Alchemy/Crafting/Enchanter Thread

[Gando]

phlinn said:

But that's inherent in the base stats, hence the lower depth and higher base benefits to begin with, plus you can still magically tweak it.

For the carpenter example, i doubt most of them start with oak. A soft wood seems far more likely, and I suspect oak is a lot trickier to work with.

This is all an abstraction to begin with, so there are limits to how realistic you really want to get.

Im not sure where you get the idea that Crafters "start with oak"

Oak is indeed a hard wood and thus is more difficult to work with as an apprentice carpenter and such an apprentice would not start with such a material just as crafters dont start with Iron items. The fact is though by the time the crafter has enough skill for Iron they are not apprentices anymore, and thier accumulated knowledge working with softer less tricky metals comes into play when learning about how iron works. So while I agree that a lower set of stats applies I do not think it should completely ignore skill level.

[phlinn]

I wasn't saying they start with oak, but in hindsight I didn't write clearly. Forgive me. I was trying to align your carpenter example with the bronze/iron/steel/etc that portralis uses.

What i was trying to imply was that you start with simple things to work with, and moving up to more difficult but better pieces is explicitly covered by skill. I.e. Working with oak instead of pine is inherently more difficult (requires higher skill), but higher quality if you can work with it at all (better base stats). A novice carpenter is going to have a d**n difficult time doing anything useful with oak at all (can't even use it).

The first oak table a carpenter makes is probably not going to be better than an average oak table. It will take a lot more practice to start adding decoration, or building in more complex parts, such leave which fold under the table if you want to make it a bit smaller for instance.

I guess my basic point is that it's not ignoring skill level, since your skill level is what lets you make it at all. That accumulated knowledge you mentioned is part of WHY the base stats are better.

[Gando]

phlinn said:

I wasn't saying they start with oak, but in hindsight I didn't write clearly. Forgive me. I was trying to align your carpenter example with the bronze/iron/steel/etc that portralis uses.

What i was trying to imply was that you start with simple things to work with, and moving up to more difficult but better pieces is explicitly covered by skill. I.e. Working with oak instead of pine is inherently more difficult (requires higher skill), but higher quality if you can work with it at all (better base stats). A novice carpenter is going to have a d**n difficult time doing anything useful with oak at all (can't even use it).

The first oak table a carpenter makes is probably not going to be better than an average oak table. It will take a lot more practice to start adding decoration, or building in more complex parts, such leave which fold under the table if you want to make it a bit smaller for instance.

I guess my basic point is that it's not ignoring skill level, since your skill level is what lets you make it at all. That accumulated knowledge you mentioned is part of WHY the base stats are better.

We seem to be going in circles here. From what I can see there IS a direct parallel from the metaphor of PINE/OAK/ETC to the actual use of BRONZE/IRON/STEEL/ETC. Have you done any real life craft work? Im not a professional in any craft catagory but I have done some of each as just a part of living. In my personal experience the learning process of a new material quickly becomes absorbed into the process of being a craftsman if you have any good training at all. That might be the key here is that you are thinking of this idea of skills in portralis as being autodidactive rather than the traditional apprentice/journeyman/craftsman/master hierarchy. For one thing when you are being trained you are not simply given one material told to make a great item and then started over again on the next material as if youd never crafted anything before in your life.

This I think is the core of our disagreement/miscommunication/(deliberate?)misunderstanding.

Of course you dont start with difficult materials usually (though it does happen sometimes that the need requires such). But as you progress you certainly will. The structure of those who are teaching ensures that this is so. You must assume in the absense of evidence to the contrary (Occam's Razor if I remember correctly) the simplest idea...which is that Portralis's crafting resembles real life crafting to the degree that in order to gain points in it you must (offscreen behind the scenes and without any actual proof it happening in the game) learn this stuff as you gain the points. By the time your crafting goes from 20 to 120 you have (offscreen, etal) learned your lessons with each new material and are a competant craftsman of the level of points you have. There is a matter of suspending disbelief because this is a fantasy game so the matter of magic mixing into the whole thing should not bother us. Its simplely part of the process. And I might add that since we are crafting magical items our skill in magical crafting must pretty good to start with (as reflected by the over crafting skill). In any event I said I did agree with the concept that you should not retain your full ability to create masterpeices with new materials though I think my own explaination takes it into account if you did. It seems to me that what you learn about working in Bronze will also apply to some degree with Iron. Perhaps not all or even ALOT but some. You already know how to make a magical item so making one with some bonuses on it should not be terribly hard. It MIGHT be harder than normal but not as impossible as if youd never crafted before.

