Crafting/Fracturing Mechanic

Feedback and Suggestions
1

I’m really over crafting, especially because things keep fracturing when they have a 2% chance to fail… I haven’t ever been able to craft a t5, mostly because the drops I keep getting are (99% of the time) not even close to exactly what I want on an item and when you start crafting from scratch the instability builds up way too fast, even with the crafting aid/support scrolls. Really sucks having a bunch of sub-par gear because of luck and nothing else.

Removal Runes being random sucks as well, especially with the drop only t6/7 affixes now. And because white items can almost never stack fully up to 4 t5 affixes, the Cleanse runes are almost pointless too. Basically you’re stuck waiting for a random yellow/purple item that happens to have exactly what you want and then doesn’t fracture while crafting it. That puts you completely at the mercy of RNG, not at the mercy of hard work or skill. Crafting should be an issue of farming for the shards and owning the shards being the only factor as to whether you can craft it onto the item. If I was to change anything it would be to make affix shards rarer but scrap the instability mechanic.

Also shatter runes are not dropped anywhere near enough and my inventory/stash is stacking up with things I want to smash for affix shards but either I have to buy shatter runes (which there’s never enough in the vendor either) or just leave it there til I can buy more. And shatter runes are too expensive as well for how much gold I’m getting at this stage of the game (early monolith runs). Really wish we didn’t have to buy shatter runes, I mean a forge should be able to just shatter anything you want to shatter at any time, free of charge, considering how much everything else costs. I’m almost eternally broke atm just trying to buy enough shatter runes, meaning I can’t gamble for items or buy stash tabs or roll mods on Monoliths or anything.

This current crafting system just leaves me with constant frustration and anger.

Take the randomness out of crafting, the luck factor side of it, and you’ll have a much better more satisfying system on your hands. Make the factor hard work and farming for the right shards and people will have much more drive to farm. It really sucks the fun out of it when you’ve been farming for ages to find even one good item, only to have it fracture at the start of crafting. That’s not even mentioning when you have crafted a lot onto an item and even with Guardian Scrolls you can still end up with a damaging or destructive fracture, ruining the item you’ve put all the effort/resources/hard work into. If I wanted to lose my items and my hard work and effort, I’d go play Hardcore, but I don’t because it not fun for me, losing all that.

If you had the good shards be even rarer than they are, you could even build an economy on trading of shards, which I know is a non-factor at the moment because we don’t have multiplayer yet, but once we do, this could be a great trading item. Fracturing and ruining the item is just something I don’t think I’ll ever be ok with. The randomness of drops is fine if you don’t also have to go through the randomness of crafting as well, only to have the one good drop you found in the last 2 hours be completely stuffed by the crafting system. Have the RNG apply to the drops of shards and items, even still apply to the value that said shard rolls on the item, but have the crafting system be a way of perfecting that awesome drop you got, not a way to ruin it.

Currently you have to go through these RNG steps:
1- Find the drop (huge pool of affixes/items to choose from)
2- Have the shards you need and scrolls you need (RNG as to whether they have dropped alone or on items you’ve smashed)
3- Use a Rune of Shattering to obtain the shards if you don’t have them (RNG as to whether you even get them)
4- Craft random values from said shards onto the item (which can roll poorly, another step of RNG)
5- Craft and pray the RNG of fracturing doesn’t ruin your item entirely.

With this much RNG, getting the item you need/want is insanely hard, especially at early levels of the game, and only due to luck, not your hard work and efforts. There is far too many steps of randomness and RNG before you end up at the item you need/want.

The first step of the loot pool is also heavily diluted by any-level-items dropping. For example, I found a t6 affix on a level 1 starter axe today, which is useless because I couldn’t use that axe til level 42 (due to the t6 affix) when a level 1 axe is totally out-levelled by then. So there’s items like this in the loot pool as well, not enough Shatter Runes to shatter them for their affix shards every time you find them, and if you happen to be lucky enough to find the right item/affixes it can then be ruined by fracturing. The randomness of the drops isn’t an issue though if, when you do find the right item, it doesn’t have the chance to then be ruined by crafting as well. But with so many layers of RNG, it does not allow for people to make it through with skill or effort.

