🌼👋 Dev Discussion: Economy and Stat Rebalance

Trescatorce

What I like and dislike about crafting right now (Novice → Apprentice, Alpha 3)

Hey all — quick context so you know where I’m coming from. I play with a group of four friends. We organized ourselves so each of us runs two characters with two optimized professions each.

My characters

Tank (lvl 15): Journeyman Mining, Apprentice Stonemasonry, Apprentice Smelting

Warrior (lvl 10): Apprentice Weapon Smithing, Apprentice Armor Smithing, Apprentice Jewelry

What I like

Gathering and Processing feel straightforward and readable. The progression is mostly linear and makes sense.

I like the change that some metals and gems can come from stone. It adds texture to routes and lets you plan better between Mining and Stonemasonry.

The problem: going from Novice (1) to Apprentice (10)

When I started Weapon Smithing, I did what most experienced players do: maximize XP gained per cost (materials and coin). In my guild (Otters), the estimate floating around is ~40,000 XP to go 1 → 10 in crafting professions. I tested a basic craft, the Brooksteel Shield, to figure out how many I’d need and what it would cost.

Recipe cost bits I used (simplified):

1× Final touch → 33 copper

4× Copper fragments → 4 × (33 copper “smoldering ash”) + 4 × [copper price]

2× Ash timber → 2 × (33 copper “sanding powder”) + 2 × [ash wood price]

If you ignore raw material prices (I gathered/proc’d them within my group, but they still have opportunity cost), the fixed coin outlay per shield is roughly 231 cp (2.31 silver).
The system vendor pays 29 cp per shield — you don’t even recoup a single final touch.

With a crafting XP scroll, I needed ~90–100 shields to hit level 10. That leaves a new player with ~100 basic shields to sell and a fixed outlay of ~2.3 gold just in coin sinks (again, excluding the time/value of raw mats).

Trying to sell them (spoiler: pain)

Listed at the trader for bare-minimum recovery.

There’s a 20-listing cap per NPC; I rotated stock, waited.

Day 1 in Winstead: zero sales.

I tried other markets… only to learn the hard way that desert nodes < level 3 have no trade NPC.

Finally listed some in New Aela and Joeva.

Four days later: 1 sale. I vendored the rest because I needed space to start Jewelry.

Jewelry: needed ~117 earrings/rings to reach Apprentice. Slightly better demand because “everyone uses jewelry”… but the same structural issue showed up.

Why this feels like a systemic flaw at Initiate tier

A level-1 character can hit 10 in a day or two without needing meaningful gear or consumables. Between occasional drops and well-structured parties, low-level gear and consumables aren’t required to progress.

That means everything you craft from 1→10 is largely unnecessary. It floods the market with items no one asked for and no one wants, especially mono-crafts like the Brooksteel Shield.

Result: low-level crafting is not enjoyable, demands time and coin, and feels irrelevant.

Now multiply by a server: if 100 players pick Weapon Smithing and most follow the same “best XP per coin” approach, you get ~10,000 unwanted shields sloshing around.

Based on Ashes’ stated philosophy — crafting should be an enjoyable pillar alongside other systems — this first step fails its promise. It becomes a mandatory slog to reach a more comfortable tier, and (from what I’ve heard) the 10→20 journey is only slightly better.

Suggestions (surgical but meaningful)

Entropic durability

Each repair reduces max durability slightly; rarer items decay much more slowly (and legendaries don’t break, but require periodic resource-intensive servicing).

Eventually, items break and yield scrap, pushing natural renewal of gear.

Example from my play: I repair a Crude Fishing Rod every ~40 minutes. If it finally died after ~3 days, I’d actually buy another. That’s healthy for markets and supports Carpentry and similar lines.

Mayor purchase orders (tax-funded)

Periodically, the Mayor spends city tax revenue on bulk orders to equip guards, improve stats, or prep for events.

This legitimizes crafting as a full-time path: crafters can sell a portion of output at guaranteed (lower) public prices and the rest privately.

It’s a predictable sink that absorbs waves of Initiate-tier items.

Practice items

e.g., Brooksteel Practice Shield that costs ~75% of mats + coin, grants full XP, creates no marketable item.

You still engage the full crafting loop (and learn!), but you don’t flood the economy with things nobody wants at that tier.

Closing thought

I’m not arguing for bigger gold faucets or free XP. I’m asking for clean mechanics that:

Let new crafters progress without generating trash,

Create predictable sinks for surplus, and

Keep markets healthy and relevant at low tiers.

I like the direction of Gathering/Processing and the stone → metals/gems twist. If the team adds entropic durability, mayoral orders, and a practice-item lane, Initiate crafting would feel purposeful instead of like a required grind to “the real game.”

Happy to hear counterpoints

HarryLoD

Ttk is too fast. People having 300 power and 5k HP brings ttk back to phase 1 speed

T2 and T3 gear for initiate and adept are not worth crafting. Not the time nor the money. We can level fine with t1

This will apply to radiant as well when we can go higher level