Guild Wars 2

It seems like such a no-brainer: crafting items that can then be used while you level to the next tier, rinse repeat.

It sounds like such a simple expectation and yet so few games ever seem to get it right. I’ve crafted in every MMO I’ve played since Everquest (and I’ve run into some painful crafting systems along the way), and so I was hoping GW2’s spin on crafting would be enjoyable and fun. And in some ways it is, but in one very basic way it’s just not.

The component drops from monsters (bones, totems, scales, etc) are just too rare. They simply do not drop often enough. For example, I spent almost 10 levels playing through the Kessex Hills map, and by the end of it I had 2 – 5 units each of any one those component drops. I had almost 300 butter, though, so I made myself a cookie to cheer myself up.

Next stop: go to a specific source to farm these drops (totems and bones from Grawl, for example). I spend hours grinding on them – more than an entire level worth of XP just from monster kills alone, and I end up with maybe a half dozen totems and bones if I’m lucky. Meanwhile, I’m looking at my crafting wishlist and I need over a 100 units of these things, each. Now, please, don’t tell me to go to the tradepost; they’re simply too expensive. I can not afford them. There was also only 90 of the bones I needed on the tradepost, and if everyone took the “use the TP” advice rather than farmed their own, clearly there isn’t enough to go around.

I could farm more component drops in a shorter amount of time if I was AoE farming events that produced a lot of these mobs quickly, but then we get to the problem with gaining experience – too much of it too quickly makes the gear you want to craft AND WEAR obsolete. Events are worth a lot of XP.

Still, it doesn’t matter. By the time I have enough dropped components to make level 25 gear, I’m level 30. By the time I get the dropped components I need for level 30 gear, I’m level 35. Suddenly I’m a level 35 character with no crafted level 25 gear, no crafted level 30 gear, not enough component drops to craft level 35 gear, and in the process of trying to get them I’m finding a ton of perfectly acceptable level 35 equipment through loot drops. Which, makes me wonder – why am I even crafting?

It’s not for fun.. because fun for me is to be able to craft my items and then use them while I level. I like to level using the stuff I make. It’s a self sufficiency thing. To me, that’s fun. But the extremely low component drop rates in GW2 are not allowing me to do that.

If the crafting isn’t for players like me, then who exactly is it aimed at? And if it is supposed to be aimed at players like me.. I have to tell you, your current component drop rates are too low and ruining it, and in serious need of buffing.

I’m level 32 and I’ve been able to craft items every 5 levels and wear them (tailoring) but I’m not trying to unlock every recipe. Also, at this level, I’m not trying to get a full set of items with the exact stats I want – I’ll worry about that later.

That said I do think it would be nice if the drop rate on the fine mats was increased. I think most people are not like me and want to discover every recipe, so they’re holding onto every fine mat they get and using them. It should be a more viable option to sell the items I don’t want for money to buy the ones I do.

Actually Lydiaele using Discovery to level your craft is the more efficient way atm for some crafts, specifically the armor/weapon crafts.

I to have been just trying to discover all the recipes associated with each insignia and armor type for Leatherworking and it has been going well. Seems like you gain skill faster that way and more XP too!

However the OP is correct that the amount of fine materials needed for insignia’s is out of balance. If you check the TP and look up metals, woods, gems, some cooking mats you will see they are super cheap. Now look at Leathers, Cloths and the fine materials. They are in demand and expensive. So that there proves to me that the materials are out of balance.

Hell there is such and abundance of some materials that A.Net had to go out of the way to make some special Mystic Forge recipes to reduce the materials on the market. That is cool and all but why not fix the problem instead of doing a band aide solution.

I’m not trying to unlock every recipe; far from it. I am, however, attempting to craft items that I actually want to use.

That may mean (example) that I craft more items that focus on power+vitality rather than precision+condition. I don’t want to just make the latter for 90% of my equipment just because it’s the materials I happen to have the most of in storage – at that point you’re just grinding out gear for the sake of watching your skill level rise and can likely find something you like more through a drop fairly easily. That’s not my goal.

That said, I rarely obtain an abundance of one dropped crafting component over the other through the normal leveling process. I only have to focus on grinding one type of mob for a specific component over another after the fact (and regardless of whether I’m killing 250 grawl, 250 bats, 250 raptors, and 250 krait versus focusing just on 1000 grawl, I’m still grinding out 1000 mobs either way).

It also depends on what your crafting procession is. With tailoring you have 6 pieces of armor and you’re outfitted. With a profession like (example) weaponcrafting on a warrior who likes to switch up his weapons based on the situation he’s in.. you’re talking about roughly a dozen weapons to craft versus 6 pieces of armor.

And for a player who has both weapon and armor crafting? The component drops needed add up quickly. I was worried about them both pulling off the same resource nodes (mining), but that’s nothing compared to meeting the component drop demands.