This means there is gonna be people out there where every good item they find is going to be ruined by fracturing, there might even be a person out there that has their item fracture every single time, would be rare but it could happen this way, leaving them unable to progress or quitting out of sheer frustration and anger. Or likewise through just not finding the drop they need, so they go to craft items from scratch and they could also be ruined by the crafting system, causing a similar frustration. This is not a good system.

The nature of RNG means that there will be some people that will just straight up lose, every time. And that’s fine if it’s items dropping, or values rolling on the items, or shards dropping from mobs/item shattering. But if you then add on the RNG of fracturing during crafting, making your item useless, you end up with people that potentially cannot progress due to luck, and that doesn’t feel good for anyone. Please take out this extra step of RNG.

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This was transcribed from Discord and some of the replies were decent ones, I’ll try to add some of them here.

Metal: “if u remove the rng of crafting you have diablo 3, and that sucks. Also you consider using the gambler? I mean, mostly all the people get the gear using the gambler xD. Obviously there´s a risk on going further on crafting but thats the point .
if u remove the “RNG” u´re talking about, then you just can play the campaign, get the base of an item and just craft everything you want and get the best gear possible. What´s the point on playing an arpg then? without a sense of progression?”

My reply: "There is still plenty of RNG without the fracturing mechanic, for one I mentioned all the steps of RNG involved, I only want to take out the one step that causes the most frustration and anger. I don’t play games to be pissed off, and currently that’s all the crafting system does for me, pisses me off.

“Currently you have to go through these steps:
1- Find the drop (huge pool of affixes/items)
2- Have the shards you need and scrolls you need (RNG as to whether they have dropped alone or on items you’ve smashed)
3- Use a Rune of Shattering to obtain the shards if you don’t have them (RNG as to whether you even get them)
4- Craft random values from said shards onto the item (which can roll poorly, another step of RNG)
5- Craft and pray the RNG of fracturing doesn’t ruin your item”

The fracturing mechanic is the last step after already going through 4 other layers of RNG. Fracturing is just annoying and demoralising. Not what I would consider a good part of any game if it makes people feel this way.

Also D3 is a bad example, because even with being able to roll a specific affix on the item multiple times, it can still be frustrating as hell to not get the right one, and even then your entire kit is made of legendaries and no yellows, taking out that factor of RNG as well. This already has more than enough RNG through all the other steps that it doesn’t need the chance to fracture and stuff up your item. At the moment I don’t even bother trying to use the reroll rune because I can’t afford the instability on the item.

But D3 at least got the idea right where the costs mounted up to be able to reroll the item affix, not run the risk of you destroying the item entirely. That way at least you could work towards making your item better, farm the gold and materials required, and not stuff the item entirely and have to go back to farming and waiting for the right drop again. And considering RNG, you are likely not gonna see the exact same drop again, meaning a fracture is devastating if you were relying on the item to improve your build."

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faraddox mentioned this which could help: “Instability should be checked for possible bugs (too often items fracture with almost no chance of fracturing), may be toned lesser abit, but shouldn’t be removed (at least with current crafting mechanic).”

thild42: “There is definitely room for improvement regarding crafts. I really like the fracture system as it introduces a risk vs reward but I think there should be additional glyphs and/or runes for late craft.
When you have all affixes to T4 on your item and want to go T5, the only option you have is to use a Glyph of the Guardian and clench your buttocks. The risk is really high and I think there should be a way to further reduce this risk.”