Also and the main reason I argue about this at all is that this game requires a certain amount of balance but should not be overnerfed. I see a tendancy among people interested in game design to lean too far to the "right" when changing things for balance sake. I think your suggestion nerfs crafting too much. And that is my main objection.

[Variaz]

I think turning this into a script will be needed.

But for the default behavior, I will probably keep it the way it is. If we base the damages/AC/to_h/to_d of crafted items on the rarity of the metal, we nerf Crafting quite a bit, because it would make Blue Steel not that much better than Bronze, since the bonus for blue steel would start low, because you suggest that it makes no sense to be suddently able to make a high quality blue steel version of a bronze item. Going all the way down to level 100, and finding a rare blue steel ore will already be a challenge, the last thing you want is for it to be weaker than your bronze weapon.

Of course, it all depends on the ratios we would determine, but overall, I don't like that idea all that much.

[sekira]

I tend to agree with Variaz and Gando. Remember, crafting just had its tweak points cut in HALF, that is a colosal nerf right there, but I think it was necessary and a good balancing move. I don't think we need to be nerfing it even more, or at least it should wait until players can actually get to the skill levels we are arguing about, and see how it affects game play before we go changing things again.

EDIT: I did think of something though, maybe you could test it out and see how it works (via scripting) with a starting bonus based on skill - depth some way, but increase the amount of bonus per skill to make up for it? That might be a way to increase your own enjoyment by having the skill behave like you feel it should (skill - depth) but also not make it worthless by increasing the benefit per skill.

[phlinn]

The following rambles a bit. I should edit it.. but i spent enough time trying to think through it. You can probably see me change my mind about halfway through.

I'd probably put it back to 2% per excess skill point, or changing it to to Base *(skill / depth). I think i prefer the former with some sort of cap though. In case anyone thought otherwise, I always assumed tweak points and the to_h and to_d bonuses would be constant, since magical benefits are more important than base stats, and the character's crafting skill represents knowledge of enchanting, not just shaping objects. Otherwise decomposing a bow back to a log and cloth is just silly...

After looking at k_info.txt, it occured to me that for non-crafters, it kind of sucks that depth increases more rapidly than AC or damage dice. For instance, the plate mails

Matierial	Depth	AC
Bronze	15	40
Iron	20	50
Steel	30	60
Mithril	40	80
Adamantium	70	100
titanium	100	120
Blue Steel	130	150

This is just one class of item, but with the minimum skill for adamantium, you're better with a crafted adamantium (at 1% per skill) than with a found blue steel -- except that your tweak points won't even be close to any item actually found if you're anywhere near the level you might start seeing blue steel, and objects.lua is nearly guaranteed to add bonus base AC at a higher rate than crafting would (Depth 70 means average bonuslevel 105, which means an average AC bonus of 155%). I'm starting to wonder if 1/10 and 1% is an overnerf at the mid to high levels. I didn't realize how generous the random generator is.

Hmm... this may seem like it's counter to my previous thinking, but maybe item depth should provide some bonus tweak points? It would mean there's some reason to make non-bronze jewelery for instance. The better materials, although harder to work with, are more magically sensitive?

[Gando]

I think the key difference here is that with tweak points you rely on your own choices to make the items worth something for you. With random items you get what you can because its potluck so to speak.

Note about the above comment. It is in no way contradictory to what Phlinn said...just thought it bore mentioning. I think we will need to experiment alot with crafting and tweaking etc and perhaps diving to get a better picture.

