Guild Wars 2

Big Boss.6248:

I want to know how many of you kittens that are having an easy time are running jewelcrafter? Any crafting class that requires insignias or inscriptions is kitten.

400 Artificer
400 Tailor

The only problems I had leveling was jute and the totem/sacs/claws you needed to level. It required some money investment, but utilizing discovery I was able to level up efficiently by selling what I didn’t need and putting in orders.

Some points to refute the OP’s complaint:

1. I don’t believe that ANet said any where you should be able to craft at your character level. There are MANY MANY ways to get good gear in this game, so no one has to craft to stay competitive.

2. The drop rates seems adequate to level 1 craft at a reasonable pace. Two weeks out and many of my guild mates are already at 400 / 400. I am at 250 / 150 and I haven’t really been trying.

3. You even get experience points and levels from crafting, so even if you can’t craft gear at your level you still get benefits.

4. Crafting doesn’t even require that you level your characters. You can actually be a level 1 character and craft at 400. Very few crafting related items are soul bound (there are a few which I hope Anet will fix).

I have weaponsmith and jeweler both at lvl 400 and I didn’t have any trouble lvling. It cost me 3g at most to buy the materials I didn’t have.

There is nothing wrong with crafting as it is. It does not cost a kitten ton of money if you pay attention and spend a few minutes looking at your proffession Tier materials.

They do not require insane amount of materials to advance a tier.
Sure it seems like its a lot to farm say 118 Tiny Venom Sacs so you can advance 2 professions in total to lvl 75. But These sacs drop plenty in certain maps that have a lot of spiders. Capable of getting that amount in just a few hours or half it and buy half etc.

Knowing and writing down the material costs to advance Crafting through Discoveries makes it a ton and ton easier.

The thing is that the guide says tiny venom sacs but you can get tiny totems, for example, instead. Instead of following guides people should just learn how the crafting system works and you would require a lot less materials.

Since I can’t edit my first post I’m going to list out a few things here for those that :

1. I HAVE BEEN FARMING! Don’t bring up the fact that “you should just man up and farm it” when I have been. I am aware of other MMOs. I was there for the WoW launch, FFXI, GW1, and even Runes of kitten Magic.

2. The problem isn’t things like wood and ore, the problem is the amount of fine materials needed to make insignias and inscriptions. Thus leading to number 3.

3. Jewelcrafting does not require any insignias or inscriptions making it really easy to level.

4. My problem is NOT that the crafts are too “hard” to level up to max, its the fact that it is impossible (unless you have plenty of gold to blow) to craft gear while you’re leveling and you need to level the crafting at end game.

In the end: There has only been ONE crafting system that I liked in ANY game, and that was Monster Hunter. You did not need to farm a bunch of materials to raise some arbitrary “crafting level” to make cool stuff. The gear you make is made of the monsters you fight making a natural progression of gear, you fight stronger monsters you get stronger gear so that you can fight even stronger monsters.

Impossible to level it up as crafting? If you start at lvl 10 when crafting, by the time you hit lvl 30, you should have your craft at around lvl 125-130. Which allows you to make guess what, lvl 30-35 armor/weapons etc.

It does not require a lot of money, it only takes a an hour or two to farm the required "Fine"Materials like venom sacs, totems, scales, fangs, claws etc.

If you really want higher level gear from crafting, craft 4 of the same item (like 4 daggers, for example; I use different inscriptions on each since I discover one of each per weapon) and throw them in the mystic forge. I always get good stuff, either to sell or to use. I don’t really farm for materials and rarely buy any, maybe 1 or 2 FCM just to complete a set within that level range, and I’m normally crafting (and then usually forging for) gear appropriately leveled. And I’m doing it the stupid way – leather and weapon smithing. I just salvage anything that I can’t sell for ~50c+ in the TO, and once I level more that’ll go up. I’m only in my late 30-somethings level wise, and I haven’t thrown very much time at all into crafting. I think I’ll be getting my armor to 100 soon, and my weapon to 150 soon.

I don’t really focus on it much, I just craft after I’ve completed an area (while collecting all nodes and fighting all mobs I cross and participating in any event I come upon, of course) and with no effort and solely discovery, I keep my crafting leveled around what level gear I’m running.

The only real issue I see with crafting is that Jewelcrafting seems to flow a lot smoother than the rest.