Tempest: “the actual craft is so annoying when you try to make a white item with perfect base roll and try to craft full T5 that almost impossible its always broke to T5 -> T1 so fucking annoying”

My reply: “Yeah crafting from white is just a no-go atm, had too many things fracture that way around the t3 for all affixes level, not even t4. I’d like for it to be reasonable to get all t5 from scratch, I like finding the best white item with perfect innates and crafting it exactly how I’d like it but that just can’t happen atm. We still have plenty RNG with t6/7 affixes that we can’t craft, would be nice if we can craft around them without ruining the item”

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magus424: “would be nice if crafting lower tiers gave less instability or something
give you more of a chance of building an item up”

My reply: “I mean I probably wouldn’t mind if the fracturing was just a “you can’t craft any more on this item” instead of potentially ruining the item completely with damaging or destructive fractures… and yeah less instability at lower tiers would work wonders as well, give us “scratch/base crafters” like myself the chance to build the exact items we want with good base innate rolls.”

Jerle: "Damaging Fractures

we need a petition man"

My reply: "Yeah and I know there’s an item you can get from a destructive fracture on, like, (I think) the starter circlet for mages but yeah, I really don’t think I’ll ever like the idea of losing tiers and an item being ruined by sheer chance. It’s like a step away from that whole “Lifebound” bs in TL3 lol nobody likes the idea of losing their item that they’ve worked hard to find/craft to perfection. Leave that as a Hardcore mechanic. Even the hesitantly named Wolcen doesn’t run the risk of you losing your item entirely (though you can still ruin your items in that as well, due to randomness of crafting, which is a big downside to Wolcen too).

I get it though, some people like the risk, some people like the buttock clenching, but not everyone does. I like playing my build, running harder content and trying to push the build further, risking my self on harder challenges like harder monolith levels, but when I have to worry in all that about whether my item is gonna break if I try and improve it too, that’s just an extra level of frustration and rage that I don’t need in my life.

Not only does it mean I can’t safely upgrade any of the items I’m using currently, but it also means that I need to find another better rolled item than the one I’m using and then try and upgrade that (which can potentially end in a ruined item anyway) or have a backup ready to go if I try to upgrade my currently used item, in case it comes crashing down in a fracture. All of this is just extra levels of stuff to manage and every time an item fractures the only thing I feel is frustration and disappointment, that’s not what I play games for.

Even Grim Dawn doesn’t risk you losing items, the mark of a good build there is if you’ve put it together right and geared it right, not if you got lucky on crafting (although it is largely luck through drops there, as there is no real crafting system)."

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magus424: “On the other hand you can’t go too far to RNG-free crafting or it becomes trivial to create exactly the item you want and then what are you left going for? It’s practically an item editor at that point”

My reply: "Farming and theorycrafting should be what makes a build work, not luck. Ultimately what drove me away from GD was that certain builds couldn’t work unless you got lucky with rolls on random drops, which meant that the unlucky people out there just suffer.

You make the shards harder to find, or make shattering items for the right shards more important, or trading for the right shards a large factor in getting the right stuff for your gear. That way if you are unlucky and don’t find the shards, you can at least farm stuff to trade for the right shards, then use said shards to make your gear, meaning you build it through hard work and not luck. PoE has a similar system with having craft-able stuff as trade currency, etc."

magus424: “but PoE’s currency is RNG on what you get. It would feel really bad being blocked by never ever getting a drop of the right affix, IMO”

My reply: “Yeah which is again something that drove me away from that game ultimately lol”

magus424: “there’s definitely room for tweaks but it’s just a balancing act”

My reply: "You also have the RNG of what value the shard is gonna roll on your item as well though, and the RNG as to whether you get the shards from any items you smash, and the RNG of getting a good drop on the innate base value of the item, and then a huge pool of items/shards/affixes to drop, there’s already plenty of RNG, I just don’t think you need to add losing your item entirely to the pool, even the damaging fracture is too harsh and makes the item useless.

I’d be fine if it fractured meaning you couldn’t craft on it any more (though this is the large portion of the fractures I’ve received that still piss me off every time because they happen really early on) but it gets worse the more you craft onto the item. Honestly I just hate the idea of being completely at the mercy of luck as to whether I get the item I want/need to progress further in the game."

