Crafting & Fracturing really rare items is a very negative experience and could be solved differently

General
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Before you read I really enjoy the crafting system in Last Epoch. It is a trade off with risk vs. reward. Neither the less Fracturing an item and making it unable to be crafted further is something that is really negative, especially fracturing with high % chances. Now, this negative experience is not so noticeable if you are in the early to mid game and have plenty of bases to work with, but if you get to the point where you start to look for exalted item bases with the right affix & maybe possible also the right base item that you want … fracturing that item with a 97% chance is a crushing negative experience.

Just to give an example. I farm 5-10 minutes for a rare base or buy it from the vendors and start crafting. Fracturing that item isn´t such a bad situation since you can try again and “lose” only a couple of minutes.

Fracturing an item base which took you 50h to find with 97% chance is very negative and actually makes me question my time investments somewhat.

Now, what would be if it would be more a positive reinforcing system that does not render your item useless to craft, but just gradually reduces the chance for a good outcome of affixes? Have a system that works with critical success rates so that you still can craft an item but with just half the stats in the end then if you hit all affixes critically. The first affix crafts are 100% crit chance being reduced in the same way as it is right now. The more you craft the less likely it is to crit until you have 0 crit chance. Balance the crafting stats a bit around a crit/non crit system to be in line with how powerful the stats are at the moment and call it a day.

If you fail a 97% critical hit and get at least some stats out of it, it feels much less shitty then bricking an item base instantly rendering you unable to craft further. Still the system stays intact where you try to secure crafts and have a risk vs. reward investment considering what to craft first, how high you craft certain values. Additionally the current crafting system has already random outcomes for affixes. Getting critical hits feels really good but their kind of rare.

So, instead of hoping to not break an item, you would be hoping to crit multiple times in a row to get the best stats (and crits can also be random affix outcome like it is atm as well).

I wish the current system wouldn´t be so punishing for really rare items that you take very long to find. Especially if you get really unlucky and brick an item directly on the first or second craft.

Just wanted to leave it here for discussion.

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Maybe the problem here is the rareness of the base. I don’t think any base item should be a “one in 50h” level of rarity. Unless we’re talking about literal perfect rolls here.

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It’s really unfortunate that EHG has got fixed on the concept of bricking items. It’s a massive and unnecessary injection of frustration into crafting and by extension the whole gear chase. Any role it serves in extending the endgame can be achieved better by fiddling with shard investment requirements or exalt drop rates.

The gambling side can stay, just use crafting mats as the stakes. They can be rare, they can have high chance to fail - it’s fine for actually getting your BiS item fully online to be an ungodly grind. The thing that’s so serious about bricking items is that they are the whole face of the system. That purple drop is the reason you’re excited to engage in the first place. Literally blowing it up in your face is pretty much the easiest imaginable way to an instant buzzkill and disillusionment with the whole process.

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I do agree with this, and I think there are several different ways it could be addressed. I think that, as OP said, bricking a magic or rare base isn’t really a big deal, but finally getting an exalted item with the right stat/mod on it, that you’ve spent more than 30h looking for, only to brick it before you get the other mods up to useable levels just feels bad, bigtime. I get the “risk vs reward” thing, but it just feels disproportionately tilted in the direction of “risk”, with very low odds of “reward” towards the end. I have a few thoughts on how it could be addressed in some way, that will keep the spirit alive, but allow you some way to work around it.

  1. Some way of “unfracturing” items. This would need to be something either very rare, or a reward for some significant time investment. Say, every time you complete an empowered timeline, you get one of these items, or defeating Orobyss (sp?) with more than 150 corruption, or something like that. Something you need to work towards or that takes a fair bit of effort to achieve.

  2. Some way of adding +1 to an affix that is outside crafting, such as the Eternity Cache. We still don’t know exactly how the EC will work, but this could be one potential feature.

  3. Some ultra-rare item that protects against fractures for 1 use. Similar in rarity to option 1.

I see quite a few benefits to this, as instead of an item being “bricked” being a let-down, it’s now a motivator to go and complete x number of runs again in order to get that item that will let you continue trying to work on it and improve it. It would drastically enhance the gear chase too, as you could potentially brick an item 3 or 4 times in a row trying to get a 30% craft up to T20 (or more), but that encourages you to keep playing the game more, and gives you a sense of agency in the process rather than being entirely at the mercy of RNG. I don’t mind elements of RNG, but it just doesn’t feel good when you are completely at its mercy.

