Guild Wars 2

Sorry if this comes out a little angry, but the more I research scribing; the more I realize: that not only isn’t it for me, it isn’t for my small guild; and it isn’t for anyone who can’t prop it up by buying gems and trading for gold on a regular basis. I did some slop math, and I could either level my profession; or sell the mats on the TP and buy myself a legendary. >=(

I think the idea of having ink the different colors of ink, and you build your ink set up as you progress in the profession; is pretty cool. But you don’t have enough brown dye in the game to meet the supply, and farming plants is too low-yield to be practical: less than 10 brown in an hour, and that was after doing research to see where it drops. I mean: Peanut butter isn’t brown. Root isn’t brown. I mean, they ARE brown when you look at them visually; but the game has them categorized as another hue. I suppose I ought to be grateful you didn’t ask for pigment from Grey Dyes, which is the category with the fewest members. But griping aside, my point is that the economic demand for Brown pigment vastly outpaces the demand for every other color; and brown is far from being the most common pigment out there, but is in fact one of the less-common ones.

Overall, my opinion is that with scribing the bar was set unreasonably high in terms of materials cost. Now that I understand what’s involved, and that it will probably cost several thousand gold worth of mats just to level the profession up. And that in return; I’ll be able to craft chairs, and a fountain, maybe a few sigils and some consumables.

Well, I’d really like to have the chairs and the fountains, and all that; decorating our guild hall has been a huge priority for us, and something we looked forward to. Right now, we feel angry, frustrated, and totally locked-out by a crafting discipline that costs way, waaaay too much money to be worth it.

Suggestions:
1: Make ink sets re-usable, or at the very least let us manufacture multiple sets for the current material cost.
2: Either make Brown pigment less of a bottleneck; or make brown pigment craftable; or increase the supply of each color in proportion to the demand to make high-demand colors like brown easier to obtain.
3: Please add a tooltip to each dye to tell us what hue that dye is. Way too easy to buy Peanut Butter or Root and think “they’re brown”. Right now the only way to tell is to go thru the wiki. This info is important now, and needs to be visible in-game, please.

Thanks.

I agree with you about scribing being rather unattainable in its’ current form.

One note: you can tell what colours are considered “brown” by looking at your hero panel’s dye sets organised by hue. Everything under Brown will provide brown pigment.

@UnfairOphelia understood, but I want that info in the Trading Post panel, when I’m considering whether to buy a dye for salvage.

I agree, then again all crafting is unreasonable. Why is there no crafting books that unlock tiers of crafting you can just buy with gold? No one levels by crafting anymore anyways.

Check your economy ArenaNet.

My main issue with Scribe is that it’s the only profession that mainly provides items for others, and as such the design of Scribe seems to suggest that a guild is supposed to donate to their scribe. The costs are prohibitive for small or even medium guilds, because not everyone is going to be able or willing to contribute.

Then there’s the problem with Scribe being a profession, and therefore dependent on the player. If the player can’t play as much anymore, or stops playing altogether, all your guild’s effort is wasted. And then there’s the possibility of the scribe holding the guild hostage (do what I say or I leave) or outright scamming (thanks for all the mats, suckers! I’m off! Lolz).

All in all a terrible implementation in a game that was originally designed to eliminate this kind of grieving. The Dev team now isn’t the one that made the base game, nor do they seem to embrace their design vision.

Scribing is a huge disappointment for many reasons I won’t go into because it’s all been said before. I’ve accepted that it isn’t something I will personally be leveling and I’m ok with that now, but very reluctantly.

What I still can’t accept is the cost of the things you get to make once you do go through the painful process of leveling it. Aesthetics like furniture, chairs etc I am not talking about. That’s not a game mechanic. The scribe was advertised as a profession that could make things to help your guild, specifically thinking about WvW. Our guild leader (and scribe) whenever asked about when can you make …? Always replies ‘not worth it’.

