Time invested to reward gained

But Harvest aside, mod acquisition on items in POE is random. So you cannot think about “bricking” an item the same way as LE. Having a random mod added which doesn’t synergise with the existing mods is effectively a brick (arguing you can scour the item and continue crafting the white base in POE is beside the point).

I think we’re also using terms differently then. I get that if you get a “bad” affix on an otherwise good item you could view that as bricked, but as you say, you can still scour it & have another go (or “just” chuck chaos at it & avail yourself to full RNG, though I thought you could also “just” chuck other currency at it to reroll that item). To me, an item is only bricked if you can’t carry on crafting on it (vaaling in PoE & fracturing in LE). YMMV.

I don’t suppose you could put that down in a formula/flow char/if/then statements could you? My brain is having difficulty getting to grips with it.

Just something to add to the discussion , yesterday they released a manifesto explaining why they are nerfing again deterministic crafting , and that they are not OK with the current system , they want more RNG.

About LE crafting , for me the worst part are those decent affixes combinations that drop in crappy bases.
I know this is a completely different game , but I would love a way to randomly reroll the affixes on a good base , trying to hunt a good affix combination to craft on.
Also with bettter loot filters (that let you hunt affixes tiers and combinations) I think it’ll feel better.

Wouldn’t happen to have a link to this manifesto would you? Dug around, but can’t seem to find it.

Hope it’s not the crappy kind of RNG…

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i dont follow the logic of this. All it means is the item is locked and you cant craft any higher tiers. You then have to start the long tedious process of farming for base items to craft again to try get gg T18-20 items. The advantage is that if you find USABLE T6/7 item in first place then you can try make it gg. At moment i don’t craft beyond T3 on those cos downside risk is too high. You will NEVER find another item like that again since

  • it has to be the right base item
  • the implicit roll have to be good ---- a winged Helm with 20% crit avoid roll is useless
  • it has to be an affix you use in the build
  • it has to be Blue 2 or Yellow 3 at worst (even then you need to run risk of 1/3 rune of removal) since Yellow 4 is impossible (and i do mean impossible as in over 1,500 hrs of gameplay i have never found a usable Yellow 4 drop or gambled one) to use

the crafting system is both beautifully elegant and frustratingly costly (time invested versus reward)

  • Lets take a very common end game item for many build being Crusader Gauntlets
  • Lets assume you work off a base drop of Blue 2T4 = T8 which is c. 3.3% gamble chance (1 in 30)
  • Now you need both rolls to be stats you want being 2/16 prefixes and 2/22 suffixes which is 1 in 88
  • Now you need to craft a T8 item to T20 which is 1 in 38.5 chance
  • That means you have to roll c. 100, 000 of these gloves to get 1 T20 item on average
  • Given that you need say 2 refreshes per getting 1 Crusader Gauntlets, the cost of each item rolled is c. 6,000 gold -----> i dont need to do the math for you to see how insanely expensive and time consuming that is
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The point is without damaging fracture, there is no downside to simply always craft your item until you hit the minor fracture. You need the tension of players asking “should I risk my item becoming worse than it is now?” when pushing for that T18-20 gear.

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If this system were implemented, I would expect a corresponding decrease in drop rate for shards. There would have to be a counterbalance to the eventual guaranteed max roll item. I know I have thousands of the main attribute shards, so unless they increased the fail rate significantly, I could easily get multiple T20 items in this alternate system, without even slowing down my mouse button to decide if I wanted to risk further failure.

If the shard rate drops, then it becomes about hunting for shards, rather than just crossing your fingers when you push the Forge button. The few times I’ve wanted to increase a tier level of a rare mod and have lacked the shards to do so, it felt worse than when I fractured an otherwise promising item. In other words, it has always felt easier to find another base item to roll the dice on, then to find the shards.

i can accept that on white/blue/yellow items but i think it is way too punitive on exalted items. There is already such a low drop rate in that a) exalted will drop 2) it will be of a base type i want / need in my build 3) the T6/7 affix is one i want / need and 4) no more than 1 other roll which is useless to my build.

Exalted items should be exempt from damaging or worse fractures in my personal opinion.

