Crafting is probably UP in DG.

Discussion in 'Suggestions' started by Equineforecaster, Dec 19, 2011.

  1. JunkRamen

    JunkRamen Member

    If they ever implement sorting it might be cleaner. I'm wondering if the tech exists for them to make a consumable that can grant a 1-time "enchant" to an item, like those armor kits in WoW.
     
  2. Ryvian

    Ryvian Member

    I'd much prefer if the "remove corruption" skill from Demonology was given to Smithing, because it makes just as much sense if not more. As for magic resist though, I'd say that's a weakness that smithing should not have to make up for. Choose a skill branch more suitable for your auxiliary needs. Warriors being weak against magic is pretty much the fundamental rock-paper-scissor trifecta; it would be an unreasonable and unneeded buff that doesn't fit the theme of a blacksmith at all. There's balancing, and then there's favoritism. Props for the boost in Burliness though. I've made a few suggestions for Smithing bonuses on another thread though, so copy-paste from there:
    Simply change some of those values and stuff, like instead of crushing damage, change to Burliness, and the resists. Some more flavor texts just for un:
    - "Blazing flames, dark billowing smoke and corrosive acids are to you like a lighter and a cigarette with a beer on the side are to most. You feel most comfortable when surrounded by this familiar environment.
     
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  3. Sniktch

    Sniktch Member


    Oh, agreed - which is why I said "there would have to be a new UI to support it".

    ...which would be fine...IF wizards actually had the weaknesses they should in said trifecta, and if magic resist was not crucial to avoiding gear destruction. But as a good plan has been provided for improving smithing, the warrior weakness issue can go to its own thread now.
     
  4. lccorp2

    lccorp2 Member

    Alternatively, they could just create runes or armour patches that could be applied to armour.
     
  5. Aranai

    Aranai Member

    What about another tool explicitly for upgrading things? Say for the purposes of example that said tool would open up a unique window with a slot for the item to upgrade up top and a selector (in vein of the current crafting system) with the upgrade choices. Could set it up to alter the number of items based on how many times you've upgraded the item. Say the recipe always starts at one component, and climbs by 1 for each upgrade, up to a maximum of 4?

    Also, hi. New to the forums.
     
  6. kino5

    kino5 Member

    I was going to suggest the same thing that Aranai did, so I support his idea completely. Maybe the old crafting system could be reused for this, since J-Factor's idea implies one piece of equipment and up to three materials to get a new one, and the old crafting window adjusts to it very nicely.

    And hi, Aranai, welcome :D
     
  7. DavidB1111

    DavidB1111 Member

    "Warriors being weak against magic is pretty much the fundamental rock-paper-scissor trifecta"
    As pointed out, this only works if Mages can be considered weak against anything in this game.
    At the moment, it's Mages trump everything, Archers trump most things, and Warriors survive less than a level 1 kobald rogue with con penalties against a dragon in D&D 3rd edition. :)
     
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  8. Arqane

    Arqane Member

    A bit late to the party here, but I had an idea before I came to the board (once I noticed on L7 I already had a 34 damage and 42 damage weapon, not to mention 4-5 other powerful buffs a piece... and the last few games I've been able to buy at least 2 of the new powerful 10-star items by L4).

    Why not let Krong anvils boost your craft recipes as a choice, along with their usual random additions? In other words, if you're standing on the island with the Krong anvil, and you craft a recipe, it will show up with random additions and use up the forge. The power of the boosts (or negatives, of course) would be tied to the floor level and crafting level. L1 crafting would give a normal Krong anvil bonus. L3 crafting would be similar to quest rewards for that level. L5 (or 6) crafting would be similar to the Evil chest powers for that level. The benefits I see are as follows:

    -You get to choose the base item for the bonuses, which is extremely good for Smithing, and useful for some Tinkering recipes as well. Weapon specialists get to use their weapons, and you can craft the type of armor you really want. Plus you still feel attached because you made the item.

    -The power is balanced by the fact that you have limited times to use it. Do you make the weapon on this level, or save the materials for the next level when you get more powerful bonuses? Do you make the weapon again on the next floor because you didn't like the bonuses, or do you make the armor you needed? And how are you going to do it when you need to create 7 pieces?!? Plus it also keeps Archaeology useful (if not a little more powerful, which wouldn't hurt IMO).

