Guild Wars 2

I’d like a complete revamp of how crafting treats fine materials. As it stands, farming for them promotes staying in one area, killing the same things over and over. Or you buy them off the Trading Post, which seems to have decided that any gems besides rubies are barely worth the inventory slot they occupy. Both my Necromancer and my Elementalist cannot get the stats they want on any Tier 4+ gear outside of dungeon-grinding, karma-farming in Orr, and WvW. I mean, whatever happened to “We don’t think grinding is fun?” Who decided that Power had to be one of the attributes on every craftable Insignia?

I would instead have each fine material grant +X to a single given attribute. JUST AN EXAMPLE: Vials of Blood adding to Vitality, Scales adding to Toughness, and Totems adding to Power. Thus, 1 Vial of Blood, 1 Scale, 2 Totems, and 1 Bolt of Cotton makes a Soldier’s Cotton Insignia.

Splitting up attributes in this way promotes exploration, evens out trade, spreads out farming, allows for a wider variety of viable builds, and allows for a greater variety of discoverable and craftable recipes.

Anyone else think this might be a good idea?

That or at least make more things a useful target for getting them. Grinding a small handful of critters for a resource is probably the most boring thing I can possibly do in the game.

With this revamp in mind, there are hundreds of combinations and thousands of permutations for any three attributes of the available 8. At max level, many farming builds are severely hampered by the fact that only two Inscriptions, Explorer’s and Traveler’s, contain Magic Find, and both of them contain Power as a minor attribute. This is not so bad for Heavy Armor characters, but for Light Armor characters, this is pretty much a death sentence.

This problem is mirrored in the gem and Jewelrymaking discipline, but the state of runes would make a grown man weep. To this day, many of the desirable runes that are found in the world simply cannot be crafted. Let us take Runes of the Dolyak for an example: At low level, the beginning player has the tendency to die a few times. For this reason, many players create a Heavy Armor character with a high survivability build. Runes of the Dolyak has both Vitality and Toughness. Unfortunately, the only source of Minor Runes of the Dolyak are on the Trading Post for a few silver. With the Adept Training Manual coming up at level 11, many beginning players must make the difficult decision between buying a full set of 6 runes and saving on repair fees until they can buy the manual, or buying the manual as soon as possible and putting their first points in defensive trait lines, until they can save up for better gear later or hope for good drops that they can either salvage or wear immediately. Neither option is ideal.

However, if the beginning player can do a little research and craft their own runes, much of the starting experience can be alleviated. As they level up and become better at their craft, they can make all the gear (runes, armor, gems, etc) that fits their build, whether they want to min-max or if they want to make the quirky gimmick builds that made GW1 so great.

The benefit of more crafting options, whether they are inscriptions, gems, or runes, can only be good for the game as a whole.

Both of these posts are excellent and I would like to see even a little expansion to the fine materials as well. Instead of 8 venom sacs and get two set stats and condition damage, I’d love to be able to mix it up a bit. I could see some pretty amazing get-ups with a system like this. And maybe not look like a pirate all the time??

I think this is an excellent idea. Not only would it alleviate the issue of needing a ridiculous amount of one specific material just to make a full set of armor, but should they decide to include more stat combinations in the future (which I hope they will), it’d make it that much easier to do so.

Great idea. I very much enjoy this. That way the difficulty of crafting a higher level doesn’t have to require a jump from 5 to 8 per say, but a jump from needing 2 different items to 3 different items

I gave up on crafting altogether (first time I’ve ever not crafted in any MMO) solely because of the fine crafting materials. I was spending the majority of my gaming time farming these drops. You can pick either reason: too many of them are needed, or they aren’t dropping enough.

If I need 60+ (example) bone fragments to craft a set of gear and I’m recovering one every 10 kills.. that’s 600 mobs I have to farm through for a set of equipment I’ll wear for five levels before repeating the process. I’m sorry, but I think that’s just ridiculous.

Doubly so because in the process of farming ~600 mobs I get enough equipment drops that I have an adequate set of gear to use without ever visiting a crafting station.

Part of the reason fine materials need to be re-evaluated is because of the low drop rate. With my suggestion of fewer but more variety of each fine material needed for a given set of level appropriate gear, your typical PVE player is encouraged to explore the whole zone instead of the genocidal slaughter of a swamp’s population of fireflies, grubs, and the occasional Risen Wurm. I’m hoping that this thread encourages the dev team that is balancing crafting to lower the number of Fine Materials per Insignia, but until then, my main will be funding my alt’s progress for the foreseeable future. XD

And while we’re at it, merge the Marks/Talismans/Seals/Medallions/Crests into the Rune system, and make them craftable. As it stands, keeping track of all the upgrade components is ridiculously confusing.

I’ve just hit 70 and I’ve used exactly 1 rune, which I got as a story reward. No reason to bother with runes pre-80 for PvE.