Just my 2 cents. I think the problem will be even worse once Legendaries are introduced, which presumably are a tier above Exalted. Exalted items are reasonably common if you’re running at corruption 150+, and it’s already kind of a nightmare to find a good roll on them.

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To improve crafting the drops will need to be adjusted. I get frustrated with the fractures, I broke a 99% success and questioned Mike in detail about it in series of crafting posts in 0.8.1.

They made some tweaks in 0.8.2 that have not sat well with many players. There has to be a penalty at some point, but the way that it does not SHOW you the results of the roll makes it harder to believe that the crafting failed at the higher success rates. I think with that part of the equation exposed for the players, it would be easier to accept the result.

Item level is only dependent on implicit stats, not affixes. Bricks are still useful unless they are destructive.

As to T20+ gear that signifies that the build is almost done. You can complete the game with T14-T16 average gear with no issues. The issue becomes a time sink with little reward/benefits for EHG’s side of the equation.

The real question becomes if you are one-shotting a 5k mob with a 10k crit does a 12k crit make that much of a difference, when both will one-shot the mob with white damage. Dead is dead at that point.

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EHG is actively working on the fixing the “feelsbad moments” and crafting in general is still to receive updates in the future.

Crafting already has been discussed in the forums at least a million times and usually I don’t interact with these types of discussions anymore, because IMO everything already has been said before, there are rarely any new ideas or new thigns brought up.

There is just one particular thing I want to point out again, that I am very opposed to:
Anything, that can make an outcame guaranteed and is repeatable

I don’t care how rare this thing would be, but anything that makes the outcome guaranteed, will automatically make any other “regular” way of crafting instantly feel bad and in most cases you don’t wanna do it, because there is a guaranteed way.

It will just feel incredibly grindy and not rewarding, because you just constantly work towards that goal, but once you reached that goal, it’s not particularly exciting.

This would be things proposed by @Deliya here:

Both of these suggestions are fine, if they are 1-time use per item IMO.

But as soon as you can use them on the same Item more than 1 time, it just a grind to get that Item to T20 (or higher for exalted items)

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I definitely see your point, but I’ll play devil’s advocate.

Everything about the game is already a grind. That is the very nature of an ARPG. You want lvls? Grind xp. You want gear? Grind maps. You want a new character? Grind lvls on a new character. Everything about ARPGs is grinding.

The only question is, what kind of grinding?

Is it a grind towards something concrete and actionable, or something vague and up to RNG? Can you measure your progress, or is it unknowable? XP is knowable. To a degree, blessings are knowable as there are a finite number that can be chosen from at a time. Many uniques are now knowable, and can be target farmed.

So in the end the question is really a matter of whether EHG want to give people something concrete they can work towards, with some degree of RNG built in, or do they want it to be a purely unknowable process where you’re completely subject to RNG.

Either way, the process will be a grind.

Mind you, that’s just my perspective on it. I do see where you’re coming from, though.

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I totally see that and I don’t fully disagree.

But having luck, variance, randomness involved in loot, makes Items more exciting.
Like it or not, it gives you more of this dopamin rush, when you finally get one.

Currently this feeling is a little bit more shifted towards succeeding a craft, than actualy dropping an Item, but this is an entirely different discussion.
All of this excitment would be lost, when it’s something you can clearly work towards.

I personally would be fine with some clear goals, that are very specifically targetable until a certain point, but for the top end gear, I don’t like that at all.

And some of the stuff you proposed I also already proposed some time ago, with some more restrictions on it.

In case you are interested:

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Very interesting ideas there!

On the note of the dopamine rush, I think right now there are several points where the dopamine rush happens. First is obviously the item drop. This is probably the biggest rush, as it’s a “FINALLY” type feeling, especially if you’ve been looking for it for many hours of play. The subsequent hits would be as the crafts continue to build and succeed.

The flip side is that there is also a sharp drop in dopamine if the craft fails very early, or damages the item beyond use. Dopamine hits are a thing, but it also drops to below normal levels if the anticipation of reward is not actually rewarded. This can have two outcomes, either seeking further dopamine boosts, or a frustration and lashing out, which we’ve seen on the forums many times in discussions around items (and I’ve seen it in global chat often enough too).

I think this is where the balance needs to be struck. Dopamine is also more active in the anticipation of reward and reward, and drops down to baseline fairly quickly afterwards, so that chase for “the next item” is typically what then takes over. This is also where the addiction comes in, but that’s another matter. It’s one reason I often take prolonged breaks from games like this, to go and play games that are less focused on dopamine hits related to RNG (I have struggled with addiction, and have as such spent no small amount of energy and time learning about the dopamine anticipation-reward-reinforce brain system).

