PoP crafting line

Discussion in 'Tradeskills' started by Soara2, May 20, 2018.

  1. Soara2 Well-Known Member

    Ok you people weren't kidding when you said this wasn't fun, but torture? Omg torture. I hate. Hope it's not prerequisite for next one cause no way am I doing it on all mine.
  2. Sigrdrifa EQ2 Wiki Author

    It's REALLY not that bad. You DO have to pay attention to avoid being killed while running around, but the real trick is to use your Tradeskill Assistants to get various crafting potions to shorten the long combines:

    • \aITEM -1553776420 -1817560871 0 0 0:[Potion of Progress]\/a
      (Increases progress by 200 for 10 minutes)

    • \aITEM -157824054 -1125465822 0 0 0:[Potion of Innovation]\/a
      (Increases progress by 1000 for 20 seconds)

    You can also get as a reward from tradeskill quests:

    • \aITEM 589081922 43570737 0 0 0:[Limited Potion of Progress]\/a
      (Increases progress by 500 for 5 minutes)

    I also highly recommend music or audiobooks. Familiarity with the quests also makes it increasingly easier because you know what to look out for.
  3. Niami DenMother Well-Known Member

    Blazen, Karamella, Meneltel and 7 others like this.
  4. Tkia Well-Known Member

    No, Sigrdrifa. The real trick is for the devs to fix the expansion crafting so that people actually WANT to buy the expansion and log in to play that content. It's a game. It's supposed to be F U N. Jumping through the hoops that you're suggesting just to make it bearable to get through simply isn't going to cut it.
    Kheldar, Zeddicious, Svenone and 17 others like this.
  5. Tommara Active Member

    I really, really like Tkia's response:

    I'm a crafter at heart, but I refuse to spend much time crafting in MMO's just because of that. Most MMO's I won't craft because it makes no sense to do so.

    That's why I played EQ2 to begin with. I was so seriously butt hurt from EQ that I avoided EQ2 at first and played WoW at its launch instead. But once I tired of it, and tried EQ2 (circa 2006), I found a near perfect balance between loot that could be obtained solo and that which could be obtained by grouping, and a much more beautiful and interesting world/lore than either EQ or WoW. Master-crafted was better than solo loot drops, but not as good as drops from grouping for dungeons, exactly where it should be. Win-win for adventurers and crafters alike.

    That takes a careful balance between loot drops and crafting design, a legacy that Domino understood, and with her gone, I suspect that institutional memory about why this game was fun for crafters left with her.

    So I've been spending most of my time lately playing sandbox games, building things just for fun, such as Second Life/Opensim building for purely aesthetic reasons, or where building actually matters for survivability, such as Minecraft and Ark Survival Evolved.

    If I just want to mindlessly kill stuff, there's a lot better games than what I encountered in Tranquil Sea. "Kill ten rats" is a decades old gaming meme for bad quest design, but there I encountered "kill fifteen rats" not once, but twice in rapid succession.

    Which leaves me with no desire to buy the expansion, just as Tkia said.

    I would be much happier if that were not the case. I really liked the niche that EQ2 fulfilled, and would buy whatever expansion if it remotely appeared fun, but that seems to be a thing of the past. I've been watching developments in Rise of the Pantheon, but so far it seems more EQ oriented rather than EQ2.

    I'll probably play it, but only because there are no other MMO's that interest me. I'm guessing I will continue to play sandbox when I really need to make stuff that matters.
    Kheldar, Soara2, chattie and 3 others like this.
  6. Tx80i Member

    In order to show players spend time playing content these days is to make combines take 5 mins to do. I have 30 crafters, alot of players have more. This expansions timeline is very unrewarding. i had alot more fun doing the shawl and earing quests for all 30. For PoP theres not much crafting but theres alot of running around, im thinking lightning strikes has more running then that heritage journey is half the fun. and these combines that take 5 mins(feels like it) in hopes players spend $$ on their marketplace potions, the daily tasks are so boring this time around i only do 5 toons for the weekly and never do lightning strikes (once was enough in the timeline for me) and security measures
    Kheldar, Soara2, Tkia and 2 others like this.
  7. Cyrrena Well-Known Member

    I was as careful as I could be and died only 9 times doing the PoP TS instance in innovation for the timeline. When I finished both timelines Adventure and TS, I did a daily, what did I get? Innovation. I did exactly what I did during the TS timeline and yet I died 28 times. I almost deleted it but then my stubborn Irish self said you will finish this, so I did.

