Handcrafted Items should be Transmutable

Tollymore wrote:

I will assume it is from farming RoK heroic zones? I have no doubt you are correct, but what does any of this have to do with making Handcrafted items transmutable?
You said it yourself they don't even loot those teasured chests, though your point is a valid it one about reactants, I don't see how it relates to this topic. When I looked it up on the broker the cheapest treasured gear lvl 80+ was all from SF. No teasured gear has dropped in DoV and SS zones. If this trend continues the only reliable source of fragments will be from that down conversion.
I have proposed an idea to have another way to get fragments, remember you need 6 fragments to make any type of adornments. The current way SoE is going here, why not just remove fragments from the game and just add one more powder to each recipe. For me, personally I don't like that idea. I see tons of items allready in the game, that for the most part aren't made, that can again have some value by helping increase the amount of fragments, help a crafter only player get a viable way to increase transmuting from 5 to 435. I believe the only people that can down convert are adorners and with my idea it would still be the best way to get fragments, but would just not be the only way.

I have now listened to many concerns about my propsal and some have been very good and made me think or reconsider. I feel I have squelched most of these with either facts taken directly from the game or logical agruments. Some points I have made will depend on some ones opinion and how they feel about it and that is fine.
I think the negative points about my idea are as follows:
1) The teasured item market will suffer, since HC items can be trasnmuted into only fragments giving a little conpetition in that area. Of course treasured items can give you powders too, so those items would still be worth more in terms of adornment materials, but the point is in many cases it would worth more to sell these teasured items to an NPC vendor instead of trying to sell on the broker.
Now if you just want to get materials for adorning getting these items is still better as you get them for free and have a chance to get powders and fragments, while HC items you have pay for the fuel and would only get fragments, but have the raw components from harvests more readily available. Also while gathering these teasured items you will get legendary and fabled gear allowing you to get the higher level adorning materials, that you can sell or keep to help your adorning.
So I see my idea making the teasured gear market less lucrative, but why would some just farm teasured items? They would farm all items and if they could get more money selling teasured items to a NPC vendor instead of on the broker, they are still geting money, just slightly less than what the current system offers. So overall I don't see hurting the teasured item market that big of a deal, but that is my opinion.
2) The effect on other tiers than just the highest current Tier. With HC items being transmutable into fragments that will allow another source of transmutable items that is readily available. Depending on the tier and how many fuel you need per items this could also be a very cheap way to get fragments. If it is really cheap you could even make the higher adorning components via up conversion, though you would have to be an adorner to do this.
But to what end? Is the market that huge for tiers that adventurers can just power through? Even if they spend some time there in that level range and actually want adorns why is it a bad thing to have them more readily available to them? If they are adventuring they should be getting items and if they know about transmuting could have these materials allready and wouldn't even need to buy them. If you think about it content is so easy now and with the ability to have mercs there is even less reasons to get adornments, but if the lowest of the components, fragments, increase in the supply making them cheaper, it could give more reason to buy them because they don't cost that much. I don't see people making adornments just to sell in those lower tiers, they would make them to level up adorning and then try and sell them. I see lowering the prices on the lowest of the adorning components would just help out the adorner. I see that as a good thing.
Now the point is with my idea, it is tough to predict what would happen at these lower tiers and how it would effect the players. You can assume that it will increase the fragment supply, which would lower prices. Lowering prices would lower the demand on the broker for teasured items of that tier. But the lower tiers aren't that populated so these items aren't readily available which is why these teasured item can cost more. Is this good or bad? I guess it depends on your point of view, but worrying about older tiers seem like a minor concern, when my solution would just increase the lowest materials for adorning.

These are the only 2 I can think of? Can anyone else think of more that I haven't allready addressed? If not I really think this is a good idea, a necessary one? Nah life in EQ2 for the adorners and gathering of the materials will still go on, with the new gear moving toward 2 white adorn slots we need more sources to get these. My idea would only address fragments, the lowest component. Adveturers will still control the powder, infusion, and manas and I have no problem with that.