I think the complication with the whole “chase” really comes down to the difference in loot in this game versus, say, Diablo or PoE. In those games, you are looking for specific uniques/set items mostly. Yes, there is some range and RNG to the stats, but you are looking for specific items, and you get the dopamine hit the moment you see the item on the ground. You go off, you enjoy it a bit, and then it’s just part of your kit and you’re looking for the next one. This is fairly simple. Farm/grind, item drops, yay!, moving on. LE’s loot is more complicated, as uniques are either super niche, or mostly good for leveling. There are a few that are build enablers, but by and large crafted items are just objectively better in most slots. This means that unique and set item drops don’t really have that same excitement attached to them. People look to the crafting instead, but when they come up against big disappointment, their own way of handling that disappointment really becomes the indicator for whether they enjoy the game or not.

Some people love the full RNG. Others don’t. Personally, I like having clear, defined goals and strategies. This is probably why I have 2500 hours in TW:Warhammer 2, and will likely log even more in the 3rd one. Maybe that means that LE isn’t an ideal game for me? Maybe. Or maybe there’s some middle ground that hasn’t been figured out yet, where you can have enough of both to satisfy both sides. I think, ultimately, that’s what it comes down to. Can you please both, or do you need to focus one way or the other? Personally, if I don’t have a clear defined goal, I feel aimless and tend to lose interest (which explains why I often skip 2 or 3 major patches, then come back and play for a while).

Neither one is right or wrong, it’s just subjective to the person, and depends on which way EHG wants to play it.

Either way, that’s a bit off track.

I like a lot of the ideas in the post that you linked. I do think that runes are underutilized and lacking variety right now, so expanding them in the manner suggested would seem like a reasonable way to do it.

EDIT: I should also say that I play exclusively SSF, which I realize drastically reduces my loot pool and makes it exclusive to each character. Thus I don’t have items for 2 or 3 other levelled chars to use on a new character, and yea, that’s definitely my choice. I just find it more satisfying, really. But either way, that also influences my perspective on it, so I should be up front about that.

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Current crafting system falls apart in late endgame, when you get into exalted item crafting.

You need to find the right mod, on the right base, get lucky removing one or two bad mods, and then get lucky and not fracture the item early on. These are crazy levels of RNG.

My suggestion would be to add a rune that makes one affix on the item non removable. And allow cleansing rune to wipe fractured items and reset the instability and fractured status, while leaving the affix you saved intact.

I also think that rerolling implicit and affix values shouldn’t add instability. It’d be nice to be able to make perfect items.

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One thing I’ve thought about is breaking apart the Rune of Removal into Remove Prefix/Suffix types.

Although that’s a 200% increase in effectiveness and might be a tad over powered, but perhaps an effect that increases chance of removing a prefix/suffix to help tilt the RNG odds in your favor.

I agree with Heavy in that this discussion has come up many times before and I’ve spent sometime reading those previous discussions.

Another thing to keep in mind in terms of bases will be player trading which can possibly open up another avenue of acquiring gear. And any changes to the crafting system will also need to keep that system in mind as well.

For me it’s the lack of ways to protect the affix you want to keep in the current system. A way to help increase your odds of keeping the desired affix would do a lot. I like the thought of runes of removal on prefix/suffix as it does inherently balance out the risk factors for forging perfect gear. Since if you want to remove the affix on the non-exalted, let’s say prefix, where the t6/7 is on then you go from 25% to a much higher probability. Whereas you could just opt to leave it and focus on the suffix to forge a really good piece of gear.

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Maybe we just need to wait for more runes and glyphs which will be more rare but will help us with protection of certain afixea or fracturing in general. I agree with u compleatly although some people wouldnt. My exp is that from lets say 100 items when i use rune of removal i got a lot of time from 3 or 4 affixes at start that t6 or t7 is removed as first affix and no one can tell me im imagining things or that this exp ia different since its desirable item or that its bad rng, it is simple math. And it is very frustrating. As for fracturing i got so many times that i got fractured on 90plus percent but here something different is comming to place and it is general law of probability which is not what is writen as a number for sucsess in craftung panel. Lets say u have 90 percent sucess rate, first time u make new affix and than u have lets say 85 percent (this 85 is no more 85 since u have already succeeded on 90 percent before. Another example would be if u have 1 coin to flip and it has 2 sides first time u flip it it will be 50 50 percent but the next time u have higher chance to get the oposite side even though its 50 50 percent and rhis is only couse your last roll count as well to the next one (and im not sure devs have put this formula in to the acount) on the long run your oposite nubers will be very close if not even (50 50) but in crafting rhere is no long run and next item that u put to craft is changing probability as well based on the last one (but this is some other thing that is very difgicult to explain and even i do not understand it fully).

