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Alpha Two Phase III testing has begun! During this phase, our realms will be open every day, and we'll only have downtime for updates and maintenance. We'll keep everyone up-to-date about downtimes in Discord.
If you have Alpha Two, you can download the game launcher here, and we encourage you to join us on our Official Discord Server for the most up to date testing news.
Economy from a Casual’s Perspective
RonDog98
Member, Alpha Two
Hello everyone, today I want to walk you through my journey of crafting my first item in AoC A2P3, and what a journey it was.
It started with a fresh new mage logging into the river lands for the 12th time. I was excited, ready to go, and I had a plan and a goal.
The plan: I was going to complete the early level experience until I had some glint and a high enough level I felt safe to go exploring and gathering.
The goal: to craft my first piece of gear this phase! The Emberweave chest piece (the more observant among you might have already spotted an issue with this plan)
A few hours of completing a surprisingly not very fresh new player experience, I had grinded my way to level six with a decent amount of glint and coin, and I was ready to gather. After selling half my glint and buying two satchels, I hit the road.
On my journey I found myself having to forage pretty far out since all the closer places had been picked clean. This brought me into very close proximity with mobs I would have had no business trying to engage. I was pretty aware of my surrounds so this was not a big issue, until it suddenly was. I fell victim to an unlucky Timberwolf spawn and next thing I know I was running back to my corpse. I B lined straight back, bud my corpse was nowhere to be seen and just like that I had lost half my remaining glint and resources. Moral not yet low, I got back to the grind and 40 minutes later I was was over flowing with flowers and I brought my spoils straight back to the weaving station. I was overjoyed! I had enough flowers for at least two pieces of armor woot woot!
It was at this point I discovered AoC’s strict processing fees. Not only did every thread require an item purchased from the vender, there was also a steep fee on top. I soon realized that not only did I have inadequate funds to process all my flowers, I had inadequate funds to even process enough for my chest piece! Begrudgingly I sold most of my resources, aside from the flowers, so that can I could process what I needed. At this point, since I’m blind, I also noticed I needed fuel. No biggie, I just chopped down two trees and 8 MINUTES LATER I had my thread and it was time! I was gonna get my cloak! Except I was not as I forgot I needed more money for the last vender item and the crafting fee. Sigh. It was hear I also realized my one death was the reason I did not have enough money to craft this one item. Cool. Okay so I gathered a bit more to sell to the vender and huzzah! The time was nigh my chest piece was almost in my grasp!
Only wait, when I went to the tailoring station the recipe was nowhere to be seen. Confused, I was going through my artisan book. Did I read it wrong? Was it just listing recipes I could get but did not have? Oh wait! There was the answer unnoticed hiding in plain site: requires anvil mountains (or whatever) to craft. What the hell, so after all that, despite being able to gather all the resources I needed, the recipe was zone locked because??? Why???? I’m all for making recipes REQUIRE reagents from other zones, but if I acquire those, on my own or through trade, I should not need to be physically in the anvils to craft a recipe I already know. Sure for rare boss crafting items that’s cool (like in the befallen forge) but for a level 1 crafting item???? HOGWASH! Absolute HOGWASH!
In summary: if you insist (dumbly) on trying to have a crafting tier at level 1, players need to naturally come by enough gold to engage with it by the time they are almost level 7! Either decrease crafting and processing fees or increase naturally acquired money through questing and solo mob grinding or better yet both! And for the love of god don’t zone lock level 1 recipes!
Thank you to everyone who took the time to read this, I hope it was at least somewhat enjoyable and relatable.
It started with a fresh new mage logging into the river lands for the 12th time. I was excited, ready to go, and I had a plan and a goal.
The plan: I was going to complete the early level experience until I had some glint and a high enough level I felt safe to go exploring and gathering.
The goal: to craft my first piece of gear this phase! The Emberweave chest piece (the more observant among you might have already spotted an issue with this plan)
A few hours of completing a surprisingly not very fresh new player experience, I had grinded my way to level six with a decent amount of glint and coin, and I was ready to gather. After selling half my glint and buying two satchels, I hit the road.
On my journey I found myself having to forage pretty far out since all the closer places had been picked clean. This brought me into very close proximity with mobs I would have had no business trying to engage. I was pretty aware of my surrounds so this was not a big issue, until it suddenly was. I fell victim to an unlucky Timberwolf spawn and next thing I know I was running back to my corpse. I B lined straight back, bud my corpse was nowhere to be seen and just like that I had lost half my remaining glint and resources. Moral not yet low, I got back to the grind and 40 minutes later I was was over flowing with flowers and I brought my spoils straight back to the weaving station. I was overjoyed! I had enough flowers for at least two pieces of armor woot woot!
It was at this point I discovered AoC’s strict processing fees. Not only did every thread require an item purchased from the vender, there was also a steep fee on top. I soon realized that not only did I have inadequate funds to process all my flowers, I had inadequate funds to even process enough for my chest piece! Begrudgingly I sold most of my resources, aside from the flowers, so that can I could process what I needed. At this point, since I’m blind, I also noticed I needed fuel. No biggie, I just chopped down two trees and 8 MINUTES LATER I had my thread and it was time! I was gonna get my cloak! Except I was not as I forgot I needed more money for the last vender item and the crafting fee. Sigh. It was hear I also realized my one death was the reason I did not have enough money to craft this one item. Cool. Okay so I gathered a bit more to sell to the vender and huzzah! The time was nigh my chest piece was almost in my grasp!