    I think that by itself would make the crafting skills scale quite well with any additions to the game, without adding a bunch of new recipes or try and rebalance what the skills already were. Plus, Krong's anvils are supposed to be for *crafting*, not just enchanting anyway ;).
     
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  9. Wi§p

    Wi§p Member

    I like the idea Arqane; I am assuming that crafting like this will give bigger bonuses / curses than normal Kronging though (otherwise it seems a bit pointless).. This would be a nice fix for crafting's main weakness, other than inventory space; The fact that loot will almost always be better.
     
  10. Arqane

    Arqane Member

    Yes, basically it would be identical to the most powerful random drops (evil chests as far as I know) if you're fully skilled in the craft. But it would also be toned down so that partial specs (3 crafting skill) would only get moderate bonuses, and low spec (1 crafting skill) would be as weak as the Krong buffs or "island" artifacts that usually give 1-2 points bonus.

    The loot bonuses already seem to be tied into the game, so really the only programming that would need to be done is tying the bonuses to crafting level (simple lookup table) when adjacent to an anvil, and switching the anvil to used. Easy enough that a CS101 student could do it in 10 minutes, but you'd probably need to put it in the base code.
     
  11. r_b_bergstrom

    r_b_bergstrom Will Mod for Digglebucks

    While I like the general concept a lot, I'm not 100% sold that this is as balanced or easy to implement as you claim. It's a great idea, but it's going to have lots of ripple effects and play-balance considerations.

    Evil chests only create weapons, and give them an extra + (2 x dungeon floor) damage. They mainly boost melee warrior builds, to help compensate them for not having AoE and ranged spam. Regardless of what boosts come up on such an item, you can't ever be using more than two of them at a time. Evil chests thus have a built in self-limit to the power they present to the player.

    Clearly, you're looking for boosts to armour and the like (since you mention the tension of wanting to create 7 pieces per floor). Which means that they'd be useful to non-melee characters. So now you're fixing smithing being underpowered by further accentuating the gap between wizards and melee builds.

    Gaslamp would have to create a formula for such items, and I don't think an equivalent number of random power-ups would be quite the same, ...nor would you want to just translate those damage boosts into magic power level or armour rating. Even if that's easy to code, it would take some play-testing to fine-tune it and ensure it's not game-breaking.

    The number of Krong anvils is at least equal to he number of evil chests. You'd be giving the archaeologist-smith roughly an extra 90 pieces of evil-chest caliber equipment per game. Given all the different slots to be filled, there's a good chance that a late-game smith in this scheme would be wearing half a dozen usable evil-chest-level items, which would mean 80 to 100 extra stat points over non-smithing characters.

    Evil Chests are also balanced by the fact that you could end up attacked by a named monster from 3 levels deeper than the current floor. Smithing doesn't have an equivalent counter-balance. I mean sure, Krong can saddle you with a penalty on your best item, but if the next anvil over (or recharging it via archaeology) will allow you to add +20 damage or some other huge bonus, then that point or two of negative Kronging would be laughable. If you do add a chance of named-monster summoning to the anvil, you're diluting the specialness/flavor of both the anvils and the chests. If instead you just make the negative Krongs more potent to compensate, you're adding a higher degree of random-number-generator frustration to the game.

    In summary: Cool, intriguing idea, but the implications of it will take some serious thinking and testing to keep it from breaking the game. Instead of moving crafting from underpowered to balanced, it might make crafting overpowered and automatic for every build.
     
  12. Kazeto

    Kazeto Member

    I'll just add that I wholeheartedly agree with r_b_bergstrom here.
     
  13. kino5

    kino5 Member

    As a crafting maniac, I support everything that has something to do with it, but I agree with r_b_bergstrom too, this needs serious thinking to avoid breaking the game.
     
  14. Wi§p

    Wi§p Member

    I agree that this shouldn't be as strong evil chest loot, but crafting at an Anvil doesn't have to be that good, or even as good as other questing rewards.. just slightly better than normal Kronging, with perhaps some scaling per dungeon level; to give some extra incentive to take crafting, and to help the tree scale better at higher dungeon levels. I don't even think the random bonuses/ curses need to scale with the crafting tree's level, since that is used to make the gear in the first place, so you can't really abuse it..
     
