The current crafting system is acceptable, but I think it could be much better. My idea is that you start by crafting an item skin, which is just a basic level 1 weapon/armor/accessory, and then you are able to craft upgrades separately, which you can double-click to apply to the item. In more detail:
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Item (skin):
- Each time you learn how to craft with a new material, you gain a new basic item skin.
- You can learn to make new item skins from recipes.
- Even at crafting level 400, the item skin that you create will still be a basic quality (white), level 1 item.
Attribute (consumable upgrade):
- You can craft major attribute bonuses, minor attribute bonuses and upgrade slot items (runes, sigils, jewels) that you can add to your item. You learn the major attribute bonuses (power, precision, vitality, toughness) within 100 crafting levels, but the minor attributes (critical bonus, healing power, etc) much more slowly.
- You can craft an item that adds a major attribute slot to an item, another item that adds a minor attribute slot to a level 21+ item and another item that adds a second minor attribute to a level 55+ item.
- Attribute bonuses are level-less; they are always the same level as the item they are put into.
- There is no change from the status quo in crafting upgrade slot items (runes, sigils, jewels).
Quality (consumable upgrade):
*Every 25 crafting levels, you can craft an upgrade that changes the level of any given item to a certain level (crafting level of upgrade item divided by 5, so at CL 100 you can craft an upgrade that changes an existing item’s level to 20).
- Five crafting levels after you learn the level upgrade, you learn the level plus upgrade, which that increases the level of any item by one as long as it falls within a certain range (a “level 20 plus” upgrade would affect items level 20 or higher, and could not increase an item’s level past 29).
- Every 100 crafting levels, you can craft an item that will upgrade the quality of an item (to masterwork, rare, exotic, ascended, and precursor).
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Benefits:
- Give the crafter more control over what is crafted.
- Make a more flexible crafting system
- Have a cleaner crafting interface
- Produce less crafting junk
- Allow the player to continuously improve a favorite weapon
- Makes the crafting system expandable without needing to raise the crafting level cap (new item skins!)
Anyway, hope you like my suggestion.