Only wait, when I went to the tailoring station the recipe was nowhere to be seen. Confused, I was going through my artisan book. Did I read it wrong? Was it just listing recipes I could get but did not have? Oh wait! There was the answer unnoticed hiding in plain site: requires anvil mountains (or whatever) to craft. What the hell, so after all that, despite being able to gather all the resources I needed, the recipe was zone locked because??? Why???? I’m all for making recipes REQUIRE reagents from other zones, but if I acquire those, on my own or through trade, I should not need to be physically in the anvils to craft a recipe I already know. Sure for rare boss crafting items that’s cool (like in the befallen forge) but for a level 1 crafting item???? HOGWASH! Absolute HOGWASH!
In summary: if you insist (dumbly) on trying to have a crafting tier at level 1, players need to naturally come by enough gold to engage with it by the time they are almost level 7! Either decrease crafting and processing fees or increase naturally acquired money through questing and solo mob grinding or better yet both! And for the love of god don’t zone lock level 1 recipes!
Thank you to everyone who took the time to read this, I hope it was at least somewhat enjoyable and relatable.
5
Comments
Thank you for your time! I really want this system to good and there is so much potential. I felt with enough posts on the topic we might get some change.
As the world fills up with player shops, caravans, and trade networks, these systems will make much more sense and create real interaction between players. It’s all part of the long-term vision that makes Ashes unique, and I trust Intrepid will keep refining the balance so both casual and hardcore players feel rewarded.
I hope you’re right, but this did not feel deep or rewarding, nor should it necessarily Given this was level 1 right out the gate crafting.
If I’m level 6 and I can’t afford to engage with level 1 crafting, that’s a problem.
Completely agree with that ...
I can understand what you want when you said,
But, as it is now, many problems will remain if nothing is done to correct things,
let me explain my point:
- If economy is driven by the players, what is the point of having the possibility to craft lvl 1-10 gears, if only lvl 10+ players can afford the skills (to not die of wild mobs attacking you everywhere you go) and with the money going on with it to craft ...
- As it is now, when reaching lvl 6, with only quest and killing some mobs, you can get like 30 to 50 silvers.
If you accumulate all needed to craft juste on set of weapons (either to handed one, or one handed + secondary hand) it cost you around 10 to 12 silvers.
Meaning, you can hardly make 3 items, (and of low quality) when you start.
other struggling, apart for the gathering profession, the leveling of craftmanship is too much too.
if you count around 5 silver par item you craft and you need at lvl 1 around 4-5 low quality item to lvl up, which mean 20 silver for lvl 1-2, and knowing that you need more and more xp, the more the lvls go up, it mean you either need like 4 to 5 golds (!) to lvl up to the next rank, or many high quality items and like ''only'' 1gold.
Seeing as how is the game now, i don't think it's doable with a low lvl main character.
All three point mean that this economy can only be maintained by high lvl players, who won't need low lvl stuff, so only a small portion of peoples with use crafts items, cause they we be too hard, or too costly to get ...
Then is the point of zone lock crafting,
The idea is good, but again, for low lvl stuff, it's too much,
I tried to start at the anvils, lvl up my rogue to lvl 8, and when i went to make a weapon, i saw that the one i want was craftable only in the Riverlands.
No problems then, i just need to take my mount and run a little ...
Ahh ... maybe i must have thought of the wild creatures again, this time much stronger than me, and what was supposed to be a 15min trip was finally a 40 minutes trips, costing me 15 silvers out of the 2X i had, 3 blue glints, and 18min run without a mount because she was instantly killed 2 times ...
not cool,
At least, if you want to lock crafting to certain zone, you need to make the travel safer, or a little less punishing ...
Of course, i could just stay there and make the stuff i can, but then, why make it that way? why just don't make T1 stuff available everywhere?
Of course, what it’s easy to states problems. But here he’s a few solutions i could think of
First, concerning costs:
You can lower crafting costs, or on the contrary, up a little the selling prices (not like it was with granite sand stones, but it’s now much more expensive to craft an item than to sell it afterwards, if you could like craft an 3rd item when you sell 2 for example would be i think a good compromise)
You could lower the material price, 30 bronze is in my opinion too much for someone who want to start craft low level items
Then the difficulty to lvl up.
I understand that you want to make it so it would take several players helping each other to craft good items, but it’s already the case (and done well i might say) when you restricted the number of profession you can upgrade in rank (you then need at least 3 peoples to craft an high tier item, which is what you want i think)
Then you don’t need to make it so difficult for the first lvls of professions, especially T1 stuff (before lvl 10)
You can maybe upgrade a little the size of bags, it pains me every time i go farming some resources, to be needed to throw some low lvl quality resources, just because they are not worth carrying (cause it's too costly to use compare to the xp it will give at the end ...)
Or just because there is so much variety that i can’t take it all (even if it’s only 2 or 3 each) in my bags
(Take granite for example, you can loot granite stone, zinc, tendonite, ruby, roughrime, in 6 types of rarity, which equal to 30 slots if i only want to take one of each, if i go with the basic bag and 2 mining satchel, I got only 14 slots available...)
I can’t even carry half of the resources I found. And putting it in the storage of low lvl zone is just enough (16 slot) to only stack material if you are only mining granite ....
There may be more to say, with more solution, but I think I have ‘’talk’’ enough for now, espacially knowing that, as a not native speaking, it may be full of errors and i apologies for that!
Or course, i still enjoy adventuring through Vera, and hop you do too!!
Have fun