Grinding to farm rares is terrible, I agree: that’s what the trading post is for. Unfortunately this means you won’t be able to craft until you’re 80 and/or on alts, but it’s much easier that way.

I also love the idea that the rare mats used determine the stats on armor: what a truly flexible crafting system this would create!

Made a few alts, and discovered another quality-of-life convenience it would be nice to have: Could we have Gathering Tools be Account Bound? This is, of course, relevant to those FCMs that drop when you gather.

Wish granted, WOOHOO!

Why not introduce a Trader merchant who will exchange Fine Materials of the same tier?

That way non-cooks can trade their useless Butter for something they can actually craft with and everyone could craft things they want to use for their level instead of just making whatever the RNG has given them the mats for. It would remove grinding the same creature and the TP would still have mats for sale from those uninterested in crafting.

@Flakfizer: The Mystic Forge and the Trading Post do some of what you suggest to a lesser and inefficient extent. Making butter only drop from low-level mobs is doing a lot to reduce the incoming supply of butter, but demand is low again, after the Mystic Forge recipe was deactivated.

Selling the FCMs that you don’t want to buy the ones that you do want is presumably the intent of the Trading Post, but due to the somewhat arbitrary selection and limited number of the max-level attribute combinations, some FCMs are highly desired, while others are vendor trash.

I’m sure that none of us WANT to grind the same creatures over and over again, which is why I suggested splitting a single attribute across all the FCMs, as well as making insignias require a lower number of three FCMs. This would make all FCMs (more or less) equally desirable, as with a wider variety of viable gear, a wider variety of builds become viable as well.

I thought this was going to be another drop rate, qq kitten post, but I agree these changes would make a better system.

With the Lost Shores update, I’m pretty sure that Karka Shells are going through the roof. 3.5 Silver each? Seriously? The silly thing is, they are not all that different from Cleric’s or Shaman’s. Blood Magic and Well Necros are happy, as are Water Magic Elementalists. But did they really need to push through an entire content patch for a minor change to end-game gear? They could really have done the same thing that I’ve described in the OP, without needlessly cluttering up inventory or bank space, by making Karka Shells represent Agony resistance. And then there’s the Passion Flower rarity, since you only get them from Harvesting Sickles, not by Mining or Chopping trees.
But Passion Flowers is a minor thing, compared to Tier 4 Jewelrycrafting. As it currently stands, Transmogrifying Tier 3 gemstones to Tier 4 is a mess. Spinel Lumps got left out in the cold, as they don’t get Transmogrified into ANYTHING. Beryl Shards require Peridot and Lapis, the stats for Sapphire Shards have only one minor attribute to do with the stats for Lapis Lumps, as does Emerald Shards and Peridot Lumps. And SOMEHOW, once you craft an Emerald Shard into a piece of jewelry, the stats get shuffled around, and the amulet/ring/earring has Toughness as its primary stat, instead of Precision?

No. Stop. Give Spinel Lumps equal love, Emerald Shards, Sapphire Shards, and Beryl Shards need to figure out who gets what and what are their primary stats regardless of whether they are gemstones or jewelry, and for Dwayna’s sake, could the 55-60 Jewelry get the same love that the 50 and 65 does, without quite so much of the Darkened Vine and Twisted Tendril jewelry, which, might I remind you, despite being Masterwork and Rare, only have two stats instead of the expected 3 from the Fine Mithril and Platinum jewelry?

Went quiet for the Wintersday and Flame and Frost launch, but nothing has been done about FCMs. In fact, with each limited-time holiday events, I could argue that the situation is now WORSE. If I wanted to go out and farm for snowflakes, or convert lower-tier Tiny Snowflakes into higher-tier snowflakes, can I do this? Nope!

Made a Warrior for the first time, and quickly found out that the Greatsword Warrior market was pretty glutted. So I decided to try something different, and made a Dual-Sword/Rifle. I wanted to find gear that had Precision, Crit Damage, and Condition Damage/Malice. Doesn’t exist. Alright, how about level 80 Exotic PVE Rabid gear? Dungeons for the armor, but no gems? Either way, can’t be crafted. Rampager’s? Power instead of Crit Damage isn’t too bad. Maybe Runes of the Eagle could make up for that, or 2 each of Centaur, Krait, and Afflicted, for extra bleed duration?

Six Gods, this is getting complicated! Too bad crafters can’t pick what kind of bonuses we get on runes, or I’d go for bleed durations on all 6. Couldn’t match a Thief or Ranger, but still fun.

Crafting has become a race to max cap, with literally no reason to sell your own products, when you can salvage them instead for MF. Ok, sure, MF has been removed as a stat, but were people really looking for the stat combos that they replaced? I mean, maybe Dire for a Necro? Either way, nobody’s going to bother grinding spiders for Venom Sacs when they can champ farm.