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The other option I thought of since these posts and replies, was a Scroll of unique rarity, that gives you a guarantee of a successful craft, like a “Master Scroll” or “Scroll of Mastery” or something like that, which would then provide a way of farming for the things you need, meaning that you can craft the perfect item but only if you put in the work to farm the crafting aid.

It means the system largely stays the way it is, but if someone wants to craft the perfect item, it’s a unique rarity so hard to find and must be used wisely, and then you satisfy both kinds of players. For anyone that wants to risk their item crafting without the Scroll of Mastery could do that, but if you have an ideal item and you want to perfect it, you then have the option to, and just like farming uniques for your build, you can farm a scroll to perfect your item for your build as well. It would even make a good trade currency as well, something that could sell really well in trades, giving the people that don’t want to use them something to trade instead.

I honestly think an option like this would provide a way for the more cautious of us out there, and the people that don’t like losing their hard work, to craft safely and perfect our items without having to constantly run the risk of breaking our precious items. And having it be unique rarity and hard to find would make the use of it need to be calculated and not too easy that you can just perfect every item you find. This would hopefully keep balance in the end.

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While I only skimmed this thread and there are many points that are valid, I would like to point out that crafting is a good idea and as an early access ‘version’ its showing some promise. It definitely needs more work, but I generally do not have such a negative view on its current form.

However, I agree that the actual fracturing mechanic needs to be verified for potential errors as it seems a little to skewed toward failure at the moment. Perhaps the RNG gods have been kind to me and allowed me to create items with 3 T5 affixes but at the same time the number of fractures I have experienced that should have had a low probability (2%) make me wonder if the formula for the instability of an item needs some tweeking.

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TBH, I TLDR’d this (sorry).

That said, @EHG_Mike did say that he would look into it but I’m not aware that he’s got back to us on this.

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I didn’t get back to you on it. Thanks for the reminder, I’ll get this going for ya.

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:smiley: ta. I knew I’d wear you down & get a response eventually.

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Not sure this would be relevant currently, but Ill add some thoughts.

Fracturing sucks. It just doesn’t feel good. That said, it’s still good for LE imo. If you take that leap and chance a craft at say… 25% you either get a better item, or you keep it and, get no upgrade, and lose an affix and ability to continue upgrading. Find and dandy.

Same scenario, but instead 25%, you have a spread of 255, 25%, 8% (Just a numbers example.), then it goes to 1: an upgrade!, 2: an unusable item, so basically 3: Item is destroyed. Not so fine and dandy.

As a rule, I always try to keep in mind “A game’s purpose is to be enjoyable. Entertaining. Fun.” Scenario one accomplishes this without ‘fracturing’ the experience too much. The latter scenario… I’d wager roasted quail to quesadilla burgers that losing your item completely has triggered more alt+F4 rages than most others lol.

Some thoughts I’ve tried to brainstorm with regading this:

Perhaps a timed solution, in that once you craft, and say end up with a 20% chance to fracture, there could be currency/usable items that reduce current instability on non-fractured items. So you could ideally really pamper an item with time and effort to try and get it t-20+ if you so desired. How to do this? Ill leave these details to the devs lol.

Perhaps over in game playtime, the fracture chance and/or instability could slowly diminish to zero or a certain point. This would allow you to craft an item over time, while playing, with much to gain regarding fracture chance and such. Again, no details how, just an idea on the topic.

Just suggestions and my thoughts on this mechanic.

Thanks,
~Vatni

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Fracturing itself is fine but the real problem is the awful process it’s at the end of. If finding desirable items was a little less of a crapshoot this wouldn’t be so bad.

The item progression in this game is just plain bad. I appreciate that legendaries and sets are more peripheral to the experience, but that means that quality yellows/purples are far more important. Yet there are so few and they’re so random. People pine for the loot filter but that doesn’t address the central flaws.

First, itemization is boring. Since so many stats are mandatory (GB for example) then 3/4s of your affix decisions are made before you plan a single build.