Our guild is full of a lot of helpful people and many of us were disappointed that we couldn’t contribute and show our appreciation to the guild by blinging it out on our own dime. But to have even our dedicated scribe be completely unenthusiastic about it is more than disappointing.

To me, scribing is this thing that exists, but I don’t give a second thought to because it doesn’t affect me in any way, shape or form. Well, except for the once a week or so that I clean out my bank to send scribing mats to our leader. I wish it hadn’t been implemented. The guild halls are great – scribing isn’t.

The worth thing about Scribing is that it implements the perks pre-HOT guilds worked to unlock. Anet took those abilities away and put them behind the HOT paywall and made it so that smaller guilds can’t reasonably expect to get a GH which of course the Scribing craft is gated by.

Scribing represents HoT and all of it’s idiotic design decisions. GrindWars 2 has taken over what use to be an enjoyable game.

HoT is garbage.

Scribing was poorly designed. A guild based crafting to unlock guild perks should be progressed by any member of the guild given authorization to do so by that guild.

For example: a panel at the crafting table that has guild wide scribing. Any scribing progression is attached to the guild itself and not attached to the guild member. Any guild member that has a scribing permission from the guild can advance scribing higher or craft wanted items. That way you don’t have multiple people in one guild fighting over scarce resources to individually level up their own crafting. They will use scribing mats donated by guild members into a scribing mat donation panel or they can use their own mats to progress the guild’s scribing. If they get tired of scribing or leave then the guild doesn’t lose that progress and only needs to select another person who wants to do scribing.

I think scribing is badly designed as well, for a lot of the reasons stated. It’s too expensive for most people to do solo, but anyone can take advantage of a guild or stop playing and all the stuff donated to them would be gone.

Scribing should have been more like the donations to the guild than what it is right now.

Even if the costs of mats weren’t inflated due to current market demand, scribe would still be pretty expensive, some of the items requiring large quantities of various materials, to yield something mundane.

Imagine the cost of turning a basic chair into higher quality chairs……

Cooking is similar in complexity, but one can level cooking without throwing their bank at it.

Ven Zehn.6573:

Even if the costs of mats weren’t inflated due to current market demand, scribe would still be pretty expensive, some of the items requiring large quantities of various materials, to yield something mundane.

Imagine the cost of turning a basic chair into higher quality chairs……

Cooking is similar in complexity, but one can level cooking without throwing their bank at it.

The act of leveling scribing should never have cost what it does now. What they could have easily done, if they wanted insane overall costs, was make it normal to level like the other professions but have the decoration recipes use a ton of the items you can craft, like stacks of 250 of X and 250 of Y, etc.. At least that way the difficulty is not in getting levels but rather getting the resources for the expensive items, like every other profession.

I’m terribly disappointed in scribe, too. It is completely unreasonable.

First, a little perspective for those who are (wisely) staying away from the craft:
At L1 scribe workstation, you get the scribe workstation. No additional access to decor or WvW items. You can craft copper ingots, jute, rawhide, and green wood into pulp.

You need a guild hall decoration merchant L1 unlock to access to 5 basic decorations (out of 16 possible). They are: basket, bookshelf, chair, crate, and table. At scribe L50, you can slightly upgrade the chair and table (unless you have more than a L1 decoration merchant).

Let’s look at the table upgrade:
* simple finishing kit (simple scribe kit, 5 sheets extra coarse sandpaper, 3 vials linseed oil). Breaking that down further: a simple scribe kit is a green wood pen (green wood dowel and a copper nib made of 3 copper ingots) + a simple ink kit (crystalline bottle vendor mat, jug of water vendor mat, and 10 brown pigment) + bag of glittering blotting powder (5 glittering dust and 3 resonating slivers rewarded from guild missions). Next, each sheet of extra coarse sandpaper takes 5 green wood pulp (15 green wood logs) + a jug of water + a bolt of jute and 10 piles of coarse sand. Finally, as most know by now, a vial of linseed oil requires 20 flax per. Plus…

• 3 bronze chisels (bronze ingot + 4 stretched rawhide squares per)
• 5 green wood planks (3 green wood logs each)
• and the basic table purchased for 50 silver.

