Apologies if this is better suited for another forum and/or already discussed, So, I noticed what seems to be a problem when combining Grandmaster spells. Let's say you missed a reactive and this caused the combine to drop to 3 bars, instead of 4. When the 3rd bar finishes, you get back 1 fuel (yes 1, after it took 200 to try the combine). Now, the fuel aside, you do not get back the Foundation/Spellshard or the master spell it took to start the combine either. From my experience with other super rares in combines, they are always returned for the completion of the 1st, 2nd or 3rd lines of the combine, should you not make it through all 4 (I'm thinking Colossal Reactants etc. here) With the extreme rarity of the Spellshard/Foundations, shouldn't those come back in the event of a fail, so that you can try again? If anything, I would expect to eat the 200 fuel and have to front another 200 to try again. Thanks for looking!
I would try a /petition and see if they'll give you the materials back. I have serious problems with 5k plat worth of materials being lost due to a computer lockup, network connection blip, or simple crafting failure. I realize it's a shortcoming of the crafting system.
I did petition it, and she did refund the master and foundation. I was hoping to bring light to Devs about the issue, to help prevent it from taking other's Materials.
I have heard of this happening to others, so you are not alone. It appears to be a definite bug. Yes, you normally lose the fuel, but not all the other rare build components.
I'm surprised they gave it back to you. They stated originally that it would be challenging, and that you wouldn't be able to just hit craft on a GM and walk away. They also stated it would be even more challenging if you try to craft a GM of another class, I.E. a Jeweler trying to craft a Sage spell. They specifically stated that you would lose the master and the spellshard. And sorry, missing just one reactive won't cause you to screw it up completely.
What's funny, is while they did indeed say all that, it's not even remotely true. There is nothing difficult about the combines, even cross-class. It's a 4,5,6/4,5,6/4,5,6 while watching cat videos on youtube combine. If you hear a bad noise (missed reaction), switch in a few 1,2,3s. Not at all as advertised difficulty wise. [Level 100 Jeweler, making Level 91-100 Grandmasters for all four archetypes, many Wizards, a few Inquisitors and SKs, one Ranger - your mileage may vary under other circumstances] ----------------------- The original rule (post crafting revamp) was you get back THE primary ingredient, and make A fuel. This made sense when there was only one ingredient of value, and only required 1 fuel. Since then, the basic makeup of many recipes has changed, but the "oops" refund code hasn't. Some special exceptions have been put in for some impossible to repeat combines (something where a character can only get one ingredient ever, such as when it's tied to an achievement), but that's it. On the one hand, there should be a penalty for failing. A legitimate penalty for half-assing it if you screw up. On the other hand, many failures are not the users fault. Packet loss, disconnections, lag, regardless of source, can put you in the ground. You're there, paying attention, wanting to press buttons, but they're not lighting up dammit! And then there's the avoidable, but inevitable. If your 150lb dog starts looking at you with that "I need to go out, NOW!" look, and it's been a somewhat-liquid day - you take the dog out, or suffer the consequences. * * This example taken from a conversation on experimenting: Me: There is NO excuse for failure. The only way it fail, is to do it wrong. Them: What if the cat is about to puke into your computer, and you have to stop it. Me: .... explanation accepted ... What I'm saying is, in an ideal world, the penalty for a legitimate failure should be severe. But, since there is no way to differentiate legitimate failures from failures outside of the players control, then we must air on the side of caution and be gentle with the 'oops' penalties.
I'll go one further. Why is the penalty for missing a crafting combine severe? I don't recall having my armor or weapons *destroyed* for failing to run a dungeon or questline properly. With refining, experimentation, and grandmasters, there is a risk of losing thousands of plat of materials in one fell swoop. I can't think of any other gameplay aspect in EQ2 that has that.
Exactly so. (Visionary experimenting, I'm looking at you.) On a risk/reward scale, crafting is the most vicious thing in the game, so it should create the best possible items, right? Nothing else (one million attempts at killing $xpac_top_raid_boss) can even peel +1 STA off of your gear. Attempting to add 2.1 potency and going linkdead because Level3.net coughed up a hairball? BLAMMO! Rewards already earned gone forever.