In other ARPGs the gearing decisions are largely centered on answering the question: “How am I going to slay tons of stuff?” Which is the right question for a hack-and-slash game. LE forces you to answer the question “How will I avoid getting one-shot?”

Second, the vast majority of yellows/purples that drop are bad stats on bad bases. Not even things worth shattering or worth the consideration of crafting. You just need way too much to go right. And this is before you ever get to the fracture mechanic. So, finally, you get that good drop, you carefully craft, and still it breaks. And this is your job for every single slot. Fun?

So between boring crafting decisions and a lot of cascading RNG mechanisms before you ever get to crafting to begin with, there’s just no reward to it.

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I pretty much agree with you. I’m trying to think up ideas about how this could be solved/get ideas running for the devs. I feel the best method would be player interaction with Instability.

Instability only grows when crafting, but if there was a way to reduce current instability or something, we’d have, as players, a bit more interaction and control in crafting an item. It still seems % based rng so even if its a 2% chance to fracture… they do. and it seems often tbh. So I’d personally like the devs to loot at that bit of code to make sure its all working right. Just feels off.

Anyway, again, its my personal opinion that if they allow us to interact with instability somehow, things would be a lot more interactive and dare I say… more fun?

Item drops and bases, etc… that’s a whole separate problem in my opinion. It all needs work, but the crafting needs 90% of then attention. Without crafting… there is no real loot hunt at the moment. (imo)

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I love this crafting system. Way more deterministic than any other ARPG i’ve played.

It’s also simple and straightforward.

It values every loot, even the blue ones. Your goal is to find a good blue / rare with the right base, and a few affixes that you want on it. I’ve crafted several double t5 items at the moment. The rest of the affixes are t3 usually, maybe T4 for some.

I could risk them and try to finish them. Instead, i’m going to wait for another base with decent affixes and craft on it. Once i have two items, i’ll try to finish one of them.

The major problem I see so far is that with the absence of the lootfilter, it sucks to read all the item on the ground and decide what could be good or not. Therefore, you’re probably not picking every item with affixes (to shatter or use them) you’re interested in, and you’re pretty much obliged to gamble to get the bases you want. I’m hunting for a really good wand, and have yet to be successful.

But it gives me incentive to play. And when I consider one of my craft ready, i’m really satisfied.

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When would u consider 1 craft is ready?
If there are rooms to progress, normal people would push it. That’s human nature.

So unless it’s at least 4x T5, or more, people WILL try to keep crafting it.

Then come the “Diablo 3” kind of success percentage. When you spend 45mins to copy-paste your stash to make a 61% success T3-T4 but fail with 50% of the result is dmg fracture (which has 15% chance), you have a serious problem.

If we all want to be masochists, at least make those % of masochist a reality.

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I consider my craft done when the two main stats i’m looking after are T5, the rest being T3+.
I’m talking about mainly defensive affixes.

If i want to make an item 4 x t5 i’ll go for a replaceable part. (so if i have another chest with two t5 stats that i need etc.) Gambling without having anything left is not my type.

If you played PoE, it’s like rerolling your 5L chest to have a 6 link with a hundred of fusings. Do you go for it, and take the risk of having a 4L back (or worse) for a while ? Or you try it to 6L another chest piece ?

Again, from my experience i don’t think there is something wrong with the values. Yes sometimes it will fail at 90% chance. that’s normal. Ofc it happens when you have your dream base with very decent affixes on it.

But maybe we could guarantee a craft outcome ? With a lot of affixe shards ? For example, the number of instabilty on your item, multiplied by the actual tier of the affix.

Let’s say i wanna guarantee a t5 glancing blows on a 25 instability item. That would take 4 x 25 = 100 glancing blows shards.

The cost to finish an item (especially with rare affixes) would be insane, and incentivize trading affixes, but you could have your 4xt5 item without problem. I certainly wouldn’t be against such an idea. (giving the oppurtunity to craft safely to those who would want.)

I also want to point out that i actually like the present design, where every item i loot is appealing. I don’t want to equip quickly 4xt5 items then and consider my character done.