Stick all that together and it goes into the processor next to the scribe station for 3 hours or so. When it’s finished, you’ll have a table that’s very slightly larger than the basic one.

I’m co-leader, and the scribe of a small guild, and at this point I’m treating scribing as a hobby. Something to do when I have some extra mats. The costs to actually make banners is absolutely horrific. So much easier and cost effect to swap my commendations and 10 silver for three heroes banners.

I think what really ‘broke’ scribing for me was finding out that a Gift of Exploration, which is an endeavor of many, many hours to earn is required to make a rather unimpressive, ordinary globe. If I was going to spend one of my world completions? I would expect that item to be large, impressive, flashy. Something that truly REWARDS the tens of hours that went into earning that Gift!

Agreed.

I don’t mind the implementation and the reliance on guild hall upgrades.

Those upgrades are permanent once earned, and generally have a completely reasonable cost assuming you have even a small guild contributing to guild mission completions and the treasury.

The materials cost for the thing you actually scribe however is ludicrous.

50s for basic furniture? Okay, sure, that seems fair.

Then we get in to slivers… which have moved down 10-20s since the commendation trade was added. I like the idea of the commendation trade, but its implementation is poor. Sigurlina needs to sell more than one sliver per commendation.

Then we start talking pigments. I’m already a chef, so I make my own pigments by crafting dyes. Using ten characters and gathering plants to craft dye each day to salvage for the pigments I need I end up with enough brown pigment each day to make one item.

Then we get in to such stupidity as certain items (like a “guild chair” with no guild logo on it) costing over 60 shards

And these are the same modest chairs you see in a T1 bar.

Seriously?

GIANT STATUES cost less than chairs in this system.

The value of a decoration system is in having a large variety of decorations you can use many of to customize a space.

The supply and demand economics of both shards and pigments are not temporary supply/demand issues. They are permanently gated by low drop chances or weekly cooldowns.

These two factors need to be seriously revised if you want scribing to be any fun.

If the idea is that leveling scribing still take substantial effort, that’s fine. just adjust down the crafting xp gain of the recipies while adjusting their overall cost.

I’d happily have sat at lower scribing levels for longer if it was actually feasible to craft most of what was on my crafting list.

Banners, again, are stupidly, hilariously expensive compared to their commendation costs. My guild hadn’t unlocked hero banners in the old system, and I had originally lanned to make it a priority in the new upgrade system.

Then I looked at the recipies, associated costs, and other relative benefits of prioritizing the tavern over other structures. The difference in cost is laughably out of whack with reality.

The only banners I have crafted with scribing are banners I used to level because they were somewhat cheaper than furniture. They are simply not worth the cost to craft, which is a huge problem with scribing in general, and the upgrade value of the tavern specifically.

Who designed these cost metrics? Did they forget about the guild commendation trader? Did they forget that banner buffs only last for 30 minutes?

Scribing’s primary material gates need to be severely toned down.

The idea of adding the materials to the guild trader was a great one, so lets expand on that! This gives the guild trader a real opportunity cost because of limited trades per day, encourages guild members to get in on guild missions, and creates ways for people to monetize their commendations.

How about a new, static guild vendor page with the following items for 1 commendation:

Rank 1:
3 slivers (up from 1)
20 pigments (brown)

Rank 2:
20 pigments (other colors)

Rank 3:
30 pigments (randomly selected)
Scribe supply cache (Contains at least 3 shards or 10 pigments, gambling box with chance to gain lodestones or 250 stacks of various pigments)

Rank 4:
Random daily selection of 3 basic decorations (from the guild’s unlocked decoration merchant)

I could probably overlook most of the other things but that brown pigment bottleneck is just ridiculous. Who thought it was a good idea to have a material required for everything from 0 to 400 and you need 10 at a time?