I guess I’ve been satisfied with my survivability as a necromancer using a mish-mash of insignia in my level appropriate crafted light armor (I’m a tailor and a jeweler). I can use inexpensive gems in the upgrade slots to boost the stats I want somewhat. I’ve never been a min-maxxer, especially at lower levels that fly by so quickly.

But, yes, there is probably something out of whack when I have butter coming out my ears without even trying and I have to scrounge to get enough jute and wool.

I agree and disagree with this thread. I disagree that it’s hard to keep up with your level, in Armorsmithing I am keeping up with myself and every now and again I’ll get ahead of myself, but I’ve never had it fall behind on my tier.

I agree that the drops for crafting is too rare, if I didn’t make money along the way, I wouldn’t have obtained the means to craft and keep up with myself in level. I throw on Magic Find food just for grinding for fine crafting materials. I literally spent about 3-4 hours the other day farming for Vials of Thin blood, alone. I had to kill bats because they drop them pretty often. I needed 48 of these vials to make a full set of gear that I needed. I could have leveled up 5 more times in the time it took me to farm those.

I’m not satisfied with crafting, I love the way it’s done and I love the mechanics, but it’s almost pointless to craft gear to wear as you level from gathering. I hate that I have to buy my fine crafting materials and I also hate that fine crafting materials are very costly.

Seconded. It seemed to me that the drop rate was much better balanced during the Beta Weekend Events, because I was able to keep my crafting more or less in sync with my level. The same was true for the first 10-15 levels I played my character after release, using Tailoring and Artificing.

However, it appears they may have changed all the drop rates with a badly thought-out patch for cooking materials, which has messed up the balance for all other crafting professions. I’ve now given up levelling my crafting as I go along, due to a chronic lack of fine crafting materials, and not enough fabric scraps either. Is a shame, because I was really enjoying doing it and making my own gear.

Note to Arenanet: Hasty balance changes without doing the maths properly really aren’t a good idea…

I think the blue mats being harder to get would be much more tolerable if we weren’t wasting so much time trying to get the right leather after we’ve out leveled the zone and loot tables change.

Same stories here.

I have a 62 /63 Ranger with leatherwork and huntsman. I am struggling to get my crafting to 50. As with the OP drops are better than what I can make. I ran all the entry level zones to get all the copper etc. was way above what I could make by the time I was done. Now I am trying to run 40ish zones hoping to catch my skill up to my level. Not enough venom sacs,bones, scales, etc. to level up my crafting.

I would not nearly mind so much farming up (example) 100 blood if I knew it meant killing 100 bats for 100 guaranteed blood drops. What I really hate is the randomness and uncertainty. When you can get unlucky and kill ten bats between blood drops and realize this kind of awful dry streak can happen another 100 times.. that’s just disheartening.

This is probably going to be the first MMO crafting system I actually give up on, and it’s completely due to the drop rates on components. For a game that’s supposed to be moving away from the grind, GW2 sure expects you to do an awful lot of it to craft.

In general I like crafting in GW2…….the process and mechanics of it are fun……this coming from someone that has almost entirely avoided crafting in other MMOs.

But something is definitely out of whack with crafting as you level and being able to keep yourself level appropriately equipped. As a Warrior I chose weaponsmith and armorsmith……..my 1st big mistake since while those 2 make the most sense for a Warrior they are also the least 2 ‘compatible’ in terms of needed materials. I have had to give up on one just to be able to barely keep the other matched to my level.

The sad part is that it really didn’t matter that I gave one up since it was vastly cheaper to just buy the gear I wanted that it ever would have been to craft those same items myself.

While at first I thought the idea of getting regular XP for crafting was kinda cool I am starting to thing now that its just part of the problem.

I think like others have said my biggest beef with GW2 crafting is the rarity, cost of the fine materials. Anet seems abit confused to me because they claim to be anti-grind so they put in alot of stuff to limit farming yet at the same time grinding/farming is a must for getting the needed amount of fine mats. The ‘need to farm’ is at odds with the ‘ability to farm’.

In the end if I had just ignored crafting as I have in other MMOs I would not only be vastly more rich than I am now I would also be better equipped. I seriously doubt that was the intent.

Increasing the drop rate of fine materials (or decreasing the fine material requirement for recipes) would certainly be welcomed, but unfortunately that still won’t solve the problem that crafting is basically worthless while leveling. On my server you can buy a full set of masterwork (green) gear on the trading post, including all armor, weapons and trinkets for a few coppers net, at any level. Individual pieces are easily found at one copper over vendor price. This allows you to completely upgrade your gear every few levels for almost no cost (a few coppers after vendoring your previous set). It would be hard to justify the cost in coin and time of crafting comparable gear every few levels when you can just buy it for free (basically). Of course you sometimes can’t find all of the exact stats that you want, but it doesn’t matter much with gear that you will only be using for a few hours.