[vastin]

I would say that crafting SHOULD result in considerably less tweak points than a standard character build with artifacts at any particular level - because you have the major advantages of:

1) Not having to grind for them - time is money as they say, and pure crafters never have to stop and farm levels for stuff (other than spellbooks or a really nice brand weapon maybe), all they truly care about is XP so they can dive deep and fast and reach higher levels very quickly. All they have to do is surface occasionally to buy new steel/mithril stuff to decompose into new items (at higher level farming returns as they need to collect adamant/blue steel etc, but it is pretty simple.) Then its back down as deep and fast as they can find stairways.

2) Crafter builds can be dramatically adjusted to remake your build on the fly. It is hard to overestimate just how powerful this is if it is properly used.

3) Your points are highly optimized. No wasted item points anywhere. No RNG's to shout and pound your fists at. This is probably = to at least a 33% overall advantage in pure points, and again a huge advantage in time.

Now I think it may be true that blue leveled items in the very late game might actually compete with crafting tweak points when combined with their huge base values, but I'm a little dubious until I see it. Crafting base armor/damage/hit values at that level will be completely obscene, and you lose most of your flexibility with blue items, though you do retain the ability to optimize.

At level 100, a Dwarf Enchanter should be getting ~230-280 tweak points per item (i'm giving them 20AP to spend on other bonuses, and assuming they've build up a cache of blue crafting boost items) - and I don't know how to calculate the base equipment bonuses for a 1000 crafting score, but I presume they are astronomical - particularly in BaseAC. For example, the character probably doesn't need to put more than a tiny handful of points into def/agil to remain functionally melee immune which frees up an enormous number of points for more offensive optimization, spell defense or a godlike HP buffer. Likewise they may need little or no Dex because of the +to_hit bonuses from equipment, freeing up another substantial source of points (probly looking at well over +1000 to hit and damage per item unless it caps?).

All this being said, I REALLY LIKE crafting in its overall scope and coolness. It just seems to make everything dramatically easier than any other build and it is one of those builds that works best when it doesn't intereact with ANY other skills - by itself it is a very uninteresting mon-build (put 90% of all your points into Crafting and Improved Enchantment - you win!).

I guess the coolest thing would be to see crafting <i>interact</i> with or enhance other skills rather than blatantly replacing them... I don't know - maybe something of a more dramatic change to the item bonus system such as all item bonuses being limited to some <i>multiple</i> of your base skill/ability scores? Force the crafter to spread their points around a bit? Improved Enchanting increases this multiple gradually so that an enchanter has the ability to buck the curve more than a non-enchanter? I don't know, just throwing wild ideas around to reign in the firepower and flexibility a bit.

Oh, I really liked Phlinn's point above about the tweak points being modified by the base item type, such that leather and bronze have worse tweak ratios, and at the high level you get more when you go over to adamant and blue steel (or Silk or whatever high-end material is available for int casters/monks). This could be used to nerf early crafters but keep them competitive late.

[Variaz]

We tried to nerf Crafting by making 1 tp/10 Crafting instead of 1 tp/5 Crafting. It was overnerf. So we must be VERY careful how we nerf it, if we nerf it at all. The only nerf I plan on putting is to disable adding Alchemy/Crafting to levelable items.

Yes, in the current release, Crafting is better than levelables. But once you reach Crafting 300, the damages increase for weapons caps, and at this point, levelables catch up.

Let's take a Steel Claymore. It's 4d7 damages, which means that at crafting 300, it becomes 12d21. That's strong, but it doesn't increase anymore. Now, the random magic steel claymore could start at more than 4d7 damages. Assuming a rank of about 50, let's say about 8d14(could be a bit less or a bit more). At level 1. Which means the following damages progression(25% bonus to both sides and dices every 15 levels):

Level 1: 8d14
Level 15: 10d17
Level 30: 12d21 (so at level 30, it equals the Crafted one. Level 30 is no big deal).
Level 45: 15d26
Level 60: 18d32
Level 75: 22d40
Level 90: 27d50

12d21 has average base damages of about 132 and max damages of 252.

27d50 has average of 688 and max of 1350. Even though you get more skill points through Crafted items, it won't make up for the huge difference in base damages, especially considering you will not place points in Crafting at all if you go with levelables, but instead in the respective skills. In the case of Swords, this mean a much higher hit rate, and with Polearms, much greater damages. The Blunt 70 feat is incredibly useful as well.