Then there is the Essence of Light. A rare drop off of three mobs in the game that spawns in a very small area so even if you can stand the grind you’ll probably end up being hit with DR long before you get a single drop.

You can craft brown pigment. There are two potato farms. Hit them both with every character you got once a day. 3 characters hitting both farms = ~9 pigment. How? 25 potato + karma bought ingredient = 1 brown dye.

If you are hitting both potato farms be sure to get the nearby green wood trees.

Hit the flax seed node for average of ~13.

Doing this each character can average 13 flaxseed, 25 potato’s and 25 green wood logs. 4 characters will give you enough mats per day to craft 1 piece of furniture.

Sand and resonating slivers, talk to your guildies.

If you treat it as hobby or want to go it solo with no help its going to be hard. Treat it as a skill and its not insurmountable. Expect to put in 1-2 hrs every day harvesting nodes as a scribe.

Justine.6351:

Expect to put in 1-2 hrs every day harvesting nodes as a scribe.

And that sounds reasonable to you? I agree that it should be an accomplishment, but it shouldn’t be a job. I’d much rather be able to have all my guildies donate mats to a guild vault specifically for scribing. I mean, we kind of do that already as we funnel mats to one person, but even then he is pouring hundreds of gold and hours into it and doesn’t feel it’s worth it. We are a big guild that is near capacity of active players and while we may not all be hardcore, we are friendly and helpful and a large percentage regularly donate spare mats. That doesn’t sound like a reasonable system to me.

Scribing should be tied to the guild hall’s workshop instead of any individual player and use the treasury donation system as the source of materials. Rights to use the workshop could be set up with the ranks like other rights in the hall too.

That would make it more of a guild crafting skill and remove the risks of anyone suddenly quitting or leaving. Also it would take off the pressure from the individual player to feel the need to level the impossibly expensive scribing.

I also have a feeling that members could be more willing to donate materials to the treasury than just send them directly to any player.

Shaaba.5672:

Justine.6351:

Expect to put in 1-2 hrs every day harvesting nodes as a scribe.

And that sounds reasonable to you? I agree that it should be an accomplishment, but it shouldn’t be a job. I’d much rather be able to have all my guildies donate mats to a guild vault specifically for scribing. I mean, we kind of do that already as we funnel mats to one person, but even then he is pouring hundreds of gold and hours into it and doesn’t feel it’s worth it. We are a big guild that is near capacity of active players and while we may not all be hardcore, we are friendly and helpful and a large percentage regularly donate spare mats. That doesn’t sound like a reasonable system to me.

Its a hardcore crafting profession. Yes I think its reasonable to finally get one that’s meant for someone serious about crafting. If a guild isn’t willing to pour mats into a scribe then they are not serious about it.

I’m slightly biased as I have 15 characters. I can hit the node farms multiple times in a short period. But that’s hardly any different than telling your guildies “if you guys want me to make stuff, do the node farms once a day or even week”.

For deco, once you have it, you have it.
For consumables, they are guild focused so it falls in same bin, pool resources.

The biggest problem with the scribe is that its character based. If someone quits, leaves guild, goes on vaction, on and on it could be a huge blow to guild. Choose wisely sometimes is just not applicable. I don’t have a solution to this potential issue. I don’t know if I would really want it guild wide or guild leaders blocking it with ranks privilages.

Justine.6351:

But that’s hardly any different than telling your guildies “if you guys want me to make stuff, do the node farms once a day or even week”.

For our guild, this is kind of the crux of the issue. We don’t necessarily want scribed stuff because the end product is not worth it, to us. That’s the disappointing part. It seems fairly useless for something that a lot of us were exited about before launch. We’re still hoping that it will be worth it at some point in the future, but right now it doesn’t seem to add any real value for us.