To level Artificing, Weaponsmithing, Armorsmithing and Huntsman you need to mine a bunch of ore and chop down a bunch of trees, then go fight certain enemies and get lucky with drops several times. For Leatherworking and Tailoring you need to farm certain enemies for cloth/leather and then other enemies for certain drops. For Cooking you need to fbo grzzlfmp gbub bluh and then give up.

Then to level Jewelcrafting you just have to mine a whole bunch and get a bit lucky with gem procs.

Arenanet don’t listen to this guy. If anything you should be limiting item drops and making them more scare so that we can get the value of goods back up to acceptable levels. Everything can be purchased for coppers right now and its way to easy.

The issue is not with the crafting… the issue is with the leveling rate of our characters.

The game levels us too fast. We are flying through the game at a pace that does not keep up with the drop rates. We do not slow down because the game pushes us to the next level; the personal story, heart quests, and crafting all give us experience.

If you try to craft your own gear as you are leveling up, you out level yourself just by standing in front of the crafting station!

In addition, crafting begins to get very frustrating when you find yourself having to purchase or grind for the fine materials that require 8 items for each recipe. To add to the level of frustration, all the ‘discovery’ items that you can not use or are worthless to you, must be sold or salvaged. Try selling your blue items on the Trading Post… you and a hundred other players are selling the same item for 1 copper MORE than what you can get off a vendor sale. ONE COPPER. That hardly compensates the crafter for his time, travel expenses, and other overhead to advance.

I really like how the crafting system was designed. But it is broken. It is entwined with the leveling engine of the game in such a manner as to make it ridiculous to try to maintain a gear vs level pace.

Sadly I feel the broken trading post at launch added to the economic decline. When the trading post first opened, it was like releasing a dam. EVERYONE had stuff to sell and undercutting just drove all items down to vendor sale prices plus ONE COPPER. I really hope this gets resolved because games have completely gone belly up with a borked economy.

Here is what I think is actually the problem with crafting: the xp you can get off of crafting one level worth of a single crafting component is more than what you need to craft the matching crafting component, AND the weapons you can make with those crafting components, before the xp level gets surpassed cutting off xp gain. But you can’t salvage components. Example: I can make 150 Jute Mask Paddings without making a single Rawhide Mask Strap using the craft all button, and my crafting level will fly up above the level that lets me get xp from making any of the Rawhide Mask Straps. It also ends up above the level that lets me make Masks using Rawhide Mask Straps and still gain xp. And above the level that I would get any xp from actually using the Jute Mask Paddings to make masks. Or make any xp from making the insignias that go with any of those components. But I cant salvage the Jute Mask Paddings. So what do I do? I dump the Jute Mask Paddings in the market and try and sell them to people. But EVERYONE is doing that so no one needs em.

Should I have hit the Craft All button? No, probably not, but @ 4 in the morning when I decided to just hit up a crafting station before I went to bed after 8 hours of playing I wasn’t really in the mood to figure out at what point all the xp gain was gonna disappear. And not everyone wants to sit around mucking with excel charts to perfectly level up in the most efficient manner. I’ve already surpassed my crafting level weapon and armor level by leveling my character, so none of the stuff I make is gonna be worth anything anyway. I don’t really care WHAT I make, I just want my level up so I can get back to a level that lets crafting actually have a point again. 150 Jute Mask Paddings all made in one go using the craft all button works just as well for leveling my crafting as actually going to the effort of figuring out what all I need to make the armors the component is for.

If you look in the market, you will see that the crafting components are WAAAAY cheaper to buy than the ingredients themselves are. All you need to do is buy up the uber cheap components necessary to make one item, make the insignias to go with em, do a discovery, then hit craft all. I jumped up about 50 crafting levels in a day yesterday for either leatherworking or huntsman (I can’t remember which) doing this. If you could salvage the crafting components and get the ingredients back this wouldn’t be the case.

I think they just need to taper out the xp cutoff levels a little more, or let you salvage components, and all the problems would disappear.

I’m making my own gear as I level. You do have to pay some attention to which mobs are dropping usable mats. And if you want to not out-level your own crafted gear, then obviously you shouldn’t try to power-level at the same time.

If you’re leveling two fine-mats-using crafting skills at the same time, you’ll have to focus a bit more time on gathering those mats.

Frankly the crafting in this game is incredible. Brilliant, very cool design, and fun to do.

