Patterns and shards are a step in the right direction to improve crafting, but they're not good enough yet

Game Feedback Game Feedback
1

Evening.

Let’s look at what patterns (guaranteed 600 gs roll, rest of the craft is carried out as usual) and shards (ability to force a stat AND a perk on a craft) bring to crafting’s viability.

For simplicity, I will use a great axe craft as an example, and let’s define “decent” axe as one with:
600 gear score, acceptable stat roll and at least two good perks (keen, vicious, keenly empowered, enchanted).

The chance to roll a legendary in the first place is 1 in 6 (assuming 595-600 capable crafter), so 16.7%

The chance of an acceptable stat roll (let’s assume str, con, str/con for great axe) is 4 in 25, or 16%.

Chance to roll first decent perk is 4 in 39, or 10.2%

Chance for the second good perk is 3 in 38, or 7.9%

Chance for the third good perk is 2 in 37, or 5.4%

Now, to the actual craft.

In case of a pattern:

You get 600 gearscore guaranteed, so there is no need to account for that, you only need to land proper stats and perks.

You force one perk, which leaves us with a pool of 38 perks, 3 viable ones, at a chance of 7.9%. The probability of an event of said chance happening within two repetitions (because you roll for two more perks), is 15.2%.

Therefore we’re looking at 0.16 x 0.152 = 0.02432, or 2.4%. That’s the chance of getting something decent out of a pattern craft. Roughly one in 42 axes will end up decent. Which doesn’t sound TOO bad, but you also have to keep in mind that pattern crafts have significantly increased material cost (and rightfully so, as a pattern completely circumvents the need for town buff and major trophies), so the average cost of a decent pattern-made axe end up being something like 1890 asmodeum, 378 ebony and 252 runic leather.

(And let’s not forget the new info - you also will have to craft roughly 200 normal orichalcum axes to even get your hands on a random pattern, which makes it even significantly worse)

In case of a shard:

I will work with the assumption that a shard-powered craft will roll gearscore as usual (595-600), but will let you force stat and perk. Kinda like how the lazarus and genesis replicas work currently, except you will get to CHOOSE the stat yourself as well.

We’re looking at a roll of 0.167 (chance of 600gs) x 0.152 (chance of decent perk in two remaining tries after forcing one perk) = 0.025384, or 2.5%. One in fourty.

Shard therefore wins, and in case the material cost is NOT increased (which I don’t know if they are or not), it wins by a lot, because that would make the average cost of a decent axe as follows: 600 asmodeum, 120 ebony and 80 runic leather.

I feel it’s completely justified for shards to be the better option, because the effort crafters took to obtain their full sets and major trophies should absolutely be remembered and rewarded.

However, 600 asmo, 120 ebony and 80 runic on my server still equals roughly 300k gold, and we’re talking about a weapon with ONLY two good perks. Grinding dungeons is still humongously better and crafting is not viable in comparison at all.

I am happy that the team decided to take a step to improve crafting rewards, but it’s not enough. Not yet. Consider continuing on this path a bit further, if you may =).

6 Likes
2

Bear with one shameless bump. I’d like to at least hear the other crafters’ insight on this =).

1 Like
3

I wonder how the maths will work for the Specialized furnishing package. OwO

4

Also for cooking, I am not sure if the new world database is correct or not. But vial of azoth is 100% not worth it IMO.
OwO

5

I guess this wasn’t super far up due to the sheer content of it, but man is this a good one.

6

Do we know for sure if you can combine pattern with shards? Pattern + shard would make the thing expensive to craft, but at least you’d get something pretty close to what you want to craft, instead of needing to try billion times with most of the resulting items being completely useless due to bizarre combination of stats like str + int.

1 Like
7

I believe I’ve seen reports that we sadly cannot combine the two. And I agree, guaranteed 600 gs + stat + perk would give you roughly 16%, or one in six, on crafting a decent weapon.

If such a craft cost around, let’s say, 30 asmodeum, we might be getting on a semi viable level.

