thought about trying for some high end stuff. But then I get silly and start making supple coconut bra's of rending or hardned bodice top of chaos

 

That Scrap silver and gold you see is harvested at blood bay and breach... that's dropped from clockwork dragons.
Got a bunch on me right now from those two sources.

 

I think the most efficient way to get into crafting is building an enormous pool of producer xp by mining gold and silver ingots. Then use all the +learning items and start crafting.

Adding a reliable source of gold and silver scraps has been suggested over and over again, and I honestly don't know why it hasn't happened. I don't think it would be bad for the game in any way, it would probably just lower gold and silver ingot prices a bit.

It's a very long road but once you get your metic very high, you can get around 200 gold or silver ingots per hour of mining.

My advice when you are grinding to get into crafting - when mining gold and silver ore, skip meticulous on the iron/copper nodes unless you crit on any metic. Or just skip those nodes all together in encounters, Elysium and Etceter Crag mines. Then during double xp move to Tanglemire because you get double xp (20k producer xp) per metic on those nodes.

 

From a realistic point of view there is no need for any substantial loss when melting down anything. So whatever the amount of metal of any kind a ring or necklace consists of, it should return that same amount when melted down after the gems have been removed before.

If that would be too much silver or gold scraps for the econonmy the better way would be to have another skill and tool: Gold/Silversmith and jewellers prongues to remove jewels unscratched.

 

127 in metic is not enough. At 130 you see the first little effort on metic. And you need a necklace with metic too. Don't use a tamed pet. Cast a pet from the magic tree. I prefer the earth elemental. My used skills for mining are earth magic and blunt weapons. Blunt works fine on skeletons. I try to get my metic skill up to 150 in the hope to hit the 20 more often.

 

Is the ab0ve qu0te the topic for discussion?

 

I guess, but it doesn't change much of the grind. What changed the grind was the introduction of all the + learning items.

Obsidian potion of guidance, LBs cake, the numerous other +25 learning items, the learning blessing in lost vale & grusk. It makes the ingot cost a complete joke compared to when I leveled it up. With a substantial producer pool you can do it very quickly and extremely cost effective. But you have to put the time in to grind the pool up first. It's insanely cheap to get there now if you know what you're doing and follow the advice.

The ingots aren't the issue at all for a new crafter anymore. The real gate to crafting is the producer pool xp. It's cheap as hell to do it now(compared to when we didn't have any of these learning items), if you do it efficiently.

 

Meticulous collection, like all other bonuses in this game, is tracked using a double precision floating point value (IEEE 754). Each skill level grants you a small bump in that value. There is no thresholding going on here.

 

Yeah, I run around with my summoned Lich. However despite doing nothing but saving my crafting XP I currently only have around 40 mil, so essentially I'm caught in a situation where I need massive amounts of xp AND I still feel that the drop rate of silver and gold scrap is absolutely abysmal especially as if silver and gold scrap are only dropping from one or two types of dragon then it's even worse. Metal scrap is so common that I have over 20,000 and I've sold off more than that before. Metal scrap's job is to help lower the grind for smelting copper and iron as they can be refined further. Silver and Gold can't but they have a much higher grind rate in a way that makes it nearly impossible to use consistently for it's intended purpose to the point where it's use is practically inverted as the scrap is rarer than the ore.

 

As a heads up, you can get gold and silver scrap by scrapping various items that spawn on certain maps. I'm pretty sure there are silver candlesticks that provide silver scrap.

 

I would say almost all of that Bloodbay silver scrap drop was me

With regards to getting getting it from scrap, I would suggest every item that has a masterwork on it when scrapped drops a few silver scraps, and a few gold scraps for enhanced items would be a nice addition to the system

 

I disagree, it's been a complete pain in the ass to farm these up. It's been genuinely months of gathering and very little xp gain comparatively. The xp has slowed my progress, but even just the ability to smelt more would increase the xp gain. I break down every item that I get as drops atm. The way that crafting works makes it better to make in bulk, so making access to silver and gold easier would make things better. Consider that I've not covered the cost of tool repair, or buying crafting items, the cost of coal is mentioned, but the more efficient you make it, the more xp you gain from smelting which will help you chip into that xp hill that is a pain as it is.

 

You can get about 5-6 mil producer xp in Tanglemire per hour if you only do they mining nodes. 10-12 mil during double xp. That's just 1 hour. Addition of the scraps will help, but getting the xp is always going to be the bottleneck in comparison. Because like I said you can raise the skills really fast once you build a large pool

Also, I'm completely on your side about adding gold/silver scraps. I'm just trying to help. For my xp mining run I only do the Tanglemire mining nodes and then teleport to grusk and do the mining nodes there for about 5 minutes and then use the balloon to return directly to Tanglemire.

 

You misunderstand. I'm not talking about xp. I'm talking about getting the specific resources.

 

Forget about scraps. Grind Tanglemire during 1X, plan and prepare to make Papa Holly Hoagies and/or teleport to zone scrolls during 2x. Dump XP into mining base, mining speed and mining meticulous. Grind Etceter Crag and Elysium.

 

If you have a ton of xp you don't need a lot of resources to level up crafting, you can use all the learning bonuses i mentioned to cut the cost WAY down for resources. With crafting levels at about 120 you can make really nice equipment. It costs 8 million for the base enchanting and masterwork skills to reach 120. And 16 million for the sub classes in each category to reach 120. When I did it there were no learning bonuses, and it cost a lot. You can completely cut that corner now.

 

So again, I was speaking very specifically about access to gold and silver scrap access because of the low amount of stuff I get even with my set up. I stream every Friday and my vods stay up for at least a week so if you want you can review the footage, but my issue is that the rate at which you can get resources is crap, the grind is a 4 ore to 1 ingot ratio compared with 2 ore and 12 scrap which at the moment isn't a grind, it's an impossibility for 99% of players because gold and silver scrap are rarer than the ore. What is the point of a scrap system if it's rarer to get the scrap than the other raw components? Iron and Copper do not have this issue as I have over 20,000 metal scrap sitting idle, and the big upgrade for them involves low drop rate materials to refine them further.

 

To be honest I get the scrap system and I do agree they should be dropping more but I personally just hate the fact that the ore to ingot is 4-1 definitely does not feel great to farm for hours just to have this little pile of silver or gold ingots that literally get eaten in a matter of seconds because enchants and masterwork taking 5 ingots each use but that just me.

 

Please, this has been brought up so many times its painful - you dump 15 to 20 silver and gold ingots into something, and it turns to junk - at least let us get something back from salvaging it