Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
A day for a sword is not enough!
nsys
Member, Alpha Two
Yesterday I got a nice little drop. A recipe for a Brass Greatsword. Me - an intellecutal - playing a fighter was delighted. So when going to bed yesterday, I thought to myself to spend today making that sword. Oh god was I naive.
I thought my first step should be to mine some copper and zinc and then hope that someone can make my sword for me or worst case I'd have to become a blacksmith. It's a lvl 10-ish weapon, so how bad could it be? The answer is very bad. First of all, you gotta be able to mine copper and zinc (lvl 4-5 iirc). For that you have to mine basalt or granite, A LOT of basalt and granite, but if you ask around/get lucky it's ok. Then you have to hit up the copper and zinc nodes and OH BOY, good luck. There's barely any. I spent hours looking for it all around the wider outskirts around LH (as I'm only a lvl 9 looking to make his first weapon) with barely any result. It just doesn't exist in a quantity where you can get anywhere.
This is insane. I'm not trying to craft a legendary relic from the past. I just wanted to make myself a cute little sword and I was not able to.
Now I am aware, that if I knew all the best spots and was in a perfectly run guild with some neckbeards, I might have gotten there and I understand fully that this is the stated goal of the game. But for a brass weapon? Really? I have to spend a week planning, networking and gathering to make a new weapon for a lvl 10 fighter? I'm not questioning the concept, but whoever is in charge of tuning this, needs to touch some grass and think about how some dad who only gets to play on the weekend is supposed to engage with the gathering/crafting aspect of the game.
I thought my first step should be to mine some copper and zinc and then hope that someone can make my sword for me or worst case I'd have to become a blacksmith. It's a lvl 10-ish weapon, so how bad could it be? The answer is very bad. First of all, you gotta be able to mine copper and zinc (lvl 4-5 iirc). For that you have to mine basalt or granite, A LOT of basalt and granite, but if you ask around/get lucky it's ok. Then you have to hit up the copper and zinc nodes and OH BOY, good luck. There's barely any. I spent hours looking for it all around the wider outskirts around LH (as I'm only a lvl 9 looking to make his first weapon) with barely any result. It just doesn't exist in a quantity where you can get anywhere.
This is insane. I'm not trying to craft a legendary relic from the past. I just wanted to make myself a cute little sword and I was not able to.
Now I am aware, that if I knew all the best spots and was in a perfectly run guild with some neckbeards, I might have gotten there and I understand fully that this is the stated goal of the game. But for a brass weapon? Really? I have to spend a week planning, networking and gathering to make a new weapon for a lvl 10 fighter? I'm not questioning the concept, but whoever is in charge of tuning this, needs to touch some grass and think about how some dad who only gets to play on the weekend is supposed to engage with the gathering/crafting aspect of the game.
5
Comments
Hopefully this will be less combersome in Phase 2 when we have player-run shops.
Well played! Sucks for us all trying to get in but THAT could be a motivator with this disproportionate money and time sink called harvesting / processing / crafting.
The neckbeards love it though. Some guy in the discord today literally (yes, literally) said he hopes maxing gathering takes 100s of hours and he got cheered. It really seems that the devs saw Old School Runescape and went "whoah, get this fast reward and instant gratification sh** outta here"
sure. there might also be more copper in the other bioms, etc. etc.. BUT to properly test stuff, we need the materials. We only have 3 days a week, with planned wipes and we kinda should be able to experiment. Doesn't need to be absolutely abundant, but it should be treated like a test-phase and not a live server with a 2 year story buildup, because, well, it's not.
The problem is that there isn't storage or a vendor at each processor. At every stage the artisan facility should allow material to be sold to it where it is on sale for people further down the crafting line, or in the case of a final product, the node vendor, where gear is only on sale to node citizens.
it would also help if gatherers depositing material were paid in commodities/consumables rather than having to craft the commodity/consumable themself. So if 20 copper ore is brought in, it is paid for in copper fragments, let's say the gatherer gets 2. The processor then comes along with his fuel, and refines that copper ore, and let's say gets 4, and the facility keeps 4, for sale, plus whatever the processor sells to them.
Same for a hunter dropping off carcasses at a cookhouse. They get paid in cooked meat, jerky or rations.
The whole thing is much simpler and is closer to a real economic system, when currency was scarce for common people, and there was a lot of barter about. It also means that when the time comes, layering an economy based on supply/demand on top of it is much easier.
I feel they are going to do this, they just haven't got to it yet. I'd like for them to have put in the vendor though and paid the gatherers in product, also having products like copper fragments and moulds on sale, even if they didn't implement keeping track of stock, and changing the buy/sell prices based on supply.
Intrepid might be planning a completely different system, but I can't think what would be easier to implement, easier to understand, or better for the player.
I don't think what you are suggesting will be a default NPC behaviour - but something that can be set up with player-run stalls. I'll be buing metal ore and selling metal fragements pretty much all day.