Transmuting discussion thread

A nice weekend is coming up, and what would you rather do with your weekend than ponder transmuting? Why, surely nothing could be better! If you have no interest in transmuting, read no further. If you do, this is a thread to discuss and get feedback on some initial (repeat, initial) ideas of how we might approach changing things for the better with the coming expansion. None of the following is set in stone and there are still 5+ months to the expansion to work out the details, so please do not panic if you have some concerns you'd like to raise!
So, with that disclaimer, here we go:
As discussed in various places on these forums, many people feel that learning transmuting is a less than ideal experience that could use some serious improvements. And, as discussed at last month's Fan Faire, we have been considering ways in which to improve both the process of transmuting itself (levelling up, getting components, learning what's required) and the adornments themselves (which slots they are for, what stats they have, how powerful they are).
These are two different, though related, things: the crafter's experience, and the product itself. Both could use some improvement but we have been considering them separately as the solutions will be different. We are not yet ready to discuss the changes to the product (the adornments) themselves, so this post is just about improving the crafter side of the transmuting experience. Assume that the adornments will also improve, but the exact details of that aren't needed for this half of the discussion.
Some handy links to refresh your memory on how transmuting works:

• Transmuting guide on EQ2Traders
• Transmuting guide on 'Zam
• Handy UI display of current adornments at h0b0.net

First, what are the overall goals here?

1. to make transmuting less painful to level up, it should be about on a similar difficulty level as tinkering in terms of speed and expense
   
2. to make transmuting products more useful and better distributed in terms of which stats on what slot and what rarity
3. to make it less confusing for adventurers to figure out how to get adornments made and who to go to
   
4. to make it less confusing for crafters to learn how to be transmuters

So, what are the problems with the current system that need to be addressed in order to meet these goals? In no particular order, here are the complaints I've seen most in game and in this forum:

1. The first recipes you get are red difficulty, which can be scary to beginner transmuters.
2. It is annoying to not be able to break down components above your transmuting level. It is confusing and unintuitive that you only get transmuting skill-ups from breaking stuff down up to skill 100.
3. Transmuters don’t get the majority of the adornment recipes, or even the best ones consistently. It is ununtuitive which class gets which recipe.
4. The RNG can mean long streaks of no skill ups when making adornments, which is frustrating.
5. Higher level recipes require huge numbers of components, which gets very expensive.
6. There are not enough items readily available to break down to produce all the components you need.
7. The availability of different components is imbalanced (e.g. some levels you have hundreds of fragments but no powders).
8. The adornments available are inconsistent, lacking in many slots, and very mixed desirability (some overpowered, some stupidly useless).

And here are some proposed solutions to each of the above points. Once again, these are still under consideration, not yet set in stone.

1. Levels of the first recipes will be adjusted down a bit so there are at least a couple yellow or white.
2. We will separate the "transmuting" (breaking stuff down) skill from the "adorning" (making adornments) skill. The transmuting (breaking stuff down) skill will be granted when you choose to become a transmuter, and will level up to max from breaking stuff down, just like mining rocks levels you up in your mining skill. Adorning (making adornments) will skill up separately and will only level up by making adornments, just like making armor levels up your armoring. The breaking-stuff-down skill will level up as fast as any other harvest skill as you break stuff down. The adorning skill will level up similarly to tinkering speed. This point is probably the biggest change, but seems to make the most sense as this makes the transmuting system consistent with our other systems, as breaking stuff down has always been intended to be the "harvesting" skill for the transmuter, and making adornments their primary function. This will also allow people to break stuff down even if they're not interested in levelling up in adornment making, which should make components more available on the broker, since everyone could learn to break down their own attuned old gear.
3. Transmuters will get all adornment recipes. At the same time, we will allow anybody to become a transmuter, even if they are already a tinkerer, so that any class that loses the ability to make adornments will be able to get it again if they wish. Nobody will therefore permanently lose the ability to make adornments. The adornment recipes will be all new ones, the old ones will be removed entirely as we don’t want to support two separate systems.
4. The frustration in leveling transmuting at present mainly arises from the difficulty in obtaining components. Adorning skill levels up at the same speed as tinkering, and if we correctly address the lack of availability of components, it should be equivalent, and much less frustrating. However, we could tweak this curve a little for both if necessary - probably a subject for discussion during beta.
   