A level 100 Dwarf Enchanter, assuming 500 natural points in Crafting, will get 937 Crafting. Assuming you place 100 points in the Enhanced Crafting ability of the Enchanter, that's 34 extra points. For a grand total of 221 per items(I will remove the bonus to Crafting from levelables in the next upload, so that's the best you can get at level 100).

So with 13 slots now being craftable, we are talking about a maximum of 221*13 = 2873 skill points, versus a total of 1300+500 = 1800 skill points for regular characters. But that's only for the dwarf, and an extremely specialized one at that.

If we take another race with no bonus to Crafting, we get 625 at best, which, assuming 34 extra points from the Enchanter ability, gives us 159 points. 159*13 = 2067, only 200 points more, which really doesn't mean much since base damages is what matters the most in damages calculation. And this 200 will not benefit from any racial bonus either. And then, 1800 points doesn't take into account the extra bonus the item may already have(and trust me, later items have very high bonus! I just generated a debug mode purple blue steel long sword with 18d21 and +32 wisdom. Equip 13 more items like that and you get 32*13 = 416 more points, making it 2216, MORE than 2067! And considering how common normal "purple" items are, it won't take long before you get good stuff like that at higher levels. Oh, and the previous item I generated had 35% resist chaos...).

[vastin]

At a glance the math looks right - though there are so many ways to multiply your damage via stat points that I'm not certain that the crafter wouldn't make up for the lower base damage with an extra thousand opints to throw around.

Anyway, they can get an ultra-high base damage WEAPON by sacrificing a single one of their crafting slots - which admittedly at that level is over 200 tweak points, but hey, a good weapon should come with a lot of those anyway. I don't know what the base armor values look like at that level or whether they work out the same way...

They can also afford to use the absolute best weapon they can get their hands on - no having to pass over several uber-weapon drops just because they don't match your weapon skill!

But really, if it comes down to a nerfing, the major target of the nerf probably shouldn't be crafting (though I feel it is dramatically overpowered in the 1-?? (at least 20th) level range) - it will need to be the Dwarf racial bonus.

When you say that the Dwarf Enchanter is a highly specialized build, that's not really true. They are the most flexible build in the game by a wide margin, because the entire basis of what they do is to multiply and transform all of their skill points into anything they need. It's the only skill in the game where you can play a very well rounded character by dumping all your points in one place. In fact, you can play several well rounded characters that way.

To have THAT skill multiplied substantially for a particular race is going to break things no matter what you do. There isn't really an in-between state. It either 33% too weak for everyone but dwarves, or its 50% too powerful for dwarves, if you see what I mean.

If you could find some less statistical and more unique bonus to give dwarves where crafting is concerned, that might work better. Barring that, you'll probably just have to tone down the dwarf bonus to 25% and the human down to 15 or so, but even then it would be silly to play anything but a dwarvish crafter (if you're going to go with crafting at all).

Crafting is also very all-or-nothing. If you don't push it to extremes, there's not much point in buying it at all, save for some minor utility in the mid to late game, as it can quickly become obsolete compared to found items if you slack off.

Have you considered using Crafting to MODIFY existing items in addition to or instead of just flat out creating them? At that point it is something you could effectively dabble in that could stay relevant throughout the game - but it might be a really major change.

[vastin]

As an aside - can the monsters at level 100 actually take anything like the kind of damage we're talking about here, or is this mostly an intellectual exercise at this stage? I know that anything I run into with a woefully unoptimized level 22 dwarf crafter pretty much dies instantly unless it is physical immune, even if it is well over his level.

[Variaz]

Well, right now, a level 100 Mature Prismatic Dragon(strongest enemy so far) would have the following stats:

Hp: 4290000

Melee damages: 32856 - 328561
Magic damages: 71199
Hit rate: 50503
Defense: 17850

This is for a normal one. A boss would have 25740000 hp, and much higher stats/damages.