Is there a way to run a quest line wrong? One thing EQ2 isn't good at is punishing players for failure. About the only thing that stops adventurers are encounters that are too strong for them, or horrible player skills. Guess what? Same thing for crafting. When it comes to making items, I can't fail these combines your talking about unless for some reason I can't pay attention to what I'm doing, or I go link dead. Experimenting is long and tedious, maybe even hard. I've failed once. I've made dozens of visionary pieces. Normal crafting is a joke unless it has one of those "you fail to counter and you die" conditions, and even those just require you pay attention and show a little patience. Saying that linkdeath is something that needs to be designed around is ridiculous. Does that mean if someone goes LD in a group or raid that the encounter needs to become easier? Should everybody else get a free repair? I believe that designers should take into account a lot of thing, internet stability is something out of the dev's control and far beyond what they should focus their time on. I find I prefer game systems to be consistent. The same thing that happens for other recipes should happen with this one. The "value" of the ingredients is secondary, especially since that value is placed by us. Trying to vilify crafting for being consistent rubs me the wrong way. As far as the actual issue at hand, Its reasonable to ask for what is consumed to be changed for this recipe. Loosing 200 fuel is reasonable. At a bare minimum the foundation/spellshard needs to be returned if the first bar is completed, the master for the second bar would be reasonable, and maybe even some or all of the regular rares if the 3rd bar is completed.
If you go linkdead in a dungeon, there is no risk of 5k plat of materials disappearing from your inventory. I am not generally in the habit of raising issues that don't affect players. I wouldn't waste people's time like that.
I mostly agree, especially since my line is rock solid (you know, 99% of the time) - but I do know a lot of people play on less than stellar connections, through no fault of their own. I always thought one concession that could be made (for experimenting), without impacting balance, would be a 'pause' button. Keep the interface locked, keep the craft in progress and frozen. And, while experimenting, adjust the linkdead timer so it fires a bit sooner, and invokes pause. This could highly mitigate problems cause by link problems, lag (if you see it going sideways due to lag, pause, and let your link stabalize), cats pulling cables, and the pizza you ordered 45 minutes ago finally arriving. I suppose it could be abused for power reasons, but power is not really a limiting factor unless you're chain experimenting, or forgot to take down Vigor II.
"Forgot to remove Vigor II" lol.. most frustrating part of crafting right now. To all those who say "I don't see the problem, just hit 4,5,6 and watch cat videos" yes, this is true, To those who say "It takes me forever to craft and I miss one button and I lose everything", you need crafting gear, the gear that has been offered to date, (insert long list of crafting slots available, cloak, helm, chest, hands, neck, ears, wrists, fingers, charms, primary) yes, it's all available and it works. It works.
I've been of the opinion that crafting gear is over rated, for years. +skill doesn't have any real effect unless your under the level of the recipe. Even then its manageable, you just have to be more aggressive with building and managing durability. The most significant factor in crafting come purely from levels and that is the improvement of event counters, and that improvement stops at 40. The second most significant factor in crafter actually comes from adventuring, and that is recovery speed (which isn't suppose to work on crafting, but its broken again). After that you have a variety of +progress, +durability, +success, +critical success and other minor bonuses from AA and prestige abilities that come into play. All of these are more effective than any amount of +skill and just as equally un-noticeable. Even a swing of 50 skill points really isn't noticeable unless your doing some sort of weird cross-class recipe that you are under level for (or you haven't trained your own class skill). Until the shawl came out I didn't bother equipping crafting gear at all. I had all of it, but the bonuses were pointless. The shawl gives a bonus that isn't skill (use to be a conservation proc, now its 1%). The only items I equip are ones that give non-skill bonuses.
Ok, since you always bring this up, why don't you give it some serious thought and come up with a proposal for a solution. Please take into account that there are several different sources for "lag" and that any of those sources could potentially ruin a crafting session. Server side, client side, even one of the servers that your being routed through getting heavy traffic. And not all connections are created equal. How much hand holding should EQ2 do? Or is this ultimately going to lead to crafting becoming exactly like WoW where I hear you say what you want and just wait till its done? I'll admit that crafting here bores me to tears, but just waiting for it to finish on its own seems a bit pointless? Maybe we could get EQ1 crafting 2.0? Instant gratification with no risk of loosing components? Really, don't just complain. Put some thought into what you want. Then share.
I still wear my "old" crafting gear, but it's mostly for power management. And, at this point, inertia. Why rewrite perfectly-good craft-gear macros?
For example, all level 100 adventurer and crafters have ALL crafting gear and takes let's say ... 10 minutes to craft a list. I do the exact same list on my level 22 adventure, 100 crafters, and it literally takes 5-6 minutes... why the difference? Not sure, but I love completing lists for guilds on my lower levels due to time
All the crafting skill in the world will not save you if your computer crashes, the server dies, or your IP croaks.
Take one of your 100/100 characters and do a comparison. Do a rush order wearing every piece of crafting gear (including a full set of crafting armor). Remove any adventuring gear your still wearing. Note how much time you have left at the end. Then put on only your adventuring gear. Do another rush order. I think you'll find that you actually complete it in the same amount of time. I also think it will be easier to spam counters with the adventuring only gear than the crafting only gear.
Yep, but the difference between my level 22 and my level 100 was 1 minute 6 seconds faster on the 22. It feels like all my lower levels craft way faster