Sorry for to much phylosophy it might be something different than what i have wrote but this is how i see it and i do not like this system at all.

Edited: but worth to mention is that is the best crafting system so far in arpg

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These threads are always filled with ideas of “Well there should be Item X that does Y thing to affect crafting”, and I just want to air drop my sentiment that I really wish people would stop with it. It’s really nice having a crafting system that is straightforward and not overflowing with several dozen items to collect and build a crafting flowchart out of. Pushing for EHG to start bloating LE’s crafting out into something overly complicated because not getting what you want all the time feels boo-hooey is not a good suggestion.

It’s so baffling to me how much of the community is in a perpetual rage vortex about POE and POE’s crafting but somehow also cannot stop making suggestions that would turn LE’s crafting into POE’s.

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It’s entirely possible that “the community” isn’t a monolithic block with just one view on stuff and that different people have different views. Crazy stuff, I know!

Edit: apparently the first half of my post got eaten by my phone somehow… Suffice it to say, EHG’s usual response to this kind of thing is that they haven’t implemented all of the runes/glyphs they want to yet.

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Lol, Llama, you crack me up.

Honestly, I’ve played the game on and off since something like v.0.4 or v0.5, can’t remember. All I know is that Ch2 wasn’t even implemented yet back then. Thing is, I’ve seen these posts on here just about every patch too. That’s why I keep encouraging them. I think that if nobody says anything, then there’s the potential for EHG to miss out on potential inspirations in future.

Just because something has been said before, doesn’t mean it can’t be said again. Plus, there are always new people coming into the game and voicing their own thoughts. That’s the point of Early Access. Saying “oh I’ve been in the game for forever and I’ve seen these posts in the past, and people should just shut up” is kind of a pointless statement. If you don’t want to read it, then don’t click on the post. Nobody’s holding a gun to your head telling you that you have to read it.

Besides, saying you don’t want a system that’s bloated, but is simple and straight forward… have you SEEN the number of prefix/affix shards? It’s already bloated.

PS, this is directed at Bronco, not you, Llama.

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I was thinking maybe a rune (might have already been suggested) that removes fracture status and keep the instability or even add instability. This way you get your “second” or even “third” chance if the crafting failed at high success rate, but the item now is becoming easier and easier to fracture, so after 2-3 tries you will have to think if it’s worth it to unfracture the item and keep trying your luck.

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It’s so baffling to me how much of the community is in a perpetual rage vortex about POE and POE’s crafting but somehow also cannot stop making suggestions that would turn LE’s crafting into POE’s.

There is nothing strange about that. There is a lot of awesome shit about poe’s crafting, especially the pre nerf harvest stuff. PoE has the most developed crafting system in an argp probably. The issue with PoE is that they keep nerfing the deterministic stuff. Their obsession with rng is what’s ruining it.

When i started playing this game, i was really blown away. It really felt like i would eventually be able to make the exact items that i wanted, but it turned out to be a major let down. After a certain point it becomes an even bigger RNG fest than PoE. In PoE you can at least make perfect items with enough determination and currency.

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Excessive RNG is along the same lines as gambling, which many GGG systems are. Button pushing gambling systems meant for the high-rollers to succeed with.

I can agree with this to a limit. I do not think you should be able to craft exactly what we want above T20. That ruins the wow factor of finding something really valuable. I think the deterministic values should be capped at the T16-20 range with no ability to go above T20 in a totally deterministic way. There has to be a reason to go for loot after all.

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It kinda is. To go above t20 you need the right base to drop with all 4 affixes being desirable and at least one of them being t6/7. Then you have to not fracture it while you craft the other affixes to t5 which may be very challenging depending on what they start out as.

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This is e

That is what I am meaning by the wow factor, hey it actually dropped all 4 stats, without having to remove, refine or reshape the low rolled values. It can be challenging but again to those who find many of the bases they are looking for can out probability the risk. T21+ should be natural drop, not being able to manipulate the 2-3 crafts to T5 with 1 or 2 solid T6/7