    Kaitheel gets us, he understands the balance just as Domino did and he tries to do things we will find FUN and REWARDING as more tradeskill oriented people, unfortunately, I believe he gets vetoed quite a lot, can we say raid quality mount from lobbing pumpkins during NoTD, that was considerably more rare than rocking horse poopie.

    Go to the test forums and the homeshow wish list, he does listen, he does reply, and he does do things for us.
    Blazen, Soara2, Meneltel and 3 others like this.
  8. Rhodris EQ2Wire Ninja

    I've followed people's experience with the PoP TS line, and I am not inclined in the least to do it. I enjoy crafting, and do not want to have all the fun sucked out of it for me. Dying by mobs (rather than by forge) while doing a CRAFTING line is just so wrong.
    Soara2, Argosunited, chattie and 5 others like this.
  9. Breanna Well-Known Member

    It really isn't that bad if you're careful, you just have to pay attention to where you are going. There's only a couple zone you can get killed by mob's in. And in innovation just make extra EMD's and put them all over and problem solved. I guess I must be one of the few who like it.
  10. Sigrdrifa EQ2 Wiki Author

    Same. On the Tradeskill Quest Line, I make 50 EMDs using mass crafting. It just means I have to harvest a little more. Then I zap every darn moving mob, and before I go through a closed door, I get as close to the door as I can and set an EMD then wait. The bots in the side alcoves of the interior hallway end up killing me if I am in the least inattentive, so I zap them.

    To place an EMD for a stationary mob, inch up until the mob name shows as just grey, then place EMD. I usually wait for the bot to inactivate, then remove that EMD, except for the two where I'm getting both a stationary bot and a roamer in the east and west rooms, when I place the EMD then go about my business.

    Here's my basic attack:
    [IMG]

    On the original Tradeskill Timeline, evac doesn't take you where you want to go, so you have to hoof it instead.

    On the weekly quest, pick up EMDs every time you pass the box. Once you've placed all the EMDs in the diagram above, you can pretty much run around safely.
    Breanna likes this.
  11. Breanna Well-Known Member

    Yea that is pretty much what I do too. I just harvest extra LOL and place them everywhere no problems at all after the first run when I said wow I need more of these emd things. I also put one right outside the door and wait before I open it too. Once you've learned that you breeze right through. Although the stupid steampipes did get me a couple times when I forgot to pull the lever LOL but that's on me (my bad). And I really like the rewards too.
    Xianthia likes this.
  12. Mirt Well-Known Member

    The PoP crafting sig line is absolutely just an adventure signature line with some long combines thrown in to make it seem like a crafting sig line. It's tedious and boring. It's not fun. Yes, the rewards are nice, however in previous expansions I couldn't wait to do the crafting sig line on all 9 crafters, but for this one I've only done it on 3 so far, because it's such a slog.
    Kheldar, Soara2, chattie and 4 others like this.
  13. Sigrdrifa EQ2 Wiki Author

    It's not an adventure line unless you have to fight. Which you don't. Lots of us have high level crafters that have very low adventure levels. And we go out and harvest, dodging deadly mobs. It's a normal tradeskill kind of thing.
    Breanna likes this.
  14. Lasai Well-Known Member

    I've never understood the "crafting as pseudo adventuring", and never liked it. I also never understood the subset that somehow felt that dodging red aggro was a "crafting" skill. Furthermore, I loathe the fact that "crafting" instanced are seeded with insta kill mobs for a max level adventure/crafter to force the red aggro dodge mentality of those with a half-finished char. I won't be doing Epic 2 cause I've had enough. Crafters should craft, not gimmick adventure. Level your adventure side if that's what you want to do. I've hated these quests since Proof of Pudding. My "high level" crafters have simply always killed anything that bothered them while harvesting.