Cleopatra.4068:

Here is what I think is actually the problem with crafting: the xp you can get off of crafting one level worth of a single crafting component is more than what you need to craft the matching crafting component, AND the weapons you can make with those crafting components, before the xp level gets surpassed cutting off xp gain. But you can’t salvage components. Example: I can make 150 Jute Mask Paddings without making a single Rawhide Mask Strap using the craft all button, and my crafting level will fly up above the level that lets me get xp from making any of the Rawhide Mask Straps. It also ends up above the level that lets me make Masks using Rawhide Mask Straps and still gain xp. And above the level that I would get any xp from actually using the Jute Mask Paddings to make masks. Or make any xp from making the insignias that go with any of those components. But I cant salvage the Jute Mask Paddings. So what do I do? I dump the Jute Mask Paddings in the market and try and sell them to people. But EVERYONE is doing that so no one needs em.

Should I have hit the Craft All button? No, probably not, but @ 4 in the morning when I decided to just hit up a crafting station before I went to bed after 8 hours of playing I wasn’t really in the mood to figure out at what point all the xp gain was gonna disappear. And not everyone wants to sit around mucking with excel charts to perfectly level up in the most efficient manner. I’ve already surpassed my crafting level weapon and armor level by leveling my character, so none of the stuff I make is gonna be worth anything anyway. I don’t really care WHAT I make, I just want my level up so I can get back to a level that lets crafting actually have a point again. 150 Jute Mask Paddings all made in one go using the craft all button works just as well for leveling my crafting as actually going to the effort of figuring out what all I need to make the armors the component is for.

If you look in the market, you will see that the crafting components are WAAAAY cheaper to buy than the ingredients themselves are. All you need to do is buy up the uber cheap components necessary to make one item, make the insignias to go with em, do a discovery, then hit craft all. I jumped up about 50 crafting levels in a day yesterday for either leatherworking or huntsman (I can’t remember which) doing this. If you could salvage the crafting components and get the ingredients back this wouldn’t be the case.

I think they just need to taper out the xp cutoff levels a little more, or let you salvage components, and all the problems would disappear.

Ill just point out toward the end of my crafting makeing 1 subcomponite netted me like 3000 to 5000 xp. While doing a final combine in discovery was over 150000 xp. This was with armorsmith though.

I agree with everything the original poster said.

Completely disagree with those who say crafting is fine, and crafting to your level is easy.

Even focusing on discoveries, you will not acquire enough rare mats to keep your crafting at level.

You have two choices in this game to keep crafting at level: either farm for the mats or purchase them on the trader.

Increase the drop rate of these things so that crafting is more fun and less onerous.

Availability of crafting mats are so out of balance atm hence the absurdly cheap woods, gems, metals but expensive leathers/cloths and fine materials. I do not know how A.Net did not figure this would happen because EVERYBODY can gather metals, gems and woods but cloths/leathers and fine materials are RNG based drops.

This causes certain crafts to be easier to level and others harder, case in point Jeweler vs Leatherworker.

Overall I agree with the OP and think there needs to be some tuning. A few ways I think they can easily fix it.

Reduce the cost of Insignia’s for the finer mats ala 4-6 Vials instead of 8. Add more cloth/leather drops and finer material drops. With that problem solved.

@all the people who saying crafting should be hard. Yes crafting Lvl 80 gear/items/legendaries etc… should be hard and should require a grind. However I completely 100% disagree that leveling a crafting skill should require so much grinding. It should be a smooth leveling curve that flows with your characters level from zone to zone that does not require any extra strenuous effort. At the end when you hit 400 is when the grind should begin for the super cool 400 only recipes.

Materials simply cost to much. 1s 22c for 1 vanilla to make something that isn’t even worth CLOSE to that. The crafting system may not be broken but the gathering system definatly is. They need to raise the drop rates of certain materials (cooking)

LeroyJenkins.1942:

Materials simply cost to much. 1s 22c for 1 vanilla to make something that isn’t even worth CLOSE to that. The crafting system may not be broken but the gathering system definatly is. They need to raise the drop rates of certain materials (cooking)

Also the finer materials and leather/cloth. Those two do not drop enough compared to how many you need to use for the crafts.

Completely agree, at the moment crafting isn’t viable at all and is hard as hell to have crafting stay at the current level of your character due to the way mats are handled within the game.