5. The number of items required will be fixed across all levels. So if a level 5 item might require 3 fragments, 2 powders, and 1 infusion, the equivalent level 85 item will also require 3 fragments, 2 powders, and 1 infusion.
6. We will address the shortage of items in a number of ways. See #5 - reducing the numbers of items required so that you don’t need as many. And see #2 - more people able to transmute will also reduce the cost of the components on the broker, and make more items available as people not interested in making adornments can still break down their old gear. We will also make more transmutable items available if necessary, one option we are considering is to make some of the items that are discovered from scrying stones transmutable.
7. We will add recipes to convert a number of lower rarity items (e.g. fragments) into fewer higher rarity items of the same level (e.g. powders). Note: this will only work within a level range, you will not be able to convert lower level items to higher level items.
8. This will be addressed separately with a complete revision of which adornments are available with which stats. This is a different discussion; more on this at a later date.

If you've read this far, you probably have some opinions already, so please take your time to think them through and post any feedback (positive or negative) in this thread. If you don't like the ideas, it would be helpful if you can explain why and what a better solution would be, of course!
Thanks for your feedback!

Edit to add a couple answers posted later in the thread:

To answer a couple of the questions raised:

Yes, if we do this the intention is that existing transmuters would maintain their current skill level. So a 350 transmuter now would end up with 350 transmuting and adorning skill.

Yes, it is intended you can both tinker and make adornments.

Yes, we can look at automatically granting you the tradeskill arts when you sign up to be a transmuter (or tinkerer).

Yes, we can look at having a less annoying spell effect when you break stuff down.

YAY! This is exciting for me because I love maxing skills, so splitting it up means more skills to play with!
This all looks very awesome so far from what I can tell, though I am a tinkerer, not a transmuter, so a muter will probably have better feedback than me. However, my guild's transmuter is curious on what will happen to him? I didn't see this in the post but if you already addressed this, sorry! He is a 400 'muter, so he has gone through the drudge of transmuting and then adorning. Will he have to grind for adorning skill ups all over again? Or will his transmuting and adorning skills already be maxed?
Thanks a bunch!! Yay!

I'm not sure about the whole separation of adornment creation skill from transmuting. While great for those who want to skill up, it doesn't resolve the issue of spam creation.Assuming you actually want to resolve it that is.
Rest looks fine to me as presented.

Do you have plans to make transmuting (breaking down) items faster? If you get requests like "Can you transmute 200 items for me?" you want to fake a LD, because it takes so damned long to transmute larger quantities of items. Or will everyone be able to break everything down regardless of level? So with 1/400 breaking skill you can break down Lvl 80 items? Or do have to start with T1 items? What happens with existing transmuters? Will they get the new skill at the same level as they are now transmuters or will the start at zero at adorning oder transmuting like everyone else? And will you increase the use of infusions in recipes? You get tons of infusions, mainly from trasnmuting raid stuff nobody wants, but there is zero need for them in legendary and fabled recipes. These recipes should rather use more infusions and less fragments/powders.

To begin - the allowance of taking up Tinkering and Transmuting alleviates most of the complaints people have. On 1 toon if you can acquire both sets of skills the field is level, the disparity between Tinkering and Transmuting becomes a moot point.
If would appear your proposition addresses truly all points of contention for Transmuting with the exception of leveling so I will take the unpopular stance on this one . . . given the impending changes I would not change anything regarding leveling or skilling it up.
Reasons for this:

1. Transmuters are going to become more valuable already, they will get all the adornment recipes.
2. You can level Transmuting from 0-400 on Tier 1 items which are easily and readily available to any and every player in the game.
3. Its a secondary skill, if you are daunted by starting on red recipes, get more comfortable with crafting then try to go to the next level. IE, Master the primary then try secondary.
4. The leveling for Transmuting on the RNG has always taken double hits due to the way items are acquired (did you get a drop from a mob you can transmute, did you get a skillup when you broke it down, will get get a skillup when you make an adornment for the 101-400 levels) BUT with the separation of the breakdown and adornment skills this also becomes pretty moot. The average ratio is 1:5 on grey item recipes with upwards of 1:2 on yellow. So if you want to skill up on grey from 101-400 you will need to essentially count on making 1500 combines. And yes, those figures are accurate and have been repeated many times.