If you see it as a hardcore crafting profession and like it, that’s great. They made someone happy with it, but I feel that for every one person happy with it, there are 10 that are very unhappy.

Honest question – what do you see is the value of scribing? What are you most excited to unlock and what do you use from it right now?

Shaaba.5672:

Justine.6351:

But that’s hardly any different than telling your guildies “if you guys want me to make stuff, do the node farms once a day or even week”.

For our guild, this is kind of the crux of the issue. We don’t necessarily want scribed stuff because the end product is not worth it, to us. That’s the disappointing part. It seems fairly useless for something that a lot of us were exited about before launch. We’re still hoping that it will be worth it at some point in the future, but right now it doesn’t seem to add any real value for us.

If you see it as a hardcore crafting profession and like it, that’s great. They made someone happy with it, but I feel that for every one person happy with it, there are 10 that are very unhappy.

Honest question – what do you see is the value of scribing? What are you most excited to unlock and what do you use from it right now?

Right now, deco.

In the future, wvw tactics and deco.

Nobody is sending me mats and our first scribe is kinda not doing anything with it. So I’ve pretty much stopped doing wvw. This is probably the most kitten ing thing about scribe. To get anywhere with scribe, it doesn’t matter how many materials your guild will send, you will find yourself needing more focused types of material that wvw oriented guilds just won’t provide.

Scribe is alien to people because for 3 years all crafting professions have been done casually with a huge chunk of the mats coming from whatever was [Deposit Collectables] option over several months of just playing. Now there is a crafting profession where you will need to go out into the world and find these material nodes like you would for any other games crafting. People who can’t mentally go that route look to the tp.

Potato’s and green wood logs should not be priced what they are on tp. It’s embarrassing.

Raise your hand if before scribing came out you didnt know how to make brown dye at chef.

*raises hand

Scribe makes sandpaper and furniture.

???

Should have called this profession a carpenter.

Another problem imo is that a single piece of furniture can use up multiple accounts of brown dye. The more advanced pieces are cumulative as every single tier of furniture adds another amount of brown dye.
You’re especially stressed to do one piece of farming for the rest of the years to come if you want a nice amount of decorations going. And that, honestly, is bad design.

I don’t mind specific crafting recipes for let’s say one item. But parking my chars at some node farm and doing that several times a week for some decoration is NOT hardcore. It’s basically Farmville. Hardcore pressing F isn’t a good thing. I like the option. Sure. But I see myself hitting that stuff everyday over the usual playtime.

Unreasonable is one word for it. The fact that our small guild has to spend tons of gold on items (banners and siege) that we ALREADY had and Anet took away from us is not unreasonable its f***ing criminal.

Scribing is ridiculous. This should have just been built into the guild hall system, like the mine, tavern, etc.

Take an individual system like crafting and bind it to a group-system like the guild hall just doesn’t work. Our guild has been great about supporting a few designated scribes, but even with a large guild it’s a lot of work. I can’t blame the “completionist” type for grumbling that they want to level their scribing and get the backpack skins, etc. However, it’s just a nightmare to try and be fair.

The random person thinks they’ll try to level scribing—they purchase a chair—the decription says “account bound”—but they can’t get THEIR chair. So, people stop donating chairs. Can’t blame them, that’s 50 silver they can’t use for their own crafting. They’ve already donated ley-line infused tools, sparks, linseed oil by the gallon, 18-slot bags even! They want just a few things to level the crafting, but if we have it open to all members, it’s just a mess.

I would really like to ask the person that decided that it would be a good idea to tether a personal activity like crafting to guild related outcomes “Why in the hell did you do this?!?” It’s not functioning well, it forces the guild to focus on a few for the craft, which in turn leaves others feeling left out or gated from content, and it needs to change—sooner rather than later.

Regarding brown pigments, I found it much more economical to buy the potatoes and mushrooms needed to make brown dyes and then salvage them.

I do agree that scribing overall feels a little restrictive. Im level 287 and am cringing at the costs needed to get to level 300 +.