I love crafting in MMO’s but have shelved it (except for Cooking) in GW2 until 80, when I will just power it up so that I can work on the “end-game” gear.

Actually I should qualify my first statement. Crafting while leveling is basically worthless from the standpoint of keeping yourself in gear. It is not worthless from the standpoint of helping you to level up, as it does provide good xp.

Wacky suggetion time:

First off, I think one of the reasons that things are as material intensive as they are is that Anet is worried about the economy. If you can make things too easily, then you can just flood the market and the price just drops out of things, (ie. they have to keep the demand up).

That said, what if there were an option to make items that were automatically Account Bound upon creation (and Soulbound on Equip) that could be made for a discount? This way you could keep making items just for leveling without needing quite as many Fine Crafting Materials, but, because they’re Account Bound also couldn’t flood the market.

Thoughts?

Agree with OP mostly. In fact finding mats in 50+ areas is so arduous and mind numbingly grindy it’s actually destroying my enjoyment of the game. Crafting is typically my main vehicle for enjoying MMOs because it drives me to do the thing I love most – explore. Which historically is a really natural human endeavor if you think about it. To explore lands to find resources.

Killing 10 mobs to find 1 out of 8 required mats to make 1 useless discovery (which wont even sell well mind you) to increase my crafting a tiny bit is so horribly un-fun that I’m having a hard time convincing myself to log in at the moment.

During beta, people were posting about making crafting “challenging” and “more difficult”. I chimed in of course because coming from the days of Ultima Online, I learned early on that crafting needed to be large in scope, but also fun and relevant to the adventure at hand. Sure you could spend all day mining, or digging up sand, but it least it was relaxing. I actually hate node based resource grinding but that’s another story…

Crafting should not be grindy, or become more difficult as you level as that’s counter-intuitive and not realistic. Early on mats were easier to find and crafting was fun because you could keep it relevant to your adventuring experience. Now I out-level my crafting just by going out to find materials to level my crafting? Which also begs the question. Why are mats for lvl 45 gear found in level 50 – 60 areas?

GW2 lives up to that ideal of not being grindy but that design philosophy doesn’t seem to carry over to it’s crafting system, which just seems slapped on and overly simplified to the point of boredom… and it seems as if the grind is only there to provide the illusion of complexity.

I use the trading post, and kept Leatherworking relevant the whole way to 80. I couldn’t do the same for Huntsman, however, and abandoned it around the 200 point mark. It was too expensive to keep up with two crafts.

I have to agree. At level 40, I’ve had to go back to Queensdale to gather more materials to level my crafting (Leathworking and Huntsman) because I did not find enough just in the natural course of leveling through the area the first time. It’s a pain.

It seems like such a no-brainer: crafting items that can then be used while you level to the next tier, rinse repeat.

Nope. The best way to be successful at crafting is to pick up Cooking and Jewelcrafting, rake in a bunch of easy Experience with them, then come to forums and tell everyone how easy the crafting system is.

It is an odd situation right now.

If you want to craft as a way to make your own gear each tier, as you level, you:

- Often gain character levels faster than you can collect the mats and advance your crafting level.

- Often find drops that are on par with, or better than the items you can craft.

Now, if you are short some mats and decide to farm for them you will gain further XP and outlevel your crafting ability even more.

If you think “I’ll buy mats from the TP to supplement what I’m short on” you’ll quickly find that the mats are often more expensive than the cost of the good they produce (which too is often also for sale on the TP). Compounding this, if you happened to not get lucky and stumble upon loot drops that are better than the items you’re trying to craft, well hey, those are for sale on the TP at ridiculously low prices as well.

I gave up crafting below 150 leatherworking. I realized I never had enough materials to get to the next tier gear, and saw that even if I could mystically conjure up those materials to make up the gap, I already had drops better than what I could make.

Then, I realized that I could purchase an entirely new set of gear from the TP, every couple levels, for vendor price+1cp. That meant that if I sold ALL my gear to a vendor the next time I felt like upgrading, I effectively rented it for a handful of pennies.

The cruddy thing is, it is still true at 80. I can purchase a lot of what I want for cheaper than the cost to buy the individual mats … if you factor in the cost to get my skill up to 400 so I can make those items? Geez.

Mog.1589:

Actually Lydiaele using Discovery to level your craft is the more efficient way atm for some crafts, specifically the armor/weapon crafts.

I to have been just trying to discover all the recipes associated with each insignia and armor type for Leatherworking and it has been going well. Seems like you gain skill faster that way and more XP too!

I actually hate gaining character class XP while crafting and harvesting. The game already levels too fast, and this is maddening.

