A Crafting Update wishlist - Groups, Guilds, and Gameplay

With several iterative updates on the crafting slated for 2023, I wanted to float a few suggestions I've been brewing over the years.

Group Crafting

Crafting is, by its very nature, a lonely activity and has only gotten more lonely as interdependencies were eliminated and professions were siloed. Rather than regressing the system to the old days, here are a few ways you could leverage existing mechanics to encourage more collaboration.

1. Crafting lore applies to your fellowship

The idea is a simple one. By grouping up with fellow crafters you benefit from their lores (and vice versa) to increase your chance of critical success. Lores would also stack so a full fellowship with top tier scrolls could essentially guarantee critical success as a reward for their coordination.

2. Mastery gives you a Craft XP aura

Currently the only incentive to fully-master a crafting tier is so you can open mastery for the next tier, so there's no reason to finish mastery on the max tier. This would change that by creating an Apprentice system of sorts. By grouping with someone who has mastered a given tier of a profession, apprentices gain additional craft XP for each recipe they complete.

3. Fellows can harvest your Farmer fields

Farming can be just as relaxing as fishing... or as tedious. This change would let your friends help alleviate that. Gathering fields would not require the farming profession so anyone can lend a helping hand, though it's still needed to convert crops into ingredients.


Convenience of Guilds

Crafting guilds were a very cool addition to the game as a means of taking the RNG out of critical success on key recipes, but between new ways to guarantee crit, LI changes, and a lack of new recipes for higher tiers, they've fallen way out of favor. With Guild access being one of the perks of VIP, here are some ways to improve its value.

4. Fast Travel to Guild Halls

Pretty self-explanatory. Joining a guild grants you a travel skill to said guild. One hour cooldown like most that can be reduced to 5m via purchases, or 5m by default like Allegiance Halls if you're feeling generous.

5. Traders exchange your excess resources

There's nothing more frustrating than having a stockpile of top tier resources with nothing to use them on and then discovering you need a random low tier resource for a given recipe that you've long-since discarded. Two choices lie before you: check the Auction Hall for said resource at likely exorbitant price tags, or venture out and start picking rocks like a peasant. It's undignified.

Adding a barterer to "downgrade" what you have for lower tier stuffs is a convenience many would gladly pay real money for (and hopefully undercut AH scalpers).

6. Crafting Instance access

A long, long time ago in an expansion far away, Crafting Instances were introduced to give crafters a reliable way to access resources without fighting over landscape nodes. It was such a great idea that we still have them today. The only obstacle keeping past iterations from seeing much action is access; their NPCs/entrances are spread far and wide across the world in areas most simply level right past. Guilds are a perfect place to consolidate the relevant ones.

Collectively these additions would liven up Guild Halls and make them the player hubs they should be.


General Gameplay

The Crafting System has gone through many changes but the core gameplay remains more or less the same: gather resources, convert the resources, use the resources for various purposes. This is how crafting works in most games, with minor variations for better or worse. A complete overhaul probably isn't feasible or even wanted, but here are a few additions that could encourage a more varied experience.

7. Resource nodes tier up over time

Currently the best way to go about gathering resources from the landscape is to find a circuit within a given area and repeatedly hit the same nodes as they respawn. It's reliable but mind-numbing, with only the occasional Rich node spawn to liven things up. Tiering nodes would offer more resources the longer they sit untouched, encouraging wider exploration and rewarding crafters accordingly.

8. Resource tracking for your fellowship

With the upcoming option to choose any combination of professions, a single character will soon be able to gather all resources in an area in one trip. Unfortunately they'll still only be able to use a single tracking skill at a time. So it goes. However, if their tracking skill also shared node locations on the minimaps of their fellows, that could encourage crafters to group up while they're out and about as well.

9. Figments of Splendor + Crafting Quests

The gold standard of casual currency. Directly available only through various festivals and their wrappers and in amounts that pale in comparison to the cost of rewards. Sure certain players can grind out Motes and Embers and convert them into Figments, but where does that leave everyone else? Scrimping and saving (and alting) so they can afford some of the game's best cosmetic rewards. It ain't right.

Crafting Quests have all but disappeared since the days of Shadows of Angmar. Bringing them back as an additional (and hopefully repeatable) means to earn Figments across all levels during the festival off-season would be a welcome and glorious return to form, not to mention a great way to add much-needed character to NPCs throughout the game world.


Honorable mentions:
- Processing/critical success ingredient options for low tiers of Prospector and Foresters
- Crafted reputation items for higher level zones (Moria+)
- Non-combat Guild Missions for level-appropriate resources
- Remove proficiency requirement for gathering resources (relevant profession/tool still required)
- More housing item/cosmetic recipes
- Misc bonuses for crafting in iconic locations (Elrond's Library, Heart of Fire, etc.)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Fantomex

With several iterative updates on the crafting slated for 2023, I wanted to float a few suggestions I've been brewing over the years.

1. Crafting lore applies to your fellowship

2. Mastery gives you a Craft XP aura

3. Fellows can harvest your Farmer fields

4. Fast Travel to Guild Halls

5. Traders exchange your excess resources

6. Crafting Instance access

7. Resource nodes tier up over time

8. Resource tracking for your fellowship

9. Figments of Splendor + Crafting Quests

Honorable mentions:
- Processing/critical success ingredient options for low tiers of Prospector and Foresters
- Crafted reputation items for higher level zones (Moria+)
- Non-combat Guild Missions for level-appropriate resources
- Remove proficiency requirement for gathering resources (relevant profession/tool still required)
- More housing item/cosmetic recipes
- Misc bonuses for crafting in iconic locations (Elrond's Library, Heart of Fire, etc.)

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I love a lot of these ideas.

I would also love a zone of landscape where ALL levels of items could be harvested. A farmer can do this anywhere, but everyone else needs to travel the world, which is okay, but not ideal once you get further up the chain. A few thoughts on where this could be:

1) Ettenmoors. Perhaps have nodes/drops for all levels of crafting.
2) The Beacon Hills. Does anyone go here for any reason? Perhaps revamp this area somewhat to be able to get at least the levels of drops up to its level.
3) Your revamp of the Guild Halls might also solve this I suppose. Fast Travel to all the crafting Resource Instances from the Guild Halls would be nice. But honestly some of the more recent crafting instances don't seem to give hardly any materials like the older ones did. They aren't worth the time doing them.

A few other ideas I also vote for...

1) Landscape Nodes being brought back for Fruits/Vegetables/Dyes in upper tiers.
2) Dyes being brought back in general. Move the dyes that are currently in the festivals to scholar recipes.
3) Recipe drops on landscape, especially single use ones, in the upper tiers. Perhaps if you want to keep the festival dyes in the festivals, at least make rare random drops of single use recipes to make six dyes of a color. Rare random single use recipe drops for all kinds of cosmetics would be a great idea.
4) More Crafting recipes in general for all housing items (decorations, music, paint, etc), cosmetics, and would be great. BUT Please do not put these recipes in places they need to be bartered for. That defeats the purpose of the recipe then and they become too cumbersome to even care about.