It is just your honest opinion.. So that’s fair:) I find it good enough, but only focus on one, since two would req. Too many of the same mats:)
I just go around and lvl, and then when my bag is full I go to LA to sell and craft:) I think it works well and enjoy it:D and if not for the stats en the look:)

I am absolutely with the OP here, it’s nigh impossible to fabricte items for your actual level because the blue materials just don’t drop. Their droprate is not even bad but you need so many of them you will never have enough without getting stuck.

You have to farm a lot, often in spots above your character level, plus you absolutely have to buy from AH and spend a lot to level profession along with character level.

If you don’t farm, your character level will progress much much faster than crafting level AND you absolutely have to fabricate crap items that you don’t need en masse, even with discovery system, not more than once, granted!

I totally agree with the fact that crafting isn’t that attractive. As far as I’m concerned, I’m an elementalist, and I don’t farm each and every map to kill every mobs and get the every mats I can.

Still, I could raise my tailoring through first and second tier, just by making my gear… Sounds so easy ? Not so much, actually ! I only use the discovery tab (let alone the insignas) to build sets of armor with various buffs depending on the fine crafting materials I have. Then, to unlock the better insignas, I have to make another set of armor : this one is useless. And then I often had to make another one. As useless as the previous one (so I just salvage them to get some scraps back…)

Then, 5 levels later, I have to do it all agan, and do three sets of armor and a half to level up. When an insigna is 8 mats, it’s quite a pain in thekitten to get all of these… Let alone the fact that I wanted to be artificer so that I can do my staves too, I dropped the idea, both professions use the same mats.

One of the problems of crafting (because there’re many others) is the ridiculously low drop rate of fine crafting materials, making the idea of gathering them a huge pain, time-waster, or money-waster.

And no, I’m not level 80, and I don’t have 40 gold to put in this.

the real issue with crafting is the chumps who list their stuff at 1c above vendor price on the trading post which, after the 15% trading post cut, actually results in them getting less than the vendor would have given them

Yes and why is this the real issue with crafting as you get materials pretty cheap this way Crake. If they sell them to vendor, nobody gets them which is a waste… I don’t get you.

Basically make creature drops 80%. That’s the point of hunting.

Take all those master level recipes and make them normal recipes but give them the same point output and make rare recipes require some kind of modifier component that’s hard to find so rare items can still sell well on the TC. This will easily give a balance between being able to keep our crafting up as fast as we level, and keeping rare crafted items rare, and valuable.

Alexandar.9043:

I don’t agree with you at all. Crafting in this game is incredibly easy. Sure you have to grind to farm some mats, but leveling with discovery is mind numbingly easy.

That’s why prices are so suppressed.

I’m tired of people complaining about grinding not being fun. IT’S a CRAFT! it takes work, if everything is handed to you, anyone and everyone would be doing it and nothing would be worth anything.

It’s the work, and some things being hard to get what drives value in an economy!

This game in general dumbs down everything to make it ‘easy’.

Stop whining,

Yes, crafting is easy because getting the money to invest in the resources via the trading post is easy. There are two problems, the only way you can make a profit is by gathering the items yourself. That takes an incredibly long time for a very small profit, excluding Exotics.

I could gather the materials for a level 80 rare set of armor, it would take me days to do that. It took me 3-4 hours of non-stop grinding just to get 18 Vials of Thin Blood from the mobs that drop them. I made a full set of blue gear. For a full set of rare 80 gear, I need 90 of a particular fine crafting material. Sure that’s fair, I can craft that easily, I’ll just go run some events in Orr for a few hours straight and make a couple of gold to buy those mats. Well I’ve made my gear, great! I can wear it! But what if I want to sell it? Oh, I paid for the mats to create it, and if I sold it on the trading post, I actually make a deficit. Well darn.

I spent about an hour grinding for large scales earlier today, I only got 2. I only grinded for it because the trading post is down.

If I wanted to craft level 80 rares just to make a profit, I could spend 10s of hours gathering the materials to make it and sell it, or I could spend less than half the time running events in Orr to get the amount of gold I would have gotten had I sold the set of gear. Crafting is pointless. I can craft to make gear I can wear, or I could just use less money than I would to craft it, by buying the same item off of the trading post. I could craft items to make a profit, but I would be wasting huge amounts of time, instead I’ll just farm events.

