Guild Wars 2

I’m a very casual player. I don’t get much time to play so I log in from time to time, mess around, then log off. For a player like me crafting is about the best option for gear. Unfortunately I picked tailoring. Now I’m level 26 and I can’t even craft gear suitable for half that level. I’ve spent a few hours trying to farm jute scraps and that gets boring really fast.

It seems like crafting in this game is meant to be something you go back and do after you reach max level. It seems nearly impossible to craft as you go and keep up. Is this ever going to improve?

Er, you can always buy the mats to craft your stuff. It really is ok to not craft as armor is cheap at tp. For me crafting while leveling up was fun. If it stops being fun for you, then stop. There really is no incentive to craft apart from making a bit of profit and legendaries.

Well if you don’t like it now, wait till you get to gossamer! At least you can farm jute.

It is very much possible to craft while leveling up and if you run out of anything it’s going to be fine crafting mats. Don’t craft coats and pants?

I spent 2 hours trying to get 2 large fangs in Straits of Devastation, and got nothing but broken claws and dirty rags. Consider yourself lucky if you get anything to drop at all in this game.

Not getting the mats that you need? Why beat yourself in the head and stubbornly wait for it to drop. When you can sell the mats, that did drop, on the Trading Post and buy the mats that you need.

I sell the mats and buy the GEAR… I end up WAY ahead money-wise because stuff isn’t worth the mats it is made out of unless it’s at least rare in quality.

Are you crafting smart? Leveling tailoring only via discoveries and for the most part only learning the shoulders, gloves, helm recipes to level with because they use the least amount of mats?
If you are almost to the next level do you salvage the stuff you made to get the rest of the mats you need? If you are still running out the trading post is obviously another option as has been mentioned. It isn’t so bad buying them if you just need a few things to finish making one or two items to get you into that next bracket.

The fine quality mats are more annoying for me than the common drops. Especially as you get higher and higher and they each insignia starts to require more and more mats.

pknecron.3920

I sell the mats and buy the GEAR… I end up WAY ahead money-wise because stuff isn’t worth the mats it is made out of unless it’s at least rare in quality.

Coincidentally, it isn’t worth wearing unless it’s at least rare in quality either. You can even fill the gaps between levels of crafted rares by buying dropped ones, which cost pretty much nothing.

Best advice is up above. If it stops being fun, then stop I’ve taken pauses from crafting a few times. I can’t actually craft anything for my current main as she’s far ahead of my crafting. So I just make due with drops and rewards.

Passive Aggressive.3154:

Are you crafting smart? Leveling tailoring only via discoveries and for the most part only learning the shoulders, gloves, helm recipes to level with because they use the least amount of mats?

This pretty much tells you everything that’s wrong with crafting. What you’ve just said, what’s in all the crafting guides. You aren’t actually “crafting” – you’re just grinding through the lowest cost items to get to 400. Its just a means to get some level 80 exotics and legendaries. There’s no fun or interesting things to do.

Unless you follow a fairly rigid method of levelling crafting, its a huge time and money sink. It offers nothing that most people interested in crafting for crafting sake care about. Its just there for those that want to make one of the legendaries – ie players who probably wouldn’t even bother with crafting if it wasn’t needed for this.

Crafting is a bore and a grind. Discovery is not interesting in any way (its completely predictable and just becomes annoying after you figure the basic pattern out).

So, yeah, there is a method to level crafting easily (and I’ve followed it to an extent), but that fundamentally misses the complaint about crafting. Its neither fun nor interesting.

The only craft that gave me fits until I was higher level was cooking. It’s nice to do on an alt, but there are way too many ingredients on karma vendors or that have been moved to obscure herb nodes to keep that one as you level.

All the other crafts the mats are right on the TP if you don’t get enough.

Is there a game where crafting isn’t a tedious bore with only max level perks as a reason to even do it? Because it sure hasn’t been any of the games that I’ve played.

Warhammer AoR had a unique and interesting system, the issue was that the items were consumable so underpowered at nearly every level.

Right, i havent played a single game where crafting was “fun”. It has always been 99% of the items you craft are totally useless, sell for less than they cost in mats, and cause you to grind over and over again to get the mats. Im still waiting for a game to do something revolutionary in this regard. In this area GW2 has failed.

Passive Aggressive.3154:

Is there a game where crafting isn’t a tedious bore with only max level perks as a reason to even do it? Because it sure hasn’t been any of the games that I’ve played.

Monster Hunter.

SWG… best crafting ever, next would have to be Eve. This game doesn’t even come close.

Passive Aggressive.3154:

Is there a game where crafting isn’t a tedious bore with only max level perks as a reason to even do it? Because it sure hasn’t been any of the games that I’ve played.

Yes. As the poster above me points out, SWG. It wasn’t perfect, had its issues, but really drove a good economy while a server still had a population.

Warhammer online had a decent idea for a crafting minigame, it was just stuck on a terribly limited underlying crafting system and was horribly implemented.

Allods Online had perhaps the most interesting mini-game for crafting I’ve seen in a themepark MMO. You had 6 rounds of dice rolls, giving possible negatives or positives to apply to one of three crafting scores. I can’t really explain it well briefly, but each round you made a decision based on several factors. Eg: do I accept a small negative now, to forstall a bigger negative later; accept a decent positive now to lock it in or gamble on a better positive later.

So, yeah, there are more interesting crafting systems out there. Are they usually in themepark MMOs, no. But then, GW2 is supposed to be innovative and outside the box, right?

Anet should make Discovery more of a minigame (or all of crafting). They already have plenty of minigames in the game, one more built on the same architecture would be a good return for a system that is considered major in most MMOs. After all, the reason I pay Anet money for their game is they’re supposed to be experts at creating interesting content and mechanics.

Edit – just to summarize, if your experience in crafting is purely MMO themeparks, yeah, you probably have never seen a interesting crafting system.