There’s always going to be downsides to a crafting system, either it’s too much RNG, risk of the item bricking (LE), the cost of crafting (PoE) or the limited choice in crafting (PoE & D3).

However, I think you underestimate the cost of getting a t20 item with my proposal, though I’ll have to wait till I finish work to run some numbers. Just because something’s inevitable (as hitting t20 would be), doesn’t mean it’ll be cheap/easy.

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Your numbers might scare me regarding how much I’ve played this game. But, presuming I read your system right, the materials consumed on failure would be the same as if it fractured in the current system. So, I’ve spent whatever your calculation shows making the T20 items I have plus all of the materials I wasted fracturing countless items over time. In summary, it won’t be anymore than I’ve already spent (though less base items would be consumed in your system) and I still have plenty of shards to spare for most mods.

That could actually be a nice system.

  1. Rework the affix rarity distribution. We currently have Common, Uncommon, Rare, and Very Rare. These are fine, but there needs to be a bit of a move towards more rare for most affixes. This would also have an affect on drops, I imagine you would see many more blue items instead of yellow items due to shard rarity. That could be a good thing to find better bases to craft on.
  2. Rework Runes and Glyphs. Rune of Shattering would need to have a lower chance of getting a shard. If an item had a T5 of an affix, you might get 1 Shard of it. Exalted items could guarantee 1 shard for each tier above 5 as well.
  3. Rework the Success and Failure. There could be tiers here as well. Critical Failure could add extra instability, Failure just fails, Success adds the affix and causes instability. Critical Success adds the affix and maybe no additional instability.
  4. Rework the instability formula. Instability should make it so crafting on a exalted item with 2 T7 affixes has a 99% failure to add that last affix. I think having to blow through 500 shards to get that to be a perfect item isn’t too much to ask. Would need to be balanced with shard drop rates.
  5. Remove fracturing altogether.

I think this system could put much more of the focus of the “crafting” system of the game on deconstruction of items for materials. Salvaging of sorts. It also calls back to the MMO’s in that it was hunting/gathering that was the hard part of crafting. You have to hunt for the materials and learn the skills needed to craft the items. Once you had that, then you could just make the item. Some systems even have room for extra success in the way of masterwork items that have better stats.

I like this idea.

let’s say I find an item that is a possible upgrade. I know I have some lower tiers on the items i want to exchange itwith. Now i can click away without any reason to stop crafting it untill a minor fracture happens.
If I get an Item to 4T3s I start looking for substitute items in case something went wrong with crafting and the item fractures. Without damaging fractures I can put on as many possible stats as untill it fractures if it is better okay if it’s worse okay.
A damaging fracture hurts more because you loose stats and theirfor shards but at the ende of a day who gives a F… urbolg about shards? I can be Dagobert Duck and swim in them in my shard stash.

It’s simply rng and sometimes you are lucky and sometimes you are not. Even in a fantasy world I would fire anyone who isn’t able to offer work like I want it to but sadly in LE everything is different and even the unluckiest donky can craft… or at least try to.

If so you’ll have the same problem for other raritys. The powercreep would be real :). The possibility of getting a purple item with good rolls i equaly to getting a yellow item with good rolls. Either you are lucky or not.

I get how frustrating crafting is or getting items that have realy no use for any build you play or in a combination that is stupid “Crit chance + dot dmg yay!” but it is as it is and the drive for getting good loot is one thing that keeps an arpg floating above while other that are on the easy side on itemisation are mildly laughed at.

The system has it’s pros and cons and is a bit frustratiung for some people but then again I think it’s more on the positve side.

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Yeah, I’ve no idea how much it would be as I’ve not had a look at any numbers yet. I would assume it would change the player’s behaviour towards crafting the rarer affixes first & the more common affixes last after they’ve got the rarer ones up to t5. It would also add the possibility of crafting up to t20 from a white base possible if more expensive. Crafting from a dropped item would be more RNG on getting the base but cheaper (as they would have much lower instability than a white item you’ve crafted up to a similar level).

@darkdeal Yeah, I guess. The devil is in the detail, as usual.

Gotta disagree with you there. It is way way way way way lower probability of getting purple item with same rolls as yellow because 1) purples have lower probability of dropping and 2) the overall probability for yellow is increased by fact that you can craft them.