DominoDev wrote:

Comments in the quote in Blue. I hope those comments help, and I trust you'll do a good job on the system. I'm sure you're ready for it, but do be aware of some whining from both the classes that were use adorns to level (even though writs are so great already, I never subscribed to that argument) and from transmuters who may see all their effort as being 'watered down'.
I assume that when this goes in, existing transmuters will have both their skills set to their current transmuting skill? (IE they won't have to level one or the other up from 1).

DominoDev wrote:

This is the money shot right here, making transmuting as simple a skill as harvesting, from 1 all the way to 400/450. I would not bother having a separate adorning skill and it seems contrived to preserve it. You would save yourself much time and effort by delegating all adornment recipes to the existing tradeskill subclasses, as is being mostly done right now.

Artemiz@The Bazaar wrote:

I'll respond to each of your numbered bits:

1. Which is why it needs to be easier for people to level them up.
2. You can level it up fast or cheap. If you level it up fast, it's going to cost you a good bit. Or you can level it up cheap, using those level 1's for 1 or 2g each off the broker and/or what you farm yourself. But that second option is in no way fast, so I would say that it is "easy" to level transmuting now is not true.
3. That's not even a good argument. Secondary TSes do not require you to have a primary TS, thus having recipes being red at the start does discourage players.
4. Given that the skillup rates for each component are going to be adjusted to be more like tinkering... I don't see a question or concern in this point.

As long as people who are max transmuters today get grandfathered into having both skills maxed, I don't have a problem.
Once I heard you would be able to do both tinkering and transmuting I invested a lot of plat into transmuting and switched from tinkerer.
The amount of treasured loot you need today to skill up is a huge plat sink, I'd hate to have to do it again.
Having the same amount of components will help, thats why most people did T1 and T2 adorns to skill up. It wasn't worth taking the risk of spending a lot of money on the expensive T5-T7 fragments (and having to use a lot of them) and then not get a skill up.
With T1, you could make a crude, it would take less time, and use less materials.
Other suggestions:

• Give furniture item levels, at least allow carpenters to make a mastercrafted product that can be transmuted.
• Going to the extreme, allow App IV's and handcrafted stuff to be transmuted with a fragment as the only possibility. This will allow new players to buy Adept 1's and treasured gear at reasonable prices since they are so off the wall price-wise now. In some cases its cheaper to get an Adept 3 made because the rares are so cheap than it is to simply buy the Adept 1, thats messed up.
• With regular tradeskilling, you can get mana back from countering events. Transmuting has no events (I dont think tinkering does either, I can't remember) and Geomancy's event counters (shard crafting) does not generate mana. It would be nice if these did and if transmuting had some events to counter.

agressiv

I do NOT think the skill should be split for 'breaking down' and making adorns, it's ALL transmuting.
I think skill up chances need to be available from 'breaking down' items to the max, not stop at 100. Level 1 items should always have a 'chance' at skill up. making items maintains it's current ability.
I do think a transmuter should be able to make 'any adorn' (since they specialize in these components), but leave the other ts classes with what they currently have. (lowering the number of people that can make adorns would be bad, when it is already hard to find people willing)
I want a window where I can place 10 items and xmute them at once, with an option for confirm. (which I will turn off, but some may want) Or make the cast time .01 second, because it stinks doing a lot at once when u need a lot to level. Let me break down a 'rare' straight to a powder, better a stack of 10 or 200 at a time (ok here i know I am dreaming but you asked).
We do need something besides hobo.net to let us not who makes what adorn for what slot. (To the hobo.net person "THANK YOU!")
Fabled should be a guaranteed mana. Legendary should be a guaranteed infusion 'or' infusion(75) and powder (25). Anything made from a rare AND the rare itself should yield a powder, and treasured gets fragments (75) or powders(25).

Its great to see transmuting getting some love I'll need to spend some time re-reading the post and considering my own transmuting experiences, but my initial reaction is positive.
One "problem" I noticed missing from your list is the way that transmuters (and tinkerers as well) currently have to purchase their transmuting reactive skills. This is very unintuitive given that other crafts are provided with the reactives automatically as you level your craft. Its not clear how reactives are expected to be provided from the revamp description, but I would highly recommend granting them automatically when transmuting/adorning is taken, and then upgrading them automatically as skill levels increase. So many times I've helped people trying to tinker or transmute only to find they didn't have any reactives and couldn't figure out how to complete their combine successfully. Heck, I did it myself on one toon even after I did both transmuting and tinkering on other characters in EoF beta!