What would happen in a case where you wouldn’t have the fracture mechanic ? We would be wearing the same item from the lvl 10 and onwards (yeah okay maybe until we loot the highest level base type) and just craft on it everytime we could. Then we would hide all blues/yellows from our filter and hunt purples.

That would be a terrible design. That’s exactly what’s plaguing both D3 in PoE in different manners. Eleventh Hour Games HAS TO artificially gate the access to the gearing process. Because it’s the game’s goal. The question is which way ? how many time should be required to finish a character ?

What i’m sure of is that i prefer 100 times more the deterministic gating Last Epoch proposes against the insanely idiotic RNG gated PoE proposes. (Where the only certain way to gear your character for 98% of the playerbase is to buy item from others.)

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Agree.

But just to clarify. If you accidentally make your 5L a 2L, you still have the chance to make it again to 5L or 6L.

Here in this game, there are great chance your items will be destroyed.

The fail rate is being investigate by the devs, so there is sth wrong with the shown chance and the actual one.

Again, Im good with grinding everything for an eternity as long as there will be a success dream outcome for me. As in this game right now, you can farm for 10000 hours, preparing 10000 back up, and with bad luck, you will still end up with 0 usable outcome.

Guarantee success is a must, as in PoE, you can pay alot of fusing orbs to get guarantee 6L. Ofc you have to pay more for that.

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Personally, I would COMPLETELY OVERHAUL HOW AFFIX CRAFTING WORKS.

As it seems they want to make it hard to get t5 on everything I would propose a different system.
Instead of the whole luck based system, just have crafting instability affect the shard cost instead, where a high instability could double or even triple the number of shards and high tier affixes cost more than low tier ones.

This method would mean that players will actually look out for gear instead of gold farming in order to gamble, if only to fracture it for the shards.

It would mean that getting good tier items would take longer, but it would be a guarentee, both eliminating the frustration and giveing an actual reward for the work that would need to be put in.

It may also mean that people will make perfect rolled items, but that would require a very significant amount of time and would not really effect anyone who isn’t doing hours and hours of end game grinding.

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Your 'first four layers of RNG" are virtually no effort at all. After you have played any decent amount of time you will have as many shards as you need to craft T5x4 on every piece of gear you own in whatever combination you want. The only thing that serves as a barrier is fractures, damaging fractures and, because of the latter, the number of Glyphs of Guardian that you possess.

If you took out the fracture process, the gearing process in this game would be way too easy, which means in all liklihood the content would be way too easy. So, then you would have a new problem: Content would be scaled up, but the casual players who lacked the play time element to get the shards to make T20 gear would struggle to keep up with the scaled content. Or, players with max gear would find the game a horrible bore due to its ease.

I get that certain players will have worse luck than average. But, I have multiple characters with multiple pieces of T20 gear and my luck hasn’t been unbelievable. I’ve broken plenty of gear, some with the perfect combination of mods. It’s part of the grind that we all embrace when we play ARPGs. If there was no grind or progression, this genre would lack the pscyhological fullfilment that gets us playing in the first place.

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PoE & LE have very different ways of crafting. PoE’s currency sink is to have the affixes you get random (mostly, with a push in the direction of certain types of affixes if you do essence/delve/harvest crafting, but it’s random if you just throw chaos at an item). LE’s currency sink is that while you can choose the affix, if you push it too far you can break the item & then you need to find another base, more affixes shards, etc. Either way you go, they’re both designed to slow down your access to power.

There might be something wrong, alternatively it might just be our perception & getting hung up on the 1 failure while not remembering the 10 successes that preceeded it. @kiss_me_quick if you want the War & Peace version of how that works… But I’d advise you not read it until you want to get to sleep.

Yes, that’s RNG, sometimes it ****s you. Again, @kiss_me_quick for how that works.

Yeah, and that’s an option though I’m not sure how they could implement something like that in LE, other than creating a crafting bench with recipes like PoE. It’s certainly not a bad idea depending on the balancing.