Have you ever found 2 purple items (not cra$%$#ppy low level but ones you actually use in your build) with same affixes and same purple affix ? i venture to never or very close to never.

The reason i say purple immune to damaging fracture is exactly that you should be able to craft them up till they brick without fear of destroying its usability. They are so very rare to find as 1) correct base item 2) good implicit stat rolls 3) a T6/7 affix you actually use 4) not having the rest of the affixes complete s$%#@t i think it is perfectly fine to craft purples till they brick. Your chances of getting a purple upgrade to that bricked one are as much as a certain ex political leader ever telling the truth.

I never said something about the drop rates but only about good rolls. Sure you get more yellows that’s totaly right but sadly yellows tend to have bs stats as well as puples. I found one worthwhile purple so far and everything else has botched stats or have been for throwing builds I realy don’t like.
So there was one out of 90 purple items that was good… I fractured it but I don’t give a shit because getting maxed gear in this game is kind of a first world problem.

Very close to never.

This goes for EVERY item in the game so what? because it has BETTER rolls that should make it more likely to fracture anyway you think it’s a good idea to make the best possible itmes not fractureable? That seems kind of… odd.

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I feel the currently gearing loop is perfect as is. You prioritize defensive passives and gear with defensive implicits early on, and slowly replace them with more offensive or utility based items as your character progresses forward. Its a setup that has had me constantly shuffling gear all the way up to 92 with a constant feeling of progression.

Eventually you hit an item wall where only exalted items are upgrades, but at that point you are pretty much build complete. Exalted items serve no purpose other that bragging rights or for endless modes like arena. Maybe there will be an endgame that supports that level of power outside of arena, but I am much more happy with the mechanical difficulty scaling Last Epoch has adopted over outright stat checks. That being said I want to look deeper into crafting in Last Epoch, and why I think it already makes crafting end game items very achievable.

Last Epoch goes a long way in reducing your need for specific affixes by reducing the defensive affix strain on gearing. Every class can already cap 2-4 resistances just through passives alone. Combine that with defensive gear implicits, and you usually only need 2-4 resistance suffixes that needs to be taken up out of 20 (22 if you dual wield).

Blessings (even low tier ones) go a step further taking away even more defensive affix strain if not wiping certain sections out entirely. With so many mandatory affixes taken from the actual pool of gear you need, the only real pressure you are left with is high rolls on prefixes.

That is a big reason why crafting the current crafting system doesn’t bother me. Having a large portion of defensive affixes taken care of means it is far easier to make end game gear. I usually only have to roll t4-t5 prefixes and t2-t3 suffixes for a piece of gear to be really good.
Why only t2-t3 on suffixes? Because most of your mandatory stat budget on gear, resistances, is already taken care of.

Secondary defenses do have an impact on EHP but not to the point that they need to be maximized to the fullest to be end game viable. Since Last Epoch hardly taxes your gear for defense you are able to get away with low rolls or even missing rolls. A 3 on build affix piece can be perfectly viable if not completely desirable(why I still highly value rares). This usually means gear that drops with 1+ on build prefix can be crafted into something usable and 2+ on build affix gear is highly likely to be end game viable if not chase tier.

If people think they need to have a perfect rolled blessings or a t18+ exalt to be build complete I think their expectations need to be tempered. T12 gear is perfectly usable for the normal monolith chain and t15 gear can get you through empowered with some careful mod manipulation. Exalted not only needs to be rare, but in danger of bricking because they are the only chase items left after becoming build complete. Blessings also don’t need to be perfect to be useful. Perfect blessings are hard to acquire because they can completely take affixes out of the pool of mandatory gear stats.

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I agree with @Irrelevant. Just because an item is rare it should somehow be given “preferential treatment”?

Nope.

Crafting in LE is too easy to get really good gear, and almost impossible to get perfect gear

The crafting system doesnt prolong the game life it just shortens it

So you end up almost instantly with really good gear if you arent playing some SSF mode but will never get perfect because its based on exalted items which dont drop and are worse to farm than anything really

Also im glad Harvest in PoE is being nerfed as its completely toxic

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