Pack ponies won't be able to collect new tier?

I would suggest you check yourself.

There is still a lot of players with a lot less than 500k out there.

There are , but seriusly you can buy bags of plats from the loyality vendor that gives you 500plat each that is what every 2 days of playing with loyality
6plat for a stack of fuel is not gonna break the bank

It's not right to expect tradeskillers to use their loyalty tokens to level.

If there were quests available or the XP were higher, then it would be a choice since there would be another way to gain XP. But right now (and for some unknown amount of time after release) the only way for tradeskillers to level is to do writs. Lots of them. Each one costing a net of 7p90g plus thousands of materials (at least as of right now).

From the crafting high of the KA expansion to this absolute low on PoP Beta...at this point, I feel like crafting has been thrown under the bus this next expac. Without a dedicated TS dev, I don't expect much for crafting, but I would like to see some minimum of content. Part of that minimum value added is an update to the gatherers code to include new tier harvests.

Really, the amount of material the pony/guildhall gatherers/goblin (if you kept him) brings back is trivial relative to what you can get from direct harvesting; however, that amount is critical for low adventure level crafters, for guilds, for those without pocketfuls of plat, for anyone that values the little extra for the hard work they put in to get the pony in the first place.

At this stage of the beta, PoP certainly appeals to me as an adventurer, but as a crafter, not so much. In fact, it has no appeal. I have no idea what may be released for crafting content down the road, but until then I would at least like to keep what I have, and to have what I have remain relevant: update the *#&# pony! <3

Every thing you make sells for the cost of the fuel it took to make, so the whinging about fuel costs is stupid.All writs in game at the moment give the fuel costs back too along with extra money.

Can't disagree with you at all, The fact that they are releasing a expansion without a Tradeskill line is a simple slap to the face. Yes they say that they are going to add one in after it launches, but come on. How many people would be alright with this setup, had they said "We was developing a adventure quest line but didn't like it so we scrapped it. Dont worry though, we will put one in sometime after launch"

Then they turn around and say no harvest goblin/pony upgrades. Its really turning out that Tradeskillers has become a 3rd class group here. And as a result i will not be buying the expansion, untill this is fixed.

Just throwing it out there and say that nothing has been confirmed one way or the other.. Gninja obviously has stated his opinion on the matter however he's also not in charge of tradeskills, which I believe is Caith in the absence of Domino and the lack of a TS specific dev(correct me if I'm wrong), who has not chimed in on the matter(at least not that I've seen).

To be fair, they haven't actually said there will be no upgrades. The response from Gninja at first was "doubtful", but he later admitted that he didn't know for sure, that he wasn't involved with tradeskilling, and that he had nothing to do with the mechanics implementation.

Hopefully the things being said in this thread and the other will be heard. PoP will be enough of a slog for crafters without also competing for thousands of harvests on limited numbers of nodes. <crossing fingers>

(Heh, jinx, Scrap )

hehe afk'd mid post so didn't see yours till after

On Beta:

I got less than 1 plat per writ while grinding to 110 and there were no items in my bag to sell after I finished each one...

So a net loss of over 6 plat per writ.

On Live:

Not sure if what I just said will go live in that state.

i would be far more worried about the low amount of nodes in plane of magic than fuel costs , i mean there are nodes but the zone is big and they are not all in a certain area
At the start of next expansion i would assume there will hardly be any nodes up with everyone want mats/rares so i really do think the pony should work

It's going to be nasty for sure. The other thing I noticed is when wearing my harvesting gear my potency was so low that any overland mob I accidentally aggroed took forever to kill. And even with max level and fully plat infused gear, my Claz could barely scratch them. It made harvesting "interesting" thats for sure.

To be able to even begin with trying to get to level 110 TS when PoP goes live, both the GH Harvesters and the Ponies have to be able to get the new tier.

Otherwise its going to be pure anarchy.

We are talking about beta and the new tier of items, though. Right now on Beta, my Sage get 45g for each of the two parts of the rush order writ and 20g for the turn-in, for a total of 1p10g. It currently takes 9p in fuel to finish the writ (50 fuel per item x 6 items = 300 fuel per writ; fuel is 6p per stack of 200), so each writ costs 7p90g to complete.

Everything is still very much in flux, so hopefully the rewards, costs, and/or materials needed will be adjusted to ease the high requirements, but as it stands right now, there is definitely a plat outlay to level to 110.

Agreed, especially when you see just how many harvestable are currently required to level. If it doesn't get adjusted, the plat is also an issue since we don't get quests to offset the plat cost of leveling.

(I've seen a few people downplay the plat required because of the Loyalty Tokens and the plat you can get with them, but I don't feel it's reasonable to expect tradeskillers to use their tokens simply to level, especially when there will be no quests at launch.)

Ah I see,This then is indeed a problem that hopefully is fixed. This will be the first expansion to not have any crafting quests in it too.How this game has fallen

Wow, as well as Gninja inadvertently stirring up the bucket with his pack pony comment, folks just refuse to read the state of Beta posted last week.

In the long and informative post by Kander there is one line that is very important and I quote

'·Some Tradeskill content. Most of the TS content will be released after the Launch of Pop.'

This is not necessarily a bad thing. I read that as we TS folk will get some quality content just as the Raider types and 'MUST END CAP EVERYTHING in 24 HOURS' players will receive quality content.

Personally I have no disappointment and a lot of hope. Yep, I tend to see glasses half full.

The problem there is that it means the items from crafting won't fit well into the content. If I already level my crafter to 110 going back for the crafting storyline is less attractive. I'll still do it, it's just less compelling. But to me this means that the TS content isn't integrated with the rest of the content it will be tacked on haphazardly later.

I don't think I've seen my pony bring back a rare, ever. So, I am after keeping it a) from all the work I've investing in dealing with qho's whims, and b) for being able to get a little bit of padding to my depots for both mine and the husband's crafting. I don't like doing it often, as there are other things I would prefer to work on, and spend harvesting trips at an average of 3-4 hours a month. I wish to spend more time adventuring, and less time harvesting. The pony is incredibly useful for a player like me and I would be very upset at not seeing them upgraded in some way.

updated pony.