I'm more or less neutral on this topic. While I've voiced arguments against it isn't because I was opposed to the idea, but rather saw the arguments as ignoring aspects of transmuting and adorning and wished the arguments to address a more accurate version of what is going on.
Lets talk about how this idea would be implimented. An infrence from how its been talked about seems to indicate that the broad idea is that 1 HC item would equal 1 fragment. That idea is inconsistant with transmuting. Transmuting works as 60% low end product, 35% high end product, 5% all possible products with the only current exception being MC which has 3 possible products but nearly the same percentages.
I'm thinking that is HC was going to be made transmutable that it would have similar production. Lets be nice and make it 50% nothing, 45% 1 fragment, 5% 2 fragments so you still have a common, rare and very rare results. If the skill up rate was maintained this would become the perfered method. If dev doesn't want this to become THE perfered method but instead a secondary option that would be more expensive, halve the skill up chance. So 25% if it is a white or yellow combine, down to 10% for "grey" combines. At a cost of 6c per item, even at 10% getting to 450 would cost less than 1p in fuel and a whole lot of time crafting. Even bronze members could get to 90 transmuting.
One reminder: Transmuting when it was first introduced was made as a massive plat sink. You only skilled up when you made adornments. Transmuting as it is now still acts as a fairly efficient way to bolster the price of treasured items in the game. If that is no longer desirable in light of bronze and silver members not being able to afford treasured gear then this is a good way to lower the value of those items. If the status quo is good (from a dev perspective) then this is a bad idea.
As it is, the game needs more plat sinks. 90 min timers on group instances only makes the farming of plat come faster with no added ways to pull it from the game. Transmuting is an effective plat sink monstly because all transmuters tend to break down any loose items instead of brokering them. Encouraging more people to become transmuters will result in less gold being introduced but the prices of low end items falling as demend falls. Overall, I tend to find Transmuting to be negligable as a plat sink due to being massively outweighed by shard chests. The same goes for fuel consumption in crafting.

Zivgar,

You want a change thats unneccessary - you can already turn the adorning mats people actually gather into powders and then fragments.

This change will need coding.

It wont make SOE any money.

It will solve a non-problem.

Give it up.

Meirril wrote:

Yes I am glad you made agruments against it because if something like this was to put in place everything needs to be looked at and not just certian area that would make my idea look better. I can only think of so many possibilities and somethings I may not think of. So I thank all the people who have made constructive criticism or voiced their concerns.
I will admit I am not 100% on your suggestion. I don't really like the idea of getting nothing back, maybe change it to an item like a 'lump of coal', where you could sell and get some of that fuel cost back, but then again it is a money sink like you said. Plus even if you do get nothing back you still have a chance at a skill up, which really when you look at this idea is one of the major points.
So I would be for this idea of something like 50% you get nothing, 45% you 1 fragment, and 5% you get 2 frags. Now I would leave it up to SoE Devs to figure out the % base. Obviously I would be more for something like 35% nothing, 60% 1 frag, and 5% 2 frags, but I don't think that really matters. Just the idea of 3 different out comes with each giving skill ups. This would still leave the market for teasured and adept books since you would always at least get 1 fragment, or 1 powder, or 1 of each. I like it.
I never posted it either, but I am glad you did. But the percentage of skills up is again something that seems right to me. I would go for something like this what you said. I think that is simular to loot drops as where is the level of the gear is much lower than your transmuting level you don't get as many skill ups. So make it the same as loot drops if this is the case. Or if you want make the skill up chance less. I would be in favor of either, but as long as crafters have a viable option to level transmuting skill. If you have to go out and kill things you are no longer doing Tradeskiller things, you are doing adventurer things.
Lastly this still wouldn't address my concern that there needs to be more adorning materials out there. With SoE doing toward the 2+ white adorn system I think the supply of these items is going to drop big time. I have allready seen prices raise. Now I don't think making HC items is the answer nor I do I think it should be. Maybe increase the amount of materials for each item that is transmuted.
Such as legendary common would be 1 fragment and 1 powder, uncommon would be 1 fragment, 1 powder, and 1 infusion, and rare would be 2 fragments 2 powders and 1 infusion. This could be ultered in any way, doesn't have to be what I suggested.
Fabled could be 1 fragment and 1 infusion for common, uncommon could be 1 fragment, 1 infusion, and 1 mana, rare could be 2 fragments, 2 infusions and 1 mana.
Of course this idea would increase the supply of fragments, powders, and infusions and leave the most vaulable component at the same rate. (the amount of manas would increase with the extra supply of infusions though)
But a good point though is the fact that zones do only have 90 minute timers, which may be the only thing that needs to keep the supply high enough to get the materials needed to adorn items with 2 white adorn slots. So adding extra components is probabely not needed, but if this other idea was put into place you would have a lot more people wanted to be transmuters. Oh well just a thought.

