More on EQ2 tradeskills

I was told my first EQ2 tradeskill review sounded too negative. My fault, I was talking about the "difficulties" you have to overcome to craft something, but I should have used the term "challenges" instead.

One month into EQ2 and I'm practically doing nothing but tradeskills, so the system can't be that bad. I have two major characters, adventuring level 11 and 12, but crafting level 18 both. Tobold and Raslebol, on the Runnyeye server, if you happen to run into them. So what does EQ2 have that other MMORPG don't have in tradeskills?

First thing is the mini-game in the actual crafting process. The game is rather primitive, but still better than just clicking on a single combine button. People complain that due to the game each combine takes too much time. But that is actually the advantage of the system, as the time restriction allows to make each combine more valuable, in terms of profit and crafting xp.

The second thing is the fact that crafting is profitable, even at low levels. There are tons of games where a crafter spends his early career grinding stuff nobody would ever want to buy, and the sells those below cost to an NPC, or salvages them to recycle part of the resources. In EQ2 you can make useful intermediate products starting from the very beginning, craft your first container at level 5, and your first app3 spell/skill upgrade at level 6.

Is it the perfect system? Not quite. Intermediate products, containers, and app3 spell/skill upgrades are about the only really profitable stuff. Weapons and armor are too easy to get from quests, and quest equipment is often better than crafted equipment of the same level. Crafters can make food, potions, and totems, all of which are beneficial for adventurers, but their effects aren't that noticeable, so there isn't much demand. Furniture can also be made, but as it is purely decorative and doesn't have any function yet, demand is close to zero.

So the whole crafting economy is held up by the few items that are in demand, but the demand is strong and up to now it is working very well. Crafters depend on other crafters of different classes to make them some intermediate items, and if they can make highly profitable stuff they often also "outsource" the production of the intermediates they would be able to make themselves, but don't have the time for.

My main complaint in the first EQ2 tradeskill review was the harvesting system, where you had to level up for many, many hours in the newbie zones, to be able to gather resources in the next higher zone. The developers listened and lowered the minimum skill needed for harvesting in the tier 2 zones from 40 to 20, a significant drop, as you already start the game with 15 skill. The effect is very visible, the newbie zones aren't overcrowded with crafters any more, and the resources in Antonica are now disappearing at a much faster rate. Gathering resources is now a lot more accessible to a lot more people, and that is good.

Resource gathering is popular not only because of crafting, but also because of wholesaler quests. The quests ask you to gather 15 tier 2 resources for a reward of 12 silver. I thought it was a bug that you don't have to gather the resources, buying them from the broker counts as well. Turns out that it is a feature which is working as intended. That effectively creates a minimum price for tier 2 resources of 80 copper, with resources that are sold for less on the broker often bought by people which just want to make a quick profit by turning them in for a quest.

So the crafting economy is humming, and just would need a bit of balancing. There are resource nodes like fish and mushrooms which yield resources for which there is no wholesaler quest, and which don't transform into anything profitable. So many people just leave them standing. But the resource respawn system works in a way that if you gather one resource type, a new node of any other type could spawn, and so the unpopular resource nodes are multiplying and the popular ones are getting scarce. A typical "tragedy of the commons" type of problem, if you gather the unpopular thing for the common good, you help everybody, but your part of that common good is so small as to be not worth the effort, if you are the only one doing it. Could be easily balanced by adding wholesaler quests for these resources as well, making them worth 80 cp.

I have no idea how long this crafting will keep me occupied. Some people deliberately grinded crafting, making unprofitable stuff for faster xp gain, and then found that beyond level 30 there aren't many recipes implemented, and that they burned out from the grind. I'm trying to avoid that, making only things that either sell well, or are needed by my guild. Slower xp, slower leveling, but more purpose, more profit, and more fun. Doesn't feel like a grind at all.
- posted by Tobold @ 7:48 AM Permanent Link