(30 asmo might sound low, but let’s not forget you also have to craft roughly 200 normal orichalcum axes to even GET your hands on a pattern in the first place)

8

So, it seems my pre-patch assumptions were correct except for one thing - I counted the material cost of a pattern craft as four times higher than normal, whilst in reality it’s only three times. This means the average cost of a decent pattern-crafted weapon is 1890 asmodeum, 378 ebony and 252 runic leather - I’ve updated the original post with these numbers as well.

This however does not affect the point I was making. Patterns are basically useless, they’re just not worth it, and shards win big time, but they’re not quite there yet either.

It’s a step in a good direction and I am still very excited you took it, but it’s simply not good enough yet to make crafting a viable option competitive to dungeon farming and we crafters will still almost always operate at a loss, if we try to craft for income, bar some haywire lucky rolls of the select few. I’d honestly at least like to be able to break even after putting in the effort of having multiple 595-600 crafting skills myself, not going to lie there =).

If we could combine shards and patterns in a single craft, then we’d be talking. Assuming triple mat cost per craft, you’d be looking at an average of 270 asmodeum, 54 ebony and 36 runic leather per a decent axe, or, with my server prices, roughly 80 thousand gold. If you keep in mind we’re talking about a weapon with ONLY two good perks, not a BiS roll, I feel it should be perfectly viable to let us combine the two. Especially if you also consider the availability of the patterns themselves - they’re not exactly easy and/or cheap to get your hands on and they’re simply not rewarding on their own.

9

For me as a crafter with low expertise my crafted gear is waaaaayyyy better than anything I could possibly find.
But if you’re trying to get bis, Dungeons with maxed expertise is the more efficient way. But that only counts for 0.1% or less of the player base. Having GS 590+ items with two good perks is awesome for almost everyone. And that’s pretty easy achievable with crafting

10

Hmm, I really wonder =). We won’t know without access to some sort of official data, but for example, I don’t think there is a single person in my guild who’d wear anything under 600 gearscore, and we’re not even a hardcore bunch, not by a long shot. But like I said, it’s fairly impossible to support this claim without any decent data backing, which I of course don’t have.

And also, I was referring more to the point of crafting not being profitable, not feeling like it’s worth it to put in the effort.

If, for example, you’re going for a 590+ weapon like you mentioned, with two good perks:

Without a shard, you’re looking at a roll of 0.16 x 0.079 => 1.3%, one in 77, which would put the average cost somewhere near 400k gold. Not viable. You won’t make a profit with that.

With a shard, you’re looking at a chance of 7.9%, so roughly one in thirteen. That still equals roughly 50k gold per such a weapon, not counting the cost of the shard itself. You’ll be lucky to sell such a weapon for maybe, MAYBE 7-8k, therefore operating at a 80%+ loss.

See my point =)?

Note: the average costs of course go down quite a bit the more perks you claim decent, but even with a wider “acceptable” perk pool, we’re still not getting anywhere close to profitability =/.

11

Hmm, you kind of right. But when you push your watermark for 200h or so to reach 600gs,then run Genesis or laz for a perfect drop, you have invested not less than leveling your crafting profession, gathered all the mats and crafted many items for that same result. It perhaps you did? I don’t know.

Being able to choose 2 perks plus attribute would be too good imo. Perhaps some mechanics that narrow down the massive amount of possible perks while crafting. Don’t know, how such mechanic could look like though.

Have you considered in your calculation of hitting a decent perk, that some perks block others?

12

That is of course a solid point too, but let’s not forget the entire thread focused on crafting a weapon with TWO decent perks, whilst lazarus legendaries have THREE of them, which makes some of them absolute BiS, and some very close to it. The average cost to craft something comparable to lazarus legendary is a ridiculous 64 million gold (without shard or pattern).

For simplicity, I am using keen, vicious, enchanted and keenly empowered as a pool of acceptable perks, and yes, if we added things like refreshing move (definitely acceptable for a hammer for example), or accounted for the possibility of keenly empowered rolling first and therefore blocking out the other “keenly” perks for the following rolls, the average cost will indeed go down a little, but still not to viable levels, I am afraid.

Speaking of which, I just realized I also forgot to account for the new trenchant perks in the updated calculation which in return widen the pool, lowering the chances even more =/.

13

This topic was automatically closed 30 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.