I play with a friend most of the time and we don’t want to get very far ahead of each other. That makes it very hard for us to craft or harvest while the other is away, because we’ll gain XP.

Dumb system, it should at least be optional.

Aion was like this too, made it really hard to keep a group in sync if some were crafters.

Dominae.3146:

It is an odd situation right now.

If you want to craft as a way to make your own gear each tier, as you level, you:

- Often gain character levels faster than you can collect the mats and advance your crafting level.

- Often find drops that are on par with, or better than the items you can craft.

Now, if you are short some mats and decide to farm for them you will gain further XP and outlevel your crafting ability even more.

If you think “I’ll buy mats from the TP to supplement what I’m short on” you’ll quickly find that the mats are often more expensive than the cost of the good they produce (which too is often also for sale on the TP). [snip rest]

Very well said.

The system is currently broken in several ways. Its a neat crafting system, but with some jaw dropping flaws.

Right now I can buy armor far cheaper than making it, and even being fairly liberal with my free time, there is no way to harvest the materials I need.

After spending nearly a week doing nothing but grinding out the crafting materials for our next tier of equipment during our game time (instead of playing the game) and gaining so many levels in the process as to make the entire effort pointless, my friends and I have decided to just give up on crafting. I was hoping to see some changes in the patch notes, but no luck.

This is the first MMO with a crafting system we’ve given up on, and we’ve played through some doozies. For me, personally, that speaks volumes regarding how badly it needs fixing.

I would have loved to have been able to farm the materials myself to level up my leatherworking profession. But I couldn’t do it. I ended up having to buy the majority the mats off the Trading Post in order to level it up. And that is doing it by discovery. Is this working as intended? If so, it makes it extremely frustrating to try to level up crafting professions.

I’ve given up on the idea that I’ll be able to craft exotics even though I did spend the karma to get the recipes. I don’t have enough gold to buy everything off the trading post. And I don’t think I can gather all the mats myself without hitting the diminishing returns thing. I’m going to try to get the karma exotic but I’m worried I’ll run into diminishing returns doing events too. I feel rather stuck.

OP, the system is obviously harder if you want to only create items of a certain type, they’d have to increase the drop rate to a silly level to do what you are after.

If you ignore 6/7 ingredients then the process is going to be 85% harder to achieve, so it’s going to take 85% longer. I’ve had no problems at all keeping two crafts levelling up at the same rate as my character.

If they increased the drop rate by 85% in order to let you get enough bones to build every weapon and every armour piece to the exclusion of every other type, people would complain that crafting was too easy and that material drops were too frequent.

Admittedly, I have found that bones in particular seem to drop less often than other crafting mats, but maybe that’s because I tend to kill the wrong enemies.

I didn’t have this problem, but for a very specific reason. Up until this game, I didn’t enjoy crafting. So I leveled two characters up to their late 20s/30s banking all the crafting items. The third alt, which I decided was going to be a Tailor and cook on the side, was able to craft wearable gear because the mats were already there from the moment she stepped out of the tutorial. But I’ve crafted, worn and sold so many items now that even that character is (level 45) starting to run into mat shortages. It will turn out soon, that I will have sell lower level crafted gear in order to buy appropriate level crafted gear on the trading post.

All that said …. if you don’t find it tedious, the leveling answer may be solved by having a “grinding” alt, which can collect the mats for the “crafting” alt.

Kaz.5430:

OP, the system is obviously harder if you want to only create items of a certain type, they’d have to increase the drop rate to a silly level to do what you are after.

If you ignore 6/7 ingredients then the process is going to be 85% harder to achieve, so it’s going to take 85% longer. I’ve had no problems at all keeping two crafts levelling up at the same rate as my character.

If they increased the drop rate by 85% in order to let you get enough bones to build every weapon and every armour piece to the exclusion of every other type, people would complain that crafting was too easy and that material drops were too frequent.

Admittedly, I have found that bones in particular seem to drop less often than other crafting mats, but maybe that’s because I tend to kill the wrong enemies.

There are a number of things wrong with your statement.

First, you’re making the assumption that I’m ignoring 6 out of the 7 ingredients, when I’m not. I actually used all the ingredients: some for my equipment I intended on using and some to discover/create vendor items for the purpose of getting my skill up to the level I needed it at (as my equipment alone wasn’t enough to get 25 skill points).

Second, whether you (example) gather 200 bones or 50 bones, 50 totems, 50 blood, and 50 scales.. you’re still spending the same amount of time farming up 200 drops. Short of one mob-type being extremely plentiful and/or easy to kill compared to the others (and that would be a balance issue), they aren’t going to drop any more or less quickly simply because you’re changing the type of mob you’re targeting. So, no, one route over the other is not going to be “harder” to achieve, nor is it going to take “longer”.