I’m not asking for grinding to be fun, or materials to be handed to me, I’m asking for crafting to be WORTH THE GRIND.

For years (goodness the anticipation train was long) I rolled my eyes at all the “X will be a big disappointment” discussions and the vast swamp of “I’m worried X won’t be as good as advertised” topics that seemed to spawn daily across forums while the game was being revealed piece of by piece. I reserved all final judgment until I played the game.

If the Crafting system deserves any grade it is a triple question mark in red ink across the top with a See Me underneath. See us, those that are speaking up. I’m not quite sure how this passed through testing, but basically the system is exactly what is wrong with other MMOs: grind, grind, grind, working behind the curve and tapping all creative time and energy for little to no benefit, when the alternatives (TP, drops) defeat the purpose.

As I understood, we wouldn’t be hammering umpteen (relatively) useless helmets to get to the next tier of helmets and so on until we prove we have invested enough resources in order to make wearable gear.

What bothers me the most is that you had this ingenious system from GW that kept things very simple and easy to manage, albeit the actual crafting was handled by a craftsman. Now let me point to all of these complaints above mine, because it was a mistake to remove NPC crafters that could be making our gear (and not the overpriced rubbish GW2 NPCs sell) while leaving players to discover and craft things of the same power but exceptional or unique aesthetics. Cosmetics is where players will happily invest hard time, yet having sufficient numbers to be competitive in the game should be baseline—it shouldn’t require that hard time.

I’m fit to level crafting as materials allow me, but as of hitting 100 leatherworking (and running my silver reserves nearly dry) I refuse to invest any more time figuring out the most efficient way to burn up everything I played for to produce zero benefit (I won’t count the XP from crafting when I could have been out, you know, playing the game and having the adventure I came for).

I guess you could say this system is salvageable, but it’s definitely a white name, common and not worth keeping.

Big Boss.6248:

Crafting needs a huge overhaul. The amount of time and gold that needs to be spent in order to level your crafting skills is ridiculous.

http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/12521-arenanet-andrew-mcleod-talks-crafting-in-gw2/page__st__450#entry599372 anet post linked to by the gw2wiki. We’re apparently supposed to be able to level crafting as I level my character by making items useful to me without having to craft a bunch of “junk,” I have been doing just the opposite though being forced to craft a bunch of “junk” and forced to go back and farm previous areas I have long since out leveled.

At this point after sinking hours into a crafting system that has returned nothing to me other than raising some level I’m about to say kitten it and just ignore crafting as a whole and only use gathering to get my daily.

So OP I remembered reading about this in the official strategy guide, and so i took the time to look it up again for you:

Alexandar.9043:

I don’t agree with you at all. Crafting in this game is incredibly easy. Sure you have to grind to farm some mats, but leveling with discovery is mind numbingly easy.

That’s why prices are so suppressed.

I’m tired of people complaining about grinding not being fun. IT’S a CRAFT! it takes work, if everything is handed to you, anyone and everyone would be doing it and nothing would be worth anything.

It’s the work, and some things being hard to get what drives value in an economy!

This game in general dumbs down everything to make it ‘easy’.

Stop whining,

I don’t understand this logic. A craft is better defined by an intricacy in how an item is created, not by mass producing it. You become better at something based on an intimate understanding of it. You are not an assembly line worker, you are a craftsman, and I certainly don’t want to play the role of an assembly line worker in any game… because that seems boring… and oh wait, grindy.

What we need is a craft system that supports the adventurer as well as the dedicated crafter. As an adventurer who takes up crafting, I should be able to maintain a level of crafting that supports my exploits, but if I choose to dedicate more of my time to crafting, there should be more available to me in the way of discoveries or rare recipes. Or perhaps a boon based on the number of real time crafting hours.

As it stands, an adventurer simply cannot support his or her self adequately because it simply requires too many mats to maintain crafting levels. There should be a differential between ‘maintaining’ and ‘mastering’.

I’ve pretty much just played my way through to level 73 and have just completely dropped crafting. I will just purchase the mats needed when I have some gold at 80. I’ll just gather for experience and getting my dailies.

At this point the only way we can save crafting is getting rid of the leveling system all together and making it so we can take all crafts at once. I’d like the make gear and have that be the reward, not leveling up some insignificant bar.

Also thanks for changing the title of this thread, it completely changes the context of the thread entirely and is something that is totally warranted.