Zivgar,

The market is doing its thing - on AB, infusions of the void are up to about 5 plat, and Distilled Mana to about 40.

Tolly is now running more content for adorning mats (and XP and AA), and buying more Legendary and Fabled items to break, and is buying a lot fewer voids directly on the market.

One of his guildies has also levelled his transmuting up, and another one is on the way.

Making handcrafted work/flag the same as treasured seems like a reasonable change at this juncture.
It wouldn't have been reasonable when transmuting was introduced, but in today's game, sure why not.

Tollymore wrote:

Funny, I just saw someone selling 200 mana at 20p each in /auction the other night. I guess the point is that the broker isn't an accurate measure of the supply but rather only measures those that are using it.
Most crafters are horders. Generally speaking, if you describe yourself as a crafter it means you've got at least 1 box of rares sitting around gathering dust. I've got hundreds of void powders, infusions and scores of mana not being used. Why? No good reason. I just break everything down that I get and don't want to give to an alt. We've been 90 for years now. I've given away stacks of void powder because I wanted to clear inventory space. Just ask around how much powder the 90/320 adventurers have, it should be rather shocking.

Meirril wrote:

Yeah good point, was just talking to a guildie and he mentioned how many he had. I have 2 boxes in my shared bank full of rares. When the daily adornering quests came in that is why I leveled up my adorner, so I am sure a lot of people have adorners and just keep those materials to use when or if they need them.
So to continue to address my issue here, it may not be needed to increase the amount of materials from each transmuting. I still think that it would be a good idea to get fragments from fabled and legendary gear along with what we currently get. I would rather not have to farm older zones to get this, I would rather play new content.

I love this idea. I have a transmutter who is stuggling to raise his skill beyond 100. (He's currently at 120 or so.) He gets 1 skillup per about 5 items muted. At that rate - even with normal solo questing - he gets not anywhere close to drop rate required to keep his skill matched with his adventure level. That rate would require about 250 mutable items per tier, which does not happen.
I could care less if handcrafted items returned anything in a mute. No fragments, nothing. I don't care. Would just be nice to have a way to work up transmutting without requiring hundrends of hours (per tier) of /played time grinding green mobs in some newbie zone.

Sorry but this is a ridiculous idea.
Fact - Adorning is cheap and easy to level.
Fact - The only reason this topic is alive is that since everyone is regearing fragments have gone up in price.
Fact - People are too lazy to level adorning in order to be able to make 7 fragments from crafting one, yes ONE single progress.

Transmuting and adorning used to be the same thing - you needed to level adorning to transmute items.
They've already oversimplified this secondary tradeskill - what is being requested just makes it stupid. May as well just put an adornment dispenser in qeynos harbor.
Or allow a person to choose what adornments they want as they loot an item.

Malchore wrote:

You are missing the point I think. It's not supposed to be easy. I've levelled transmuting on all 20+ of my toons and its not hard, at all. And your numbers are way off, sorry.

Impact@Splitpaw wrote:

Well, transmuting grey items is a 20% skill up rate. Transmuting items that are white/yellow is a 50% skill up rate. Guessing the Malchore is doing "grey" items?