    I understand that some of you get some sort of validation by sneaking red aggro.. but "crafting" quests should never have had that forced upon everyone regardless of adventure level.
    Mirt, Soara2, chattie and 2 others like this.
  15. Sigrdrifa EQ2 Wiki Author

    They kill max level adventurer-crafters, too.
    Soara2 likes this.
  16. Lasai Well-Known Member

    Stating the obvious? Isn't that what I said? Only because they are buffed to Epic levels and the only reason to buff them to that level is to kill chars with high level adventure. An artificial means to reduce those of us who have fully developed our characters to the same useless state as a "pure crafter" with a minimum of adventure level. A half done character.

    Whatever. I'm done with these phony "crafting" quests. And by the way, all of you so proud of your aggro dodge skills, that's a harvesting thing, NOT crafting, and you choose to enter red zones on a **** character.
    Mirt, Kheldar, Soara2 and 1 other person like this.
  17. Lasai Well-Known Member

    Now is also the time to interject my take on the origin of the "pure" low level crafter as well. It was seen as an advantage, period. There was, and perhaps still is a perception that the lowest level Adventure chars had the most efficient use of power for reaction arts, rightly or wrongly. People took this so far as to craft with no gear on whatsoever, nothing to boost the power pool. Those were the WORT and subcombine days, button mashing far in excess of today. Leveling up your pool was seen as detrimental. Crafting instances were full of naked low levels. People complained about exploration EXP ruining them.

    "Pure" crafters avoided adventure exp to maintain a perceived advantage. One reason killer forges got nerfed was that it did not take much to kill a "pure" crafter. This was the Environment Domino learned to craft in, and some of it got to the Dev table.

    Phase 2 was when certain factions could be leveled with either TS or Adventure. No separation into a craft faction. Early ROK was a good example. Those of us with Adventure/TS chars gained faction faster. This caused some real drama, with "pure" crafters basically calling us cheaters and exploiters and demanding separate TS factions that couldn't be sullied by those of us with Adventure/TS characters. We were doing it wrong. We were rotten cheaters. People demanded that our adventure level be removed from the equation.

    And so we end up being a "low level" to epic NPCs in TS instances out of some warped idea of "fairness" by people who refused to level up because of a perceived advantage of being low level and a refusal to give that "advantage" up. GG "pure" Tradeskillers.

    Done with it. There is no conceivable reward that will get me into an instance like these again. I'll be happy doing the open world tradeskill and harvest tasks while my "unfair" level 100+ merc casually slaughters anyone that bothers me. And trust me, I'll be laughing when one of you "pure" artful dodgers gets swatted like a bug because you have no instanced plot device to save you...
    Mirt likes this.
  18. chattie Well-Known Member

    I rarely do the dailies and weeklies simply because of the length of time it take to complete the recipes, and if I do any of them its only the one recipe quests, no way am I doing the others. lol And that's a sad thing bcz I used to love crafting. Oh, well there have been a billion complaints on this subject and it has been ignored by the powers that be.
    Soara2, Quillyne and Rhodris like this.
  19. Lateana Older than Dirt, Playing EQII since 2004

    I only do three dailies to complete the weekly on my two raid toons who need the stones to upgrade gear. Everyone else skips them after they get the achievement for doing all of the zones. BTW, I don't follow any of the various guides to complete Security measures. It takes me an average of 12 minutes to complete the zone and I only make 20 of the EMDs for the Signature version. I run the entire zone in a circle and pre-plant key EMDs, all of which makes it easy peasy with no dying. Remember that the critters in the corridors are only in the inner circle and all is good.
    Rosyposy, Xianthia and Mermut like this.
  20. Gudum Active Member

    Really have not kept up for the last couple of months, so not sure if anything has changed, but I only did the crafting timeline on one toon and then totally lost interest. The reward at the end didn't amount to much except a replacement for the beta reward, and the timeline was added so long after the expansion came out that all my crafters were already max level (except for the one I held at level 100 in case there was beta testing for the tradeskill content). May look at it later in the year, if I get energetic enough to buy the next expansion, and can still get decent experience out of it.
    Soara2 likes this.