And, while were on the topic, where the hell are our bags of mortar. The tooltip still says they are sold by the master scribe, but they are nowhere to be seen in game. This blocks a lot of potential decoration recipes.

Blaeys.3102:

Regarding brown pigments, I found it much more economical to buy the potatoes and mushrooms needed to make brown dyes and then salvage them.

I do agree that scribing overall feels a little restrictive. Im level 287 and am cringing at the costs needed to get to level 300 +.

And, while were on the topic, where the hell are our bags of mortar. The tooltip still says they are sold by the master scribe, but they are nowhere to be seen in game. This blocks a lot of potential decoration recipes.

Do the master lvl brown eyes give more than 3 average brown pigment? I’ve just been doing the potato+karma for the (blue quality) brown dye.

I’m not sure about mortar, is it maybe at the guild tradder like glue and linen?

Inimicus.5197:

not only isn’t it for me, it isn’t for my small guild; and it isn’t for anyone who can’t prop it up by buying gems and trading for gold on a regular basis.

It’s meant for a solid guild of many players to pull together and work towards a common goal it seems. I’m really enjoying the journey with my guild and we have about 200 active people working on it donating items to level our assigned scribes.

Guild hall upgrades in general are unreasonable.

They really just need to provide a more general way of getting some materials for it. Downgrading higher tiers of wood, mixing pigments in order to get brown pigment, mixing pigments to get higher tiered pigments. Keeping the ways of getting the materials for the Guild Halls diverse would definitely help people feel more like they can progress towards it in their own chosen way.

FrizzFreston.5290:

They really just need to provide a more general way of getting some materials for it. Downgrading higher tiers of wood, mixing pigments in order to get brown pigment, mixing pigments to get higher tiered pigments. Keeping the ways of getting the materials for the Guild Halls diverse would definitely help people feel more like they can progress towards it in their own chosen way.

This would not help.

Brown pigment and desired wood type can already be easily focused. People who arnt willing to do so are not going to suddenly have enough pigment for crafting and they will not have plenty of other lumber needed for other various scribing tiers.

People complaining about scribing costs atm, under your improvement idea, would have no brown pigment, no green wood logs and shortly after converting would have no pigment of any color and no wood logs of any tier.

Justine.6351:

Shaaba.5672:

Honest question – what do you see is the value of scribing? What are you most excited to unlock and what do you use from it right now?

Right now, deco.

In the future, wvw tactics and deco.

Decorations are subjective, so I get that people value them. Personally, I don’t because I don’t get to place them as a non-scribe.

WvW items are overpriced and you can get much of the same from guild commendations. The cost of guild siege is not worth the difference in cost of getting them other places. The tactics are too expensive to use, honestly. Maybe in a top-tier server, the WvW items might be worth it, but we are near the bottom and we have fun and do it regularly, but the fights don’t mean much and it’s not worth investing in.

So for people who are not into competitive WvW, and people who don’t get to do decorating, there is little value in the profession at all. I know you could say that for someone who only plays Warrior, the profession artificing doesn’t offer anything of value, but I think it’s different. This was hyped up as a profession that you can do to help out your guild! But it is in a very narrow way that won’t have value to a large swath of people and not what I expected. Maybe that’s on me for having certain expectations, but it would not be the first time my expectations and Anet’s communication has clashed.

Actually, I think if Anet had been more clear about how the profession was actually going to play out, we might not have so many people upset over it. And I’m not upset, just very, very disappointed and, sadly, that doesn’t surprise me at this point.

Shaaba.5672:

Justine.6351:

Shaaba.5672:

Honest question – what do you see is the value of scribing? What are you most excited to unlock and what do you use from it right now?

Right now, deco.

In the future, wvw tactics and deco.

Decorations are subjective, so I get that people value them. Personally, I don’t because I don’t get to place them as a non-scribe.