Impact@Splitpaw wrote:

Your talking about adorning, which as you well know is not Transmuting. Heck, your can do adorning for free if your willing to do it 11 combines a day.
I don't think this is about creating fragments so much as it is about skilling from 1-50 in transmuting. Just my opinion on this. Again, I don't think this is a good or a bad idea. It won't have a major impact on transmuting in either case.

Impact@Splitpaw wrote:

Funny how you call this a ridiculous idea yet none of points is remotely close to the idea I have stated. Comments in Red
If your worry is about losing out on the teasured gear market, then this idea could go in the direction of what Meirril stated and that is to have one of the outcomes be transmuting a HC item gets nothing. This will lead my idea to being a way for crafters to level up the transmuting skill, giving another choice to those people that level up both an adventure class and crafter class. Currently there is no viable way to level up Transmuting for a Crafter. I just want that option and that is one of the major points of my idea.

Zivgar wrote:

Actually, there is. Harvest and craft mastercrafted items to transmute.
And lengedary items CAN transmute into fragments.

Mermut wrote:

Legandary items CAN NOT transmute into fragments. http://eq2.wikia.com/wiki/Transmuting Look it up from this page. I only get powders and infusions from Legendary items. I do not recall ever getting fragments from a Legendary item. Sorry but that is wrong.

Yes I have stated many times along with others, that MC items can be transmuted. I said viable or practical way, you need 435 transmuting skill to transmute lvl 92 items. That would be 430 skill ups. If each item you transmute gives you 1 skill up then you would need 430 rare items to do this. So you would have to buy or farm that many. To me that is not a viable solution to level up transmuting as a crafting only character. As we all know it is not a skill up every transmuted item. I do not have the actually numbers, but I believe we can all agree that 'grey' items give a lot less skill ups. Meirril said about 20% per grey item. So if you get your skill up to 100 then you need 330 more skill ups to get. If only using T1 and T2 rares it would then take you roughly 1650 rare items to level up transmuting. How is that viable?
If you are only lvl 10 Adverturer, while a lvl 90 Crafter how can you get enough high level rares to makes these items to level up to 435 skill? Can you? Of course you can get enough, but I think it is still a lot easier to get up by adventuring, in fact almost everyone has said that is true, so why force a crafter to do adventure things?. So please respond to this? How is being able to craft MC items a viable way to level up transmuting for a crafter? To me it seems to cost way too much or take way too much time to gather all those rares.
If you are concerned about having too much fragments onto the market, then just say that you like my idea, but you prefer Meirril's solution by making one of the transmuting out come to give nothing when you transmute a HC item. But I disagree with you when you say that making MC items is a practical or viable way to level up transmuting, I just don't see it. You quoted what I said so please read that quote before you use it to base your statements on.

Impact@Splitpaw wrote:

Okay, fogive my ignorance. I recently returned to EQ2 after nearly 5 years away. At the time I left, Transmuting and Adorning were two seperate skills. Are you saying it's now possible to work up my Transmuting skill while crafting adornments?
I'm unaware of any other way to work up Transmuting skill other than muting items. If there are other methods, then please share, or at least direct me to a thread that explains it all.

Malchore wrote:

You are correct currently there is only one way to level up transmuting that is to transmute items.
http://eq2.wikia.com/wiki/Transmuting
That is a good website for info on transmuting, but I bet it is pretty much the same info that was current about 5 years ago when you last played.

Zivgar wrote:

Hehe, it's perfectly viable. Given that back before the transmuting/adorning change, it's how most of us did it. It was the easiest, cheapest way to get the job done. (I think I still have a box of left over Tier 1 rares because it didn't take as many combines as expected.) But on the other hand, while it was viable, nobody's claiming it was any fun.
But while I object to making handcrafted gear transmutable into fragments for all the reasons mentioned upthread, I don't think I object to making it transmutable for skillups alone.
Make it transmutable into nothing, with a 20% chance of a skillup, and I don't think it'll throw anything out of balance game wise. I also don't think it's necessary, as transmuting is easy enough to skill up anyway once you get past level 10. I'm not overly fond of the idea, but I don't find it objectionable either...