  15. Arqane

    Arqane Member

    I'd certainly agree against my own idea, too :). At least to a point. Granted, I haven't had a chance to play enough of RotDG to come up with an extremely well balanced version of the idea. But the lack of scaling of the skills was extremely apparent even halfway through my first run through the expansion.

    The key parts of the idea were really as follows:

    -Allow scaling of the skills
    -Keep a limitation on the number of uses
    -Keep the flavor of crafting skills, which in my opinion wasn't so much adding power (you can eventually buy or find nearly all crafted equipment), as much as a guarantee of the type of weapon/armor/item that you're looking for
    -Use as much of the current code as possible

    Other skills could use some scalability, too. But as an old school min-maxer who's a mathematical genius (not really, but I guess you could say close enough ;)), I noticed that with the limited number of skills that you get per run, I really didn't want to pick any crafting skill if I wanted the 'best' build through all the levels.

    So it can definitely use some tweaking. But I think sticking to those parameters would be the best for any future expansions or rule changes.

    EDIT: And just to follow up on bergstrom's post, it wasn't really about adding evil chest weapon power to armor as well. There just seemed very little incentive to get smithing at all for weapons when you're practically guaranteed to get better weapons. I think comparable weapons (2x floor weapon damage), along with slightly improved armor (1x floor bonus mods for crafting level 5) would be a good incentive. Keeping in mind that Krong anvils already give a few possible mods, and that *both* random and crafted Kronged items could end up negative.
     
  16. Mr_Strange

    Mr_Strange Member

    Actually, I've found that Smithing's thrown items are pretty epic, and come in great quantity. Yes, Alchemy has some better thrown items - but you only make a few of them compared to all the throwing axes and spears I get with a Smith-based thrower. I literally walk around with 300 + spears!
     
  17. Sniktch

    Sniktch Member

    1: Depends on how many Diggle Eggs you turn into Brimstone - 2 Brimstone + 1 Bottle + level 5 Alchemy = 3 Brimstone Flasks, On most floors, 3 Brimstone Flasks lobbed to run consecutively will kill pretty much all non-chicken AI critters in the zoo, including bosses. Add one more to clear the chickens when they cluster, and you're looking at on average a "need" for 15x4=60 Brimstone Flasks per game to clear zoos. Assume an average run where you're gonna get about 30 Diggle Eggs from the floor and maybe a handful more from machines - call it 42 eggs total just for ease of ballparking, and realize I hit floor 7 and lower with over 50 Cheesy omlettes almost every playthrough without Werediggle. 42 Brimstone + 7 Plastic Ingots + level 5 Alchemy is 63 Brimstone Flasks - theoretically enough ammo to clear EVERY ZOO IN THE GAME without recourse to any other weapon type, and not counting any you can buy from vending machines. That's not even touching on Poison Flasks.

    2: Smithed Throwing weapons are utterly inferior to crossbowery, because crossbowery gets the damage of the crossbow plus any enchants on the crossbow plus any damage bonuses from gear plus the damage of the bolt itself. Throwing gets Melee Power plus gear plus the base weapon hit. Ingeniously Scythed bolts of all stripes will AT LEAST match Nzappa Zapps for base damage, and getting Melee Power high enough to match a Clockwork Bolt-Thrower is hard. Getting it high enough to match proc-Kronged CBT or an Evil Chest CBT - or half the time, just a shrine or Inconsequentia CBT - is nigh-impossible.

    Smithing throwing weapons has exactly 2 bonuses at the moment, both due to bugs: all the single-target thrown weapons are "ignore LOS and obstacles", and Throwing can actually match anything but an Evil Chest CBT...by abusing the bug with Killing Blow for ranged criticals without burning the buff. The only reason that's a bonus for Throwing is because crits on crossbows get no bonus damage, just the auto-bow-through-defenses effect. It's not even as efficient for making lutefisk as Tinkering - 2 Iron and 2 steps to get 6 Nzappa Zapps vs. 1 ingot and 1 step to make any base bolt in quantities of 13 given equal skill investment. Half input plus double output = Crossbowery(and thus tinkering) has 4x the output, both in damage and fisk from junk. Or even more, since smithing uses plastic for a whole 2 "real" recipes - Axetar and Axekeytar - and Tinkering gets 16 bolts per ingot.
     
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