It's a depth 40 enemy. And it was done BEFORE levelables/tweakables became what they've become. The next chapter and the chapters after will take all of that into account, as well as the enhanced hp, and feature much enhanced enemies. So no, they aren't just mental exercices. Stuff will get scary later on. ;D

[T10]

Vastin meets the problem with crafting I met before.
But he is a better drafter than me:)
The proper term for the problem is can't found before: all or nothing.
Thank you for your words:)

But my experience says a bit diferent thing:
In early game my character defeated Quazar at lvl25. She has a crafting 60 and she never met any armor better than she can craft for herself - a steel full plate [207, +36].
With some craftsman's stuff she can raise her crafting to 70 and will make a mithril full plate.
I think it will be a great armor for the next 20 levels:)
Every other clothers - except the few levelables - are [25 +36] because of defense transfer.
Her current AC is 9776 - I think it's a nice value at lvl25:)

[vastin]

I'm done playing crafters for a while. They are powerful enough to spoil your perspective on the rest of the game at the moment, especially in the early to mid game (up to 30th at least):

My final suggestions for crafting are the following:

1) Reduce or change the nature of the dwarven crafting bonus. It is too big and if you try to balance crafting for it, it'll just end up being useless for everyone else. Nobody else gets a racial advantage that basically reads: 'Increase all your skills, stats, armor and damage values by 50%, and negate your other racial disads'.

2) Have the material of the item affect the tweak point ratio as suggested by someone else earlier. This is a sensible way to weaken the skill early without having wierd arbitrary changes in the skill's behavior at certain levels. It has the side advantage of making material actually matter for jewelery:

Leather/Cloth = 1/10
Bronze = 1/9
Iron = 1/8
Steel = 1/7
Mithril = 1/6
Adamant = 1/5.5
Titanium = 1/5
Blue Steel 1/4.5 (if you REALLY think crafting is 'underpowered' in the late game, which I'm still dubious about...

3) reduce the BaseAC, +dam/+hit/+AC bonuses but remove the 300 cap. This again would weaken the skill early, but help it to stay relevant into the end game.

4) Smooth out the crafting values needed to craft higher material types, just to make it so crafters have to get to a higher level before those better tweak point ratios become available:

Bronze: 5 = 20
Iron: 10 = 40
Steel: 20 = 60
Mithril: 40 = 80
Adamant: 60 = 100
Titanium: 90 = 120
Blue Steel: 120 = 140

5) Consider replacing 'Improved Enchanting' with something more interesting. Right now it is very generic and very powerful, which discourages putting points anywhere else and thus sucks much of the flavor out of the Enchanter class, turning it into a pure tweak-point mule.

As crafting is constructed now, always assume that the player is putting at least 90% of their points into crafting. There's no point in assuming otherwise as the skill is basically worthless if it is allowed to fall behind the stuff you pick up off the floor.

In the long term, I'd look at modifying crafting into something that can improve found magic items rather than just creating them. Properly implemented, this would remove the 'all or nothing' nature of crafting and allow it to be part of other builds, rather than existing only as a core build of its own.

[Gando]

I have (of course) several things to say about your last post Vestin.

1) I noticed you have a knack for finding extremes (at least in Portralis) which is a great thing for a beta tester to have....finding exploits others would not is something to be proud of particularly when your aim is to improve the game for everyone.

2) As a result of #1) your perspective I think is a little skewed. The game isn't competitive (unless you consider posting builds to be competition) so the idea of perfect balance isn't the same as it would be for a multiplayer game. (consider the case of T.O.M.E. for an example of a similar style game) You need to keep in mind that not everyone has made or will make the same builds you did. I totally ignored Improved Enchanting in my enchanter builds as I was more interested in other parts of the class.

Crafting is not broken or unbalanced any more than anything else is in the game it is just a different way to play the game.

I do not agree that the game needs major changes such as those you recommend though some I do agree with at least partially. (You may derive a feeling from my posts that I am against dramatic overhauls and changes in the game that I view as unnecessary and you will be correct.)

Crafting IS an easier way to get through some of the lower levels if you are familiar with the game mechanics and are already a smart player. Otherwise it is merely another way to die alot I expect Sakura's new class to be quite similar when it finally arrives (I almost forgot about it entirely btw since its been a long time coming...WHEN IS IT COMING OUT V???). I expect that once people have played it for a bit that it will be one of the stronger final game classes. At least until the later chapters.

My recommendation is....stick around for a bit...observe a few builds first...then ask for the sky.