Even after these great ideas for changes, I suspect that higher levels of transmuting will still suffer from a lack of available materials on the market.
T1 transmutables that vendor for a few silver are worth farming for ingredients, while T9 transmutables anticipated to be worth a lot of gold at vendors will most likely be far too expensive to buy off broker: considering that the T8 transmutables sold for roughly 16-26g each item, it suggests that T9 will probably be around 25-35g at the vendor, meaning that a T9 frag on broker will be priced accordingly.
T1 frag = copper or silver on broker, T9 frag = arm and leg plus a gouged eye, Halliburton-style with no bathtub of ice to rest in after the kidneys are removed...

Neskonlith wrote:

I actually doubt that will be true. One of her points is that the # of consumed materials will be the same accross all tiers... meaning a T9 adorn may only use 1 powder 2 frags, which would be roughly 3x the vendor value. And your prices are out of whack... L70-79 adept's, my transmute-fodder of choice, sell for 9g on to the vendor. I think the L80 ones sell for 11 or 12. That is hardly 25-35g.
Now, if you look at some of the misc. trash gear drops, those sell for more. So don't use them to transmute, it's as simple as that. I am getting by perfectly fine in T9 using only 70-79 adept books, L80's and the vendor trash equip I sell.
So if anything, these changes should make it cheaper than ever to make T8 and thus T9 adorns. Purely since you will need much less material.

I am not sure what to think about this until we know how current 400/400 transmuters will handled. It makes sense to break them out but only if current transmuters get both skills equil to thier level.

Jesdyr@Unrest wrote:

I think that is what is most likely to happen. I doubt Domino would make you have to level one or the other up from skill 1.

CoLD MeTaL wrote:

Can't agree with you on that one. "Breaking things down" is transmutting. Making adornments is a tradeskill... just like making armor. So make them seperate. By making them seperate, everyone.... even those that HATE to tradeskill, can break things down. Just like anyone can harvest rares and sell them without being a tradeskiller. This creates more components on the market, driving down prices (hopefully).

This looks good and addresses a lot fo the reasons my transmuter has been languishing aroung 145 skill for such a long time.

DominoDev wrote:

I don't want to make an assumption here, so to be clear I will ask. For those of us who currently have a transmuter at a certian level of transmuter skill, lets say 400/400 for now, will we have 400/400 transmuting and 400/400 adorning skill once this change is in effect? I would hate to have to level up my adorning skill all over again as that is how I leveled it to begin with.
I think you will find many people who will only be transmuters and tinkerers and not be adorners if this goes live. Most people don't care to actually make the adornment, they just want to be able to break down their old stuff.

I would prefer if adornments where made by the regular crafter classes, and the transmuting skill was treated like a harvesting skill entirely. I love the idea of raising transmuting by breaking down stuff and getting tradeskill supplies.
I prefer a market broken up into chunks. As it stands currently if one person wanted to corner the adornment Market they woud need to level up all the tradeskill classes ( many seperate characters ) including Tinkering and Transmuting . As the proposal goes they would only have to level the Transmuting character and have a big house for broker space, alts for more of the veteran reward broker cases would of course help.
I would be completely happy with a change in which Transmuters recieved all recipes, and the regular tradeskill classes each recieved a selection of those same adornment recipes appropriate to thier tradeskill class.
In other words my armorer might make adornments that affected armor based stats mitigation/defense, a weaponsmith had recipes relating to parry/weapon damage/procs for weapons, a tailor might very well recieve the exact same selection of adornments as my armorer. A sage might very well recieve all the recipes realating to spell based procs, a jeweler to combat art based procs, an alchemist might recieve a selection of the prismatic stat and resist based adornments. Just a few examples.
I would also request a new tradeskill station for transmuters creating adornments.

Barx@Antonia Bayle wrote:

Good for you! Please note I referred to the rough pricing of vendoring transmutables, not just adepts - so naturally they are more expensive.
Yes, I imagine that it must be wonderful to be a transmuter on the AB server with an abundance of riches - and I'm sure that the AB server also sets the market pricing for all other servers... so all those other servers having notably fewer available T7+ adepts listed, starting priced at 25g+, they are merely an aberration not worthy of pointing out - yet in such an aberrant situation, using 16-26g transmutables to tear up for ingredients is simply part the cost of doing business.