WvW items are overpriced and you can get much of the same from guild commendations. The cost of guild siege is not worth the difference in cost of getting them other places. The tactics are too expensive to use, honestly. Maybe in a top-tier server, the WvW items might be worth it, but we are near the bottom and we have fun and do it regularly, but the fights don’t mean much and it’s not worth investing in.

So for people who are not into competitive WvW, and people who don’t get to do decorating, there is little value in the profession at all. I know you could say that for someone who only plays Warrior, the profession artificing doesn’t offer anything of value, but I think it’s different. This was hyped up as a profession that you can do to help out your guild! But it is in a very narrow way that won’t have value to a large swath of people and not what I expected. Maybe that’s on me for having certain expectations, but it would not be the first time my expectations and Anet’s communication has clashed.

Actually, I think if Anet had been more clear about how the profession was actually going to play out, we might not have so many people upset over it. And I’m not upset, just very, very disappointed and, sadly, that doesn’t surprise me at this point.

if your scribe/guild leader is not letting you place deco they suck. If its an issue of “as scribe I’m bearing all the costs” then check wiki for list of mats needed for a piece of deco they can currently make and send them. If its something they will get exp from they should be happy to do it. If not, well they should do it anyhow cause lol, they are the scribe.

I’m not too worried about the expense of the tactics. People get so hung up on it they miss the point of it, fun. Don’t grind the mats so you can airstrike smc several times a night. Get the mats so you can do it maybe once a week. I don’t think a lot of the tactics are going to be game changers so that’s what I am aiming for, the occasional fun ones.

smiling.9028:

It’s meant for a solid guild of many players to pull together and work towards a common goal it seems.

Then it shouldn’t be a personal profession but a guild feature. What will that guild of 200 do if their scribe decides to quit playing (or switch guilds) after getting to level 400? Okay, maybe that will not happen to your guild, but in most cases that is a really valid fear.

Justine.6351:

FrizzFreston.5290:

They really just need to provide a more general way of getting some materials for it. Downgrading higher tiers of wood, mixing pigments in order to get brown pigment, mixing pigments to get higher tiered pigments. Keeping the ways of getting the materials for the Guild Halls diverse would definitely help people feel more like they can progress towards it in their own chosen way.

This would not help.

Brown pigment and desired wood type can already be easily focused. People who arnt willing to do so are not going to suddenly have enough pigment for crafting and they will not have plenty of other lumber needed for other various scribing tiers.

People complaining about scribing costs atm, under your improvement idea, would have no brown pigment, no green wood logs and shortly after converting would have no pigment of any color and no wood logs of any tier.

Funny thing is. I have no green wood because I always upgraded it. But to say everyone would have no pigments or no wood anymore is just silly. To me it would mean it adds several more ways of getting the right pigment.
So if 1 red 1 blue 1 yellow (or green) gives 3 brown I would be for it.

And no. It wouldn’t fix the material costs. But it definitely would make it more diverse to get.

Currently there seems to be an oversight where Green Pigment is not used for ANYTHING. Instead, Yellow Pigment is used twice, once for Fine tier and once for Master tier.

In the long run, I do have faith that prices will balance out (thousands of players are harvesting plants every single day and generating pigments as a side effect. It’s just that most of them are likely just sending them all to their Mat Storage instead of selling them like back in the early days of HoT), but I do agree that in general Scribing seems to be an awful lot of mats and expenses for not a lot of return.

“We just don’t want people to grind in our game”

“It doesn’t suck your life away and force you onto a grinding treadmill”

Oddly, I just can’t stop laughing….

(Yes, I’m aware the first quote is explicitly referring to leveling and story progression, but it fits the situation shrug )

I would be a little happier if we knew that all of the crafting materials were actually in the game – and not an oversight.

Anyone seen Bags of Mortar (should be sold by master scribes but isnt) or Essence of Illumination (should drop in Hidden Garden JP, but after hours and hours of grinding, still to be seen)?