If you’re not interested in the preamble, please skip to the headings below.
I love a lot of things about the crafting system, especially during the campaign and early monoliths. It’s very refreshing to have deterministic crafting which isn’t guaranteed to work. A very creative way to avoid the tropes of:
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Collect ingredients to combine in a recipe while leveling up your crafting ability, so that you can unlock new recipes to gather ingredients for.
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Spam a bunch of crafting materials (let’s call them orbs) that transform items in various ways until, hopefully, you eventually roll a useful set of affixes at a relatively powerful tier.
That said, I think it starts to lose steam in the endgame. For example, I’ve kind of lost interest in my level 94 sorcerer, even though I’m really enjoying the empowered boss fights. It’s mainly because it feels like I only have two options to improve his gear:
- Get almost exactly the same affixes on almost exactly the same base items, but manage not to fracture before getting everything to T5.
- Find one of a few T6/T7 affixes on a select few base items and, if that ever happens, also manage not to fracture it before getting most of the other stats near T5.
I don’t mind grinding and I don’t expect perfect items to be handed to me but it isn’t particularly motivating when it feels like I’ll probably spend dozens of hours to improve my character in increments of 3% increased health or 2 intelligence.
I understand that this is a work in progress and that it would be completely unrealistic of me to expect a fully fleshed-out endgame crafting experience. I also imagine that as more unique items are added, there will be new options to aspire to beyond what is available from crafting and exalted drops.
Regardless, I’m very impressed by what is currently available and, even if nothing were to change, it will probably feel better once trading is a thing. However, I think the framework you’ve established has the potential to grow into a really deep crafting system, and, to that end, I’d like to share some ideas.
Glyphs and Runes
- I’m in the process of moving these ideas to a similar thread started by @Heavy: Suggestions for additional runes/glyphs
Enchantments
Items could occasionally be found with an enchantment, or perhaps a rare crafting item could be used to apply an enchantment to gear. Either way, the enchantments would affect crafting on that item, in one or more ways, for a limited number of rolls.
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The next X crafts will have one of the following conditions:
a) add reduced or no instability
b) 50-100% less fracture chance
c) an increased chance for critical success
d) roll affixes with lucky values (closer to max of range) -
Possible constraints:
a) Enchantments can only be added to items with <= X instability
b) Glyphs can’t be used for ‘enchanted’ crafts
c) Items automatically fracture once enchantment is expended
Capsules
Destroy an item to capture one or more of its affixes within the capsule.
- These affixes, along with a suitable amount of instability, could then be applied to a different base item.
- This would replace any affixes currently on the item (or can only be used on normal items, but that might make loot filters onerous).
I don’t purport to have any idea how to balance the addition of these crafting options, nor do I expect they would be implemented in a way resembling what I’ve put forward here. This is purely an exercise in brainstorming.
I’d love to hear more ideas from other members of the community!
